It’s no longer enough to have a sleek website, social-media presence, and consistent brand aesthetic online. The new rules of branding your business on the Web have a lot less to do with presentation, and a lot more to do with interaction. In order to bring you up to speed, Inc.com has compiled nine of the most innovative and ingenious tips from articles, guides, and interviews in Inc. and Inc.com over the past year. These are the new rules of branding online.
1. Don’t just start the conversation.
Be an integral and evolving part of it. “Social media has one very important perspective to share with brand management—the conversation. Like branding, social media is all about the conversation and building effective relationships. They are perfectly suited to one another,” says Ed Roach, founder of The Brand Experts, a brand management consultancy in West Leamington, Ontario, the author of The Reluctant Salesperson, a free e-book available at http://www.thebrandingexperts.ca. The rules for brand messaging through new media versus traditional channels haven’t changed, but “the game sure got better and more interesting,” says Roach. It’s not enough to have a Facebook page or a Twitter account, you must participate in the conversation by making regular posts and replying to direct messages from your customers. Ron Smith, president and founder of S&A’s Cherokee, a public relations and marketing firm in Cary, North Carolina, agrees, adding that you’ll want to stay on top of what people are saying about you and your brand online. “Monitoring social media is a must for all companies. Social media has shortened the time frame for company responses to complaints or accusations. These days, companies need to acknowledge any issues and control the messaging in a matter of minutes instead of hours or days,” says Smith. Read more.2. Either keep your personal brand out of it…
So you have 10,000 Twitter followers. Does it matter to your customers? Tim Ferriss, the entrepreneur behind the sports nutritional supplements companyBrainQUICKEN and author of The 4-Hour Workweek, told Inc.com contributor John Warrillow: “Unless you’re in one of a handful of businesses like public speaking, I think managing and growing a personal brand can be a huge distraction for company founders. I see all of these entrepreneurs trying to collect Twitter followers, and it reminds me of a matador waving a red flag in front of a bull. In this case, the founders are the bull. The bullfighter moves the flag away, and the bull comes up with nothing but air. Steve Jobs has a personal brand, but it isApple’s product design that makes it such a valuable company. He isn’t jumping onFoursquare to develop his ‘personal brand.'” Read more.3. …or dive in and make all the headlines you can.
Appearing in the media as a source of expertise can go a long way toward building your brand, Inc.’s April Joyner reports. To gain press, identify media outlets that are most applicable to your particular areas of expertise and send them targeted pitches.
Here are five powerful ways online video interviews can help you grow your blog.
1. Create an opportunity to converse with your niche’s most interesting people
Getting on the radar of influencers in your niche is a great way to establish who you are and put your blog on the map. This can be done by asking influential people in your niche to allow you to interview them. With typical in-person interviews, it’s more difficult to secure because they may be in a different city, have a jam-packed schedule, or both. Either can make interviews unfeasible, especially if they aren’t familiar with you.
Conversely, the option of an online video interview is often more appealing. Essentially, you’re just asking them to sacrifice a few minutes sitting in front of their computer, rather than traveling to a specific location or totally rearranging their schedule.
2. Create a differentiation point between you and your competition
I alluded to this earlier. Think about the websites and blogs in your niche. Chances are only a few (if any) are creating content via online video interviews. How great would it be to separate your brand from everyone else’s? Online video interviews may be your ticket to do that.
3. Create compelling content
Online video interviewing gives you the opportunity to create compelling content. It is an awesome alternative to someone who wants to make a mark online, but lacks the writing skills or desire needed to create text articles. Or you may simply enjoy conversing with people, rather than emailing them the typical question-and-answer document that’s often reproduced on blogs. An online video interview will appeal to people who enjoy learning through an interactive conversation.
One of the most unique features of Google+ is the “circles”. Circles allow users to group followers into different groups for communicating different things.
This means brands are in a better position to share more relevant information with their followers, as against churning out the same information to everybody.
A good example of this can be seen with Intel, who invited users to select the photo which best represents the circle best aligned with the interests. This subtle but very effective move proved to be the right one as it ensured that people were getting exactly what they wanted.
Google+ is set to introduce more features very soon and if these stories are anything to go by, it’s about spotting an opportunity and going for it. It is important to keep a keen eye on these developments, as the opportunities are limitless.
Here are some thoughts on creating content in today’s always-on world. Rather than a how-to guide, these are simply some observations on what impacts the process.
It’s entirely too easy to feel the lure of social networks. The immediacy of Twitter, the connectedness we feel with friends on Facebook, the endless boards of pinned images on Pinterest and the hipster art on Instagram – these are all false idols when it comes to creating content. We’re more likely to be consuming content on those sites. As such, they qualify as distractions.
But just as the martial artist knows how to absorb energy from an enemy’s attack, we too can learn to pivot with these tools. Asking a question on Twitter as I did was a diversion rather than a distraction. While my question focused on the challenge I was having, it allowed me to focus on the conversations instead.
Over on Facebook, you’re probably likely to have surrounded yourself with people who share your hobbies, beliefs, geography, etc., and therefore you may not be inspired by a diversity of thought. Seek out people you might not have interacted with in a while. Change your feed settings from Top Stories to Most Recent. This will mix up your content a bit. You can also create Interest Lists and visit these customized feeds with a specific purpose in mind. These small actions could provide a little variety to what you’re seeing and from whom.
Understand who you’re trying to reach
Kind of a no-brainer, but when you’re tasked with creating content that needs to live somewhere, it’s a good idea to know a little bit about that somewhere and the people who frequent it. It could be your corporate website, a Facebook page, recipients of a white paper or email, viewers of a video, etc. If you don’t understand a little bit about them, you may miss the opportunity to connect with them. Based on previous interactions, what kind of content do they like? Have they indicated other brands or interests that matter to them? What have their comments told you? All of this should help fuel the content you’re making.
Look to industry leaders
There are others who are doing this well. Let them inspire you. About a year and a half ago, Mashable took a look at a handful of leaders in content marketing (How 3 Companies Took Content Marketing to the Next Level), highlighting Mint.com, HubSpot and American Express. And just this week, Forbes ran a piece titled 5 Big Brands Confirm That Content Marketing Is The Key To Your Consumer. Their list was made up of Virgin Mobile, American Express, Marriott, L’Oreal and Vanguard. All respectable brands. But one stood out to me.
Read full article via Scott Monty’s Social Media Marketing Blog
Here’s a few things to remember when you’re creating a strategy:
- Social media thrives on interaction, so make sure you’re giving your fans and followers something they can’t just read off your website.
- Add some personality to messages so that your fans know there’s actually a person on the other side of the connection.
- Remember that different communities have different personalities, so don’t just spam them all with the same line. If you’ve done your job correctly, people who belong to more than one social community may be following your account on each, so it is a red flag to see the same line of content on each. That flag says you’re spamming me.
2. Turn blog posts into advertisements.
If you’re blogging consistently, you’re on the right track. But if all your blog posts are about your own product or service, you’re really just advertising. Don’t do this! Provide value for the readers of your blog. They didn’t come to your blog to read about how awesome XYZ service is, although you can definitely link to that service or even mention it at the end of a post. The more in-depth and interesting your blog posts are, the more people will realize that a) you know what you’re talking about, and b) you’re not just giving them a used car salesman-type pitch. The best blog posts get the reader to think highly of the author, which makes them think highly of the company, which makes them remember that company when they have a need for your product or service. Be subtle. Give readers the perception that you’re awesome, but don’t shove it down their throats.
When you think of social media marketing, you may only consider the potential for introducing new customers to your products and services through social interaction. However, social media marketing is an effective way to keep your existing customers happy – and happy customers drive repeat sales that can significantly impact your bottom line.
Here are five easy tips to help you increase your revenue stream from existing customers with social media.
1. Reward frequent purchases
Since it costs more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one, why not increase revenue by encouraging your customers to make purchases more frequently? If you sell products, you can entice customers to come back more often, and if you sell services, you can promote add-on services and upgrades.
Offer exclusive deals and specials to your social media community, basing the discount on the customer level or frequency of purchase. For example, you could offer a coupon to your Facebook community, providing them with a discount off their fourth purchase.
2. Encourage more spending per purchase
Another way to increase revenue from existing customers is to encourage them to spend more at each purchase. You may set a goal to increase each transaction by 25%, for example. Once again, create exclusive deals for your social media community. For example, offer a coupon for $40 off a $150 purchase to increase product purchases.
For service industries, consider bundling your offerings together, providing a discount for multiple services that will entice your customers to spend more. You could use Twitter to drive awareness of the deal with a call to action.
3. Continue engaging customers to keep your communities strong
No one wants to see an endless stream of deals and promotions with very little customer interaction or information sharing. Be sure to continue with your engagement strategy as you add deals and promotions to your tweets and postings.
The rule of thumb for an effective content mix is 20% company-related content and 80% relevant third-party content and direct engagement with your fans. So mix in the promotions carefully, and you will continue to have a thriving community.
Here are six rules of thumb that will help you write a sales message that actually helps you move an opportunity forward. I’ve got a few examples below, too, so you can see how to turn a bad message into a better one.
1. Write like you talk.
Sales messages are meant to be spoken. Even when somebody reads the message, you want readers to feel like you’re talking to them personally. Therefore, whenever you write a sales message, ask yourself: “Does this sound like something I’d actually say to a real person?” If not, your message won’t work well.
Before: “Engineers efficiently evaluate and improve their designs using our software tools. We are dedicated to building the most advanced vehicle system simulation tools.”
After: “Engines designed with our simulation software are more fuel-efficient than those that aren’t.”
2. Use common words rather than biz-blab.
Unfortunately, when most business folks sit down to write something, they turn into Dilbert’s pointy-haired boss and start writing in gibberish, stuffing sentences full of important-sounding terminology that means little or nothing. The cure is to use simple nouns and verbs that have a precise meaning.
Before: “We provide ‘one stop shopping’ for all of your HR needs. Through a single relationship, you have access to HR services for the continuum of the employment life cycle.”
After: “We help our clients with hiring, compensation, compliance, and training, so that they can spend more time running their business and less time and hassle dealing with HR details.”
3. State facts rather than promises.
Promises are only meaningful to people who already trust you, and that list probably doesn’t include prospects who aren’t yet customers. In fact, most people view a promise from a stranger with skepticism if not outright suspicion.
It’s more effective to provide a quantitative, verifiable fact that creates credibility.
Before: “You’ll love our dedicated account managers, comprehensive inventory, reliable delivery and competitive pricing.”
After: “Our customers save as much as $100,000 a year when they purchase directly from our account managers.”
Joe Pulizzi over at the Content Marketing Institute recently shared a fascinating video presentation from Coca-Cola about their upcoming marketing strategy.
The short version?
Content marketing has arrived.
For more than 100 years, Coca-Cola has been one of the world’s foremost practitioners of what they call “one-way storytelling.”
(You and I call that an advertisement.)
But Coke — in the form of their brilliant VP of global advertising strategy, Jonathan Mildenhall — is looking around and realizing that the 30-second television ad won’t take them where they want to go next.
To do that, they’re turning to the tool that’s quickly becoming the most important strategy for smaller businesses — content marketing.
For anyone who still thinks that content marketing is some kind of fad, take a look at the thinking (and dollars) going into Coca-Cola’s marketing strategy, aimed at doubling worldwide consumption of Coke by the year 2020.
The videos are compelling, but they’re also packed with advertising jargon that can be about as intelligible as Klingon.
And yet, this is a peek into a great marketing and advertising mind — and there are some juicy strategies we can carry off and implement in the real world.
Here are a few of my favorite ideas from Mildenhall’s presentation
The term “content marketing” sounds like a hip buzzword to describe the latest marketing craze, but in reality, the concept has been around since the first newsletters came rolling off the presses.
And if there’s one single reason why companies around the world continue to incorporate “content marketing strategies” into their yearly plans – it’s because it has been working for hundreds, if not thousands of years!
Let’s go over a short recap as to why content marketing is a good marketing strategy to employ for today’s online audience:
- Show You’re an Authority on a Subject – When you offer unbiased and valuable information on a given subject matter, you earn trust with people who visit your blog or website. And as well all know, increasing the trustworthiness of your brand, tends to increase business.
- Search Engine Traffic – Ten years ago, piling on content was a surefire way to grow traffic, but thanks to content farming and Google catching on to other SEO trickery, it’s not that easy anymore. However, the more content you create, the more search engine traffic you will accumulate simply because you will be increasing your longtail search visibility. But more importantly, well written content gets linked to – and backlinks are vital for climbing search engine rankings.
- Build Your Marketing List and Readership – And as you commit to writing great content day in and day out, hopefully you are building up a list of readers whether it’s through Twitter Followers, Facebook Fans or email and RSS subscribers. As your marketing list grows, the more flexibility you have to promote and share offers to your subscribers.
The following resources below will help anyone learn about why content marketing is important to any business and how to get the most of it.
For Beginners
For beginners to people looking for primers on content marketing, these links will get you on the right track.
1. What is Content Marketing – Copyblogger’s introduction to the world of content marketing. If you don’t know what content marketing is, then this is the perfect place to start.
2. The Beginner’s Guide To Blogging & Content Marketing – Learn how to source freelance writers, promote your content, and more with this free e-book.
3. Creating Consistent Content: A Content Marketing Plan – This post will help you create a content marketing schedule and (hopefully) stick to it.
4. Why You Need To Be Doing Content Marketing – This post outlines 10 content marketing goals worth pursuing.
5. The Time For Content Marketing Is Now – A call to arms post on why you need to be jumping on content marketing now. Post also includes stellar examples of content creation done right.
6. The Periodic Table of Content – Types of content broken down into ‘elements’ on a periodic table. An easy way to look at what types of content there are and approximately how long each type of content should be.
7. 7 Content Marketing Myths: Selling the C-Level – It’s not easy to get executives to buy in to new marketing initiatives – use some of the tips in this post to learn how to sell the c-level on content strategy.
8. The Content Marketer’s Guide To Web Content – This is an introductory post to the different types of content on the web with some examples of where + how you can use them. If you ever need a primer on content, this is the post to refer to.
“The On-Demand Brand: 10 Rules for Digital Marketing Success in an Anytime, Everywhere World” characterizes the challenge of demanding attention from a new generation of consumers who want what they want, when they want it, and where they want it. Here are the new marketing rules I support:
- Insight comes before inspiration. Innovative marketing starts with customer insights culled from painstaking research into who your customers are, and how they use digital media. Then it’s time to innovate through the channels or platforms that are relevant.
- Don’t repurpose, re-imagine. Digital quite simply is not for repurposing content that exists in other channels. It’s about re-imagining content to create blockbuster experiences that cannot be attained through any other medium.
- Don’t just join the conversation, spark it. Create new online communities of interest, rather than joining existing ones. Ask why it should be, and why customers should care. Then give them a reason to keep coming back. Keep it real, social, and events-based.
- There’s no business without show business. Remember Hollywood secrets. Your brand is a story; tell it. Accentuate the personalizable, own-able, and sharable. Viral is an outcome, not a strategy. Make people laugh and they will buy.
- Want control? Give it away. Several companies, including Mastercard, Coca-Cola, and Doritos have let customers build commercials and design contests, with big rewards for the customer and for the company. That’s giving up control, with some risk, to get control.
- It’s good to play games with your customers. Games are immersive, but shouldn’t be just a diversion. They need to drive home the value proposition. Don’t forget to include a call to action, like leading people to the next step of the buying process.
Video has become an essential marketing tool. It’s a great way to tell your story, show the human side of your business and communicate highly complex ideas in an easy to digest manner. But while video has the power to deeply engage, it also has the power to bore the viewer to tears—and creating compelling video is different than writing, say, a compelling blog post.
Starting a camera and spouting out a thousand words of brilliant prose does not make a compelling video. There are proven techniques and tools that can help make your videos engage, hold attention and wow the viewer. Here are 10 tools that can help you get started.
1. Prezi. This is a interesting take on the slide presentation as it allows you to create one giant and more easily connected idea and then use the tool to zoom, pan and fly all around the presentation to create a really dynamic feel. It’s not the easiest tool to master, but check out some of the incredible examples on the site to get inspiration.
2. YouTube Editor. I like this tool because it’s free, and because you’re using YouTube to host and stream your videos anyway, it gives you some nice editing capability right in YouTube. You can also add annotations and transcripts to your videos making them more SEO friendly.
3. Camtasia. This PC and Mac desktop software is the market leader in the screencapture video world. Screencast videos are a great way to demonstrate how something online works. Camtasia has some nice features that allow you to add focus to areas on your screen as well as annotations and URLs.
At the Yammer Tour, David Obrand, Yammer VP of Global Sales, stated that most intranets are not participatory, and that most existing enterprise software tools basically suck (my paraphrasing). And he’s absolutely right. By comparison, Yammer has good functionality and a class leading, very familiar UI (taken almost pixel for pixel from Facebook). It exposes a lot of enterprise software products as the creaky, dated code pits that they are.
But is Yammer a viable intranet replacement? Yammer’s team says, ‘We want to be the place where work gets done. In time it will be’.
Whether you believe this really depends on your definition of intranet. If you perceive an intranet to be just about communication and social conversation, and the ability to co-author documents, then Yammer may be a viable intranet replacement tool. Yet it is missing a lot of pretty common CMS functionality, and is simply in the lightweight class of products compared to the best intranets out there.
You also have to ask, is it Yammer’s destiny to become a mid-level, cloud-hosted CMS product, with social capabilities? If that’s the case, what will happen first: Yammer adds all the CMS capabilities that organisations need, or CMS providers add a micro-messaging capability? Even with every necessary feature, you still have the cloud-hosted aspect, which remains a huge hurdle for many organisations.
Yammer’s increasing integration and connections with other tools – SAP, Salesforce, SharePoint etc – is notable here (and awesome in many ways). But I don’t see Yammer’s (or any other social tool’s) place in the enterprise as the single environment or unified interface, it’s much more of an accompanying tool – the social layer in a composite system.
Replacing the intranet is an ambitious statement and a great strategy, but at this stage it’s difficult to agree with it at anything but the most lightweight level. To top it off, ambitions to replace or ‘kill’ incumbent products rarely turn out to be realistic. This is why Lotus Notes still exists.
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.
Every once in a while consultants are challenged to put their ideas into practice. Such was my experience this week. Colleague Shel Holtz, ABC and a co-host Neville Hobson, ABC, host a podcast “For Immediate Release” twice a week. This week, Shel invited me to join another measurement guru, Angela Sinickas, ABC as the featured guests on their regular podcast.
For the past year, I have been advocating that communication and management leaders need to include blogs, wikis and podcasts in their arsenal of communication channels. Blogs have been a relatively easy sell. They have increased in visibility, value and usage. Wikis are still a bit of a mystery but there is a small awakening there. Podcasts, on the other hand, are still in the incubator. The innovators and the early adopters of new ideas are just beginning to warm up to the concept.
Podcasting evolved with the birth of Apple’s iPod and the ability to publish audio files on the internet. A podcast is simply and audio blog. The audio files can be accessed on the internet and aspiring broadcasters can self-publish or ‘broadcast’ radio style programming using the internet as the distribution channel. Unlike regular radio, the podcasts can be accessed, downloaded and played by anyone, anytime, anywhere.
Podcasting began in the fall of 2003 and really became a growth phenomenon in late 2004. Shel and Neville launched “For Immediate Release”(FIR) in January 2005. Their listening audience has been growing in leaps and bounds. Their focus is on issues and innovations in communication and public relations. Shel brings a North American perspective from California and Neville from Amsterdam.
Each podcast is accompanied by a detailed guide to the content of the podcast – about one hour in length. Each topic has a time code so that you can select pieces of the broadcast rather than listening to it all in one sitting. Every person, topic and organization mentioned in the podcast is listed in the notes with links to relevant web sites. “For Immediate Release” is a model for others considering getting into the field.
It will only be a short time before enlightened organizations start using this new channel for communicating with customers, suppliers and employees. It has huge potential with its advantages of immediacy, convenience and consumability. It is the ultimate commuter’s communication channel as you sit in the bus, train or traffic jam listening to a podcast that you have downloaded in to your iPod before leaving home or the office.
So how did Angela and I do on our podcast? Well hear for yourself. The podcast was published in the June 22, 2005 edition of “For Immediate Release”. You can find the podcast at http://www.forimmediaterelease.biz with the detailed podcast notes. So you can listen to it all, select the parts that interest you or just see what this new communication channel is all about.
There is a link for comments at the end of the notes just like a blog. Give us your feedback and let us know what you thought of the issues we discussed.
Tudor Williams
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.
It’s that time of year when us pundits make bold predictions about upcoming trends in 2011. I had considered putting on my Nostradamus cap and making some reputation management predictions, but then I discovered my fellow reputationista Dr. Leslie Gaines-Ross had already staked-out that turf!
Oh well, I’ve never been one for predictions, anyway. So, how about some certainties instead? Some solid, often unwritten, rules of reputation management that will pervade 2011–and beyond?
OK, here goes!
Law #1 – Everyone has an online reputation
We all have an online reputation to maintain. Don’t believe me, go ahead and “Google Yourself”–I promise you won’t go blind! Even if you don’t find anything written about you, then that’s still your reputation–or lack thereof. In 2011, you should make sure that what’s found in Google, Facebook, Twitter et al is something you’d be equally comfortable showing your mom or your boss!
Law #2 – Your reputation is an extension of your character
It doesn’t matter how hard you work on managing your reputation, it will only ever be as solid as your actual character. Tiger Woods had a reputation of being the greatest golfer–and a family man. His character revealed otherwise. As Abraham Lincoln once said,
“Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.”
Law #3 – Every reputation has an achilles heel
While Toyota may have spent years telling us that its cars are the most reliable in the world, sticking gas pedals told a different story. In fact, even though Toyota tried to deny the increasing incidents of sticking accelerators, its customers were the ones steering the car manufacturer’s reputation in another direction. Instead of denying the issue, Toyota should have been the first to recognize it! When you recognize and acknowledge your weaknesses, before your customers, you have the opportunity to craft a response before the public outcry. Do you know your reputation’s weakness?
Law #4 – Listen twice, act once
OK, so I’ve plagiarized this from the saying “measure twice, cut once,” but it’s appropriate, when it comes to listening to your customers. I tell our customers at Trackur that they should spend twice as much effort on listening as they do responding. It’s too easy to simply jump in and reply to that tweet or Facebook post–without fixing the underlying problem. Instead, you should spend time actively listening to the feedback you’re collecting about your reputation. Listen for trends. Listen for opportunities. Listen, listen, listen–ok, that was three listens, but you get my point. When you actually take onboard what your stakeholders are saying about your reputation, you do more than just fix a problem, you make sure you fix the underlying issue that created the problem in the first place! GAP’s customers weren’t so much angry that the company’s logo was changed, they were mad that the company hadn’t initially thought to listen to their feedback–a decision the apparel company quickly reversed!