You can’t be a thought leader on Twitter. Discuss without getting verklempt.

Remember that hilarious skit called “Coffee Talk with Linda Richman” on SNL? You know, the one with Mike Meyers dressed up like a lady with a giant Brooklyn accent and even bigger hair? I loved that skit and one of my favorite parts was how he would give people a ridiculous topic to talk about and then say “Discuss!” So what does this have to do with social media? Well, recently a report by the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth found that corporate blogging among Inc. 500 companies has decreased while Twitter and Facebook use has increased. Now, it’s great that companies are embracing these new social media outlets but are they missing out by focusing on micro-blogging as opposed to actual blogging? My vote is “yes” because it’s the business equivalent of companies throwing out ideas and saying “Discuss!” ala our friend Ms. Richman.

Frank Reed, managing editor of Marketing Pilgrim, wrote an article in response to the report that I happen to agree wholeheartedly with. Frank’s opinion is basically that companies who are just doing Twitter and Facebook while ignoring the power of corporate blogging are taking the easy road out. As someone who blogs in my personal time, I can attest to the fact that blogging takes time, lots and lots of time. It’s not like Twitter. You can’t be Linda Richman and throw out a topic and hope people have a valuable conversation about you just because you gave them something to retweet. You have to think about what topic you want to write about, do your research, and then sit down and write it. Then, of course, you have to edit it, proof it, edit it some more, change the title three times, and then post it. That may seem overwhelming to most companies both in the effort needed to compose a blog and the money spent while that person is blogging. Twitter and Facebook are cheap and cost effective making them very popular in a tough economy. In ten seconds you can tweet a quip out to all of your followers and then tell all your corporate buddies you’re a social media mogul. However, what happens when they try to find out more about you? If all you have to show for your communication efforts are one sentence Facebook status updates and a hundred tweets about how you’re a leader in your industry they’re going to sniff out the shallow facade from a thousand yards away.

Yes, blogging is time consuming. Yes, it might open you up to people disagreeing with you. But, in the end, is that a bad thing? Is it bad to defend your stance? Is it bad to show you are so much more than a status update or a tweet? The idea of being cheap and cost effective works great when you’re trying to justify the business cost of mass producing, say, toys for a kid’s meal. But you can’t apply that same thinking to representing your brand’s leadership. Do you really want your leadership to seem cheap and cost effective? Gaining the trust of clients isn’t about efficiency. In the end, they don’t care just about the fact that you know 5 different programs and have X number of other clients. That information might be a hook to get them interested but it’s not going to keep them around. They want to know that you really and truly know what you’re doing. Can you prove that in 144 characters? Probably not.

This post was dedicated to Barbara.

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Executive Use of Social Media – A Collection of Research (Part 2)

In part one of the presentation, we focused on looking at the research that has come out during 2011 about social media for B2B companies and how you can use that research to understand how to use social media in your organization to solve your pain points. In part two, we’re going to look at several companies who are doing just that. Through published case studies and an example from Impact Interactions itself, we’ll see how you can utilize social media in a manner which generates real economic value to your firm. So let’s get started.

As always, should you have any questions or would like to comment, please do so below in the comments section.

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Pro-Active Social Media: Taking Audience Engagement to the Next Level

While doing some research on how companies are incorporating social media into their communications, I came across two intriguing articles that really got me thinking about how far the social media industry could go and whether it should go there. The first article, When Customer Service is a Twitter Response, was actually written in response to the Hotels Magazine article, A Day in the Life of the Digitized Hotel(registration required to read). The Hotels Magazine article was a proposed day of interaction between a hotel and their guest completely driven by social media. First, the guest gets off the plane and complains on Twitter that the taxi line is long to which to hotel quickly responds asking if they would like the hotel to contact a car service for them. In a second exchange, the guest is sent a message on their hotel provided iPad recommending a massage because the guest had mentioned in a tweet that they were considering having one after a long day. Finally, when the guest returns home and mentions the hotel in their tweet the hotel again responds this time thanking the guest and giving them a code for a complimentary upgrade on their next stay.

The idea of taking social media to this level was fascinating even though the “big brother” aspect was admittedly a little creepy. The comments I read in the Economist article were mostly against this kind of heavy social media driven interaction. Many of the comments lamented the loss of human interaction in our society while others were somewhat unsettled by the thought of companies knowing that much about where they were and what they were doing. One commenter actually recounted how he stayed at a hotel only to find out that the hotel (and many others) had actually removed the in-room phones because they assumed that all their guests had cell phones and it was just costing them money to keep them in the rooms.

Taking it to the extreme that the fictional hotel did does smack of something from Minority Report but I’m still left asking myself why shouldn’t companies engage their audience (or event heir business partners) in this way just on a smaller scale? I don’t know that I lament the use of social media by companies to pro-actively engage their customers. If my options for communication are calling a company and being put on hold for an undetermined amount of time or making a request online which can instantly be dealt with, I know which one I’m picking.

I recently helped put together a presentation on examples of companies successfully implementing social media into their business plan. One of the stand outs was TATA Docomo, a telecom provider in India. Rather than operating like most corporations who expect the masses to come to them, TATA Docomo realized that the only way they were going to make inroads in the tough Indian telecom market was to go to the people. They now skillfully leverage both Twitter and Facebook as their main means of communicating with their customers for both customer service issues as well as informing them of new offerings. This has lead to huge customer loyalty despite the lack of a “physical” connection.

The generations that are coming of age now are doing it in a time of amazing digital advancements. I’m old enough to remember the days before the internet was a daily part of life but young enough to be in the generation of adults who are keen to absorb any new digital gadget that comes onto the market. Businesses need to realize this fact and capitalize on it. Don’t be afraid of using social media for these kinds of communications. Companies that start a Facebook page only to tell all the people who ask for help that they need to contact the customer service number are going to be sorely disappointed by their “community” building efforts. That’s because they aren’t engaging people in the places where they actually want to be engaged. The example of TATA Docomo is one that companies should look to as the way forward. TATA has engaged their communities consistently on the formats they know are the most popular. What did it get them? It took them from the bottom of the Indian telecom barrel to the top of the mountain. They were the 9th telecom company to enter the Indian market and faced competitors who had been there for years but in a very short time they were the top. Why? It worked because they embraced what social media could do for them.

Ignoring the changing communication landscape is the equivalent of sticking your head in the sand. The world is changing around us, why not change with it? Our two part blog series on this very topic titled Executive Use of Social Media discusses the importance of this changing landscape and highlights the success several major companies have had in implementing social media into their business operations. Part One is already posted so be sure to check back and watch Part Two.

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Executive Use of Social Media – A Collection of Research (Part 1)

 

There’s been a shift in social media. Have you seen it? Business to business companies in industries beyond the traditional early adopters are utilizing social media more effectively today to build awareness, generate business, and nurture customers than as little as six months ago. Research that has been published over the past year shows that B2B social media is not only becoming more prevalent, but is also expected by customers, prospects, investors, and recruits.

In the video below, we’re going to interprete the relevant research from multiple sources in order to present a pretty compelling analysis for using social media in the business to business setting. In Part 2 of this topic, we’ll show you how several companies such as Cisco, Intuit, ShipServe, and Impact Interactions have used social media in the B2B setting to achieve real business results. We’ll also provide you with a measurement methodology which will help your team to quickly identify areas where action is necessary as well as where you are successful.

So in the words of the immortal Warner Wolf, let’s go to the video tape!

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Consumer Focused Social Media: Are We Building a Brand or Simply Throwing Money Away?

If your social media strategy is all about coupons and discounts for your company, you’re not really getting the point of social media from a business perspective. Sounds a bit arrogant right? Well, let me explain what we’ve seen over the past several weeks as we analyzed a segment of the retail space…

Company A (Large U.S. Based firm in the Womens’ Apparel category) – Analyzed 400 tweets, 293 were related to promotions for a 10% coupon. Analyzed 125 wall posts, 96 were related to the same promotion.

Company B (Large U.S. Based firm in the Sportwear category) – Analyzed 200 tweets, 127 were related to a BOGO (buy one get one) offer. Analyzed 63 wall posts, 48 were related to the same offer.

Company C (Large Internations firm in the Apparel category) – Analyzed 320 tweets, 148 were about a buy X amount of merchandise online and get a coupon for 20% off your next purchase. Tweets autoposted to Facebook. (YIKES!)

Is this what social media has become for the B2C market, a platform to push coupons?

What our analysis, limited as it may be, is showing us is that the Retail market is simply building an audience which activates only for a deal. Yes consumers want a deal, but do you as a seller only want your customers to come to your site when you offer a coupon? Doesn’t really seem like brand building does it? While many companies get it right (see Nike for one and Zappos for another), many do not. It’s as if these companies are competing with the Groupons, Living Socials, CouponDeals, etc. of the world rather than focusing upon their customers’ needs and building their brand in the process.

Maybe B2C social media marketers could learn from how B2B companies are using social media to build relationships.

“But Mike, that won’t work. You have to capture the shopper’s attention.”

I’d agree with you on that, it’s how you do it with social media where I differ… Let’s go about this use of social media in a different, more consumer-brand friendly way. Start with your brand. Is this something that you continually want to cheapen by constantly incentivising followers/friends to only care about when they get a discount? More importantly from a business perspective, how does constant couponing impact your margins?

Really successful social media programs understand that there are steps to reach success. First there is audience building, then engagement and activation, which in turn leads to value for the company. Too often companies lead with activation, skipping the audience building and engagement processes that generate loyalty. Audience building is time consuming, but works to give your company an group of followers and fans who actually are interested in your brand and products. (To learn more about why followers and fan counts are not a measure of influence, read this.) Audience building takes compelling content that excites and interests your potential customer. Social Media activities which compliment your existing brand building activities help to build audience. Use your branding messages from Television, in-store promotions, print, etc. to expand your reach to social media viewers.

Engage with your fans and followers. Pay attention to their content. Are they retweeting or tweeting a positive mention for your brand? If so, send them a direct message and thank them. Does a customer want help with store locations? Sure they could go to your site and use your store locator, but why not engage and ask them what city they are near and then give them a list of locations? What about that person who complains about a poor experience? Engage with them by apologizing and offering to have customer service contact them. Post content about your product line, post content about what your company is doing in the communities it operates in, post content about industry news from news sources you trust, and post pictures of people using or wearing your products.

Remember visual ques are just as important as customer reviews. That’s why so many brands pay celebrities to use their products in public. Social Media just allows a larger group to do the same thing. User generated content is a powerful tool to utilize in social media, yet we see very few brands even try to do this without offering a prize or coupon.

And that goes back to the point of this post, by providing incentives as your main content on social media, you are doing a disservice to your brand. From our blog post on incentives, “Remember that it’s EGO that drives the participation of your top members. They crave recognition for their efforts, not trinkets.”

That message holds true today for your best customers… so engage with them, give them an opportunity to shine, then recognize them. Otherwise, you’ve doomed your social media audience to be a zombie group which only activates for a coupon, not because your brand is of interest.

Zombie Image from: http://neighbourhoodzombiewatch.wordpress.com/

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Why Social Media Shouldn’t Be Treated Like a Shiny New Toy

We’ve all seen it happen. A kid begs their parents for the latest and greatest toy because ALL of their friends have it. The toy gets bought, played with in earnest for a week or two, and then is promptly set aside only to collect dust and create clutter. Then one day the child’s parent walks into the room to find something and is totally overwhelmed by the mountain of junk they have to sift through to find what they need. The same can happen to your company’s social media campaign if you aren’t careful.

Too often, companies launch Facebook and Twitter sites before fully understanding why they want them. They don’t know what it does or how to use it but they know their competitors have it and they assume they need it to give them an edge. So, they get their Facebook page going, send out a few Tweets, and make ready for the waves of new fans and maybe even some customers. Except, the fans and customers don’t come. Why? Because the company didn’t think about what they were going to do with their new toy once they got it and now it’s just another waste of money.

Social media has power; a lot of it. But you have to wield that power in the right way. We at Impact Interactions strongly believe in what we call the “Beacon Strategy.” You want to utilize certain tools in ways that will guide new users to your main repository of information (your website), not leave them lost in the sea of digital clutter. Facebook and Twitter can’t replace a robust website full of quality information, nor should it. These are simply tools, lures even, that should be used judiciously. When considering how to use these tools you must first know where you’re going, what you want to achieve, and how you can measure your success. Once you have determined those things then you can go out and make the investment in developing a social media campaign. Always understand the why of your campaign before you think about the how and then make a commitment to nurture the campaign over time rather than letting it sit and get dusty next to the last latest greatest business toy you just had to have.

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Why Blogs Work in B2B – Featured B2B Magazine Article

I was recently interviewed by Jon Vanzile for an article he wrote for B2B Magazine (6/6/11) titled “Is Blogging Over?” along with our client, Jeanette Gibson of Cisco. The article is in response to a New York Times article in February claiming that blogs are losing their marketing power, especially with younger audiences due to the growth in Twitter and Facebook. When we spoke about this, I told Jon that this isn’t the case from our experience in the B2B world. In fact, blogs are a cornerstone for B2B marketers (or should be) who are looking to develop stronger relationships with their customers, prospects, and stakeholders. Here is my quote from the article about why blogs work for B2B marketers:

“When you look at the B2B market, what’s necessary is thought leadership, and you cannot get thought leadership in 140 characters or a Facebook post.”

Think about this for a moment.

We counsel our clients that the main difference between B2B social media and B2C social media is the needs of the audience and the buying cycle timing. For B2C, social media is about building awareness and then trial. B2B is much more complex, it is about building awareness then relationships with the audience. Why? Because in general, the sales cycle for B2B is longer than B2C so more effort and information is necessary to help your prospect move to become a customer.

Blogs can play a big role in this relationship building process by highlighting your company’s thought leadership in the industry. Companies want to buy from companies that will be leading the industry and can demonstrate staying power. By providing executive views of the world to your audience, you help them to understand that your company is a leader and will be there in the long term to help your customers.

Can Twitter or Facebook do the same? No, they cannot. Here is a better way to use these tools in your B2B marketing.

We work with our clients to use B2B social media tools like Twitter, Facebook (yes, it does work in B2B), LinkedIn Groups, and YouTube in their online marketing mix. But we recommend a stronger process of using these tools as a complimentary set of tactical processes that support business objectives. We do that through our “Beacon Strategy.”

Just as a lighthouse helps ships to find safe harbors, the correct use of social media tools can help your audience find the best information you can provide quickly and efficiently on their time. Social media in a B2B setting works best when it works together with blogs and compelling content to educate and help audiences to learn more about your products, services, view of the industry, and support issues. By pointing your social media content on third party sites such as Twitter or LinkedIn Groups back to your controlled website, you have the advantage of measurement while your audience has the advantage of learning more. B2B social media requires measurement. Friends, followers, group members, etc. don’t mean anything until they are engaged in a conversation or contact process with your firm. Why? Because you cannot measure anything of real economic value until the person completes an action. Those actions should take place in your harbor, not somewhere in the vast ocean that is the internet.

Getting back to the article, B2B blogs when clearly written with compelling content are one of the best destinations in your safe harbor for people to learn about your company. In a project we did with SAP back in 2004 and 2005, we saw that one of the best indicators of whether a company was moving towards purchase was their reading of the SAP Executive Blog Series. This was a series of blogs by SAP Board Members and top executives at the time (people like Hasso Plattner, Shai Aggasi, Leo Apotheker, etc.). Why? Simple. Before a company spends thousands of dollars on your products, their executive team wants to know if you are aligned with their interests and if your company is truly customer focused. Blogs help to show this to your audience.

So, are blogs dead? For B2B marketers looking to use relationship marketing, the answer is a resounding NO!

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Welcome to Impact Interactions’ B2B Social Media Catalyst Series

In our new B2B Social Media Catalyst Series, we are going to provide our best practices for developing or enhancing your B2B social media efforts. Too often, we see content on the web that promotes the idea that B2B and B2C social media tactics should be used in the same manner. Based upon our experience with major B2B brands like Cisco, SAP, NetApp, and midsize B2B companies like Micropole, we respectfully disagree with that idea.

The main reason is focused upon the results that marketers are trying to achieve when using social media. Consumer focused efforts usually are attempting to build awareness which leads to trial of the product or service. That’s why couponing and discounts work so well in the space. Think of Dell’s results on Twitter. They gained results by constantly announcing a discount on their products which lead to a sale. Yes, some small businesses bought using this channel, but the majority of customers were individuals seeking out a discount.

Business to Business focused firms have a much different path to success using social media. Their efforts are based upon building awareness to build a relationship that is mutually valuable and sustainable. In most cases, B2B social media efforts are not built for quick transactional results, but rather for a longer term relationship. In our experience, this is why we believe that B2B social media is a complimentary tactic to your relationship selling strategy.

So let’s get started with a quick introduction to the series by learning a bit more about the differences we’ve noticed during our work with our business to business clients and colleagues.

We’d like our B2B Social Media Catalyst Series to be an online roundtable for discussion of these issues. Please feel free to add your comments to this blog entry and the team at Impact Interactions will be happy to discuss our experience and ideas with you. You can download the presentation and transcript in our Social Media Resources library.

Future series sessions will include the building blocks for a successful B2B social media strategy, beginning with content then moving to the 3rd Party application (think Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook) beacon strategy we recommend to our clients, social media monitoring tactics, building stronger conversion and engagement rates, measuring your B2B social media efforts, and a framework for using social media for your lead generation and customer nurturing efforts.

We hope that you’ll join us for the series over the next several weeks and let us know if there are specific topics that you’d like to see us cover in our B2B Social Media Catalyst Series.

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Upcoming Event – iStrategy Meeting San Jose April 5-6 2011

Impact Interactions’ president Mike Rowland to host panel discussion “Riding the Hype of Social Media for B2B Marketing” at iStrategy Conference, April 5, 2011 in San Jose, CA.

In the current economic environment it becomes absolutely vital for businesses to be able to reach and acquire new clients and grow while at the same time managing costs. Social networks are a great and easy way for B2C companies to communicate with their potential customers, but their use by B2B businesses presents a number of challenges. Nowadays buyers set the ground rules on when and where they will engage and increasingly turn to trusted third parties for education (including blogs, Twitter, and other social media), not sales people. This means B2B marketers must develop an integrated social media strategy which identifies where customer conversations are taking place and effectively uses various digital channels to acquire, convert and retain business customers while simultaneously nurturing existing clients. Sound challenging? It is.

This panel discussion will examine NetApp’s, Cisco’s, and SAP’s social media strategy and how new online channels and interactions provide the company with innovative ways to market to their business audience. It will also look at examples how these companies organize their teams and how they integrate social into the rest of their campaign mix, with results of specific campaigns, and show simple tools used to build an integrated Social campaign and measure success.

Join Navneet Grewal, Director of Online Marketing with NetApp; Jeanette Gibson, Director Corporate Communications with Cisco; and Sara Larsen, Senior Director of Digital Marketing with SAP, along with Mike Rowland in learning how to help your B2B efforts move to the next level of success.

To learn more about this great senior executive level event, please click here.

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Social Media: Whose Brand Is It? A Contrarian View

This week’s Fortune Magazine has a very interesting article in its career section titled “Building Your Brand (and keeping your job)” by Jost Hyatt. Are you a senior level marketer in an company that is moving quickly into social media? If so, this article should be on your critical reading list. Here’s why (excerpted from the article):

“When Monty joined Ford, he brought with him 3,500 Twitter followers; he now counts 41,000, conceding that many of those came with the big blue oval logo that now accompanies his tweets.”

“And he’s kept his Twitter handle as @scottmonty rather than adding the Ford brand. ‘I was Scott Monty before I came to Ford, and I’ll be Scott Monty after I leave Ford,’ he says.”

And he is absolutely correct… when he leaves Ford, he takes all the brand equity from his social media efforts with him. Well, maybe not all but certainly a lot.  This is not a criticism of Scott in any way, just a social media tactic that is going to back fire with a lot of companies as the economy gets better and people start changing companies again.

As we wrote in an earlier blog post, Walking Out the Door with the Twitter Password, organizations must have a plan for social media and turnover of employees. But we didn’t go in to the brand equity and ownership issue. So with the above article as an example, here are our thoughts.

Contrary to popular opinion that brands are owned by everyone in the world of social media and that organizations should give up control, we argue that this advice results in companies giving away valuable assets. The number one objective for using social media from a brand perspective should be to build the importance of the brand in the audience’s thoughts. That’s why marketers use advertising to build awareness, coupons to build trial use, and consistency in branding to build a relationship with consumers. In B2B terms, it’s still about awareness but the relationship factor becomes even more important. With all of the money spent by marketers to build their brands, enhance them, and promote them, why would they let the value slip away as someone walks out the door for a new position? But with the social media tactics promoted and utilized by so many, this is exactly what companies are doing.

“People forget that they are always representing their companies… If you send a tweet that says ‘My Boss sucks,’ you have to be aware of what could happen.” – Lucia Erwin, fomrerly H-P’s sr. director of strategic workforce planning

And here’s an example of how personal accounts acting as corporate accounts can back fire from the article:

“Amy D. was a social-networking expert at a marketing firm. She was just ‘letting out some frustration’ last year when she issued a tweet noting the irony that she was editing a presentation about social media for her boss who didn’t use it. She got fired shortly thereafter for violating a new communications policy.”

(Amy probably wasn’t a real social networking expert because that was such a rookie mistake. But that is another story about our industry all together…)

So what is a company to do? Well, for one rethink this tactic. Think about the number of cases where an employee has tweeted, added to their wall, or commented on a blog inappropriately or worse in a way critical of the brand. It’s easy to write these off as isolated instances, but it happens a lot. That’s why companies institute social media policies for their organizaiton’s employees to follow. It gives them recourse and a limited amount of protection should they fire someone (as also mentioned in the article above).

A better tactic is to use the brand as the leader, not an individual. The account(s) are owned by the company, not the individual. The passwords are the property of the company. If the individual leaves, the account remains in tact but with a new author. Does the author get some credit? Sure, in the profile section of the company brand’s account. For example, the account for your product could be titled “AcmeWidgets” with a profile that states “AcmeWidgets provides product information and company communications. Our account is written and managed by JoAnn Smith, an Acme employee with six years of experience in the Widget Industry.” (See our Twitter account profile as an example: @ImpactInteract.)

That way, the focus of your company’s social media efforts remains on the brand not on the personality of the employee. It also gives credit to your employee, but allows your company to switch out the author at any time without losing your audience. 

While some ‘gurus’ and social media ‘experts’ will argue about transparency or being authentic here, this tactic is transparent/authentic, it gives your company a social media voice, and it allows for a measure of protection of your most valuable asset…. your brand.

Sometimes, it pays to follow a contrarian idea and go against the ‘wisdom of the crowd’ especially if it involves maintaining your brand’s position and standing in an ever growing social world.

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