An interesting case study has recently emerged in New Zealand that underscores the power of social media… and how it must be wielded CAREFULLY.
National Business Review (NBR) chose to leverage social media to promote its 40th Birthday via a competition of sorts. Entrants were asked to submit a brief story on how they would celebrate winning their own weight in Veuve Clicquot Champagne. The entry implied a popular vote process, and entrants jumped on board via their social networks to solicit support for their entry. A brilliant move by NBR and by Veuve Clicquot – to motivate its audience to leverage their social networks to promote the 40th Birthday. Cheers from here for the idea!
But the story does not end so well for National Business Review (or Veuve Clicquot). After one particular entrant appeared to run away with the popular vote, NBR indicated it would take the top ten voted entries and have a judging panel choose a winner. Fair enough except… NBR did not make this clear to the entrants in advance.
What is one of the most important elements of a social media strategy? TRANSPARENCY. And this is where NBR failed.
The fallout is beginning to reach a fevered pitch in New Zealand as bloggers and mainstream media are now berating NBR for its lack of transparency. True to the nature of social media, the court of public opinion is speaking out and it’s not pretty. A few comments from blogging community:
The postings continue and now a dedicated Facebook page has been created as a result of the situation, with further comments propogating throughout.
Do you suppose this was the result that NBR anticipated when it launched the campaign? NO. Could this have been avoided? YES.
NBR failed the transparency test when it built the campaign. If there is one thing we learned from the TGI Friday’s “Woody” campaign of 2009, it’s that you must set clear expectations and be able to deliver upon those expectations. It took TGI Friday’s 10 days to fix their redemption mistake, but they made good on EVERY promise… even though it cost them a few extra $$ along the way.
NBR and Veuve Clicquot opened the social media door when they created the campaign. The best move they can make now is to create extra space on the podium, include the popular vote winner and celebrate. Maybe next time they will plan their social media strategy more thoroughly, and make sure that the rule of TRANSPARENCY is heeded.
What failed social media campaigns have you experienced? How did they fail you?
EDIT- Five days after the social media eruption occurred, NBR posted this apology and awarded the popular vote winner a grand prize as well. A graceful apology with a bit of humor, it is interesting that NBR states it did not intend to “compromise transparency.” No doubt a lesson learned by NBR in how to properly engage in the social media environment.
Dr. Colin N. Clarke is a senior strategist for The Flint Group who studies how and why people choose to consume information. Follow him on Twitter @colinnclarke or on Facebook at Facebook.com/cnclarke.
When it comes to creating a social media strategy, there is one, often overlooked piece of the puzzle that falls through the cracks. The who is doing what piece of the puzzle.
I work with clients to create communication plans and digital strategies that usually include some form of social media. I often get an objection when the social elements of the program are introduced. Something along the line of “we tried a blog but it wasn’t a success” or “we have a Facebook page, but it isn’t doing anything for our business.”
Who’s Doing What?
Digging deeper into the failure, many times it is because the business did not understand who is doing what. The blog was a failure because posts were not written on a regular basis. The Facebook page was a failure because they were not engaging their audience, they were just collecting names. As my colleague Jay Baer preaches, social media is not about collecting names, it is about activating your fans. That can only happen if you know who is doing what.
It can get complex depending on the size of your social media program, but here are some tips to help make sure you’re managing social operations appropriately:
If you are blogging, create an editorial calendar. You don’t need to know the what, just the who and when.
Again with the blogging, make sure your blogger or bloggers want to do it, if they are forced into it, you won’t get your posts on time.
If you have a Twitter account, set up a CoTweet account to help manage interactions, and define who is responsible for interaction.
If someone asks a question in a social space, make sure you have an expert on hand that can answer the question if it gets too technical for the day-to-day social listener.
If you are being badgered by someone that continues to post off-topic or negative comments in your space, what is the plan to engage them, and who is going to do it?
If you have a Facebook page, know who is responsible for engagement. Who is responsible for adding content? Photos? Videos? It might be different people for each task.
Who is monitoring social spaces where you don’t currently have outpost? There are tons of free and paid tools out there that help you to monitor the conversations taking place.
Take a look at the Social Media Responsibilities Worksheet we use at the Flint Group. Hopefully it will help you figure out who is doing what.
Social media usage by businesses in Fargo, Duluth, St. Cloud, Grand Forks and Anchorage is increasing everyday and rightfully so. It’s a great way to connect and engage customers and prospects. And having a solid strategy to do so will allow you to move the needle and help you reach your goals and objectives for your social media program and your business.
With this increase in usage, however, HR directors are scrambling to govern social media activities by employees. This has led to companies large and small creating social media policies for their employees.
Mike Volpe from Hubspot takes a different look at social media policy development in his post Why Social Media Policy is Stupid. In his post Mike states “… the best “policy” is to hire smart people, give them the right coaching and training, set the correct culture around customer interaction, and then punish those who misbehave.” Although we have a social media policy for employees at Flint Group and have helped many clients develop social media strategies and social media policies, I kind of agree with him.
So what do you think, do businesses need a social media policy?
Have you dipped your toes into the vast world of social media? Maybe you’re slowly stepping into Facebook or beginning to chirp a few Tweets. Or you could be “all in,” using several social media tools to interact with your key audiences.
Whatever the case, how do you know if the time and effort you’re putting into social media is working? According to leading social media expert Jay Baer, there are two schools of thought: the pet naming program and the baby naming program. It’s a round-about analogy, but worth the read.
In a nutshell, as with any marketing effort, start with a strategic plan. Among other things, the plan must include the specific objectives you want to achieve, as well as how you’re going to measure whether you’ve achieved them.
Make your goals realistic and know they won’t happen overnight. But by methodically working a well-thought-out plan, you will reach your goals.
If you want help developing a social media strategic plan, we’d love to be your partner. Or if you have any questions, shoot me a note.
This is the story of a blog post that I wrote a while back, and 2 big takeaways for us all.
It is easy to put the blinders on and tell yourself that your content is reaching your audience because your blog had some views, the link in your tweet was clicked or your group has lots of followers. Purely looking at the numbers at a high level won’t really tell you what is going on. You need to dig deeper into what the numbers mean, and who is making up those numbers.
After watching the views rise quickly, I decided to compare the results. Here is what I found:
Views on the Flint-Group blog: About 200 Views on the Social Media Today blog: Over 3,200
Tweets from the Flint-Group blog: 2 Tweets from the Social Media Today blog: 82
Are you talking to yourself?
Purely looking at the high level numbers will also be deceiving in regards to “who” is reading your content. I work at an agency, and it is pretty typical for several co-workers to read my post after it has published. That’s great, but if your goal is reach and thought leadership, which will ultimately lead to new clients down the road, those internal views are essentially like talking to yourself. Removing your internal traffic from your analytics will tell the real story.
It’s not just blog posts though. The size of your Twitter following is sometimes used to measure the reach of your message. Quite often I hear people say something like “I can reach over 4,000 people through Twitter” because that is how many followers they have. Yes, you are posting it out to 4,000 people who have the opportunity to see your message, but how many of them are actually logged on to Twitter at the time of your post? Even if they are logged in, how many of your followers can keep up with every tweet that comes through? It is easy to get caught up in a dialog (Twitalog maybe?) and think that thousands of people are listening in, but the reality is, they just aren’t.
NOTE: If you are smart enough to make a tool that can tell how many of your followers actually were logged on to Twitter at the time of a tweet, or logged in after the fact and scrolled back to the tweet so it appeared on the screen, that would be helpful. Extra credit if the tool can actually guarantee that the tweet was read. GO! (and good luck)
When the cauldron was lit and the games of the 2010 Olympics were declared open, HatlingFlint was there at the Opening Ceremony, tweeting live. And we weren’t alone. Turns out there were lots of tweeters inside BC Place, around Vancouver, and all over the world who were sharing their Olympic experiences from where they were at that moment. This may not seem that unusual, but looking back only four years ago to the last winter Olympics, social media was virtually unknown. Today, social media is playing a very big role in connecting fans with athletes, teams, countries, and the overall Olympic experience.
It is for this reason that the US Speedskating team has added two members of the HatlingFlint team to their Olympic delegation, for the sole purpose of managing their social media campaign. Many of the athletes such as Apolo Ohno, Allison Baver, Jordan Malone, and Katherine Reutter, just to name a few, were already veterans of social media, but for the team as a whole, it was new.
Members of the US Speedskating team skating in Vancouver
The purpose of this new social media campaign that is still in its infancy, is to bring the Olympic experience of the team to fans of Speedskating, and continue with a sustaining program after the Olympics are over. Despite the well-publicized sponsorship of Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert of the US Speedskating team, after the Olympics are over, his involvement will be complete, so the team continues to seek a new gold-level sponsor who will take the torch from Colbert. Having a sophisticated social media campaign in place will be attractive to any future sponsor, and can serve as an additional means by which to get this message out.
The primary components of the campaign include: Facebook fan page – updated several times per day with photos, race updates, and of course, daily medal counts. Fans have also engaged by adding their own photos of them wearing their Colbert Nation caps, historic photos of Olympics from the past, and posting questions about where to get tickets to events. Twitter – most popular are the live tweets from the venues as the races unfold. Even though some of the events are not broadcast or delayed, fans can choose to follow the action immediately. Two times per week, a trivia quiz keeps fans coming back to answer a question and go into a drawing for a cool prize. YouTube – new videos are uploaded showing many different sides of athletes from competitions, practices, goofing around, and their opinion on brussel sprouts. Blogs – daily monitoring allows us to comment on every blog that mentions Speedskating in some way; so far there have been over 100 blog posts to date and growing. Featured bloggers are added to the facebook page which helps give them even more exposure.
So take advantage of this new phenomenon and join in the fun. Engage with the US Speedskating team online and we’ll keep you up to date on every possible moment we can, now through the Olympics, and well into the future.
I sit down with Libby Issendorf, Digital Strategist for the Flint Group, to discuss her past experience at Campbell Mithun and what brought her to Fargo. We’ll also talk about her social media work with the US Speedskating team, her upcoming trip to the Winter Olympics, and where businesses should start their social media efforts.
The results are in. Facebook is the #1 used social media platform for business leaders in Grand Forks/East Grand Forks. Number two, LinkedIn.
Our research partner, Prime Contact, conducted a survey with The Chamber of Grand Forks/East Grand Forks. Answers reveal that businesses use social media platforms for personal and business connections. See the detailed results.One of our social media strategists, Libby Issendorf, presented the survey results and her recommendations to a group of Chamber members last month. She’ll repeat that presentation with another group of members in March. (She’ll be in Vancouver, helping our client, the U.S. Speed Skating team, with social media during the Olympic Games!) The meeting space for these sessions can only hold a limited number of attendees, so we’ve summarized her presentation here:
Social media is important to business because it’s where people are.
Organizations must be in the right “media,” and this is it. Yet the messaging and interaction must capitalize on the “social” aspect. This isn’t TV, radio or even a website.
Social media is powerful word-of-mouth marketing.
Done well, social media allows businesses to solve customer service issues, collaborate, build brands and grow their customer base.
Social media works if you have a plan.
It’s tempting to create a Facebook page—just because you can. Slow down. First, answer some questions. What do you want to accomplish? Who is in charge of content? How will you tell people about it? How will you determine its success?
Crushing the Myth of B2B Social Media
The author of this blog, Jason Baer, is one of the most frequently cited social media experts. He also happens to be our business partner.
How do your customers use social media?
Use this tool to find out. Enter your customer demographic information and it breaks down typical social media usage by age and gender.
About a week ago I booked a long overdue family vacation. We looked at several options from resorts to villas to cruises, and settled on a cruise with Norwegian Cruise Line. Needless to say, my 4 and 6 year olds were bouncing off the walls.
Last night I was thinking about the process we went through in booking our trip. Many queries started either on Google Maps, Cruise Reviews or Trip Advisor. From there, it was usually a brief stop on the website for the property, then right back to consumer reviews and photos on a third-party site. This happened over and over.
When we settled on the cruise, we wanted to look at the excursions the ship had to offer. We found ourselves off the NCL website and on to caribbeanportreviews.com to get what we really wanted, which was firsthand opinions of the excursions. My kids wanted to see every square inch of the ship, so we looked at pictures posted by past vacationers, again off the corporate site. NCL did provide some nice 360 view tools, but there were large parts of the ship missing.
I have seven different websites bookmarked, and when I put them all together, they answered most of the questions we had. It shouldn’t take that many sites to get the content I’m looking for. That just leads to a very poor customer experience. I know it is a big undertaking, but why wouldn’t NCL want to provide a one-stop platform for this information? Six of the seven sites (the seventh being ncl.com) I used to make my decision had information on all the major cruise lines. Do they really want potential customers reading about everything everyone else has to offer?
Are you providing what your customers want? Have you asked them what they want? Remember, if they are not getting the information they need from you, they are getting it from someplace else. Do you know where that is?
People are looking for authentic content when making buying decisions. You need to provide the opportunity for your customers to provide it. If you don’t have the capacity to maintain a sharing platform, you need to at least provide links out to sites that have this information, like Amazon reviews, Yelp, or Trip Advisor. Make it easy for your audience.
Question: Are reviews, tips and photos less credible when they are on a corporate website, even if they are not being sanitized? Do you trust them? Would you go to a third party site anyway? Tell me what you think.
Traditional evolution of business has lead to segmentation by department for many companies. Marketing, sales, customer service, human resources, finance and fulfillment are some of the most common. But digital communications is creating a virtualization and convergence that is dramatically changing the way businesses operate.
How customers engage with companies has changed with the explosion of digital and social networking tools. Customers have wrested power to engage with companies on their own terms and in a fully visible environment. One-to-one conversations have now become open forum, placing greater pressure on companies to be well organized and prompt in response.
Customers can choose to engage on your company website using Google Sidewiki or your own message boards. They can also engage via social media outposts should you have a presence there. And if you don’t have social media outposts, they can still engage your brand in discussion whether you are present or not!
A service question, warranty question, sales question, human resources question, finance question or shipping question or concern can all be directed to the same place in the digital environment. Customers look at your company as one entity, not as a network of departments, and they expect your company to respond as one entity. The lines blur, the departments converge and at the end of the cycle only one thing matters – have you answered the customer’s question?
Your company’s success is based on the brand promise that you communicate to your customers. How well you manage customer expectations through their engagement with your brand, your company, ultimately determines your long-term viability and growth.
Step back and have a look at your organizational structure. Now look at all your customer touch points. Are you prepared to respond to your customers in an efficient, timely manner regardless of question? Do you have a strategy for managing customer interaction in a digital open-forum environment? Are your departments prepared and trained to work cross-functionally?
If not, it is time for digital strategy and social media strategy to integrate with your company’s management and planning process. Your customers are already converging. Are you prepared?
The professionals at SimmonsFlint are always hungry for new marketing trends, techniques or hot topics that we can share with friends and clients. Watch for a regular stream of insightful information – or join in the conversation.
I have seven different websites bookmarked, and when I put them all together, they answered most of the questions we had. It shouldn’t take that many sites to get the content I’m looking for. That just leads to a very poor customer experience. I know it is a big undertaking, but why wouldn’t NCL want to provide a one-stop platform for this information? Six of the seven sites (the seventh being 
