Social media and learning to ride a bike  - 10 practical tips to get started...

...and what airlines can learn from the Tate Modern Art Gallery in London

What, Why, How in 10 steps, Critical Success Factors, Social Media Strategy, Practical Templates and some examples from other airlines

June 2011

What?

Could you imagine 15 years ago digital cameras, internet and/or mobile ownership becoming a standard even in developing countries, increased eReading letting the 2nd biggest American bookstore go bust and people interacting and communicating instantly their experiences whilst watching a movie or the Oscar nomination, visiting a town or travelling via facebook, twitter and youtube...? Web 2.0 technology puts travellers in control and enables instant interaction with friends, business partners, peers and non peers. Yet many airlines hesitate to start their way into the jungle of twitter, facebook, linked in, stumbleupon and other social media. 

Why the hassle?

In 2010 Americans spent 23% of their online time using social networks - and use among 50 to 64 year old doubling. Owership of smart phones in Europe alone is expected to rise to 98% in the next couple of years. Taking into account that word of mouth is one of the main criteria for customer experience and brand evaluation, social media can represent a huge opportunity as suddenly the magic number of “you tell this to 10 peers” can easily be “you tell this to dozens or hundreds of people”. In the past, customer interaction was complicated, and almost impossible real time. We had no chance to interfere good or bad word of mouth, now we do! And on top, we can learn from it to continuously improve our business. The hype and opportunities are overwhelming, yet if you do not do it right, you can develop significant indirect cost and only achieve suboptimal or even negative results.

Increasingly, travel shoppers are bypassing traditional sources of information and advice and turning to other travelers on review sites and in social networks. They want to share their experiences, and airlines do not provide many opportunities to give feedback.

If you did not bother - you would lose out on opportunities to first of all know about the buzz and secondly to influence it - by showing that you care if there were any problems, by simply saying “we are sorry”, by sending positive messages and information. You would also loose opportunities for real time feedback, for product testing, for internal communication, for PR and a lot of other usages. And - you would not appear to be a modern brand. Be aware of this impact as well. The developments are moving fast. The earlier you start to get accustomed, the better your position will be in the future.

Marketing, getting your brand known and even engaging with your customers also in foreign markets suddenly becomes possible at a very reasonable expense.

The degree of engagement differs by type:

How? 

The 10 point check list for starters - in order of commitment, meaning start with the first point and continue with the next one in the list once you feel confident and so on. Go ahead in stages, for specific markets only, to gain confidence over time before extending the efforts further.

1. An easy start is listening. Define which are the most relevant social media in your market environment (this can change dependent on your country). Assign a responsible person to spend 2 hours per day checking comments about yourself and the main competitors. Make the results part of your weekly meetings as part of customer and market insight. Decide at that moment if you want to react at all to specific comments or not. Test it out if you feel confident enough or keep it as customer insight and develop learnings and action points as you go along.

2. Check your website, to start with the home language one. The more you work digitally, the more you need to ensure that all your digital communication and booking options are working. This gives trust to consumers. Monitor the site and ensure that the content is up to date. Add the possibility to bookmark or to share information with friends or peers by adding the option e.g.to send twitter or facebook information, giving information about the price of a flight or advising friends about the flight details. Continuously improve usability of your site - this makes the difference for tomorrow. Think about adding an assistant / linguistic assistant to already allow for more but clearly defined interaction.

3. Extend the listening and website activities to your major foreign markets, involving your local teams where possible and assigning responsibility for this.

4. By this time, you should have realized the value of social media. The listening should have proven to you the value and the impact of social communication. Assign clear ownership in the company. If you see social media as a key part of your strategy, soon to be extended beyond the poor customer interaction, and if your organization is used to working in a matrix structure, then assign social media very visibly as part of the top management organization, with direct reporting line into the CEO, and assign champions in the relevant departments and markets, in particular in marketing, sales, product and customer experience, PR, HR. If you are not yet fully convinced and see the main value on the marketing and customer relations management side, then assign ownership in this area. In many companies, social media start as a separate team in headquarter, but soon extending to local teams.

5. Use social media to interact and engage with your staff much more, e.g. by creating a separate group or via a web 2.0 based intranet. The questions they have. Informing them real time and asking to their questions instantly. Have sessions for answering the number of questions personally and via streaming and chats for remote staff. This will lead to commitment and engagement. This can be extended later to even include communication as part of the emergency procedures. Once your staff feel involved and trusted and empowered, they will engage with your customers for the benefit of the company. And they will develop pride for their company.

6. Start responding to the comments. But remember: content has to be natural - do not prescribe wordings to your employees, it is contrary to what social media are about. They are approached in real life by friends and family too about the company and need to respond without the company’s control. Rather ensure that they feel confident and supported, and that they are committed to the company and the brand. Using social media for staff interaction will lead to a successful interaction with customers.

7. Develop a clear plan and strategy. Where do you want social media to go? How much further do you want to engage? What are items which you want to cover? How will you get there. What are your measurable objectives, and how much are you willing to invest? The plan, objectives and strategy roadmap can help to give guidance. But do not go into too much detail or expect a too strict adherence to the plan. Keep your flexibility to react to current developments, and to enhance new developments as well, which for sure will come up regularly in this dynamic market place. When thinking through your strategy, also think about the impact in terms of responses. There are a number of intelligent ways to achieve engagement without ending up in thousands of one to one conversations. In order to get social media insight, there are a number of sites and blogs about best practice and examples. Some of them are mentioned below in the tools section. Others include www.socialmediaphilanthropy.com/ and watching airlines such as Southwest and Virgin Atlantic.

Considerations for social media strategy: 

• For marketing and sales - eg integration of reviews skytrax, tripadvisor etc. into booking process – drives conversion; eg LH my sky approach – share of travel plans; eg send offers for specific travel plans when finding out about them online (my sky etc) – or create tool and give option (for fee) to receive specific tailormade offers, or as a kind of ebay principle; for booking and check in; for brand building - giving your company a face, showing that you care;
• For communication of schedule changes
• For real time customer satisfaction measurement and interaction - this is how you cancreate real loyalty and avoid ustomers to move away.
• For product testing / product communication with customers - clubs for specific segments e.g. africa club kl
• For customer relations - instant interaction with your customers does not only avoid cost and administration but ensures that you can solve their problems and retain them as customers for the future. Make intelligent use of interaction / linguistic and virtual assistant for questions on your website to preempt a number of questions from the beginning. And ensure that you solve some of the basics such as duration of refunds etc.
• For HR / job hunting - the reach is enormous, and the cost pattern is very attractive. In any case, ensure to check about your interview candidates what they do on the social media side beforehand. It can give some interesting insight.
• For integration into your internal crisis response plan.
• For internal communication and staff engagement. This is in particular useful given the diversity and mobility of airline staff, and the different locations involved. A good customer engagement strategy needs to build on staff engagement.
• eReading and social reading - this represents enourmous opportunities for the onboard magazine and for personalized entertainment.

8. Review tools for analysis. The more volume and interaction happens about your company, the more difficult it will be to follow up one by one. And the worst that can happen once you start engaging with your customers is to no answer or have long response cycles. Something which already happens too often with many airlines on the call centre side. The right strategy coupled with tools to filter and automate part of the process will help. A number of tools are described below.

9. Once you are more advanced, you can start actively inviting your customers for feedback. Create a corporate facebook and linkedin site for example. Invite customers at all moments - including at the end of the flight - to send their feedback via these sites. Potentially include an official travel recommendations site such as tripadvisor or one of the latest ones, lovethis, as well. With simple tools such as kissinsights.com and online chat you can do this on your website to get feedback about your site, product and processes at all moments. You can save a lot of money for monitoring and database analysis tools whilst being closer to your customers and giving them the chance to react. Activities in this area can involve very proactice measures such as for example some of the following:                          

• extend live sessions to the wider community
• establish linked in groups on specific subjects for business oriented customers
• create personal blogs for some key people
• cover specific topics of interest
• offer live chats with the CEO or other airline experts
• cover specific subjects around aviation - let customers ask what they always wanted to know (why are the lights switched off during take off and landing etc.)

10. Spread content and build your brand. Do remember: quality goes above quantity.Content has to be natural - do not prescribe wordings to your employees, it is contrary to what social media are about. Continuously test, monitor and learn from the results. Do not restrict social media responsibility to the marketing department. Ensure clear ownership. Make it part of the targets. Monitor and control.

What are critical success factors:

• Ensure that you learn from feedback and incorporate it into your plans. Ideally, communicate back to customers about the changes that have been made.
• Keep on testing and adjusting. Start small and expand beyond, but ensure constant supervision and tinkering.
• Do not prescribe what has to be responded. Rather use interaction with your staff as well and create a culture of empowerment and engagement. Assign a number of social media ambassadors throughout the company as well as a dedicated team to ensure active use.
• Get your basics right. If your basic customer experience performance is not good, it will lead to a defensive approach and communication. Ensure to focus on it. But by listening to your customers you can set the right priorities and follow up.
• Assign ownership and responsibility for the social media strategy. Change the skills of your marketing team. Classical ads are out, digital is in. Do not see the digital side as a departmental specific issue. Gradually increase and support active usage of social interaction throughout the organization. Your staff also in every day life are challenged by friends and family sharing their experiences. They have to respond. Now they can do this via social media. Identify which individuals need to be consistently informed about planning, decisions, changes and progress of your social media strategy.
• If you achieve to build a company culture where interaction between staff as well as customers is becoming natural, this will differentiate you from others. And it will lead to more usage of social media, whether for staff searches, active marketing promotions and sales, for PR or for product development.
• Ensure instant responses. Develop a strategy around active participation and monitoring. This coupled with the right team and the culture and tools supporting this, the management of social media will be possible in an effective way. By taking into account the main questions and issues, you can gradually develop a virtual assistant - in writing and linguistic terms - preempting pro-actively a wide variety of issues from the beginning, and creating a knowledge database at the same time for customers and staff.
• Identify clear accountability for the social media strategy and for the implementation
• Make it part of your meetings, as the customer experience should be part of any meeting anyway.
• Company culture - This includes marketing managers who decide on messaging, content producers who write the copy, web developers who structure the website, and even the PR team that writes the press releases and educates the media. Each person has to understand SEO best practices and use this knowledge in everything they do. It starts with education, but you also need the right workflows and technology in place.
• Think of every keyword as a marketing channel
• Watch your competition: Which social media channels are they using? what are they using social media for? How often are they mentioned? How do they integrate social media in their strategy, and focus on differentiation / be better
• The right tools - for tracking and monitoring, for responding - seo platform,
• Templates - monitoring and tracking results - practical and guiding, like a check list
• Check also www.lovethis.com, www.tripadvisor.com and www.hitchhiker.com as feedback forums.

How to measure the effectiveness of social media campaigns:

Enterprises measure a lot of things in order to determine if their actions justify the cost and incur a return.

• In the world of accounting a number of methodologies were developed to measure the various attributes of business activities. They include IRR (The internal rate of return); NPV (Net Present Value) vs. Future Value; CLTV (Customer Lifetime Value); new knowledge reveals new measures.

Each of these methodologies attempts to put effective decisions trees around measurement of the cost and return from business activities. When businesses look at return on investment for social media strategies and technologies, they face two major problems:

1. They try to put quantitative measures  around human interactions and communications, which by nature are not immediately quantifiable.
2. They should not only consider current measures of ROI but they should not forget to look at the present value of future opportunity costs. This is very much a matter of mind: doing business in the 21st century requires appreciation for the dynamic technological advancement in the marketplace.

In the end, it all comes down to what your goals are. If your main objective is to participate in the conversation and to enhance your relationshop with your audiences, becoming a trusted member of the community around your brand, then your measures should prove this.

Simple considerations for measurement include

SMI (social media intelligence) tools help you to develop, monitor and manage your reputation and social marketing activities, develop your social strategy, training your staff and learning via case studies from other companies and latest trends. Examples for SMI platforms include

• monitter (www.monitter.com, real time live twitter keyword search and analysis)
• tweetbeep (www.tweetbeep.com, hourly updates of conversations including your company and keywords about your products and services)
• twitrratr (http://twitrratr.com/, tracking opinions on twitter)
• Radian 6 (www.radian6.com, social media case studies, platform to manage social media including monitoring and workflow management for a listening grid) 
• Visible Technologies (www.visibletechnologies.com/, best practice about social media, monitoring and measuring software) 
• NM Incite (www.nmincite.com/, a Nielsen/McKinsey company, formerly BuzzMetrics, Buzz Metrics customizable dashboard to monitor social media, threat/tracker alerts, data feeds/APIs social media intelligence platform, social media and brand management)
• Viralheat (www.viralheat.com - social media monitoring and analytics)
• Synthesio (http://synthesio.com/corporate/, social media monitoring as a conviction)
• Bitly (http://bit.ly/, to help, share and analyse your links)
• SocialReport (www.socialreport.com, social reporting and analytics dashboard, white label)
• To make sense of reviews, hotels are using Revinate (www.revinate.com/, exclusively for hotels) and ReviewPro (www.reviewpro.com/, quality seal for hotels to post to their website that displays the Global Review IndexTM - GRI, a 0 to 100 score derived from social media analysis). They aggregate, organize and score review data from across the web.

Do and don’t:

From a marketer's point of view, the fewer restrictions placed on social efforts, the more opportunity you have for creativity. And it's amazing what can be accomplished quickly and cost effectively.

• do act on negative comments - listen, move out of public view, react fast, attempt to turn into opportunity, e.g. use crowd input for suggestions to improve; Ryanair had decided not to respond to the twitter message of a famous person complaining about the 40EUR charge at the airport if you have not printed your boarding pass before - the impact was an audience of 3 million actively participating in the negative reaction
• 90% customer service and awareness, but higher conversion for bookings - better relationship with the customer; facebook credits?
• you can express the same message multiple ways using different tones and verbiage; make sure your site's writing speaks to your fans
• do not tolerate adverse situations. All pages have their haters and antagonists, and it's important to diffuse any adverse situations as soon as they arise If someone is blatantly out to ruin your page or company reputation, remove them immediately.
• do post at the right time. People have plenty of site choices. They will come back if the topics are timely and relevant. Posting  topics according to a calendar is good in theory and as a starting point, but that strategy can work against you, so ensure it remains flexible and is rather meant as a help to be organised and faster once certain topics are appropriate.
• always keep your demographic in mind when determining your subject matter. As authors of the ApplevsGoogle page, the topics we could focus on are endless. But the truth is, we have discarded myriad compelling subjects simply because our audience would not be interested.
• do anticipate questions
  Although this might sound difficult, the truth is that if you have a solid understanding of your audience and subject matter, you should be able to predict upcoming questions or issues. Anticipating questions and addressing them will position your company as being both informed and involved.An easy way to stay ahead of the curve is by following the latest industry news and posting relevant stories. 
• do Take your audience's temperature
  Once you have grown your "likes," test out how active and involved your audience truly is on the site. An easy way to do this is by rolling out a contest. Hands down, it is the simplest -- and often most inexpensive -- way to interact with your fans, share your comments, and build your audience. Here's the trick: Always tie a question in with the contest. Ask fans for their opinions on a topic or have them vote on a particular issue. The comments you receive will teach you about your audience members, their interests, and how they like to communicate.
• don't be afraid to advertise
  Don't be afraid to advertise; if done correctly, it can yield positive results. Be sure to tailor your ads to the targeted demographics. 
• do speculate and instigate
  If your company page is not regulated by an iron-clad legal team, create a conversation through speculation. Sure, speculation is a form of instigation, but what better way to get to know your audience and where it stands on issues? Get people talking and allow them to have the conversation on your page.
• do ask a question if you want an answer
  The simple fact is that questions encourage interaction. If your site focuses on posting statements all the time, you're missing out on many opportunities for fans to engage with you. And Facebook users want to give their opinions just as much as your mother-in-law does...
• do ensure that you twitter only messages you want to be public; it can easily happen to by error post something per twitter which you had wanted to distribute per email only, as happened to congressman Weiner at the beginning of June

Examples for successful campaigns:

Southwest travel community, encouraged on their homepage:

http://travel.southwest.com/travel/community/exploreCommunity.html?int=GFOOTER-TOPCOMMUNITY

JetBlue links rewards program to Facebook Go Places app

JetBlue has tied its TrueBlue rewards program to airport check-ins via a new Facebook Go Places app, which is based on Facebook Places.

To get in on the promotion, which is slated to end March 1, 2011, Trueblue members register on JetBlue’s Facebook page and when they check-in at a JetBlue airport location with their mobile device, they earn 25 TrueBlue points. When travelers check-in using their mobile phones, they can do so using the Facebook mobile app and they will automatically get the TrueBlue points and badges. Travelers earn JetBlue badges when they tag a traveling companion. JetBlue boasts: “Go Places is the first location-based social media application to provide incremental airline rewards points to customers for check-ins exclusively through Facebook Places. Unlike many apps, Go Places will allow JetBlue customers to earn real rewards because it is directly tied to the TrueBlue loyalty program.” JetBlue says Go Places is “the first of many” promotions it plans in 2011 using Facebook Places. JetBlue’s Go Places app is powered by GO, a promotions platform from Brand Networks leveraging Facebook Places.

Virgin Atlantic

This week the airline launched the Travel Tip Catcher, a system being introduced to its new fleet of Airbus A330s (the first two known as Beauty Queen and Mademoiselle Rouge) which allows passengers discover and share travel tips during a flight.

The system is contained in the aircraft’s in-flight entertainment units and works almost along the same lines as a Facebook or other existing travel social networks -- read tips about destinations, writes messages (140 characters, of course) to others using the network, search for reviews and rate content from other passengers.

At this stage the service is quite simple -- there is no interaction between passengers in specific seats, for example, or access to product listings and bookings for some of the tours and activities being discussed on the system.

But this could be to where the in-flight version of Vtravelled evolves to, especially if there is some kind of integration with the existing (and presumably rapidly improved) service when it eventually relaunches.

Virgin announced in March 2011 it would be closing the Vtravelled network for six months in a bid to overhaul the service, admitting that the original proposition for Vtravelled, launched in June 2009, had not work out as planned.

Creative director Lysette Gauna said Gauna said at the time the carrier had realised it wanted “credible mass not critical mass” for Vtravelled.

The site also had to contend with Facebook’s steepest growth curve during the latter half of 2009 and 2010 -- a period when many social networks come under pressure, let alone new ones trying to find a marketplace.

There is no indication as to progress on the upgrade of the main Vtravelled service.

Cathay invites its fans to plan an 80-day trip across the world.

One global winner gets unlimited round-trip tickets for 80 days on the Cathay Pacific network:

•  Increases Cathay’s visibility on Facebook.

•  Drives unparalleled awareness about Cathay’s worldwide network of flights.

Incentivise customers to spread the word..

http://www.socialtimes.com/2011/01/klm-stalks-passengers/

•  Someone checks in on foursquare at AMS
•  KLM's  Surprise team goes to work
•  They research the person's Twitter and Facebook  data
•  Find a gift that’s customized to that particular customer
•  Make contact with the person through social networks and other means 
•  Meet up with them to deliver the gift

Crowd sourcing example Estonian Air - asking their customers for service improvements

If this was done via social media instead of only on their website, it could be much more effective and include open discussions.

 

11. Which airline is your first choice to fly to/ from Tallinn?

12. What does the status of national carrier mean to you?

13. What is your criteria to choose between different airlines?

14. Do you agree that all airline traditional services (like one free registered baggage, check-in) have to be included into the ticket price? Yes No

15. Which additional service is the most important that Estonian Air should offer for sure? 

Food

Video games

Wifi on board

Mobile network on board

Some other additional service (write what kind)

16. Would you be willing to fly remote airports and sometimes even with inconvenient departure times to save money?

Yes (I don’t mind inconvenience and surprises)

No (I value my time and hassle free experience)

17. What are the most important destinations where Estonian Air should have direct flights?

18. What makes (or would make) you to be proud about Estonian Air?

19. What would be the brand attributes you would like to be associated with (choose

three)

29. I usually fly for:
Business
Vacation
Private reasons
I do not fly very often

Lily Allen slams Ryanair to 3 million Twitter followers, nothing happens

 

Posted by Kevin May on 06 June 2011

Low cost carrier and infamous social media-refusenik Ryanair has demonstrated perfectly that it doesn’t see any point in worrying about what people say on the likes of Twitter.

British singer Lily Allen, a high profile celebrity figure over the past five years or so and with three million followers on Twitter, reacted angrily last week when she arrived at a UK airport and was forced to pay £40 to print her boarding pass for a flight with the airline.

She wrote:

Clearly not very happy, shortly after she tweeted again:

The charge is part of the airline’s terms and conditions when a ticket is issued, presumably put in place to make sure passengers are armed with the correct paperwork in the terminal and require almost zero contact with the airline before they move air-side.

Now, it is perhaps reasonably fair to say that any other travel company on the planet would have panicked somewhat when faced with a high profile celebrity exploding with such a rant in public.

Social media crisis committees would have been convened, PR companies  charged with spinning around the clock to counteract any negative publicity by working with so-called friendly folk, etc.

Even the airline’s unofficial cousin in the US, SouthWest, unleashed resources into defending itself and trying to have some dialogue when actor and director Kevin Smith took to Twitter to complain about seat sizes.

But this is Ryanair, remember – a company without an official Twitter account, Facebook page, social media strategy (at least, a visible one) and which famously said it didn’t want to engage with “lunatic” bloggers.

Whether Allen’s outburst will prompt anything meaningful from Ryanair (it has, typically, been silent over last week’s events) is difficult to determine. It is still sells millions of tickets every year, without a social media strategy.

But for all the hand-wringing about social media, it’s fascinating to see how one company is still completely belligerent and dismissive about its impact – and seemingly doesn’t appear to have taken any significant hit to the bottom line for years, despite reams of negative publicity.

Published: May 04, 2011

Lessons from a social media firestorm

Procter & Gamble's new Pampers product line caused an uproar among mom bloggers and consumer media outlets. See how the brand turned the tide of the social media conversation and set the record straight.

Procter & Gamble's Pampers brand had a rough summer in 2010. Shortly after the company launched its new line, Pampers Dry Max, a group of mom bloggers came forward with allegations that the new products caused severe diaper rash. These allegations spread into mainstream media, sparking an investigation by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).

In the face of every brand's worst nightmare, P&G was able to turn the tide by following a path of transparency and engagement, said Bryan McCleary, director of public relations for baby care at Procter & Gamble, during his keynote address at this week's iMedia iMoms Summit.

As McCleary noted, all new diaper products -- even those boasting something as simple as a color change -- are greeted by increased complaints of diaper rash. "In the past, all this was fairly invisible because complaints came through a 1-800 line," he said. "But that no longer applies. Complaints can now be very public."

In the months that following the social media uproar, P&G worked to address complaints in a one-to-one manner. The company reached out to the mom blogger community and brought influential community members to its defense. Over time, consumer trust was restored, and the CPSC vindicated the product of all allegations against it.

But it wasn't easy, and mistakes were made along the way, McCleary admitted. Here's what the brand learned:

Don't default to an apology
After the crisis broke, interactive gurus called on P&G to apologize to consumers, McClearly said. But that's the one thing the company couldn't do. It had to maintain that the product was safe.

That said, there are different ways of communicating safety, McCleary added. And the company's first tactic -- insisting that there were no examples to support allegations -- came off as a guilty response. Quickly, the company shifted course. Its representatives communicated with parents on a personal level -- as parents themselves. They noted that, as moms and dads, they'd be the first people to pull a product from the shelf if they believed there was any danger to their children.

Arm your front lines
Make sure your consumer relations staff has the resources it needs to respond. P&G was slow to do that, McClearly noted. Early responses came off as robotic, which only fueled the fires.

Try to change the narrative
The Pampers situation was irresistible to mainstream media: Pampers vs. moms. Thus, the company had to shift the story line by bringing parents and mom bloggers onto its side as well.

Track, track, track
Know where you stand, McClearly advised. Track consumer awareness and willingness to purchase throughout the process so you know if -- and when -- the conversations begin to turn.

Repeat the Serenity Prayer to yourself regularly
Know what you can influence. Know what you can't influence. And have the wisdom to know the difference. For a company like P&G, which prides itself on remaining in control at all times, that posed a challenge, McClearly noted.

Accentuate the positive
Don't exist entirely in a defensive stance, if possible. In the case of Pampers, the brand found it was useful to find something that it could apologize for: its initial corporate response to the allegations. And with that, the brand was able to turn the focus to education.

Be human
Consumers expect corporate-speak from a company the size of P&G -- so Pampers had to break that perception. Instead, the brand engaged in a two-way dialogue and sought to put a human face on the people behind its product.

Lori Luechtefeld is senior editor of iMedia Connection.

5 May 2011

Social Media: Participate in the conversation

from Social Media Philanthropy by Jeff Gibbard

What are we doing?

Seriously; what is the point of all this social media?  Are these just platforms for us to bicker over partisan politics?  Is this just a platform to push “Get more Followers” services, “work from home,” “get rich quick”, “acai berry diet nonsense?”   Though these platforms are amazingly powerful they are surprisingly easy to operate and automate, thereby lowering the barrier for anyone that wants to spam the Internet.  Everyone talks about social media like it’s just a cheap/free platform to market.  ”Push,” “blast” and in some cases “beat into their head” is the marketing plan for many recent adopters.

Communication

These are the greatest communications platforms in human history.  We can communicate globally, spread ideas in a split second and reach a majority of the developed world.  The amount of data being created with the removal of a gatekeeper is astounding.  Human beings can isolate and follow any topic their hearts and minds desire.  We can connect and organize around ideas and events with unprecedented speed and efficiency.  We are enabled to tap into an ongoing public conversation and isolate sentiment and trends.  How can you not be in awe of the amazing possibilities that social media and networking presents?

We are participants!

“Participate in the conversation”

That phrase has been said so many times it has all but lost its meaning.  Allow me to restore it and reclaim it from those that tarnish its integrity.

The networking event analogy

Scenario #1 (The inappropriate interjector)

You go to a networking event, several feet away you see three people having a conversation.  You lean in.  It sounds like they are talking about retirement planning.  You decide to run in and say “I’m planning for retirement too, here’s my business card let me know if you’re in the market for a new copier.”  With that you throw a business card at each of them and seek out another conversation.

Scenario #2 (The earless talker)

You go to a networking event, there are people all around, meeting each other, asking each other questions and getting acquainted.  You decide to take an alternative route.  You see that off to the side of the room are several folding chairs.  You take a chair, put it in the middle of the room, stand on it and start shouting “my company makes the best copier on the market.”  Someone walks up and mentions that they had some trouble with your brand of copier and they’d like some help.  They also mentioned that they have a product feature suggestion that might be valuable.  You cease shouting, get down from the chair, look the person in the eyes and say “I don’t have time to listen to you about this, I’m very busy,” and then you walk out.

Scenario #3 (The winner)

You go to a networking event, several feet away you see three people having a conversation.  You lean in.  It sounds like they are talking about retirement planning.  You walk up, excuse yourself for interrupting and listen to the conversation for several minutes.  Several minutes later, someone remarks: “I wish I could just find some resources that would make this process easier.”  You smile and offer to send a few links to some sites that you have personally found useful.  The person accepts and the conversation continues, you talk about something in the news, maybe something involving a local sports team.   Towards the end of the conversation, you exchange business cards and leave for the evening.

Several days later you follow up, and agree to meet for lunch.

Respect

Why is it that when the networking is moved online, so many people think scenarios #1 and #2 are ok?

Effective participation is a product of respect.  If you respect your audience, prospects and fellow human beings, you would listen to them, you would empathize with them and you would participate instead of dominate.

I don’t care how many social media gurus, consultants and professionals have said it, it’s still true; participating in, and listening to the conversations happening online is everything.  You need to “get” that before you begin.  If you still think social media sites are a place for you to market, you are mistaken.  They are a place to connect with others.  If you are lucky and you play it right, they may want to do business with you.

Templates for planning, monitoring and measurement:

Set up your plan

Support social media activity by other communication and customer touch points:

Website Bookmarks	Email Signatures	Newsletters	Staff Accounts	Other

Content development program for active spread of content - start with promotions and information, continue with specific actions:

Week number:
	Content sheduled:	Responsibility of:
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thurthday
Friday
Saturday/Sunday

 

Search terms to identify the social media content relevant to you:

Company Name/s
Product Name/s
Service Name/s
Company URL/s
Key Employees
Public Figures
Industry-Related Terms, Keywords & Phrases

 

Areas in the company of social media that need to be covered, building on social media search terms

 

Industry Websites
Key Blogs
Industry Figures
Journalists
Industry Publications

 

monitoring timescales:

 

	Industry Websites	Key Blogs	Industry Figures	Journalists	Industry Publications
Mon	AM/PM AM & PM	AM/PM AM & PM	AM/PM AM & PM	AM/PM AM & PM	AM/PM AM & PM
Tue	AM/PM AM & PM	AM/PM AM & PM	AM/PM AM & PM	AM/PM AM & PM	AM/PM AM & PM
Wed	AM/PM AM & PM	AM/PM AM & PM	AM/PM AM & PM	AM/PM AM & PM	AM/PM AM & PM
Thu	AM/PM AM & PM	AM/PM AM & PM	AM/PM AM & PM	AM/PM AM & PM	AM/PM AM & PM
Fri	AM/PM AM & PM	AM/PM AM & PM	AM/PM AM & PM	AM/PM AM & PM	AM/PM AM & PM
Sat/Sun	AM/PM AM & PM	AM/PM AM & PM	AM/PM AM & PM	AM/PM AM & PM	AM/PM AM & PM

 

Monitoring tools:

 

	Using/Will Use	Product/s Description
RSS Tools	YES/NO
Keywords and Referrals Tools	YES/NO
Industry-Related Website Tools	YES/NO
Authority Websites Tools	YES/NO
Micro/Blogging Tools	YES/NO
Social Bookmarks Tools	YES/NO
Network Followers Tools	YES/NO
Content Communities Tools	YES/NO

 

website aggregators

Website personal agregators – Netvibes.com – Bloglines.com – Google reader

Applications – Mozilla firefox (browser) – Flock (browser with integrated rss reader) – RSS reader

 

 clear reporting structure:

 

	Objective 1 (Short-term) Reporting Method	Objective 2 (Long-term) Reporting Method
Micro/Blogging
RSS Feeds
Social Bookmarks
Social Networks
Content Communities

  

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