Tag Archives: experiences

Best Practices of Social Media Marketing

Here’s a smashing list from Lee Odden over on Online Marketing Blog, Best and Worst Practices Social Media Marketing:

  • Start with a plan, not tactics.  Research and build a Social Media Roadmap involving:  Audience, Objectives, Strategy, Tactics, Tools/Technology and Metrics.
  • “Give to get” – Successful social media marketing programs involve listening and participation. That participation centers around giving value before expecting anything in return. This is not “sales” as you know it. But companies can definitely increase sales as a result.
  • Commit resources & time to be successful or you may very well fail. It’s important to forecast labor hours, who, what, when, how and where with the intention of succeeding, not just experimenting. If a social media effort is successful, scalability will be an even bigger issue if you don’t plan for it.  Hiring a community manager for example, may not be justified when a social media monitoring program is started or with a new company, but a job req and understanding of the role should be ready in case it’s called for.
  • Be transparent with intentions & your identity or you may alienate the very audiences you’re trying to connect with.  Objectives, strategy and doing your homework about a community should make it pretty obvious what types of commercial messages are appropriate.  Being transparent about intentions might come in the form of stating a purpose:  ”Brand XYZ has created this Facebook page to help consumers make better choices about Topic XYZ”.  It’s fine if goals are to increase sales, but participation should be focused on providing the kind of value that facilitates sales – not attempting to make sales directly. When is the last time you purchased something other than a virtual cupcake on Facebook?
  • Understand, you do not control the message.  Old habits die hard and there’s a tendency to want to treat social media participation like advertising where the ability to control messaging is the norm. Once information or media is available on the social web, people will inevitably mash it up, stretch it, pull it and reshape it according to their interests. Brands need to protect their identities, copyright and intellectual property for sure, but rather than “controlling the message” marketers should encourage the mashup and creativity.
  • Welcome participation, feedback and co-creation. As comfort levels rise with social web participation, companies will see opportunties to encourage participation with communications, especially with brand evangelists. Developing relationships and community within social communities on the web can facilitate buy in, provide invaluable feedback and crowdsourcing opportunities.
  • Metrics should roll up to objectives and objectives should be relevant to the channel.  More than a few companies see evidence of other social media efforts ranging from Superbowl commercials on YouTube to social participation during and after President Obama’s campaign, and “want that too”.  Direct marketing is the lens through which many social media efforts are first viewed, with a tendency to focus on action “A” resulting in “B” outcome. Social media marketing is more like public relations than direct marketing. It’s more like providing resource “A” results in “action “B” that influences outcome “C”. Metrics for success need to consider the pre-goal performance indicators like number of “friends”, comments, links, etc as well as commercial outcomes influenced by social media participation.

Check out his worst practices as well over at: Best and Worst Practices Social Media Marketing.

The Social Network Business Plan by David Silver

9780470419830 The Social Network Business Plan by David SilverInteresting new business book,  The Social Network Business Plan, is out, written by David Silver. It looks interesting because, in my humble experience, most people go into the world of Social Media and Social Networking with no business plan at all by either winging it or by reinventing the wheel:

In The Social Network Business Plan, social network expert, David Silver presents and explains 18 cutting-edge methods to create revenue for social network websites–none of which are advertising. He also predicts the demise of seemingly successful online communities such as MySpace and Facebook that rely on advertising as non-sustainable modalities. Silver describes and explains that in the future new products and services will be introduced, talked about, rated, reviewed and recommended – or killed – by online communities.

One example of the 18 new revenue channels that online communities are adopting is the sale to vendors of anonymized conversations of the community members concerning those vendors’ products or services. Another example is online communities who partner with the internet providers to receive payment when a particular online community’s information is downloaded using that providers service. The other sixteen revenue channels are equally head-turning!

Silver is the only angel investor, operating down where the rubber meets the road who is investing in online communities in their infancy, and writing about which ones will win and which ones will fail.

The State of Buzz (and Word of Mouth) in 2009

I spent three years working at New Media Strategies, from 2003-2006, doing buzz marketing and have spent from 2007-2009 doing some semblance of word-of-mouth and public relations.

As a result, I am fascinated by what Emanuel Rosen, dean of buzz, says 9-years after the publication of his book, The Anatomy of Buzz.  Thank you, Ben McConnell, for this interview!  Check it out at the Church of the Customer Blog.

1. Do you define a difference between word of mouth and buzz?
I use the word “buzz” as an umbrella term to describe all the person-to-person communication about something. I like the definition you gave in your first book: “Buzz = Word of Mouth + Word of Mouse” but I would add to this formula any other type of communication (for example: learning through observation). By the way, the first person to suggest the word buzz to me was Everett Rogers, the late diffusion scholar. I told him that I didn’t like this term, but over the years I grew to like it a lot.

I read your latest blog entry on word of mouth vs. buzz and, although we use different terms, I agree with the spirit of the things. The foundation of buzz is a great customer experience. No doubt about this. But even customers who love you sometimes forget and run out of opportunities to talk. My whole focus has been on ways to trigger and stimulate additional conversations, and there’s more than one way of doing this.

2. Network-theory scientist Duncan Watts disputes a lot of what’s in Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point,” specifically that if marketers just reach a few influential tastemakers then word of mouth should flourish. Where do you stand on Watts’s research?
My approach is practical: there are people who talk more than others. Whenever you can, cost effectively, identify these folks and work with them — go for it. Watts’s work is an important reminder that not all buzz is created by hubs or influentials, but it does not prove that connecting with these people doesn’t work. In the new edition of my book I dedicate five pages to this debate but the above is my view in a nutshell.

3. What’s your assessment of how social media affects word of mouth today?
Social media let text-based buzz explode, but perhaps more important is the effect it has on visual buzz. Buzz is not only about telling, but more and more about showing. My friend doesn’t have to tell me that he likes Lego Mindstorms. He just posts a video of the latest robot he built using these Lego bricks. My cousin doesn’t have to tell me that she supports a certain organization.  I see on Facebook that she’s now a fan of that cause. A lot of the value of social media comes from this type of implicit recommendation.

4. How prevalent is fake buzz, whether its agencies creating astroturfing campaigns for clients or companies comment-stuffing review sites like Yelp?
I didn’t investigate how prevalent it is but I’m sure that undercover marketing is out there and that’s such a shame. Anyone who cares about word of mouth should fight this type of manipulation. I like the approach of Zagat and Angie’s List, that see it as part of their job to ensure the integrity of their sites. On a related issue, I think we should encourage everyone to generate more experience-based buzz (“I read this book and I liked it because…) as opposed to secondhand buzz (“my friend says that his cousin read this book and it’s cool.”) With too much secondhand buzz, we’ll end up with what can be best described as a buzz bubble as illustrated by a review posted on Amazon: “I haven’t read this book, but judging from the online reviews below, I don’t think it’s a very good book.”

5. In the big picture, what do you think is more helpful in understanding buzz and word of mouth: marketing or psychology?
Psychology. I think that the first step is always to understand what motivates people to do certain things. Marketing techniques come and go, but if you understand why people talk about products, you can find new ways to motivate them to talk about your brand.

The New Yorker Online Book Club

I have been a loyal subscriber to the New Yorker every since I was 16-years-old in Honolulu, HI.  To me, it represented everything literary and urbane, even though I have never lived in Manhattan. Now I discover from Mediabistro that the New Yorker is rolling out an online book club:

The New Yorker opened an online book club this morning, taking readers on a month long group reading of the recently adapted Richard Yates novel, Revolutionary Road.

The magazine tested the book club interaction last month with a small team of readers, a group reading of Roberto Bolano’s epic novel, 2666. Ranging over email and the comments section, the discussion also included guests like journalist Kate Coleman.

Here’s more from the site: “We plan to approach the books as landscapes for exploration, in which we are the park rangers, if you will, examining the flora and the fauna and fending off the occasional wild animal. (Every good book has one.) We hope you’ll join us in this ongoing experiment, and lend your voices to the clamor.” (Via BookClubGirl)

Social Networking Pioneers Launch Audience Machine To Help Online Brands Leverage Shared Interests Across Social Networks

My friend Todd Tweedy popped me the following press release that I would love to repeat for him, back-scratching and all.  Don’t judge me!  For more information, check out the Audience Machine website!

Continue reading →