Social Media Campfire

A good analogy for social media is like sitting around the campfire. There are stories to be told and no one feels the urgency to fill the pauses. There is a good deal of listening and reflecting. You get to know the people as everyone shares and contributes.

We have put together a presentation on social media marketing — outlining what it is, the best way to get started with social media, the methodology and a number of company examples of best practices. If you would like see it, just give us a call and we can schedule a time for an online presentation.

JD Lasica has put together a great list of conferences for upcoming year. There are a couple of local events I will attend here in Boston including the Enterprise 2.0 in June and the New Marketing Summit in October.

Which events are you thinking about attending this year?

A social media plan is built by first understanding the audience or the people who will be using the social media tools. One must merge a company’s business objectives with its desired social media objectives to create a strategy that also meets the needs of the audience. With a defined strategy, one is free to choose the most appropriate technology and social media tools.

Okay, let’s break this down. Forrester has come up with a nice acronym for building your social media plan – POST.

Social Media Plan = People + Objectives + Strategy + Technology

I have found that this is a very effective means of building a social media implementation. In the next post, I will explain how to define your audience so you are targeting the right people.

Yesterday, the first social media president was inaugurated.

Barack Obama was the first presidential candidate to effectively use the Internet to converse with his audience. Other candidates had used the Internet to broadcast or raise a ton of money (Howard Dean), but candidate Obama took it to a new level by first listening to the needs of the country through twitter and his website. Once these messages were received, he incorporated these needs into his plan of action. The level of success of his social media strategy was demonstrated not just by the election results but by yesterday’s massive level of participation and enthusiasm on the Washington streets and throughout the rest of the country.

The ongoing challenge will be to see how this administration continues to mobilize this energy as he has transitioned his social media enegagement to Whitehouse.gov. We will be watching.

I get that question from many of my clients and prospects, so I thought I would start defining how I view social media for businesses. It’s not really about media, or least how most people think about media which is usually delivering the message in one direction. Social media about conversations, permission, dialogue, information, sharing, attention, engagement, participation, communication, enthusiasm, passion and being authentic — using technology as vehicle. It’s not about using a fire hose to blast your message out to an audience that never asked to be interrupted as Seth Godin is fond of saying. Social media is about actively listening to your audience to determine what they are interested in, then engaging them by providing a platform so you and your audience can converse, share, participate with each other.

Let see how some other people define social media. The Common Craft group had a nice video which told a story about a little town’s affinity for ice cream combined with new technology can spark new informational interactions. I just wish that the community had first asked more than the three flavors and the big bad ice cream company had refused. Another good example is from Peter Kim who defined social media as “Interaction between a company and individual via [digital] delivery channels, intended to share commercial content that will lead to a sale and/or be passed along to others.” To take it a step further, I would add “the opportunity to connect with like-minded individuals.” One of the best slide shows I have seen about social media is from Marta Kagan, though her title is a slightly more risque than mine. She exhibits an boatload of passion in her messages as she explains that social media is not a fad and the longer companies wait to get on board — the more business you will lose.

In the days to come, I break down some of the components of social media, best practices, my social media stories, social media implementations and maybe a little about where I see it going.

Last week, I was shopping at my local supermarket around 9pm and one of the items I needed was canned sweet potatoes so my wife could make her fantastic muffins. I looked in the canned fruit section, the baking section and the canned vegetable section — no dice. I went up to 2 cashiers and 2 baggers who were not helping anybody at the time since the store was practically deserted. I asked where were the canned sweet potatoes. I got 2 different answers, so I went back checked both locations and still no luck. As I was checking out, I remember that I still needed the sweet potatoes. I told the the cashier that I still could not find the sweet potatoes. After trying to tell me again where it was, I told them to send someone to find it and to bring it back. I compare this experience to one I get at Trader Joe’s, where I am usually led right to the item no matter what the employee is doing at the time.

Bruce Tempkin of Forrrester, talks about leadership this week on his fantastic blog, Customer Experience Matters, after reading a post on the HBS discussion board talking about the CEO of UK retail giant Testco, Sir Terry Leahy, who said recently in a speech, “Tesco doesn’t want one leader. We want thousands of leaders who take initiative to execute the strategy.”  The company has 400,000 employees so it can be difficult to keep everyone moving in the same direction. Early on they came up with a company motto,”Every Little Helps.” I agree with Bruce that the motto is incredibly powerful and simple at the same time.

Zappo’s is a online shoe retailer that delivers excellent customer service. It has a company policy, which offers employees a $1,000 bonus to quit after their first week, believing quite correctly that if you don’t feel like leading the way with superior service, they want to encourage you to leave rather than contaminate the other employees.

As I deal with companies, I see employees go out on their own to deliver good service and many times that action is neither observed or rewarded by anyone else in the company. A smile. A thank you. Calling me back. Just actually listening to my question. Unfortunately, all too often a company with a lack of leadership will suck the passion right out of their employees with conflicting, unclear or strict company mandates. These different company environments lead me to ask this question. How difficult is it to make sure there are individuals leading everyone in the right direction and empowering your employees to to make sure that everyone is a leader in their own right. How about your company? Is it run by a bunch of leaders or is everyone moving in different directions or worse no direction at all?

Elbow Grease Marketing has recently realigned our marketing team and marketing services into six service offerings. Each of these services can be implemented as a standalone service or be integrated together for the maximum amount of impact. We believe that this new structure allows EGM to deliver a complete solution for your company in the areas of sales, marketing, social media, customer engagement, online communities and websites.

Content
Content is the creation of company information to be used as social media. This content is both formal and informal and can be placed in any number of locations, whether it be on the company’s website, in a press release, on a social bookmarking site, an online communities or a social networking site.

Design
Design is the formatting and design of the content in order to present a unified company image. We see design as a opportunity for your company to cut through the clutter with designs and logos that will resonate with your clients.

Networking
Networking is the facilitation of online social media efforts and off-line partnerships. Using our unique marketing strategies and good old-fashion perseverance, we will help you connect with your customers through blogs and online communities, investors through introductions and partners through marketing outreach.

Optimization
Optimization encompasses all aspects of your website, including paid/organic search, optimizing content and website navigation. We can help deliver optimal search efforts, through carefully analysis of your keywords and content, incorporating relevancy, popularity and high rankings.

Promotion
Promotion is the design and implementation of advertising campaigns and marketing programs. Based on our years of experience, we can indentify, plan and implement the marketing program or campaign which can best promote your company, including guerilla marketing, event marketing, print ads, TV ads and radio.

Publicity
Publicity is the creation and execution of a comprehensive public relations and media strategy. We can help you navigate the ever changing world of media operations and the emergence of social media to help get the word out.

I will be attending a couple of events over the next few weeks.

Web 2.0 Expo

First off, is the Web 2.0 Expo New York which is happening next week from September 16th to the 19th at the Javits Center in Manhattan. There is plenty of stuff happening both online and off-line. Mashable is giving away free expo passes to the show. The will have a slew of interesting speakers including Dave Lyons aka Fake Steve Jobs, Ariana Huffington from the Huffington Post, Tim O’Reilly from O’Reilly Media, Jay Adelson from Digg, Gary Vanyerchuk from Wine TV and Fred Wilson from Union Square Ventures.

Next up is my alma mater, Babson, which is hosting its annual the Babson Forum on Entrepreneurship and Innovation on Thursday, October 2nd from 7am to 9pm. This is a great event, covering topics on Social Entrepreneurship, Green Entrepreneurship, Corporate
Entrepreneurship,  Product Design & Creation and Venture Capital & Private Equity. To top it off, they are giving away 30K to one lucky company. On a related note, the Babson MBA program recently was named by US News and World Report as the best business school for entrepreneurship in the country for the 15th straight year.

Finally, the last event is not actually an event but a great list of events, mostly covering marketing and technology, Gary’s Guide. The site covers events in Boston, New York, Washington DC, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, Austin, San Diego, Denver, Toronto and Portland which you can subscribe via email or RSS. It’s easy and very comprehensive.

Change. Change is good. Too often we do the same things, the same way. Tonight, brush your teeth with your other hand. Drive to work a different way. Read a different blog. Pick up a new magazine.

Elbow Grease Marketing (EGM) has also been experiencing change. Our company has been busy expanding our marketing service offerings with a renewed focus on social media and customer engagement.

Our new website’s blog reflects the opportunity for our clients and visitors to join our community discussion. Companies everywhere are working to improve their marketing effectiveness by refining their customer engagement model to incorporate more social media tools. In the weeks to come on this blog, EGM will best practices for some of the new social media tools we are incorporating into our own marketing service offerings – in our core delivery areas of advertising, marketing and technology.

We want to thank our clients for the opportunity to work with them on their projects as we continue to build on our seven years of experience delivering top-notch marketing services. We hope you will join in the discussion and that we have the opportunity to continue to learn from each other.

Now excuse us while we try to tie our shoelaces with a blindfold on.