What is Social Media?

Doing Social Media Right Original creation by Marta Strickland, social media strategist for digital marketing agency “Organic Detroit.”

social media strategist for Organic Detroit, a digital marketing agency

What is Social Media?

Social media is an umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos, and audio.

But that doesn’t quite do it…

It’s how people engage, participate, and share online…

… the experiences they leave behind

… and the shared meaning they create.

FROM HONEYMOON TO MARRIAGE

It’s…> 100,000,000 videos on YouTube4,000,000 articles on Wikipedia200 M blogs1 billion tweets on twitter> 200 M people on Facebook each month

Social Media By The Numbers

346,000,000number of people globally who read blogs

700,000,000number of photos added to Facebook monthly

273.1 minutes time on average spent watching online video each month

55% internet users who have uploaded and shared photos

57% internet users who have joined a social network

93% Americans online expect companies to have a social media presence

But It’s Not All Good News…

Recent Headlines:

• Social Media Fatigue. Too much out there?

• Blogging is Dead, According to Wired.com

• Forrester Says Consumers Don’t Trust Corporate Blogs

• Advertisers Face Hurdles on Social Networking Sites

• P&G marketing chief questions value of Facebook

• Half of 'social media campaigns' will flop

The Honeymoon Is Over…

Social Media Challenge #1Companies have to overcome their fear.

• How do you learn to “let go”• Give control back to the consumer• Lose the limits imposed by legal• Reinvent PR… PR 2.0• But is the risk work the reward?

Social Media Challenge #2This is a different kind of marketing.

• Stop thinking “campaign”• Stop thinking “channel”• Beware of Business Week syndrome• Objectives need to come first• It’s so much more than “marketing”• www.ideastorm.com• http://mystarbucksidea.force.com/

COMMUNICATION

Social Media Challenge #3It starts with the community inside.

• Bringing community to the business silos• Socializing success is the key to success• Watch out for company ADD• End users can tell if your “family” is

dysfunctional

Social Media Challenge #4Social media advocates are over-zealous.

• It’s not just brands who are challenged• The world wide echo chamber• Don’t follow the “shiny object”• Bring brands in with baby steps• Prevent culture shock

Social Media Challenge #5Consumers are suffering from fatigue.

• It’s a competition for consumer attention• They can afford to be picky• Human behavior is complex• But phony never flies

Who Is Doing It Right?

Reinventing Customer Service

The Unhappy CustomerComcast’s Nightmare

23,000 subscribers is how many TechCrunch's Michael Arrington told when his Comcast service was down

1.5 million viewersis how many have seen the video a Comcast customer recorded when a service technician fell asleep in his house

The customer’s voice has become a powerful weapon…

The Happy CustomerZappos.com / Powered by Service

Zappos.com doesn’t sell shoes, they deliver “WOW” through service. The primary sources of the company's rapid growth have been repeat customers and numerous word of mouth recommendations. Free shipping both ways, an always open call center, and 365 day return policy are part of what sets Zappos apart.

"Hopefully, 10 years from now, people won't even realize we started out selling shoes." Tony Hsieh (CEO)

How Do You Measure Success?

Active Participation: 438 Zappos employees on Twitter

Instant Access to Your Customers: 47,104 Followers on of the top Twitter accounts

Extending Your Reach: Increased traffic and search volume

More Efficient, More Effective:Limit the amount of advertising by focusing on a customer experience that will generate natural word of mouth

Increasing the Bottom line:75% of Zappos sales come from repeat customers $840 million in 2007, about $1 billion projected in 2008

Reinventing The Infomercial

Take A Look AroundBlendtec Before “Will It Blend”

• A faceless company with expensive product• New marketing director means a set of new eyes• A charismatic CEO with some interesting habits• “Extreme blending” as a regular occurrence

How Do You Measure Success?

Millions of Eyes and Ears: 65 million YouTube views, 120 million WillItBlend.com views

Dominate the Search Results: Turn search buzzwords (“Chuck Norris”, “iPhone”) into video traffic

More Efficient, More Effective: They’ve received national media coverage (TV appearances, awards) that is equivalent to millions of dollars in advertising

Increasing the Bottomline: Total Blender retail sales grew 700% in the past two years

Making the World a Better Place:Blendtec auctioned the blended iPhone on Ebay which sold for $1,000 and proceeds were donated to a children’s hospital

Reinventing Public Relations

Change The ConversationThe Trouble Ford Was In

• Consumers don’t trust corporations• Trust needs a face and a name• Enter the automotive crisis• Ford put into an interesting position• Can a bad situation be a brand defining moment?

How Do You Measure Success?

Get Your Content Out There: Traffic increased 100% in past 4 months to thefordstory.com“Ford Story” CEO YouTube video has received 53,354 views

A Strong Leading Man: Scott Monty has 14265 followers on Twitter and conducts almost daily interviews with blogs, news sites, and television

Be the Brand Everyone Is Talking About: #12 in AdAge’s most social brands of 2008, next to Disney, Sony, Dell and Apple

Owning Your Story, Before It Owns You:Ford effectively changed the conversation around the automotive bailout to position themselves in a different light than the others

What Are The Best Practices?

The Inconvenient TruthThere are no best practices.

• Every project is a custom fit.• You learn as you go. What are the best practices for a conversation? What about for a relationship?

You can read books, attend seminars, but it all comes back towho you are and who they are. There is one best practice to which there is no exception…BE REAL

An Approach to Being Real

You need to understand

• Who they are• Who you are• What you can

handle

You need to act• Accordingly• Transparently• Honestly

To evolve, you must• Always be

learning• Always be

teaching• Always be

improving

How to UNDERSTAND

1. First and foremost, listen2. Define the problem3. Match the problem to project objectives4. Find the community inside your

company5. Understand the community outside

Are you ready to listen

Tools You Can UseSocial Media Buzz Monitoring 1. Free Alert Systems

2. Paid Analysis Dashboard

3. Full Service Insights Partners

What Ford Heard…

“I am boycotting all companies that

receive bailout money. Join me and ask

others. We can make taking bailout

money so painful others will not suck the

life’s blood out of our children and

grandchildren.”

“If we all bought American, where would the competition and innovation be? Have you seen the junk on wheels they sell? The Big 3 haven't been selling what people want, but the foreign car companies have.”

Why are American cars still so unreliable? Nobody buys American anymore!!

Six in 10 oppose auto bailout…

Hello?! I think we have a problem

Define the ProblemIt all comes down to a problem in communication…• Our customer thinks of us as _____ instead of _____• People don’t know the facts about our brand• We don’t know what our customers think about us• Our marketing message isn’t resonating with our

customers

Ford’s big communication problem…• Big faceless corporation • American people against the bail out • Ford lumped in with misinformation and bad press

Determine Your ObjectivesSocial media project objectives must…• Directly solve your communication problems• Have a clear way to benchmark before and after

Ford’s objectives…• Put a face forward, humanize the brand• Combat misinformation• Tell your story, get others to tell it for you• Change opinion around the brand

What is your corporate culture

The Community InsideQuestions you need to ask…• What is (who owns) our corporate culture?• Who is allowed to talk on behalf of the brand now?• What assets are we or could we be creating?

– Events, content extras, internal superstars

How they did it…• Blendtec picked up on internal meme and decided to

share it with the world wide web• Zappos looked at their core values, commitment to

culture, and ways employees were already talking online

Reach out to your followers

The Community OutsideQuestions you need to ask…• What the types of people exist out there already?• Should we build or join a community?• What does the community need?

– Should we support, energize, or embrace them?

How they did it…• Blendtec understood the tone people looking for and

embraced their requests for content• Zappos continues to find and actively follow people

that mention their brand

How to ACT

1. Create a pilot program with core influencers

2. Ignite conversation and engage your audience

3. Don’t forget to share results, content, and plans, be transparent and giving

4. Be a great party host by connecting community members together

Create A Pilot Program• Start with creators and influencers. • Find renegades and evangelists. • Be interesting.

How they did it…• Microsoft put together Channel 9 to show behind-

the-scenes interviews with developers and even executives. On the first day, word of mouth had drawn 100,000 viewers. Half a year later, traffic was up to 1.2 million unique visitors a month.

Find ways to ignite conversation

Engage Your Audience• Ignite conversation. • Develop community activities. • Build a content calendar.• Be social.

How they did it…• Chrysler engages business units on a weekly basis

for discussion topics to put up for their Customer Advisory Board and finds executives to participate in online monthly chats.

Don’t Forget to Share• Be honest. Be giving. • Be transparent, esp. when you are wrong.• Let the community own the community.

How they did it…• When Cork’d was recently hacked, the very first thing

Gary Vaynerchuk did was post a video comment on TechCrunch to apologize and inform

• What not to do… When AMC first found out that fans were Twittering posed as characters from the hit show Mad Men, they asked that the accounts be shut down

Remember to be a great party host

Connect the Community• Be a great party host. • Encourage member interaction. • Drive exploration.

How they did it…• Mr. Tweet takes a look at which Twitter users you

should be following based on your personal interests• CCS, the College of Creative Studies, uses Facebook

to match potential students to counselors and current students who can answer important questions

How to EVOLVE

1. Empower your advocates through reward and recognition

2. Cross-pollinate and extend into other programs

3. Measure, report, share, and improve4. Learn what works and what doesn’t

Empower Your Advocates• Reward and recognize. • Give them the tools.

How they did it…• Yahoo! Answers gives users different privileges

based on how many questions they have answered • At Dell IdeaStorm, community members suggest

and vote on ideas for how Dell can improve their business.

• Lego Factory allows users to create 3D lego bricks. The community can vote on the best creations and some of the winning creations end up at local toy stores.

Extend your reach beyond the web

Extend into Other Programs• Integrate. • Cross-pollinate. • Widgetize. • Meet up in the real world.

How they did it…• The Barnes and Noble community is a lively brand loyalty

community supported by the Lithium platform. Hot topic threads are featured on the e-commerce site.

• ArtShare is an application developed by the Brooklyn Museum to share the Museum's collection on Facebook. Rather than expect users to come to the website to learn about the collection, they engage people in their own social space.

Measure, Measure, Measure

• Match metrics to your objectives.• Report, share, improve.

How they did it…• Many brands use buzz monitoring software such as

Radian6 or Sysomos to measure fluctuations in volume of conversation compared to competitors.

• CCS, the College of Creative Studies, uses the metrics provided by Facebook’s Insight tool to measure increased traffic, photo views, and wall posts.

What Do We Want From Them?

Track, quantify, and analyze conversations around a brand, their competitors, and their industry through out the entire online space

Determine the spread and velocity (how far, how fast) of branded syndicated content (video, widget, article)

Qualify and analyze social interaction within a defined channel in order to determine community health, sentiment, and engagement levels

To talk about the brand BRAND MONITORING

To spread our content CONTENT TRACKING

To engage us directly COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT

Learn + Adapt• Go with the flow. • Catalog what works and what doesn’t. • Rethink often.

How they did it…• Community platforms such as Lithium and SalesForce

(which runs Dell Ideastorm and MyStarbucksIdea) have implemented “idea management” features which help brands manage insights collected from the community and measure and learn from user engagement.

• Get Satisfaction is feedback widget that can get integrated into websites to provides real-time, dynamic customer support content that leverages the wisdom of crowds.

This is HARD WORK

But it will get easier…

Introducing Web 3.0

The Information PortalWeb 1.0• information exclusivity, be the first to own the content• dividing the world wide web into usable directories• everyone has their personal own little corner in the

cyberspace

The web became STATIC + LONELY

It lacked: • community• interaction• scalability

The Social PlatformWeb 2.0• focus on the power of the community to create and

validate• the power of a seemingly freer form of organization

(“tags”)• setting up “hooks” for future integration (RSS, API)

The web became NOISY + OVERWHELMING

It lacked: • personalization• true portability• meaning

We Broke Dunbar’s NumberDunbar's number is the supposed cognitive limit

to the number of individuals with whom any one person can maintain stable social relationships

There’s me

There’s myMyspace, Flickr, Yelp, YouTube, LinkedIn,Facebook, Last.fm…

And here are all my friends

And theirMyspace, Flickr, Yelp, YouTube, LinkedIn,Facebook, Last.fm…

And their friends with their content

Navigating the seas of the social web

Introducing Web 3.0What does it mean?The 3rd decade of the Web (2010–2020), when simultaneous

andcomplementary technology trends will finally reach maturity:

• a network of separately siloed applications and content repositories creating more seamless interoperability between connected devices

• data anywhere anytime via broadband adoption, mobile Internet access, software-as-a-service, and cloud computing

• true data portability via open identity (OpenID), APIs and data formats

• a consistent web language via RDF, OWL, SWRL, SPARQL, etc.• intelligent agents, natural language processing, and machine

learning

Web 3.0 is The Relevant Web

Improving How We ListenSocial Monitoring 2.0• Monitoring based on keywords makes it hard to

distinguish brand conversation (“jaguar” the car vs “jaguar” the animal)

• Sentiment changes based on the context (ie “lemon”)• Too much reliance on manual adjustments and

interpretation

Social Monitoring 3.0• Smarter aggregation, mapping conversation trends

• Conversation tracking beyond keywords

Better Customer Acquisition

Online Advertising 2.0• Contextual ads can be inaccurate and unsafe for brands• Behavioral ads don’t account for multiple users• Consumers trust each other more than corporations,

brands, and their advertising messages.

Online Advertising 3.0• Deliver relevant ads to the right consumers

• Make content easier to discover by interested users

Better Community Management

Community Management 2.0• Shear number of social networks with disconnected

profiles makes it difficult to find the most valuable people to connect with

• Hard to distribute the conversation beyond your blog or community

• No relevant social information when you need it most

Community Management 3.0• Finding the influencers across the social web

• Extending the conversation beyond the networks

Improving How We Measure

Measuring Success 2.0• Limited amount that we can measure: reach, exposure,

volume of conversation• Social networks are “walled gardens” with inconsistent

metrics• No algorithms to measure that a community has been built

Measuring Success 3.0• Better sentiment analysis than “positive, neutral,

negative”

• Social graph analysis, conversation connections

Thank You.