Corporate Social Media

When it comes to social networks and social media channels in general, a lot of social media champions are using words like “enagagement” and “influence” to describe best practices.  While these are certainly areas that a brand should aspire to become better at, I think businesses outside of the Fortune 100 need to start looking at the low hanging fruit: advertising.  A recent eMarketer report expects global spending on social networks to grow to $4.3 billion by 2011… and this is only on social networks.

With that level of investment for social network advertising alone, brands need to also start thinking about areas outside of Facebook and MySpace in which they can buy ad space.  Understanding where the bulk of conversation is coming from can help uncover new places to put up digital billboards.

For some clients, the thought of having to “engage” with customers on new channels outside of the comfort zone is scary.  It’s sometimes easier to focus on Facebook advertising and maybe some occassional Twitter engagement.  While this is an important first step, I think companies need to start marketing and advertising on mediums other than the usual suspects in order to have simple and easy access to their target audiences.   Finding the next tier of social media channels focused on your industry, products or services will be crucial to the next step in social media marketing.  And who knows, advertising on these channels may even provide better ROI!

Recently, I have been talking to a number of start-ups about building a business from the ground up marketed through social channels.  There is no question that it is easier to make two-way communications a part of the lifeblood of your organization if you are starting from scratch.  It is probably one of the reasons that we are seeing larger organizations who are having such a hard time figuring out governance and structure when it comes to utilizing social.

If you are looking to build a company that embraces social, and you do not have a current client set, I think there are a few steps that you can take to make the process of “going viral” a realistic possibility.

1. Listen to what people in your target pool are saying – Most new companies have identified a pretty large set of individuals who can use their products or services.  Understand who is actually using social channels first, and then figure out what resonates with that target audience. 

If you are a service that provides access to ”green” products, find out the largest set of people who are engaged on social media discussing similar topic areas.  Let’s say that there a lot of people in many different demographics discussing “green”.  Great, that’s an opportunity for future growth.  But maybe mothers with young children take up over 60% of the conversation related to “green”.  Well, start there, and see what they are looking for.  When they talk about products, are the products for themselves or their children?  Let’s say that they are talking about personal products for themselves (services, personal care, etc.)

2. Develop relationships/partnerships with companies who provide these items – If you want to reach mothers who are looking for “green” personal products, you want to have products and partnerships with your service that resonate with this group.  Perhaps, you go after local businesses in your region that provide these products.  Build up a portfolio of as many companies in perhaps Ohio who provide green products.  Most businesses are happy to be included as part of new channels to get their product to market, so work on creating this first.

3. Engage with your target audience - Once you have set up adequate relationships to make it worth the while of mothers to start talking about your product and how you can provide local “green” personal products to mothers, get the word out.  Tell bloggers that your service provides access to over X different companies in the Ohio area who deliver the products that their audience is looking for.  If you are providing value, these individuals will help to spread awareness of your service.

I think a lot of new businesses are thinking about social in the back of their minds, but they are not thinking about how they can build their business to strategically utilize social and current discussions.  In this example, if you simply build partnerships with all “green” businesses without focus (personal hygiene, solar equipment, restaurants, etc.), you may just not resonate with any specific group.  And then it can be a long hard road to readjusting your vision, as you subsequently see where the interest is coming from.

With the proliferation of spoofs on social media gurus and sites mocking the generalization that some social media professionals are offering to clients, I think there is a real need within the social media consulting community to actually figure out what can help clients today.  Too much advice is driven by hype, and a bit more rigor needs to be applied to the overall discussion around how to attack social media.  If you work in PR, marketing or sales, there is a sense that organizations need to do something to engage and monitor conversation happening around the brand.  But do we all need to start tweeting and figuring out our Foursquare strategy right away?  Probably not.  We may actually never need to look at those tools.  Never.

Lots of people have said it before, but the technology is secondary to the strategy.

Marketing - If you are a marketer, first look for the places where individuals are talking about your brand.  Don’t waste time trying to figure out how you are going to engage.  Too often organizations will spin their wheels thinking about engagement when they could just use forums as places to actually market their products and services.  So today, really understand who is talking about you, what they are saying, and where they are saying it.  Refine your message, and advertise based on what you learn.  Want to create an engaging social media widget?  Great.  That’s step two.

PR - If you work in public relations, you want to control the message around your brand.  First things first.  When someone says something that is blatantly false, help make corrections and provide simple transparent content that does that.  Whether it’s a paid monitoring tool or not that gives you insight to these conversations, focus on the negative.  As a PR professional, you want to keep the message clear.  Step two is creating a conversation with people who love you, people who are not sure how they feel… and driving more conversations that emphasis this message.  I think PR is a bit further along with social media, so being more proactive on listening and engaging is something that you can do.  But focus on the message, and address conversations that are off-message first.

Sales- Of all the functions that can suffer from analysis paralysis, there is no function that can fall into this trap more than the sales function.  Developing new business is usually high-touch and often a really difficult endeavour.  There are businesses who are making sales by looking on social media, but this can often be a long process.  If your Marketing and PR team focuses on advertising and message within social media, they have you generally covered.  After all, these groups, especially Marketing, are designed to drive sales.  So setup your monitoring tools to look specifically for individuals who are looking to buy now.  If you are up for the challenge, go ahead and engage those individuals.  Otherwise work in conjunction with Marketing and PR to be aware of the conversations that are occurring on social media.  While there are a few industries which may benefit from directly talking to individuals discussing an imminent purchase, this is an extremely difficult thing to do.  Wait for the tools (and the associated algorithms/processing) to get better, and then revisit using social media from the direct view of a sales function.

If you can attack these ideas first, there will be plenty of time to use other (much cooler) ways to get involved with social media.  Let’s get back to running a business!

When it comes to using social media in the world of non-profits, there are two things that immediately come to mind when asked what this new medium can help with: awareness and fundraising.  And then of course, people gravitate towards fundraising, because that’s a lot more exciting than awareness.  And you may think that it’s a great way to show ROI on social media.  Stories of people raising millions of dollars on a social media campaigns lure you into believing that it is easy.  But is it really?

The more we dig into the numbers, non-profits just are not raising as much as the hype claims.  In 2008, $300 billion was raised by non-profits, $15 billion of that money came from online sources, and in the last 3 years only $21 million came from Facebook (Giving USA and Blackbaud).  Many of the non-profits that we talk to who have already experimented in this area are coming to similar conclusions.  But that shouldn’t be a reason to abandon social media.

Non-profits need to start thinking about how social media can help them cultivate the relationship between themselves, their patrons and their patrons’ friends.  Be wary of circulating content that asks for money without a specific cause.  Instead spread awareness around what your organization is helping with functionally.  Talk about what you do, why you’re good at it, and what people should pay attention to.  Only after you have developed a deep relationship and created an interest around the conversation, should you start the conversation around fundraising.

I think the key message here is that social media builds relationships and awareness of what you as an organization do really well.  Focus on that part first, and the money will follow.

With the recent (and somewhat flat) IPO of QuinStreet, it got me thinking about how our clients can start to use the concepts of vertical marketing and social media in conjunction with each other.  It’s a way to strategically think about how organizations can increase social media exposure, and in turn justify the expenditure through a measurable ROI channel.

To take a quick step back, what do I mean by vertical marketing?  Vertical marketing, in the way that QuinStreet does it, essentially means setting up websites  that don’t necessarily have your brand on it, and then providing a lot of information around that vertical(mortgages, loans, online learning, etc.).  When you fill out a form that says that you want to hear more, QuinStreet essentially sends the lead over to a single or multiple companies who pay for those warm/hot leads.  And it’s not just companies like QuinStreet and ValueClick who are doing this.  Companies are doing this on their own, and it drives SEM as well as sales.

So how is this similar to social media?  For those of you who may not be familiar, there is a story from the book Groundswell (video below) that talks about how P&G created a website called BeingGirl.com to engage with young girls about their feminine problems.  It was an unbranded website that had a forum where these girls could ask  Iris, a psychologist hired by P&G questions that they might not feel comfortable asking their parents.  Each of Iris’ answers was followed by the simple line: “Good luck from BeingGirl.com.  Brought to you by Always Pads and Pantyliners and Tampax Tampons.”  According to P&G, this was 4 times more effective per dollar spent than traditional advertising. 

So with these two examples in mind, I think that there is a huge opportunity for organizations to use their engagment strategies to drive strong lead generation.

If you are not already running vertical sites to drive traffic, start monitoring social media channels to find out what your consumers are looking for.  A lot of the marketing execs who I talk to are trying to understand the topic areas that are already occurring across the overall conversation (related to their brand) in social media.  Figure this out, and then start building a site that is aligned with your company’s overall goals.  Obviously, easier said than done.

Once you have a site up, add social components to it so that your consumers can talk to each other as well as to your company.  This is not really something that either QuinStreet or ValueClick has done, but I think companies who build their own vertical sites can make this a priority.  Of course, be transparent in who you are while trying to provide a non-biased forum for consumers to get and share information.  And then provide unobtrusive links to drive traffic back to the sales funnel.  I think this type of strategy to lead generation can really help companies begin to justify the costs of social media and see revenue generating results.  Which is what we all really want in the end anyway.

With the recent flurry of news and blog posts on mobile social networks like Foursquare, there is a sense that these networks really have a shot of taking this all the way.  On Thursday, Foursquare announced that they had over a quarter million people “check-in”to some physical location in a single day.  That’s pretty impressive, and while there has been hype around Loopt and Gowalla, there is a sense that Foursquare has the momentum to actually make something of this attention.

To take a quick step back, Foursquare and its competitors are services that allow people to broadcast out their location to their network.  When you go to a restaurant or store, you “check-in” to that location, and do two things.  One, you tell your friends that you at a specific place, and two, you let the store owner know that you are there.  Why would you do this?  Well, the most loyal person (most checked-in visits) can become the “mayor” of that establishment, and they get some bonus for being sucha great customer.  Maybe a free coffee or pitcher of beer, as well as the social capital of being the mayor.

When we think about this from a branding level, this is some amazing data to have at your fingertips as a marketer.  And all of this information is supplied by your customer, broadcast to his/her network and verified by GPS as being accurate.  Couple that with profile data and incentives, and you have an army of bonafide brand ambassadors.  And apparently, over a quarter million people are already putting their location onto the airwaves.  Scary but exciting stuff.

I think what’s unique about Foursquare is that they are actively taking advantage of the current attention to their service to forge relationships with major media companies as well as with retail stores like Starbucks.  In addition, as the Economist reports, there are a number of stars that have aligned to put Foursquare in the right place at the right time.  The prevalence of smart phones, unlimited data plans, GPS accurate devices and a slew of applications that can take advantage of this information have put companies like Foursquare in the sweet spot of winning the race.

While I don’t believe that mobile social networks are going to become fully mainstream anytime soon, I do think that consumer facing companies should start experimenting with how they can use these tools to drive revenue and increase customer loyalty.  According to the Economist article that I referenced earlier, “Juniper Research predicts that global revenues from location-based services could soar to $12.7 billion by 2014, up from $3 billion last year”.  Even if this is an exaggerated figure, there is surely a sense that it’s worth playing a game of peek-a-boo with your customers to see if they are up for it.  There’s a lot of money at stake here.

I spent tonight at the World Affairs Council here in San Franciso listening to Jay Walsh, Head of Communications at the Wikimedia Foundation, talk about his organization.  The talk was titled: “A New Model for Global Collaboration”, and it was a deep dive into the history and size of the Wikimedia Foundation.  What I really want to talk about is what brands can get from wikis in general, as well as from Wikipedia, but here are the basic numbers from his presentation:

• 275 languages
• 340M unique visitors in a month
• 100,000 volunteers (about 10% who contribute more than 100 edits a month)
• 5th largest site globally according to ComScore (after Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Facebook)… and it’s a non-profit
• Over a 1B edits since Wikipedia got started in 2001

What I think is really interesting is the total number of languages that are covered across the various Wikipedia sites as well as the sheer volume of the articles and edits.  We are not talking about straight translations of the English site, but rather unique versions on the same topic area.  A simple search of “Nintendo” in both Spanish and English will show that there are differences in both entries, and as Nintendo there is a lot you could learn about cultural and political biases or preferences by looking through these entries.  Collaboration tools like wikis across languages can help brands get a very focused idea about what a “neutral” point-of-view believes.

For large global brands like Nintendo, Coca Cola or Sony, organizations can begin to make observations across countries, languages and cultures as they look to bring products or services to new markets.  Jay presented a number of studies where Wikipedia in certain languages were broken up based on the type of content that they searched as well as the countries that searched within specific languages.  Undoubtedly, a corporation like Procter & Gamble or Pepsi could conduct similar types of studies on a more granular level.  Here are a few of the examples that the Wikimedia Foundation have put together from a macro-persepctive.

To take my Nintendo example one step further, the organization could look at how the company and its competitors are percieved across continents and languages.  Differences in opinions across games, genres, etc. could result in better content development and marketing campaigns.  Console decisions and strategy could be tweaked based on what certain groups look for out of gaming.  We are talking about research for marketing, strategy, sales and product development all through wiki analysis.

While we typically advise clients to use Social Media and wikis to manage their brand, I think there are some other very big implications of using wikis specifically.  By analyzing this level of data across wikis (which happen to have the advantage of being user-generated and social, while being seen as “neutral” through their unique crowd sourcing style model), a company can take advantage of global brand data that can help them make decisions across a number of topic areas in a very focused manner.

Out of all of the stories that have come out about social media being successful at driving sales and traffic, I think the most impressive has come from the travel industry.  From Jet Blue’s All You Can Jet promotion to Travelzoo and Fly.com’s Real Time Flight Deals, there is tangible and proven way to make serious sales from micro-blogging.

I think there’s a lot that other companies can learn from this, but you also need to be prepared.

• Be ready- The scary thing about viral messages is that they can have a lot of impact in a very short amount of time.  You are hoping for a great deal of interest, so make sure that your organization and online channels have the capacity to take on a heavy burst of activity.  If there’s distribution or marketing dollars on the line, think about how you would react if your social media initiative has legs… or even wings.
• Be selective – Not every deal needs to be advertised, so only send out deals that are going to generate A LOT of buzz.  You don’t want to be the boy who cried wolf for every little thing that your company does, otherwise you will surely see a drop-off in interest.  But at the same time, keep your audience engaged by sending out deals regularly so that they remember to watch for specials.
• Be proactive – Don’t wait until everyone else in your industry is sending out deals through Twitter.  This is the time to show a little innovation and leadership.  Think of new ways to engage your customers and followers so that you are the one leading the conversation.

This is permission marketing at its best.  Your company’s fans and customers have given you permission to give them great deals, and their friends in turn have given them permission to send through ideas and information that they think is valuable.  But it could be a lot, so it’s not just a random exercise in new media marketing.  This is the new way to market.  They have asked for the sale, so now it simply up to you and organization to close it.

It’s now pretty standard for most consumer brands to have an official Twitter and Facebook account up and running.  At the very least, every company should have an account on the two platforms as strategy is slowly put into place.  But I think, on some level, these accounts are gathering dust or not working to their full potential when they could be out having and sparking conversations across the web today.

Why is that?  I think that fundamentally, it’s still not understood what social media can do from a business development  or sales perspective.  And so, people tend to put less weight into social media channels as a real marketing conduit.

Here’s a quick example of how I think Social Media needs to be framed for consumer companies:

Imagine that you are a marketing director for a large fashion retail brand, let’s say Express.  Then imagine that you have just stumbled on a group of girls in the mall who are talking about the new styles at Express and the other stores where they typically find the coolest and newest clothes.  Would you want to start a conversation with those girls?  Would you want to find out what they liked and didn’t like?  And most importantly, wouldn’t you offer them an incentive to come into Express and buy a couple items?

This is exactly what Social Media can help you do.  From a business development perspective, you can find consumers talking about your brand, and offer them incentives to check out your online store or get discounts on new purchases.  You can keep the conversation going by allowing them to become fans of your pages, and you can continue to incentivize them through additional discounts.  It’s more immediate and gratifying than mailers, and it allows you to really understand your customer.

Now you can approach that group of girls or guys in the mall and hundreds of groups just like theirs to drive traffic into your stores, both online and off.

There are surely some specific segments within the population heavily engaged with social media which can be highly lucrative.  If you happen to have a business that attracts these segments, you can make a lot of money.  And I think as we look to which segment is having a very real impact on Internet based businesses, we can see that social media marketing works extremely well with the Type A “Mommy Bloggers”. 

This is the group that has money to spend and the web-savvy to blog, tweet and be a part of a larger conversation.  We have seen this group of Type A women bring huge revenues to companies like Gilt and Rue La La, and we have also seen them have big impacts on toy and baby companies.

Recently, I had a call with a marketing director at a toy company who stressed the importance of attracting this group to their website and ultimately creating buzz around their brand.  Without a doubt, there are PR firms who can help you locate some pretty influential bloggers out there, but it got me thinking about how a company really needs to make this a part of their “corporate blood”.

There are really two things that brands who have an interest in this group need to do.

First, find out who is talking about you, your competitors and your products.  What are they saying, and can you influence them in any way?  Think about ways that these Type A Moms can help you improve your product and ultimately sell more.  Of all the bloggers out there, this group can be very proactive in offering advice that you can act on.  Use it.

Second, get a sense of what these Type A Moms are talking about besides your product.  Can you become a part of this conversation?  This is when you and your company can go from an organization trying to sell products to a group of friends looking to help out and talk.  If you can make this transition, you have made the full leap into the target segment that you are looking to approach.  And it’ll make the selling a lot easier for you… and the buying a lot more appealing to you customers.