Social Media

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?

SXSW Interactive starts at the end of next week. Yes, next week! This means for many the opportunity to meet with people that have influenced them online face to face, perhaps for the first time.

Some people will see this as an opportunity to try and convince an influencer that they have the next killer {app, blog post, book idea, social network website} <<

Who Are You?

While it’s great that this person, in whatever way, has influenced you, don’t assume that:

1. You know them
2. They know you

If you have had no previous interaction with them before, you have never bothered to leave a comment on a blog post, Re-Tweet them, offer encouragement etc. why exactly do you think that in a few minutes at the end of a panel you are going to convince them to be your new BFF?

SXSWi can be the place to start that engagement. If you say you read a person’s blog, then really read it. As a blogger, I can say nothing gets my attention faster than someone who quotes one of my posts to me and then makes a point about it. They don’t have to agree with me, in fact it’s great when they say, you said “blah, blah, blah” but I think this! Good discussion will ensue.

Read the book

If the person you want to meet has a book out, read it. Not just the first few pages, the whole thing. Write a list of things you like and don’t like about it. The concepts that you agree with and the ones you don’t quite follow. Now you have something to talk about. Better still, do a book review of the book in a short video, then email/tweet the person with a link to it and tell them you reviewed their book. Talmadge Boyd has some great advice on how to put this together.

Don’t expect to have the conversation about their book in the few minutes at the end of the panel. Ask them for a biz card, give them one example of a concept that you’d love to discuss with them and ask to email them about it. This gives them a reason to remember you, and a reason to engage with you. Develop a relationship with them first, because as much as you might see them as influential, they are human beings first and they, like you, want to get to know someone before they become involved.

Of course if you just want a fan pic with them that’s usually cool too!

Who do you want to meet at SXSWi?

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?

We have at our disposal a wealth of software tools that all us to connect with both people we know in the real world and those that we only know in the virtual one. As we grow our connections the volume of information coming to us from all of these connections can seem overwhelming.

I have some 4500 followers, on Twitter, not a huge following compared to many. If I were to try and use just the Twitter website to stay in touch with all of them it would be impossible, so instead I use Tweetdeck. I have about 20 columns all well organized. Followers added and sorted into how they fit into my greater connection set.

Facebook is the same, with over 1100 connections on Facebook lists become essential to help me sort through all the communication. Facebook itself tries to help me by only showing me status updates from those people with whom I interact most.

Does Shouting Equal Quality?

Therein lies the problem. I interact with those people because they appear on my home page most often. I tweet with those people who appear in one of my columns. I hear those who shout loudest, but are they always the ones I should be listening to?

Is volume in either quantity or sound a measure of worth of content? If I come to a party at your house and stand in the middle of the room and shout out what I have done with my day am I adding more to the party than the individual standing in the kitchen sharing the profound thoughts with only two others?  Probably not.

With all this software that supposedly “helps” us are we in fact missing out on the good stuff. Are we missing the diamonds in a mountain of coal? I am constantly seeking out ways to find those diamonds. From adding ever more columns to Tweetdeck with less and less people in them, to creating more and more lists in Facebook. Certainly one method that I have found that has proven useful is to categorize people in multiple ways. Location, Job, Subject etc is one way to make sure I don’t miss out.

How are you making sure you don’t miss the diamonds?

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?

This week I found an addition to my Gmail, Google Buzz. Like so many others of you I was surprised at the way this was rolled out. No invites, no “elite” group of users first, just open your email and there it was.

Open Rollout – Not the Google Way

A definite departure from the way Google has rolled out previous applications, including Gmail. What to make of that? Was Google not so sure that they could create a buzz about Buzz?

Having played around with Google Wave and been left with the impression that while it might be useful for groups of collaborators, as an individual it left me feeling like I had taken a trip back in time 15 years or so to the days when I was one of only a handful of people I knew that had email. I could see that this might be useful, but no one I knew used it and so for the most part it was irrelevant.

Turn Down The Volume

Google Buzz seems to be much the same type of thing. For the first time I would have to say that Google is a day late and a dollar short. Google Buzz is little more than an echo chamber, in a world that has enough noise already. Rather than bringing something new and exciting to the table, they have invented a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist, namely, how to stay in touch with people I email using Gmail. The people I email using Gmail I am already connected to, on Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, Foursquare, Plaxo, LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube and of course via email. Why do I need another tool?

When I look at Buzz what I see is cross-posting from Twitter & Facebook, along with “Hey, how does this work?” posts. So what is the point?  That is a classic software development conundrum. Google has given me a tool, but I have no idea how or why I should use it. So I will just leave it be and not use it.

A New Tool For The Miner

If you are going to build a social tool, then at least look at what already exists, and look at the problems that occur with them. The primary problem for anyone actively involved in Social Networking is Noise. A tool that enables me to reduce the noise, focus on what I am interested in across all sites and still enables me to catch those odd alluring snippets that might otherwise be missing from my attention stream is what I need.

Tweetdeck is the nearest tool that I use that comes anywhere near that, and that barely does the job. I currently have more than 20 columns in Tweetdeck that I scroll across every day looking for the good stuff. I am an information miner, what I need is a laser, not dynamite and definitely not a 16oz claw hammer which is what Google Buzz is. Old tech, old approach.  Google I expect more from you.  Back to the drawing board you go.

Have you found a use for Google Buzz?

In January’s edition of Scientific American MIND, David DiSalvo wrote an article entitled “Are Social Networks Messing With Your Head?”

He raises some interesting points about Social Networking sites, how they are used and how they can often fall short of a users expectations. What I found very interesting was his and others observations that these sites can actually increase stress and lower feelings of self-worth. Something that many of us who use them on a regular basis might find counter-intuitive.

I Hate The Social Media A List

There are plenty of rant posts out there, that boil down to this basic statement. Someone somewhere doesn’t like a prominent Social Media/Social Networking “A Lister”. Whether its Robert Scoble, Chris Brogan or some other person. It often struck me that many of these rants were the result of jealousy. I know Chris Brogan in particular had a rough patch late last year with attacks on him. These were always a surprise to me, as having met Chris several times in person, he is one of the nicest guys you could meet and definitely not a “Its’ all about me, celebrity”. Reading DiSalvo points to a potential reason for all this angst, the people making them are lonely.

DiSalvo quotes a study by John Cacioppo of the University of Chicago in which two groups of subjects were shown images while undergoing an MRI. One group typed themselves as Lonely, the other non-lonely. The group whose brains showed a higher response to pleasant images of people and situations were those who were non-lonely. Those whose brains showed a higher response to unpleasant images of people and situations were the lonely ones.  DiSalvo states that “Lonely people have a heightend sense of social threats. Snubs, insults, alienation & gossip all elicit higher levels of stress in the lonely”.

I Want More “Friends”

Those joining sites like Twitter, Facebook & LinkedIn to “connect” to more people may in fact be doing themselves more harm than good. SoHo workers & Stay At Home Mom’s in particular often make statements like “Twitter is my window to the world”, ” I love the support I get from my Facebook friends”. However, in reality, seeing other build larger networks, and having more conversations with those people who are perceived as being “influential” may actually heighten feelings of loneliness.

Laura Freberg of the California Polytechnic State University defines loneliness as “the deficit between what you want & what you have” and goes on to say “Social Networks can make this worse”.

The key here is that those who use Social Networking tools to support their existing friendship circles do better than those who center their friendships on these sites. It seems that meeting in real life is always going to win over just meeting online. Which is why Tweetups, Social Media conferences, and social sharing tools like Foursquare are becoming increasingly popular. Don’t just tell me what you are doing, come do it with me.

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?

Living in Austin – the self proclaimed “Live Music Capital of the World”, it is not too surprising that there have been attempts to also dub it the “Social Media Capital of the World” or at least the US. I was part of some banter on Twitter a few days ago on just this topic, the challenger being Boston,Mass.

Most of the conversation centered around who lived in those particular cities and what they represented in terms of Social Media leadership. To be honest, given the talent in both I tended to say that they jointly held the title.

However, it got me thinking. Often when you are part of a sub-culture it is all too easy to become blinded to the fact that not everyone shares your interests. So I decided to do a little research using Google Insights for Search to see where, in the US, people were actually searching for Social Media. The results were surprising.

Search Terms

I used the year 2009 for the search period and used the following search terms as the basis for showing interest in Social Media marketing:

• Social Media
• Social Media Marketing
• Social Marketing
• Facebook Marketing
• Facebook for Business

I arrived at these terms after testing several others to see which produced the highest results.

What the results show is, that far from being the Social Media capital, Austin, or more specifically Texas didn’t make the top five (actually it didn’t make the top ten), Massachusetts comes in at number two, so its fairly safe to assume that a reasonable number of the searches came from the Boston area.  Illinois is no real surprise, being home to Chicago, and a lot of companies being based there.

Minnesota, Oh ya

What really surprised me was the appearance of Minnesota, whilst obviously home to the Twin Cities, with a population of 5.2m (US Census 2008 figures), it is considerably smaller in population than Texas (24.3m), home to Austin. In fact Texas’ population is almost double that of Illinois and more than 40 times bigger than that of the District of Columbia, both of which register with higher numbers. I would have expected that simply given the higher population numbers there would have been more searches.

The fact that Texas doesn’t make the list could simply mean that they don’t use Google to find their Social Media services, or know that they are so well served with agencies, conferences & other resources that searching for them is unnecessary. It could be that they are using search terms that are completely outside the realms of those I used (though I think this unlikely).

For whatever reason, in terms of where those people live who are looking for information on Social Media, for now at least, in the discussion between Austin & Boston, Boston is the clear leader.

Where do you think Social Media is most wanted?

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.