Thank you Colle McVoy for the tweet about this video.
Most interesting thought I just saw was - The head of social media in your company is the customer.
How true is this!
Social Media
November 18, 2009
October 31, 2009
August 31, 2009
9 Ways to Jump Start a Social Media Community
One of my favorite bloggers Jeremiah Owyang recently posted an article on how to kick start a community. In his article he lists out 9 practices he has heard from companies that have built successful communities, but before I go into the practices I would like to make some key points about starting a community.
- Long-Term - When building your social media strategy make it very clear to the stakeholders that there is no quick short-cut in creating a community.
- Make it Easy - Do not create long registration forms. Make it easy to participate.
- Listen - Always, listen for feedback to evolve your strategy.
- Lifestyles - Do not communicate using one channel. Use multiple channels so your customers can choose a channel that caters to their lifestyle.
- Offline - When applicable do not only think online, test offline strategies too.
- Participate / Engage - Do not just create a strategy that just pushes out information / content. Engage your community, show them you are listening, tell them you are there if they need help.
- Passionate - Create a team that is passionate about the social media channel.
Here are the 9 practices:
1. Create compelling content on a recurring basis. Brands sometimes create videos, podcasts, or stories on a daily or weekly basis that encourages members to come back.
2. Reward users who fill out their profile. Folks like to see other friendly faces, so giving them access to premium features or recognition of those who have the most complete profiles should recognized.
3. Invite community influencers and advocates to the community first –giving them first right of testing the system and then inviting others.
4. Encourage interaction through conversations. Ask questions, talk about controversial topics, or host a contest that encourages participation.
5. Reward top contributors: Those that participate the most, or perhaps, are the most helpful should be recognized on a leader board, and thanked in public. Unexpectedly, send them something nice as a thank you, or reward them with premium services – never money.
6. Centralize your community around your real world events. People want to find each other before events, talk about the event during the duration, and then afterwards are key. Use the community in your physical events.
7. Virtual Events integrate community: Don’t just use on your real world events, but integrated with your virtual ones, I‘ve written at length about that here.
8. Integrate with your website –and other customer touchpoints. Remember, corporate sites of the future are aggregations of community discussion, be sure to integrate community in your corporate site. Make sure your call center, email marketing, and external newsletters all integrate community. (don’t forget even the email signatures)
9. Encourage employees to get active. A party isn’t much fun if there’s no one there, so encourage the hosts (often employees) to kickstart discussions by talking, debating, and arguing about the news, updates, or even relevant YouTube videos will trigger discussion. Of course, you have a community manager on staff, right?
Source: Web Strategist
July 08, 2009
Words of Wisdom From Zappos CEO
A couple of great tweets I recently came across from Tony Hsieh the CEO of Zappos.
@zappos: If you don't trust your employees to tweet freely, it's an employee or leadership issue, not an employee Twitter policy issue. @zappos: Spoke on panel this morning about employees tweeting. Zappos employee Twitter policy: "Be real and use your best judgement."
Thanks Dobby!
Source: http://twitter.com/zappos
See How VW Understands the Potential Power of Facebook
With all of the hype that has been surrounding Facebook this past year you would think there would be many applications that would use information within a social profile to create a customized user experience. This experience would be driven by the data within your profile such as age, sex, interests, and a few other data points that almost everyone will have filled out. Once the data is gathered then business rules would be applied to the information to give you a personalized experience of a product or service.
Well I am excited to say Volkswagen has created an application that taps into the power of Facebook. This unique Facebook application was developed around an ad campaign called Meet the Volkswagens and was developed by Crispin Porter + Bogusky. Using data from a user’s social profile the Facebook application is automatically tailored to each individual user making it more relevant to their needs. In addition to creating relevant content, the application creates a seamless user experience that encourages you to explore the results and then pass it along to a friend.
Check the application out for yourself and please do not hesitate to let me know if there are other unique applications like this one out there.
Source: Meet the Volkswagons
June 24, 2009
New Social Media Trend - Contextual Ads Based Off Social Profiles
Starting to see a new social media trend where web pages are dynamically created based on user profile ID from a social networking platform. Check out a Web site promoting a video game called “Prototype”. Upon accessing the site, Prototype Experience, you will be prompted to login with your Facebook account. After a lengthy loading period you will watch a short teaser trailer.
This is not a normal trailer. The trailer uses content within your social profile in Facebook such as your profile picture, profile information, and photos of your friends.
Very cool!
Source: Prototype-Experience Web Site
June 20, 2009
List Of Hospitals Using Social Media - YouTube, FaceBook & Twitter
Recently I have been on a quest to find how social media has had an impact within the healthcare industry. Due to HIPAA Privacy Rule, which provides national standards to protect the privacy of personal health information many hospitals have been reluctant to dive into the social media space. But to my surprise I came across information that showed around 300 hosptials within the U.S. are within the social media space. Here is the breakdown:
As of June 15, 2009:
- 297 Hospitals total
- 142 YouTube Channels
- 109 Facebook pages
- 213 Twitter Accounts
- 26 Blogs
Here are some examples:
Mayo Clinic Rochester, Rochester, MN
Sutter Medical Center Castro Valley, Castro Valley, CA
May 18, 2009
Twitter Promotions - Real Results For Small Businesses
An article in Advertising Age showed some actual results when local businesses started marketing themselves using Twitter. Due to Twitter's low barrier to entry it has a "golden trait that appeals to small businesses: It's easy." Below are a few highlights of two successfull Twitter promotions.
Naked Pizza, a New Orleans healthful-pizza shop
- Twitter promotion conducted on April 23
- Brought in 15% of the day's business
- All phone calls and orders were tracked by where it came from
- Naked Pizza's Twitter Feed
Berry Chill, a yogurt shop with three Chicago locations
- Used Twitter to send out "Sweet Tweets"
- Promos required users to show they're Twitter followers of the store
- Last big promotion Berry Chill gave away 1,100 yogurts -- $5,500 worth of product -- but sales were the same as the day before.
- The people who were existing customers standing in line at Berry Chill attracted people who hadn't tried it.
- Berry Chill's Twitter Feed
Source: Advertising Age
May 12, 2009
Social Media - Research Shows A Connection Between What Is Said Online And Sales
Recently I am across research that was conducted by Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management on a trending analysis of social media. According to research conducted by Kellogg, there is a measurable connection between what is being said about a product in online posts and real-time customer behavior. Listening to what people are saying about your product can be a valuable method of improving corporate performance. Becoming aware of online comments and learning how to use the information can avert potential downturns in sales and can help companies fine-tune their marketing.
Other key points within the Article:
- Traditional research has shown that a relatively small group of people can have a substantial influence on the majority. Researchers have also found that the same is true in online communities.
- By monitoring online postings, a firm can find out much sooner if there is negative sentiment among customers about the brand.
- The highly influential posters tend to have an especially intense interest in the brand, either positive or negative. Because of this intense interest, they are more likely to advocate a strong opinion, which in turn has a much bigger influence on potential purchasers than does the opinion of the average user.
- Social buzz whether positive or negative, is a leading indicator of sales.
- The authors of the article suggest that firms should monitor online word of mouth in order to “stay ahead of the race.
Source: Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management - People are Talking
My Other Accounts
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- Words of Wisdom From Zappos CEO
