Tourism Ireland is currently ranked the third largest national tourist board on Facebook, with approximately 700,000 fans across 20 markets in eight languages. In the absence of an accepted industry standard to assess the value of this beyond simply counting fan numbers, we developed the concept of Social Equivalent Advertising Value (SEAV).
Just as the PR sector has traditionally measured its impact by the cost of buying advertising to cover the equivalent column inches, so a similar approach can be applied to social media. The more a brand message is shared, the more “column inches” are gained and the value of this can be compared to the cost of equivalent online advertising.
We identified four levels of consumer engagement with brands in social media:
- Post Impressions: viewing a brand post.
- Page Impressions: viewing a brand owner’s social platform.
- Personal Actions: consuming brand content such as photos, videos or links.
- Public Actions: sharing brand content with their network.
We then categorized the actions that consumers can take across the major social platforms into each of these groupings, and attributed a financial value to the cost of delivering a comparable consumer engagement online. This allowed us to quantify the value of our social engagement in Facebook at the end of last year at an annualized level of €1.7 million.
Companies are beginning to discover that social technology platforms provide a far more efficient way of communicating and collaborating. And, they give companies a way to dig out the “dark matter” of company knowledge that is buried in email inboxes and on hard drives. Unlike email, messages on social platforms are accessible to the entire team in real time, eliminating all the to-ing and fro-ing to get everybody on the same page. Even better, on social platforms, communications become content — forming a searchable archive that can be continually enriched with comments and additions by members of the online community. So, when the expert in the group answers the question about how to account for depreciation in Turkey, everybody can see it or find it later.
We estimate that “interaction workers,” (managers, professionals, sales people, and others whose work requires frequent interpersonal interactions, independent judgment, and access to knowledge) spend 28% of their workdays answering, writing, or responding to email. They also spend another 19% of the time trying to track down information (including searching through their own e-mail files) and 14% collaborating with co-workers. (And these are your most expensive employees, and the ones you count on to do more than routine work; they’re supposed to be innovating, figuring out how to improve business processes, and generally building you a better mousetrap — not wading through e-mail.)
These activities could potentially be done much more efficiently and effectively using social technologies — we figure by 20-25%. This assumes, of course, that time saved by communicating and collaborating via social technology is not used for viewing videos of cute kittens, but is dedicated to the most productive uses.
Naturally, there is also a catch: to capture this value, companies will have to do a lot more than buy some enterprise social technology. To get the improvement in knowledge worker productivity, organizations need robust and widespread participation by all sorts of employees (you never know where that dark matter is hiding). Firstly, social technologies will only succeed if they become part of the daily workflow, not an extra item on a to-do list that will never get checked off. Sometimes this means the company’s workflows need to change, sometimes the social tools must be adapted to workflows, and in many cases, both workflows and technologies will have to be adjusted. For example, in one computer-generated animation company, social tools did not become commonly used until they allowed people to post and interact on video clips — the preferred medium for discussion.
Participation, in turn, depends on having an environment of openness, information sharing, and trust — the sort of culture that many organizations have not yet established. For this to happen, leaders must take the lead — after all, these are social technologies. Leaders will have to role model the use of these technologies, explain how to use them to drive value, observe success stories and help them to scale up to the rest of the enterprise. At the same time, these technologies are only as effective as the degree to which individuals participate, so lessons from consumer social applications can be applied in the enterprise. How do you create applications that are as compelling to corporate employees as they are to those same people in their personal lives? Techniques such as self-reinforcing behavior loops (e.g. gamification), A/B testing, and mobile deployment can be applied in the enterprise, just as they are used in the consumer space. But overall, changing mindsets, behaviors and a culture that celebrates and expects sharing and openness is a real organizational challenge.
Like the rising temperature of the water the proverbial frog is sitting in, organizations are feeling the social era all around them, but failing to notice how significant a change it has produced. Because it has shown up in bits and pieces, via freemium models, crowdsourcing, online communities, virtual workforces, social networks, and so on, it is easy to miss how much the overall context has changed for the way value is created.
You might notice that I have used the term social era. It’s not to create more jargon, it’s to emphasize a point: that social is more than the stuff the marketing team deals with. It’s something that allows organizations to do things entirely differently — if we let it become the backbone of our business models.
How does this work? What are the rules? What does it mean for all parts of my business? That’s something I will be exploring in several posts for HBR. Here, let me start with three major shifts that I see:
Lean, not big. Most organizations operating today started when companies needed more operating capital. Being big was in itself a mark of success. And in fact, being big created a natural barrier to entry for competitors. The “big” mindset continues to form an organizational framework for many institutions. Take banking as a visible example. Bank of America recently considered a $5 fee for customers to get their own money via their debit card because they have to find a way to fund all those retail storefronts. But if they were launching today, banks would likely ask themselves how to accomplish the transactions (deposits, withdrawals, financial management) of banking without the physical commitment of banks. They might try what ING is doing with its café model. They might even reimagine what it is to lend money. Instead of competing with new startups like Lending Club or ProFounder, they might be the ones reinventing the space.
Conversations, not chains. Many organizations still operate by Porter’s Value Chain model, where Z follows Y, which follows X. These linear models optimized efficient delivery of a known thing. But this doesn’t help us when faster, fluid responses are what we need. Fifteen years ago, The Cluetrain Manifesto taught us that markets are conversations and that was a great starting point. But “conversations” can actually go deeper if you allow them to become central to how you work, rather than leave them on the perimeter of the work. How many companies have figured out how to shift from supply chain management to integrating customer feedback directly into their product design, distribution, and delivery? Because that’s the point.
Mass markets were a convenient fiction created by mass media. Television and major magazines could only reach only very vague demographic segments like “women of child-bearing age” and “college students,” so a lot of organizations still think of that as “targeting” their offer. But real markets are much more precise.
Finding out where any particular customers hang out and talking with them directly is central to accurately understanding demand and building it into the business model. Case in point: Gap missed many of its performance numbers in 2011 by believing that their only interaction with their customers happened at the cash register.
Altimeter Report: Making The Business Case for Enterprise Social Networks
View more documents from Altimeter Group Network on SlideShareData HighlightsThe report also includes input from 13 technology providers, 185 end users, and surveyed 81 ESN decision makers from companies with over 250 employees (see below in Related Resources for links to the data). A few of the findings and graphics from the report are included below. There was only moderate impact on business goals. On a scale of 1 to 4, the highest impact seen – improving collaboration between departments/teams — scored only a 2.91 (see Figure 5 below).
While most small business owners are starting to realize that social media is a necessary part of any marketing strategy, as a social media coach, the question I get most often is how to add social media to a day that is already way too full. For those of us working as solopreneurs or small business owners, it may, at times, feel like we are working virtually around the clock so when are we really supposed to tweet, post or blog?
I’ll admit creating a social media plan that will stick is like starting an exercise program. You just have to take that leap and do it. You need to look at it, not as a series of social media tasks that need to be done during the day, but more of a lifestyle change that you need to incorporate into your entire way of thinking.
5 tips to make the social media lifestyle change
- Coffee and Twitter: For most of us, a morning cup of coffee is sacred. Without one, our day cannot get off to a good start. Try to incorporate tweeting with your morning coffee, Instead of reading the newspaper, read your stream to find interesting articles to share with your followers. If you still need to read the paper, know that most publications these days are online and make sharing with your networks very easy. In addition to coffee first thing in the morning, take a moment or two to tweet during your mid-morning or mid-afternoon coffee break as well.
- Change the way you look at the world: Instead of walking through your day with blinders on, as most of us do, focused on the tasks we need to get done, try looking at the world with a different set of eyes. Examine everything — images, articles, conversations you have with co-workers — and use it as fodder for posts, blogs and tweets. This doesn’t mean that you need to be online all day, it just means changing the way you think to include a social media aspect to your day. Taking mental notes to save for your social media coffee breaks.
- Blog on the weekend: We all know that blogging for business is one of the most important factors to getting found online. It improves our SEO, increases our professional credibility and lets our audience know who we are and how we interact. Blogging can also be the most time consuming part of any social media plan. During your busy workday, as your taking in everything that is going on around you, take mental notes and save the blogging for the weekend when our schedule is more open. Most social dashboards will allow you to schedule posts to go live at a later time.
Here are 10 key actions to transform employees into ambassadors:
- Ditch social media guidelines for social media training – The internet changes everyday and with it, the norms, behaviors and destinations an ambassador must pay attention to. Static guidelines leave ambassadors with instructions that expire and little direction. The journey from employee to ambassador includes more than a set of rules, it includes the acquisition of skills. Those skills can only come from experience and training.
- Use game mechanics to incentivize participation – Building an organic audience is a long-term commitment. Not every ambassador will be energized by the prospect of daily production, reading, sharing and networking. To maintain momentum, break-down responsibilities into discrete and categorized actions. Weight each action by expected effort and reward accordingly. Make it all add up. Give ambassadors a set of quests that allow them to qualify for a particular specialty — set up a profile, make your first connection, unlock your newbie status. Design digital tools that monitor activities and allow constant feedback.
- Limit your audience to interest groups – The ‘mass web’ is an extremely competitive environment where the latest gossip, extraordinary news events and cat videos fight for attention. The size of the potential audience is huge, but the chance of being drowned out is even larger. Avoid irrelevance by engaging with interest groups. Focus on becoming a valued member of the community, not just a sponsor of it.
- Don’t get caught up in audience size – 100 good friends online can often trump 100,000 acquaintances, especially if those 100 friends are well connected. With a smaller network, the content that you produce and things you have to say become more focused. That focus improves the likelihood of engagement and strong referral. Good friends don’t just ‘pass things along’, they advocate for their circle of friends.
- Choose your speciality – There are many ways to become prominent online. Brands become obsessed with leading conversations and taking the authoritative role. But, not every brand has the qualities to lead audiences like a Seth Godin or Steven Colbert. There are other specialities. For example, Jason Kottke has won the attention of a large audience by exploring the fringe of internet and sharing links that would otherwise remain hidden. It’s not about what he says but, about what he finds.
You must decide – as an organization and as an individual team leader – what spirit you intend to convey with the participation of your employees in social media.
If your intention is for them to be simply mechanical amplification vehicles for a very carefully crafted marketing message, that can work. You’ll likely see some results in terms of absolute reach and volume of short-term message resonance. You will sacrifice a degree of credibility on behalf of your individual representatives and personality and genuineness on behalf of your brand in favor of a consistent, safe(-r) message. You will also likely sacrifice culturally, since your employees will realize they’re part of a marketing machine, not someone who is entrusted to help build and shape a brand.
If your intention is for employees to become individual voices for your organization and unique representatives of your company’s values, personality and diversity, that can work too. You’ll likely see results in terms of trust and affinity for your brand as well as better identification of your advocates, both internal and external. You will sacrifice a certain amount of stability and potential consistency of message in favor of communications that are more unique and individual. You’ll also sacrifice some predictability around outcomes and need to rely on strong education and culture initiatives to guide your teams and hone their own sense of good judgment.
The bottom line: governance and guidance is important. But it’s a means to more scalable social media, not the end.
We’ve said many times here — and will continue to — that social business transformation is far more cultural than it is operational. Getting your employees involved is no different, and your policies and guidelines need to consider not just what you don’t want to happen, but instead what values, vision and intent you want your teams’ social media participation to convey.
INTEL
Always pause and think before posting. That said, reply to comments in a timely manner, when a response is appropriate. But if it gives you pause, pause. If you’re about to publish something that makes you even the slightest bit uncomfortable, don’t shrug it off and hit ‘send.’ Take a minute to review these guidelines and try to figure out what’s bothering you, then fix it. If you’re still unsure, you might want to discuss it with your manager or legal representative. Ultimately, what you publish is yours – as is the responsibility. So be sure.
Perception is reality. In online social networks, the lines between public and private, personal and professional are blurred. Just by identifying yourself as an Intel employee, you are creating perceptions about your expertise and about Intel by our shareholders, customers, and the general public-and perceptions about you by your colleagues and managers. Do us all proud. Be sure that all content associated with you is consistent with your work and with Intel’s values and professional standards.
It’s a conversation. Talk to your readers like you would talk to real people in professional situations. In other words, avoid overly pedantic or “composed” language. Don’t be afraid to bring in your own personality and say what’s on your mind. Consider content that’s open-ended and invites response. Encourage comments. You can also broaden the conversation by citing others who are blogging about the same topic and allowing your content to be shared or syndicated.
If you’re hoping for your latest content to go viral, it has to do one thing: evoke strong emotion. Key word there is “strong”. If someone lightly laughs at something, or is slightly inspired, that doesn’t make them jump to the “share” button. It has to be to the level of awesome. Awesomely funny, upsetting, uplifting, offensive, whatever the emotion is–it has to hit it hard. P&G’s Olympics ad is doing that–to the tune of 5.4 million views. Your latest blog post on why you like your company’s product isn’t doing that.
If you hit one or more of those emotions, that’s when the spread starts. The key to long-lasting viral is to reach the Third Circle.
In the middle is you or your brand. When you push out content, it always hits a good percentage of your First Circle. That’s your brand fans on Facebook, your followers on Twitter, the creepy people still on MySpace. It can also be personal friends and family. A percentage of those in the First Circle will always share your stuff for a multitude of reasons. They know you, so there is more reason to find an inside joke funny, they think you’re attractive (that’s a hot logo you got there!) so they always “Like” whatever you share. That means your content can always easily reach the Second Circle. It’s getting the content to spread past that circle that is the difference between viral and spiral.
That Second Circle have little to no brand attachment or relationship to you. They will spread the content based on its own content merits. Once they start sharing it with no brand umbilical cord attached, you know you’ve got a good one on your hands.
Companies cannot survive (let alone prosper) without recognizing that Social as a phenomenon can allow us to redefine our organizations to be inherently more fast fluid and flexible by its very design. Not by doing a little bit more, or slimming down a bit here or there, or by doing a few things a little bit faster. No. We will not tweak our way into the future.
Today, too many organizations that think their status as an “800-pound gorilla” gives them an edge are struggling to survive, let alone thrive. They underestimate social to their great detriment. They see it as the purview of two functions: marketing and service. It’s either “Like us on Facebook!” or “We’re so sorry you’re having a problem.” While a few have figured out that they can use social to listen to the market — sort of like putting a stethoscope to the market heartbeat — they have yet to figure out there is more to this Social thing.
So before we can explore the Social Era, we need to disaggregate two words — social is not always attached to the word media. Social can be and is more than marketing or communications-related work.
When we look at all the parts together, we can see how Social affects all parts of the business model: the way an organization creates, delivers, and captures value. They also shift the ethos by which we lead and work.
In our final installment we learn about a few of the essential keys to creating a successful corporate blogging program. Here is the last part of my chat with Silicon Valley communications legend Lou Hoffman. – Steve Farnsworth(@Steveology)
Can you talk about what you mean by storytelling and why it’s important to corporate blogging?
(LH) Given a choice between dull or compelling, people gravitate toward compelling. This is why more people watch American Idol than CSPAN.That’s the idea of applying storytelling techniques to blogging. It pushes the content toward the compelling quadrant.
No one expects a scientist coming out of R&D to write like David Pogue from the New York Times. Geez, I wish I could bring such cleverness and levity to my own blog.
But that same scientist can absolutely improve his or her blog content by using techniques found in classic storytelling.
For example—
Just trusting your ear and writing with conversational tone improves a blog.
There’s a reason that anywhere from 10 to 30 percent of the content in Economist articles are anecdotes. They entertain and show a certain realness.
Recognize that drama comes from contrast, showing the difference between “what was” and “what is.” The greater the difference, the greater the drama.
All of these concepts and others help people who don’t write for a living tell their stories in a more entertaining fashion.
Conventional wisdom holds that you shouldn’t be different for the sake of being different.
I disagree.
There are millions of blogs out there.
It’s tough to break through the noise.
If you’ve got a way to be different, give it a shot. Your Google analytics numbers will tell you whether it worked or not.
(SF) If a corporate blogger wants to start using storytelling in their writing, how can they start?
(LH) Read corporate blogs as well as mainstream blogs.
Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop does as good a job as anyone at capturing the top blogs by subject matter.
On the mainstream side, I think someone like Henry Blodget at the BusinessInsider combines strong opinions with the ability to turn a phrase as reflected in his recent post on the Hurd fiasco at HP.
A good example of a CEO who isn’t afraid to deviate from the status quo is Dave Kellogg at MarkLogic (not a client). His post “Dear CIO, Stop Writing Big Checks For Commodity Software” is a classic.
I’d also suggest corporate bloggers flag posts that they find effective, taking a moment to reverse engineer the content. What made it good?
In fact, this concept can be applied to everything you read including books and magazine articles.
Same goes for content that bores you.
If you can understand the “why” behind the good and bad, it starts to cultivate your own writing and voice. Train yourself to read with Post-it notes at your side.
In the book The Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, he espouses the “10,000 hour rule,” that it takes 10,000 hours to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert in anything.
I’m not saying every corporate blogger needs to point to this 10K threshold to be successful.
But there’s no getting around the act of writing and striving to tell compelling stories will improve the corporate blogger over time.
A simple social media policy is best — it can even fend off lawyers. And a set of simple, easy to remember and enforce rules also happens to be the best way to run your business, raise your children, and be a decent person.
So here it is:
Don’t lie, don’t cheat, don’t steal, don’t reveal.
If you add in the Golden Rule we learned as children, and treat others the way you want to be treated, many of the social media policy disputes that are making headlines these days would simply fade away.
THE EASY PATH
Prefer the easy path? Just follow these four basic steps.
- Follow somebody at random – literally anyone will do
- Wait 24-48 hours to see if they follow you back
- If they don’t, unfollow them
- Repeat
This is known as churning. And while it’s supposed to be a breach of Twitter’s TOS, they rarely do anything about it. It’s a simple and highly-effective way to build a lot of followers in a short period of time. In three months you can easily pick up ten thousand people. And if you’re really into it, a lot more.
There’s just one (relatively minor) drawback to finding followers using this system: almost none of these profiles (1-2 per cent maximum) will pay you any attention whatsoever. This is because most of the people who automatically follow you back are employing the exact same system as you. With very, very few exceptions, the actual value of a network built this way is at or close to zero. Want proof? Just check out the bit.ly data of anyone who built a Twitter network using these practices.
Take a look around Twitter and you’ll see lots of folks, many of whom come bearing titles such as guru, maven and internet marketer – and so many of them are enthusiasts, too, which is always nice to see – who have built huge followings using this very system. They’re easy to spot, as they’re nearly always following a few hundred more people than the tens (and sometimes hundreds) of thousands of people who are following them. Although a few are sneaky, and later mass-unfollow almost everyone to make it look like they recruited their audience simply by being awesome. They didn’t. And they’re not.
THE HARD PATH
Unfortunately, the hard path is literally that: hard. It takes time, it takes effort, and it requires all of this to work.
- Learn the Twitter basics (and continue to educate yourself)
- Write perfect tweets
- Be yourself
- Put in the hours
- Be useful, helpful or interesting
- Be nice (until it’s time to not be nice)
- Have a proper avatar
- Pay attention
- Don’t be a jerk
Here’s how the 1% have done it (color coded).
#1 Create a No Retribution Social Media Policy
Most leaders forget that employees become cynical over time. Policies come and go. Some die; some are ignored. The 1% start with a social media policy that their employees comment on publicly. This gives ownership of the policy to everyone in the organization.
A no retribution clause enforced by the executives of the organization is a must. No exceptions. If the employee follows the policy, then he or she cannot be punished. In fact, most of the 1% hold up the employees’ actions publicly as if to say, “See, we’re serious about recognizing your rights”.
P.S. Some policies read: “Don’t be stupid,” and leave it at that.
#2 Make your Subject Matter Experts Heroes
Every company has at least a few of them. They are the people that you look at and say Wow, how do they do it? The 1% promote their subject matter experts (SME) internally and externally. They make their SMEs into industry celebrities, which attracts fans (customers), which attracts revenue.
Sites like Triberr make promoting SMEs easy because they create an active and cooperative ecosystem system that helps promote and foster relationships and content.
#3 Build Your Community
We are moving toward a business environment of commercialized, social communities. That business organization, or any organization for that matter, is as much a social organization (consisting of internal and external collaborative communities) as it is an economic organ.
Today, companies are erecting the scaffolding for employee and customer communities to better understand and connect with them. These social support networks provide the organization with far less expensive resources (the crowd of employees, customers and partners) to execute on the objectives of the organization.
#4 Enlist Partners and Suppliers in Your Organization’s Supply Chain
Everything comes down to the quality of relationships – intangible assets that are the most important to an organization but the most difficult to understand. Social organizations understand how to establish support networks that benefit each party.
Chris Brogan calls it a home base, or you can think of it as a hub.
Your own content-rich site, on a domain you own, managed with good content management software, is where you’ll put about 80% of your content marketing time and energy.
A site like this becomes a valuable business asset. Over time, it develops a reputation — both with human readers and with search engines.
It’s where you develop the ideas that will become your unique selling proposition.
It’s where you’ll foster the customer conversations that spark new product ideas.
It’s where you’ll optimize your content for both search engines and potential customers.
There is a commodity that is at the core of our work in the communications field, and the related fields of marketing and advertising. Without this commodity, we could never hope to wield influence. Unlike oil, it is a resource that will always exist, yet it is finite; there is only so much of it to go around. This commodity is attention.
In an information/knowledge economy, attention is at the heart of just about everything. If people pay attention, you have a shot at getting your message across. If they don’t, if they choose to focus their attention elsewhere, you might as well be firing your messages into deep space. What’s more, given the nature of the Net, you can identify what people are paying attention to and use that information.
It’s interesting to reflect on the term “pay attention.” “Pay” suggests some kind of barter arrangement. When I pay money for something, I expect to get something in return, whether it’s a pack of chewing gum, a new laptop, a novel, whatever. When I pay heed, I also expect something in return, such as information of value. As more and more organizations jockey to attract the attention of key audiences, what are they giving in return? Are they even thinking in terms of an exchange? And what of those organizations that use services like Technorati and PubSub to identify where people are focusing their attention in order to use it to better hone their own messages? Are they employing any ethical guidelines to their application of the information they obtain?
These questions are new to the information age, but a non-profit organization has been launched to advocate on behalf of the people who own the commodity organizations crave. AttentionTrust maintains that individuals own themselves, their data, and their attention. Further, this ownership assumes certain rights:
- Property—You own your attention and can store it wherever you wish. You have control.
- Mobility—You can securely move your attention wherever you want whenever you want to. You have the ability to transfer your attention.
- Economy—You can pay attention to whomever you wish and receive value in return. Your attention has worth.
- Transparency—You can see exactly how your attention is being used. You can decide who you trust.
AssociationTrust defines attention, in part, as
…the substance of focus. It registers your interests by indicating choice for certain things and choice against other things. Any time you pay attention to something (and any time you ignore something), data is created. That data has value, but only if it’s gathered, measured, and analyzed. Right now, you generally lack the ability to capture that data for yourself, so you can’t benefit from it. But what if you could? And what if you could share your data with other people, who were also capturing their own data, or if you could exchange your data for something of value with companies and other institutions that were interested in learning more about the things that interested you? You’d be in control–you would decide who has access to what data, as well as what you’d accept in exchange for access to your data.
The site also includes links to some research and writing on the subject of attention.
The mission of AttentionTrust isn’t clear, and its activities aren’t defined, but the association is inviting memberships for those who are willing to abide by the four principles. In any case, this is no fly-by-night group. The volunteer board includes the likes of ZDNet columnist and attention advocate Steve Gillmor (president), Nick Bradbury, designer of the FeedDemon RSS newsreader, Seth Goldstein, Clay Shirky, and Mary Hodder, among others. Since there’s no dollar figure attached to membership (other than a suggested $25 donation), I’m signing up if for no other reason than to see what comes next.
This depiction of the digital marketing landscape was shown at a Buddy Media event marking the launch of the social marketing software agency’s new suite of measurement tools.
You can click to enlarge it, but that won’t make it look any simpler.
Bonus points for reader Ryan, who realized Pinterest isn’t on there.
In my “Writing for the Wired World” workshops, I begin by pointing out a fundamental difference between business websites and everything else on the web. When you build a family site (birthday party pictures and the like) or a fan site (if you love your Mini Cooper, for instance) or a performance art site (fun with Flash, for example), your visitors are happy to click here and there to see what you’re offering. When people come to a business site, however, they know exactly what they want. With laser-like intensity, they will zero in (or, at least, try to) on the answer to their question, the solution to their problem. Visitors to business sites have agendas. They’re not interested in following any links that won’t get them to what brought them.
Similar distinctions apply to business podcasting -– particularly B2B podcasting, where your customer is another business instead of an individual customer or consumer. There’s no point in pretending to be “Dawn and Drew” when your audience has come for useful business content. (Besides, if they want to listen to “Dawn and Drew,” they can. )
That said, it’s also worth noting that your listeners spend most of their time listening to podcasts other than yours. There are podcasting practices you should learn and adhere to that, so far, many business podcasts are ignoring. Most busines podcasts, for example, don’t have associated blogs. More on that later.
Not that there are a lot of B2B podcasts out there yet. I count maybe half a dozen (from Oracle, Jupiter, Eric Schwartzman, and BMC Software, for example). But podcasting is exploding and businesses are going to figure out sooner rather than later that a podcast could be a useful B2B communication channel.
With that in mind, I started jotting down some guidelines for B2B podcasting. As luck would have it, I wound up with 10:
Be relevant
If you’re considering a B2B podcast, you’ve probably already given some consideration to a theme and an audience. One of the no-brainer podcasts no business has A podcast for this audience helps elevate your content above the dozens or even hundreds of other companies sending content through traditional channels. It’s not enough to just focus on this audience; you have to add some value. You don’t need to disclose material information for this podcast to be relevant, but you should offer insights into why your organization is a worthy investment. You might, for instance, pick a focus of your R&D efforts and give it a bit more attention that usual, talk about customer satisfaction metrics, or conduct an interview with one of your thought leaders.
Under some circumstances, you might be tempted to use your podcast to address issues that have reared their ugly heads. It’s easy to view the podcast as a broad business communication tool. It’s not. Podcasting is all about narrowcasting, particularly when you’re dealing with a business audience. Resist the temptation to digress or risk losing an audience that listens because of the highly focused content you deliver. Consider IBM’s podcast, which delves into the future of some aspect of life (homes, cars, shopping) through the eyes of two company thought leaders on the subject. How many people would unsubscribe if IBM used an episode to explain its labor issues? That’s not why people subscribed.
Avoid fluff
I’ve heard some comments recently suggesting that business podcasts should be more entertaining. One pundit went so far as to suggest that business podcasts should play songs. Don’t you believe it. Someone who listens to the IBM podcast wants to know what the future holds and they want to hear it from experts working on real-world applications. Listeners to my podcast may argue, “You play music.” Yes, Neville and I play a podsafe tune at the end of every show. But we’re not a B2B podcast; there is no business behind our show. (We’re just two guys doing a podcast.) We also save the music for the end of the show, so those who don’t want to hear music can stop listening when the music starts. (Incidentally, we play music to support the independent artists whose efforts are one of the biggest drivers of podcasting and because it’s our show and we want to.)
Be infotaining
While you don’t want to turn your B2B podcast into a top 40 music show, you do want to employ enough entertainment elements to make it interesting to listen to. Solid content is not compelling if it is delivered by a lone monotonous voice. Use musical intros and outros, introduce new features, and generally take advantage of the medium. Adopt a format for your show. “For Immediate Release” is a co-hosted discussion with audio commentary from other sources. You could do an interview show, a panel discussion, or commentary by company thought leaders. Listeners get to like a format. They also like it if you shake it up from time to time.
Build and engage community
There’s a podcasting myth that suggests one of podcasting’s great limitations is its one-way, top-down nature. Hogwash. Podcasts routinely build communities of listeners the members of which interact with the podcaster. Adam Curry’s Daily Source Code offers a great example. Curry expressed an interest in biodiesel and asked for input. Listeners sent what they knew by email and audio comment. Other listeners commented on what the first round of listeners said. Curry responded and asked more questions. The biodiesel discussion has been going on for weeks on DSC. Neville and I have worked hard to make “For Immediate Release” listener-driven, with as much as half of each show based on themes raised by our listeners.
There are no competitors…okay, there are some competitors
If you spend your time bashing your competitors, your listeners will unsubscribe in droves. They’re coming for insights, not an us-vs.-them commercial. As my mother (and yours, too, probably) used to say, if you can’t say something nice about somebody, don’t say anything. In fact, if a competitor introduces a podcast or says something worthwhile in a blog, point to it. Neville and I don’t see the growing number of PR-focused podcasts as competition. We even link to them in what we call our “podroll,” a list of other communication-themed podcasts on our show blog. Just because your audience is made up of customers doesn’t mean you shouldn’t recognize the interconnectedness of the medium and your listeners’ hunger for useful and interesting content.
Not that I think Boston Consulting Group would ever welcome a new podcast by McKinsey & Company into the podosphere. Short of that, though, it pays dividends to be part of a bigger podcasting community.
Don’t advertise or sell
Nobody wants to subscribe to and download a commercial. You can brand your product, service, or company by being the provider of useful information. You should avoid turning your podcast into an advertisement at all costs, regardless of what your throwback marketing VP wants.
Be authentic
Businesses often are inclined to overproduce their media, striving to be as good as – or better than – mainstream public media. I remember talking to the manager of one company’s video production operation who said his baseline was a local newscast; his work could never, no matter what, be worse than a typical local newscast. While podcast listeners do want to be entertained, their primary interest is in content, not polish. A podcast hosted by voice talent reading a script will be dismissed, while listening to a real engineer or designer or brand manager -– replete with all his “ums” and “uhs” -– will be compelling, as long as he’s talking about something the listener cares about. (Besides, you can edit out the worst mistakes.)
Be mindful of your listeners’ time
Depending on whom you talk to, podcasts shouldn’t exceed 20 or 40 minutes. Neville and I routinely run 70 to 80 minutes. But again, while “The Hobson and Holtz Report” is about business, it’s not from a business. With a business podcast, you’re asking your customer (or prospective customer) to give her attention to your organization’s content. It’s an exchange. Don’t ask for too much of it. Make sure you fill the time you do have with something useful enough to make the exchange worthwhile.
Integrate your podcast into the blogosphere
Outside the pseudo podcasts from the mainstream media (repackaged pre-broadcast radio content), you’ll be hard-pressed to find a podcast that doesn’t have an associated blog. So far, most of the business podcasts haven’t emulated this practice with the exception of GM, where the Fastlane podcast is just part of the Fastlane blog. Your podcast blog page contains show notes, another tactic common among indie podcasters but missing from businesses. Listeners appreciate the hell out of good show notes. Most important, but inviting comments on each show, you more effectively build that community of listeners naysayers insist you can’t build with a podcast.
As I said at the beginning, I’m sure I’ve overlooked some important guidelines. What have I missed?
A dominantly male platform, almost 70 percent, Google+ is slowly but surely attracting a more diverse user base. Big brands are taking notice and many have fully integrated the platform into their social media strategies for 2012. Is Google+ a part of your 2012 social media strategy? It should be!
Let’s examine a few of the brands to look in 2012 for social media insight.
H&M
Over half a million users have this brand circled on Google+. If you circle H&M you’ll see their fashion picks of the day, get access to style guides like their 2012 Denim Guide and engage with other fans of the brand by discussing questions like “What’s the first sign of spring? Caps, sneakers, sunglasses?”. Engagement isn’t quite what you’d expect if you had this many fans on Facebook – under 100 shares and around 100 +1s is common for their daily status updates.
Social networking sites give us the opportunity to share something interesting and meaningful, but staying active on these sites is difficult. Look back on your recent tweets, Facebook status updates, blog posts. Do you find this material interesting and relevant? If you don’t, chances are others won’t either. If you find yourself posting just for the sake of posting, you may be experiencing this fatigue. Engaging in content and interacting with other users, rather than shooting out content blindly, is the key to combating social media fatigue. Social engagement is more than just content—it’s about getting involved in a conversation.
Find ways to integrate all of your social media platforms into one tool to make things easier. Using Hootsuite, or another social media consolidation platform, is one way to do this. It’s also important to keep track of where your time is being spent. Set up a routine and make appointments with your social networking sites. Set aside two hours (or however long) in the morning for blogging, scheduling tweets and updating LinkedIn/Facebook/Google+, etc. Later, pick a part of the day where you can cut loose and catch up on things. Pop into each network for five to 10 minutes to survey activity and reply to what you need to. Getting into the habit of tracking your time on social media sites takes persistence before you see results.
As someone who specializes in the online marketing arena, I meet and chat with people everyday who are interested in using social media to market their business. Not a big surprise right? But what you might be surprised to learn, is many of these medium-to-large firms have a major problem: they don’t know how to start.
While social media marketing advice can be found on every corner of the internet, most of it doesn’t address this problem or offer ways to enhance or “reinvigorate” an existing campaign.
So in this article I want to push aside the “Go Get ‘Em Tiger”s and technical mumbo jumbo and provide you with a fool proof step-by-step 101 list to get your social media marketing campaign underway in no time flat!
Let’s dive right in:
Step 1: Write Down Your Objectives
The first thing you’ll want to do is really identify what you are trying to achieve through using social media to market your company. Keep in mind that more leads is not your only goal. Think about possible objectives such as; engaging your current customers/clients, offering better customer service, building brand recognition, getting more local exposure….these are the types of objectives that you should be looking at.
Step 2: Know Who Your Target Market Is
A social media marketing campaign that is laser focused has the ability to reap better results than a broad shoot campaign. You don’t want to waste time here wading through unqualified leads….you want the real deal. Make a list of 5-10 target markets that you want to hit and keep it handy throughout your campaign. Having this list will help you keep your “eye on the prize”.
Step 3: Look at What Your Competition is Doing on Social Media
Many of us do a competitive analysis when we put together our marketing plan….so why don’t we do one when we are developing our social media marketing strategy? Usually the easiest way to begin this exercise is to go to their website and follow their social media links from there. If you can’t find the links there, login to sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter and search for their company name. When you find them, see what they are doing and if it is successful. Are they getting lots of comments? Do they use lots of graphics and design elements? Are they posting often? Taking a look at these items can even give you good solid ideas of what you need to do…and what you don’t need to.
Step 4: What Are You Going to Say?
This is one of the trickiest things to come by as many organizations don’t have a wealth of available info to share. If your company does – the battle is nearly over! If not, it has just begun. Make sure that you are able to come up with content that is timely, engaging, entertaining, thought provoking and educational…or one of those 5. Also, think out of the box! If I was a healthcare organization, I would go to the website for the medical association that is within my niche and share some of their updates and tips, as they would be relevant and interesting to my audience. Sharing is caring….not stealing! But content is king folks.