Over the past couple of years, we’ve had the privilege of working with social media consultant Jay Baer, author of one of the best social media blogs in the world: Convince & Convert. Every once in a while, Flint experts get the chance to write guest posts on his wildly popular blog.
Here’s an example of strategic social media in action for our client, SunButter.
SunButter sunflower seed spread is like peanut butter, but totally peanut-free and made from sunflower seeds, so it’s perfect for people with peanut allergies. It’s also delicious, as fans on the Internet will attest.
These were the kind of conversations we found when we started listening to people talking about SunButter in 2010. The only way to explain how positive the results were is to say that people are crazy about this stuff. We’re extremely fortunate to work with a client that is so well-loved by such a passionate fan base. It was a logical next step to create a social media strategy that turned these fans into SunButter advocates.
The first reports of Osama bin Laden’s death? Twitter.
Some shared the news unknowingly, like an IT consultant:
@sohathReallyVirtual
Helicopter hovering above Abottabad at 1AM (is a rare event).
Other tweeters were in the know, such as Donald Rumsfeld’s former Chief of Staff:
@keithurbahn
So I’m told by a reputable person they have killed Osama Bin Laden. Hot damn.
Intentional or not, these tweets show the power of this social media platform.
Amidst the bin Laden events, the Flint Group Writers were spending a month focused on Twitter, specifically looking to intricately understand the medium and harness its power for our clients and their goals. We found ways to share and enhance our personal and professional interests, from Macs to fringe music to games-in-progress sports action. We see Twitter as a good place to interact with other marketing communications professionals, including media outlets. We understand how Twitter can allow organizations to provide more attentive customer service. Several writers now turn to Twitter first for news, from local happenings in rural areas to major international developments that may affect our clients. Many writers now follow and interact with professionals who will boost Flint’s service to clients. A few are just looking to vent about their favorite sports teams. And all of us are on the prowl for opportunities in and around Twitter that will benefit our clients.
Do you tweet? Personally and/or professionally? What are your Twitter experiences? We always like to from you.
Bill introducing Josh and Libby at the 2010 HatlingFlint KNOW event.
As big of a deal as it has become, social media remains a mystery to so many of us. We pretend to know what we’re doing when we post a status update, a link to a favorite blog, and press “like” once in a while on Facebook. But, navigating Facebook is just the tip of a giant iceberg.
Do you know how many characters are in a Tweet? How many friends does the average Facebook user have? What percentage of companies use LinkedIn as a recruitment tool? Every minute, how many hours of video are uploaded to YouTube?
Some of the answers are shocking, others are just no brainers. Attendees of our KNOW event on Thursday, Oct. 7 at Territory Golf Club got these questions answered and so much more. Our topic again this year focused on social media: blogging strategy and the importance of Facebook. Our presenters Libby Hall, New Media Strategist, and Josh Lysne, Digital Strategist, both with the Flint Group did an awesome job.
Two hours flew by with some pretty frantic note-takers burning a hole through their notebooks. We failed to remind them that a copy of the slides would be available. Ooops! We remembered and reminded everyone that the slides will be available for download.
Many of our attendees expressed interest in a “How to create a LinkedIn strategy” seminar. We’ll be posting information on this event as we make plans. Don’t forget to check back.
By the way, there’s 140 characters in a Tweet. The average Facebook user has 130 friends. 80% of companies use LinkedIn as a recruitment tool. And, 24 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.
Josh speaking to those eagerly awaiting golden nuggets of information.
Libby explains how Facebook and contests can lure someone in...we got you with our contest, didn't we?!
Today, humans are more powerful than ever. They can publish anything at any time online. From a brand management standpoint, it’s a beautifully scary thing.
Word of mouth remains the most powerful and trusted form of advertising. Simply put, friends trust friends. This is true of real-life friends, Facebook friends and blogger friends. As more people continue to share their thoughts and opinions online, you can’t ignore word of mouse.
So how do you begin to navigate the vast blogosphere?
Bloggers are the new media.
Media relations and blogger relations follow the same guidelines: treat humans like humans. It’s called earned media for a reason. It’s not demanded, forced or manipulated media. Bloggers, twitterers, editors and news directors essentially do the same thing: they tell stories.
And in order for them to tell yours, it’s important to play by their rules. Human relations rules. Follow these simple guidelines, and you’ll be earningink, air, tweets and posts in no time.
Give first. Ask second. Ever had a friend who contacts you only when he or she needs something? You probably dread seeing that person’s name light up on your cell phone, yes? The media will feel the same way if all you ever do is beg for help and provide nothing in return. Establish solid relationships before you need them. Furthermore, offer help in return. Make their jobs easier by providing all the accurate, honest details needed to publish an excellent story.
Focus on content. Be interesting. Whatever you’re promoting, make sure it’s relevant and newsworthy. Think like a journalist and identify the good stories from the bad. Just because publishing online is free, it’s not necessarily easy.
Be respectful. Respect bloggers’ influence. Before “pitching” your idea, take time to actually read their blogs to determine if they’re the right person to contact. (The same concept applies for traditional media relations: never pitch a publication that you haven’t taken the time to read and understand.) Read the blog’s About, Contact and Advertising pages to check if the blogger specifically asks not to be pitched ideas. If so, respect their wishes.
Know their audience. There would be no blogs or magazines without interested readers showing support through subscriptions, views and comments. Keeping readers interested and engaged is key for any storyteller, including bloggers. Make sure their readers care about your idea.
Don’t ignore the little guys. Popularity isn’t always everything. Yeah, the blogosphere is huge and growing, and it’s important to prioritize who matters the most. But a blog with 500 readers could be more important to your brand than a blog with 50,000 readers. Remember, it’s not about reaching the most people; it’s about reaching the right people.
Be honest. Be a real human. Always disclose who you are and who you’re working for. It’s important to be upfront and honest at all times, not only to follow online FTC guidelines, but to build strong, truth-based relationships with bloggers.
Get involved. Read. Comment. Blog. And do it all regularly. Don’t just sit on the sidelines until you need something. Use the freedom of the web as an opportunity to grow and learn. Conversations are happening: face it and embrace it.
Say thank you. Never, ever pay a blogger for giving a good review. Not only would that be dishonest, but it would destroy your credibility. Say thank you in other ways.Leave a thoughtful comment. Reciprocate the favor via your own social media outlets. Help them reach more people. That’s more valuable to bloggers, anyway.
Pretty basic rules, right? However, building mutually beneficial blogger relationships takes plenty of time and effort. Doing your homework isn’t necessarily easy. It’s hard work. But that’s why it’s called earned media.
And the results pay off.
Few other media outlets are as wonderfully segmented and specialized than blogs. A public relations pro’s dream is to reach the right people, at the right time, in the right tone and in the right place.
Blog posts, tweets and updates can make that dream come true.
Do you have any great blogger relations tips to add to the list? Please, do tell!
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.
The professionals at HatlingFlint 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.
@sohath ReallyVirtual
