Month: April 2010

How Ford Uses Social Media [VIDEO]

At the risk of giving away too much of what we do (not really – everything we do in social media is in the public, so you just need to pay attention or search around to find out), I’d like to share with you a little bit about Ford Motor Company’s approach to social media.

Here’s a great video that WebPro News did when we were at Blog World Expo last October. It captures a lot of what Ford is doing in the space.

I keep a clipsheet of coverage of our social media efforts (using Profilactic), which is helpful when speaking to reporters or digital media and they’re looking for examples of how our work has resonated. I simply refer them to our links and they can sort through the filters to find what they’re looking for.

On his blog, Jeff Bullas gave away The 7 Secrets to Ford’s Social Media Marketing Success last month. There are some great takeaways there for any company that’s interested in social media and some that are specific to Ford and our efforts. And Slate.com’s The Big Money covered the success we’ve seen from the first wave of the Fiesta Movement.

We’re working on a lot more – notably Chapter 2 of the Fiesta Movement, in which there are 20 teams of two in 16 cities across the country, creating mini marketing campaigns through social media as well as offline events and media. And our social media strategy is global, reflecting the growing interest from many areas around the company and around the world.

And we maintain profiles on a number of social networks, including profiles on Twitter: @Ford, @FordCustService, @FordFiesta, @FordAutoShows, @FordLatino, @FordEU, @FordAPA and more. In addition, we’ve got some employees on Twitter. You can find the full list at http://twitter.com/ScottMonty/ford.

We also have a number of Facebook pages, the most prominent of which are Ford and Mustang. All of our pages are favorited on the Ford page, so you can pick which ones you’d like to become a fan of.

ford

In addition, we’re active on Flickr for photo sharing, YouTube for videos, Plancast and Upcoming for events, Delicious for public bookmarking, and Scribd for document sharing (where we’re the #5 most followed profile). And if you’re ever in doubt where to find us, you can see our profiles on the front of Ford.com or on The Ford Story.

Lots of stuff going on right now that’s keeping us really busy. Just thought you’d like a window into what some of it is and why we’re doing it.

Scott Monty

Disclosure: http://cmp.ly/4

The Face behind your brand

elmo

When I say Elmo, you think… Sesame Street.
When I say Miss Piggy, you think … The Muppets.
When I say Steve Jobs, you think …Apple.

…I was in Starbucks this morning getting my coffee and I received an email from a friend who was announcing his resignation from his current job. There was a level of secrecy as he hadn’t made the announcement public. It made me wonder why I was one of the few selected to receive this special announcement. I checked to see who else was cc’d and was rather honoured and surprised at who else was also getting it. Then I realized that these were high-caliber, young, professionals who owned or represented a brand. He was reaching out to us for a very specific reason. It got me thinking…although some of these individuals don’t own the company they are working for, they are the face of the brand. They are the front line go to person. I wondered if these companies made the right choice in choosing such people. Although they are outgoing, intelligent, personable people, I wouldn’t say that some were the right people for the job. Perhaps I am wrong.

If you are a small business owner hiring for a brand rep., PR, community manager, community type position, make sure you select wisely as these people or this individual will be your mascot, the person and face that people will think of when communicating with or about your business. Make sure their personalities match that of your organization and that they will consistently and professionally represent your brand to its fullest potential.

Giving away a magician’s secrets

Steve Cohen makes more than a million dollars a year doing magic tricks.

I will now tell you the secrets of this magic:

1. He sells to a very specific group of people, people who are both willing to hear what he has to say and able to pay what he wants to charge them.

2. He tells a story to this group, a story that matches their worldview. He doesn’t try to teach non-customers a lesson or persuade them that they are wrong or don’t know enough about his art. Instead, he makes it easy for his happy customers to bring his art to others.

3. He intentionally creates an experience that is remarkable and likely to spread. “What did you do last night?” is a great question when it’s asked of someone you entertained the night before, particularly if you can give the audience an answer they can give. That’s how the word spreads.

4. He’s extremely generous in who he works with, how promiscuous he is about sharing and in his attitude.

5. He’s very good at his craft. Don’t overlook this one.

I guess it comes down to this: if you’re having trouble persuading people to buy what you sell, perhaps you should sell something else. Failing that, perhaps you could talk about what you sell in a different way.

Important clarification: I’m not telling you to sell out or to pander or to dumb down your art. Great marketers lead people, stretching the boundaries and bringing new messages to people who want to hear them. The core of my argument is that someone’s worldview, how they feel about risk or other factors, is beyond your ability to change in the short run. Sell people something they’re interesting in buying. If you can’t leverage the worldview they already have, you are essentially invisible. Which is a whole other sort of magic, one that’s not so profitable.

Junto is Born!

Many of us have been inspired by the cooperation meme lately, and it appears that our collective spirit has given birth to Junto!

In case you haven’t been following along, Junto is a concept we’ve been discussing for a global communications and collaboration platform. It starts with a simple interface, combining video chat with a text box and a twitter backchannel, all streaming in public, real-time. It could be used for any number of projects or goals – organizations could use it for open innovation or to show how they are taking social responsibility in the world, groups with similar initiatives could use it for huge group discussions and meetings in order to accelerate the process of organizing and taking projects from idea to action, and individuals could use it to engage in dialogue and create shared meaning and shared understanding across geographic and cultural barriers. For more context, check out the original post here.

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9 Ways to Breathe Life Into Your Blog

grow

I’m not much of a numbers hound.

I don’t pore over my stats with a fine tooth comb, I don’t obsess about unfollows or subscriber numbers or any of that stuff. In fact, I don’t even have that nifty little widget here to tell you how many people subscribe – even though I understand the benefits of social proof – simply because it’s never been that important to me.

So it’s a bit contradictory for me to say that I’m proud to have recently crested 10,000 subscribers for this blog in the two years I’ve been musing here. It’s been an amazing adventure, and one I intend to evolve, shape, and carry forward for a while to come. I thank each and every one of you for making this place the rewarding adventure it’s been.

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Three B2B Marketing Trends (To Avoid)

Three B2B Marketing trends have surfaced during my travels in the past few months that are worth sharing with you as we move deeper into 2010.

signs

The first is that the overwhelming majority of marketers I am speaking with are thinking of social media marketing as something separate and distinct from the rest of their corporate marketing plans. I don’t believe this is being done intentionally, it’s just happening. We saw this same thing (and still do to some extent) happen when companies were first considering how to begin marketing on the internet.

While this approach may work on a small scale for a limited time, to realize the full benefits the social web has to offer your B2B marketing, your social media marketing needs to be integrated with your overall marketing plan and targeted to specific buyer personas. It needs to share the same overarching goals, share the same voice, and most importantly, share the same performance metrics. Thinking of it separately will not be giving it the attention it deserves (and the resources it needs) to truly help you realize its benefits.

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Crowdsourcing: Future model for big corporations or outcome of socialization?

“No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else”. – Bill Joy, Cofounder, Sun Microsystems

The word Crowdsourcing was coined by Jeff Howe of Wired Magazine, a portmanteau of the words ‘crowd’ and ‘outsourcing’. It is used to describe the phenomenon using group intelligence to solve problems and complete projects. A darling of Web 2.0, more and more companies are jumping on the crowdsourcing bandwagon, and even federal government agencies have begun to explore it, with the Federal Communications Commission crowdsourcing ideas on how to improve America’s broadband infrastructure.

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Definition of Social CRM – Explained!

In one of my earlier posts, I defined Social CRM as follows:

Social CRM is the business strategy of engaging customers through Social Media with goal of building trust and brand loyalty. Loyalty is defined as attitude towards a brand that inclines a customer to repurchase it and/or recommend it to others. Social CRM and Social Media are more about building trust and managing loyalty with customers than about managing relationships or transactions, which are focus areas of “traditional” CRM.

I received a lot of great feedback on this definition and want to elaborate further on it to answer some of the questions raised by readers of this blog.

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Maintaining Your Garden of Trust

This morning I was getting some seeds started for my garden, and I was reminded of a tweet from a few weeks ago where I said something to the effect of ‘customer service is now more like gardening and less like hunting – nurture relationships.’ Well, the SCRM crowd (social customer relationship management) pushed back. [@wimrampen @grahamhill @ekolsky @myjayliebs @mkrigsman @SameerPatel @pgreenbe @kitson, you know who you are!] They said this wasn’t the case, and that studies had shown that customers don’t really want a relationship with a brand. To me, “relationship” doesn’t have to mean I’m going to have you over for dinner. There are levels. It can just mean that I will recommend you to a friend. I let it go at the time, but I want to go for Round 2.

I think that gardening is as powerful a metaphor as any for the life-cycle of a process, and I do see a correlation between what it takes to grow a garden and what it takes to build trust with a potential customer, client, or future alliance. Here’s how I see it:


seeds

It starts with a seed. Tiny enough to get lost in the crease of your palm, seemingly insignificant on it’s own, it’s value not immediately apparent. This is that new contact, that new Twitter follower, yourself.

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Making Social Media Happen in Your Company

New video from @ChrisBrogan recorded at SAS’s headquarters in Cary, North Carolina in which he lays out some concrete steps people and companies can take to make social media happen.

Notable are the points on the utility of social media in undoing the lobotomy that seperated functions such as marketing and PR to now create a unified development and communications capability.



Looking forward to meeting Chris at #BroganMemphis as it seems he shares some of the unification goals of @TheSocialCMO through C-Level Social and smashing the silos with social media is currently one of our favorite pastimes!

Jeff Ashcroft