360DigitalInfluence

"Proceed until apprehended," the rallying principle for social media experimentation & execution shared by Brandon Friedman, Director of Online Communications for the Department of Veterans Affairs captured the pioneering spirit of all of the panelists from the October 6^th Ogilvy Exchange: Can the Department of Defense realize the full power of social media? The experienced panel of practitioners — rounded out by Jack Holt, former Senior Strategist for emerging Media at the Department of Defense, and Lieutenant Commander Chris Servello, Director of Emerging Media for the US Navy’s Chief of Information — shared very practical tales from the trenches for applying social media to some of the government and DoD’s most difficult communications challenges.

Lessons & Links
Social greatness comes from the inside out - Jack Holt shared a number of helpful lessons, but thematically returned multiple times to something often overlooked — it is critical to embrace the principles of better interaction and connection internally before the promise of social media engagement with external constituents can be fully realized.

Even small engagements are important. If you visit the Department of Veterans Affairs remarkable Facebook page, you will see 1×1 questions and customer service being addressed in a very “public” forum. Take a read through the discussions and see if that changes your impressions of the Department.

There is power in speaking directly to your audiences — Last week, LCDR Servello’s group at Navy released a YouTube video of the new F-35 fighter landing on the USS Wasp. This brief video clip has racked up a remarkable 200k+ view on YouTube in a week of release with no traditional media aircover — overwhelming evidence that there is an audience for the stories the Navy has to tell. Social media empowers them to speak directly to their audience in the same venue where they can carry the story forward to their networks. continue reading

image by John Moore a.k.a. @BrandAutopsy

On a panel last week for a WOMMA event at Chicago’s Social Media Week, I had the pleasure of sitting with Keller Fay’s Ed Keller, Brains on Fire’s Robbin Phillips, and Social Media Today’s Robin Carey to discuss social media measurement under the heading of “Is WOM worth it?”.  In the context of that discussion, I talked about the siren song of social media counting (vs. measurement) and the trap that we too-frequently see: social media “cases” that end by rattling off 20 different social media metrics that do not track to a meaningful business metric.  To illustrate, I mentioned that no CEO is not banging the table looking for more tweets (which BrandAutopsy riffed into the above), he’s looking for shareholder value - sales, market share, preference, purchase intent and a legion of other measures that can not be ripped off the back of Facebook insights.

So, with that in mind and the voices of my esteemed co-presenters in my head, I put together a list of 4 potential measurement pitfalls that can kill your social media measurement program before the horses have left the stable:

1) Setting the wrong objectives.  This sounds silly, but often an activity or “client brief” will be mis-translated as an objective.  For example, “run a high-impact event” is an activity, but “increase consideration and share of voice among X audience” attending that event is an objective.  TEST: Can it be measured?  If the answer is no, it isn’t an objective.

2) Determine the meaningful (vs. diagnostic) KPIs before you begin:  Chances are, meaningful KPI’s will require measurement techniques beyond simple, spoon-fed social media metrics like likes and shares.  Take a walk through our Conversation Impact(TM) white paper to determine how to craft meaningful Reach, Preference, or Action KPIs.

3) Find where your audience is interacting on a relevant topic: Yes, Facebook has 800 million people and likely some of them are in your desired “audience” but they may not be on Facebook to discuss their mother’s prescriptions or whatever topic that you may have value to add.  The important second step to “going where the party” is already happening is not just determining where your audience is, but how they are using social media for different things - where do they share recipes vs. look for snowboot recommendations?  While they could light up for FB, Twitter, Flickr, etc it will be critical to understand the relevance of those platforms to their lives to put together a measurable strategy.

4) Plan to measure: If you put together a measurement plan after you’ve already begun, you have lost your chance at a baseline and being able to know the true impact of your efforts.  Ed Keller admitted that he often gets calls halfway through campaigns at which point, there are limitations on the types of measurements that can be taken.  The baseline is going to be the key to your “winning” metric such as “Increased purchase consideration by 45%”.  That is the type of metric that CEOs do care about and will keep your social media efforts on strategy and in budget in 2012.

The Word of Mouth Marketing Association’s School of WOM has been a wonderful combination of hands on skills development with leading practitioners,  inspiring keynotes, and a new element this year - questioning some of the “obvious” things about our profession that might not even be true, much less obvious.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Duncan Watts, author of extensive previous exploration on human social networks and the new book Everything Is Obvious Once You Know the Answer.  His new book provides compelling information for why we should question our human intuition and “common sense” as there are too many cases in which that “common sense” could reverse justify any number of outcomes.  Being people ourselves gives us a false sense of understanding how our fellow humans work.  As Duncan said yesterday, a physicist would never put himself in the shoes of an electron and imagine which way it would go, yet we in the (practical application of the) social sciences do this on a regular basis. continue reading

Silos have long been bemoaned as preventing the optimization of everything from enterprise resource planning to cohesive customer experience.  If Phase 1 of corporate social media development is scattered maverick experimentation and Phase 2 is creating integrated strategy, chances are Phase 3 is likely defining silo-based roles & responsibilities.  For example, Corp Comm could own Facebook, Consumer Marketing owns Twitter,  Care runs branded communities, and Recruiting runs LinkedIn (although we often see platform ownership split by business unit focus in marketing as well) .  There is a very real reason for doing this.  Clear ownership assures great responsiveness and allow for organizations to get appropriate social staffing and funding approved.  It is also true that the different social platforms have different audiences and dynamics (what & how you share) that are likely more appropriate for one part of your org than another.  It is safe to assume that this is not going away…so let’s make it work.

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The folks at Whale Shark Media were kind enough to invite me to join the esteemed Dr. Kate Niederhoffer in engaging some of their partners around how to get the most out of social media.  This sounds like an average assignment right up until the moment that I tell you Whale Shark Media is “rollup” of affiliate sites like CheapStingyBargains, Deals.com and CouponShare and that everyone in the room was an affiliate channel manager in many cases not on their brand’s “social team”.   Not your typical day at the office, but who doesn’t love a challenge? continue reading

You’ve successfully passed through “phase 1″ of your company’s social media evolution where just a few expert voices represented your brand online.  Now you are handing over the keys to a larger, more representative group of speakers.  How can you make sure that this proliferation increases, not fragments, your impact online?  How do you prevent someone going off the reservation?  Through guardrails, governance, and training (oh my!).  Here’s a checklist from basic fundamental to advanced degree: continue reading

I don’t particularly enjoy business books.  The format is predictable, most  are 80% too long with no salient points beyond the first 2 chapters and too often, they are self righteous works from pundits with scant real world examples to back up their platitudes.

TOUGH LOVE, a new business ebook presented as an innovative Hollywood screenplay defies the issues above in both format and content and manages to entertain in the meantime.  You may know the author, John Moore, as the WOM Enthusiast at WOMMA, the Chief Marketingologist at Brand Autopsy, or the author of 2006’s Tribal Knowledge.  While Tribal Knowledge shared “Business Wisdom Brewed from the Grounds of Starbucks Corporate Culture”, TOUGH LOVE approaches the same company (thinly-veiled as Galaxy Coffee) at a very different time in its business - the present.   Galaxy has hit a rough patch after wandering away from its core beliefs while chasing the “growth” dragon.  While the story is woven as a screenplay, the lessons - John’s thoughts on the brand challenges from the perspective of a former insider - are shared through the interactive “Marketer’s Notes” throughout the .pdf.  Here are my favorite 4 TOUGH LOVE takeaways:

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If you’re wondering who owns the eyebrow-lift-inducing Facebook vanity “hotasianbuns”, look no further than Chicago’s own Wow Bao.  Wow Bao is a concept of Lettuce Entertain You, but it has a social media voice and plan of action all its own.   Geoff Alexander, Wow Bao’s Managing Partner joined me on a panel at WOMMA’s School of WOM and shared enough of those elements to make me want to learn more.  The personality and choices that Wow Bao has made qualify it as a Brand Worthy of a Weekend (BWOW) - a brand for whom there is a passionate set of fans that would give up a weekend with their families to come “immerse” themselves in the brand - learn more, meet the people behind the brand, and want to have a hand in crafting the brand’s future.  So what’s Wow Bao’s recipe for a talkable, weekend-worthy brand? continue reading

Thus far, 5000 inspired Johnny Cash fans around the planet have contributed painted frames to an online video of the Man in Black eerily singing “Ain’t No Grave” off  his forthcoming (final?) album of the same name.  Are these hardcore Johnny Cash “fans”?  Doubtful.  I think it is far more likely that this has tapped into the deepest of our human desires.

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Yesterday I ran into an old friend of mine who I hadn’t seen IRL (in real life) since 2005.  He had, however, recently reached out through social networks to ask me to become a fan of a band I had never heard of - Coventry Road.  The fortuitous in-person encounter allowed me to ask about the motivation for the “become a fan of” request.  He told me that the first question club owners now ask is not “where’s your demo” but “how many Facebook fans do you have”?  Far from the upstart organizing tool of 4-5 years ago, building a digital audience is now a requirement for a band starting out - not a nice to have or an advantage.  continue reading