Consumer Forum Recap: Clients Share Their Challenges

[Posted by Neil Strother]

I enjoyed the many conversations I had with clients this week at Forrester's 2009 Consumer Forum in Chicago. It was interesting to listen to some of the best in the interactive marketing business. They shared with me the challenges they face regarding mobile strategy, budget issues and campaign measurement. Key takeaways from my discussions:

• Most understand that mobile marketing is here to stay, but they struggle with a clear strategy. The right way is to first understand how your customers use mobile phones, and not jump straight to a technology choice. (We can help you with that. If you're a Forrester client, see my report on mobile marketing best practices).
• Many budgets are under stress, but not all. Some people said that getting money for proven interactive campaigns or innovative projects wasn't as hard as you'd think. For others, it's more of  an issue; if that's you, and you're a client, there's help in my report on securing budget from a CMO.
• Measuring campaign effectiveness in newer areas like social media and mobile is still evolving. And even leading companies using these tactics don't have it figured out, but they are working to get the right metrics in place.

If you attended the Forum in Chicago, what were your takeaways? If you did not attend, do you face some of these same challenges as a marketer? Share your thoughts by posting a comment below.

Pizza Hut Embraces The New Marketing Reality (Live from Forrester Consumer Forum)

by Sean Corcoran

I'm here and live blogging from the Forrester 2009 Consumer Forum in Chicago. Bob Kraut, VP of Communications for Pizza Hut, is presenting how the brand used an innovative approach to digital marketing to adapt to a new and challenging consumer landscape.

Pizza Hut has been hit fairly hard in this economy as people cut back on much of their sit down dining in the recession. They also are fighting the same uphill battle as other marketers – the reality that consumers' media habits have been fragmented and reaching them in an engaging and effective way with scale is very difficult and very costly. In response to these realities, Pizza Hut had to be innovative in how they leveraged digital tools to reach and enable their consumers. They developed a four step strategy that included a lower priced menu items, more variety in the menu, more convenient and fulfilling customer access and finally to become part of the conversation online.

What manifested from this approach were some interesting tactics that include a viral video showing celebrity sponsor Jim Breuer freaking out during a taping of a Pizza Hut commercial (spoofing the Christian Bale video), a viral video featuring the popular High Five Guys, a popular promotion to select a Twintern (who now has over 1 million Facebook fans) who works with the team to push out special promotions through their Twitter account, the development of a new website that will both recognize repeat customers and offer one page ordering (first in the industry) and finally a popular iPhone app that enables consumers to order pizza. They're even using lead back targeting to advertise to people who have watched their viral videos – a fairly unique approach to behavioral and leadback targeting through display media. They're also using a visual dashboard to track all of the key metrics and while they don't have a hard formula for ROI, they're in the process of fine tuning reporting and analytics.

What can interactive marketers learn from this?

• The consumer landscape has changed for good and brands are recognizing that
• Now is the time to start shifting some time and resources to owned and earned media and integrate it alongside your paid media tactics
• Even the brands at the front end of social media are still trying to figure out how to measure it
• You really can order a pizza through an iPhone app as Bob's pizza just arrived as he wraps up

How Social Media Email Marketing Boost Customer Reach

For years, rumors have circulated that email marketing is dying and teenagers the world over have proclaimed email as, “something old people do”.

Whether you agree or disagree that email has one foot in the grave, many online marketers are finding effective ways to leverage email as part of a social media marketing mix. Integrating email and social media was the topic of discussion at a session during the MIMA Summit last week with Loren McDonald, VP of Industry Releations, SilverPop and Brian Brown, Director of Modern Marketing, ideapark.

Social sharing options embedded in online content have helped increase distribution and reach for thousands of web sites. One of the most common ways email has been used in a social context is “Forward to a Friend”. However, the tried and true ‘Forward to a Friend’ link has less than .1% CTR, so many marketers have taken it upon themselves to find a new way to circulate content amongst networks.

Alternatively, there is the ‘Share to Social’ (S2S) link. While S2S is relatively new, a .5% CTR gives early reason to be optimistic according to a Silverpop study.

The Silverpop Share-to-Social study also reported that S2S is likely to result in sharing of content with 150 to 200 people on average. In contrast, a “forward to a friend” link may reach an additional 1 to 2 people. Share to social use results in a 24% increase in reach on average.

How does Share-To-Social (S2S) Work? S2S is a call to action such as ‘Share this Newsletter’ followed by graphical links to various social network or content sharing sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, StumbleUpon and so forth. all within the email message.

If you look at most blogs and online publishers, social sharing buttons are not anything new. In fact, TopRank created one of the first tools for blogs to embed social bookmarking buttons over 3 years ago. Posting them within email messages, however, is catching on and there are a few guidelines to follow for successful integration:

Understand what motivates subscribers to share
People share for different reasons including:

• Self Interest: People share because they think they will be rewarded. i.e. sweepstakes
• Altruism: sharing makes them feel good
• Validation: sharing feeds the ego
• Affinity: sharing makes people feel more a part of the community
• Prurience: sharing makes people feel less guilty for gawking

Target the right social networks and media
Is the use of 4 or 5 networks the right number? If not, how many is?

Be sure to do your homework and identify on which social sites your target audience is spending time. Of those, on which sites are they interacting or sharing content the most?

Once you have this identified, don’t shut down the research. Continue to follow the target audiences to make sure they aren’t migrating to a new site leaving you unaware.

Keys to targeting the right networks:

• Utilize 3^rd party research
• Survey subscribers/monitor network activity
• Test and analyze click/share activity
• Identify subtrends i.e. high value sharers
• Kill the losers

Educate subscribers on how/why to share
Despite the growth, ‘sharing’ is still early among some audiences.

Alongside the ‘share this’ buttons, consider adding a ‘what’s this’ button and give them instructions on how and why to use the feature.

Encourage people to share. Placing the links on the page/email may not be enough. Just like with anything marketing, you need to include call to actions to get people interacting.

Once you have integrated S2S, the next step is to identify high value sharers. Who are the ‘few’ people that often share your content and have a larger than average network?

Optimize email sharing design and link location
Where to put the links?

Test different placement of the ‘share this’ links. Top, Middle, Bottom, Sidebar etc.

At the very least, by moving it around you can avoid users getting used to seeing it and therefore ignoring it.

Eight ways to create shareworthy content:

1. Trustworthy - Brand and source of content or offer is widely known and trusted
2. Tap into Tribes - Message content speaks to tribal groups within subscriber base
3. Obvious - Essence of the email content to be shared is obvious, simple to grasp
4. Easy to Share - Sharing links are easy to find and use
5. Social Acumen - Targets the right social networks and social acumen of subscribers
6. Creates Value - Must provide value or recipients will not share
7. Rewards/Incentives
8. Great Content

What B2B emails are shareworthy? Articles and statistics.

What’s not shareworthy? Long newsletters, negative news and highly personalized emails.

Analyze, test and refine for increased sharing

Test – what’s working and what’s not including:

• Copy
• Link style
• Link location
• Broad vs narrow focus messages
• Viral-only messages
• High-value sharers

Key Takeaways for integrating social networks and email:

• Narrow your network focus
• Make it easy to share
• Determine what your subscribers find most ‘shareworthy’
• Identify and reward your key influencers
• Test everything and don’t be afraid to fail

At our agency TopRank, we’ve been implementing email marketing programs in conjunction with other online marketing and lead generation efforts including social media for 5 years. A good starting point to improving email effectiveness is to read some of the better email marketing tactics online and this recent post from WebProNews on why social media isn’t replacing email.

Are you implementing email marketing with social networking? (outside of the emails that occur within the social network) What have you found to be the best/worst practices?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. |
How Social Media & Email Marketing Boost Customer Reach |
15 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

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Social Media in Healthcare Marketing: Making the Case

For marketers in any industry—from manufacturing to real estate to banking, and everything in between—making the business case for social media isn’t a quick and easy process.

But in healthcare marketing, it’s an understatement to say that gaining buy-in for social media isn’t easy.

Consider for a moment just what healthcare marketers are up against:

• A multitude of privacy regulations
• Nursing and support staff shortages
• Increasing demand for services thanks to the quickly aging Baby Boomer generation

It’s not difficult to understand why some healthcare decision makers may be slow to adopt social media. But instead of throwing in the towel, consider these 5 tips for making the case for social media in healthcare marketing:

1. The movement has started. Healthcare may not be as quick to adopt social media as some other industries. But there are many hospitals and healthcare organizations that are quietly innovating on the social web, as Digital Influence blogger Rohit Bhargava suggests.

In a recent post, he points out that there are 367 US hospitals using social media. They are responsible for 10,000 Tweets from 267 Twitter accounts. When making your individual case for social media in healthcare marketing, leverage some of the great examples out there:

• Patients Like Me is an online community site created in 2004 by MIT engineers to allow patients to share information and their personal experiences. The goal is to connect patients with the same or similar diseases so they can rely on one another for support.
• The Center for Connected Health community website is designed for healthcare providers and policymakers. Community members can discuss controversial topics, and share best practices, new ideas, upcoming events and research.
• Individual hospitals are involved in social media efforts as well, Bhargava points out. The Sarasota Memorial Hospital uses Twitter to answer patient questions and provide immediate customers service. In March, the Henry Ford Hospital used Twitter to connect with 1,900 people and answer questions during an actual brain surgery.

2. Patients—and potential future patients—are involved in social networks. A March 2009 report (pdf) from Nielson Online found that 67% of the global online population takes part in online communities. Plus, time spent on social media sites now accounts for almost 10% of all time online.

Clear and simple, patients use social media. Hospitals can utilize social channels to answer healthcare- or illness-related questions or simply provide medical information—just as the Sarasota Memorial and Henry Ford hospitals have done. If the numbers aren’t convincing enough, consider this: Patients are comparison shopping for hospitals, CNN reports.

With the increasing cost of healthcare and a growing number of available hospitals, it’s only natural. Social media is just one tool for hospitals and healthcare organizations to stay top of mind and relevant for patients.

3. Patients are online, and so are physicians. Consider a few statistics from Manhattan Research:

• As much as 89% of US physicians rely on the Internet as an essential part of their professional practice
• Approximately 64% of physicians now use smartphones
• 41% of physicians’ research takes place online The bottom line is physicians and other healthcare personnel are already spending time online.

Additionally, Doctors have their own social network, Sermo, which has over 110,000 practicing MD’s participating.

By embracing social media, hospitals and healthcare organizations can provide their current staff with a mechanism to share information and best practices. Plus, organizations can use their social efforts as an incentive when recruiting new employees.

4. Healthcare is top of mind, in the news and constantly changing. Particularly since the last presidential election, healthcare has been thrust into the public spotlight. From universal healthcare to electronic health records to patient privacy, there’s a new healthcare news item in the headlines every day. Social media can provide an effective mechanism for hospitals and healthcare organizations to stay involved in healthcare legislation discussion.

Take the lead from Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. The hospital CEO is using his blog to discuss and comment on potential health insurance legislation – among other topics.

5. Social media efforts don’t have to involve a lot of costs. Budget cuts have become a common business practice across nearly all industries—hospitals and healthcare organizations are no exception. But social media campaigns don’t have to include a significant financial investment.

Consider the healthcare marketing success story from the Mayo Clinic. The Mayo Clinic in 2005 began utilizing social media channels to promote and increase downloads of its podcasts. The clinic posts the podcasts, along with video and text, on its blogs. It also leverages a Facebook fan page, a Twitter account and a YouTube channel. Downloads of the podcasts have increased by more than 8,000%, thanks to using three free social channels.

Be sure to read this recent interview with Lee Aase, the manager of syndication and social media for Mayo Clinic, where he offers specific advice for other companies on his “MacGyver-style” testing , developing a social media strategy, winning management approval and measuring social media ROI.

Post Script: Here’s a newly launched blog in the B2B Healthcare category of Medical Imaging from McKesson (a TopRank client). It integrates with a Picture Archiving and Communication System web site.

These tips, of course, are just a starting point to help healthcare marketers make the case for social media in healthcare marketing and creating better connections with the healthcare community, hospitals and patients. What examples of social media in healthcare have you found worth pointing out?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. |
Social Media in Healthcare Marketing: Making the Case |
9 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

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Why DIY SEO Can Fail

It’s crazy how often we can draw parallels between seemingly incongruous pieces of our random daily adventures. And it’s cool, too, because sometimes these parallels lead us to an eye-opening revelation or down the path toward enlightenment.

I’ve recently been negotiating with what I can only describe as a blinding, burning, evil demon of pain that has taken up residence in my back — not to be overly dramatic or anything.

I fell asleep wrong on the plane ride home from SMX East and a wicked gnome that must have been hiding in the floatation device under my seat took the opportunity to wiggle its way into my awkwardly curled body. I can only assume that he’s since invited a hundred of his closest friends and family to stay the week at the vacation resort that is my back — and, man, are they an inconsiderate, messy bunch.

All that’s to say that I’ve been searching for solutions to my life-consuming pain problem, and first off, I want to thank everyone who offered me their well wishes and their experiences of what worked and didn’t work when faced with a similar problem themselves. I don’t think I’d be dealing with my uninvited guest so civilly if I wasn’t so encouraged by everyone’s stories of having been there and getting through it.

Secondly, I learned a very important lesson following my failed and desperate attempts at do-it-yourself pain fixes. In short, there are times when you should leave it up to the professionals. Also, there are times when trying to do it yourself can end up making things worse.

It’s not because I’m dumb or cheap or frantically grasping for relief, any relief — okay, that last one may be true. But the monetary cost I’m willing to pay to relieve the pain knows almost no bounds.

And I talked to at least 20 people who had experienced back pain, and I weighed their solutions thoughtfully to decide which might be right for me. But in the end, deciding that procedure X was the saving grace I had searched for ended up causing me more pain, simply because I had failed to get an accurate assessment of the problem before selecting the solution.

Now procedure X can offer incredible relief to back pain sufferers. I had no less than ten impressive reviews of how procedure X has changed their life for the better. And I had a glowing recommendation about one procedure X practitioner in my area. I made an appointment and headed to the office as soon as my work day was over.

But here’s the rub. I’m no expert, but I think it’s safe to describe procedure X as a method for correcting misalignment of the vertebrae. When the bones of the spine are out of place, they end up irritating the nerves in the area, which is what causes a sensation of pain. Turns out procedure X was the solution to a problem I didn’t have.

There are other sources that can create similar sensations of pain. For instance, a pulled muscle in the back can result in swelling which can also affect the nerves in the back area and cause pain. Addressing a muscle problem with a method that affects the bones is a bit misguided. But hey, that was me 48 hours ago.

I had decided on the solution before having a complete understanding of the source of my problem or my final goal. It’s a conundrum the marketing world is all too familiar with.

How often does an organization approach an Internet marketing company and say, “I want to be involved in social media,” only to answer the following “why?” with “I hear it’s good for business.”

There’s this all-too-common drive to jump on a technology bandwagon before fully understanding the benefits, drawbacks, and resources required for implementation. I heard a good example during a session at SMX East last week: “Should I be hosting my videos on my site or on YouTube?” to which the panelist replied, “Well, what are your goals? Driving traffic to the site? Garnering video views? Brand visibility? Having your site show up in blended search results? Answer that question first, then you’ll discover the answer to the question you just asked.”

Though, in retrospect, that sounds a little harsh. I had only the best intentions when I decided on how I’d fix my issue. I did research. The solution was highly rated. But my first problem was failing to have my problem accurately diagnosed — which, in truth, only an expert can do.

There were some other ideas I considered back ups if procedure X didn’t work. But I’m not fooling around with prescribing my solution to self-diagnosed issues any more. I’m going to my doctor, darn it. And she’ll be able to use her expertise and resources to identify the cause of my problem and offer up a fitting solution.

Funny thing is, a Web site has uncanny parallels to the human body. There are problems that will display for all to see, and there are problems that lie under the surface and occur deep within. Irritation in one area of the body can resonate in another part of the body just as an obstacle on one page of a site can send a ripple effect down the entire conversion funnel. And like a doctor treating a patient’s ailment, a competent SEO trained in identifying the source of problems and weighing the risk and benefit of possible solutions can work wonders on a poorly functioning Web site.

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Social Media, Search & Reputation Management

We’ve reached my last liveblog post of SMX East 2009. But it’s not the last of my reporting from the conference. Don’t miss today’s SEM Synergy podcast straight out of SMX East.

I had an opportunity to interview conference speaker and president of paid search management platform ClickEquations, Craig Danuloff, and conference interviewer extraordinaire, Mike McDonald of WebProNews. Tune in to WebmasterRadio.fm at 3 Eastern/12 Pacific today!

Craig shares highly-actionable tactics for a query-based approach to PPC as well as insights about the state of many organization’s search campaigns and a synergistic approach to SEO and PPC. Mike offers up his tips for making connections and getting information from leaders of the Internet marketing space. Bruce and I also share some candid observations about our time at the show. Check it out later today or download it anytime from WMR or iTunes.

Following that public service announcement is another great service — technical and strategic recommendations for online reputation management. Here’s the panel:

Moderator: Chris Sherman, Executive Editor, Search Engine Land

Speakers:
Brent Csutoras, Social Media Consultant, Brent Csutoras, Inc
Rhea Drysdale, COO & Co-Founder, Outspoken Media
Jordan Kasteler, Co-Founder, Search & Social
Chris Silver Smith, Director of Optimization Strategies, KeyRelevance
Marty Weintraub, President, aimClear

Chris Sherman says that in the online environment you have to react to things quickly and with little preparation. There’s a form of chaos that, despite the preparation and everything you do, still comes up.

Brent Csutoras starts us off. He’s going to talk about social’s role in rep management. It’s always a nightmare to get attacked — even if you DESERVE it. But social media can come to the rescue. There is professional social networking, social networking, social media, social aggregation and informational sites.

Remember that social media isn’t just a fad — it’s the direction we’re moving in. It’s good to have these platforms as a way to clean up your search results and gain more search real estate. And it’s also good to have them as a means of presence on the Web and visibility.

He spends most of his time on social aggregation sites so he’s going to stick with what he does most. In some of these cases, it may not be a direct takeaway. It may be more intensive and require the work of a creative team. Because with social aggregation sites, it’s about quality. Think outside the box and be creative.

Using Social on Social

You can use social aggregation sites on your own social media campaigns. We’re starting to see tweets show up on top social aggregation sites. That gives you more links to the Twitter profile. It doesn’t take many links to get your Twitter account to move up the search rankings.

Videos are very popular. It can be corporate, as long as it’s interesting. Getting good links to your social media profiles will help them rank. Flickr pictures can have links. You can write questions on Yahoo! Answers — and even answer them yourself, if you want. Provocative and edgy questions/answers can also be submitted to aggregation sites. It only takes a couple quality links to get a submission on a social aggregation site to rank.

Launch a Social Campaign

IKEAhacker.blogspot.com is an idea like this. IKEA lets people submit ways they have modified IKEA products. Not only will it be viral, but it can speak to the social community. Modifications are very popular in certain spaces. GM’s FastLane Blog is another good example of this.

Submit Third-Party Content

It doesn’t have to be yours, it just has to be positive.

Chris Silver Smith is up next. He once knew someone who was wrongly targeted by an animal rights group and had to get his information wiped from search so the group wouldn’t come after him at home. He’s helped school districts and small towns being vilified in Wikipedia. And Wikipedia is the focus of this presentation.

Addressing reputation management issues:

• Pushing negative content off page one of SERPs

Generating strong neutral / positive content
Filing complaints to remove negative content
Link-building to push up good content

To push down the negative results, you’ll need to seek out strongly ranking sites. Wikipedia fits the bill. Having an article page link in Wikipedia does wonders for a result you want to move up.

• Article about company/brand
  • Subject must meet minimum notability requirements
  • Ask established Wikipedian to author
  • Must be written with neutral P.O.V.
  • Have reference citations
  • Categorize to rank quickly
• Other articles pertaining to brand name
  • For example, if a well-ranking celebrity is a spokesperson for a brand, that celebrity’s Wikipedia article may be able to include a link to the company.
• Generate unrelated article for identical name. WARNING: Short-term tactic — avoid.
• Provide Wikimedia Commons image(s)
  • A photo about the subject can be uploaded to an article. In the file name you can include your brand name and a link.

Negative content within Wikipedia:

• Is it cited? If not, request deletion.
• Is it slanted? Request change due to goal of neutral P.O.V.
• Is the page repeatedly defaced? Request lock on edits.
• Is it minor? Request removable as non-noteworthy.

Finding content to push up: Do a search for the term or related terms and start link building to them.

Request removal of unfavorable content:

• File complaints to remove negative content (review terms and conditions)
• DMCA take-down notices to Web host, ISP, Google, Yahoo!, Bing, etc.
• Cease and desist letters

Rhea Drysdale is next with an interesting view on taking advantage of negative publicity of competitors. A company she once worked with had an alternative to QuickBooks

What’s the secret to managing your online reputation? Something is going to happen. Don’t pretend it’s not. But besides knowing that, you have to know what’s happening in the brand management space.

Brand trust is falling — 52 percent in 1997 and 22 percent in 2008.

What ORM clients seem to have in common:

• No line of defense: The big problem oftentimes is that your results are just empty, so when something bad happens, it will rise to the top.
• Brand doesn’t want to speak up: When a brand won’t speak up, all the negative stuff will dominate the conversation.
• No intention of righting the wrong: A client that isn’t willing to right the wrong is more-or-less impossible to help.
• They’re making the problem worse: A company will sometimes follow-up negative comments with a comment trying to speak up for themselves. But adding their brand name as fresh content on the page is actually reinforcing the authority of that negative review.
• It’s just a tough industry: If there’s no social areas in your industry, set them up yourself. Launch a help center, for instance.

Outspoken Media has an ORM guide you should check out for more.

Jordan takes the mic next. He’s gong to talk about setting up social profiles across social media sites. First you have to register the social profiles. A tool like knowem.com will show you where your brand name is and isn’t available on social sites, and they can also build out the profiles for you.

Use your company name as the username whenever possible and include the company name as the vanity URL when possible. Both of these steps will get your name/keywords in the URL. Include links to your other social profiles within social profiles. This will give them higher equity.

Keep your profiles active and fresh — add friends, join groups, comment — because it will help your profiles rank. Once your profiles start populating search results, start link building to get them ranking even better. This will likely lead to higher activity on the profiles, and that requires monitoring.

Don’t let things spin out of control. Track and monitor the social space:

• Buzz/trends
• Blogs/RSS feeds
• E-mail alerts
• Social convos
• Forums and message boards

Technorati lets you monitor the blogosphere and you can sort by authority. BlogPulse.com has a good conversation tracker that you can use by keyword. WhosTalkin aggregates conversation based around your selected keywords/brand. Keotag.com lets you search for tagged blog posts across several social sites. Twitter’s advanced search tool looks for emoticons next keywords to help signify positive and negative attitude. Tweetbeep.com, Yahoo! Alerts, Google Alerts, BoardTracker, BoardReader — lots more tools he’s sharing with us.

Marty Weintraub presents next, starting with a cheery note: if it can burn, it will. You have about three days to mobilize. With a nasty PR storm on the horizon:

First: explain personalized search for key executives. Look it up.
Then: do an inventory of your assets. You can use PPC, YouTube, Digg, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, PR and lots of money to your advantage.
Next: Define a filtered keyword monitoring grid, confirm general keywords monitored [brand sucks], [I hate brand], etc., and distribute that to the team. Bring in the analytics team to monitor.

Make it known that the brand is listening on all channels. You want to make the point that you mean to serve the public first. Explain that you’re trying to make good and make friends. Redirect damaging inbound links to boost SEO >o< (LOL).

Set up your tactics:

• Optimized On-Strategy Content
• Coordinate Across All Channels
• What Are we Actually Going to DO?

Do a SERP snapshot and report on a daily basis to the client. Sentiment report is good too. Identify if it’s in the Universal Search results and in the news cycle. Look at the related searches. Measure the social chatter in a report. Analyze case-by-case on whether or not to respond. But the number one thing you should do is put your defense in place.

Here’s the wrap:

• Mobilize
• Demystify personalized search
• Inventory of assets
• Define filtered keyword monitoring grid
• Determine and execute strategy and tactics
• Establish analytics and reporting

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Follow Me Follow You: WhyFollow Twitter Poll

With Twitter riding the social media wave to a $1 billion valuation, the attention from celebrities, usefulness for everything from real-time communications in natural disasters to serving as a profitable marketing channel, a momentum of interest has spawned in how to make the most out of spending time on Twitter. Like any tool, Twitter is what you make of it. But Twitter and social communication applications like it are a lot more than just tools. One question about Twitter best practices that often comes up deals with how people (not bots) decide to follow one another on Twitter.

I ran an informal poll (on Twitter of course, another of it’s many uses) to proof a few ideas I had on what factors weigh most heavily for people when deciding whether to follow another Twitter account. My initial influences included location, bio, offline connections and others. You can read the replies to that poll here: #whyfollow. A self-assessment in combination with the informal poll feedback are what power the potential answers in this Reader Poll.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.

By sharing your top reasons for following others on Twitter, we can all learn how to be more useful to the communities we’re trying to reach.

If one or more of your answers are in the “Other” category, then please add them in the comments below. Sharing this poll with others is GREATLY appreciated. Can we get over 200 responses? How about 500?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2009. |
Follow Me Follow You: WhyFollow Twitter Poll |
24 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

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5 Twitter Tips for Staying Authentic and Transparent

Any marketer who’s successfully made the move to social media will tell you the rules of traditional marketing have to be reexamined. That’s particularly true with Twitter, where brands have just 140 characters to inform, evoke emotion and inspire action. One of the most basic and critical rules for brands on Twitter? Be authentic and transparent in all you do.

Check out these 5 Twitter tips for staying authentic and transparent:

1. Reveal who’s behind the Tweets. It doesn’t necessarily matter who it is—the CEO, the social media manager or a marketing intern. It just matters that the person is in fact a person. Putting a face and name behind your Tweets through a photo and brief bio can help followers relate to and connect with your brand.

Kodak is an excellent example of a company that’s put a face to the brand on Twitter. The company’s official Tweeter, chief blogger and social media manager Jennifer Cisney (@kodakcb), leaves no guesses as to who she is and what she does. Her Tweets strike a healthy balance between letting her personality shine through and offering too much irrelevant information (i.e., “Sitting on my couch watching Desperate Housewives and eating popcorn.”)

2. Show some personality. It doesn’t have to be all business all the time. Have some fun with your Tweets by telling humorous stories or poking a little fun at yourself every now and then.

Part of what makes Ford Motor Co. head of social media and Tweeterati Scott Monty (@scottmonty) so successful and popular is his ability to make followers feel like he’s an old college buddy or family friend. His bio tells his followers he’s “a generally nice guy.” But his genuine Tweets—a combination of marketing insight, Ford and auto news, and his own personal anecdotes—lets them know that’s the case. (Scott Monty video interview here)

3. Admit when you’re wrong. With the explosion of social networks over the past few years, bad decisions and unfortunate snafus are exposed sooner rather than later. So it’s important for brands to fess up first and show their willingness to rectify the situation. With that said, why not turn a negative situation into a positive one?

After you’ve admitted to a mistake, strike up some friendly competition by asking your followers to submit their own “biggest oops moment.” Choose—or better yet allow followers to vote on—the best story. Offer some sort of an incentive to the winner, whether it’s a coupon, a free product or a gift certificate.

4. Get to know your followers. Let’s face it: Your followers—and potential customers—have more on their minds than just your brand. Ask your followers questions about themselves, gain a sense of who they are and customize your responses to them based on their personal details.

In the end, not only will you be viewed as an authentic and trusted brand on Twitter, you’ll also obtain valuable information on customer demographics.

5. Don’t get carried away by your accomplishments. With trial-and-error, know-how and a little luck, you’re likely to find much success in your social media and Twitter efforts. But don’t let it go to your head. Keep in mind that it’s your followers who gave you that success.

You’d be hard pressed to find a Twitterati that’s been more successful at using Twitter for customer service than Frank Eliason (@comcastcares) from Comcast. But what keeps them relevant and useful for followers over the long term is their ability to remain genuine and humble amidst widespread popularity. (Frank Eliason interview here)

While there are any number of ways to fail while trying to effectively market on Twitter, social media usage by companies has matured enough for a growing number of good examples to emerge. Being aware of what’s working for others can be priceless insight for how to develop your own genuine communications and brand experience with customers on the social web.

What are some brands that have done a good job at staying authentic and transparent on Twitter? What other Twitter tips do you have for remaining authentic and transparent?

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5 Twitter Tips for Staying Authentic and Transparent |
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The Interactive Attribution Wave is Live

After talking about the topic of attribution for several years now, I'm very excited to be publishing a Wave that highlights the key companies in the interactive attribution space. The companies are: Atlas, ClearS, Coremetrics, Theorem, Trueffect, Visual IQ and x+1. You may not have heard of some of these companies, and many of these companies don't even consider themselves competitors. Two signs that we are really at the leading edge of this topic, and have a lot of room to grow. That said, we found some robust solutions out there that are doing a lot to advance marketers' abilities to more accurately measure and buy online media.

We evaluated the current attribution offerings in the market as they relate to the key online marketing channels: display, search, email, affiliate, social, etc. There are a lot of ad networks, agencies and vendors out there who also do a great job of attributing credit within or across these channels, but the vendors selected for the wave illustrated the most functionality and robustness. We looked a a wide variety of criteria when scoring each vendor, but took particular interest in:

• Depth of Insight: We took a serious look at how accurate the attribution measurement was.Some companies use custom algorithms to get at the heart of the attribution problem. Other companies require the marketer to come up with the various weights or values they want to assign to the first, second, or third interaction in a customer's purchase path.
• Ease of Use: Most marketers are just starting to understand how to think about attributing credit across marketing touch points, so tools in the market need to be intuitive, instructive, and easy to use. Some companies solve this with well designed dashboards, while others offer a full-service consulting offering.
• Integration: You might have noticed a few site analytics and ad serving tools in our list. Obviously, a client of Doubleclick would think twice about how much they want to switch to Atlas in order to get their attribution capabilities. A lot of the solutions we reviewed are tied to larger products or services, and must be integrated into a marketer's suite of tools and business process – no small task in this day and age.
• Strategy: The interactive attribution space is growing rapidly, and so each vendor's strategy for growth and market leadership was a key factor in their score. We assume that competition in this space will only increase, so we looked closely at how well each offering was set up to be successful in the next few years.

I encourage you to review the Wave. I would love to hear your comments: who you see as the next player in the space, and how marketers will shift their measurement practices over time.I also wrote a companion document to the wave that takes a look at the interactive attribution landscape, and identifies some sectors of the industry that may become bigger players in the near term.

 

 

  

 

 

The Social Media Marketing Handbook

When I started my social media marketing firm three years ago I had an advantage. By autumn, 2006, I had passed through New Media Strategies as Technology Strategist and Edelman’s elite Public Affairs Online Advocacy team. Even so, my business partner, Mark Harrison, and I made a lot of mistakes, walked through mine fields, and eventually started taking more hills than we lost. I started Abraham Harrison almost exactly three years ago and I would have really appreciated Friends with Benefits: A Social Media Marketing Handbook by Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo. Actually, I am kind of bummed that I didn’t write this book myself because I certainly could have and should have — but I didn’t. (Via Marketing Conversation)

Friends with Benefits spoke to me because I have “lonely nerd” deep inside of me and this book goes all the way back into the yesteryears of 80s computing when I, too, was surfing the proto-Internet via a 1200-baud modem. Like the book asserts in chapter one, we lonely nerds weren’t lonely, “the early BBSs were actually very social” and so were we. Fast-forward from the early 80s — when I was doing dial-up and geeking out in Honolulu Bulletin Board Systems — twenty years and “social media” is invented. No, re-invented.

Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo get it and they lay it all out into this book and basically wrote the book on starting and building Abraham Harrison — or a firm or agency like it — from scratch. And not just starting an agency but integrating social media marketing into your advertising or PR agency or even adding smart social media capacity into your big, medium or even small business. I am impressed.

According to the book, “social media marketing is using social media channels to promote your company and its products. This type of marketing should be a subset of your online marketing activities, complementing traditional web-based promotional strategies like email newsletters and online advertising campaigns. Social media marketing qualifies as a form of viral or word-of-mouth marketing.” The goal of Friends with Benefits is to take social media, social media marketing, viral marketing, and word-of-mouth marketing and answer “so what” and “what now?”

What I like about this book is that it is not a book on Twitter or Facebook. It answers what and why with a how that is comprehensive and includes geekier-but-essential topics such as RSS, corporate blogging, and even social media news releases. The real value of the book kicks in in chapter 3, “Flagging a Ride: Finding the Right Bloggers and Communities” when the book goes into the explicit details surrounding blogger discovery, blogger prospecting, how to choose the right blog and blogger based on their type (personal, topical, or corporate) and popularity (size matters), including how best to judge bloggers and blogs using various analytics and metrics tools like Compete.com, Alexa Ranking, Google PR, and Technorati Rank. And from more instinctual reviews such as checking out Google Trends, mentions on Google, the number of RSS subscribers on Feedburner, mentions on blogrolls, popularity on Twitter/Facebook/FriendFeed, frequency of posting, volume of comments, professionalism, etc.

Chapter 4 addresses Netiquette, something that a lot of books give very little lip service to — a small sacrifice to Internet protocol. Friends with Benefits offers quite a solid list of lessons in nettiquette: Listen first, take baby steps, make friends, lay your cards on the table, bloggers aren’t journalists, your reputation precedes you, don’t be a social media spammer, and don’t fib — probably the most serious list I have found, and one that I have learned needs to be taken dead-seriously. I tried to suggest my favorites, but they’re all important to consider, although making friends — spending time together outside the office, if you will — is probably one of the most important because when you reach out to anyone for help, especially when it is earned media (meaning you’re not paying these bloggers — or anyone — to write about you or your client), they’re going to ask, “who the hell are you?” and “do I know you?” If you’re nobody they know, people are more likely to not make decisions that are compassionate or human, they’re more likely to just assume that you’re not much better than a bot — don’t let them.

Chapter 5 deals with the social media pitch. Make it compelling, relevant, timely, exclusive, personal, brief, comprehensive, conversational, linked, access, and offers an incentive (or gift, in our parlance). This is exactly the list I would have written — this is the list my team would have written, too. There are also warning about blogola (payola) and other untoward things not to do, including best practices in follow-up. In fact, the value-add of this list is amazing and with a little help you could very well use Friends with Benefits as a play-book for your burgeoning (or suffering) social media practice — and the only reason I am proud instead of threatened is that my company actually offers all the doing of the work for our clients and not just social media consulting. That said, this book is going to put a hell of a lot of social media experts (SME) out to pasture when their bosses read this book and learn that their director of social media doesn’t know what he’s doing. I recommend this book to all the SMEs out there — read this before your boss does.

Chapter 6 is titled “Measuring Success: How to Monitor the Web.” This chapter answers quite a few questions about defining success and return on investment (ROI), the holy grails of social media marketing and the reason why too many companies who need SMM are hesitant to take the next step, boldly. What’s smart about this chapter is that Barefoot and Szabo tell it like it is: you need to ask your client and yourself how you define success. Are you interested in brand-building? Growing traffic? Conversion to sales? Social media mentions? Increased buzz? How are you going to do this? Monitoring? Listening? The issue of managing expectations is also raised. Unlike banner ads, that turn on or off like a tap, social media marketing can be a slow-burn. Being “realistic” and “humble” are recommended. Then, after discussing what success could be, Friends with Benefits discusses web monitoring and how to keep track of your successes and failures and then how to follow-up. Following up is key. Moving the relationship forward it key, too. Bloggers — indeed everyone — hates being used and there are too many examples of a win, a success, and a post not being followed-up with a neighborly thank you in the form of a private email or a public comment. Remember how your momma told you to be polite and to write a thank you note? Well, come on! Make momma proud.

Chapter 7 addresses risk. And there are risks, such as the campaign not getting off the ground, blogger backlash, the crowd talks back, you get rejected, your initiative dies on the vine, you put all your eggs in social media and your other channels shrivel, not being proactive (or staying in front of it), you will be measures, someone gets cold feet in the organization and the campaign is killed, or even get too much success too soon and you collapse — #fail — under its weight. Good advice at the end: proceed with caution, not cowardice.” In my experience, campaigns fail from lack of commitment — from fear and cowardice. Before you get out there to engage, you had better be willing to commit: be brave.

Chapter 8 deals with damage control and crisis management and is short and sweet, dealing with how to deal with crises with a useful crisis management primer. There’s too much stuff in there that I can’t be pitch here but they do recommend that it is essential to keep head of the crisis: create a crisis response document, create a response blog and social media platform (and reputation) right now instead of after the crisis occurs (though it is never too late) and be willing to engage and not hide down at the bottom of the spider hole.

I am going to go through the rest of the book faster because I really believe that the most important book comes in the first 8 chapters. Chapter 9 reminds us that MySpace is still amazingly relevant with about 125 million users worldwide and needs to be respected and the members can and should be engaged if appropriate. Same thing with Chapter 10 on the subject of Facebook, offering case studies, including a case study my firm took part in: Sharp’s LifeChangingBox.com campaign on Facebook done for Lowe NY. Chapter 11 deals with YouTube and other video-sharing sites. And Chapter 12 briefly addresses microblogging and Twitter. Each of these chapters are brief primers, dealing a little bit with applications, with widgets, with culture and protocol, and a little about marketing.

To me, chapters 8-12 are throw-aways. If you’re looking for a book on Twitter marketing, there are better more comprehensive guides. To avoid chapters 8-12 would have been too much of an omission and social networks systems are too sexy right now to leave out; however this book is invaluable and there’s nothing like it out there in terms of a realistic portrayal of what works and what doesn’t. This books teaches you to measure twice and cut once and to trains the reader up on the culture, the expectations, and protocol of the social web. Folks online are not numbers or clicks or even consumers, they’re people and they’re having — and have had — lots of parties, socials, and get-togethers before you ever got there and you need to be very respectful of the them and their current conversation and when and if to interrupt.

This book isn’t out yet. You’ll have to wait as I reviewed an advance galley of the final book. What I would do is pre-order the book — it is sure to be something you will consume and maybe keep to yourself as your very own competitive advantage. Now that I see that the book was produced by No Starch Press I kick myself again — I pitched them on this book three years ago. Oh well, like I said at the beginning of this post, the best man and woman won.

Chris Abraham is co-founder and principal of Abraham Harrison LLC, an international consulting group with specialties in online word-of-mouth/conversation marketing and online business & technology strategy advising. See his profile, contact Chris via email, Twitter, or leave a comment below.

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