Drew's Articles Archives - Page 34 of 55

Focusing Content Around the Customer

Posted on April 10, 2012 by Drew Neisser

Discovery Communications has a robust social media program that is (or should be) the envy of the traditional media world. For example, the Discovery Channel Facebook page has over 9 million fans, a decent percentage of whom are actively engaged. Gayle Weiswasser, heads up social media for Discovery and my interview with her follows. Gayle, as you will soon find out, is a big believer in having a cross-disciplined team and creating content that really addresses the needs and wants of your fan base. Sounds easy enough…

DN: Can you speak to the benefits of having a cross-discipline team to handle social media?
Social media is a function that crosses many disciplines, and failure to recognize this leads to an unnecessarily restricted team that cannot operate at its full potential. At Discovery, social media supports marketing, communications, digital, ad sales, commerce, distribution, government relations and other business units. As a result, the company benefits from having a cross-disciplined team that can add value in many different areas, instead of just one. This structure requires flexibility in reporting as well as a lot of communication and coordination across teams, but it yields a much richer social media strategy that can be successfully integrated to meet many business goals at once.

DN: What’s your trick for developing such effective content?
Effective content takes into consideration the reasons that fans are following social media accounts in the first place. Why are they there? Do they want product information? Behind-the-scenes scoops? Exclusives? Discounts? Substantive content about particular subjects? Trends? Understanding the passions and interests of your audience is the first step toward developing engaging content. Beyond that, it’s important to set a very high bar for the quality of what gets posted on social platforms. Social media teams should ask themselves, before posting, “If I were a fan of this page or account, would I be inspired to click, share, or otherwise engage with this content?” If the answer is no, then the content shouldn’t be posted. Fans will reward good content with engagement and will ignore the rest.

DN: Turns out, large B2C companies scored higher [on the Social Media Fitness Survey] than B2B firms. Do you have any thoughts on why that may be the case?
I think this is because social media is more successful as a B2C tool, with the bulk of the activity on the platforms being for personal and social reasons, rather than for professional ones (the exception being those of us who work in social media and those looking to network). From a numbers perspective, there is also more opportunity to reach people, with personal accounts far exceeding business accounts. Additionally, given the way most social platforms are designed, with the exception of LinkedIn, it’s simply easier to share content with consumers.

How This Brand Stays Ahead of the Social Curve

Posted on April 9, 2012 by Drew Neisser

In a month-long pursuit of insights for the soon to be released Social Media Fitness Study, I interviewed a number of social media professionals including Jennifer Lashua of Intel. As a high-tech company with a broad customer base, it is not surprising that Intel is ahead of the curve in social media, having established a center of excellence, developed a disaster plan, conducted a social media audit, set up a real-time dashboard, streamlined its social channels and crafted a consistent customer experience across all their channels. Here’s the thinking behind all of this activity. Thanks Jennifer!

DN: How have you dealt with customer service related issues with social media governed by the marketing department?
While our Social Media Center of Excellence is within the Marketing organization, we are highly matrixed with teams across the company and around the world. Our extended team includes PR, product teams, HR, recruiting, and many others. It’s these relationships that allow us to be effective both proactively and reactively (when needed) on our social media networks.

DN: Can you talk about Intel’s social media disaster plan?
Intel has a process in place for constant monitoring of social media conversations about our brand. This team is located around the world, so we have the ability to monitor and moderate 24×7 and in multiple languages. We use monitoring tools to identify and escalate issues when needed; and we respond directly when needed. We have well-defined processes for crisis management, should this be necessary. Thankfully we haven’t had to put these processes in place often, but they have been tested once or twice over the past few years.

DN: Can you speak to the benefits of having a real-time dashboard?
We launched the Intel Social Cockpit this year at CES and it’s now a key part of our social media program, enabling us to understand what’s performing well, what’s trending, and how much share of voice Intel is receiving in social conversations. At CES, we used the Social Cockpit to see what keywords were trending on top, specifically which announcements from our CEO’s keynote were getting the most attention through social networks. We then honed in on those topics and created new content (videos and photos from our booth) aligning to these. We were able to do all of this within a matter of an hour or two, which enabled us to continue fueling the dialogue with highly relevant, timely content.

DN: Why did you decide to streamline Intel’s social media accounts?
The great part about social media is that anyone can participate. This is wonderful from an adoption perspective, but can be tricky from a message consistency, engagement, and risk perspective. A few years ago, we had hundreds of Facebook pages and Twitter handles, but we were finding that only a percent of these had high levels of engagement and large numbers of fans/followers. By streamlining (we now have just 45 Facebook pages), we are able to maximize reach and engagement by aggregating audiences together. We also used data and insights to re-architect our Twitter structure in 2011. The @Intel handle is our signature handle and is the center point for much of what Intel does on Twitter. The @Intel handle together with a set of 10 strategic handles and 40 country allows us to effectively cover a range of topics and grow our follow base while effectively managing each handle and engaging our followers.

DN: How have you been able to create a consistent customer experience across all social channels?
It’s a priority for us to both offer a consistent look and feel across our social networks as well as take advantage of the unique features each offers. For example, our Facebook page and our Google+ page currently feature similar campaign imagery; however we have optimized our Google+ page to take advantage of the Circles feature, whereas Facebook is centered around tabs. Google+ circles provide a really unique way to segment your audience. We know that a software developer wants to hear about different things than a journalist, for example, so we’re asking our followers to ‘opt-in’ to circles which represent topical areas of interest to them. Then, we communicate with that circle about those specific topics of interest. We have also developed a set of global assets which local teams integrate into their Twitter profiles. If you look at our primary handle, @Intel, as well as a country handle, @IntelBrasil for example, you’ll see that we’ve aligned the design to be consistent across both.

This Ex-Renegade’s Thoughts on Social Media

Posted on April 6, 2012 by Drew Neisser

To help gain insight into the results of our soon to be published Social Media Fitness Study, I interviewed a number of marketing professionals including Trip Hunter, VP Brand Marketing of FUSION-IO, a recently public company that is doing really well on all fronts. Trip, as many of you know, worked at Renegade for many years, so of course, I’m completely bias about his talents. Nonetheless, I think you will find what he has to say quite informative and insightful.

DN: B2C companies outscored B2B companies in the Social Media Fitness study. Do you have any thoughts on why this might be the case?
B2C companies are much better at engaging with people as individuals. B2B companies market like the end consumer isn’t a human being. They are a collection of survey responses and data points. They’re not. They are real- live human beings too that get sad, and find things funny, and care about their overeating.

I also think there is a belief that the level of passion that consumers in B2C have for brands is a lot higher and more a part of ‘who they are’ than exists in B2B brands. People strongly identify with the brands in their life. They help define who they are. “I’m an apple person”, or “I drive a BMW.” You don’t hear so much someone say “I’m an HP 980 server guy”. So I think B2C brands are better positioned to capitalize on this. It is not always true, but it’s a perception among B2B that individuals don’t identify with B2B brands as much, so why bother?

DN: Do you think there is still skepticism among B2B marketers that social can help them achieve their business goals?
I do think there is skepticism here, especially among more established and mature industries, because it is difficult to find a point of view or create content that is newsworthy, or interesting, or engaging. If you can’t get people involved in your story, then you might walk away. Fusion is lucky in that it is a technology that is very innovative, and new, and because of that, techies really pay attention to our story. They are constantly talking about Fusion, and playing with our solutions, and benchmarking them against the existing status quo, and engaging with us. Their passion for Fusion is genuine, and we would be the fool not to engage and share and facilitate in the growth of that passion. A lot of people are asking a lot of questions, because what we do is so revolutionary. If we don’t answer, someone else less qualified will. By facilitating understanding, we ultimately help them find solutions for the current issues that plague traditional data storage architecture.

DN: What is social media doing for your business?
We consistently generate qualified leads through SM. When prospects ask the general community a question about Fusion, we put them directly in touch with someone at Fusion who can answer that question. More often than not, this leads to further conversations which lead to sales. As our director of social media said “I am the SM switchboard operator who connects people to the right person in the right department. I communicate with customers and potential customers directly and help them out. Our efforts are as much about customer service, if not more, than about lead generation.”

DN: Less than 1/3 of the companies surveyed had a disaster plan in place. What triggered the development of a disaster plan at FusionIO and did it work when you had to use it?

There are at least two kinds of disasters: Disasters that shake the house, and those that knock it down. Our disaster plan covers the former well. We’re working on the latter.

Disasters that shake the house happen almost everyday. Someone makes a negative or incorrect comment about us, or incorrectly compares us to a competitor. Our first negative comment through SM was back in 2009, and we have been creating our disaster plan ever since. As a result of that negative comment, we contacted the customer, helped him out, and turned him into an evangelist. He went on to make supportive and positive comments about us from then on. (see below) Recently we’ve been adding “what if” scenarios to the playbook. Being a public company, we have to be prepared.

In general, we’ve learned that the quicker we are able to respond, the more favorably things go. There’s no way to fully measure the impact of our direct communications with followers, whether they be customers, fans, or critics, but we believe it’s invaluable. Because we have been very approachable and communicative, people expect honest and quick answers from us. They know they can reach out to us via social networks and we will respond and help them.

One key component of our plan is to be measured in our response. Sometimes people just want attention-want to be recognized, and you have to know when to walk away. What we have learned is that there is a code of conduct in the community, and many times it is self regulating. Recently a guy made a video about us that wasn’t based in fact. We responded saying we would love to discuss his POV offline as is would be a rather in-depth discussion. He had no interest in doing this-he was looking for attention. But the community dealt with him, discounting his claims and eventually stopped listening. This was a huge homerun for us-So much more credible than if we are telling him he is wrong.

DN: Most companies especially B2B struggle to develop engaging content and get their customers to pitch in. How have you been able to accomplish this?
We are always trying to grow engagement with our customers, and we are not as far along as we would like to be. That said, we are so new that a broad understanding of our technology doesn’t exist yet. People want to know more, so getting them involved is not as hard as it might be for others.

We treat them like the intelligent, opinionated, passionate human beings they are. B to B companies’ customers are still consumers and human beings. We may not have the massive number of followers that consumer brands do, but our fans are just as loyal and passionate.

DN: You mentioned that you are in the process of auditing all of your social channels — what do hope to learn from this audit?
We are hoping to learn a lot of things, especially where we stand relative to our competitors. Since we sent you that answer, we have gathered some revealing numbers. Even though we’re much tinier than our largest competitor, we are gaining followers as a percentage of overall audience faster than they are, and in the area of measurement that really matters–shares–we are also ahead. People click on our links and share our content on Twitter more than they do with our largest competitor, so that is promising.

We also want to find out what we need to do better. B2C companies are known for creating very engaging content on channels such as FB and Twitter-we can learn a lot from them and how some types of B2C efforts can translate across to B2B.

The Importance of a Social Roadmap

Posted on April 5, 2012 by Drew Neisser

As part of the qualitative portion of our soon to be released Social Media Fitness Study, I had the pleasure of catching up with Pete Abel, SVP of Corporate Communications at Suddenlink. What I especially like about Pete is his candor. While he and his team are doing lots of smart things with social media including the development of a cross-disciplined team, a disaster plan and a road map, he fully acknowledges that they need better metrics, a belief most of his peers share. Enjoy the interview and stay tuned for more insights from other smart marketers in the days ahead.

DN: Can you speak to the benefits of having a cross-disciplined team in place to manage social media?
Starting from the premise that social media is all about having – and maintaining – conversations with customers and other stakeholders, we believe the best, most legitimate conversations are achieved when a diverse group of people participate, each bringing to the dialogue their own unique perspectives and skill sets. To be clear, our approach is not the wild west. The members of our cross-functional team are not renegades. We consult; we coordinate; we check and verify with each other. But at the end of the day, the quality of the conversation is improved – and our customers seem to be happier – when they hear from more than just one voice, or one group with one perspective.

DN: Can you tell me how Suddenlink came to have a social media disaster plan in place?
About three years ago, I was at a thirtieth birthday party for one of my nephews. In the midst of the celebration, I was notified that a disgruntled customer had opened up a Twitter account with a handle that used our company name, preceded by an expletive. Within a few hours, this customer had accumulated dozens of followers and an even longer list of tweets from other disgruntled customers. Eventually, we got our decision-makers together, formulated a reasonable response strategy, implemented it, and the crisis diminished. But that experience underscored for us just how quickly issues can surface in social media and take on a life of their own. We knew that, but we hadn’t experienced it first hand until then. From that point forward, we were compelled to become better prepared. Granted, the “disaster plan” we have in place today is not all that complicated. It’s essentially a monitoring program and communication chain, one that helps us make sure we promptly identify issues and react accordingly, with all the key people involved. But even with just those basics in place, we tend to sleep much better at night – and, I’m confident, we’re in a much better position to respond than we were three years go.

DN: Can you talk about the challenges of establishing KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for social media?
We have some informal metrics in place. For instance: “How many customers are we helping each week, and of those, how many are we transforming – in the language of Fred Reichheld’s book, The Ultimate Question 2.0 – from detractors to promoters?” But we can and need to do more. Several questions remain: “What does that more look like; how do we get there; and what does it cost – not just in dollars but in human resources?” To use a semi-tired analogy, our team members often feel like they’re trying to sweep back ocean waves with brooms. How do you measure the success of an effort like that? Recently, we started reviewing tools that will help us collect, analyze, visualize, and report on the tone and trends of various conversation threads relevant to our company. From that base, we hope to establish more robust and better-informed objectives or key-performance indicators – and track our progress against them.

DN: Could you speak to the advantages of having a social media road map in place?
After we had a reasonably sound social media program up and running, members of the team started coming up with new (and often very intriguing) ideas about what we might do next. Tina Simcox – from our customer experience team – was a particularly energetic idea generator, and she still is. Unfortunately, as with all organizations and all ideas (social media or not), we had to face the reality of limited resources and make some tough decisions. So we sat down and started mapping out the art of the possible: What are all the ideas; which of them are the most important/critical; which will deliver the nearest term bump; what do they cost; what can we do today; what might we be able to do tomorrow? The discipline of that process helped us get some of those great ideas up and running; otherwise, I fear none of them would have been implemented. Saying all that, I’ll confess, after we worked our way through the first version of the roadmap, we let it lapse. I’d guess we’re not the only organization guilty of doing so. But we need to get back to it. It’s critical to making sure we’re not resting on our laurels or running off in potentially unproductive or even counterproductive directions.

Brands Need An Alternative to Facebook

Posted on March 24, 2012 by Drew Neisser

While the rest of the industry hailed the announcement of Facebook Timeline as a great leap forward, I can’t help but wonder if Zuckerberg & Co. have pulled a fast one on brands and their fans. In the pre-Timeline days, brands might have felt they actually owned their fans or at least had some control over the relationship. In the post-Timeline era, it is now clear that Facebook owns these fans and brands can rent them if they want to pay for them. And while I have no problem with Facebook “monetizing” its network, after all it needs to make the post-IPO math work, it still seems a little shocking that brands have so little control on their part in the social network.

You have 5 more days to become a visual storyteller
Pithy posts may have carried the day on the old Facebook, but Timeline puts a particular premium on images and videos. Not only is there an enlarged photo “cover” on the landing page, but photo albums are featured more prominently. Brands can also “star” images, allowing them to expand across an entire page. And while all of these changes should increase engagement, brands without an arsenal of images will need to assemble one mighty quick. (Ready or not, Facebook will convert all brands to Timeline on March 30th, 2012)

Fan acquisition costs are rising
One of the beauties of the old Facebook was that any brand could build up a following at little to no out-of-pocket expense. Add some compelling content, throw up a “fan gate,” and you could watch those Likes rise like the national debt. With Timeline, Facebook seems to favor paying advertisers at every turn. Sure — “fan gates” are back as of late last week after Facebook fixed a technical problem, but you can only drive traffic directly to these pages if you pay to do so or link to them via a post. Otherwise, the default landing page is your Timeline home page and the fan gate will be on one of your secondary “tabs.”

Fan engagement costs are rising too
Prior to Timeline, brand communications were filtered through Facebook’s mysterious algorithm to an unknown subset of fans. Well, that mystery is no more. Facebook announced that marketers will be able to reach only 16% of their fan base for free. If you want to reach more fans, you’ll need to pay to do so via the “reach generator,” which enriches Facebook but not necessarily the brands that support it. A number of brands have already seen their engagement rates drop substantially after making the switch to Timeline.

If you don’t have a history, you have a few days to make one up
For illustrious brands like the New York Times and Coca-Cola with long and well-chronicled histories, Timeline is a dream come true. These brands can now publish “milestones” as far back as they want, adding a rich texture to their Facebook presence. For new and younger brands, Timeline will take a lot more creativity. Perhaps these folks will hearken back not just to the inception of the business idea, but to the conception of the founders themselves!

Pin your hopes on the weekly pinned post
With the cover photo now taking up so much prime-time real estate, much of a brand’s content will now fall below the typical screen viewing area. To help address this, brands will now be able to “pin” one particular post to the mid-left side for an entire week. Deciding what to pin will become a weekly ritual — but one that perhaps belabors a minor issue, since so few people actually return to a fan page after their first visit.

Engage – or else everyone will know you’re not
Facebook is so serious about pushing brands to become engaging storytellers that they will now make it easier for everyone to see how you’re doing. A quick click on the Likes box just below the cover photo reveals not just the number of Likes and “people talking about this” but also the most popular week, most popular city and most popular age group. A nifty little graph tracks new Likes and “people talking about this,” accenting the probable correlation between engaging content and fan growth.

The good news: managing complaints just got a lot easier
Most brands will welcome the fact that Timeline includes an optional Message tab that allows consumers to contact them directly and privately rather than just post a complaint publicly. In theory, this will help weed out the whiners who broadcast their complaints from those genuinely seeking immediate assistance. Taking unpleasant conversations “offline” is a customer service department dream come true — and should hasten the integration of social and service-related activities. (It also appears that brands can avoid unpleasant posts altogether but electing to approve them in advance. This sounds good but could lead to complaints escalating in other venues so brands will want to try to be as transparent as possible dealing with complaints.)

Bottom line: it’s time to develop a Plan B
Time will tell whether the new Timeline actually improves a brand’s ability to engage with its fans via Facebook. What we do know is that the cost of engagement with all your fans just went up, and that Facebook will not hesitate to impose its will upon your efforts. So while few brands can afford to be without a Facebook presence, given how much time consumers spend there, this is as good a time as any to start thinking about how you can engage YOUR fans in other less dictatorial arenas.

FYI, Renegade converted to Timeline two weeks ago. The process is relatively easy although digging up all the old content to fill in timeline is indeed time consuming. If you have yet to make this conversion for your company, Facebook will do it for you on March 30th!

Updated Brand To Do List for Facebook Timeline

Posted on March 1, 2012 by Drew Neisser

Like it or not, all brands will need to convert their pages on Facebook to the new timeline format as of 3/31/12 or Facebook will do it automatically. A number of brands have already taken the leap and offer a preview of what your brand page might look like:

Ben & Jerry’s – example of a “heritage” brand taking advantage of timeline with old pics
Verizon Wireless – integrating user photos into their “landscape” visual
Redbull – fun scavenger hunt game to encourage fans to explore their timeline
WalMart – promotes feedback and local WalMart tabs
Natural History Museum – example of how another NYC landmark is integrating their history and archival pics into timeline
NY Times – highlights select moments from their 160+ year history

Here is a quick check list of things you’ll need to from a design/content standpoint all of which can be done relatively easily. My 3/5 updates are in italics:

Find and post a primary visual (no offers) to serve as your new welcome banner. Facebook does not wants brand to turn this visual into blatant ads and they are no longer allowing “Like” gates
Find, back-date and post content to fill our your historical timeline (you need not do it all at once)
Decide which four “applications” (formerly known as tabs) you want featured just below the banner as thumbnail images since all other applications/tabs will now be hidden
Pick a post that you want “pinned” that will remain on the left hand side of your page for up to 7 days
You will also be able to “star” posts which will enlarge the visual associated with that post
Review your current application/tab pages since they can now be wider (from 520 pixels to 720 pixels). If you don’t want to revise these, they will simply float in the middle of that page
Individuals can now send brands direct messages and brands are allowed to respond up to two times to a consumer DM

The far bigger issue/opportunity is how advertisers will be able to use Facebook to achieve their business objectives. Since Facebook currently limits the exposure of any one post to 16% of a brand’s following, marketers will now have the opportunity to buy exposure to their full network. Lucy Jacobs, COO of Spruce Media, a company that specializes in Facebook advertising, believes this is a watershed moment, noting that ” the official lines between paid, owned and earned media are now officially gone.” Here are a few more implications of the new Facebook Timeline for brands according to Jacobs:

All ads in Facebook will now all begin as content posted to a Facebook Page, brands will no longer create separate ad copy. Brands will publish content and the content which drives the most engagement will gain distribution as ads through news feed and mobile.
Facebook users will be able to “like” and engage with this page post and news feed content, initially people will like and engage with brands page post content and then brands can “amplify” this messaging through paid distibution (I.e. Ad spend) — (FB reach generator product). Facebook quoted a stat today the the average fan sees 16% of page posts updated, reach generator extends this reach to 75% for brands through paid media (reach generator product).
FB has created a flexible, engaging and scaleable advertising model combining the best of digital and traditional advertising in one platform with close to 1BN consumers (half who log in every day). New formats will double engagement rates and traffic to Facebook pages which implies ad dollars go further. Ad Units are now an extension of content and engagement with pages drives ads to be cheaper so brands have 200x the reach to reach fans through socially aware ads.

Stay tuned. There other important implications especially for mobile advertising. Undoubtedly you’be reading about this just about everywhere in the coming days including these helpful posts on AdAge, Mashable (thank Todd Wasserman) and MediaBistro.