Marketing

Social events need not be a huge affair, but they can be extremely effective. They should definitely be a part of any social media strategy that your organization is considering. From a marketers perspective they can be a good way to persuade the C level that the trip to Vegas will be more than just a non-stop party.

Having created your Facebook page, your Twitter account(s) and your LinkedIn page how do you take that work out to the real world with a consistent message? How do you leverage all that online work when you meet people in real life?

For some reason this is still one of the biggest puzzles for a lot of organizations. They understand face to face marketing & sales, they go to tradeshows, conferences and other events, but for some reason when they get there they completely forget to utilize their Social Media efforts.  Here are some suggestions to make that connection easier.

Four simple things to do

Let’s imagine you are sending a team of four people to a tradeshow in Vegas with a booth. If all your efforts are focused on the tradeshow floor you are missing a big opportunity. Why not create a tweetup at a bar, perhaps in the hotel that the tradeshow is being held in.

• Use Twitter to find out who is going to the tradeshow. It’s as simple as sending out a tweet asking just that.
• Create a hashtag for your event that reflects your company name and/or the main event.
• Put up signs at the event – just simple ones printed in the business center of the hotel reminding people to Tweet the event, use your hashtag, checkin on Foursquare and send a shout.
• Have a couple of door prizes for people who tweet your event, maybe even have a few quiz questions about your company or the event and reward the first person to tweet the answer.

These simple steps can turn an ordinary conference trip into something a lot more creative, that has tangible results that can be built into the trip autopsy.

What does your organization do to move Social from online to the real world?

Influence. It has always been an emotive word. Always been something that has attracted some types of people. The ability to exert influence over others. The world of Social Networking, Social Sharing & Social Media has created more opportunities for more people to become influential and to witness the amount of influence particular individuals have increase.

While at first this might seem a good thing, almost a leveling of the playing field it brings with it a new set of issues for many. The myth that being a blogger with a certain number of readers will bring recognition as being influential is a common one. The “many” see a few people being selected and think that it is as easy as that.

Many PR companies base their selection of bloggers on what they perceive as influence. What this has created is commonly referred to as the A list. That select group of bloggers that are perceived as being extremely influential, able to sway the masses with only a few words.  Having them review your product or service is almost as good as a celebrity endorsement and a whole lot cheaper.

But is this true? Follow any of those on the A list long enough and you will see some form of rejection of the pressure they are under to deliver this influence. They are asked to do more, produce more, by an increasing number of people. Not just companies but individuals who feel that they only need a few mentions, tweets or a blog post and their idea will take off because of this one persons influence.

But really, lets look at the math. If an A list blogger has 10,000 page views per day is it better to court them or 10 non-A list bloggers who get 1o00 page views per day? Which is more effective at getting your message out?

As a blogger would you rather try and build an empire around your blog at a national or international level or build a local circle of influence that has a more tangible impact where you live? I’m not trying to say that you can’t do both or that by doing one you should give up dreams of the other. However, how many High School quarterbacks play in the NFL?

My point is, in aiming to be the next Chris Brogan, Darren Rowse, Brian Clark you could miss out on being you. Being a big fish in a small pond is always considered a bad thing as though it has no value. But what if your ability to influence your local “pond” created real change?

Instead of striving to be someone else why not try to be you?

One of the reasons that sites like Foursquare, Gowalla & MyTown have become so popular beyond just the ability to share your location is the game play aspect. Not only are you asked to share, but you are positively rewarded for doing so, in fact the more often you share the more you are rewarded.

The upside for the businesses whose locations are shared is that they get free word of mouth promotions everytime someone checks in. Now comes the same functionality from two sites for products on the web. GetGlue, from Adaptive Blue & Hollrr, from well Hollrr.

Both have adopted the same concept. Encourage you to share products you like with your “friends”. Let’s look at each in turn.

GetGlue

Glue wins a lot of points for its ease of use, they have a firefox plugin that creates a glue toolbar which appear whenever I am on a site that has products displayed. This toolbar is almost like a personal shopper. Not only does it give me the ability to share the product by simply clicking “Like” but it shows me who else in the Glue community has liked this product, it shows me similar products and if I want, allows me to see other suggestions.  I like this feature a lot. If I am shopping online it allows me to see what others that I know think of this product, this is even better than the embedded ratings & reviews that sites have on them.

They reward sharing with changes in status, encouraging users to strive for “Guru” status. Achieving this opens up another dimension to the service – special offers. Guru’s are eligible to win free stuff from Glue sponsors. DVD’s, Books and other offers on a regular basis. So there is a tangible reward for all this sharing. Overall I’d say Adaptive Blue have done a great job of combining Social Sharing with ratings & reviews, with game play.

Hollrr

Hollr is a less developed platform, no browser plugin, which forces me to return to the site to conduct product “Hollrrs”. Hollrr’s are rewarded with badges, in a Foursquare style reward system. Hollrr has a more cutesy, Web 2.0 feel to the site than Glue but no tangible rewards. I like the game play but there are features of the site that need some work. For example it couldn’t find my email contact friends or Twitter connections who were using the site, even though I know a couple of them are. A small bug, but huge impact. If I am being asked to share socially, the first group I want to do that with is those with whom I already have a connection.

Overall, I’d say that Hollrr needs work, cute badges are easily trumped by real life rewards. Make it easier for the user by providing a browser plugin so I don’t have to keep coming back to your site.

Both these services would do well to explore the Mobile avenue and create apps that allow integration with cameras in Smart phones. I’d like to be out in a real life store and “Like” or “Hollrr” a product from there, now that is real social sharing.

Have you used either of these services? Which do you prefer?

The Austin Chapter of the American Marketing Association, an organization for which I volunteer, recently ran into trouble with Facebook.  The trouble began when the chapter tried to set up a couple of event announcements for events being organized in Austin for  marketers to attend.

Firstly, Facebook would not allow the word “free”, even though there is no charge to attend the event. Eventually the word complimentary was found to be acceptable. Secondly, having created two events. The page admin received the following stern warning from Facebook that the chapter:

“significantly slow down or stop this behavior. Further misuse of site features may result in a temporary block or your account being permanently disabled.”

This is surprising for two reasons, firstly, the chapter is a non-profit, it provides information to marketers who are both members and non-members, it’s fans all understand that when they become fans of the page. Secondly, the chapter only posts one or two events a month. This hardly strikes me as misuse of site features!

I checked the Terms of Service to see why Facebook would think we have fallen foul of their rules. Surprisingly there is nothing in either the General terms or the special provisions applicable to pages about the number of events you can promote in a given timeframe.

So what is really going on with Facebook? Are they trying to bite the hand that feeds it? After all if Marketers stop running ads on Facebook where will their revenue come from?

Facebook either needs to make its terms of service clearer or they need to make their messaging clearer when they rap organizations on the knuckles for “misuse of site features”.

Have you or your organization run into issues with Facebook and their terms of service?

I decided to get out of the office to write today. Sometimes a change really is as good as a rest. Recently I have started a number of new projects, some collaborations with people I really respect, others solo projects that I hope to develop into something much larger in the coming months (YouAreHereApps) is an example.

In addition to that I just started submitting articles to Read Write Web, the first was published last week and I just became the Austin Twitter Correspondent for Examiner.com, where I will be writing stories about Austin people using Twitter in different ways.

All of this is in addition to running a successful Marketing Communications company (we just signed another Fortune 500 company last week) and volunteering as VP of Events for the Austin Chapter of the American Marketing Association.  If all of that wasn’t enough I am also doing an increasing number of speaking appearances.

So why am I sharing all this (other than to toot my own horn? – I thought I’d say it before the cynics out there did).  I’m sharing it because sometimes I get asked where do I find the time, and why do I bother trying to do so much at once. The simple answer to those questions is “I get bored easily”. The more complex one is that, I approach building a business the same way I was taught to cook pasta. If you are not sure its done, throw it at the wall and see if it sticks.

It might not be the way they teach it in B school, but I’d rather try things and see if they work than find a book on it and read someone else’s attempt. Business, like so much else in life is not a spectator sport. Either play or go home.

Out or Up?

So when do you build up and when do you build out? Lets take a look at what I am doing – a lot of what I do at a personal level revolves around writing, and sharing my thoughts. I’d call that building out. Establishing new footholds, new storefronts for my writing and for readers to find my writing.

Building the IncSlingers, and the associated activities that I engage in around that (upcoming conference, Youarehereapps etc.) is building up. Its taking an established plot and adding new floors to it, raising it above the existing skyline so that it becomes more visible.

Which direction are you building?

I was having an interesting conversation a few days ago discussing the various merits of Social Media for business. The conversation started to focus on the various ways of “relationship” building, customer “engagement”, pipeline “nuturing”.  These are of course the stock in trade phrases rolled out by Social Media “guru’s” and those who follow them blindly.

Social Networking & Social Media

Firstly I want to clear up a common misunderstanding between Social Media & Social Networking. They are very different, though often conducted using the same tools, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc. Social Networking is the nice, kumbaya, lets all hold hands, hug and generally be nice to each other activity, also known as Socialist Media.

Social Media on the other hand is the activity of promoting a brand, service or product to the masses with the intent that some or all of the recipients of the message will buy, use or encourage others to do so.

With that clarification, lets clear the decks for the real meat of this post. Social Media is not about making friends, it’s not about customer engagement, it’s not about creating warm fuzzies with your prospects or existing customer anymore than any other  form of messaging is. If a brand has 1.2m fans on Facebook do they have the bandwidth to create a deep and meaningful relationship with each of those fans, no of course not. So lets stop kidding each other.

Uncle Phil

At the Enterprise level, and even at the Small & Medium business level, Social Media activity can best be described with a family analogy. The picture at the beginning of this post is our imaginary Uncle Phil, he comes to all the family gatherings, he’s an ok guy, takes an interest in our lives, even remembers our kids names and what grade they are in at school. But you know, somewhere between the Turkey & the Pumpkin pie, he is going to lean over, press his slightly sweaty palm onto your arm and say “How is your insurance coverage looking these days?”. Yep, he wants to sell us something. All that chatting, all that “getting to know you”, was just a front.

“Transparency” is a word so thrown around in Social Media that it has become, like so much other jargon, almost meaningless. If brands are to achieve real transparency in their Social Media activity then they need to put out their shingle up front. Some do, some are very good at it. Only a completely naive person would imagine for instance that Ford loaned Fiesta’s to reviewers so that they could experience having reliable transport for a few months. The Fiesta Movement was created with the sole intent that people get excited about the product and go and buy it.

Selling Isn’t Shameful

There is nothing wrong or shameful about selling your product, there is nothing wrong or shameful about using Social Media to sell your product. What is wrong is trying to hide it. The Social Media audience is evolving quickly, their level of sophistication is rising exponentially. They no longer truly believe that Brands want Fans so that they can invite them over for dinner, or find out about how little Johnny is doing in school (if in fact anyone ever believed that).

Some Social Media guru’s/agencies are still touting the “engagement/conversation” model. The “Touchy Feely” campaign creators. The problem with that model is, where is the ROI? Yes, exactly there isn’t any. I prefer the “Ouchy Bleedy” campaign. Yes it’s going to hurt the kumbaya crowd, but its more honest. Hello my name is Simon & I want your wallet. (the image is from a t-shirt I was inspired to design from LOLCatz – I’ll be wearing it at future conferences).

What about you? Do you want Hugs from customers or dollars?

The last installment of the Foursquare series takes a look at B2B and how Geo-Location services like Foursquare, Gowalla & even Twitter can be used by them.

Successful use of Social Media by the B2B space is a bit of a holy grail amongst marketers. Some have even gone so far as to dismiss the technology as it currently stands because they see no real method of seeing returns on their investment.  If services like Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn are a hard sell, how much harder is it to sell a service like Foursquare which seems to reside firmly in the B2C space and be little more than a game?

I was talking this idea through the other day with a friend who read my first post in this series and she extrapolated a very interesting concept for me. I was proposing the use of the technology by B2B service organizations, such as HVAC, copy machine repair etc. Her extrapolation of my idea was to incorporate the heat maps that I showed in the first post into a CRM/Lead Generation environment.  I can definitely see this being used, especially by small B2B outfits.

Imagine being a service based organization that has some type of field force, whether they are making deliveries, making maintenance calls etc. By using heat maps you can see the frequency of visits in a particular area, and by field force member. The heat map would show you where your calls were and where they were not. This would immediately give you valuable information for targeting either customer service issues (too many maintenance calls) or sales opportunities (no deliveries). While I am sure that there is enterprise level shipping, tracking or delivery scheduling software out there, I am equally sure it is beyond the budget of a small B2B businesses trying to compete with bigger organizations. I posted the link to wheredoyougo yesterday, here is another service, checkoutcheckins (produced by Danny Pier) doing a very similar thing with heat maps – still in Alpha.

Location, Location, Location

Of course the key here is still a physical presence. What of companies that do not have a physical product, for example a Marketing Communications Agency?  How do they leverage geo-location services to advance their marketing, especially in the B2B space?  The quick answer is they don’t, not directly. After all the key to geo-location social networking is exactly that, location. However, in much the same way as companies are now starting to feature select staff member twitter streams on their websites, I could definitely see some companies showing select staff member check-ins on their websites. Why? If for no other reason than to show that the company has more than a passing knowledge of how to leverage the technology. More than this, it can provide subliminal messaging showing your potential customers who you are already working with. Of course, it has to be managed correctly, and there is the question of just how much transparency you want with your organization.

Other concepts that have been proposed all revolve around having a location, even if its a temporary one such as at a trade show or conference. This is still a good idea, though temporary locations really do go against the spirit of geo-location social networking, insofar as the idea is that you can repeat the experience of others. If your “friends” are checking in at a conference that you aren’t at, then you have no way of repeating their experience.

Changing The Game

B2B Marketing through geo-location social networking is a much harder proposition. If I were the marketing manager for a company such as Avery Dennison, how would I use Foursquare or services like it to market my message to potential customers? Having access to an individuals’ check-ins doesn’t help me much.

Because I lack the other information about that person, are they authorized to make purchases on behalf of the company etc.? Just because I see that they have checked-in at Office Max doesn’t mean they are buying labels for their company or at all. So no point in pushing them discount coupons. So what do I get from a geo-location service that helps me get my message through all the noise that potential & existing customers are already experiencing? I reverse the concept. Instead of trying to use the service to simply promote my products, why not use my products to promote the service. For example, market to restaurants, bars, coffee shops etc. that are using Foursquare, labels that they can give away to “Mayors”?

Overall, I think that there is a long way to go for geo-location services. We will need to see a greater convergence of both current software technologies and new adaptations of hardware technologies. I certainly see a role for RFID technology in geo-location social networking, having a product check-in for you as you buy it will certainly expand the B2c potential of these services. Quite where B2B will go with Social Media in general, and geo-location in particular, remains to be seen. But there are some very smart people out there figuring it out and you can be sure that, given the right incentive, we will see some innovative campaigns using these tools.

Share your predictions for these services with everyone in the comments below.

Read Part One of this series.

Read Part Two of this series.

Following on from yesterday’s post about Foursquare for users, today I’m going to look at Foursquare for business, in particular the Business to Consumer market (we’ll look at Business to Business tomorrow). During this series I’m making several predictions, mine are based on research, they are generated by getting involved in the development community and talking to people who are actually building these applications. When I see smart people like Mike Langford of Tweetworks diving into the Foursquare API it’s a clear indication that some good apps are just around the corner.

One reason businesses get involved in any new technology is the rate of adoption by the broader community, e.g. their potential customers.  The chart below shows the increasing rate of check-ins in 2009, an increase of approx 900% over the year.

(thanks to John Wiseman for the graph)

In considering the B2C market, I’m going to segment it into large brands & local businesses. While the core of this series of posts focuses on Foursquare, it really covers all geo-location services and their potential uses.

There are two major elements for businesses to consider when getting involved with any Social Media service. Firstly, what can they achieve by using or encouraging use of the application? The other is what can they derive from the application if anything?

Large Brands

Large brands are usually associated with large budgets. What this means is that they can, if they so choose, spend more to acquire a customer than smaller businesses. However, the mindset of doing that is changing. Social Media has made it possible to lower that cost. Geo-Location when used as a part of the Social Media movement can be leveraged quite cheaply.  There are some very obvious quick wins, which large brands can and do use when using Social Media. Promotions, discounts and activity based rewards are all a part of their arsenal.  All of these can have a geo-location element. Gowalla, another of the popular location sharing services uses these to promote its own service. They hide rewards at locations and provide clues to their existing users. This type of “Treasure Hunt” is a common use of marketing in geo-location and is inspired by geo-caching as a game.

The advantage of this type of marketing is that the brand does not need to have their own physical location, they are leveraging other locations, usually notable ones – The Golden Gate Bridge, Grand Central Station, Sydney Opera House etc. This means that brands like Coca-Cola or Hanes can compete with brands like Disney, Marriott etc that have well known physical locations.

The real win for brands is not however in the simple B2C competition, but in leveraging the fact that geo-location services like Foursquare and Gowalla are social. The real win is in the B2C2C space. This might be a reward not only for you but for getting your friends to take action as well. E.g. if you check-in at X location you will receive Y reward, however, if you get 10 of your “friends” to check-in at that location you will get YY reward.

An Open API Leads to Greater Adoption

The fact that, certainly for Foursquare, it is possible to extract this type of data via their API means that brands can promote rewards far more easily through networks.  Foursquare in particular, having opened its API, is making it possible to construct applications that have far reaching potential. Because Foursquare allows its users to auto-post their check-ins to Facebook & Twitter, any application that utilizes the Foursquare API also gets this benefit. In effect they piggyback on the permissions already granted by a Foursquare user.  So a brand could set up a location based competition application and have users take part and promote their activity to their entire network, without the brand ever having to gain direct access to that network. This is a very powerful application of, and extension to, tools like Foursquare that we will see more of in the coming months.

Local Business

The most commonly considered method for local businesses to use location based services is loyalty programs. This is a quick, easy and free/low cost method of using these services. Simply ensuring that your business location(s) are entered in the tool correctly and waiting for people to check-in is great way to achieve a small amount of free promotion. By actually telling people that they will be rewarded for checking in it is possible to increase this dramatically.

In fact, Foursquare actively encourages this on their website by providing a form for businesses to fill out when they offer specials at their location(s). While this is great, it isn’t the only way local businesses can utilize these tools.  Just offering a discount or a freebie will only work so often and for so long. Again, as for large brands, the real killer is not in just communicating with your customers but having them communicate with others and spreading the word. Services such as Yelp have gone a long way in doing this, but they lack the instant nature of geo-location services like Foursquare.

Unlike large brands, local businesses do not usually have the funds to invest in the creation of applications to leverage the networks of users, so they have to do it in a more analog fashion. Referal business is at the core of most successful small businesses, by encouraging referral activity via the use of social tools, small businesses are able to leverage the large networks that users build without cost. For example if I owned a dog washing service I might offer a free dog wash to the “Mayor” of my location, however, if a user brought in 3 other “friends” I might want to offer something more. Using the physical location to show these offers, combined with online announcements, encourages people to take part in these activities.

In the B2C space we are likely to see a lot more integration of applications. As more applications open their API to each other it will be easier for businesses to have their advocates share their message to a broader networks. So what would a future business to consumer app look like in the near future?

You have a local business that sells a major brand product, you want the local customers, the brand wants the loyalty of your customers. As a supplier they provide you with an incentive for your customers, some kind of promo, but instead of a coupon that has to be redeemed, it is validated via geo-location social networking. Having installed the brand’s application, when the customer makes a “reward” purchase, that reward is promoted to all of their network as well. “Matt just earned X, you can too”.

What features do you think Foursquare should have to get businesses to use it?

I’ve been using the mobile location service Foursquare for sometime now. Originally via the mobile web and more recently as part of the Beta test group for the Blackberry – sorry but I can’t reveal anything about that at this point. What I want to cover in this post is the more basic question of  ” Why the heck should I bother with another app?” Over the next two days I’m going to try cover this from two angles, that of the user and that of the business looking to leverage another Social Media platform.

From a user perspective Foursquare appears, on the surface, to be nothing more than a game. Check-in more times than your friends and claim the title of “Mayor” of a location. So what? In much the same way that new Twitter users are stumped by the question “What are you doing?”, new Foursquare users find the act of checking in at a location somewhat pointless. As a friend of mine says, other than enabling stalkers what exactly are you getting out of it?

It’s true that the current actual value of Foursquare to the average user is minimal, if you stay mostly in your home town, you might find you are checking in at the same location as friends, possibly you might get a recommendation for an alternative to the location you are at, but that’s it. If you travel then you are likely to get more from it in terms of recommendations for places to visit, things to do and the potential of meeting other users – the core of Social Media.

However, just as Twitter as a service has spawned numerous add-on services and applications (see OneForty for the definitive list), so Foursquare is doing the same thing by opening up their API.  The heat map of my checkins below was created by WhereDoYouGo.

Ok so it’s a pretty picture but, again, so what? Imagine being able to layer your friends check-ins over the top and see it all graphically. You would, at a glance, literally be able to see the “hotspots” of your location. Much more useful, now add to that augmented reality applications like Layar – put the two together and you have a real-time city guide written by you and people you know.

Imagine being out for an evening, hold your cell phone camera up to a bar front and instantly see layered over the image reviews by people you know, see who you know who is in the bar without going in and what the special offers are for users of the application. Sounds like science fiction but all of the tech to achieve this already exists and is rapidly converging on a phone near you very soon.

Ready to sign up? Go on try it, and send me a friend request at the same time.

What’s that you say? I can’t hear you over all the noise! Listening was promoted heavily in 2009 as THE activity that companies should be undertaking in Social Media. I agree listening is very important and it has become increasingly easier to do with tools from Visible Technologies, Radian6, ScoutLabs, even google. The trouble is with all this listening going on, companies are not taking action. Listening by its very nature is passive, no business survives long by being passive.

What Are You Listening To?

Social Media monitoring is, or should be, an integral part of any organizations Social Media plan. However, what often gets left out of that plan is what the organization is listening for. Social Media “guru’s” will tell organizations, conversations are being had about your product/service/organization whether you like it or not, you need to hear them and join in. Great advice, but what conversations are being had, what do you want to do about them? How will you join in?

For major brands, the noise can be deafening when they first open themselves to “listening”. Even for smaller organizations the volume can be overwhelming and unexpected. Sometimes organizations will come to the “listening” stage with trepidation because they expect to hear bad things, they are braced for all of the “awkward” C-Level meetings that they are going to have, only to find that most of the conversations are positive, now they sit back and pat themselves on the back.

All I Hear Is Crickets!

Even more awkward is the situation where very little is being said. Is it because the organization isn’t worth talking about? Is it because no one cares enough to mention them? How do you fill the silence, should you even try? Without an action plan in place, all the listening in the world will get you no where. Before you listen, plan on what you are going to pay attention to, what you are listening for and what you are going to do when you hear those things. Simply trying to listen to everything will result in the same organizational paralysis that occurs when organizations try to measure everything.

What Should Your Organization Do When It Hears Things?

image by Mat Strange