TheSocialCMO

Social media: to plan or not to plan?


In the debate regarding whether or not social media should be planned, I typically fall on the “yes” side, while others may feel it should be more organic. Really, though, my answer is, “it depends who you are and what you’re doing.”

If you’re a large organization like Aurora Healthcare, you’re going to benefit from a more formal plan, for these reasons, according to Jamey Shiels, Aurora’s Director of Marketing:

“Our social marketing strategy is planned and documented. We have a corporate plan and smaller plans for internal partners that feed the larger plan. The documentation is critical for keeping groups focused on the long term strategy and goals. While documented, the material is not lengthy, one to two pages and is flexible to adapt to performance, user feedback and overall activity. Our success and ability to measure becomes easier to achieve with this approach.”

Yet, on the flip side, if you’re an individual, a small business, or a small, grassroots effort, having the “plan in your head” can be enough.

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Is Social Media the Cure for Apathy?

I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but somewhere over the last 50 years the majority of people in the world lost their mojo when it came to fighting for change. Didn’t matter whether the issue was big or small, even bad customer service and poor quality flourished because of the divide and conquer realities of slow one to one and the high cost of mass communication.

People grew tired and weak from being browbeaten into submission to the point where apathy set in when it came to believing in, mobilizing and exercising their power as an individual within society.

The ability for people to communicate, organize and take action around an issue or idea had become very slow, difficult and costly. Even more significantly, the poor results often seen by those who actually made the effort led many to accept “Is it really worth the bother?”

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The 5 Keys to Successful Online Demand Generation

It is good to hear senior marketing people beginning to talk turkey about online demand generation now that some of the luster and magic has worn off of social media. And while both customer behavior and online tactics have evolved, the essence of good online demand generation has stayed the same for the past decade; and really its boils down to 5 key factors to sustainable success online.

Before we get into the 5 keys, let’s first reach an understanding on what online demand generation really is.

First, this is well beyond generating a “lead” through a form or SEO/SEM tactics, although these may form a piece of the overall process. The way I like to describe it is this…

“From the point of first contact to the last time they (the customer) touches your online presence, you have created a defensible brand position in their mind for your product or service that leads directly or indirectly to self-qualified prospects for long term customer relationships and near term revenue.”

The art of generating demand, particularly in an ever increasing complex and noisy digital marketplace, requires an increasingly simple and targeted approach.

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I won’t over think. I will get something wrong. And I will REWORK

That is my way of doing things now. Thinking it through. Thinking of some ways to go about accomplishing my goals (strategies) and then deciding to do it.

I have been reading REWORK, by Jason Fried and David Hansson. With each chapter I feel as though I’m sitting in a church pew and listening to the preacher tell me things that are happening; things that have already happened and now that I know and have been told, some things that just shouldn’t happen at all.

I’ve read so many books on PR, Marketing, Networking and more. Now with starting a new business. I needed honesty. And I like Jason and David’s honesty in REWORK. They did it. They made mistakes. They thought it through. They decided on it. And REWORK and it is working beautifully!

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Extend your influence by extending trust: a social story

A stranger walks into your store and tells you about his problem. After asking him a few questions to help you understand the problem, you hand him a brand new pair of shoes and tell him to try them for couple weeks. “If they work,” you say, “just come back and pay for them. If they don’t, we’ll try a different pair.” Typical? Probably not.

That’s exactly what Jeff Milliman, the 1980 NCAA cross country champion, did in 1998 for Olivier Blanchard. Olivier wrote about his experience with Jeff in a 2005 blog post called That Bond of Trust. I caught up with Jeff today at his new home at Go Run, a part of Go Tri Sports, in downtown Greenville, South Carolina.


Social Story: Tell me about Olivier. A story of trust. from Trey Pennington on Vimeo.

Please note a few really cool things about this social story:

  • Jeff just did what he always does: listens to people and then applies his knowledge to try to help solve their problems.
  • Jeff is willing to take a risk in order to fulfill his passion.
  • Jeff did the unexpected and went the extra mile and SEVEN YEARS LATER the object of his generosity, Olivier Blanchard, wrote about it. (How many shoe salesmen have people writing glowing stories about them seven years after the sale, or seven hours?)
  • Jeff’s act of generosity and Olivier’s act of gratitude enabled an long lost friend to reconnect with Jeff after nearly 20 years apart.

That means you never can tell when the harvest of your generosity will come.

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Stop paddling once in a while, and look around you.

Yesterday, I went kayaking on Green Lake. It is Wisconsin’s deepest lake at 237 feet deep, and it is wide and windy. Paddle anywhere near an open bay, and you need the upper body strength of the Hulk to keep going. So I clung pretty close to sheltered shoreline. But, what I was thinking about was mostly this lesson I have decided is the most important thing I need to bring home from vacation.

In paddling, and in life, it is not actually necessary to paddle furiously the entire time, as is my tendency and I suspect most of yours.

It is actually OK to stop paddling, float for a while, and just look around you, savoring exactly where you are at this moment, rather than the next point at which you are trying to arrive.

If the swells are up and the wind is high, you might start getting pushed too close to a place you don’t want to be. So, you’ll need to redirect yourself from time to time.

And then, when you’re ready, you can start paddling furiously again, with renewed strength and focus.

This morning, I sat on the bench in this photo with my latte and gazed directly across the lake, at the point where my lovely childhood memories live (see previous post). And while I may or may not have shed a couple of tears thinking about how my past compares to my overall present non-vacation state of being, it’s a healthy thing to have one eye on the past, if it helps you redirect your future.

I had to overcome a lot of pressure to come back from vacation yesterday, to attend a meeting today that was planned long after this vacation was planned. And as important as my work is to me, it will never, ever be more important than this time to break away with my family to just enjoy the beauty of the moment and reflect on how we want our future to be.

What do you think? Are you capable of stopping the frantic paddling, to just float on the waves for a while? The last time you did so, what was the result?

Susan Spaight

Social Media Marketing Resources #MMchat with @KentHuffman

For our sixth MarketerMonday Chat #MMchat our SPECIAL guest was @KentHuffman the original founder of #MarketerMonday and our topic was Social Media Marketing Resources!

This is only the sixth #MMchat we’ve held and see #MMchat for more details on MarketerMonday Chat our previous SPECIAL guests, transcripts and our upcoming schedule.

Thanks again to Kent as well as all of you #MMchat tweeps who joined us and participated in this interesting and very interactive chat!

Check out the full transcript of tonite’s chat at http://bit.ly/KentHuffman and please join us in two weeks as @ScottMonty joins us! Scott Monty is the Head of Social Media for Ford and a member of the @TheSocialCMO Crew and will be joining us September 13th at 8:00 pm EST to discuss Encouraging Executive Participation in Social Media!

Cheers

Jeff Ashcroft

@TheSocialCMO

Mistakes being made trying to measure Social Engagement

The mistakes I see being made is trying to measure Social engagement with the same tools we measure every other digital touch point. In my view email, search, even banner ads, have spoiled marketers into thinking everything can be and must be measured with the metrics used to gauge success in other mediums. I am not sue of what the next stage will be but right now as we are building our Social Media audiences, and testing. I have three stages with which I measure… #1 is Audience growth, #2 is Reactivity… getting them to take an action, and #3 Stickiness… keeping them coming back, engaged and interacting.

In addition setting expectations is important. Setting goals for number of follows/fans and how you interact and engage with them and them with you, can be very useful. Growth of your audience is very important and as clearly outlined in the study by CMB, consumers engaged via social media are more likely to buy and recommend.

Five reasons corporations are not using Social Media effectively… 1. They don’t talk about anything broader than their own products, 2. They listen to customers but don’t take any action (which means they aren’t really hearing), 3. Companies can’t expect to have a strong social media presence when social sites are blocked internally to employees, 4. There is a fear that exists about jumping in, but while there have certainly been some hiccups and miscues along the way, social media has yet to be the undoing of any company, 5. When employees are more concerned with what’s in or out of their job description than doing the right thing to help the customer, that’s not a culture that’s likely to build trust and advocacy for a brand and there is no way social media efforts can be effective.

Ted Rubin

I Still Believe

I’m a pragmatist.

One of my strengths is that I can take a big, lofty idea (usually conceived by someone else), and help bring it down to earth. Break it down into reality, make it happen. Tamsen excels at that, too. (The blog’s tagline here is no accident). So for most purposes, I’m pretty practical, and I’m sometimes the killjoy as a result.

But I’d like to say something.

I’ve been in the business world for nigh on 15 years now. I’ve worked in nonprofits and the corporate world, mostly in communications roles like fund development, marketing, client services. I’ve seen little business, big business, slow business, and fast business. I’ve experienced bringing the web into the business world, and all that’s entailed (for better or worse). I’ve watched a lot of stuff change, and a lot of stuff stay the same.

In the 3 years or so that I’ve been working in and around social media specifically, I’ve seen some amazing things happen. I’ve been in awe of the implications, the changes, the subtle shifts (and the not so subtle) that have been happening in the way we communicate with one another, be it business or personal.

And I’m still excited.

I know negativity sells. Controversy catches eyes, and it’s all the rage right now to, well, rage against the machine that is social media. Or point out all its shortcomings. Or declare things or people dead, over, overhyped. Or spend time tearing ideas down instead of applying true critical thinking, and figuring out how to build something from the rubble.

But I just don’t think that’s very helpful.

We are indeed at a time of unprecedented opportunity. The web and its agility give voices where there were none, ways to connect that defy time and geography, opportunity for ideas that might never have seen the light of day. It’s helping businesses rethink everything from their culture to their people to the systems they’ve built, and even big ships are finding themselves turning in new directions.

And we’re starting. We’re trying. We’re learning with little things that feel comfortable and familiar (and don’t always go so well, but that’s the nature of progress). There are missteps and misunderstandings and lots of imperfections, but those will always be there. The nature of a gawky adolescent with limbs too long and a mind too easily distracted.

But we are moving. Waking the sleeping giant. Growing and maturing with flashes of brilliance amid our zealousness. And things are indeed changing around us…for good.

I think that’s pretty spectacular. We’re part of history right now, and not an insignificant part. To all of you with enthusiasm and knowledge, I say let’s leave people with things they can do. Focus some of our boundless energy into the hard work of creating, of criticizing with thoughtfulness and progress in mind, and laying a foundation upon which we can build this next generation of human connectivity.

I still believe. Do you?

Amber Naslund

photo credit: Bob Jagendorf

Long Tail death knell… I think not!

Some in the digital media world are declaring the death of the long tail due to digital ADD, the exponential growth of and time spent on Social Media platforms and the time taken up by gaming. I have to strongly disagree. The long tail is alive and well, and if anything, experiencing a re-birth of sorts with regard to media and independence.

As stated so well by Chris Anderson, even if he is changing his mind now… “One of the most frequent mistakes people make about the long tail is to assume that things that are not viewed by a very large audience are ‘not as good’ as things that do have vast distribution. A given niche has both quality content and a lot of junk across a broad spectrum. Sturgeon’s Revelation states that the percentage of crud (junk) is in the range of 90 percent. On a store shelf, or in any other limited means of distribution, the ratio of good to bad matters because it’s a zero sum game: Space for one eliminates space for the other. Prominence for one obscures the other. Long tails in the online world are not pre-filtered by the requirement of factors such as shelf space, bandwidth, or the biases of purchasing managers.” Companies are popping up every day to serve and offer valuable services to the long tail at very affordable rates and the desire for people to communicate, build audiences and relationships, is not only growing, but a very basic part of human nature and something that is gaining momentum, not the other way around.

As long as publishing is low-cost and easy, and people have an easily accessible means to access that content, the long tail will not only live on, but thrive.

Ted Rubin