Introducing Social-smart’s Events Services

October 11, 2009 · 4 Comments

There is no doubt that events, whether they be trade shows or conferences, real or virtual, are seeing huge benefits from social media technologies, particularly when it comes to audience participation and feedback – as I found out at the recent at the recent Social Media Arizona [http://socialmediaaz.org] #smaz event. The Twitter #hashtag for the event tells its own story. Whether you could attend in person or not almost didn’t matter as you could follow proceedings pretty closely by following the Twitter stream – even the main talking points of the presentations were Tweeted as they were given.

This is certainly the future of such events and Social-smart is not slow in offering to provide the technology to companies looking to gain the most from their event. Jeramiah Owyang wrote a great piece about the importance of social media for events back in August -

http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2009/08/11/playbook-how-to-integrate-social-technologies-with-virtual-events/ – and I certainly can’t improve on that and I commend to read it in order to get a full understanding of the services we offer here. The key takeaways from that article are as follows:

Firstly,

“To be successful, virtual –and real world events must have a strategy that integrates social technologies, before, during, and after”

The 3 key principles of a successful social media strategy for both real and virtual events are:

1) Events should integrate with existing communities and social networks where they exist.

2) Events should have a strategy that includes the before and after –not just during.

3) The audience can assert control over the event, so encourage audience participation and know when to get out of the way.”

These are the core principles by which we offer the following Social media services and virtual event development and management.

We aim to increase the community-building and reach of traditional events. Promote registrations and participation, before, during, and after the event – with on-going engagement that continues the community experience long after the event ends, for increasing conversions, and building deeper customer relationships.

Our options include

Pre-event:

Integrate with existing corporate communities and social networks.

Build anticipation: blogs, forums, Twitter groups for attendees, vendors, speakers.

Synchronize and link online ads and email blasts to social media.

Promote attendance with registrations and messaging Ning

(private social network), Facebook, LinkedIn, Xing, Twitter, etc.

During-event:

Increase audience participation, and include larger virtual audiences, by integrating live Twitter features (and video-to-video chat) into the event.

Monitor and moderate social web and chat rooms to react in real time.

Do live online/mobile polling.

Generate reports on social participation, sentiment, and influence of social web.

Post-event:

Keep virtual events open for 90+ days.

Launch surveys for feedback.

Accept user-generated content.

Aggregate all content, and offer transcript retrieval.

Blog about top reactions.

Offer regular on-going webinars, scheduled discussions, eNewsletters.

Use email to ask about follow-on opportunities, and drive conversions..

Continue the conversation…

Companies interested in our event services can contact us at events@social-smart.com

There is no doubt that corporate events and meetings, both real and virtual, are starting to explore the benefits of social media technologies, particularly when it comes to audience participation and feedback – as I found out at the recent Social Media Arizona [#smaz] event. The Twitter #hashtag for the event tells its own story. Whether you could attend in person or not almost didn’t matter as you could follow proceedings pretty closely by searching for, and following the Twitter stream – even the main talking points of the presentations were Tweeted as they were given. In fact, people are still Tweeting about it long after the conference.

This is certainly the future of events. So Social-smart is starting to offer services and technologies to companies looking to gain the most from their conferences, trade shows, and meetings. Jeramiah Owyang wrote a great piece about the importance of social media for events back in August - How To Integrate Social Technologies with Virtual Events – I certainly can’t improve on that and I recommend you to read it to fully appreciate the dramatic changes that are happening in the industry, and for the services we facilitate. The key take-aways from that article are as follows:

The 3 key principles of a successful social media strategy for both real and virtual events are:

“

Events should integrate with existing communities and social networks where they exist.
Events should have a strategy that includes the before and after — not just during.
The audience can assert control over the event, so encourage audience participation and know when to get out of the way. “

These are the core principles by which we offer the following Social media services and virtual event development and management.

We aim to increase the community-building and reach of traditional events. Promote registrations and participation, before, during, and after the event — with on-going engagement that continues the community experience long after the event ends. To help build deeper customer relationships, and increase conversions.

Our services include…

Pre-event:

•   Integrate with existing corporate communities and social networks.
•   Build communities and drive inbound traffic with brand pages and groups on public social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter); and with a private social network (Ning).
•   Promote attendance with email blasts (linked to social media) and online ads.
•   Build microsites and landing pages for driving registrations, conversions.
•   Build anticipation: blogs, forums, Twitter groups for attendees, vendors, speakers.

During-event:

•   Increase audience participation, and include larger virtual audiences, by integrating live Twitter features (and video-to-video chat) into the event.
•   Monitor and moderate social web and chat rooms to react in real time.
•   Do live online/mobile polling.
•   Generate reports on social participation, sentiment, and influence of social web.

Post-event:

•   Keep virtual events open for 90+ days.
•   Launch surveys for feedback.
•   Accept user-generated content.
•   Aggregate all content, and offer transcript retrieval.
•   Blog about top reactions.
•   Offer regular on-going webinars, scheduled discussions, eNewsletters.
•   Use email to ask about follow-on opportunities, and drive conversions..
•   Continue the conversation…

→ 4 CommentsCategories: Social Media · Social Media Marketing · Social-smart Services
Tagged: Conferences, Events, Meetings, Social Media Marketing, social strategy, Trade Shows

5 Fundamentals for Companies Looking at Social Media

August 28, 2009 · 8 Comments

We are increasingly seeing companies and marketing agencies looking at ways of leveraging social media for themselves or their clients. A lot of companies are both looking at, and asking questions about, how to monitor the conversation, or how to measure results, how to avoid bad PR, should they be using this tool or that tool – how, what, why, when, where – that is what everyone wants to know. There is also a lot of confusion out there. They all know they should be ‘doing something with social media’, a few dabble with it if it doesn’t cost them anything – like ‘being on Twitter’. But few are prepared to spend money on a properly planned out, strategically integrated social media presence – which of course is what they really need to do if they want to successfully engage with social media. I know – its the economy. That’s fine – we’re all in the same boat. In the meantime though, companies looking at social media need to understand one thing – every company’s requirements will be different – there are no ‘off-the-shelf’ answers – you are always going to need a solution that is customized to your own particular needs.

That said, there are five fundamentals of social media for business that will apply to almost any company, and of any size. Companies – if you focus your thoughts on these fundamentals as they apply to your own situation, when you are ready to seek the expertise of an outside expert, or hire one in-house, your customized solution will be all the more easy to implement.

1) You need to know who your ideal customer is

Who are they, what are the key aspects about your product or service are they interested in, what online media do they use to find out about it. I’ve talked about this before – http://socialsmart.wordpress.com/2009/07/22/the-social-smart-social-media-campaign-checklist/ – David Meerman Scott is a useful source on this topic – what he calls ‘buyer personas’. I have plugged his book ‘World wide Rave’ – http://www.amazon.com/World-Wide-Rave-Creating-Triggers/dp/0470395001/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1248299183&sr=1-1 several times before and I make no apologies for doing so again here. This is such an important point that it deserves to be No. 1 in our list of 5 fundamentals to social engagement. You cannot even begin with social media until you understand this:

“By truly understanding the market problems that your products or services solve for your buyer personas, you transform your marketing from mere product-specific, egocentric gobbledygook that only you understand and care about into valuable information people are eager to consume and that they use to make the choice to do business with your organization.”

2) You need to open up – humanize your company

Letting your potential customers & clients get to know who you are, what you do, what motivates you, why they should come to you and not the other guy is another fundamental of any social media plan. It is likely that the two primary tools for achieving that goal is the company blog, and video (your YouTube channel). If ever there were two tools that I would argue every company should use, it is these two. Here is one example of a very simple, easy to do, video introduction I came across just this week, which I think is very effective in putting a human face on a small company – http://www.youtube.com/user/MarComPros#play/all/uploads-all/0/guyVDY8qg4Q – very simple, under 2 minutes, but instantly makes them much more approachable. People like to do business with people they know, or at least know something about and are comfortable with – they like to business with people, not companies, and especially not corporations. For larger organizations and corporations, you don’t need to let people know all your staff, just introduce your bloggers and relevant personnel (see 4). You don’t even have to give their full name if they are uncomfortable with being publicly profiled – just their first name will do, as long as it is done honestly. Which leads us to point

3) You need to be honest

Social media is about engagement – if you can’t do it openly and honestly then don’t do it at all – you will be caught out, ‘named and shamed’, as we say in Britain, and publicly so! Laura & Jim’s folksy blog called ‘Wal-Marting Across America,’ is a classic case of dishonest blogging being ‘outed’. Supposedly written by two ordinary ‘fans of Wal-mart’, the blog turned out to be funded by Wal-Mart. Needless to say, Wal-mart’s perceived dishonesty got far more attention than professional writer, Laura & professional photographer Jim’s gushings about how fabulous Wal-Mart is. – http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/oct2006/db20061009_579137.htm – Another good example was also the huge backlash against 3M following the “3M Carjacks the Post-It Note Jaguar” story – http://www.murketing.com/journal/?p=1520 – that David Meerman Scoot also highlights in his book. You definitely do not want this happening to you. But it is not only about being authentic, it is also about being responsive. You need to be monitoring what people are saying about you and your products and be prepared to answer any concerns people have quickly and honestly. It is your reputation – manage it carefully – it can disappear very quickly if you don’t, or you try to ignore it. When it comes to social media ‘honesty’ is not only the ‘best’ policy – it is the only policy.

4) It is your story – it needs to come from you

There has been some debate as to whether a company’s social media should be done in-house or whether it can be done by an outside marketing agency or PR firm. Ultimately, it is YOUR story, it needs to come from YOU – that is to say someone who is a company employee and who knows the company and its products or services inside out. Who you chose to tell that story will be determined by what it is that your ideal customer is most interested in engaging with you about – that could be product developers, to customer service managers, to the company CEO – it depends on the particular situation. A good article to read on this subject is Jeramiah Owyang’s post – 3 Ways Companies Let Employees Participate in the Social Web – http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2009/07/15/three-ways-companies-let-employees-participate-in-the-soical-web/

However, that is not to say that a marketing agency or PR writer cannot write on the company’s behalf (they can certainly be vital contributors in terms of strategy). But, if you do go down that route, I would suggest that not only should this be made very clear to the audience (see 3, Honesty), but also that the writer him/herself, needs to physically engage with the necessary personnel at the company, at least on a weekly basis, if any element of authenticity in your company’s story is to reach your audience. It is still YOUR story – you need to own it – you are the one who will ultimately have to answer the feedback that arises from it.

5) Be service orientated, not sales orientated.

I think this fifth point really struck home to me after I saw Dell’s Digital Media Manager, Lionel Menchaca’s presentation at the recent BlogWell Conference. There has been a lot of back and forth over the question of measurability and Return on Investment (ROI) over the last few months, but the fundamental paradigm behind social media is that people will come to you because they are interested in what you have to offer – what has been dubbed ‘inbound’ marketing. That is never going to happen if you use social media from a sales mindset. That sales mindset is the primary reason that the old methods of ‘push’ or ‘outbound’ marketing are being universally blocked and rejected, and why so many marketers are looking at the alternatives of ‘inbound’ or ‘pull’ marketing to help companies reconnect to their customers. ‘Pull’ marketing, I would argue, can only work from a customer service orientated mindset – it won’t work from a sales mindset. However, as Dell has been finding, if you engage people honestly and from a service-minded viewpoint, people will naturally want to do business with you. Just don’t make that extra business the sole benchmark by which you measure the success of your social media. Dell doesn’t even factor it into their thinking. As we have quoted before, Lionel Menchaca’s view is:

“I frankly don’t care that we’ve done $3 million in revenue through Twitter – but I do care that Stephanie Nelson is out there answering questions and engaging with customers.” Obviously revenue is being generated through social media, and obviously it is measurable – even if it isn’t necessarily the focus. If it works for Dell it can work for you.

I hope that post helps those companies who are still looking for answers concerning social media. I am sure others will have views on other aspects of social media they think equally fundamental, and I am more than happy to see them expressed in our comments section. To companies I would say we do have the expertise to help you get the right solution for your particular needs, and have the tools that can help you plan – link checklist – and manage – link Youtube video – a successful social engagement. We are here to help – feel free to contact us today for a quote.

We are increasingly seeing companies and marketing agencies looking at ways of leveraging social media for themselves or their clients. A lot of companies are looking at, and asking questions about:

How to monitor the conversation
How to measure results
How to avoid bad publicity
What tools to use (how, what, why, when, where).

There is also a lot of confusion out there. They all know they should be ‘doing something with social media’, a few dabble with it if it doesn’t cost them anything – like ‘being on Twitter’. But few are prepared to spend money on a properly planned out, strategically integrated social media presence – which of course is what they really need to do if they want to successfully engage with social media. I know – its the economy. That’s fine – we’re all in the same boat. In the meantime though, companies looking at social media need to understand one thing – every company’s social media requirement will be different – there are no ‘off-the-shelf’ answers – you are always going to need a solution that is customized to your own particular needs.

1) You need to know who your ideal customer is

Who are they, what are the key aspects about your product or service are they interested in, what online media do they use to find out about it. I’ve talked about this before – David Meerman Scott is a useful source on understanding what he calls ‘buyer personas’. I have plugged his book, ‘World Wide Rave‘, several times before and I make no apologies for doing so again here. This is such an important point that it deserves to be No. 1 in our list of 5 fundamentals to social engagement. You cannot even begin with social media until you understand this:

2) You need to open up – humanize your company

People like to do business with people they know, or at least know something about and are comfortable with – they like to business with people, not companies, and especially not corporations. For larger organizations and corporations, you don’t need to let people know all your staff, just introduce your bloggers and relevant personnel (see 4). “It’s about people, not logos” as Jason Baer so rightly said in his post on ‘maximizing your company’s social reach‘ today. You don’t even have to give their full name if they are uncomfortable with being publicly profiled – just their first name will do, as long as it is done honestly. Which leads us to point

3) You need to be honest

Social media is about engagement – if you can’t do it openly and honestly then don’t do it at all – you will be caught out, ‘named and shamed’, (as us Brits say), and publicly so! Laura & Jim’s folksy blog called ‘Wal-Marting Across America,’ is a classic case of dishonest blogging being ‘outed’. Supposedly written by two ordinary ‘fans of Wal-mart’, the blog turned out to be funded by Wal-Mart. Needless to say, Wal-mart’s perceived dishonesty got far more attention than professional writer, Laura & professional photographer Jim’s gushings about how fabulous Wal-Mart is.

Another good example was also the huge backlash against 3M following the “3M Carjacks the Post-It Note Jaguar” story (that David Meerman Scott also highlights in his book). You definitely do not want this happening to you. But it is not only about being authentic, it is also about being responsive. You need to be monitoring what people are saying about you and your products and be prepared to answer any concerns people have quickly and honestly. It is your reputation – manage it carefully – it can disappear very quickly if you don’t, or you try to ignore it. When it comes to social media ‘honesty’ is not only the ‘best’ policy – it is the only policy.

4) It is your story – it needs to come from you

5) Be service orientated, not sales orientated.

I think this fifth point really struck home to me after I saw Dell’s Digital Media Manager, Lionel Menchaca’s presentation at the recent BlogWell Conference. There has been a lot of back and forth over the question of measurability and Return on Investment (ROI) over the last few months, but the fundamental paradigm behind social media is that people will come to you because they are interested in what you have to offer – what has been dubbed ‘inbound’ marketing. That is never going to happen if you use social media from a sales mindset. That sales mindset is the primary reason that the old methods of ‘push’ or ‘outbound’ marketing are being universally blocked and rejected, and why the trend in marketing is heading towards the alternatives of ‘inbound’ or ‘pull’ marketing to help companies reconnect to their customers. (Eg. ‘Gap dumps TV ads for Facebook campaign‘) ‘Pull’ marketing, I would argue, can only work from a customer service orientated mindset – it won’t work from a sales mindset. However, as Dell has been finding, if you engage people honestly and from a service-minded viewpoint, people will naturally want to do business with you. Just don’t make that extra business the sole benchmark by which you measure the success of your social media. Dell doesn’t even factor it into their thinking. As we have quoted before, Lionel Menchaca’s view is:

“I frankly don’t care that we’ve done $3 million in revenue through Twitter – but I do care that Stephanie Nelson is out there answering questions and engaging with customers.”

Obviously revenue is being generated through social media, and obviously it is measurable – even if it isn’t necessarily the focus. If it works for Dell it can work for you.

I hope this post helps those companies looking for answers for adopting social media successfully. I am sure others will have views on other aspects of social media they think equally fundamental, and I am more than happy to see them expressed in the comments section. To companies, I would say we have the expertise to help you define the right solution for your particular needs, and have the tools that can help you plan and manage a successful social engagement. We are here to help – feel free to contact us today to discuss your needs.

→ 8 CommentsCategories: Social Media · Social Media Marketing · in-house marketing
Tagged: fundamentals, Social Media, social strategy

How Social-smart Answers the Social Media Trends PART FIVE: 2010 Marketing Channel Forecast

August 14, 2009 · 1 Comment

Just released is the ‘2009 Marketing Industry Trends Report‘ by Equation Research, who says it is “unique in that we opened up survey development to the Marketing Community — and did so by leveraging a Web 2.0 strategy of crowdsourcing the survey questions directly from marketers.”

The report highlights some trends in social media that are not only important for adopters to understand, but which also allow us to showcase the capabilities of Social-smart as a solution to marketers looking for answers. This five part blog post series looks at the details of the Social-smart solution in relation to the areas highlighted in the report.

2009 Marketing Industry Trends - Equation Research

The 2009 Marketing Trends Report shows clearly that the

“march towards ‘Online’ as the advertising channel of choice continues unabated for Brands, Agencies, large and small companies alike. Of the traditional media, only PR is showing any sign of life –and that is likely to be largely online. Print and TV advertising continue to suffer. As consumers move away from these mediums, so will ad dollars.”

In light of these pronouncements it is perhaps unsurprising that a significant increase in spending on social media, search engine advertising and email marketing is expected throughout 09 and 2010. What is significant for those companies spending that money is that all those things – social media, search marketing, and email marketing – can be integrated through the Social-smart dashboard.

When it comes to what brands and agencies think is the channel with the most promise in the future, and despite only moderate interest in increasing TV spend, TV advertising emerges as the third most promising future tactic behind Social Media and Online. However, there seems to be an indication that TV is gradually moving towards more interactivity as well, which may account for the figures. We are already seeing some integration between some social networks and TV with services like Hulu and TVLoop’s hookup with Facebook – http://mashable.com/2008/12/09/tvloop/ The traditional model of TV is likely to change as people expect more and more to be able to watch what they want when they want.

Surprisingly, email marketing is seen as promising by only 8% of brands and only 5% of agencies. Taken in isolation this may well reflect email marketing’s future promise – everyone is rightly fed up with the spammers – but when integrated with social media and search as it is through Social-smart’s ‘interest-targeted’ email lists, one could argue that it has much more of a future role to play than a lot of marketers currently might feel. We have posted before about the importance of email in social media – http://socialsmart.wordpress.com/2009/07/19/the-importance-of-email-in-social-media-marketing/ – and given a more ‘opt-in’ rather than ‘opt-out’ approach, email marketing still has much to offer in the overall marketing mix.

Social-smart has long understood the direction marketing is taking and has worked hard to understand and resolve the issues and barriers that companies come across in trying to implement their own social media community strategies. We not only provide the tool to efficiently and effectively manage a multi-channel community engagement, but we also provide the framework for the business processes and team-work required to make it successful. The Social-smart solution is completely customizable to the needs of the individual company and no company, whatever the size needs to be concerned whether or not they are investing their marketing dollars in a wise and productive fashion. We have the technology – we have the knowledge and expertise. Call us today and find out how we can help you get started.

The 2009 Marketing Trends Report shows clearly that the

“march towards ‘Online’ as the advertising channel of choice continues unabated for Brands, Agencies, large and small companies alike. Of the traditional media, only PR is showing any sign of life – and that is likely to be largely online. Print and TV advertising continue to suffer. As consumers move away from these mediums, so will ad dollars.“

In light of these trends it is perhaps unsurprising that a significant increase in spending on search engine advertising, social media, and email marketing is expected throughout 2009 and 2010. What is significant for those companies spending that money is that all those channels – search strategy, social media, and email marketing – can be integrated through the Social-smart dashboard.

When it comes to what brands and agencies think is the channel with the most promise in the future, and despite only moderate interest in increasing TV spend, TV advertising emerges as the third most promising future tactic behind Social Media and Online. However, there seems to be an indication that TV is gradually moving towards more interactivity as well, which may account for the figures. We are already seeing some integration between some social networks and TV with services like Hulu and TVLoop’s hookup with Facebook. The traditional TV model is likely to change dramatically as more people expect to watch what they want, when they want, where they want.

Surprisingly, email marketing is seen as promising by only 8% of brands and only 5% of agencies. Taken in isolation this may well reflect email marketing’s future promise – everyone is rightly fed up with the all the spamming that goes on with some email marketers. However, when integrated with social media and search as it is through Social-smart’s ‘interest-targeted’ email lists, one can argue that it has a more valuable role to play than a lot of marketers currently think. We have blogged about the importance of email in social media in earlier posts, where ‘opt-in’ email marketing is a valuable part of the marketing mix.

Social-smart understands the direction marketing is taking and has resolved many of the issues and barriers that companies face in implementing a social media campaign strategy. The results is the Social-smart dashboard. A tool for efficiently and effectively managing multi-channel campaigns. It provides a framework for the business processes and team-work required to make social engagement successful. The Social-smart dashboard is not an off-the-shelf product. It is a solution customized to the particular needs of each business we work with.

We have best-practices and solutions. See our demo video today, and learn how we can help you get started.

→ 1 CommentCategories: Internet Marketing · Social Media · Social Media Marketing · Social-smart Features · in-house marketing · social
Tagged: 2009 Marketing Industry Trends Report, Internet Marketing, marketing, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Social-smart

How Social-smart Answers the Social Media Trends PART FOUR: How Marketers are Measuring the Effectiveness of Their Social Media Efforts

August 12, 2009 · Leave a Comment

2009 Marketing Industry Trends - Equation Research

The report showed that most companies surveyed are using 2 to 3 different ways to track their Social Media efforts. Company Brand Managers and Agencies (reporting for their clients) reported very similar approaches.

“While website ‘hits’ reveals a still dominant ‘traffic’ mentality, qualitative feedback and internal sentiment were also strong. Links, mentions, business leads and buzz are all examples of similar ’soft’ and ‘hard’ measures. With different tools and tactics in wide use, measurement is understandably dispersed. Yet there is an acceptance that both hard and soft measures need to come to bear in order to assess success.“

We discussed this topic at length in our recent blog post – The Question is Not Can You Measure Social Media ROI? It is Should You? I don’t want to repeat all the arguments here. But, suffice it to say that much of the ‘ROI’ debate has been centered around the financial returns on social media engagement. Whereas it may appear hard to evaluate a financial return it is certainly possible as long as you know what it is you are measuring. There are plenty of non-financial benefits from social media that are the ’soft’ measurements referred to in the Marketing Trends Report.

What is clear is that the best-practices outlined in the Social Media Campaign Checklist for planning goals and objectives, and the combination of free social insights and analytical tools included in a customized Social-smart dashboard, help companies focus their social media efforts, improve their efficiency, and measure their effectiveness. If you use, or are planning to use, a third party tracking service, as the Report shows about a quarter of brands and agencies are currently doing, those services can be easily integrated into a Social-smart dashboard. In that respect Social-smart is, we believe, uniquely versatile.

→ Leave a CommentCategories: Internet Marketing · Social Media · Social Media Marketing · Social-smart Features · in-house marketing · social
Tagged: 2009 Marketing Industry Trends Report, Internet Marketing, marketing, social, social campaign, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, social strategy, Social-smart

How Social-smart Answers the Social Media Trends PART THREE: What Specific Tools and Services are Marketers Currently Using?

August 11, 2009 · Leave a Comment

The Marketing Trends Survey shows that Facebook, Twitter, online video and blogs are the four most popular Social Media tools. Yet, the report goes on,

Diag – p.19

At the recent BlogWell – San Francisco Case Study Presentation – http://www.socialmedia.org/video-case-studies/ – Dell’s Digital Media Manager, Lionel Menchaca gave some important insights into the importance of using the tools that your customers are using.

He related how in the early days they made the mistake of hosting own content, on their own servers. Company IT Departments tend to argue that you have more control over things like ‘quality’ when content is distributed from company servers. But they soon found that quality is not the point – it is accessibility and sharability.

“The most important consideration is to use the same tools consumers use – you are enabling your customers to share and embed your content – but its also about reaching out to people who are using those tools … nurturing those communities, and when you use their videos etc it engenders a sense of loyalty – it allows you to elevate them in the work that they are already doing.”

Now they use YouTube and Flickr because that is what their community is using. For smaller companies it makes sense from a practical and financial point of view anyway. You can end up paying for a lot of bandwidth if you have customers downloading a lot of video from your server – and why re-invent the wheel when there are perfectly good tools out there to use for free, and that your customers are already using? The key for businesses is to be able to efficiently manage all their social media channels in one operation. At Dell, blogs, forums, wikis and media gallerys were all separate but now, this year, have been merged into one operation on the same platform. Content from other areas of the business, like press releases for example are all coordinated through the Communications Dept – where Lionel works – and that is precisely the kind of operation that the Social-smart dashboard was designed to facilitate.

The Marketing Trends Survey clearly shows that

“none of these channels are being used in isolation –there are on average 5 to 7 other Social Media tools being either actively used or dabbled with by Marketers at the same time – there is substantial experimentation going on among Marketers who use Social Media … the feeling is that as ‘knowledge’ is one of the main barriers (see part 1 of this series), a good portion of this experimentation is probably undirected. For these companies, building Social Media strategy will be more about harnessing and coordinating disparate efforts than beginning from a clean slate”.

Whether you are trying to coordinate your disparate efforts or looking to begin from a clean slate, the combination of Social Media Strategy Checklist and the Social-smart dashboard is exactly the tool you need to efficiently monitor, manage and measure your own social media campaigns. Why not sign up for our demo video and check out the dashboard’s capabilities for yourself?

Just released is the ‘2009 Marketing Industry Trends Report‘ by Equation Research, who says it is “unique in that we opened up survey development to the Marketing Community—and did so by leveraging a Web 2.0 strategy ofcrowdsourcing the survey questions directly from marketers”.

The Marketing Trends Survey shows that Facebook, Twitter, online video and blogs are the four most popular Social Media tools.

2009 Marketing Industry Trends - Equation Research

At the recent BlogWell – San Francisco Case Study Presentation Dell’s Digital Media Manager, Lionel Menchaca, gave some important insights into the importance of using the tools that your customers are using. He related how in the early days they made the mistake of hosting their own content, on their own servers. Company IT Departments tend to argue that you have more control over things like ‘quality’ when content is distributed from company servers. But Dell soon found that quality is not the point – it is accessibility and shareability that matters.

“The most important consideration is to use the same tools consumers use – you are enabling your customers to share and embed your content – but its also about reaching out to people who are using those tools … nurturing those communities, and when you use their videos etc, it engenders a sense of loyalty – it allows you to elevate them in the work that they are already doing.“

Dell uses YouTube and Flickr precisely because their community is using them. For smaller companies it also makes sense from a practical and financial point of view, too. You can end up paying for a lot of bandwidth if you have customers downloading a lot of video from your servers – and why re-invent the wheel when there are perfectly good free tools out there that your customers are already using? The key for businesses is to know which channels their customers are using, and to be able to efficiently manage all those channels in one operation. At Dell, blogs, forums, wikis and media galleries were all separate, but, this year, they have been merged into one operation on the same platform. Content from other areas of the business, like press releases for example are all coordinated through the Communications Dept – where Lionel works. This is precisely the kind of operation that Social-smart was designed to facilitate — multiple managers/moderators needing to access the campaign assets collaboratively. All their campaign social network channels, messaging, and analytics can be easily accessed by the campaign’s teammembers for efficiently monitoring, managing, and measuring the company’s social engagements with one login. Social-smart will help companies customize the dashboard for their individual needs and goals.

The Marketing Trends Survey clearly shows that

“None of these channels are being used in isolation – there are on average 5 to 7 other Social Media tools being either actively used or dabbled with by Marketers at the same time – there is substantial experimentation going on among Marketers who use Social Media … the feeling is that as ‘knowledge’ is one of the main barriers (see part 1 of this series), a good portion of this experimentation is probably undirected. For these companies, building Social Media strategy will be more about harnessing and coordinating disparate efforts than beginning from a clean slate“.

Whether you are trying to coordinate your disparate efforts or just planning to begin, the combination of Social Media Campaign Checklist and the Social-smart dashboard is exactly what you need to efficiently plan, monitor, manage and measure your own social media campaign. See our demo video and check out the dashboard’s capabilities for yourself?

→ Leave a CommentCategories: Internet Marketing · Social Media · Social Media Marketing · Social-smart Features · in-house marketing · social
Tagged: 2009 Marketing Industry Trends Report, Internet Marketing, marketing, social campaign, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Social monitoring, social strategy, Social-smart

How Social-smart Answers the Social Media Trends PART TWO: Barriers to Social Media Use and Adoption

August 10, 2009 · 1 Comment

When questioning both company brand managers and agencies the following were cited as the main barriers to social media adoption (Agencies/Brand Managers):

Lack of knowledge – 31% / 37%

No way to measure effectiveness 28% / 37%

No funding 24% / 26%

Don’t have the time 17% / 25%

Social media not a proven/tested strategy 31% / 19%

Legal/policy constraints 9% / 15%

Not seen as a good use of employee time 10% / 7%

“Lack of understanding of Social Media makes the task seem daunting and the learning curve seem steep. Smaller companies are especially concerned with the ramp-up in resources required to move into this space. Lack of established measures adds another layer of risk when investing valuable time and resource -‗Is the return there?

To implement a successful Social Media strategy, issues of knowledge, resource/time and measurement must be addressed first. Just learning the tools will not be effective unless the business loop is closed with proper resource allocation and measurement feedback.”

At Social-smart we could not agree more. Here is how Social-smart becomes the answer to all those barriers to social media adoption:

1. Lack of knowledge

As we say on our website, social-smart was designed by marketers for marketers. We understand the the position from both sides. We know that every company is different and has different audiences and different requirements. Social-smart begins with a comprehensive Social Media Strategy Checklist that will help a company plan its strategy, set goals and objectives, build the right team, and thoroughly understand the what, why and where of social media. We can provide as much or as little in terms of consulting as is required. The dashboard itself gives access to a Wiki that is constantly updated with the latest information regarding industry insights, strategies and technologies. Innovation is rapid in the world of social media and we make sure that you have access to the latest techniques.

2. No way to measure effectiveness 28% / 37%

We disagree – social media’s effectiveness can be easily measured – as long as you know what you are measuring. A large part of obtaining reliable measures on the effectiveness of social media begins at the planning stage – the setting of objectives and goals – the understanding of ‘marketing accountability’. We discuss this in detail in a recent post – The Question is Not Can You Measure Social Media ROI? It is Should You? – http://socialsmart.wordpress.com/2009/08/03/the-question-is-not-can-you-measure-social-media-roi-it-is-should-you/

There are many ways to measure the effectiveness of social media and the Social-smart builds analytical tools into each channel as they are set up in the dashboard. The key to using those tools, and others, is in understanding what it is you are measuring.

As Alex Schultze of Social Media Academy points out -

“On the surface social media is a marketing and sales gig. Under the hood it is a major cross functional engagement model. Using customer engagement models for product feedback, customer integrated support models, social network based product launch, social media sentiment analysis for procurement planning and of course sales and marketing.”

Many traditional methods of measuring business success can be implemented in additional to the online analytics when it comes to social media – it just requires thought and planning.

3. No funding and/ or no time

In marketing terms social media is cheap, cheap, cheap! Even Dell only had a team of three people to start with. And the Social-smart dashboard is designed to make the multiple daily social interactions much more efficient. Pre-loaded messaging menus allow information to be dropped in as required with the click of a mouse, and only having the one login means you can quickly move from channel to channel without having multiple screens and logins. With multiple moderators being able to access the same dashboard online both content creators and community engagers can collaborate seamlessly, even if they are in different departments, in different buildings, even different countries if needs be.

5. Social media not a proven/tested strategy 31% / 19%

You might have been able to argue this a few months ago but more and more examples are appearing in both the blogs and mainstream press. Here’s three sources with plenty of examples:

Book – Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers by Robert Scoble, Shel Israel – http://www.amazon.com/Naked-Conversations-Changing-Businesses-Customers/dp/047174719X

Book – World Wide Rave, by David Meerman Scott – http://www.amazon.com/World-Wide-Rave-Creating-Triggers/dp/0470395001/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1249512150&sr=1-1

Gaspedal’s BlogWell conferences – http://gaspedal.com/blogwell/

Just for starters…

6. Legal/policy constraints

Many companies are worried about the legal ramifications of staff members blogging on the company’s behalf, not staying ‘on message’, or saying something that will undermine their carefully crafted corporate policies.

This is where a tool like the social-smart dashboard comes into its own. By allowing multiple moderators to access the same dashboard, commonly used messaging can be vetted by legal departments, mandated policy statements can be uploaded to the dashboard for use by community moderators as required when communicating with a customer. It is a question of facilitating planning and teamwork.

A great example was given at one of the recent BlogWell conferences – eg. http://vimeo.com/5394769 – Vice President of Social Media Programs for Wells Fargo, Joel Nathanson described how there are certain words that they can’t use without attracting a mandated disclaimer or disclosure – something that can’t be tweeted in 140 characters or less – words like “promise”. “expert advice”, “guarantee”, “investments”. Banks and other financial institutions are tightly regulated, as are other professions where laws, regulations or policies need to be adhered to. How useful would it be to be able to drop those disclaimers or disclosures straight into the bottom of an email as needed – picked from a menu on which you have all the commonly required legal wording – Social-smart facilitates exactly that.

7. Not seen as a good use of employee time.

This really goes back to the argument about whether social media is a proven strategy. The more cases there are to show the value of social media the more it will be seen as a good use of employee time. What the Social-smart dashboard can do is make the time spent by those employees much more efficient and will probably actually save hiring members of staff that would have been needed to manage some of the community channels had the Social-smart not been utilized.

If you have yet to see the capabilities of the Social-smart dashboard for yourself, I recommend signing up for our demo video and checking it out!

Just released is Equation Research’s ‘2009 Marketing Industry Trends Report‘ which was “unique in that we opened up survey development to the Marketing Community—and did so by leveraging a Web 2.0 strategy of crowdsourcing the survey questions directly from marketers”.

When questioning both company brand managers and agencies the following were cited as the main barriers to social media adoption:

(% = Agencies/Brand Managers)

Lack of knowledge – 31% / 37%
No way to measure effectiveness – 28% / 37%
No funding -24% / 26%
Don’t have the time – 17% / 25%
Social media not a proven/tested strategy – 31% / 19%
Legal/policy constraints – 9% / 15%
Not seen as a good use of employee time – 10% / 7%

At Social-smart we could not agree more. Here is how Social-smart becomes the answer to all those barriers to social media adoption:

1. Lack of knowledge

As we say on our website, “Social-smart was designed by marketers for marketers”. We understand the position from both sides. We know that every company is different, has different audiences and different requirements. Learning from best-practices can be helpful for companies that want to get started. Social-smart offers a comprehensive Social Media Campaign Checklist that will help a company plan its strategy, set goals and objectives, build the right team, and thoroughly understand the ‘what, why and where’ of social media.

2. No way to measure effectiveness

We disagree – social media’s effectiveness can be easily measured – as long as you know what you are measuring. A large part of obtaining reliable measures on the effectiveness of social media begins at the planning stage – the setting of objectives and goals – the understanding of ‘marketing accountability‘. We discuss this in detail in a recent post – The Question is Not Can You Measure Social Media ROI? It is Should You?

There are many ways to measure the effectiveness of social media. Social-smart integrates the ‘Insights’ of each social channel, and Google Analytics, into each dashboard they configure. The key to using those tools, and others outside the dashboard, is in understanding what it is you are measuring.

As Alex Schultze of Social Media Academy points out -

In additional to online social media insights and web traffic analytics, other traditional business success metrics can be measured too – it just requires thought and planning.

3/4. No funding and/ or no time

In marketing terms social media is cheap, cheap, cheap! Even Dell only had a team of three people to start with. The Social-smart dashboard is designed to make multiple daily social interactions much more efficient to handle. Pre-loaded messaging in the Social-smart Message-menu makes it much easier to drop in commonly required information or helpful resources with the click of a mouse. Social-smart’s single sign-in means you can quickly move from channel to channel without having to cope with multiple screens and logins. And, with multiple managers/moderators able to access the same dashboard online, both content creators and community engagers can collaborate seamlessly, even if they are in different departments, in different buildings, even different countries if need be.

5. Social media not a proven/tested strategy

You might have been able to argue this a few months ago but more and more examples are appearing in both the blogs and mainstream press. Here’s three sources with plenty of examples:

Book – Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers by Robert Scoble, Shel Israel.

Book – World Wide Rave, by David Meerman Scott.

Gaspedal’s BlogWell conferences – http://gaspedal.com/blogwell/

And that’s just for starters…

6. Legal/policy constraints

This is where the social-smart dashboard comes into its own. By allowing multiple managers/moderators to access the same dashboard, commonly used messaging can be uploaded to the dashboard’s Message-menu for convenient and consistent communications with customers and communities. When marketing, PR, support, engineering, HR, and legal can all contribute to the messaging and management – it streamlines the campaign with better teamwork.

A great example was given at one of the recent BlogWell conferences - Vice President of Social Media Programs for Wells Fargo, Joel Nathanson described how there are certain words that they can’t use in online conversations with Wells Fargo customers without attracting a mandated disclaimer or disclosure – something that can’t be tweeted in 140 characters or less – words like “promise”. “expert advice”, “guarantee”, “investments”. Banks and other financial institutions are tightly regulated, as are other professions where laws, regulations or policies need to be adhered to in communications with customers. How useful it would be to be able to drop those disclaimers or disclosures straight into the bottom of an email as needed – picked from a Message-menu with all the commonly required legal and policy snippets for every occasion – Social-smart facilitates exactly that.

7. Not seen as a good use of employee time.

This really goes back to the argument about whether social media is a proven strategy. The more cases there are to show the value of social media the more it will be seen as a good use of employee time. What the Social-smart dashboard can do is make the time spent by those employees much more productive – actually saving staff that would have been needed to manage the community channels otherwise.

If you have yet to see the capabilities of the Social-smart dashboard for yourself, I recommend watching our demo video and checking it out!

→ 1 CommentCategories: Internet Marketing · Social Media · Social Media Marketing · Social-smart Features · in-house marketing · social
Tagged: 2009 Marketing Industry Trends Report, Checklist, Internet Marketing, marketing, Social Media, social strategy, Social-smart

How Social-smart Answers the Social Media Trends PART ONE: How Social Media is Defined

August 7, 2009 · Leave a Comment

Just released is the ‘2009 Marketing Industry Trends Report‘ by Equation Research, who says it is “…unique in that we opened up survey development to the Marketing Community—and did so by leveraging a Web 2.0 strategy of crowdsourcing the survey questions directly from marketers.”

The report highlights some trends in social media that are not only important for marketers to understand, but which also allow us to showcase the Social-smart solution’s value to marketers who are looking for answers. This five part blog post series looks at the details of the Social-smart solution in relation to the areas highlighted in the report.

One of the first key questions addressed in the report was just how marketers define ‘social media.’

“Marketers weren‘t afraid to offer up thoughtful definitions that defined Social Media from very different angles. Some emphasized the interaction among consumers, for others it was the technology, and for still others the specific tactics employed by brands. While it was clear the common theme was ‘interactive communication’, the sheer diversity of responses indicated a difficulty to articulate what this meant.“

Ultimately, nearly every corporate department (marketing, customer support, product development, PR, HR, even legal) can have a stake in a social media program – joining the conversations that consumers are having on the social media channels or platforms their customers are using (that’s where technology comes in) – about the brand or particular product or service. The tactics employed need to be geared towards the things that make consumers WANT to engage with you/your brand in a way that is meaningful to THEM.

One answer quoted in the report hit the proverbial nail on the head –

“There is a hub, source or portal for the connection that delivers value through information, products or services that motivate the parties.“

The hub & spoke model [ see Report: Companies Should Organize For Social Media in a “Hub and Spoke” model] is a good model for companies looking to build a multi-departmental collaborative team, one that could also include agency team members and/or consultants, and one that will deliver the ‘value’ that will motivate both staff and customers alike. In practical day-to-day management terms, that hub will be the Social-smart dashboard. By allowing multiple managers (company/agency/consultant) to login to the dashboard remotely, a collaborative effort can be developed that encompasses the roles and responsibilities that different people/departments have in the company’s social engagement funnel.

“Before they collaborate with the community, they have to collaborate with themselves. If responsibilities and workflow isn’t established and most importantly, if guidelines aren’t drafted and disseminated company-wide, the intention of helping influential customers and advocates can quickly transcend into social, and very public, chaos. We need rules of engagement. “
Ross Mayfield, CEO of SocialText, from an article by Brian Solis http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/11/real-time-conversations-hasten-social-crm/

But, the important point is that at each level, the engagement (whether it be about branding, research, customer support, marketing or sales) is about conversation. The technology helps you to know where that conversation is taking place, helps you to engage using the same tools your customers are using (ie. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc), helps you manage all those channels efficiently, and helps you to measure the results of that engagement. That is why the Social-smart dashboard was designed to to monitor (through a free or paid keyword alerts/listening service), manage (the day-to-day engagement through the social media channels), and measure (free integrated analytics) – all in one tool – AND customized to a company’s specific requirements. Not only that, we also provide a Social Media Strategy Checklist that helps companies plan their campaigns. When companies understanding their goals and objectives, Social-smart can configure a dashboard to help them achieve results.

The report goes on to suggest “…a map of consumer interaction, technology and tactics that provides a better framework for understanding the Marketer‘s position in this complex social net.“
The report highlights several areas for attention:

1. The need for a framework
2. The need for a proper business process…
3. The need to ‘coordinate disparate efforts’
4. The need to incorporate hard & soft measures of success.

Social-smart provides that solution:

1. A framework — the Social Media Strategy Checklist
2. A business process that encompasses branding, research, customer support, marketing and sales — see the Social-smart customer engagement funnel. [PDF]
3. Disparate departmental efforts and needs can be coordinated by multiple managers/moderators using the Social-smart dashboard together.
4. Both hard and soft measures of success can be recorded through the correct setting of goals at the planning stage (see Checklist), using the integrated analytics that are available for each social network channel, and Google Analytics for measuring inbound web traffic, registrations, and sales conversions. (see also our post entitled ‘The Question is Not Can You Measure Social Media ROI? It is Should You?‘)

“No business professional should be without a solid understanding of how this new world affects them,” the report concludes.

Social-smart provides that solid understanding. Check out our 10 minute demo video to see the dashboard features yourself.

→ Leave a CommentCategories: Internet Marketing · Social Media · Social Media Marketing · Social-smart Features · in-house marketing
Tagged: 2009 Marketing Industry Trends Report, Internet Marketing, marketing, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, social strategy, Social-smart

The Question is Not Can You Measure Social Media ROI? It is Should You?

August 3, 2009 · 15 Comments

A lot of interesting discussion has centered around the question of measuring Return on Investment (ROI) on social media in recent weeks. The main themes are based around whether a) it is possible to measure ROI in social media and, b) how do you measure ROI in social media. I would suggest that the question should be “Should we be measuring ROI in social media?”

The question of whether it is even possible to measure social media becomes all the more interesting once you have the input of a few marketing professionals. In a recent discussion on one of the LinkedIn Groups, Jacob Morgan argued that

“Marketing across the board has always been understood to be a “black box,” meaning nobody could really ever justify the ROI (and oftentimes impact) of marketing spend … The issue at large is marketing accountability as a whole, and social media is just one component of that.”

(See also his blog post fro MarketingProfs – Forget Social Media ROI, What About Marketing Accountability? – http://www.mpdailyfix.com/2009/07/forget_social_media_roi_what_a.html)

By ‘marketing accountability’ Jacob is referring to to the need to understand all the factors involved in the marketing infrastructure before you can ‘measure’ anything – such as knowing the customer life cycle, the target audience, the average price per transaction, the acquisition and/or retention costs, and so on. Either that, he argues, or pick abstract objectives and measuring impact – which can include brand building.

Roger Kondrat added -

“Despite these marketing accountability deficiencies the vast majority of organisations don’t seek out any marketing research either bespoke or off-the-shelf to support their objectives. Without research asking your business partners to give you a plan with relevant ROI or even Impact metrics is a huge huge request, one could say an impossible one”.

In a separate blog post, Olivier Blanchard - http://thebrandbuilder.wordpress.com/2009/07/09/roi-and-social-media-101-financial-vs-non-financial-impact/ defines ‘ROI’ – in business terms – the ‘R’ = $ investment > action > reaction > non-financial impact > financial impact (measure the ROI here). With clear goals and ‘marketing accountability’ financial ROI should be readily measurable. But financial returns don’t really give you the whole picture when it comes to the benefits of social media.

Alex Schultze of Social Media Academy points out that -

Social media is many things and whereas it is relatively easy to see how you could achieve a measurement at the non-financial impact stage, measuring financial impact may not give you the whole story.

Therefore, it begs the question should even be trying? One of the most interesting – and telling – comments on the subject were from Lionel Menchaca of Dell in a recent presentation at BlogWell San Francisco.

http://vimeo.com/5484057 from the BlogWell San Francisco Case Study Presentation – http://www.socialmedia.org/video-case-studies/ – Dell’s Digital Media Manager Lionel Menchaca gave some important insights into the ongoing development of Dell’s social communities. Interestingly, right at the end of his talk and in answer to a question from an audience member about ROI, Lionel said that driving sales was not part of what they are trying to do, even though it may result in sales – so they don’t worry about that or try to measure it “that’s not the goal on the enterprise side, or the consumer side either for that matter”.

“I frankly don’t care that we’ve done $3 million in revenue through Twitter – but I do care that Stephanie Nelson is out there answering questions and engaging with customers.”

Their’s seems to be much more customer service orientated approach to social communities than sales orientated - is there a lesson to be learned here? Is that the point when it comes to social media – as soon as you actively try to drive sales to a community you go back to the old methods of PUSH marketing and they are all turned off. Dell still manages to integrate their Dell.com eCommerce operation with their community activities, but they don’t do it in an overt way – just in a ‘how can we help the customer better’ sort of way. Isn’t that how it should be? Although costs are always a consideration for any company, perhaps, in terms of measuring a ‘return’ on something as encompassing as social media, the non-financial impact of engaging the community of our customers is as far as we need to look. However, Jeramiah Owyang today emphasized the ”The Importance of Social Media Audit”s – http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2009/07/28/the-importance-of-a-social-media-audits/

Just as brands conduct audits of inventory, employees, and budgets on an often annual basis, they should also survey the landscape to find out what customers, influencers, partners and employees are participating on the social web. Audits are key for identifying priorities, benchmarking previous efforts, and planning for future efforts; the same applies for social media.

A lot of interesting discussion has centered around the question of measuring Return on Investment (ROI) on social media in recent weeks. The main themes are based around

a) whether it is possible to measure ROI in social media and,
b) how do you measure ROI in social media.

I would suggest a better question is “Should we be measuring ROI in social media?”

(See also his blog post from MarketingProfs – Forget Social Media ROI, What About Marketing Accountability?)

By ‘marketing accountability’ Jacob is referring to to the need to understand all the factors involved in the marketing infrastructure before you can ‘measure’ anything – such as knowing the customer life cycle, the target audience, the average price per transaction, the acquisition and/or retention costs, and so on. Either that, he argues, or pick abstract objectives – ‘we want to be the leaders in X’, and measuring impact , say as part of brand building.

Roger Kondrat added -

In a separate blog post, ‘Defining Social Media ROI once and for all, and understanding the action-reactive-return narrative’, Olivier Blanchard defines ‘ROI’ – in business terms, as -

‘R’ = $ investment > action > reaction > non-financial impact > financial impact (measure the ROI here).

With clear goals and ‘marketing accountability’ financial ROI should be readily measurable with today’s analytical tools. But financial returns don’t really give you the whole picture when it comes to the benefits of social media.

Alex Schultze of Social Media Academy points out that -

Social media is many things and whereas it is relatively easy to see how you could achieve a measurement at the non-financial impact stage, measuring financial impact, though possible, just may not give you the whole story.

Therefore, it begs the question should we even be trying? One of the most interesting – and telling – comments on the subject was from Lionel Menchaca, Digital Media Manager for Dell, in a recent presentation at BlogWell San Francisco. Menchaca gave the audience some important insights into the ongoing development of Dell’s social communities. Interestingly, right at the end of his talk, and in answer to a question from an audience member about ROI, Lionel said that driving sales was not part of what they are trying to do, even though their activities may result in sales – so they don’t worry about that or try to measure it “that’s not the goal on the enterprise side, or the consumer side either for that matter”, he stated.

“I frankly don’t care that we’ve done $3 million in revenue through Twitter – but I do care that Stephanie Nelson is out there answering questions and engaging with customers.”

Their social community building seems to be based on a much more customer service orientated approach than a sales approach. Is there a lesson to be learned here? Is that the point when it comes to social media – as soon as you actively try to drive sales to a community you go back to the old methods of PUSH marketing and you just end up turning them all off. Dell still manages to integrate their Dell.com eCommerce operation with their community activities, but they don’t do it in an overt way – just in a ‘how can we better help the customer’ sort of way. Isn’t that how it should be? Although costs are always a consideration for any company, perhaps, in terms of measuring a ‘return’ on something as encompassing as social media, the non-financial impact of engaging the community of our customers is as far as we need to look. That is not to say there is no accounting. Only today, Jeramiah Owyang emphasized the “The Importance of Social Media Audits”.

“Just as brands conduct audits of inventory, employees, and budgets on an often annual basis, they should also survey the landscape to find out what customers, influencers, partners and employees are participating on the social web. Audits are key for identifying priorities, benchmarking previous efforts, and planning for future efforts; the same applies for social media.”

Such an audit would soon highlight whether you were getting ‘value for money’ or not and, in the end, isn’t that what you want to know?

→ 15 CommentsCategories: Internet Marketing · Social Media · Social Media Marketing
Tagged: Marketing Accountability, Return on Investment, ROI, Social Media Audits

The Social-smart Social Media Campaign Checklist

July 22, 2009 · 6 Comments

Different companies (and agencies) are at different stages of getting a grip on how to effectively implement social media marketing campaigns. It is a new phenomenon to most marketers, and with new technologies coming online almost weekly, it’s a moving target. Although the Social-smart dashboard was designed to integrate a campaign’s search strategy, social media (social networks), and messaging and email strategies, together — it was clear that we needed to provide more than just a tool. We also needed to offer a roadmap of best-practices to help clients get to market quickly. That is why we provide a Social Media Marketing Campaign Checklist that clients can use to plan a customized campaign solution with.

Developed over several months, and combining many years of marketing experience, the Social Media Strategy Checklist is very much part of the value proposition of the Social-smart solution, and it comes in two parts:

The free Campaign Checklist is designed to let clients review the basic preparations for launching a social media marketing campaign, and see the professional Social-smart features they can use to monitor, manage, and measure the campaign components – I will detail this more below. Social-smart subscribers also get access to a more comprehensive online Wiki checklist — with regularly updated social media campaign best-practices information, industry resources, and valuable dashboard tips and tutorials. This is a great way to stay up-to-date with the new dashboard features that are added as Social-smart continually improves to respond to new marketing needs. It’s also a great way for new team members to get up to speed with the dashboard.

The FREE Campaign Checklist is available as a PDF download, and is split into the following sections:

Goals & Objectives
The first stage in any social media campaign is to define the business goals and objectives. This includes defining your Return on Investment (ROI) targets, a program plan and, of course, a budget. Without these being clearly laid out from the beginning you will end up expending a lot of time and effort without any clear direction or aim – and with no way to measure whether that effort is worth the time or money being expended on it. Depending on the set-up of the company, and/or the set-up and relationship of the Agency/Client Company, there may be several different people and/or departments involved in the setting of these goals. Which takes us to -

Campaign Management
It is important that all parties involved in the campaign understand their respective roles and responsibilities. Those roles need to be defined, social media experts and resources identified, and the team set up, whether that be an in-house company team or a combination of company and agency personnel. One of the key benefits of the Social-smart dashboard is ability for multiple moderators to login to the same dashboard, for instant access the campaign’s social networks, conversation, and analytics.

Search Strategy
A big part of any online strategy is bound up in SEO keywords, especially when it comes to monitoring the ‘buzz’. It also plays a big part in people finding your content in the first place. ‘Sharing’ plays a large role as well, but it is not the whole story. Therefore, defining your keyword and linking strategy early-on will increase the effectiveness of your campaign with more web traffic and social participation.

Social Media Strategy
THE most important first step of any social media strategy is to define your customer profile. what David Meerman Scott, in his book ‘World Wide Rave,’ calls the ‘buyer persona’ -

In order to make that information ‘valuable’ you should anchor the campaign with a creative theme (supporting the brand image or product positioning); define a social policy that states what you are doing and want to achieve (to keep the team authentic, and focused on results); define the campaign’s social media channels (the media mix); and define engaging content that the target audience will want to interact with (and share, and subscribe to).

Messaging and Email Strategy
You then have to define how you will respond to customers when they interact with you. Are there specific brand, product or legal aspects you want to include in your messaging, for example? Are there ‘influencer’ resources you want to share in your responses, like a link to an industry blogger or review site for example? Have you other resources to offer – newsletters, promotions, etc that can be targeted to particular customers whose interests you have tagged in your customer database? The follow-up, or re-marketing, is an essential extension of the social engagement funnel — after you use Social-smart for automating list-generation, customer acquisition, and eCommerce conversions.

Business ROI
The one thing everyone wants to know how to quantify! ROI is totally related to the goals and objectives you have set for the campaign. It is completely quantifiable as long as you know which parameters to measure. It is therefore important to benchmark your results at each stage of the engagement, from search results, to web traffic, and community engagement. Be deliberate: regularly track social metrics, customer opinion and sentiment, conversions and, of course, your goals. Web analytics tools and social network insights are integrated in the dashboard to make campaign measurement, and results, a seamless process.

The Wiki Checklist that subscribers get access to is a more comprehensive “living document” from the developers of Social-smart, and with insights crowd-sourced from our clients. The free Campaign Checklist helps organize the basic details for planning and streamlining a successful campaign — especially helpful for clients new to social media marketing. We hope you find it useful and would welcome any feedback you care to offer.

→ 6 CommentsCategories: Internet Marketing · Social Media Managers · Social Media Marketing · in-house marketing
Tagged: Checklist, social campaign, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, social strategy

The Social Media Marketing Tool Every Social Media Professional Needs to Know

July 20, 2009 · Leave a Comment

Note: This is only a screen-shot - see below how to sign up for the video.

Victor Hugo once wrote – “Greater than the tread of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come.”

Well that time has come and the idea is Social-smart. Now you can decide for yourself — see the new Social-smart demo-video. We have been working for the last five months preparing the launch of Social-smart and, finally, we are ready to proceed. With improvements in both the technology and offer, I can confidently predict that Social-smart will become the tool that every Social Media professional will want to know about.

If you are a Social Media Manager for a company, an agency offering integrated campaigns, or an independent consultant — you are going to want to see the video. If you have taken the time to look at the website or the PDF One-Sheet two important factors will stand out – the fact that Social-smart integrates search, social media, and messaging and email, AND that it is an end-to-end solution for monitoring, managing and measuring social media campaigns. What you won’t have yet seen, though, is the Social Media Campaign Checklist and Dashboard Planner. These are provided when you’re ready to sign up for a Social-smart dashboard. Many companies, and even agencies, are still uncertain how a social media campaign should be structured for maximum effectiveness and return. The Social-smart Campaign Checklist will be as big an asset to your social media campaign as the Dashboard tool itself, and I will be writing more about it later this week.

We are already talking to some great companies who are interested in the Social-smart solution — more on them in later posts — they see that this is the sort of solution they are going to need if they want to stay on top of the fragmented nature of the social web. There is nothingas comprehensive as the Social-smart dashboard on the market, so a small investment of 10 minutes of your time may save you much wasted effort and, possibly, several staff members in the future. You can see the Social-smart video-demo right now — you will be impressed, I promise you!

→ Leave a CommentCategories: Social Media Managers · Social Media Marketing · Social monitoring · Social-smart Features
Tagged: Demo, Social Media Managers, Video-demo

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