Before I continue – the disclosure: Since 2009 I have been part of the Hanes Comfort Crew, a panel of Social Media advocates and advisors. However, they do not in anyway pay for content. They do make opportunities available to the Comfort Crew and we are free to use our discretion as to whether we accept them or not. This post was not requested or paid for.

What I liked about this was precisely that. The pairing was unexpected. This is smart marketing. The instinct to reach for the most obvious partner or association in what we perceive to be the mind of the consumer is the downfall of many marketers. I am a big fan, for example of the work of David & Goliath, the agency behind the Kia commercials. After all who puts a full size Sock Monkey on a mechanical bull as a way of selling suv’s to soccer mom’s?

So what was the idea with Hanes and JetBlue? Actually they hit upon one of the things that passengers are most concerned about, Comfort. Both brands are very focused on comfort. Hanes from a wearable perspective, JetBlue from a traveling perspective. They partnered up to try and bring comfort to the passengers of the early morning east bound flights in the US. The red-eye or Shut-eye as JetBlue calls it is certainly a place where passengers seek comfort.

I traveled from Denver to New York City on a JetBlue flight which departed from Denver at 00.50 (for those that don’t do military time, that’s ten minutes to 1am). The gate was surprisingly busy with a lot of people catching a few more minutes of sleep laying on the floor, slumped in seats, or sitting against pillars. If ever a bunch of people needed comfort this was it. As fate would have it, I was greeted at the gate by none other than Molly Lynn who is not only a great crew member for Jet Blue but a Social Media maven in her own right. She had been “warned” I was coming and that I’d be taking pictures & possibly video.

Warning or not Molly treated every passenger extremely well, again something that everyone flying at that ungodly hour wants. At boarding time, the passengers were advised that on boarding they were welcome to take a free Hanes t-shirt. This tied in with commercials that Hanes had been running both online and on TV for their new T-shirts with a no roll collar. Again part of the comfort angle. For this to really work it would have been better if each passenger had been handed a T-shirt at their seat, but as I later found out, that many t-shirts in boxes would have been way too much weight for the aircraft to carry around.

Some of the passengers didn’t take a t-shirt, especially those who were obviously headed to a business meeting at the end of their flight, others simply eyed them suspiciously as though heeding the security announcement that they shouldn’t take things onboard from people they didn’t know. The people that did take them were the ones you would expect to take freebies, kids, student aged travelers etc.

Overall this campaign gets my Smart Marketing nod because of the unique pairing. The execution was very difficult because of the physical limitations but for a company as traditional as Hanes to try new and innovative things is a great sign. For all of its buzz, Social Media will only take you so far. Getting closer to the customer in the real world should always be a part of a Smart Marketing campaign and not reaching for the obvious is definitely the way to make things memorable.

What Smart Marketing have you seen lately?

Image used under Creative Commons License by HowNowDesign

A lot of the most recent discussions have focused on the sharing of location, the safety and privacy issues that these tools bring to the forefront. However, location tools are not the only place where this perceived oversharing takes place.  Jill Hanner who is based in NYC and does promo work for Ford has shared in a video about her experience of sexual harassment in the workplace. She presented a very reasoned case and I have to agree that this type and any type of bullying whether in real life or online is awful.

Jill recently also posted video and pictures of herself in a bikini. Now she is a very beautiful woman, she is young and there is no reason why she shouldn’t be proud of her body. However, when she posted the picture of herself in her bikini to her Facebook page one “friend” questioned her for doing so, pointing out that she had remarked on harrassment and was now inviting it by posting alluring pictures of herself. Other “friends” were quick to jump to her defense pointing out that a woman should not be considered to be “inviting” harrassment or any other form of unwanted attention simply because of the clothes that she wears.

Poppy Dinsey posts a daily picture of her outfits everyday on her Posterous blog. Recently she was on vacation in Spain and so her daily pics often showed her in a bikini. Poppy is an entrepreneur based in London, England.  Again should she be judged for sharing revealing pictures of herself?

The real question comes from what we consider to be professional. Is it possible for the modern business woman to post these pictures and still retain the same level of professional credibility as those that don’t? Does Social Media encourage and invite people who are already fairly open in real life to be even more so with the distance that technology affords? Are these young women, and I don’t mean just Jill & Poppy but others who also regularly share pictures of a more revealing nature inviting “judgement” more than just a woman who wears revealing clothes to the office?

There is no “dress code” for the internet, however,is there a double standard at play here. I would definitely lose not only credibility but reputation if I were to post pictures of me in a speedo. Ok, agreed a lot of that has to do with the fact that I’m in my forties and hardly have an adonis like physique, however, even if I did look like the Old Spice guy would it be appropriate? Would people feel I had shared too much?

I’m extremely excited by this news, we have already executed one project in Mexico and are in the process of signing more clients as I write.  This is a major step for a company that only celebrated its two year anniversary at the beginning of this month.

What next?  Over the next year we will continue to expand our operations across the US & in Latin America. Our next obvious target is Europe and I am looking at various options for partners in London with which to gain a foothold there. There also a couple of individuals on my radar who I think would be an awesome fit for the IncSlingers team so we will see where things go from here.

Speaking of awesome individuals, our other major news is that Aronado Placencia of Startup Lucky has joined the IncSlingers US team as Creative Strategist – again you can read about him on the About Us page. Aronado will lead our sales & marketing efforts in the US. Seeking new clients that are looking to partner with real communicators who will ensure that their message is delivered.  See why Aronado decided to join IncSlingers in his video.

Of course they did all this by doing what? Oh yes that’s right, posting links to their posts and asking people to click on it! Where do they think their influence came from? Did they just wake up one morning with all these fans and readers and subscribers, nope they produced good content (definitely key) but then they had to do the donkey work of promoting that content. Which online means putting the link out there and telling people why they should click on it.

Every time a popularity contest comes around, be it the Mashable awards, the Shorties, or whatever a whole section of the Glitterati get their undies in a bunch over it. It so happens I have a theory on this, it’s called… Low Self Esteem. You see the people that get most concerned about this are the ones that can’t fathom why they are already popular. They suffer from fragile ego’s and a certain amount of paranoia and worry that it will all just disappear if someone else becomes popular.

I know this sounds very condemning of me. The reason I can take this stance is quite simple. I suffer from the same concerns as well. I understand that we all get a little paranoid sometimes and worry that our good fortune might just evaporate, that someone somewhere is smarter, better, sharper than us (actually I know for a fact that they are).  However, telling a company like Fast Company, you got it wrong is not the right solution. See the opportunity in this project. I’m already discovering people who I had no idea existed before that have got some good things to say. The blogosphere is too big for us to know everyone. We find a “jerk circle” (thanks to Jason Falls for that term) and we stay in it. We know the people we know and we stick with them.

So instead of simply writing the Influence Project off as lame, why not take a second look and see what you can actually get out of it.

Oh and my Influence Project link is fcinf.com/v/byxg

I actually recommend utilizing these services for many of my clients, in certain circumstances and usually on a case by case basis. However, as an individual I shy away from them. The biggest difference between building a personal brand over building a product brand is that its, well, personal.

Individuals who are using these services are flooding the revised Facebook stream with their Twitter comments, they are also filling their FriendFeed stream, Plaxo and several other places as well. The analogy that comes to mind to me when I see this is that these people are like someone invited to a party who only knows one joke, they then move from room to room at the party telling each new group the same joke repeatedly. Soon everyone at the party has heard the joke, but still they keep telling it.

The person that was once funny, is now annoying. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. Personally those people who are feeding their Twitter stream to Facebook and don’t share anything original on Facebook get “hidden”. I’ve already read your Twitter post on Twitter I don’t need to see it again on Facebook.

The point is this, if you are trying to build a personal brand, spend some time being personal. If you can’t think of something original to say on one platform or another that’s ok, better that you say nothing that simply repeat yourself.

Lack of Alignment

While most Twitter users are aware of the amazing job that Frank Eliason has done for ComCast on Twitter, acting as a one person rescue squad for their customer service issues, the rest of the brand has not aligned with this new way of doing business. A quick search on google for customer service at ComCast continues to result in many more horror stories than it does in success stories. Why? Because having one or two people creating a good impression on one platform is not enough. If there is no brand alignment behind the philosophy of listening and responding then all of the Social Media efforts in the world will not turn a brand around.

A search on Facebook brings equally crushing results, of the first ten (page one), one is fairly obscurely related to ComCast, Six are Anti-ComCast groups, One is a fan page for ComCast technology, one is a fan page for ComCast Interactive Capital and one appears to be a group for past employees.

Twitter is Not Social Media

As popular as Twitter is, it still only has a 5% penetration, being on Twitter, even if you do it well is not a Social Media Strategy. Twitter is at best a small part of an overarching strategy that includes not only the tool set, comprising tools like Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube etc but also the internal education and alignment that ensures these tools are part of a much broader “Social” focus within the organization.

Brands like Zappo’s aren’t good at things like Twitter and Facebook because they have some awesome marketing department working 24/7 to provide thrilling content. They are good at Social Media because their stated aim is to be the best service company in the world, they just happen to sell clothing and footwear. When you start with a socially focused goal like that, it’s hard not to be a success in Social Media.

Which brands do you think have focused too much on the platform and not enough on the philosophy?

Content is King. That’s what “they” say. I disagree. The King is dead long live the King. Quality content then, that must be King, possibly a prince but still not a King. The real King in the world of content is Social Content. The easiest way to define “Social” content is as the confluence of organizational/brand driven content and user generated/consumer generated content. It resides at the point where ownership and authorship lines blur such that it is hard, if not impossible to see where one ends and the other begins.

At the Social Media Breakfast in Austin on Friday 8th May I was fortunate to be on a great panel with @lionelatDell and @natayanap both of whom are extremely smart thought leaders in the area of content. Below is the video excerpt of me explaining my definition of Social Content.

[viddler id=2be210b2&w=545&h=451]

Letting Go to Gain Greater Control

This is all part of the movement within communications for brands to come to the realization that they do not own their brand, nor do they own the content that surrounds their brand, they share the same role as other content producers. By recognizing this and becoming a part of the community of content producers they can in fact regain some of the control that they so fear losing.

Some brands are already recognizing this and trying to make moves toward including a more social experience throughout their content. Right now most brands are focused on Social Media as a way of producing social content. Unfortunately simply having a page on Facebook, or a few hired hands on Twitter does not make for social content. Of course its definitely a step in the right direction and no one can reasonably expect brands to change over night.

What Does it Look Like?

So what does Social content really look like, what are the potentials, and why should brands really care?

Social content looks like a conversation, to market researchers it would probably look like the output of a well crafted focus group, the big difference is that the brand wouldn’t be setting the agenda, they would be just another participant. Offering pointers, advice and amplifying restrictions that are both internal & external so that the community can gain better understanding.

The potential for Social content is endless, I foresee brands being able to included customers and potential customers in the entire production process from ideation, design, testing and ultimately sales and marketing.  After all if you had helped design a product wouldn’t you talk about it?

Imagine a computer company that wants to produce a laptop that meets the needs of a group of users that it has identified as being a missed opportunity. Now instead of simply holding focus groups, and then designing some clever marketing collateral to help promote the product, what if the company was able to actually engage the audience in the design process, having the engineers work online in a collaborative environment with the intended users, helping them all gain from each other in the different ways the computer will be used.

Having assisted in the design and development, the sales and marketing team could then work with the same group of collaborators to design the promotional material that would help sell the product.

This is what Social content of the future could look like. Will all brands embrace this? Very unlikely, but for the few that do, they are likely to be the ones who set the stage for real content.

Video courtesy of @bryanperson

Disclaimer

Before going any further with this post it is important that I acknowledge that I & my company provide Social Media advice, guidance and execution as part of our service offerings as an integrated Marketing communication company. However, what follows is in no way an advertorial, I will not be promoting our services in this post.

The Basics

A quick search of Twitter profiles turned up 80 Twitter users just on one results page that included the term Social Media expert in their profile. I think most people know to be wary of “self-proclaimed” experts. However, just in case you aren’t, you should be.

So ignoring those who will loudly proclaim their own expertise how can you find someone to work with who can provide you and your organization sound advice? There are several important criteria to consider when evaluating a potential Social Media Partner:

• Longevity
• Experience – Doing Not Saying
• Results
• Shiny Object Syndrome

Longevity

How long have they actually been doing this? Some people maintain that Social Media is so new that it is impossible for anyone to have gained expertise in the space. I disagree, Social Media has only been new to those who didn’t recognize it for what it was – primarily the mainstream media. Social Media has been around a long time in one form or another. Podcasts used to be called Webcasts, they pre-date the iPod by several years (I launched my first series of webcasts in 1998). Blogs have been around at least that long, admittedly you had to have some coding skills to create one and they weren’t really recognized as blogs per se, they were referred more to as lifestreaming or online journals (posted my first one in 2002). So to state that the space is so new that no one has gained enough knowledge to have expertise seems to me to be a way of making excuses for those who, after 3 months of Twitter use hang out their shingle as a Social Media expert. As with any “consultant” check and see how long they have been in the field.

Experience – Doing Not Saying

This is where I prefer the term Practitioner rather than Consultant – its a semantics thing, and at the end of the day the job title doesn’t really matter. However, in my experience consultants are usually very good at talking about a topic, not necessarily good at executing. When considering a Social Media Partner find out if they have actually had personal success with Social Media. When I think of Social Media Practitioners I think of people like Chris Brogan who doesn’t just talk about Social Media, nor does he just consult with companies on the topic, he “does” Social Media and as such has gained recognition as a Social Media Influencer, being approached by brands to be an online evangelist for their product. At a more local level to me, here in Austin, we are very fortunate to have some excellent Social Media practitioners. One that jumps immediately to mind is the very talented Shelia Scarborough. Sheila is a blogger, Social Media trainer and practitioner. As a travel blogger she was invited to go on a tour of China to experience the growth and changes in that country. You don’t get invited on trips like that simply by calling yourself an expert, other people have to recognize your ability and your practice in the space.

Results

Does your prospective partner know how to get you results? Can they cite previous examples of having gained results for others? Remember that in this age of sometimes semi-transparent business practices, some companies demand that external consultants sign strict Non-disclosure agreements that prevent them from using the company name on any marketing materials. So don’t be overly surprised if they aren’t able to give you a name and number to call for a large project, but they should be able to produce data at a detail level such that they aren’t faking it.

Shiny Object Syndrome

If your potential Social Media Partner wants to talk endlessly about the latest new technology, new platform or widget that they think you should be using, proceed with caution. While a good knowledge of upcoming trends is essential, the habit of simply running to the latest and greatest platform and dragging you & your organization with them isn’t good for you. Remember that Social Media isn’t about technology, its about people. The platforms we use now will be very old hat in 2 years time. Being obsessed with the technology won’t lead to a successful Social Media strategy.

Hopefully you have some things with which to separate the wheat from the chaff when considering a Social Media partner. What qualities do you think I missed, what would you add to the list?

Image by Neil Rickards

As Facebook continues to evolve it is interesting to note how much attention they have given to the development of the Fan page concept. Originally Fan pages were a very limited, cut down version of the personal page. They had much less functionality and their ability to provide a communications platform was minor.

The recent revisions of Facebook were overshadowed by the new look homepage which met a lot of resistance from users when it was first launched. With all that attention the other changes have been largely overlooked. Fan pages have become identical to the personal page. They can have all of the same content artifacts (pictures, video etc.) they can even be programmed to take other tools through the Facebook Markup Language (FBML).

The latest development which I really took notice of yesterday for the first time was the inclusion of Fan pages in the “People you might know” section. I find this interesting for two reasons, firstly Fan pages arent limited to People, so under People I might know now appear branded products. Secondly, I see this as a move toward monetization of friend recommendations by Facebook.

Here is the current recommendation list for me:

Of these three, one is a business run by a friend, so that’s fair enough, one is someone I have never heard of and the other is the comedian Chris Rock. A quick google search told me Anthony Robbins is a Life Strategist – who knew? Well apparently someone in my friends circle, or at least that is my assumption. People you might know is usually based on 2nd order friendships, in other words, friends of friends, I actually use this quite a lot as it’s a good reminder of people I want to connect with and haven’t yet. The addition of Fan pages is interesting to me because Brands that have fan pages that friends have become fans of already show up in the righthand sidebar of my homepage. Now they are showing up as “recommendations” – what would a brand pay to appear in that list?

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• 5 Ways Twitter can Monetize without Ads (simonsalt.wordpress.com)

Simply using a tool to auto follow everyone who mentions a key phrase, or worse still paying a monthly fee to a service to provide you with thousands of followers will not enhance your Twitter experience. Most of the users of these services are either too lazy to grow an organic network or are so hung up on the numbers that they miss the point of Social Media networks, engagement.

TwitSeeker from Guy Hagen, the creator  of Twinfluence (a tool I reviewed some time ago), allows you to search for specific phrases from either a Twitter users Tweets or their profile.  The results are then shown to you as a grid of users complete with a snapshot of their bio and whether you are already following them or not, if they follow you back and how many followers they have. It auto-selects all the users you aren’t following so that, with the click of a button you can follow them all. You can also choose to unselect some and just follow the remainder.

Below is a walkthrough of how to use TwitSeeker:

Twitseeker has both a simple search and an advanced search, unsurprisingly the advanced search is very similar in style to search.twitter.com advanced search. For the simple search enter the term you are interested in, enter your screen name and then select either from tweets or from bio then click search.

What you will get back is a results page similar to this:

What I like about this is that it shows me who I am already following and being followed by (full green circle), who I follow but does not follow me (half green circle) and who I am not following (black circle). Rolling over the twitter bird will give you a snapshot of that users profile, rolling over the cloud icon gives you a cloud tag of recent tweets, clicking on the users name gives you a detail page for that user.

Overall this is a great tool, there are a few bugs, such as you can’t search by keyword and location at the same time, but I am sure these will be ironed out eventually. The key to this is that you are able to find Twitter users that you aren’t following by keyword from either their conversations or their bio – this adds the relevance to your searching and provides you with the first step in engagement.