Category: influencers

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Machiavellian boyscouts get more influence in social business

It’s not just courteous and kind to help little old ladies cross the street: it pays.

Last month I attended an excellent presentation concerning social media analytics and ROI by the esteemed Chuck Hemann, Director of Analytics for WCG, sponsored by the Social Media Club of Seattle. Chuck made an important point about social media influence that I want to share with you.

Both quantity and quality are important for social influence

On one particular slide Chuck showed us an image of Edelman Digital VP Michael Brito accompanied by a few bullet points scoping out his social media influence. At the sight of this slide the standing-room-only crowd murmured approvingly. More than 30,000 folks, myself included, follow @britopian on Twitter. He’s a well known thought leader and published author in the social business realm.

Chuck’s next slide showed a sweet looking woman wearing a straw hat with a flower on it—Chuck’s mom. She has around 1300 Twitter followers: very respectable…but she’s no @britopian, at least at first glance.

Flower power: social influence means talk gardening to gardeners Question: Given the choice, would you rather have @britopian or @susanhemann tweeting about your brand? Answer: It depends what your message is.

In Chuck’s hypothetical, your message is about gardening. You’re trying to influence people who are into gardening and have personal networks of like-minded people. Low and behold, Chuck’s mom is a well-established gardening Twitter personality and blogger. Many of her 1300+ Twitter followers are, presumably, rabid, over-the-top gardeners and gardening influencers. So naturally the person you want tweeting about you is Chuck’s mom.

Not that there’s anything shabby about Michael Brito or his followers, thank you very much. But they’re not focused on gardening. Yours is not a high Continue reading “Machiavellian boyscouts get more influence in social business”

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Social media highlights from the Seattle Interactive Conference 2011

As a followup to my post from a couple of weeks ago, 9 timely social media and brand communication insights from SIC 2011, I put together a quick video blog post featuring just the social media highlights from last month’s Seattle Interactive Conference. I apologize in advance for the primitive tech quality, but try to think of it like pie crust, it’s better when it’s home made and looks it, right?

Here’s the video with my explanatory post on the Audienz blog, 5 social media insights from the 2011 Seattle Interactive Conference, and here’s just the video itself on YouTube:

[Updated on February 2, 2012]

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9 timely social media and brand communication insights from SIC 2011

SIC LogoI recently attended the 2011 Seattle Interactive Conference (#SIC2011) at the downtown Seattle convention center. Besides enjoying the opportunity to catch up with friends in the local marketing and social media communities, I was impressed by the overall caliber of presenters and the hard-won insights they shared. Looking back, they gave us a snapshot of the state of the industry as of Q4, 2011.

The following are some of the presentation takeaways I jotted down at the event (click on any of the items in this list to jump down to the details):

1: Identify and engage with your brand’s social media advocates
2: Brands must plan in advance to be authentic in social media conversations
3: Preempt negative comments about your brand to rob them of their power
4: How to make a “good” social media video
5: Comcast “sucks” if it still hasn’t addressed the underlying problem
6: Social media ROI requires a multiple touch attribution model
7: Brand advocates disproportionally influence content consumption, conversions
8: Content is the carrier, the click is the action
9: Seek to increase social media engagement with actual customers
More insights from SIC 2011

#1: Identify and engage with your brand’s social media advocates

Kim Johnston, VP of Marketing, Desktop Virtualization, at Parallels, spoke Continue reading “9 timely social media and brand communication insights from SIC 2011”

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Unwittingly funny GOP social media experiment failed by being generic

A recent US Republican Party social media experiment misfired not because of poor moderation, as some critics have assumed, but because site managers failed to recruit and motivate the right community. This post explores ways to create an open, uncensored forum that can more constructively represent both loyal followers and potential converts who were (presumably) the intended targets of the site.

Saying they want to “give the American people a megaphone to speak out,” last week GOP Congressional leaders announced a new web site, AmericaSpeakingOut.com, an open “town meeting” where everyone has an “[o]pportunity to change the way Congress works by proposing ideas for a new policy agenda.”

Despite an enthusiastic introduction by GOP leaders, wackiness ensued. Notable submissions on the site included unlikely suggestions, like: Continue reading “Unwittingly funny GOP social media experiment failed by being generic”

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Social media and retirees

The owner of an online-only business recently asked me whether I thought social media should be used to reach out to retired people. Because he had received a number of telephone calls from older customers having trouble with his online application, his fear was that very few retired people were computer literate enough to complete a transaction on his web site or to use social media.

A recent Nielsen survey revealed that 17.5 million people aged 65 years and older now use the internet. Of that group, approximately half (8.75 million) use the internet to send email, read news, do online banking, and use social networks. (Citation: http://mashable.com/2009/12/10/seniors-online-habits/ ). As such, one would have to assume that at least 9 million retirees are computer literate enough to be high value customers for any online business. They can be acquired through the same combination of media outreach as other consumers online, and they can be serviced at the low marginal cost of an online transaction.

I also asked for input from a friend who held a  strategic role during a formative period at Amazon.com (for a number of years Amazon didn’t even publish a telephone number for customer service inquiries, as you may recall). He harumphed, then opined that besides being more than capable of completing online transactions, retired people can be quite viral because they are likely to use their leisure time to share product and services information with their friends.

Certainly, some number of people from any given demographic – including retirees – will have trouble with every web site. But so long as you focus on making your site user friendly, don’t be afraid of reaching out to retired people through social media. They may just find you, and tell their friends.

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Generating B2B sales leads using social media

The 2009 Forrester Research report about what influences IT buyers in a B2B context presented the following list of the most influential sources of information for technology buyers. As it happens, the positive impact of all of the sources of influence on Forrester’s list can be enhanced through social media efforts. Starting from the top, in order of influence, the sources are:

  1. Peers and colleagues
  2. Vendor, industry, trade web sites
  3. Your direct vendor salesperson
  4. Technology or business magazines
  5. Consultants, VARs, or SIs
  6. Industry trade shows or conferences (in person)
  7. Industry analyst firms
  8. Forums, online communities, social networks
  9. E-mail or electronic newsletters
  10. Web events or virtual trade shows
  11. Interactive media: podcasts, video, online demos
  12. Blogs

(surveying 1217 technology decision makers at companies with more than 100 employees).

B2B sales lead generation - fitting the pieces togetherAlso according to Forrester, 91% of B2B technology buyer decision makers use social media to gather information.

It’s critical to recognize that a successful social media lead generation strategy doesn’t require reaching out to every customer on a one-to-one basis. Instead, the most powerful online strategy is to use existing communication channels by reaching out to the influencers who already have a one-to-one relationship with customers. Here’s how this strategy maps to Forresters list:

“Peers and colleagues” – People will go out of their way to share good news with their friends. It’s human nature to tip off friends about big finds. The right tools can make it extremely easy for people to share information about products and services via email, Twitter, and other channels. State of the art viral messaging hooks can be built into the sellers web site, including a subscrition email messaging system and connections to other transmission mechanisms on the web (like Twitter). These are all trackable, incidentally, to provide feedback about the spread of a seller’s messages via various channels.

“Technology or business magazines,” “Consultants, VARs, or SIs“, and “Industry analyst firms” – I lump all of these together under the category public relations (PR). The experts and commentators in almost every B2B community are constantly trading information. More and more of this discussion happens using social media. Social media like Twitter and blogs are now a key conduit for building relationships with journalists, bloggers, analysts, consultants, and other experts, who in turn influence IT decision makers. (See my post earlier this week for more about this.)

“Your direct vendor salesperson” – Social media can reveal which specific people working for potential buyers are looking for a seller’s solution. For instance, LinkedIn provides a virtual directory of who does what inside many companies. Twitter and blogs can provide a blow-by-blow account of the projects specific people are working on.

“Web site“, “E-mail/newsletters“, “Web events“, “Interactive media“, and “Blogs” – Initial contacts are stickier, stronger, and last longer when people can effortlessly keep in touch with a seller using the form of online communication – email, blog, Twitter, LinkedIn, webinar, etc. – that they are most at home with. But a surprising number of B2B sellers aren’t using these off-the-shelf subscription and interaction options to convert contacts into leads.

“Forums, online communities, social networks” – These three are pure social media. But a company must actively and consistently participate in them to have an impact.

Last but not least, within every communication channel mentioned above it’s important to listen and learn what people are saying about your company, its competitors, and its markets. Companies that don’t make an effort to become aware of what influencers and customers are saying are likely to miss both sales opportunities and criticism. It takes an effort, but a wide variety of tools are available to automate the process.

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Now PR like journalism is really Social Media

Bruce WilsonNot surprisingly, public relations (“PR”) is undergoing revolutionary change right along with journalism. I just attended a Seattle Lunch 2.0 presentation based on the premise that social media is now the primary vehicle for PR.

Panelist John Cook is a journalist-cum-blogger, a former Seattle Post Intelligencer beat reporter and blogger for venture capital, now co-founder and executive editor of TechFlash. He made two particularly interesting points:

1) In response to an audience member who expressed the widely held view that press releases are mostly useful for SEO purposes nowadays, he said he still WANTs to receive press releases, they help him assess potential stories.

2) His “sources” for investigative journalism stories he’s covering now include people who read about his investigation online and give him tips via posts (comments on his blog, Tweets, and emails I assume) in real time.

Jaime Riley from Deloitte said that since it’s inevitable that the “Gen Y” future leaders of Deloitte will wind up using social media in the ordinary course of business, they’ve started incubating a healthy social media culture now (Deloitte has two Twitter accounts, she said–not sure if that’s company wide or Seattle or where).

Thanks MWW Group for a tasty lunch, an eloquent panel, and interesting attendees. (For more insights, and plenty of plain old redundant Twitter chatter from attendees, tweets concerning the event can be found at #mww2dot0.)

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New FTC guidelines are not quite law and not fully baked yet

Bruce WilsonThe FTC has announced new guidelines which concern “endorsements” by bloggers (21 of the document’s 81 pages have some direct reference to blogs or bloggers). If I understand correctly, under the guidelines which become effective December 1, 2009, a blogger can be fined for failing to reveal that they received payment or kept an object they were given to review–even a book–if they publish a review of the item or the company that made it.

Three points:

First, we all (not just bloggers, but everyone) should just do this anyway. Your credibility will suffer if you endorse something to me and I find out later that you received something of value from the folks you endorsed, whether or not YOU think it influenced you! So FTC or no FTC, this is a good reminder about minimum ethical standards for communicating about products and services.

Second, there is a lot of confusion about the power the FTC is packing behind these new guidelines. To vastly oversimplify the US regulatory system: this thing that we’re talking about isn’t part of the Constitution (obviously), Federal Statutes (passed by Congress) or Federal Regulations (passed by individual Federal Agencies). It’s more of an announcement by an agency, the FTC, clarifying how they intend to interpret and enforce the laws and regulations that already exist in this realm. Keep in mind that until the FTC actually goes after someone citing this guideline, and their enforcement action challenged in Court, its implications are murky. And in the mean time the FTC can simply change its interpretation or otherwise enforce this (and related) principles in a wide variety of ways.

Third, the FTC seems remarkably poorly prepared to deal with this area of regulation. Which might explain this embarrassing interview between a blogger and a representative of the FTC (thanks to blogger Edward Champion at Reluctant Habits for digging deeper) revealing that the representative (and very likely the FTC) hasn’t really thought this through yet. (Bloggers would be able to open used book stores? Come again?!)

So I’m predicting that these guidelines won’t be featured in any enforcement actions any time soon. But I’m hoping that any bloggers (and non-bloggers) who aren’t disclosing their relationships with the products and companies they review take the hint and begin doing so!

(By the way, these guidelines are by the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, who are responsible for consumer protection, not to be confused with the FCC, the Federal Communications commission, who are responsible for regulating communication via radio, television, wire, satellite and cable, and are central to the “net neutrality” debate.)

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