Double Shot of Weekly Social Marketing Links: June 30, 2009

Posted on July 2, 2009 by Aaron Strout

Crap. How many times can I make excuses for not getting our group’s weekly links out there. Not many more I guess.

With that as a backdrop, let’s skip right to the good stuff.

Beth Lopez (Marketing)

My article this week Social Media Is Changing the Content Marketplace by Heidi Cohen. Article focuses on the ways social media is impacting traditional media and what traditional media organizations can do to capitalize.

DP Rabalais (Marketing)

Good, quick read from MarketingProfs on the value of Online Communities in regards to market research. The article is titled Three Essential Market-Research Methods in an Online Community by John Kembel

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My second article is titled, As Economy Impacts Online Retail, Companies Shift Marketing Focus. 

Bill Fanning (Business Development)

My article for this week is titled Why Twitter will soon become obsolete written by Jason Clark. I had to read this one given the title and I found it pretty interesting. To be fair, I don’t think he is saying that Twitter will not have a place at all, he is saying that Twitter is not the marketing miracle that it is currently hyped up to be. Furthermore, as Twitter becomes more “spammy” it will become a less effective marketing tool. Controversial topic and worth the read.

Jay McIntosh (Business Development)

As the economy goes, so goes the marketing budget! Most corporations pull back their marketing spend, and therefore activities, during a recession. Though, I philosophically disagree with this strategy, it’s done because most of the marketing budget is hard to measure or not measured at all! I know, I know….just because you can’t measure something doesn’t mean it’s not valuable. Tell that to Wall Street where it’s all about numbers (revenue, EBITDA, comp sales, etc.). Anyhow, as a company whose purpose is to help marketers get smarter with their overall spend, it’s important to understand their top priorities, near and longer-term. This article summarizes an April 2009 study by the Association of National Advertisers about where marketer’s minds are now, during the recession, and where they anticipate being as we come out of the recession.

Doug Wick (Business Development/Social Media)

[Aaron here] Doug wrote a great blog post this week about Powered’s Offerings/Online Community serving as a company’s “401(k).” It’s too good not to include in this week’s update.

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My article for this week is from Gary Stein, who writes for ClickZ and is the VP of Social Media for Isobar.

The title is Open Position: Media Earner. Eventually there will need to be a way to unlock media dollars and let them flow into social, and the concept of “earned” vs. “paid” media might be conceptual connective tissue that gets us there. Here Gary makes it real by describing the person who is in charge of planning earned media. His mocked-up job description is really a description of what all marketing jobs will be in the future, where our job performance is measured by how well we are facilitating conversation, adding value to the conversation, and receiving positive mentions as a result.

Don Sedota (Product)

I’ve been involved in a few of the messaging/positioning discussions lately around the technology section of our new website and I fortunately stumbled across this great Pragmatic Marketing article on messaging/positioning that I think is well worth the read:

In the discussions I was involved in I think we were generally in line with this article but the article gave me additional clarity on architecting a top-notch product message that resonates with consumers.

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Really good blog post here on Comment Marketing by Shannon Paul . This is basically a guide for brands on responding to blog/forum/etc. comments with the intention of marketing the brand. She classifies several situations as green light, yellow light and red light situations based on the caution that should be placed on brands responding to an online comment.

Here are the highlights:

  • Green light – Your company is mentioned in product comparison btw Company A and Company B
  • Yellow light – Your company is left out of the comparison btw Company A and Company B
  • Red light – No direct mention, only a general reference of industry or market segment
  • Yellow/Green light – Reader asks about your company in the comments

Also includes some good links to related “comment marketing” posts.

Filed under: Social Marketing | Leave a Comment »

Does Your Social Media Portfolio Include a 401k?

Posted on June 24, 2009 by Doug Wick

401k SignRecently I’ve been thinking more about (and working on) how Powered, as a social marketing provider that focuses on building online communities for brands, can expand our partnerships with those brands’ marketing agencies. In an earlier post, I broke down the question of whether or not agencies can evolve into social. In that post I mentioned a lot of ways that agencies will choose to drive that evolution – with a partnering strategy being one of the major approaches.

For brands – who are really focused on delivering results in the most cost-efficient way possible today – the goal with any partner approach is to drive a social marketing offering where multiple cooperative partners in the social space can deliver more value than they would individually.

A useful metaphor for how this might be done is the world of investing. After all, social marketing is about brands investing in relationships in ways that they can’t do through more traditional marketing channels. But these investments can take many forms.

Any good investor will tell you that diversification is key. You must not only invest in short term vehicles (like stocks) that can be more rewarding but are also riskier, you must also make sure you putting money into long term vehicles. Additionally, the interaction between these short term and long term investments is important to building wealth. Gains made in stocks must occasionally be funneled into longer term vehicles and locked down.

I see the world of social media the same way. Ultimately, storytelling and the production of compelling media – the ability to connect emotionally with a consumer while fitting into the current media and market environment – takes the skill and experience of a great agency. Here are some recently highlighted offline examples from the world of Outdoor advertising.

This “Day Trader” of the social media world knows how to place the right bets, which tools/networks to place them in, how to get the message just right, and the right process for spinning them up with online and offline media/search buys. His or her world is dynamic, and changes every day based on moves in technology, competitor activities, audience preferences, and hundreds of other variables.

Because of that changing world, the focus is on the near term and the strategies are campaign-oriented. They have to be, as the campaign that works today might not work tomorrow.The focus is on creativity, customization, agility, trendspotting, leveraging various technologies, short term measurement, joining instead of building, and exploration.

The good campaigns will be heavily rewarded: with consumer attention, affinity, word-of-mouth buzz, loyalty, and new business. But where will those earnings go when that Day Trader has to move on to the next campaign?

This is where the Investment Manager comes in, the person who keeps a long view and helps leverage the riches that the Day Trader produces into long term wealth. In social marketing, this is the community provider – and with that provider are the people that manage the marketing assets where fans and customers can engage over the long term with brands and with each other. This is who creates and manages a brand’s 401k. The focus is on infrastructure, sustained processes, long-run measurement, building instead of joining, and content with a long lifespan.

These skill sets are both highly necessary, highly complementary, and difficult to perform at a high level simultaneously – which makes them fit a partner model well. Also, the long-term vehicle of community is the newer piece, and part of an agency’s evolution into social is to understand how it works, and how it complements, their work.

Filed under: Social Marketing, Social Media | Tagged: , | 1 Comment »

Upcoming Webcast: Pitfalls and Best Practices for Online Community Building (6/24)

Posted on June 21, 2009 by Aaron Strout
Lisa Radner, Forrester

Lisa Bradner, Forrester

Debi Kleiman, Communispace

Debi Kleiman, Communispace

Aaron Strout, Powered

Aaron Strout, Powered

Yes, this is going to be a good one. Don’t miss the opportunity to join Forrester Principal Analyst, Lisa Bradner, Communispace CMO, Debi Kleiman and Aaron Strout, CMO, Powered (yup, that’s me) this Wednesday, June 24 at 2 PM CT as we talk about the good, bad and the ugly of community building. Our presentation promises to be chalk full of examples AND prescriptive advice on the best way to approach community building.

Specifically, we’ll talk about:

  • Building a solid foundation for your online community initiative
  • Leveraging what you learn from community members in your organization
  • Driving participation and engagement among community members
  • Avoiding the 7 deadly pitfalls of community development and management

I won’t BS you and tell you to sign up now because this is a limited time offer but you should do it soon so you don’t forget!

Filed under: Community, ROI and Marketing Measurement, Social Marketing, Social Media, Social Networking | Leave a Comment »

Double Shot of Weekly Social Marketing Links: June 10, 2009

Posted on June 16, 2009 by Aaron Strout

Alright, I’ve been a little lax in my blogging responsibilities. You REALLY know that this is the case when I can’t even make the time to post a digest of the links that the product/marketing/business development teams at Powered pull together on a weekly basis. In fairness to me, I’ve been in the process of moving across country the last two weeks starting with a 2,000 mile drive with a car full of plants, cats and condiments from my refrigerator (all things moving companies won’t touch). I am now settling in to the great city of Austin, TX and with my settling will come a redoubling of my efforts to do more blogging here.

With that as a backdrop, the good news is that you all get a double dose of articles this week — one from last week and one from this week from each of the “Team Powered” members. Even better, this is one of the best batches of articles/posts to date. Hope you enjoy ‘em!

Beth Lopez (Marketing)

Five Reasons why Content Strategy comes before Social Media

http://blog.junta42.com/content_marketing_blog/2009/06/five-reasons-why-content-strategy-comes-before-social-media.html
Liked this post as it reinforces our approach to content and community.  Plus, it was written by Joe Pulizzi with Junta42.com who was one of our May Webinar panelists talking about Content Marketing strategies.  The five reasons he listed are:
1. Social media does not work unless you have something valuable to say!
2. Publishing is marketing, marketing is publishing.
3. Social media activity does not mean you are accomplishing your marketing goals.
4. It’s the content that is ultimately shared through social media.
5. Social media = I hear you + I’m listening to you + I understand
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Millennials Among Those Who Don’t Appreciate Twitter
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=107081
Quick read and short article that discusses a recent study that found that only 22% of millennials use twitter.  I found this stat particularly interesting given the fact that Millennials are one of the larget demographics online, participate in social networks, text friends without even looking at their phone, are into the latest tech gadgets and fads, etc….I would have thought that more millennials would have been on Twitter than this study suggests.  Reinforces that brands need to understand where their target audience lives online before launching social media campaigns and could be one explanation as to why brands that try to reach this audience via twitter have failed.

I liked this post as it reinforces our approach to content and community.  Plus, it was written by Joe Pulizzi with Junta42.com who was one of our May Webinar panelists talking about Content Marketing strategies.  The five reasons he listed are:

  1. Social media does not work unless you have something valuable to say!
  2. Publishing is marketing, marketing is publishing.
  3. Social media activity does not mean you are accomplishing your marketing goals.
  4. It’s the content that is ultimately shared through social media.
  5. Social media = I hear you + I’m listening to you + I understand

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Millennials Among Those Who Don’t Appreciate Twitter

Quick read and short article that discusses a recent study that found that only 22% of millennials use twitter.  I found this stat particularly interesting given the fact that Millennials are one of the largest demographics online, participate in social networks, text friends without even looking at their phone, are into the latest tech gadgets and fads, etc… I would have thought that more millennials would have been on Twitter than this study suggests.  Reinforces that brands need to understand where their target audience lives online before launching social media campaigns and could be one explanation as to why brands that try to reach this audience via twitter have failed.

DP Rabalais (Marketing)

Since we met Greg Matthews of Humana last week, I thought I’d find an article or post regarding Humana’s Social activities.  The article by Jason Falls talks about how Humana very successfully tied an offline program (Freewheelin) into online social media, including:  Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, plus a few fan Blogs.  Interesting, light read about a company we could potentially do business with.

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I thought this article, Five Ways to Use Twitter to Improve Your Marketing, by Heidi Cohen of ClickZ would be relevant to everyone.  Most of this we all already know, but still it’s a good reminder and has a few points that can be incorporated into Powered’s online marketing presence.

Bill Fanning (Business Development)

A couple weeks ago, I highlighted an article about the new way of thinking about the web in terms of streams rather than pages.  This week, the post I’d like to highlight, titled Web 3.0 is about taming the deluge of data written by David Griner, discusses how the web will evolve to manage the stream.  In a nutshell, the social movement has created an enormous amount of content that is very difficult to manage for businesses and individuals alike.  The next evolution will be tools to distill the conversations into digestible chunks so we can actually make the content valuable rather than overwhelming.  Well worth the read and a good guy to follow on Twitter and his blog, The Social Path.

Jay McIntosh (Business Development)

We often discuss the characteristics of brands that we believe would benefit tremendously from having a branded online community. The ones that come up most often either fall into the category of passion brands or what I call utility brands.

This article entitled America Revs Up Its Do-It-Yourself Passion talks about how more and more shoppers (56%) are dabbling in DIY. Of course there’s an economic factor that is driving growth in DIY, but there’s also a social/psychological one as well and this is where the passion comes in. Let me explain…the products that consumers use for DIY projects typically aren’t from what we would call passion brands. Home improvement products, auto parts, hair color, tax tools, etc. are not typically thought of as passion products. However, the DIY category is full of people who are passionate about DIY projects. Why are they passionate about DIY? I suspect it has a lot to do with a sense of gaining greater control in their lives, satisfaction in doing something tangible, etc.

With the growth of DIY and the consumer need for education and sharing it makes sense to pay close attention to them as potential targets in the future. To that end, here are a few of the DIY categories and associated brands that support the category:

Home improvement – Ace Hardware, Orchard Supply Hardware, IKEA
Travel and Recreation – REI, Columbia, Northface, Patagonia, Coleman
Beauty – Sephora, Loreal, Clinique
Digital Home/Entertainment – Best Buy, Cisco, Samsung
Eating – Williams Sonoma, Costco

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Talk about blurring the line between brands…Comcast is going to provide content for target.com. Comcast owns theDailyCandy.com site which will be providing shopping/fashion content in a new section of Target’s site called “Red Hot Shop”. This WSJ article goes on to discuss how retailers are partnering with media companies to gain access to more entertaining and engaging content in order to drive more traffic to their brands. This benefits the retailers in two ways; 1) they sell more stuff and 2) it increases the demand for advertising on the their site, which creates an additional revenue stream. Meanwhile, the media company gains additional buyers (i.e. revenue) for the content it produces.

Anyhow, this article raises a couple of interesting opportunities/challenges for brands, especially those targeting lifestyle categories (i.e. travel, health, entertainment, etc.):

  • How do they attract and engage consumers with content that is compelling and UNIQUE in a world where media companies are desperate for additional revenue and reselling the “family jewels”? Do brands purchase exclusive rights from the media companies for a period of time? Do brands invest in creating their own lifestyle content? What about UGC? It’s much less expensive than “professional content” and maybe brands provide consumers with more powerful tools to improve the quality of their content? But who “owns” the content, the consumer, the brand, both?
  • What is the advertising business opportunity for brands, especially retailers, who invest in more entertaining and useful information? Is the value primarily in drawing more consumers who buy more stuff from the brand? Or does it shift (as mentioned by Expedia’s VP of Global Media Solutions) to media and advertising revenues? Whatever the mix, it’s going to be determined by us (consumers) because every action, click, forward, buy , etc. done online can and will be measured, or at least it better be!

Doug Wick (Business Development/Social Media)

I am going to go with this blog post by 360i announcing the publishing of their Social Marketing Playbook. I’m cheating a little because I got this off of Yammer, but I think it’s a good enough resource that it should be included . . .

The Agency, 360i, published a “Social Marketing Playbook” that is a useful document in the vein of Forrester’s Groundswell, but which comes at the problem of social marketing from a practitioner’s viewpoint. It’s worth a read whether you are just getting starting in social media / marketing or you know what you’re doing already. Especially interesting is their side-by-side analysis of the social marketing footprints for H&R Block, Vitamin Water, and Skittles. It also notably includes guest articles by outside experts such as Jeff Pulver, Pete Cashmore, and Jeremiah Owyang, among others.

Don Sedota (Product)

My article this week was posted on Mashable in mid-April and is entitled Social Media and SEO: 5 Essential Steps to Success. The article gives a great overview of how social media and SEO programs can feed off of each other (i.e., social media community traffic/participation can be greatly enhanced by ranking high in search results for important keywords and SEO rankings can be greatly increased by having dynamic and compelling content that is linked to by 3rd party sites, as well as strategic page level metadata tagging and other tactics). Bottom line is that SEO is a critical demand generation component of building community traffic and participation.

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A few weeks ago, Facebook announced that they’ll be supporting OpenID registration (i.e., users can leverage an existing OpenID account such as Gmail to create a Facebook account). This obviously lowers the barrier to entry for creating a new FB account and helps online users in the effort to simplify their online account management across the Web. Here’s a good Mashable article, and here’s FB’s official press announcement. Up until this announcement, I hadn’t spent a lot of time researching OpenID but I have since this announcement and here are some thoughts/highlights regarding our platform:

  • Gmail accounts are OpenID (which is really what made me sit up straight) so OpenID integration within our platform would open the doors to Gmail account owners the same way Facebook Connect integration opened up the doors to FB members on our communities
  • The fact that Facebook is now supporting OpenID is a pretty significant endorsement that OpenID isn’t going away
  • Good quote from FB’s press release “In tests we’ve run, we’ve noticed that first-time users who register on the site with OpenID are more likely to become active Facebook users. They get up and running after registering even faster than before, find their friends easily, and quickly engage on the site.” – this is interesting from an OpenID perspective, but I would also think that this perspective applies to FBC integration on 3rd party communities (i.e., good to know since we just implemented FBC)
  • Something we should probably consider seriously for the next few platform releases

Filed under: Social Marketing | 2 Comments »

Back to School Podcast: The Real Scoop on Facebook Connect

Posted on June 11, 2009 by Aaron Strout

With Powered’s recent release of Facebook Connect, you won’t be surprised to hear me say that I think this is the future of social marketing. To help share in this excitement, our PR firm, SHIFT Communications, amassed three big brains (all three of which are friends) in Jennifer Leggio, social media blogger at ZDNet, Marshall Kirkpatrick, lead blogger at ReadWriteWeb and Matthew Lees, analyst and VP at the Seybold Group.

During this 20 minute podcast, we talk about:

1.      Who (if anyone) is doing Facebook Connect well?
2.      Will mainstream users adopt it or will it be mainly those “in the know?”
3.      What do you think about the tradeoffs between data collection (less w/ FB Connect) vs. lowering the barriers to entry?
4.      How does FB Connect stack up against Open ID? Will Open ID take off? Or go away?
5.      Will people tire of seeing “business” messages permeate their news streams?

6.      Thoughts on FB Connect vs. FB Fan pages?

Who (if anyone) is doing Facebook Connect well?

  • Who (if anyone) is doing Facebook Connect well?
  • Will mainstream users adopt it or will it be mainly those “in the know?”
  • What do you think about the tradeoffs between data collection (less w/ FB Connect) vs. lowering the barriers to entry?
  • How does FB Connect stack up against Open ID? Will Open ID take off? Or go away?
  • Will people tire of seeing “business” messages permeate their news streams?
  • Thoughts on FB Connect vs. FB Fan pages?

To download this podcast, right-mouse click here and select “save file as.”

If you’re interested, we’ve got a slick demo of how Facebook will work with some of our Powered clients.

 

NOTE: The “Back to School” podcast series will be a regularly occurring podcast focused on the business value of social marketing, social media and online communities. Guests will include practioners, authors, analysts and thought leaders in the space.

Filed under: Social Marketing | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Inbound Marketing Summit Lessons: Listen, Be Authentic and Measure!

Posted on May 29, 2009 by Aaron Strout

If hearing the words “listen, be authentic and measure” brings back childhood memories of your parents badgering you about “brushing your teeth, keeping your elbows off the table and/or putting your clothes in the hamper,” that is a good thing. It means those of us who are doing our best to lead the social charge are doing our job helping companies think about the best way to embrace this thing called “social.”

I’m writing this post as I fly back from the Inbound Marketing Summit in Dallas, TX and as a result, I have the aforementioned themes from the title of this post fresh in my mind. In fact, it seemed that “listening, authenticity and measurement” came up nearly every session at the conference. You know why? Because they are three of the most important things you can do when it comes to companies starting out on their “social” journey.

To that end, I’m not going to cop out and just share a bunch of tweets with you from the event (I’ve done this for a few posts recently and it really is a lazy way of conveying infomation). However, I am going to reinforce the title of this post with three messages from the conference – one from yours truly, one from uber-blogger, Chris Brogan and the last from IBM vet and author, Mike Moran.

Lesson One: Listen

Okay, I told you I wasn’t going to cop out but I lied. For my portion, I’m posting my presentation that talks about:

  1. How companies and their customers got disintermediated in the first place thanks to the phone and web
  2. Five ways companies can “listen” and “engage” with their customers
  3. Examples of the results companies can expect when they “listen” and “engage” with their customers

Lesson Two: Be Authenic

While this is something that Chris Brogan mentioned during his keynote, it’s not what I want to focus on when I drive this point home. It’s something that clicked in my head while Chris was speaking — something I’ve heard him say several times but didn’t really digest it until yesterday. During the first five minutes of his presentation, Chris likes to warn, “”oh yeah, I like to curse during my presentation. If that offends you, you can pray for me in church.”

Whether Mr. Brogan is intending to do this or not (I’m assuming he is ’cause he’s a pretty smart feller), what he’s telling his audience right up front is that he’s a no bullshit kind of guy. A nice guy, but not one that sugar coats things. Hearing this for the third or fourth time I realized what a brilliant analogy this was and how it subtley planted the seed of one of Chris’ main points. To be clear, I don’t think Chris is advocating that companies should swear or by surly with their customers. What he is pointing out, however, is that it’s okay to be a human being. That means showing your less polished side sometimes.

The more I think about this, the more I appreciate its brilliance.

Lesson Three: Measure

Mike Moran did a nice job talking about Internet by the numbers during his session. One of the highlights from his talk that really resonated with me was that one of marketers biggest fears with social or any new type of marketing for that matter is that by measuring it, you are immediately putting yourself on the hook to fail or succeed. Obviously marketers don’t mind the succeeding part but the risk of failure can be daunting. This is a particularly difficult pill to swallow for marketers that are used to well established techniques and metrics of tactics like direct mail, advertising, e-mail marketing and even paid key word search.

During a webcast I did yesterday (5/26) on the value of content marketing, one of the participants, Joe Pulizzi had an equally pleasing answer when the question came up around which metrics to use around measuring the success of content marketing. Joe warned that I probably wouldn’t like his answer but went on to explain that it really depended on what the goals of the marketer were. Joe went on to explain that because marketers/companies measure so many different things depending on their product, service, marketing tactics and audiences, the measurement needed to align with the companies objectives. Amen Joe!

 

There were obviously tons more great lessons to be learned from a lot of really smart speakers at the event. What did you learn while you were there (or from following along on Twitter with hashtag #IMS09)? Feel free to share in the comments or provide a link back to your Inbound Marketing Summary posts.

Filed under: Social Marketing | Leave a Comment »

Weekly Social Marketing Links: May 25, 2009

Posted on May 28, 2009 by Aaron Strout
Each week, the members of Powered’s marketing, business development and product teams pick a news article, blog post or research report that “speaks” to them. With that article, they need to come to our weekly staff meeting prepared to give a 120 second update on what the article was about and why they found it useful. Links are below:  
Beth Lopez (Marketing)      
Found the article, The One Word You Can’t Say, quite amusing given how we have always advocated the need to view social marketing as a long-term strategy.  Seems that it’s starting to become a mantra at all of the social marketing events and tradeshows.  Per the article, the word you can’t say is “campaign” when referring to social marketing…preferred alternatives include terms like “program,” “initiative,” or even “conversation.”   
DP Rabalais (Marketing)
Great article aimed at CEO / CMO level. Do You Need a Social Media Marketer? Measurement & analystic seems to be the big reason more companies aren’t embracing social media / social marketing.  Another reason we need to continue to plug our analytics/insights capabilities at Powered. To that end, I called out a paragraph from the article that drives our point home:
A recent survey of 110 of the top CMOs by recruiting firm Heidrick & Struggles in Atlanta seems to echo Schwartz’s point. The report found that social media was a relatively low priority—ranked in the bottom third. “Mostly it’s because of analytics,” said Lynne Seid, a partner at the firm. “The things that are measurable are a top priority. Most marketers see [social media] as an experiment.
Bill Fanning (Business Development)
This weeks article is titled Social Media vs. Social Responsibility, written by Reid Carr (president of Red Door Interactive).  It’s an interesting look at Social Media being the great equalizer to the companies who over the years have behaved more like magicians trying to trick people into buying their product or service rather than honestly marketing and selling their products and services.
His premise is that this behavior has lead to a severe distrust with consumers and social media allows consumers to have a powerful vioce, finally balancing the power that traditional businesses and media outlets once owned.  He notes that it’s our responsibility as consumers to not only support our favorite businesses by purchasing from them but also by talking about them in various social media outlets. Likewise, it’s our duty to responsibly talk about the poor experiences we’ve had with businesses.
Jay McIntosh (Business Development)
On a self-appointed hiatus this week.
Doug Wick (Business Development) 
A very short article about the brand innovation behind Cereality, a café concept based on our favorite cereals. This article struck a chord because of the way that they developed the idea for Cereality, by building on the brand equity of popular cereal brands and focusing on a food category that is both ubiquitous and taps into brand passion. The approach put forth is similar to the process behind the conception of branded online communities, which tap into passion points and truly put the consumer at the center of the experience. 
A salient quote from Cereality’s founder – “When you hit that zeitgeist and people are excited and find it relevant to their lives, they start a conversation and you have to be at the center of that conversation.”
Don Sedota (Product Management)
This week I picked a report written by Forrester analyst, Laura Ramos,titled Effective Customer Reference Management Anchors B2B Community Marketing Efforts that might be helpful to our program managers in the context of setting up community customer reference strategies for our clients and/or for our own corporate marketing efforts. Hopefully validates/supplements our current strategies in both arenas.
Cross-posted on http://blog.stroutmeister.com

Each week, the members of Powered’s marketing, business development and product teams pick a news article, blog post or research report that “speaks” to them. With that article, they need to come to our weekly staff meeting prepared to give a 120 second update on what the article was about and why they found it useful. Links are below: 

Beth Lopez (Marketing)

Found the article, The One Word You Can’t Say, quite amusing given how we have always advocated the need to view social marketing as a long-term strategy.  Seems that it’s starting to become a mantra at all of the social marketing events and tradeshows.  Per the article, the word you can’t say is “campaign” when referring to social marketing…preferred alternatives include terms like “program,” “initiative,” or even “conversation.”

 

DP Rabalais (Marketing)

Great article aimed at CEO / CMO level. Do You Need a Social Media Marketer? Measurement & analystic seems to be the big reason more companies aren’t embracing social media / social marketing.  Another reason we need to continue to plug our analytics/insights capabilities at Powered. To that end, I called out a paragraph from the article that drives our point home:

A recent survey of 110 of the top CMOs by recruiting firm Heidrick & Struggles in Atlanta seems to echo Schwartz’s point. The report found that social media was a relatively low priority—ranked in the bottom third. “Mostly it’s because of analytics,” said Lynne Seid, a partner at the firm. “The things that are measurable are a top priority. Most marketers see [social media] as an experiment.

 

Bill Fanning (Business Development)

This weeks article is titled Social Media vs. Social Responsibility, written by Reid Carr (president of Red Door Interactive).  It’s an interesting look at Social Media being the great equalizer to the companies who over the years have behaved more like magicians trying to trick people into buying their product or service rather than honestly marketing and selling their products and services.

His premise is that this behavior has lead to a severe distrust with consumers and social media allows consumers to have a powerful vioce, finally balancing the power that traditional businesses and media outlets once owned.  He notes that it’s our responsibility as consumers to not only support our favorite businesses by purchasing from them but also by talking about them in various social media outlets. Likewise, it’s our duty to responsibly talk about the poor experiences we’ve had with businesses.

 

Jay McIntosh (Business Development)

On a self-appointed hiatus this week.

 

Doug Wick (Business Development) 

A very short article about the brand innovation behind Cereality, a café concept based on our favorite cereals. This article struck a chord because of the way that they developed the idea for Cereality, by building on the brand equity of popular cereal brands and focusing on a food category that is both ubiquitous and taps into brand passion. The approach put forth is similar to the process behind the conception of branded online communities, which tap into passion points and truly put the consumer at the center of the experience. 

A salient quote from Cereality’s founder – “When you hit that zeitgeist and people are excited and find it relevant to their lives, they start a conversation and you have to be at the center of that conversation.”

 

Don Sedota (Product Management)

This week I picked a report written by Forrester analyst, Laura Ramos, titled Effective Customer Reference Management Anchors B2B Community Marketing Efforts that might be helpful to our program managers in the context of setting up community customer reference strategies for our clients and/or for our own corporate marketing efforts. Hopefully validates/supplements our current strategies in both arenas.

 

Cross-posted on http://blog.stroutmeister.com

Filed under: Social Marketing, Social Media | Leave a Comment »

Loyalty Marketing Meets Social Marketing Podcast: Episode 2

Posted on May 25, 2009 by Aaron Strout

Loyalty Marketing Meets Social Marketing: Episode 1

Loyalty Podcast Series

This is the second episode in the bi-weekly series of podcasts that I’m doing with author and loyalty marketing expert, Jill Griffin (you can find episode one here). During these brief 5-8 minute podcasts, we’ll be talking about the intersection of loyalty and social marketing and how focusing on both disciplines can help large and small companies deepen their relationships with new and existing customers.

In this episode, Jill answers the specific question:

I’ve read in a number of places that businesses need to start paying closer attention to Gen Y and the fact that they have different needs than those of Baby Boomers and Gen X-ers. Can you talk a little about creating customer loyalty among this age group? In particular, what can companies do to help deepen ties with these natural born “Googlers?

Right-mouse click to download

Be sure to check out Jill’s latest book (as referenced in the podcast) titled, Taming the Search-and-Switch Customer: Earning Customer Loyalty in a Compulsion-to-Compare World. You can also follow Jill on Twitter.

Filed under: Austin, Social Marketing, Social Media, Social Networking | 1 Comment »

May 19: Weekly Content/Social Marketing Links

Posted on May 20, 2009 by Aaron Strout

Each week, the members of Powered’s marketing, business development and product teams pick a news article, blog post or research report that “speaks” to them. With that article, they need to come to our weekly staff meeting prepared to give a 120 second update on what the article was about and why they found it useful. Links are below:

 

Beth Lopez (Marketing)
Kicking butt on next week’s webcast and our new website this week – she gets a hall pass…  

DP Rabalais (Marketing)
Two articles this week. One on how Retailers are Shifting Marketing Dollars. The other speaks for itself…
Bill Fanning (Business Development)
The article I’d like to share was published in Tech Crunch and is titled, Jump Into The Stream. The author, Erick Schonefeld, discusses the evolving distribution of online information, from a collection of web pages to a real-time stream, and the impact on web business and consumers of information. The interesting part of this article is the idea of the new metaphor being “streams” instead of “pages”. Web business are transforming from being owners of content to providing a place to present the most relevant stream of information, i.e. Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, Digg, Google Reader, and a bunch of others. Consequently, the way we consume information has been forever altered.After reading the article, I started thinking about how this applies to branded communities. I think it re-enforces the importance of being able to share your activity in a branded community with the “stream”. For example, the ability to publish a particular activity to your Facebook feed, or the ability to share an article through sites like digg or de.li.ci.ous. Participating in these types of distribution networks are, and will increasingly be important traffic drivers to the community. It also re-enforces the need to supply a steady stream of new and relevant content to keep the community engaged. The content could be professional, user generated or both, but it needs to constantly evolve.     

This article is loosely based on a blog post by John Borthwick, CEO of Betaworks (Twitter, bit.ly, Tweedeck, etc.) titled, Distribution …Now, which he references several times. Also, well worth the read!

 

Jay McIntosh (Business Development)
My article this week presents a perspective on the challenges of seller vs. buyer interactions. It’s written by an experienced marketer who has been on both sides of the “fence” at different times in her career. I too have spent several years on both sides and completely understand where the author is coming from when she points out the all-too-common salesy approach taken with potential buyers. A salesy approach is when the sales person thinks, talks and acts as if it’s about them, their product, their company. This is the way the majority of salespeople (and companies) approach buyers even today. They want to tell their market all about themselves and why they’re the best…blah, blah, blah.

Anyhow, I switched over from the buy side to the sales side about 12 years ago. At that time, the promises of the Internet and all the new technologies and tools made it okay to sell/push products. Actually, it was more about just taking the customer’s orders and getting the contract/PO in place. That doesn’t, won’t and can’t work today or any time in the foreseeable future. It is all about the buyer and what the seller can do to grow their business. Start with this as the foundation of developing a business relationship. This foundation based on the seller delivering the goods, provides an ongoing compelling reason for the buyer to buy…it really is that simple!

 

Doug Wick (Business Development)
This week’s article is taken from Business Week’s Executive Guide to Social Media, How CEOs use Twitter. The individual stories are interesting, but the common story is that these CEOs need to be able to hear individual voices, and to choose whose voices are important to listen to at any given time. The power of social is just that, to introduce not only the voices of peers, but the voices of individuals inside companies and inside brands. Within brand communities, the consumer can listen to all of these voices and decide which ones are important given their needs and where they are in the customer life cycle.
 
Don Sedota (Product Management)
On vacation this week – he gets a hall pass…

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Monsanto: Turning Heads with Social Media

Posted on May 18, 2009 by Aaron Strout

monsanto

Chances are, you’ve heard of the agri-business giant, Monsanto. If you haven’t, you’ve probably read about some of the controversy surrounding their business. After all, they’ve been identified by the EPA as being a “‘potentially responsible party’ for 56 contaminated sites (Superfund sites) in the US1“. Their genetically engineered seeds haven’t exactly endeared themselves to farmers in Europe and their “aggressive litigation and political lobbying practices, have made the company controversial around the world and a primary target of the anti-globalization movement and environmental activist1.”

Young_Glynn-1-1.jpgSo why would I want to write about a company whose director of electronic communications, Glynn Young, says ”99% of people online hate and the other 1% think they should?” For one reason and one reason only… they are embracing social media and they are doing it in a BIG way.

I was fortunate enough to hear Glynn speak at The Conference Board’s Marketing Conference last Thursday. Imagine my surprise as I sat there, mouth gaping, as I listened to Glynn talk about the fact that Monsanto (@MonsantoCo on Twitter) has become a poster child for social media. Due to my fascination with this topic and my belief that we could all learn a thing or two from what Monsanto has been doing in the socialsphere, I will try and do a podcast and/or blog post interview with Glynn (and perhaps some of his team) later this month. In the meantime, here are a few of the gems I pulled from his presentation:

  • During the session, I asked Glynn how the hell he was able to pull off the feat of getting Monsanto to embrace social:
    • He found very friendly attorney
    • Got permission from boss
    • Flew under radar for a while until they could prove an ROI
  • Following efforts to fight a particularly tough piece of legislation, Monsanto agreed to write a post for the publication, Crooks and Liars — a publication geared to criticizing companies like Monsanto. Being open and honest helped and the piece of legislation was defeated. [link to: http://crooksandliars.com/]
  • Monsanto has an internal community and ~2/3 of employees participate.
  • In spite of having a number of critics, major news media AND all of the PR people from one of their major competitors, Monsanto continues to plug away at their corporate Twitter account (side note: after my numerous conference tweets RE @ Monsanto, I got a couple of nice notes back from the corporate account and a couple of the Monsanto team members on Twitter thanking me for tweeting Glynn’s presentation).
  • Glynn and his team are measuring traffic drivers to Monsanto.com. Facebook and Twitter are now in top 5 in terms of traffic drivers.
  • Monsanto maintains a corporate blog and while they don’t permit profanity and inappropriate behavior, they do allow negative comments (example).

Given how powerful Glynn’s presentation was, I’m going to ask if he will post on Slideshare. If he can’t/won’t, I will be sure to see if he might selectively make it available for folks that want to DM him or me.

Monsanto may be crazy for putting themselves out there when they know how disliked they are but Glynn says that it’s starting to make a difference. The analogy I like to think about is imagine one of neighbors started spreading rumors about you that weren’t true. You could do three things to combat this:

  1. Ignore it and hope it goes away (in Monsanto’s case, that ain’t happening)
  2. Move away (also tough for Monsanto given their international footprint)
  3. Hold a neighborhood meeting and clear the air. This last approach not only lets you tell your side of the story but it also shows that you care enough to get to get the root of the rumors (or semi-truths) in the first place.

So what are you thoughts? Is Monsanto crazy for putting themselves out there? What other companies can you think of that would benefit from “starting a dialog” with their customers and detractors?

1Source: Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto

Filed under: Social Marketing, Social Networking, Twitter | 5 Comments »

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