Community Building

HubSpot Inbound 2012 Day 4- Content, Context and Effort oh my!

Today was the final keynote speech, a few more break out sessions, and a closing ceremony of sorts where we all got kudos for attending and coupons for next year... what a day!

Keynote: Gary Vynerchuck @garyvee

"The only reason I love social media is only because it sells S#$%. I don't give a S$%& about Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, Facebook or whatever, I care about where my customers' attention is going so I can sell them S#$%"

Gary Vynerchuck, curseword user extraordinaire, got into business at 13. He made $1,000 a weekend selling baseball cards and was sitting on a pretty pile of cash ($30k) within a year, that's when his Dad made him go to "work" at the family liquor store.  Pretty quickly, Gary realized collecting wine was almost the same thing as baseball cards and by 1997 winelibrary.com was born.

Vynerchuck saw his competitors were sending out catalogues or faxing (yes, sending paper through a machine!) when he figured out e-mail! What started out as a weekly email sales offer turned into bi-weekly email service, then daily email service, then 5 days a week and then daily. At first, it was awesome and everyone opened, read and used the coupons in his emails, but like most things, the more you give the more diminished returns.  

He goes on to say that you have to pay attention to culture shifts and get onboard no matter how much time it takes. Didn't we first think the WEB was a fad? Didn't we first think that Twitter was fad!? So, where do we spend our time next? After realizing that EVERYONE is now on email, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. Gary declares retention is the next stage in the game. It's not how many customers you get, it's how many you can keep. It's the lifetime value and % of wallet you get from your clients.

With that, similar to the context discussion yesterdsay, the next step isn't just about finding people, but finding what their interested in. Through all of the social media tools out there we can learn about you and then, we give a F*&^, and we can sell to you better. Effort for the end user is such a valuable thing, if they can sense your effort in learning about them, they want you.

"As our world goes more Jetsons, the marketers and business people that act like the Flinstones are gonna win" This is awesome as I have been described as an old soul and my aesthetic as "grandma chic." Gary talked about how our grandparents way of business (showing potential clients you're interested and showing real clients that you are still interested) works!

You've got to build a brand or else it's a tactic, and the brands that win put in the effort. if you can figure out how to afford the allocation of effort, your long term value will be dramatically higher! If you do anything at all, audit what you and your business do and and take the percentage of dumb stuff and put it towards effort in your customers. Use technology to bring us back together and show you care about people. It matters.

In summary,  Gary says do nice S*%$ while you've got them, not when they're going!

The other two sessions were: Inbound Marketing Success Within An Enterprise- David Donland @ddonlan, Kevin Karner @kkarner23 (Performable, acquired by HubSpot) and Part 2: The View from the Marketer's Eye by Mark Sneider- Owner/President RSW/US & RSW/ AgencySearch. Lessons learned can be found soon in a little something we are working on!  Hope you enjoyed the #Inbound12 play-by-play and that I'll see some of you there next year!    

Posted by Leah Raras on August 30, 2012 at 4:04 PM
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It's a B2B SxSW Monday

Today was my last full day at SxSW and it was once again filled with great discussions. For once I decided to forgo payments panels, and spent more of my time in panels that discussed B2B social media as well as a panel on brand journalism, and yes, one on the future of money.

The brand journalism panel and B2B panels were filled with a lot of insight and tips that will be of interest to our B2B clients and to B2B communications professionals.

First, it is clear that B2B companies are embracing content marketing. According to a survey from Marketing Profs, 49% of companies plan to increase their content marketing spending in the next 12 months. The two biggest content challenges these companies face are: 41% their content is not engaging enough and 20% have trouble producing enough content. As trusted advisors, communications professionals need to find ways to help our clients overcome both of these challenges.

This brand journalism panel, and a solo presentation from Tim Washer, Cisco’s Senior Manager of Social Media, hit on a key issue: B2B companies need to remember to talk to people in a human way. 

B2B purchasing decisions are made both on facts and emotions. If you sell on just speeds and feeds in a competitive market, you are at a competitive disadvantage. Communicators need to keep this in mind and call out the human elements inherent in any story.

Following are four other key insights it took from the panels today:

1. Gamification is everywhere and is starting to be used to drive B2B engagement. When people hear about gamification they tend to think of consumer brands, Foursquare badges or Scvngr. But Cisco has added badges to at least some of its blogs. Now visitors can receive badges for visiting the blogs, leaving their first comment, leaving 10 comments, Tweeting the blog post, etc. This is a great step. It is an easy and focused incentive to drive the business outcomes a company desires (engagement and awareness). IBM and Xerox also spoke about how they are using gamification, with IBM using it internally to drive activity and identify those most passionate about social media.
2. Re-examine how you gather registration information. Cisco and other B2B companies are using Facebook and OpenID to enable social login. Why does this matter? Since Cisco implemented it, they have seen a  40 percent reduction in cost and 20 percent increase in registration.
3. B2B Needs to embrace video – If your B2B company is not yet using video as part of its communications strategy you are missing great opportunities. Here is a great video from Cisco about how it is helping in Africa. It does a great job humanizing the story and moving it beyond the basics.
4. Look at humor. This one is near and dear to my heart as I do standup comedy in my spare time, and understand the power of humor in business. Humor in B2B can engage your prospects and customers. It is a positive emotion, humanizes the brand, builds goodwill and cuts through the noise. If you don’t have the budget, go to a film school and ask the professor for his best seniors. Offer them an internship and $1000 if you end up using their final product. One example of humor in action comes from this Cisco Valentine’s video. It has almost 200,000 views and drove coverage in the New York Times, Network World, Light Reading and other outlets. See it here.

If B2B communicators start doing just one of these things that they may not be doing today, they will help their brand prosper and their communications programs deliver greater ROI.

The five most quotable observations from Monday at SxSW:

1. Content is the new black
2. Your B2B story may not be good enough for TV, but it is good enough for YouTube, your clients and prospects
3. Information without analysis in the information age is as valuable as stone in the stone age
4. We make things complex because frequently we are too insecure to be simple. But look at Apple. Simplicity sells.
5. Question conventional wisdom. For Trulia, blogs about sports figures drove 3x the traffic as those about celebrities

Posted by Mark McClennan on March 13, 2012 at 12:10 AM
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SxSW Sunday: It's all about convergence

Today was a great day at SxSW. I had the pleasure of attending three different sessions on payments and mobile wallets, one on the future of retail and a most inspiring session that looked at updating classic iconic ads for today’s technology.

I was prepared to write a very payments-focused post. But as I was thinking about today, I realize the key lessons for PR and business professionals transcend the payments market. Every presenter today, in their own way, was talking about convergence.

What do I mean?

Too often communications, marketing and business professionals think about communications and sales channels. Despite our best efforts we silo our thoughts. What does mobile allow us to do for payments, what business use can we get from mobile devices, what is the future of digital video?

While that thinking is important, it can also be limiting. It was expressed in different ways on the different panels, but it came down to a few observations.

Mobile payments isn’t about payments. If all you think about is taking a contactless card and putting it on a smartphone, you are missing the bigger opportunity and the market won’t grow. Isis is taking it a step further and realizing that for mobile to succeed it needs to be better, faster and cheaper. As I discussed yesterday, they are betting on loyalty, security and a better shopping experience to be the growth drivers.

But the discussion at the FutureShop panel made me realize there is more to it than what even Isis is saying. We need convergence and to see how all the channels can work best together. The retailers on this panel were nowhere near as optimistic about NFC as the payments players in other sessions. But they saw an even bigger picture. Convenience and loyalty offers are great. But that is just looking at one side of the opportunity. When retailers configure their stores to take advantage of mobile technology, it will prosper. The speakers gave examples of one company that had a scavenger hunt like game that lead people through the store to daily specials. These retailers see the iPhone turning into the helpful sales clerk of years gone by.

Seth Priebatsch of Scvngr challenged the status quo, but he added another piece to the puzzle. With loyalty blending with analytics businesses and communicators can adjust consumer shopping habits using game theory. In Philadelphia they ran a 45-day test that showed rainy days correlated to significantly less restaurant revenue. So they designed dynamic deals to encourage people to visit a restaurant on rainy days and saw a significant business lift.

It is only by putting the wallet vision of ISIS together with the bricks and mortar innovations of Future Shop and some of Scvngr’s futuristic ideas that we truly can see the shape of the future of mobile payments come together. Without all three perspectives, without the gestalt of the different perspectives the success will not be complete.

This transcends payments. This is a lesson that communications professionals should take to heart. We need to make sure we are not narrowing our vision to influencer channels, social media strategy or analyst relations. Sure those can drive results. But we need to look not just at how they work together and challenge ourselves to find at new ways in which they can work together.

Google and Coke did just that with projectrebrief.com (along with other brands). The project  updated four iconic ads for today’s mediums.

The premise was powerful, yet simple. We don’t want to do social media campaign. We want to do a campaign that is social. What Coke did is amazing. They made it possible for someone to actually send the world a Coke. Consumers could record a video on the site, and send a free Coke to a number of machines around the world. Someone would receive your message in less than 90 seconds (after it was reviewed for content) and could then thank you. You would receive that video a minute later.

It is powerful. It is social and it harnesses physical, digital and social channels to create a result much greater than the sum of the individual parts. More communicators need to think like that. If we do so, our programs will be much more compelling, we will gain better understanding of consumers and drive greater business results.

So join me in always looking for ways to advance convergence. We won’t regret it.

It was so popular yesterday, I decided to end with it again today. The five most quotable observations from Sunday at SxSW:

• Pharma is not bad. Pharma is probably going to save your life
• Security is not a selling point for consumers. Criminals will find ways, and consumers think the  phone is less secure even if it is more secure.
• We are on the precipice of shopper 3.0 – The combination of Wed, brick & mortar, and mobile.
• Tools today are an extension of our mental, not physical self. The shape of technology tools has changed dramatically over time, this is not the case with many physical tools.
• If you want to drive consumer engagement, get people to look forward, not back.

If you have any questions in this post, leave a comment or tweet me at @mcclennan to meet up at SxSWi.

Posted by Mark McClennan on March 12, 2012 at 12:37 AM
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SxSW Saturday Takeaways: Destroy Labels, Know Yourself

Saturday at SxSW was much more interesting than Friday. I had the pleasure of attending a very wide range of panels. The topics included strategic communications, Dad bloggers, enterprise social media, the future of mobile wallets, a comedian/activist keynote, and a look inside Joss Whedon’s head. The panels were a mix of both aspirational visions and cautionary tales.

The sessions were all great learning experiences, but they present something of a challenge. How do you blend parenting lessons from Leviticus with social analytics and loyalty programs? While many of these sessions merit their own posts (and will likely get them in the future), I wanted to focus on overarching themes that I noticed.

I would say there were two key takeaways from these sessions.

• Destroy the labels
• Know who you are

From the Mmbile wallet to NFC Chips to Dad bloggers, people and companies are too often failing to reach their full potential because they are succumbing to easy labelization. Don’t get me wrong, there is immense power in the study of groups and flocking, but if you too quickly group someone, you may come to the wrong conclusion or miss opportunities. I saw that time and time again today.

This is particularly insidious when it comes to Mom bloggers. Mom bloggers are too often defined by who they are rather than who they write about. Very few “Dad” and “Mom” bloggers blog about parenting. They are parents who blog. A mom blogger who writes about beer or food, should not be lumped in the same category as one who writes about technology or parenting. I personally have seen too many companies make this mistake. The lists created by influencer tools may serve as a good start, but influencers are not Oreos. Each is unique and needs to be understood and communicated with in context.

The same lesson applies to the mobile wallet. First of all, there is a blurring between mobile wallet and P2P payments and this line needs to be clearly understood.  It also applies to enterprise social media when “employees” are lumped together as one audience as companies roll out solutions. Some of the best advice from IBM today was to understand what your corporate culture is like and what tools employees use to work and to communicate, and enhance those existing tools rather than make everyone conform to new tools. If you try to force people to do something they do not want to do, you will end up with an empty wiki, upset employees and wasted budget.

The second point is to know who you are. If you have a niche, carve it out. Just don’t let others put you in that niche.

Isis in the digital wallet space seems to clearly know this. They understand that in order to convince people to move away from contactless cards and Mag Stripe they need to offer more to retailers and merchants. They are betting their success on the premise that bringing loyalty cards and coupons into an integrated whole to provide consumers savings and convenience; and providing retailers a chance to impact consumer purchasing behavior before a transaction will push them over the edge. (That and retailers being penalized by the issuers if they do not adopt NFC by 2015).

I am not sure I agree with them completely, and I know not everyone in the audience did. Consumers have shown amazing willingness to stay with what works. As one panelist pointed out, 10 years ago the cover of Card Transactions was “Mobile Commerce is Ready for Takeoff” and we are still discussing its pending rise today. Additionally, consumers have shown a willingness to have multiple loyalty cards and apps, and there are other alternatives to impact pre-shopping behavior today (such as eGiftcards – technology from a client of mine - and location based deals).

The audience definitely did not all agree about the easy path of NFC. My most popular tweet of the day was “NFC being positioned as the Borg. Do not resist. You will be assimilated.”

Knowing who you are also helped many companies in the first panel I attended of the day. The reaction to Zappos’ data breach was much less negative than most breaches of its type. That was because Zappos quickly communicated in a way that was appropriate for its customers.

This post is getting long, so I want to wrap it up with the five most quotable observations of the day:

• Before you make a critical business decision, ask yourself – what would John Stewart say about it?
• Great ideas are not always great and not always well received.
• Bloggers have more influence over purchasing decisions than traditional celebrity endorsers do
• 48% of B2B CEOs say social media helped generate qualified leads
• Voice of customer research is not for validation, it is for discovery

Posted by Mark McClennan on March 11, 2012 at 12:26 AM
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Digital videos - keep it real!

 Samsung expected to make a big splash at last week's CTIA Wireless conference with its unveiling of a new Galaxy Tab. They didn't, however, count on a lot of online flak regarding the video they produced to support the launch. Harry McCracken, editor of Technologizer, makes a pretty compelling case that the "real-life" users in the video are actually paid actors. His posts have attracted a good deal of attention and quite a few reader comments. What does this have to do with the merits of the new Tab and how it stacks up against the iPad 2? Absolutely nothing - and that's exactly Samsung's problem. 

Well produced videos have the ability to convey an organization's story in a quick, compelling manner. And, hopefully, a sense of trust is established with the target audience. In order to ensure this bond, it should be assumed that discerning viewers will do a little digging to make sure that the claims made by a company are factual. It doesn't have to be many viewers. All it takes is one viewer unearthing something questionable - and the viral power of the Internet may take over, potentially doing serious damage to a company's campaign. 

There are times when it makes sense to use hired actors in a video. But any time the project involves customer testimonials, there is no substitute for the genuine emotions and experiences of real users. They may not spit out the PR team's key messages exactly as scripted, but audiences aren't interested in robots reciting lines. Nothing resonates better than honesty. 

Be creative, but be completely up front with your audience. Trying to gain traction against competitors like Apple is tough enough; having the attention of customers and industry thought leaders diverted by such silly miscues only makes the challenge more formidbale. No matter what you do, keep it real!

Posted by John Moran on March 29, 2011 at 3:54 PM
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Google Rolls Out its Own Magazine

Google has launched a magazine, Think Quarterly, and mailed the limited number of copies (they printed only 1,500) to advertising partners in the UK. The magazine, Google's first, was created and published in the UK and is also available online.

Since we, as lovers of technology PR, of course pay attention to Google and pitch editors of magazines (although it's not at all clear to me that Think Quarterly is pitchable), I thought the debut was worth noting. You may have caught the news yesterday on Mashable.

This issue is almost 70 pages long and is all about data, how people are trying to wade through it and find value ("data obesity and how to treat it"), how basing business on facts can be beneficial, etc. There are also several topics of interest to advertisers (e.g., "how to maximize return on search advertising").

Click on the image above if you like to check out the full issue.

Posted by Laura Kempke on March 25, 2011 at 9:21 AM
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Responding to Facebook Attacks: Companies Weigh In At SxSW

The last day of SxSWi 2011, I decided to take a brief foray into crisis management, specifically looking at how brands respond to Facebook attacks. The dynamic session was highlighted by Dell and Intel discussing how they handled the issue of brand attacks.
 

Ekaterina Walter, Intel’s social media strategist and Laura Thomas, a senior consultant at Dell who oversaw its Facebook presence consolidation, provided a few helpful tips that I thought made sense to share with our readers. While many of these are common sense, they shared some good data:
 

• Facebook interaction changes perception—Over the past year, Dell interacted with more than 5,000 customers on Facebook. A set of them had 98% negative view/comment of Dell. After the Facebook interaction, 36% of the 5,000 publicly expressed satisfaction.

• Social media crisis response still requires planning—Organizations need to have the right policies and procedures in place, but they also need to test them. Ekaterina from Intel shared an example where Intel had the listening tools in place, and the listeners alerted one department, but not her. This showed they needed to have more practice drills. Companies should plan a few social media crisis drills/year.

• Explain your actions—If you are turning comments off, not responding to certain posts, or deleting certain posts, clearly explain why. Laura  @Dell emphasized “Make sure you set up at the very beginning what you will/won't allow and enforce it.” For example, Dell allows negative comments but not R-rated language.  They will highlight that a response was deleted due to profanity.
   

Another example that was shared by the panel: A Mayo clinic radiologist had allegedly made some racist comments. Protesters went in and posted the comments on Mayo’s Facebook wall.  Mayo allowed the negative comments to run for 2-3 days, then created a discussion tab and thread there, and they posted to the wall, they had moved the discussion there, and if people continue to post on the wall, those posts will be deleted.

• Volume (both positive and negative) matters—According to panelists, just 0.02% of posts on Facebook make it into people’s “Top News” feeds. This means a lot of Wall discussion is only seen if you visit the site. If you want to be visible, you need to encourage conversation on the Wall, not on discussion boards. Or as I like to say it: “Links are Google Juice, Wall Posts are Facebook Juice.” 

Do you have other tips you would like to share?
 

Posted by Mark McClennan on March 18, 2011 at 1:07 PM
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Analytics and Measurement in Practice at SxSW

For me, Sunday at SxSW could best have been described as analytics day. They decided to have all the research and measurement die-hards make the trek out to the AT&T Executive Conference center.  The surroundings were plusher, the seats much more comfortable and the data was fascinating.

There were two interesting panels on measurement and analytics and the most exciting part is none of the speakers were from vendors. Shawn Brown from MIT’s Sloan Management Review and Chris Traganos at Harvard  spoke about how they measured Web success and worked to increase traffic; while Elizabeth Winkler from the University of Texas - Austin, discussed how she and her colleagues developed a model that showed how Twitter chatter accurately predicted movie revenues.

Harvard was doing some very interesting things and relies primarily on five social media tools:

• Wordpress feeds
• Facebook Open Graph
• Chartbeat
• QR codes
• Socialflow

By comparison, the tools MIT highlighted included:

• Google analytics
• Bit.ly (Think about using Bt.ly pro so you can have custom links you can control if Bit.ly goes out of business in five years)
• Google alerts
• Topsy
• Tweetreach

These are tools most of our readers know, but it shows that tools like these, used intelligently and backed by great content can deliver very good results. A few practical tips on how they grew traffic included advice such as:

• Lots of tags are your friend: every story they push has 30 tags that are fed into blog aggregators
• If you aren’t using Facebook’s OpenGraph and you create content, you need to start doing so. Instead of the share button, use the like button. Despite the power of the tool, you should check URL Linter to see what Facebook is getting and not getting.
• Chartbeat is a perfect complement to Google Analytics. I haven’t used it on my sites, but I plan to check it out. It gives you real time analytics in a way Google does not.
• Probably the biggest “huh” in the session was the tidbit that the smaller the URL, the less dense the QR code is, so it works faster. Keep using those URL shorteners, and make sure they point to a site that is optimized for mobile.

These are great practical tips for growing and analyzing site traffic.

This was a great primer for the next session that looked at how Twitter chatter could be used to tell how good a movie will do on a weekend. Elizabeth Winker and her team used a set of 20 servers to gather and aggregate tweets on movies and store than in a database for further analysis.

They first eliminated the false positives (which was very tricky for the movie “The Hangover”) and broke the results down by positive, negative and neutral using an automated system they built themselves. By then analyzing how many people said they planned to go to the movies and the reaction and buzz afterwards, they showed how positive Twitter chatter mapped nicely to box office sales for the 60 movies they analyzed.

One area Winker touched on briefly, but I think is worthy of further consideration is the power of Twitter and geolocation. They could map the Tweets on a certain movie to the subset of those that have enabled geolocation on their phones and break out the analysis and prediction on a regional level. This could help allocate ad and marketing spends to the areas where it is most needed. One Winkler didn’t explore that I would love to see is if there is greater correlation based on the chatter that is made immediately after a movie (which a movie company should be able to do by mapping the tweets to theatre locations). This also has implications for CPG and consumer technology companies.

The panels weren’t earth shattering, but they gave good practical advice and a glimpse into the future of quick, high-volume analytics.

Posted by Mark McClennan on March 14, 2011 at 11:15 PM
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The American Idol Social Media Power Rankings

Many of us here are at Schwartz Communications and the Schwartz Research Group are huge fans of American Idol. Some of us for the singing, some for the drama and some for the pure joy of social media analysis and water cooler talk.

Every year, as the season unfolds, Ryan Seacrest talks about how many votes are cast…but anyone who has worked in politics or public affairs knows that in order to get out the vote, you need good connections. The two keys to winning American Idol are great performances and a great fan base.

Now that the Top 24 are known and the voting will be open to the American public beginning on Tuesday night, the Schwartz Research Group decided to look at which contestants are already using social media to reach out to their fans, and who has an engaged, grassroots campaign already underway. With the introduction of Facebook voting, social media will be even more important this year.

Like Seacrest likes to say, the results were...surprising.

Top Female:

For a larger Image, click View image

Top Male:

For a larger image, View image

Your Top Three:

Top Facebook

 Top Twitter

Twitter is Queen; Facebook is King

While Twitter is a great way to carry on conversations and engage one on one, it is still dwarfed by Facebook when it comes to the most popular way for fans to relate to American Idol contestants.
 

100% of the contestants had some Facebook presence (even if it was just 43 fans). Much fewer – 66% - had a Twitter presence (and 50% of the Twitter feeds were fan, and not contestant feeds).

If social media determined the Idol champ…today…it would be: Scotty McCreery (but frankly, the Research Group handicappers have him finishing 6th at best). McCreery also happens to be in the lead in VoteForTheWorst Fan voting…

The Bottom Three—When examining the 24, contestants Tatynisa Wilson, Rachel Zevita and Clint Jun Gamboa have the least overall social media fan engagement. With Tatynisa’s relative lack of air time, it will be interesting to see if and how that changes.

There is a definite gap between many of the contestants and it shows that some of them are already quite savvy in how they use social media. It will be interesting to see which gaps close and which expand.

What do you think about the contestants and their social media engagement?

Note: Photos courtesy of Fox. Followers and fan were determined on 2/25. Also, the Schwartz Research group does not believe it is just followers that matter. The intensity of their passion is also something that would need to be tracked over the coming weeks. Those contestants with the largest and most impassioned base are most likely to generate a high number of votes.

Posted by Mark McClennan on February 28, 2011 at 8:56 AM
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Location is the new black and Facebook is throwing around its weight

The Internet user as we know him is dying out. He is no longer behind his desktop computer checking his email or on the couch with a notebook in his lap updating his Facebook status. From an immobile creature, he has quickly evolved into a very mobile being, like a prehistoric fish that has grown a pair of legs and has left the ocean.

Instead of legs, though, evolution has equipped him with smart phones and a 3G network that enables him to move freely, while surfing the net. He is no longer the sitting duck that was an easy target for Internet communities, media, advertisers and marketing departments across the globe. The big question resulting from this is: how to catch him while he is moving?

This is actually an easy task, because he is eager to tell you where he is. Location-based software has created some fast growing communities such as Foursquare, Gowalla, and SCVNGR that allow him to show the world exactly where he currently is located. Those communities let you to mark a place, let’s say your favorite café, with a geo tag. Other community members that come to this place can “check in” indicating to their friends where they are currently at and what they are doing.

As the popularity of those mobile location networks is growing, so are the creative juices of the marketing and PR departments in the chase to find out how to use the new knowledge they confronting them. The first test balloons have already been launched. The campaigns that we have been seeing so far are mainly trying to foster customer loyalty. The café mentioned earlier, for instance, can measure their customers’ loyalty by checking the amount of time they have checked into their place via Foursquare. If they check in ten times, they are awarded a free cup of coffee.  

In the next couple of months, we will see more creative and more elaborate campaigns of this kind as the networks are growing. The question then will be what platform to use for your campaign? Those things tend to sort out themselves: Remember the battles Twitter vs. Jaiku, or Facebook vs. MySpace? Each ended with a clear winner.   

There is yet one problem: Obviously, Facebook with its Places and Google with Latitude want to get in on the action, too, which could change the outcome of the race. Google for instance has already set things in motion by acquiring Dodgeball, one of the pioneers in geosocial networking, in 2005, only to discontinue it four years later. In the meantime one of the founders of Dodgeball went on to found Foursquare, which is now leading the location-based social networking pack.

Facebook’s contribution to the picture is a recently awarded patent titled “Systems and methods for automatically locating web-based social network members are provided”, which many fear could wipe out all the other communities mentioned in this post. This however still remains to be seen.
One thing is for sure. One should keep an eye on location-based social networks as they contain a tremendous communication potential. It is still quite unexplored territory and grants room for experimentation. It is still too early to say who will be the big player in this field in a year or two from now so don’t put your money on just one horse, but keep an eye on all communities out there.   

And by the way, while the battle over location-based networking is in full motion, the first person just recently “checked in” at the International Space Station. 

Posted by Martin Gleissner on October 29, 2010 at 9:32 AM
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When Social Media Customer Service Fails

More companies are turning to Twitter, Facebook and other social media channels every day for customer service. When it is done well it creates engagement and a deeper bond with a dissatisfied customer. It can also help publicly turn a dissatisfied customer into an advocate. It also saves money compared to call center operations.

These are all good reasons for using social media for customer service. By the key phrase in the above paragraph is “when it is done well.” Too often companies are not following through on their promises or not creating useful feedback. Paul Gillin wrote about it recently here.

I have my own story to share. It is with the Sheraton Hotel and Marina in San Diego and Starwood Hotels. I was at the hotel last week and was grabbing breakfast before a client meeting. The dining room was less than half full. My colleague and I ordered eggs. Thirty minutes later we were still waiting. We really needed to leave then to make the client meeting on time, but we figured if we drove fast, we would still be OK.

We saw the waiter and asked “Excuse me, do you know if our breakfast will be coming soon?” The waiters helpful reply “I don’t know, if you care so much, why don’t you go in the kitchen and ask the chef.”

To say I was displeased with the response (and the service) is an understatement. I tweeted it out, and within an hour had a response from @StarwoodBuzz “@McClennan Sorry to hear about breakfast. If you DM us your stay details, we can follow up with the hotel for you.”

This was a perfect, textbook response and I was quite pleased. I shared the details with Starwood. They respond and asked  me to follow them so they can DM back – even though no sensitive information is being shared, and if they lead with @McClennan, likely only I can see it.

The next day, I get a DM response “Thank you. I'm sending off your comments to the hotel so this can be improved 4 future guests. Pls DM if you wish to include your email add.”

There are a number of things wrong with that.

First, in business communications, there is no need to use “4”. We are engaged in a professional discourse. Second, it sounded from the first message that they were going to “follow up with the hotel for me” (i.e. do something about the situation). The personal message basically says, we will let the hotel know there is a complaint. Thanks. Bye.

I don’t need them to do that. I know how to call a manager, tweet and blog myself. Starwood Hotels failed by not providing a meaningful discussion once they engaged. I provided my email as requested, it’s been a week and I have not yet received a response from the hotel.

The end result? 1) A positive social media engagement turned sour and 2) The next time I am in San Diego, I will be staying in a Hilton.

What lessons can marketers, consumer and services public relations professionals take from this?

1. It is essential to listen to all social media channels, so you can address negative situations.
2. Listening isn’t enough – If you engage, you need to provide meaningful resolutions or you can do more harm than good.
3. Use DMs appropriately. Financial institutions and other regulated industries should use DMs. Hotels should not use DMs for form responses.
4. Use proper English in your response.

Posted by Mark McClennan on July 22, 2010 at 9:40 AM
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SxSW Day 3: Creating A Connection

The day started off with a great Social Media Breakfast Austin/SxSW where I had a chance to hang out with a few hundred other social media professionals. I saw some old friends and met a few new people with some really interesting companies. I ended up reconnecting with many of them at the Microsoft party later in the evening.

Compared to the first two days of the SxSW, the panels were interesting, but not as strong.

The first panel I attended took a look at the use of applications for extending the brand. The main takeaways were the iPhone is now the dominant brand platform, eclipsing Facebook (for the company has more control). The general consensus from the audience and panel ties into the theme I raised yesterday in my banking recap: The future is mobile. They also emphasized the brand needs to take a backseat in the application or consumers won’t stay engaged.

One if the most interesting points in the session was the debate over the use of apps for engaging consumers. The general consensus is one most consumer technology marketing people have heard for years “The days of brands doing traditional marketing are gone.  They need to engage customers in social dialogue and provide utility, or they won’t have lasting relationship.”

A strong counterargument that was advanced speaks for itself “I like toothpaste, but don’t want to have a two way conversation with it.”

That being said, what Charmin has done with mothers rating bathrooms shows the type of discussions one can have for common household items.

The second panel I attended was hosted by Scott Kirsner and dealt with effective ways to build a cult (or Facebook and Twitter followers…your choice). While there was little earth-shattering about the discussion, it reinforced that building a community usually takes time, it requires constantly refreshed new content and it has to *be* a community. Talking to customers does not draw a crowd. Talking *with* customers draws a crowd. The filmmaker he interviewed advocated letting fans be part of the process. Engage them. They them use your content, have fun with it and create new things. They will help promote your movie (or software) much more if they feel a sense of some ownership. The final important point was that if your content isn’t embeddable, it’s like you are leaving on a roadtrip without any gas.

Finally I attended a session with Peter Molyneux, one of the most influential game designers of the past 30 years. I went both because I have worked with many game companies and because the topic intrigued me – How can videogames speak to the heart? I thought there are lessons that could be applied to public relations and marketing. To my surprise, I think I was the only non-filmmaker or game designer in the room.

The first thing Molyneux said tied back to the first panel on mobile apps and the theme that emerged today. Movies can never engage like games. Movies want flaccid robots. Think about that in terms of traditional public relations or marketing, and now how PR has evolved. By making consumers’ voices heard, knowing they have a stake in your brand, companies can create an emotional connection they could never create through shouting.

So the question is, how are we as public relations professionals working to create that connection every day?

Were there other panels I missed? Let me know what you think about SxSW.

 

Posted by Mark McClennan on March 15, 2010 at 1:17 AM
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SxSW Day 2 - Financial Services in the Spotlight

SxSW today for me was all about something near and dear to my heart (and many of my clients) banking and payments. I managed to carve out enough time to attend three banking sessions. The sessions ran the gamut from tips for personal finance to the future of banking and the role of geeks in finance.

There a few lessons any financial services technology company should carve in stone, but these rules also apply to consumer technology and other markets.
 

1. Consumers are dead. (or at least dying). They are evolving into active participants. They don’t want to pick from a menu, or be given one choice, they want to be empowered. Smart banks and financial technology companies are empowering consumers and giving them actionable advice and data.
2. Financial services UI (user interfaces) need a revamp. I know Mint.com has done it, as has my client Fiserv. Both are putting great emphasis on this. I see it as another variation on death by PowerPoint. Having tons of data can be great, but you need quick, actionable intelligence to make the right decision.

At first the second session was being bit too anti-bank. Banks serve a role, and all agree banks are essential. The challenge is many FIs are risking being disintermediated by third-party developers that don’t work with the bank. That’s what all the panelists in the second session we championing, so banks should pay attention and work on innovation within their services and offerings.

Mint.com has been very successful to date, and its executives were featured on two panels. There were a few key points I thought were of interest:

Mint.com built its following by hanging out where the consumers are, rather than creating their own community. They find it more effective. I believe both have their place, but it ties back into the fundamental premise of successful social media engagement – strategy before social.

Mint also does not buy PPC, they have found creating short videos and making them widely available to be most effective. Their consumers prefer that type of activity, and it lets them provide a richer (no pun intended), more detailed experience.

The consensus in multiple panels was the future of banking is mobile. But mobile information is just the first step, financial institutions need to focus on transactional capabilities, as well as advice and counsel. Getting tailored advice on your cell phone is much more valuable. That’s a message every good marketer knows – tailored, relevant and useful information engenders more loyalty.

Consumers need to pay attention as well. According to the speaker in the first session, Ramit Sethi, consumers are fundamentally delusional when it comes to money: 20% of people polled think they will get rich via the lottery and  3% though an insurance settlement.

While yesterday was all about the human network, Day 2 of SxSW was about the evolving financial network. There are a lot of interesting things on the horizon. As a final note, if you haven’t checked out CreditKarma yet, you should. A very interesting site that brings a lot of value to helping consumers improve their credit score.

Posted by Mark McClennan on March 13, 2010 at 11:49 PM
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SxSW - Day 1: It's the Human Network

SxSW

It’s a good thing I am a morning person and registered early, as this line demonstrates. Many of the folks in the line missed the first sessions. (This is the line to get into the exhibit hall to register)

The first session at SxSW dealt with social media marketing, and while it covered many thing I already knew, there were a number of interesting insights to take from it. One of the points the speakers (Chris Winfield and Tony Adam) made is one I have been making for years – Web 1.0 (forums) still matter. The power of niche social media sites and networks can trump the power of Digg, Facebook and others. You eliminate much of the chaff and keep just the wheat.

Two key things I was reminded of in the session that I thought might be of interest to technology public relations pros:

1. When trying to find the most popular niche boards, http://rankings.big-boards.com/ is a good place to start.
2. Being engaged (without spamming) on Yahoo! Answers can also advance thought leadership campaigns.

The second session, with Brian Solis talking about the themes in his new book, Engage, was a great session packed with good advice. A lot of it was a positive reaffirmation of what many companies engaging in social media are already doing, but there were some new ways of thinking about things that he drove home. He seems to have taken the Tipping Point categories and expanded on them to identify the types of people that you tend to interact with on social networks, and how you can impact their hearts and minds. This has some intriguing implications and is with thinking about much more than most people do.

He also reinforced a point from the first session. The networks don’t matter, the channels will change, it’s the human network that we are all a part of that is truly driving and advancing the social media change and the impact it is having on business. Companies that enter the network in the right way can have a significant impact. Those that do not, may do OK, but will never excel.

He also drove home a point Schwartz’s president, Bryan Scanlon, has been making quite a bit recently  - listening and talking aren’t enough. You need content to drive the discussion. Every company is now its own CNN, and they need to promote what they do, listen, and interact. They can’t rely on the media to give them pre-made programs (articles) anymore. There is much more to the channel than their ever was and technology, consumer, green, and healthcare PR pros need to pay attention.

Some other elements on which I will expound in more detail in later posts include:

1. Most social networks are matriarchies
2. The social compass is a good guide to developing a coherent and effective social media strategy
3. Social media engagement fails if there is not a human in some way associated with the brand
4. B2B Tech companies were the first to adopt social media with developer forums. There are benefits many B2B tech companies are overlooking.
5. Banks and other location based venues should look at foursquare. Now 1500 venues are giving rewards to their mayors and driving traffic and deeper relationships.

Check back tomorrow for more highlights from SxSW.

If you are reading this and at the conference, what were some of the best lessons you learned today?
 

Posted by Mark McClennan on at 12:41 AM
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Schwartz Twitter Campaign Yields 70% Increase in Referral Traffic

This week's issue of PRWeek describes a holiday Twitter campaign that Schwartz designed and executed for Australian client RetailMeNot.com.

RetailMeNot is an online discount and coupon site. They're a current Schwartz client, but this article focuses on a push made around the 2009 holiday shopping season to reach RetailMeNot's target demographic of women between the ages of 18 and 39 with messages about new merchants, discounts and other offers to help drive website traffic.

Check out PRWeek for a description of Twitter tactics. The result was a 70 percent increase in referral traffic to RetailMeNot.com and continued strong traffic after the conclusion of this particular campaign. Pretty nice for a campaign that lasted just over a month.

Posted by Laura Kempke on March 2, 2010 at 3:27 PM
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The Debate Over Social Media Press Releases

Not sure if I am supposed to give props to a competing agency on this space, but the Social Media Press Release (SMPR) invented by Shift Communications a few years back was a novel idea.

Today, the SMPR means different things to different people:

-- Originally, an SMPR meant content organized online so that it is easily digested by the media. Features are presented in bullets; it's easy to click from content to supporting quotes; and graphics and other content are easy to find to support a story.

-- Some services today describe an SMPR as a press release that is formatted and presented so it is easy to share. A newer example is Pitch Engine, where one finds readily available tools for sharing a release on Facebook, posting a release on Twitter, or using other social media platforms.

-- Certain news distribution services, such as PR Newswire or Business Wire, describe a SMPR as a release that is augmented by multimedia content, including videos or pictures, and a release that includes hyperlinks within the body of the release.

-- Some describe an SMPR as any combination of the above.

The reality is that press releases serve a far greater audience than just the press. Anyone who visits the web can end up reading a press release. Furthermore, since press releases are syndicated by distribution services and are often modified slightly and presented on news web sites, they can have significant SEO value.

The topic of the SMPR was front and center this week, mainly because of a webcast produced by Hubspot that noted how old fashioned press releases, without fancy graphics and presented as just plain text-- are more likely to be syndicated than any form of a SMPR. In addition, Hubspot postulated that the old fashioned releases were better for SEO, since links were more likely carried in the syndicated releases.

The report prompted some debate since Hubspot tried to find away to measure an instrument used in PR-- a marketing function that itself is very hard to measure.

Internally here at Schwartz, we have been debating SMPRs, press release distribution services and the role of a press release for some time. Here are a few points related to the conventional wisdom internally and the discussions this week:

-- Adding visuals or videos to a press release makes the press release more attractive to media and any other audience that views it,

-- For companies especially interested in SEO or web traffic, it's a better course to host visuals, video, graphics, etc. on the company's website, and then link back to the website from the press release,

-- Making the release easier to share is important, and the best press rooms today are those that incorporate tools for sharing content right in the press room,

There is no clear-cut guidance on this issue, and we're experimenting with a number of press release distribution options and press release formats here at Schwartz. If you are interested, keep reading this blog or drop me a line (rossl@schwartz-pr.com).

Posted by Ross Levanto on May 22, 2009 at 3:02 PM
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Red Carpet Here We Come

Congratulations to Schwartz and its long-time client partner CheckFree (now Fiserv). We are a finalist in this year’s PRSA Silver Anvil awards, which are pretty much one of the most prestigious awards in the PR industry. The nomination, in the "Marketing Consumer Services Technology" category, highlights our work promoting green living and fighting fraud with online bill payment. This is a testiment to a great client who is committed to research and creative campaigns, and a close, long-term working relationship. 

Schwartz and CheckFree (Fiserv) secured more than 1,500 articles and on average the majority of articles contained at least two key messages and/or statistics. Green coverage for the campaigns ranged from key blogs and regional papers to the Sierra Club magazine. Working closely with CheckFree, partner banks and the industry, the company offered various promotions, including an offer to plant a tree for each E-bill activated. This generated more than 125,000 new users and planted that many trees.  If you are interested in finding out more, visit ebillplace.

The identity fraud campaign was just as successful, and generated more than 1,000 total articles, blog posts and TV stories. More than 60% of the articles contained at least two of the top messages including paying bills online is safer than mailing them.

A client for ten years, the CheckFree (now Fiserv) and the Schwartz team partnership is no stranger to awards. It's the fourth time in seven years that the CheckFree/Schwartz team is a finalist---and we took home the gold for two of those.

I wonder if we have a Meryl Streep thing going here?

(Photo courtesy of Entertainment Weekly.)

Posted by Bryan Scanlon on April 20, 2009 at 11:25 AM
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