Social Media in Harmony with Business

Social Media in Harmony with Business

by Chris Brown

CMNS 490 Directed Study (Prof. David Thomson)

University of the Fraser Valley

September 6, 2011

A bit of the back-story on social media

The good news and bad news

Observe the landscape before you jump in

Plan carefully and set goals

About social media ROI

Joining online conversations

Don’t try to buy your way in

The upside and downside of transparency

Showing your personality

A little (really) about how we got here

I’m intentionally going to spend very little time talking about what social media is. I’ve decided this because I don’t think I could do it justice in the scope of this guide. There’s a lot I could tell you about the evolution of the internet—but I don’t think you care much about that. There’s an interesting, (but long) back story as to why we’re such social crea-tures, and why social media has become so pervasive (it was more than love at first site, it was a ‘where have you been all my life’ mo-ment for humanity), but I think an anthropol-ogist would be better suited to tell you about

that. I’d like to focus only on best practices for developing, implementing and maintaining a social media strategy for your business, and I’d like to jump right in after I give you the brief gist as I see it.

The gist

Even if you don’t know what social media is, you’re actually familiar with it. Yes, social me-dia has come to be defined by Facebook and Twitter, but what we’re really talking about is a medium for communicating with other people. In past centuries the public forum was the town square which was perhaps a me-dium for one person to reach hundreds, and


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if the message was considered to be highly valuable it might spread from person to per-son. Newspapers, radio, and eventually tele-vision became the new media for messages to be spread, and this scaled up the amount of potential message recipients but essentially did nothing to help message recipients to re-spond. Now, you might say that these forms of media weren’t very social because it the communication was one-way, but I disagree. People may not have called up the television network very often to communicate back—but if something stirred their emotions they would certainly talk to others in their social circle about it. Wearing the jersey of your fa-

vorite sports team is a public, non-verbal way of communicating that you ‘like’ them (Face-book didn’t invent that one).

The things that have improved are scalabil-ity and accessibility. With internet-powered social media, your messages don’t take weeks to spread, they can spread across the world in seconds; if something stirs your emotions you can share your thoughts on it with peo-ple in your social circle, or with people you don’t know but who you relate to in some way (for example, by nationality, or by shared in-terests). Now everyone has a microphone, a printing press, a television channel.

Today, marketing is about engaging with the tribe and delivering products and services with stories that spread

Seth Godin (author, Tribes)

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The bad news: You don’t control the conver-sation any more.

When radio, television and newspapers had cornered the market on ways to broadcast to your customers, all you had to do was lay down your money and you could run an ad-vertisement. If your message was that your product was indestructible or cured baldness or removed baked on grease, you said so. The fact that reaching your customers through these forms of media was expensive actually made it safe to say nearly anything you want-ed to with impunity because it was cost-pro-hibitive for customers to refute your claims through the same high-exposure channels. Instead, they contacted you directly, and you sorted them out (or not), in complete privacy.

The fact that in some cases your product was found to be destructible, incapable of curing baldness, or unable to remove tough stains—or even if your product was just found to be unremarkably average—you controlled the microphone, so you continued to control the message, and you didn’t have to change it.

That’s what’s changed.

Jeff Jarvis proved this point in 2005 with his famous, “Dell Hell,” post in which he lambast-ed Dell over his customer service experience with them: he purchased a warranty along with his new computer which meant that his computer would be fixed in his home in the event of any problems. The problem occurred when he needed to activate the in-home ser-


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vice agreement but was told that since the technician they were sending, “wouldn’t have the parts, so [he] might as well just send the machine in” (Jarvis, 2005). His rant gener-ated many commiserative responses from his readers who, armed with social media megaphones, began a public and unflatter-ing conversation about the company and ul-timately eroded the credibility and value of Dell’s brand. In response, Dell launched Di-rect2Dell, a blog which invited the public to provide feedback on Dell’s products and ser-vices, and Dell has since become a leader in social media (Salwani, 2009).

The lesson is that your customers have a lot more leverage now. They’re going to demand better products and services, and you’re go-

ing to get away with less.

The good news: You don’t control the con-versation anymore.

No, you don’t control the conversation any-more, but that’s okay because people gener-ally weren’t gullible enough to believe ev-erything you said anyway—you’re extremely biased. People are more likely to believe an unbiased report and who better to provide that than other customers? Now all you have to do is create remarkable products and offer excellent service experiences. You don’t need to control the conversation, you just need to join it. If there isn’t one, you need to get it started (more on that later), but you want your customers to be leading it.


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Check for a pulse

The first thing to do is to find out what, if any, conversations are already happening that are relevant to you.

Your company

If your company is already well-established, it is very likely that you have already generated some online buzz. Take note of what people are saying about you. Is there a positive or negative sentiment?

Your competitors

Do people compare your company to anoth-er? What are they saying about your competi-tor’s brand, products and people? Does your competitor engage in social media in any way?

Your industry

Regardless of whether there is a conversation happening about you or your competitors, there is very likely a conversation happen-ing about your industry. Try to identify any trending topics, and authority figures—peo-ple with large audiences.


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Simply blasting promotional messages on Twitter is

analogous to walking up to a stranger at a cocktail

party and stating, “I’m Erik Qualman, author of the

book ‘Socialnomics’ due out in August, there is cur-

rently a 20 percent discount on Amazon for pre-or-

ders, would you like to use my iPhone to pre-order it

right now?” That doesn’t go over well at the cocktail

party and it doesn’t go over well in Twitter.

“

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Erik Qualman (author, Socialnomics)

This is the Twitter metrics dashboard created by Radian6 (radian6.com), but there are others including TweetStats (tweetstats.com), and Twitaholic (twi-taholic.com) and Klout (klout.com).


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Before you jump in, you need to set some goals and now that you have a sense of how people are (or aren’t) talking about your business, you have a good place to start.

Questions to ask may include the following:

What are we hoping to achieve?

If measuring return on investment (ROI) is important to your business then this is an important exercise. Whether your goal is to create leads, or to build better relationships with your clients, you should consider what your main objectives are.

Here is an example of what General Motors saw as their social media objectives:

A. Become more responsive to people/consumer audiences

B. Incorporate audience/consumer feedback into your organization more quickly and effectively than has happened traditionally

C. Make your brand a little more “human” to the outside world, and show people the smarts, per-sonality and passion of the people behind your logo

D. Increase awareness of the strength of your current product lineup, and provide perspective/accurate information about your companySource: http://www.slideshare.net/sschablow/whats-missing-from-your-social-media-program-how-to-create-an-effective-social-media-plan


Which social media channels are best for your goals?

The social media platform(s) you choose to invest in should be informed by the goals you have set for your organization. A tat-too artist will likely select a different subset of the following avail-able channels than a lawyer would (source: wikipedia).

Blogging: Blogger, ExpressionEngine, LiveJournal, Open Diary, TypePad, Vox, WordPress, Xanga

Microblogging: FMyLife, Foursquare, Jaiku, Plurk, Posterous, Tumblr, Twitter, Google Buzz, Dailybooth

Location based: Foursquare, Geoloqi, Gowalla, Facebook places, The Hotlist, Yelp, Google Latitude

Social Relationships: ASmallWorld, Bebo, Cyworld, Diaspora, Facebook, Google+, Tuenti, Hi5, Hyves, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Orkut, Plaxo, Tagged, XING, Yammer

Events: Eventful, The Hotlist, Meetup.com, Upcoming, Yelp

Collaboration/social bookmarking: PBworks, Wetpaint, Wikia, Wikimedia, Wikispaces, CiteULike, Delicious, Diigo, Google Reader, StumbleUpon, folkd


Who will be responsible?

There is an active online debate about which department should ‘own’ social media. Since social media can be used both as a market-ing/PR tool and also as a customer commu-nications and service tool, it’s hard to say that it’s exclusive to one department. The reality is that it’s both of these tools as Chuck Tanowitz of Fresh Ground PR/Social Media firms says:

“While internally this may be a customer ser-vice move, externally it’s customer service blend-ed with PR, since customer service problems are now being handled in the open, not in the rela-tive privacy of a phone call. (Tanowitz via War-ren, 2010).”

The choice between which department (includ-ing potentially a new, dedicated social media department) should lead is a decision that will be different for every company, but what’s clear is that there must be communication and col-laboration between departments.

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Who is responsible for the social media strategy in your organization?

Source: Social Media and Online PR Report 2010 by E-Consultancy Group via http://mashable.com/2010/05/17/social-media-ownership/

source: http://mashable.com/2010/05/17/social-media-ownership/

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How will we measure success?

Of primary concern for any investment you make for your business is your potential for a return. While you can’t know the precise number of people who have been positively affected by your social media campaign, there are other metrics that your business can use to measure ROI such as social media men-tions and website traffic. There are even tools (though they’re not perfect) which allow you to peer into the various social media men-tions and measure customer sentiment. The important step to remember before you em-bark on your campaign is to establish a base-line.

Establishing a baseline

You won’t be able to measure the impact of your campaigns without establishing some-thing to compare against. Use sentiment and web traffic analysis tools to take the tempera-ture before and after your campaign begins.

Sentiment analysis

Tools include Viral Heat (viralheat.com), Twendz (twendz.com), Crimson Hexagon (crimsonhexagon.com).

Website traffic analysis

Your webmaster should be familiar with Google Analytics--a free tool that helps to measure website traffic metrics.


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Sentiment Analysis Snapshot (source: http://mashable.com/2009/10/27/social-media-roi/)

Website Traffic Snapshot (source: http://goo.gl/5rNxC)

Finding trends and

tracking them back to

their point of origin is

key to measuring ROI.

“ “

Christina Warren

Contributor, Mashable


Joining the conversation

It’s important to join the conversation, rather than barge in an interrupt everyone. Instead, when you’re ready to jump in and get started, you should recognize those already in the discussion first. You should have done your homework by now and found out who the conversation leaders are and what the recent conversation trends have been.

Getting a new conversation started

If your company is relatively young, or you just haven’t generated a lot of online buzz just yet you have a bit more work to do. The approach is, ‘build it and they will come.’ Identify topics related to your industry and start contributing. Then start advertising your online presence to your customers and ask them to join you.

Join the conversation in a way that adds value. You can’t just start talking about how awesome you are and expect people to engage – you have to contribute to conversations people are al-ready having to gain an audi-ence. Respond to what peo-ple are saying about your brand.

“

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Tara DeMarco, bloggerSource: http://goo.gl/Rv22s


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For your consideration

There are too many social media channels to do them all justice with this guide, but what follows are some best practices to consider when engaging with your customers on Facebook, Twitter, or a blog.

Your business on Facebook

A Facebook presence allows your business to converse directly with your customers, and push content to them. Clients can ‘like’ you or become a ‘fan’ which are ways for your customers to publicly show that they support you. Not only does this spread your brand in a word-of-mouth fashion, the nature of Facebook’s profile engine al-lows you to take a peek at the demographics of your fan base.

Your business on Twitter

Twitter is a micro-blogging service which allows members to post short (140 charac-ter), public messages and to read messages posted by others on various topics such as your business or industry.

Your business on the blogosphere

Blogs generally features chronologically published content that regularly updated and invites users to share their thoughts by leaving comments.


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Set up a profile page for your business

Most social networking platforms provide a way for you to set up a profile. Twitter and Facebook both provide this option. A blog could include an ‘about us’ page. This profile page should be completely separate from any personal account(s) you may have--this keeps the proverbial photo of you wearing a lamp-shade at a party separate from the pub-lic image your business conveys.

Consider whether you should link individual profiles to your company profile

It’s not wrong to share individual profiles of prominent people in your organization. For example, Robert Scoble (RackSpace, formerly Microsoft) blogs personally, but it’s not a secret that he works for RackSpace--in fact the company logo appears on his blog. His isn’t the voice of RackSpace, its the voice of Robert Scoble—who works for RackSpace. With a readership of more than 100,000 people, Scoble’s blog connects Rackspace to a wide audi-ence by proxy, piggybacking on Scoble’s established credibility.

Decide who should have a voice

Consider integrating social media in such a way that gives everyone a voice. Austin, TX-based company Sweet Leaf Tea gives each ‘tea-mate’ a voice through the company blog (sweetleafteablog.com). Larger companies may find that this approach doesn’t scale up very well but there are other ways to give employees a voice such as allowing them to par-ticipate in industry-relevant online public forums.

Develop a policy for how your staff should represent themselves and your brand

A well-thought out social media policy should include guidelines for: being responsible; being authentic; considering your audience; exercising good judgement; understanding community; respecting copyrights; protecting the company’s confidential and proprietary information; bringing value (Luaby, 2009).

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Integrate social media into your website.

Connecting with you through social media channels on your website should be easy and obvious.

Integrate social media into the content you generate online

If your company generates content on an ongoing basis through a newsfeed, e-newsletter, email campaign or a blog, integrating social media buttons on each post allows readers to like (and share) this content. It allows your fans to share your content on an ongoing basis.

Integrate social media into content that you generate IRL (In Real Life)

Social media generally requires the internet to work, but that doesn’t mean you’re limited to the internet when it comes to integrating these channels into your real-world market-ing and other content. If you’re active on any social media channel, you should make it obvious to your customers and ask them to join you.

On a recent trip to Costco I was greeted at the door, as usual, with a selection of coupons to use in-store, and on the back was an invitation to connect with Costco through Facebook.

The Vancouver Canucks invite fans to connect through Facebook and Twitter in the header of their website.Source: http://canucks.nhl.com/

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The Good, the Bad, but not the Ugly: Intel’s public forum policy If the con-tent is positive or negative and in context to the conversation, then we approve the content, regardless of whether it’s favor-able or unfavorable to Intel. However if the content is ugly, offensive, denigrating and completely out of context, then we reject the content.

One of the major values of social media is its implication for word-of-mouth marketing. Social media channels like Twitter, Facebook and others give customers instant access to (generally) unbiased reviews and opinions.

The value is in what Tara Hunt, author of The Whuffie Factor: Using the Power of Social Net-works to Build Your Business, calls, “Embrac-ing the Chaos.”

Companies may be hesitant to engage in so-cial media channels because they fear that this will open themselves up to negative posts, and customer service or product complaints. But this transparency is precisely what gives the channel it’s value--if negative posts are allowed, then the positive ones are more like-ly to be genuine. For example (right) Costco allows customers to publish reviews of prod-ucts (good or bad) on their website. The fact

that the reviews are uncensored for sentiment makes it a useful tool.

What if it’s used for evil?

What you don’t want to censor is legitimate sentiment, but you should filter out hateful or otherwise inappropriate language. This should be spelled out in your social media policy.

http://goo.gl/DtwGt


Ask any Fortune 500 executive, small business owner, or sole pro-prietor what their most effective form of marketing is and I guaran-tee their answer, without hesitation, is Word of Mouth...but what happens when Word of Mouth goes to World of Mouth?

“ “

Erik Qualman (author, Socialnomics)

Source: http://reviews.costco.ca/2070-en_ca/10315099/yamaha-yamaha-acoustic-guitar-kit-reviews/reviews.htm


Since social media channels are opt-in only--customers can choose to participate or not, there is a perceived correlation between so-cial media followers/fans and popularity of a brand, which in turn correlates with quality or value.

More fans --> more credibility --> mo’money.

The real life equivalent is a row of street vendors, and one of them has a line-up that snakes around the block. No matter what they’re serving, you know it’s good (and you want some).

Before social media, you couldn’t really see the ‘crowds’ when you visited a website. Now the Twitter account, the Facebook page, and the active blogging community are the crowd.

But you can’t fake it--or at least, you shouldn’t.

It didn’t seem right when Netflix hired actors to attend their Canadian launch party and ham up the excitement (source: http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Netflix-Canada-Actors-Media-Press,news-8100.html). The same principle applies to social media.

When Newt Gingrich bragged about his le-gions of Twitter followers he was trying to show off the ‘crowds’ around him in order to attract more people. But it turned out that roughly 1.2 of his 1.3 million followers were fake accounts set up by the PR company he hired to boost his online perception of popu-larity (source: http://gawker.com/5826960).


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Sources: (TOP) http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/08/03/7242024-gingrich-campaign-denies-fake-twitter-follower-accusations (MIDDLE)http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/technol-ogy-blog/most-newt-gingrich-twitter-followers-fake-011440319.html (BOT-TOM) http://www.businessinsider.com/gingrich-fake-twitter-followers-2011-8


Don’t be boring

This is very important, having a personality is what makes you interesting and different from your competitors. And while your so-cial media policy (and some common sense) should tell you what isn’t appropriate, don’t expect followers to stick around if you’re just going to spit out corporate messages.

...companies must develop a voice that resonates with your audience. Tell sto-ries, crack jokes, laugh at other people’s jokes, give words of encouragement, tweet at celebs you don’t really know, and most importantly, recognize and cheer on your followers. Aim to be hu-man in the social space. Dermot McCormack (contributor, Mashable)

“

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source: http://twitter.com/#!/DragonTruck


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I manufacture synthetic lubricants for agri-cultural machinery (or I do something else that I don’t think the masses care about).

So?

In Socialnomics, Erik Qualman argues that the internet has generated a lot of niche frag-mentation of markets. What he means is that in the past it was not affordable to use mass-media channels (radio, TV, print) for niche marketing because the audiences were too small, but the internet changes that. It’s now affordable to reach precisely your target audi-ence through social media. But why will they tune in to you?

You are an authority

You may not have a captive audience of mil-lions, but if you can provide value for your

community, and you can do this by be-coming a thought leader--an authority.

Being seen as an expert by your peers has an amazing upside for small business owners for network-ing, for developing alternative reve-nue streams, and for broadening the reach of your existing business. Josh Catone (Feature Editor, Mashable)

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You can do this by contributing your thoughts on industry-relevant issues. Use current events as a springboard for offer-ing takeaways relevant to your industry. For example, a lawyer might comment on a precedent-setting ruling in the news, while a business coach might comment on what a public speaker did (or didn’t) do well.

http://twitter.com/#!/positivedating

http://twitter.com/#!/baconsalthttp://twitter.com/#!/DoodyCallsDFW


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Hunt, T. (2009) The Whuffie Factor: Using the Power of Social Networks to Build your Business. Published by Crown Business.

Qualman, E. (2009, 2011) Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the way we Live and do Business. Published by John Wiley and Sons.

Godin, S. (2008) Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us. Published by Penguin Group.

Jarvis, J (2005) Dell Lies, Dell Sucks http://www.buzzmachine.com/ar-chives/2005_06_21.html

Salwani, S (2009) Presenting: 10 of the Smartest Big Brands in Social Media. http://mashable.com/2009/02/06/social-media-smartest-brands/

Luaby, S. (2009): 10 Must Haves for your Social Media Policy. http://mashable.com/2009/06/02/social-media-policy-musts/

Luaby, S. (2009) How to Implement a So-cial Media Business Strategy. http://mash-able.com/2009/12/28/social-media-busi-ness-strategy/

Warren, C. (2009) How to Measure Social Media ROI. http://mashable.com/2009/10/27/social-media-roi/.

Warren, C. (2010) Which Department Owns Social Media? http://mashable.com/2010/05/17/social-media-ownership/

Catone, J. (2010): Why You Should Talk About Everything But Your Business Online. http://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/technology/article/why-you-should-talk-about-everything-but-your-business-online-josh-catone.

Documents

Social Media in Harmony with Business