Marketing Today

Who's Doing Social Media in the ProductCamp Crowd?

Steve Robins led a great session on Social Mediaat ProductCamp this past Saturday in Cambridge, MA.  I found it interesting to be in a crowd of product marketing folks from organizations of all sizes with the opportunity to see where they were with social media.  Its fascinating to see social media programs start in "old school" organizations and that attitude of employees towards adopting change or hiding from it.  Here are my notes from this session.

We all agreed that an effective social media program begins with your organization’s goals.  But, when the group was asked what their goals were, there were a variety of answers that included:

• We want to gather market requirements
• We want to gather leads
• We want to make sure that we aren't getting burned "out there"
• We want to hear what people are saying about our competition
• We know people are doing their research online so we want to make sure our information is there
• We want more evangelists for our products

These are all good goals, but in a big organization (or even a mid-size one), chances are these goals fall under different departments and no one stepped up to say that they were coordinated across their organization with a company-wide social media strategy.

So where should an organization start?  How about by listening before you start talking?  Everyone agreed that "Frank" at Comcast Cares on Twitter was doing a great job at staying ahead of the pack on customer complaints online. Why?  Because he asks "how can I help?" to diffuse the emotion and to change the conversation. 

We also agreed that just because the world is on Twitter doesn't mean that your company belongs on Twitter.  There's nothing worse that jumping into social media without a strategy so that when some sort of action occurs, you're not prepared to respond.  An example that Joseline Manebrought up was with Sprint. Last spring, there new CEO ran ads with his e-mail address on it asking for customer response.  When folks accepted his invitation and start writing in, they received an auto-response e-mail.  Talk about a way to backfire your campaign!

In all, about a third of the crowd said that they were using social media in some fashion within their organizations.  When asked how it was working, no one jumped up and said "Fantastic!"  Instead, we heard that it takes a financial and resource commitment and until my company is ready to commit to that, we can't start a social media program.  And, that social media is something that you need to measure so that you can demonstrate success to senior management for buy-in. 

While I think that the ProductCamp crowd was conservative, I think their approach towards adopting social media is typical of many organizations today.  They get that they need to be doing it and they want to learn more, but they are hoping that someone else will figure it out for them and tell them what to do.

Making Marketing Mischief with the Stainfighters

Did you ever attend a dinner party at someone's house and manage to stain a few things while you were there?  This happened to my friend Nina who was mortified when she thought she'd smeared some blueberry pie right into a mint green cloth napkin at a recent dinner party at my house.  She e-mailed me first thing the next morning to say "Thank you and I'm sorry."  I wasn't really that concerned, but since she felt so bad, I started a load of laundry immediately and we had a little fun with the situation.

Making Marketing Mischief with the Stainfighters

I should mention that Nina is not just my neighbor and friend, but she's also an IT consultant and a marketing geek like me.  By 7:56 a.m. she started tweeting:

@NinaLytton:  can anyone advise @cgunst on how to get blueberry pie stains out of cloth napkins? the culprit would appreciate forwarding

No answer from any of the 45 million plus on Twitter, so I just applied some laundry detergent directly to the tablecloth and dropped it into the washing machine.  Voila!  Stain was gone and I tweeted back at 10:19 a.m:

@NinaLytton After pretreating cloth napkins with All laundry detergent http://bit.ly/kUicp all blueberry stains gone. Ur worries are over.

What surprised us both is that even after I mentioned the name of the detergent with a link to their page, still no one joined our silly, stainfighting conversation.  This got us both wondering how many organizations are actually tracking the conversations about their products online.  While we read about the ones who are, we're guessing there are an awful lot of others out there who are not a part - good or bad - of the customer conversation. 

What about you?  Are you tracking your customer conversations?  If not, why not?  Do you just not understand social media so you are avoiding communication with your customers online?  I hope that's not the case.

Gravity Summit Brings Social Media Crowd Together at Harvard

Yesterday, the Gravity Summit was held at the Harvard Faculty in Cambridge, MA.  What a fantastic collection of social media rock stars from hip hop legend MC Hammer to wine guy Gary Vaynerchuk to Domino's pizza man Ramon de Leon who showed us all how social media is done right. 

The seminar focus  was on how to use new social media tools - blogs, wikis, podcasts, Facebook, Twitter, online video, and social networks for customer engagement.  Top social media experts Beverly Macy and Rodney Rumford took the audience through a full day of information, case studies, special guest speakers, and networking. 

I watched most of the conference online as it was streaming live on CNN throughout the day and through Twitter at #gravsum. (Thanks Master Tweeters Joselin Mane and Jeff Cutler for all the tweets!)  Around 5:00, I headed over to the TweetUp/After Party at the OM Restaurant  in Cambridge with my friend Sarah.  It was great to meet so many of the folks that I follow on Twitter and to get to know some new social media folks including one of my social media idols MC Hammer.  (Special thanks to Robert Collins for posting the pictures of the Gravity Summit Tweetup so quickly.)

For some of the press coverage of the Gravity Summit at Harvard, check out:

• Boston Business Journal
• Boston Globe
• NECN

It's Official! Everyone But My Mom Has a Facebook Page!

I snapped the image you see to your right off a table in the food court at the CambridgeSide Galleria today.  Yes, even the local mall (once considered a gang safe zone when I used to work over in East Cambridge as a Lotus employee) has a Facebook page.

CambridgeSide Galleria on Facebook

Being a geek, I snapped a picture of the table promo.  Being a curious geek, I came home and checked out the site on Facebook.  Believe it or not, the site has 888 fans!  Communication to the "fans" seems to be more push than pull, but I am impressed that they got so many folks to sign up with them on Facebook.  Wonder how many people found them on Facebook through the table promotion?

My Mom Will Never Be on Facebook

I gave my folks a demo of Facebook when I was just visiting them this past week  so that they could see all of the other "Gunsts" on Facebook who have started to form an online community.  While my dad was able to translate some text from the German folks who are participating but didn't seem to know any of them.  Neither my dad nor my mom is really interested in meeting them online.  As they say "If they really want to meet us, they'll pick up the phone and call."

Using Online Videos to Market What You're Selling

There's nothing like a humorous video to get across sometimes complicated messages to your audience.  Here is an example of one that I was involved with for the launch of a new product, Disk Library for mainframe.  It was released online as part of the launch which included a press release, unveiling at an industry trade show, and inclusion in several blogs written by industry enthusiasts published on launch day.

 

Revenge of the Mainframe features a mainframe pioneer as he reminisces about the glory days of mainframe technology and predicts what the future has in store.  It came out on the day we announced the product at a mainframe conference and it received 1200 hits in the first two days!  Beyond the trade show floor, the video was shared by many who wanted to share it with their industry peers.  The 6000 hits it's gotten in just over a year came from the audience it was intended for and it linked people back to a landing page for more information on additional mainframe offerings.

Got A Concept You Need to Message In a New Way?

Whether you've been creating videos for a while or you're just considering it, give it a try.  It can cost as much or as little as you want it too.  You'll be surprised the hidden talents people you know have when it comes to a video project.  I was.  With new cameras like the Flip, you can start creating your own video and upload straight to your computer for editing for under $500.  It's easy to post your final product up onto YouTube when you're ready.  You'll find that there's only so much outbound promotion that you can do through social media (Twitter, blogs, etc.) and e-mail blasts, the rest is up to the Internet audience to promote (or not.)

Oprah Sends First Tweet on Twitter

How do you know when Twitter has become ubiquitous?  How about when Oprah Winfrey signs up and makes the announcement that she's sending out her first "Tweet" at 10 a.m. on April 17th?  My local radio station announced this morning that she was already up to 60,000 followers.  A quick check in this morning had her >66,000 and there's an hour to go before she officially uses Twitter!

Oprah and Social Networking

Oprah is on Facebook and has over 600,000 fans of her show there.  Today's announcement is "The Oprah Winfrey Show is LIVE in Chicago today with Ali, Gayle and Nate Berkus... we're talking to Ashton Kutcher, and Oprah's going to send her very first tweet! Make sure you're following her: http://twitter.com/Oprah".  Ashton Kucher is the first celebrity to get over 1 million followers on Twitter and I'm sure he'll be giving her some tips.

Several of Oprah's producers have blogs that discuss what's coming up for the show and what's going on behind the scenes.  YouTube videos show guests getting ready to go on the show.  Interestingly, a search on "Oprah" brings up about 19 different Twitter accounts from "Fake Oprah" to "I Am The Oprah" to what will be the real Oprah or @oprah.  If you think about it, if you're a celebrity and you don't take ownership of your name on various networking sites, copycat sites can proliferate that may get the wrong message out about you.

What Will Oprah Tweet About?

You'll have to tune in at 10 a.m. to find out!  Let's just hope that Twitter.com can handle the traffic.  If you're interested in seeing how this will work, go to Twitter and follow @Oprah.  While you're at it, follow Ashton Kutcher too, he's at @aplusk.  And, if you really don't have anything else to do today, might as well follow Demi Moore at @mrskutcher just to see if she joins in.

Facebook Jumped the Shark

One day last week it occurred to me that Facebook had jumped the shark.  This phrase refers to a desperate attempt to lure in more viewers by doing something that goes against character.  (Like the Fonz did in one of the last Happy Days episodes.) It's also a sign that something has probably passed its peak.

I think that Facebook is there.  Facebook is a free social networking site modeled after a paper facebook that members of a campus community that some colleges give to incoming students, faculty, and staff as a way to get to know other people on campus.  The site actually began at Harvard University and expanded to other schools before going mainstream after accepting investment money from a variety of major sources.

Jumping Into Facebook

Like many people, I jumped into Facebook to learn what it was all about.  As a marketer, I looked at how companies like M&M Mars launched new types of candy to consumers with innovative Facebook marketing campaigns.  I joined a few groups with friends and former co-workers and I started a group of my own for the not-for-profit that I work with.  And, through the experience of using Facebook, I connected with people I hadn't seen since elementary school, high school, past jobs, and people with the same last name as mine that I'd never met before.  I also connected with friends and neighbors that I see almost every day.  Being on Facebook seemed cool.

Facebook Jumps the Shark

This past year, Facebook has changed its user interface twice and now looks more like a Twitter stream.  The parts of Facebook that I found interesting - groups, ad campaigns,  etc. are buried.  And, then there's the suspicious e-mail through Facebook which carried a virus.  (Happily I recognized it and deleted it, but others I know weren't as fortunate.)  With founders and executives leaving for other opportunities and all the changes to the site, I have to believe that Facebook has gotten too big.  The pressure from investors to hit financial goals or number of users have ruined the online community that got it to this size.  It has jumped the shark.

Blurring the Lines with Social Networking on Facebook

This past week, I deleted about 50 friends out of Facebook and I'll probably go back and delete a few more.  (Note - if you're on the delete list, don't take it personally.  If you want to get in touch with me, just call.)  It was bugging me that it was so easy for friends to post a casual comment that just wasn't appropriate for business contacts to see.  And, vice versa.  People I went to high school with, I doubt care what industry networking event I'm headed to or about some article from the NY Times on cloud computing I post because some of my industry friends will find it interesting.

Long story short, I'm glad to have reconnected with some of the folks that found me on Facebook.  Other folks I connected with, I just don't have that much in common any more which is why we hadn't chatted in 20 years or more.  The latest UI makes Facebook less interesting for me to use or put the time into.  And, then there's Twitter to capture my interest right now.  I'll write a blog entry when I think Twitter has jumped the shark.

When It Comes to Twitter, It's MC Hammer Time!

The best way to learn about Twitter is to a) jump in, and b) follow a leader like MC Hammer, the rapper famous for his 1990 single “U Can’t Touch This.”   You have to admire someone who has reinvented himself successfully by communicting with his fans through interactive websites and on Twitter.

Engage Directly with People

At a recent stop at Harvard Business School, MC Hammer was quoted in the Harvard Crimson explained that "social media sites—such as micro-blogging service Twitter—can facilitate personal interaction in both business and music."  And he went on to say that "social media, more than any other form of communication, excels in “shortening the distance between creator and consumer.”

Get Yourself on Good Morning America

I first heard about MC Hammer on Twitter, when he appeared on Hubspot TV when he had 94K followers on Twitter.  After an appearance the next day on Good Morning America, he's now up in the Twitter stratosphere with 145K followers!  In the interview, reporter John Berman asked MC Hammer why people want to know what's he's doing all day, and he said that "in real life, we want to check in on what people are doing.  We want to know the latest fashion...best movie..best hair style" in real time.

Too Legit to Quit

MC Hammer is about a "50 Tweet a Day Guy" but he says that it's not about the numbers, it's about being interesting and cutting out the middle man to communicate directly with your fans.  As the Harvard Crimson reported from MC Hammer's talk at the Harvard Business School “At the end of the day, there are only so many notes, so many rhymes, so many keys on the keyboard.  The next thing is: who is the best marketer?” Can't touch that!

When Online Friends Meet Up Offline (And Vice Versa)

 Last night, I hauled my semi-Luddite friend, Nora, to the Hubspot "Celebrating Out 1,000th Customer" event in Cambridge, MA.  I forget sometimes what a tech party must look like to someone not familiar with one. 

One of the first people we bumped into at the party was a man wearing a black t-shirt that read @abinoor.  "What's that?"  Nora asked.  "It's his Twitter address," I answered.  "What's Twitter?"  she asked.  Long story short - I'm happy to report that by the end of the night, we geeks had not only opened a Twitter account for Webinora, but five of us were now following her.

Always Amazing to Meet Your Online Friends In Person

I remember last April when I got great pickup on a blog post I wrote about how I was getting ready to head down to Kentucky for the annual Throughbreads and Redheads event that Maker's Mark puts on.  I immediately heard from two representatives of Maker's Mark via comments on my blog post and I made a point of meeting them in Lexington.  One fellow was incredibly shy which is not his online personality at all.  I quickly realized that he's a writer and a bit of an introvert.

A couple of years ago when I was active on epinions.com as "caroleg" I used to write up product reviews on my home appliances and then the community would rate them.  It was one of my early experiences with an online community.  I got chosen as a "Home & Garden" expert by the epinions team and got some sort of special status.  It wasn't long before "bonies7" decided to have meet up in New York City for several of us writers who were curious to meet each other.  It was a fun night and we surprisingly had an interesting conversation for several hours mostly about this new website we'd discovered and how we'd been a part of getting the startup off the ground.  If we tried to get together today, I doubt we'd have much to talk about at all since we've all sort of drifted off to other online experiences.  Only one epinions friend is part of my Facebook network or is a Twitter follower of mine.

Thank you again, Hubspot!

It was great fun last night to see people's online personas collide with their real selves through Twitter as we celebrated Hubspot's success.  It's always interesting to watch someone who's not used to such a geek fest experience...and jump right in to the craziness with the rest of us.  To grasp our online/offline experience, check us out on Hubspot TV.

I Love Blogging: It Got Me Back Into Writing

About a year ago, I read a book that really made me rethink my approach to marketing.  It's called "The New Rules of Marketing and PR" by David Meerman Scott.  This book is based on the viral success of a blog entry about how the old methods of PR aren't effective because people are getting their information directly through the Internet which requires a different way of marketing.  Since reading the book, I've met David and have heard him speak at the Inbound Marketing Summit and I've learned a lot about giving up control of the message in order to get your prospects and customers the information they need.

Blogging Changed My Life

While always interesting and provocative, I'll never forget one thing David Meerman Scott said which was "Blogging changed my life.. and it will change yours too."  It sounded like such a used car salesman thing to say.  But, I decided to give blogging a shot to help teach myself to be an effective social networker.  With the thinking that you write about what you know about, I chose to write about my observations on marketing today.  I'm having a blast.  There's no higher compliment any one can give me than "Hey, I read your blog the other day and I really enjoyed it."  And, I love checking my stats on my iPhone throughout the day to see how traffic is and which entries people are reading. 

Blogging Got Me Back Into Writing Again

Since second grade, people have been telling me that I'm a good writer.  To be honest, writing comes easily to me when I know that's it's a huge struggle for other people.  It's a skill that has served me well in my career.  I can take something that is hard for people to understand and through the process of writing about it make it understandable.  The questions that I ask as I'm pulling something together often provide an insight that makes it an interesting piece for others to read.  The discipline of creating a blog entry twice a week, has gotten me back into writing outside of the technical marketing wirting that I do in my day job and that's a good thing for me.

Nag me, I need it

So, if you've read this far, check out a web site for a book that I want to write on Lotus Development.  And, if you see me, nag me on how far I've gotten with that project, because I need the push.  Blogging has gotten me started.  Hopefully, some free time over this weekend, will allow me to at least get it outlined in order to move it to the next stage.  I've got a really cool idea!

[NOTE:  If you're on Typepad and want to take part in the "I love blogging" challenge, click on the I love blogging graphic above for directions.]