Word of Mouth Marketing - Social Media - Search Visibility

Social Media Monitoring Tools Podcast - A Discussion with Brian Chappell

BY JASON CORMIER

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Length: 10:45

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Show Notes:

Room 214 Co-Founder, Jason Cormier, discusses social media monitoring tools with Brian Chappell, Senior Social Search Strategist at Ignite Social Media.

In this podcast, we discuss:

1. The most valuable aspects of social media monitoring tools: Keeping tabs on conversations and customers for the purpose of crisis communications and reputation management.

2. Sentiment analysis in social media monitoring tools: Is automatic sentiment analysis developed enough?

3. What are clients looking for in these tools? Engaging in new markets through listening to customers, opportunities to include intelligence in product development cycles.

4. "Social media isn't a salt shaker": You have to work it into the base of your marketing.

5. What's next with social media monitoring: Greater levels of CRM integration, and more consistent pricing models.

Notes: I appreciated Brian's participation in the discussion, even as some have cited our agencies as competitors. It was affirming that Ignite is working through many of the same issues we are with respect to the tools. Hopefully, there is a nugget or two of insight here for others considering how they should evaluate the options. As one of our partners once put it to me, "it's always preferable to combine our powers for good instead of evil."

TAGS: SOCIAL MEDIA MONITORING • SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS • CAPTURE THE CONVERSATION • RADIAN6 • ROOM 214 PODCAST • BRIAN CHAPPELL • IGNITE SOCIAL MEDIA • SENTIMENT ANALYSIS • REPUTATION MANAGEMENT • BRAND MANAGEMENT • JASON CORMIER

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The Top Value Propositions of a Social Media Agency

BY JASON CORMIER

"Of people who identify themselves as social media marketers, 65.5% have never posted an update on Twitter" ~ Source: Sysomos Blog, June 2009.

I've been witnessing a dichotomy: Many marketing professionals are unaware social media agencies even exist, while at the same time, emerging hordes are on their way to creating them. Whether you're a social media "expert" looking to build an agency, or part of a company trying to understand why you might need one - this post should offer some insight.

At Room 214 we consider three areas of focus as seen in the diagram above: Analysts, Engineers and Creatives. Competency with respect to communications and the actual execution of work takes place in and across each of the three, ultimately enabling our value as a social media agency.

Each of the three focus areas have their own value propositions, and like a tri-pod, the whole operation is ineffective if one of the legs is too weak to support its part of the load.

1. Being Analysts: One of the beauties of Internet-based campaigns is the ability to track and measure what people do. With traditional web analytics meeting with new conversational analytics, the data can be overwhelming. Social media agencies have the expertise in sifting through the data to interpret insights leading to actions.

Due to the explosion of social media, there has been an emergence of social media monitoring and business intelligence tools for benchmarking, competitive analysis and gaining insights around certain topics that can be tracked in blogs, forums, Twitter posts and mainstream media.

The question becomes:  Are the tools and data valuable? Yes. Do busy marketing or service support professionals have time to stay on top of them to the extent of actually impacting their business? Often not.

Top 5 Value Propositions from Social Media Analysts:

• Identification of trends, and insights into thought leadership
• Objective evaluations of tools, strategies and tactics
• Understanding and establishing best practices
• Research, benchmarking and measurement
• Filtering out the unwanted noise and capturing actionable data

2. Being Engineers: This is a key differentiator for our agency, in particular - even to the extent of adopting "social media engineers" as our tagline. Why? Because in our experience, a high level of expertise around technical platforms and infrastructure is a leading contributor to quickly making and keeping companies competitive.

Consider Facebook as a case and point: In the context of "engineering," there are three technology environments in Facebook that need consideration: Application development, Facebook Connect, and the functionality of general pages. Each of these areas has its own set of rules. The documentation is arguably limited, and as @DominicDiMarco put it - "the target seems to be constantly moving."

You may have great ideas - but the ability to execute and leverage relevant assets is often delayed and overly expensive due to a lack of technical (engineering) expertise.

Top 5 Value Propositions from Social Media Engineers:

• Knowledge of when to build vs. when to buy
• Ability to uniquely integrate, build and implement technology
• Insight to how solutions scale or how they are limited
• Innovation needed to improve upon accepted functionalities
• Customization of tools, applications and social platforms

3. Being Creatives: One thing I've noticed about "agency" vs. "contractor" status is the expectation around coming up with great ideas. Effectively implementing and supporting social media campaigns is critical to the success of any agency in this industry, but conceptualizing and communicating (internally or externally) great ideas requires a combination of skill and inspiration.

Expecting clients to conceptualize along with you without effective presentation aids, creative samples and proofs of concept can be an uphill battle. The ability to articulate, justify and demonstrate an idea from inception - then efficiently create the spaces by which it may grow and materialize is a practice in and of itself.

Top 5 Value Propositions from Social Media Creatives:

• Frameworks for brainstorming and conceptualization
• Development of visual samples or proofs of concept
• Collaborative processes to improve upon original concepts
• Holistic approaches to leveraging existing assets, advertising and PR
• Relevance around usability and effective models of engagement

It's easy to conclude that leading social media agencies must wear many hats - analysts, engineers and creatives. And being successful while maintaining a competitive edge requires a constant fitting of all three hats.

Where do you believe most agencies are strong or lacking? Are there aspects of the stated value propositions you would like to elaborate on from your own experience?

TAGS: SOCIAL MEDIA AGENCY • SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGNS • VALUE PROPOSITIONS OF SOCIAL MEDIA • ROOM 214 • JASON CORMIER

Posted at 10:34 am | 0 Trackbacks | 0 Comments | Share this article

The 4 Keys to Social Media

BY JASON CORMIER

This has been somewhat of an anecdotal piece to many of our conversations about social media lately - so I'm sharing it. Given the countless layers of social media, it should be understood these keys are in the context of research, planning and measurement (not tactics).

Of course, many of our prospects and clients want to shoot straight for the tactics. Part of our responsibility is backing them out to the bigger picture of what the objectives are. Strategy follows, and only then are the tactics (and technology) addressed.

As practitioners we casually speak about listening, learning and engaging. The first two keys are specific to listening.

Here is Room 214's take on it:

1.    KEY Words: Those again? Yes. Keywords are not just for SEO and search marketing. In fact, most of today's leading online business intelligence and social media monitoring tools are providing value initially based on keyword search queries. Even basic keyword analysis can go a long way.

2.    KEY Topics: Beyond keywords, are key topics or emerging themes. Knowing what your share of voice is in terms of percentage of conversations about your brand (vs. your competitors or partners) has its place - but understanding common themes or topics in those conversations adds a whole new level of insight with respect to priority of messaging, response, etc.

3.    KEY Performance Indicators: If you have an idea in terms of what success looks like against your objectives, then key performance indicators should be established to provide a means of measurement.

I realize we could get into an entirely separate discussion around score cards, Net Promoter and ROI here - but the point is to establish some form of measurement related to response. Might sound like common sense, but it's an often forgotten element.

4.    KEY Influencers: This is where the gold is with respect to a great deal of action that can follow from the initial data (listening) collected. Social media is little more than word of mouth marketing on the Internet. Unlike traditional word of mouth, however, identifying influential people and web properties essentially enables the priority of who gets the word first.

When you consider these keys, which one do you think is most relevant to you? What parallels do you see with what might be considered traditional marketing and public relations?

Note: Thanks to nerdapproved.com for the image.

TAGS: SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING • WORD OF MOUTH • SOCIAL MEDIA MONITORING • KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS • KEY INFLUENCERS • SOCIAL MEDIA PROGRAMS • ROOM 214

Posted at 6:02 pm | 0 Trackbacks | 0 Comments | Share this blog post

Computers Are Computers. Humans Are Humans.

BY BRANDON WHALEN

Today I found some pretty appalling examples of people misusing automatically generated updates on twitter to over-promote themselves. It inspired me to highlight why auto-tweets are a really bad idea. 

First of all, if you are thinking about using Twitter to get your name out there, or tap into this social media stuff, please consider a few things first. People are not going to follow you, or help you achieve any sort of promotional goal, unless you understand how to operate within their realm. They can easily spot fakes and spammers. 

If you want to promote something on Twitter, you have to do the ground work. You can start by being a human that knows how to listen, being respectful, and putting others before yourself. Take a look at Qwest's Twitter (@talktoqwest) for a good example. 

Out of all of the bad examples I dug up today, one particular account struck me with it's extraordinary misuse. In the nearly two years this account has been up, it has amounted to a whopping 107 followers. They have been kind enough to follow zero of them back. Instead, they thank their followers by pounding them with an outrageous 211,291 tweets. 

Here is an example of one of their tweets. I must note that every single one of their 200k+ tweets looks exactly like this (I changed the link to keep the computer Twitterer anonymous): 

• www.newestfindings.com update: Zimbabwe parties 'agree timeline' (Mediators say Zimbabwe's rival parties have agreed to share power...)10:05 PM Jan 26th from web 

There are a few fundamental things this computer is doing wrong: 

1. Every tweet is self-promoting and comes out in the same format. 

2. It does not interact or converse with anyone.

3. It is is sending way too many updates for any real Twitter user to ever want to follow. 

You are never going to experience any kind of success running your account this way. In fact, it only showcases that you do not belong on Twitter. 

Now lets take a look at the way a human uses Twitter:

One of my favorite persons to follow is Mr. Chris Reinhard. Chris' stream comes packed with plenty of humor and down-to-earth friendliness. He responds to people. He communicates with his friends. He shares his thoughts and feelings.

He even took the time to do a favor and let me interview him on his Twitter use: 

1. Are you a human or a computer?

I am human. Or am I dancer?

2. Why do you Tweet?

I use Twitter as a news source, a writing and editing aid, and a place where I can make small talk without having to answer any questions about the weather.

3. Do you use Twitter to interact with other humans and physically meet them at some point?

I've only met people from Twitter who came recommended by other friends. Random folk...no thanks, unless it's a job opportunity.

I was able to get Chris to fill out an interview within 3 minutes of sending him a direct message. It demonstrates the kind of connections you can build on Twitter if you just use it in the appropriate way. It can be far more effective than any of the banners or links you see everyday. 

I was able to get someone to stop what he was doing, open an email, and fill out an interview by sending him one direct message. The auto-generated account has failed to make a real connection with anyone in two years. 

There are no shortcuts, but having a well-run Twitter is valuable and important for any company.

TAGS: TWITTER • BEST PRACTICES

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Why Social Media is Succeeding at Qwest

BY JASON CORMIER

Qwest announced its "Talk to Qwest" program today - a comprehensive social media effort effectively helping Qwest customers resolve a range of issues online - including billing, tech support, product/pricing inquiries, etc.



Starting on Twitter, @TalkToQwest, Qwest has put together a super-group of people clearly demonstrating their care for customers through daily outreach and response (in 140 characters or less). That is actually the short answer to why they are succeeding in social media: their people.

As the social media agency hired to assist them, it's a privilege to share a little personal insight on Qwest with respect to both challenges and opportunities. But first, I have a confession.

Frankly, I was a little concerned about the project before we even started working together. It's one thing to focus on a project within a department of a large company - but when multiple departments are motivated to participate, and impassioned individuals are talking about literally changing how the company does business… well, I'll let you fill in the blanks from your own experience. Exciting? Yes. Quickly and effectively executed? Often not.

My internal questions were simple. How quickly is Qwest really going to be able to move on this? Would even necessary things like "messaging" and legal stand in our way of doing it right? Could they be relevant? Could they be cool? Could they be timely? Would the people we worked with have enough buy-in from the rest of the organization to really show the world that Qwest "gets it?"

Today, you (and Qwest's customers) are in the position to answer some of the more important questions I had early on. Socialmedia.qwest.com is a good start for seeing how the company is introducing and addressing the relevance factor.

And cool?! How about those Viddler videos of the people behind Qwest's Twitter presence? I can't tell you how glad I am about the avoidance of over-production that could have so easily been present here. And you just gotta see what this Qwest guy does at the bowling alley after hours (see video below). Classic!


In answer to my own questions - it's refreshing to say that early on, what we discovered within Qwest were groups of extremely committed people excited to work across multiple departments to make this happen. 

Continue Reading...

TAGS: TALK TO QWEST • QWEST SOCIAL MEDIA • SOCIAL MEDIA MONITORING • SOCIAL MEDIA PLANNING • CAPTURE THE CONVERSATION • TWITTER • CUSTOMER SERVICE • ROOM 214

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