Social Media Rules of Engagement
11/10/2010
By: Doug Bedell
Mike Smiley, of PAPA Advertising, calls them guidelines. We call them rules — for engaging in social media. That’s because Smiley’s principles outline a relational stance that’s crucial to maintain in conducting online dialogues — honest, responsive, non-defensive and compliant.
Here they are (Smiley states them, of course, in more detail):
1. Be transparent – Be forthright about where you work and who your are.
2. Be honest – Never represent your organization in a false or misleading way.
3. Be a contributor – Use social media to open a dialogue.
4. Be compliant – Observe the corporate rules you’re working under.
5. Be the expert – Provide perspectives born of professional experience.
6. Be civil – Keep the discussion polite despite possibly differing opinions.
7. Be diplomatic – Be correct and well-founded in writing about competitors.
8. Be discreet – Don’t comment on legal matters, litigation or parties related to them.
9. Be cognizant – Be well-informed about your company and don’t comment on what might be a crisis situation.
10. Be cautious – Protect yourself, your privacy and your company’s confidential information.
If anyone doubts that social media is a discipline, one requiring training and professionalism to conduct profitably, Smiley’s principles are timely correctives.
“These 10 guidelines are just the beginning,” Smiley notes. “They can be used as a starting point for your social media campaign, but remember it’s all about what’s right for you and your company.”
Again, we’d call them rules — ones for learning and growing in a new media setting.
Top Five Social Media Marketing Mistakes
06/22/2010
You know about all the wonderful things the blogosphere can do for your business. But how can you prevent the not-so-wonderful stuff?
By Mike Proulx
Social media initiatives have become standard components of companies’ marketing and communications strategies. Large or small—from the local bakery to General Motors (GM)—businesses see the value of engaging in online conversations already taking place about their brands. While social media best practices have emerged, brands still struggle with how best to engage with their consumers. Here are five common mistakes:
1. Not (or Barely) Monitoring: Companies that do not first “listen” and observe how their evangelists and detractors talk about their brand risk jumping into a cyclone of unanticipated activity. Constant monitoring is a must.
Even a well-liked Internet brand can fall victim to lack of social media monitoring. In 2009, hackers exploited a vulnerability in online retailer Amazon.com’s (AMZN) site, causing all books by GLBT (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender) authors to disappear. Over the course of a weekend, thousands of consumers on Twitter, Facebook, and forums voiced their concern, suspecting that Amazon had made the authors unavailable deliberately. Two days later, when Amazon made an attempt to explain the glitch, people on Twitter already had created a hashtag further ridiculing the company’s ineptitude.
2. “Down-sourcing” to Interns or Junior Staff: The fresh, young digital natives at your company embody a crucial resource in helping to navigate the emerging media waters. In some cases, however, their lack of business experience could imperil your brand’s “social voice.”
Recently, Nestlé’s (NESN) Facebook page erupted in a flame war when Greenpeace staged a protest of the chocolate maker’s alleged use of palm oil from deforested areas in Indonesia. The “official” posts in response to comments were overly flippant and defensive, which only fueled the firestorm.
3. Fast Beats Perfect: In the digital world, content can spread like wildfire. Immediate, authentic, and humble acknowledgements of your brand’s social media kerfuffles are not only necessary but also expected. Taking the time to craft a perfect corporate response with layers of bureaucratic approvals will only cause more damage to your brand’s social reputation.
In a matter of days, the now infamous Domino’s YouTube video, in which employees did some highly unappetizing things to the chain’s food, erupted into a full-fledged crisis. Although the chief executive officer provided a video statement/response, some felt the company’s reply took far too long. (The company has since redeemed itself with its highly successful Pizza Turnaround campaign.)
4. Faking It: If you’ve failed to foster and energize a legitimate set of brand evangelists, don’t attempt to disguise false engagement by having employees pretend to be customers (known as “astroturfing”). It will most certainly be found out.
Earlier this year, speculation was that Wal-Mart’s (WMT) local Chicago PR agency was behind a fake community support group commenting on blogs in favor of the retail store coming to town.
5. Having an “Off” Switch: Your brand’s involvement in social media should never have an end date, since at its core, that involvement is about nurturing customer relationships. While campaigns that have a social media extension may come and go, you must maintain an “always on” approach and outlook.
TGI Friday’s September 2009 cross-channel campaign reached its goal of winning 500,000 fans of fictional character “Woody” on Facebook. In fact, it got close to 1 million fans. TGI Friday’s ended the campaign and deleted the Facebook page without those fans converting to TGI Friday’s official Facebook page, losing all the social capital built up over the course of the campaign.
As we’re still in somewhat of a nascent period in social media marketing, brands will inevitably make mistakes and learn from them along the way. This learning process is exciting and offers marketers some unique opportunities to connect directly with consumers.
At the end of the day, brands must earn their “social currency.” There are no shortcuts or substitutes to authentic engagement in the realm of social media.
Mike Proulx leads digital strategy at Hill Holliday, an advertising agency based in Boston. You can follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his blog.
iPhone SmiPhone; BlackBerry SmackBerry; Droid Smoid – How smart ARE SmartPhones? Smarter than say, Bill Gates? Smarter than…Steve Jobs? Smarter than…Mark Zuckerburg? Notice my strategic wordi-ness in typing out three big names (and not forgetting to also “tag” them in my description) in hopes that Google or Bing or Yahoo! will pick up on this and shoot me to the top of the blog list on topics of Facebook, iPhones, or Obama…or oil gulf spill distaster, BP Twitter, Dancing with the Stars, Miley Cyrus, hot summer. That should get me ranked. Maybe. Wait, the new iPhone has FaceTalk, texting, Droid does then doesn’t, Jon Stewart is funny, Good Morning America, Good MorningVietnam, Robin Williams, China cabinet, summer grilling secrets.
There. Now they should find me.
But is being found more important than being relevant when you ARE found. I don’t think so. Twitter has shown me that no matter what I say, someone out there “interested” in what I “tweeted” and immediately requests to “follow” me. Follow away my wittle tweety. Last week I Tweeted I don’t know how many times while following my favorite golfer Tommy Gainey at the Fort Smith Classic. Now this week, I’ve got “GolfLover101″ “FollowPGA”and 5 or 6 more golf related “followers.” And since I’ve got my Twitter directly linked to Facebook via text, it’s not surprising that most all of the ads on my Facebook page this week are all about GOLF! But you know what, I like that. It’s like I choose what ads I want to see. Wow! That’s great. Only ads that are relevant to me and what I’m interested in RIGHT NOW. But, I will say that when I make updates about working out and losing weight, I’m not interested in the ads that say, “Single Women Looking for Fat Men” – although, it does make me smile.
This is the future. I choose what ads I want to see or want to hear. I can “like” the ad if I do indeed like it or I can choose to ignore it. On Hulu, some commercials give me the option of choosing whether the ad is relevant to me or not. Or, they give me the option of watching an ad about a family SUV, a sporty convertible, or a 4×4 truck. It’s all about me – I LOVE THAT.
Now, where am I going with all of this? Be ready. Be ready to reach a particular audience. Be ready to target EXACTLY who you want to target, when, where, and how. BE READY. It’s here and some businesses are already taking advantage of this targeted advertising. It’s more than “social media marketing” – it’s a total shift in how we reach our customers. Technology has broken all barriers of privacy – and most people want to be heard. Privacy Smivacy – I don’t want to see ads on Viagra until I’m at that age that I need to see those ads. I could care less about Pantein ProV1 haircare products…however, I am interested in the Titleist ProV1.
ARE YOU READY?
Networking can fix….ANYTHING
05/28/2010
…well, almost. I’ve recently returned from a conference in Orlando, FL where I met/talked to/exchanged info/”networked” with over 400 people in 6 days time. Did I meet and shake hands with everyone? Probably not. Did I make a lasting impression with those whom I did interact? Um, yes. Besides, what else is there to do in Orlando besides network? Wait, nevermind. So, there I was in sunny Orlando with two goals in mind: 1) to learn this software (Advantage/Webvantage) as best as humanly possible, and 2) meet as many people as possible. I succeeded in both I’m proud to say. As I talked with people in the same area of expertise as myself, I learned that my struggles and battles were often times very much similar to theirs. Like scary similar. So, after talking more, we came up with solutions. The ole, “two heads are better than one” scenerio, and in some instances this reference involving “heads” on beer. Either way, it worked! It was nice for once not turning to Google or blogs or message boards for solutions. I went to the “in-person” approach. Perhaps outdated and “old school,” it’s nice to know that it’s still effective.
Mobile Advertising to Rise 80% in 2010
05/05/2010
March 17, 2010
Mobile advertising is going to break out in 2010, with average spend increasing 80 percent, but some publishers are struggling to participate in the boom, according to Mojiva.
In a recent survey conducted by DM2Pro.com and Mojiva, nearly 1,000 agencies, brand advertisers and publishers chimed in. The survey projected a significant hike in mobile ad spending.
“Agencies polled represented that the average individual client spending would see an 80 percent increase,” said Melinda Gipson, publisher of DM2PRO.com, Royaton, CT. “On average across their business, they see a ramp up of 65 percent and for brands, the prediction is that spending will more than double.
“What’s surprising about this is the consistency of responses here,” she said. “When you take out the agencies that are staying level or decreasing their spending by 1 percent, only 6 percent of respondents are decreasing their mobile spending.
“When’s the last time you saw 94 percent agreement in the ad agency world on anything?”
Mojiva is a mobile advertising platform for advertisers and publishers who want to get into the smartphone market.
DM2PRO.com is a membership site for digital media and marketing professionals who want data, case studies and information on mobile media.
Mobile future
According to several agencies, client spending was pegged at $143,000 on average last year and $260,000 this year, which represents an 80 percent increase in spending.
Additionally, agencies predicted that its client spending would increase by 65 percent for 2010.
Brands predict that mobile advertising spending will double, from an average budget of $269,000 in 2009 to $679,744 in 2010.
In addition, more than 67 percent of publishers sell mobile separately, but for an overlapping 65 percent, mobile can either be bundled or included as a value-add in other media sales.
Only 24 percent of mobile publishers sell out more than half their inventory.
“There’s a rapid influx of newbies into mobile marketing,” Ms. Gipson said. “Their spending is still quite small.
“This is to be expected, but when you look at the more tenured marketers – those spending six figures already, and the much larger increases they’re forecasting, you’d have to conclude that, once you crack the code on mobile, the ROI must be phenomenal to justify that level of increases that marketers are projecting here,” she said.
“Even those who haven’t done mobile marketing at all look to be putting 10 percent of their total spend into the category. This seems like a large leap to take – sort of like going from 0 to 60 in 10 seconds.
Advertising strategy
According to DM2Pro.com, many brands have not done mobile marketing because they claim they need a better strategy.
The company claims that the data it collected from respondents should be helpful to businesses in making the right strategic decisions.
“With all this money headed into mobile marketing, many publishers still have difficulty capitalizing on this influx,” Ms. Gipson said. “It sounds self serving, but clearly, those who do, seem to be those that effectively use mobile ad networks.
“For example, publishers who use mobile ad networks say they account for more than 60 percent of revenue,” she said. “2010 is the year mobile breaks out of single digits for brand and agency marketers.
“Total overall mobile spending is small, but will begin to represent a growing subcategory of online spending for most, and a key, dedicated channel for many others who’ve already found it successful.”
What makes a person return to a place that they’ve been dozens of times before? A waterfall for instance…has it really changed since the last time you saw it? Has the water miraculously changed directions, or worse, colors? What makes it different? How about everything surrounding the waterfall? The flowers, the trees, the greenery or lack of…even the animals are different. Each season brings a different picture. If it didn’t, we might not return. So Mother Nature does her own bit of advertising by simply changing the scenery. I can’t imagine the budget it takes to change the landscape of Arkansas four times a year, but I know she’s getting a great return in her investment. Whatever ad agency has her as a client sure has their work cut out for them.
“I need a budget quote on a snowy mountain in January, then a RL on Spring flowers by COB. We’ll need to have the FA to God by the end of September for Fall. Where are we on the summer garden layout?”
Spend some time outside this weekend. It will make Monday seem…not so Monday….I promise.
Whether you’re having a conversation over the phone or in a meeting with a group of people, or texting a message on your phone or typing an email, how best do you communicate? If it’s by speaking, I might ask, do people really ever listen anymore? Or do they wait until they receive an email then act? I recently found myself on the phone with an email marketing solution group that I work with very closely. After 20 minutes of arguing and complaining about a particular problem I was having, the conversation ended, and my problem was not solved. A few days later I followed up via email to the same company with the same problem. Five minutes later I received a response. My problem was fixed, I was happy, and the person on the other end was satisfied that she was able to handle the “upset customer” successfully. So I wonder, was I just able to communicate my problem better over email, or was the person on the other end of the phone just not listening?
As someone that spent 10 years in the radio business, I like to think that when I speak, I am clearly understood. But often I find that my tone is more often misinterpreted by speaking than in email! Yes, I know, just the opposite of what one might think. I guess in the end, the more ways you can communicate to get your point across, the better it will be understood. So talk, text, then follow up with an email; update your Facebook and Twitter status to urge those to make sure they read your latest blog post. Then, when you you’ve exhausted all communication resources, write a song.
In today’s world of online communication, it’s always interesting to see how people respond to an actual conversation when the subject is important. Are they listening intently, taking notes, perhaps recording the conversation? Or are they just there in body, not in mind, listening to about half of what’s going on, knowing that whatever is said is going to followed up by a detailed email anyway. If it’s important enough to be said, it’s more important that it be typed out and presented on the screen. Afterall, isn’t that what “minutes” in a meeting are? A re-cap; reassurance that what was said is now on paper (well, in an email anyway…print it if you must). If this is all true, one might question why we even bother with the actual conversation. What better, more thorough way to make sure that your point is getting across than to send it out in an email. Sure, a person’s tone or attitude might be misinterpreted, but the actions that you are going to take, or need someone else to take are right there, in black and white, as a record of what needs to be done. There’s always a possibility that if direction is given only by the spoken word, that something could be dropped, forgotten, or worse, “I didn’t say that.”
So I ask, which do you trust more: Someone’s word? Or someone’s email?
Google It: Read All About It
03/30/2010
I’ve found myself over the last several months, as an experiment, Googling anything and everything that I might have even the slightest question about. Afterall, Google knows everything, right? They certainly have an answer to everything. Type in “Things to Google” in Google. Here’s the first result: http://listsgalore.blogspot.com/2008/06/101-things-to-do-when-youre-bored.html
I wonder, am I among the majority that now reaches out to this search engine, as well as others, to find answers? My guess is yes. I try to imagine a time when we didn’t have instant access to anything and everything and wonder just how productive one could be without this kind of access. It seems now MULTI-tasking has given way to OMNI-tasking. But is more actually getting done? On paper you would think so, but it really depends on the user. Everyone has access to the same web (for the exception of countries that put a “filter” on the internet…oh yes, that happens…Google it: Read All About It http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship) Will there come a time when we not only look for answers on the Internet but also RELY on the answers we get? If you ever wondered why so much is being spent on search engine marketing, website analysis, social networking, etc…consider that one day, sooner than later, what we see on the computer screen will determine our every move. Far fetched?
Google It: Read All About It.
The 1% Rule and How to Make It Work for You
by Taddy Hall chief operating officer of Meteor Solutions and former chief strategy officer for the Advertising Research Foundation.
These days everyone seems to have advice about how to run your social media marketing program. There are so many tips floating around, it’s hard to know what truly essential strategies you should follow to effectively use social media to build your business. Questions abound: Do Facebook fans drive sales? Why should I fund forums for consumers to pillory my products, ridicule my service and tout the competition? And, whatever I decide to do, how I will I know if it’s working?
In the search for truth, sometimes social media is its own worst enemy. With a self-credentialed guru waiting at every click, finding actionable, fact-based insight is tricky.
So, in a modest attempt to bring a dose of sanity to this intellectual frat party, I’ve reined my impulse to lob more “personal picks” into the fray. Instead, I’ll follow the wisdom of an august data mining colleague to just “let the data speak.”
Our process was to query data from hundreds of our brand clients to see what testable truths emerged — and here’s what we found: 10 rules that hold up across category and time.
1. The 1% Rule
In category after category, our data show that a small fraction of site visitors are responsible for a substantial portion of total site traffic. On average, the percentage of influential users (defined for our purposes simply as a visitor who’s subsequent sharing actions result in at least one additional site visitor) on a given site is 0.6% and rarely above 4%. However, these influencers regularly generate 20%-50% of total site traffic and an even higher share of conversion (defined however a site owner so decides). To make social media marketing effective, marketers have to identify and engage — and better recognize and reward — these super-influentials.
2. The 2-4X Rule
When it comes to conversion, visitors driven to a site by influencers are to to four times more likely to convert compared to visitors from other sources, such as display advertisements or paid search. That means your landing pages for people coming from shared links and social sites should reflect these visitors’ interests and offer enticing deals that will encourage them not only to convert but to share the deals with others.
3. The New Media/New Pipes Rule
In today’s socially driven internet, it matters far more what consumers do with your content than what you do with your content. What they say about your brand means more than what you say about your brand. Our data shows that content spread from consumer to consumer through word-of-mouth is far more powerful at driving brand preference and purchase intent than content distributed by the brand itself. This has profound implications in social media. To illustrate, if a brand puts content on its Facebook fan page, it is far less likely to go viral than if an influential consumer puts that very same piece of content on his or her page or posts it to a relevant community of enthusiasts.
4. The Martha Stewart Rule
Throw your own party; don’t just cater someone else’s! If you base your social campaigns in venues you don’t control — such as Facebook or YouTube — you may get great “attendance,” but data show it’s hard to convert and retain these party-goers. If your goals are anything beyond building brand awareness, it’s better to have a house of your own where friends can find you — such as your own branded social site, contest site, or customer forum.
5. The Power of “Weak Links” Rule
Influentials generally do have many direct “friends” and “followers,” but what makes them truly valuable is the number and relevance of their extended or indirect connections. As Albert-Laszlo Barabasi illustrated in “Linked,” you are far more likely to find your next job through a friend-of-a-friend than through an intimate contact. These “weak links” matter in the “real world,” and they matter even more online. A critical implication for marketers is the need to track the extended social graphs of their content if they are going to be able to understand and activate the dynamics of influence.
6. The Feed the Fire Rule
Consumers love to share relevant, engaging, useful, and entertaining content with their friends. Make it easy for them to find your content and make it easy for them to share your content. Ninety percent of internet pages have fewer than 10 links pointing to them — making them effectively unfindable. Avoiding this abyss of irrelevance requires more thought and effort than just pasting a sharing tool on your pages. It means actively syndicating and curating your content and distributing it not only through your brand’s social graph, but through the graphs of your most influential advocates and fans. Easy ways to do this include following/friending your influentials’ followers/friends and retweeting/posting content even if it’s not yours.
7. The More Things Change Rule
Our research consistently demonstrates that e-mail and IM remain popular ways to share content. So don’t throw out your old e-mail marketing methods just because Facebook and Twitter are the newest communication platforms du jour. The tried-and-true methods of getting customers to share links via e-mail and IM are still extremely valuable sources of traffic. Furthermore, incorporating social elements into your e-mail, such as incentives to share, can dramatically enhance an investment you’re already making.
8. Horse Before the Cart Rule
Success in social media happens when brands infuse their content with social dimensions (Facebook Connect, most notably), not when they simply stick their ads and content in social forums. In other words, if you want to succeed in social media, your brands and content need to have social attributes — content worth sharing, brands worth talking about, sites that encourage consumer participation and dialog. If your social strategy relies on advertising in social media, it’s probably better to hang on to your money.
9. The PR Pitfalls Rule
Blogger outreach and content seeding may be popular ways to get your message into the social world, but our data show that more than 90% of seeding has no material impact. Up to 5% gets some response, but less than 2% of seeding drives valuable traffic. In other words, if you can’t track efficacy of these efforts, don’t bother.
10. The Customer-Service Rule
Social marketing programs succeed when they provide a service to the consumer. Traditional media-planing processes that begin with reach and frequency targets are largely unhelpful in social media. Reach and frequency — as well as engagement, preference and conversion — are positive consequences of giving consumers content that is sufficiently relevant and useful that they propagate your message across their own social graphs. Focus on providing useful content and offers to your target audience and they will spread your messages for you.
Social media isn’t a science, but applying data-backed principles to your social efforts provides a structured framework that will enable you to improve effectiveness and ROI over time. And one final note: Every rule has exceptions. We live in dynamic times. Find what’s true for you — and share.
