I like this Facebook ad by Maier Advertising. The message is simple, and they smartly included in their phone number in the ad. Since they’re paying most likely on a cost per click basis, including the number in the ad is one way of saving money.

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A brand’s personality now has an opportunity to be articulated by a real, human voice. We can now, through our behaviors, live the values of the brand. And in so doing, we deepen the relationship between brand and consumer.

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My favorite quote (about 3 minutes in):

“Everyone of you clowns, including me, are in one business now–the customer service business because word of mouth builds business and right now we’re living through the word of mouth on steroids era. Every customer has a much bigger voice because they are connected to so many more people through technology. So we are now in 1 business: customer service. Word of mouth converts 89% in the “real world.”

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It’s been an exciting few weeks for social media in Boston. It’s not just the events, of which there have been many—but it’s the people that have made it exceptional.

The Megatweetup on December 3rd demonstrated the power of the social media community we’ve built in Boston. @joselinmane, and those who helped him, created an event with more than 400 participants at Microsoft’s NERD. People socialized, new friends were made, food devoured, and awards for the best Tweetup were given. It was like the Oscars for tweetups.

The entire social media community in Boston (and beyond) supported the event. I was thrilled to watch social media superstars @ChrisBrogan, @CC_Chapman and @SteveGarfield interact with students and new friends warmly.

These gentleman, hot shots in our world, were as down to earth in person as they are in writing. Case in point, @ChrisBrogan spent 15 minutes socializing with my students taking a real interest who they are. In what other industry would this happen?

The next day I moderated a panel at Emerson College with three major contributors to our social media community: @Cmajor, @joselinmane and @vanhoosear. We reflected on the history of social media in Boston—how Thursday’s at Berkman, Social Media Club, Boston Media Makers, Tweetups, Open Coffee, Mass Innovation Nights, Web Innovators Group and more gave rise to community. On the panel we discussed our predications for the future. I shared my thoughts through an analogy of a tagging a tree, which I’ll write about shortly.

I’d love to know your great memories of Boston Social Media. We should gather them and create a book….

Picture credit: Todd Van Hoosear. Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/vanhoosear/4158687673/

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How do businesses generate sales? Answering that question helps to establish social media’s ROI. Rather than connecting social media directly to sales, try connecting social media to the factors that contribute to sales.

1.    Hire better sales people. If you want to generate revenue hire talented people who understand how to prospect, develop relationships with and service key accounts. Social media can help you identify these people. Use your own network of connections to promote sales jobs via LinkedIn. Use sites like Jobvite to create referral programs using social networks. Evaluate the social media presence of a prospect as a way to determine their relevant connections and experiences. Look for sales people who understand how to maintain relationships using social tools. Hiring better sales people = generating more revenue.

2.    Create compelling offers. Do you know how people are using your product? Or what they are looking for in a product? A listening program on social media can help. Notice what words are used to describe your product and your competitors. Use what you find to position the product, create compelling offers and identify keywords that spark attention. Better offers = higher conversion.

3.    Increase the trust in a company. Twitter has associated a human voice, and often a human face, with companies who use it well. I know if I have a problem with Comcast, I can @ComcastCares, or @ScottMonty if I have a question about Ford. I would argue that trust and connection with a brand facilitate purchasing behavior. Social media used poorly produces the opposite effect. As @RustyW states, “ Fake reviews web site http://consumerreviews.org/... was created by DirectBuy to showcase positive reviews. Just wrong.”  Trust –> Relationships –> Sales

4.    Increase the trust for a sales person. The best sales people I’ve worked with are resources to their clients. They provide effective solutions and immerse themselves in their client’s businesses. Social media provides an effective way to learn about your client’s businesses and to provide new solutions to constantly stay relevant. How? Use blogs and RSS to keep informed about trends in your clients’ business.  More relevance –> better ability to solve clients problems –> more sales

5.    Reach people at the moment of decision. Customers are asking their networks for advice directly impacting their purchasing decision. Try this test. Go to search.twitter.com and enter “Can you recommend?”. Companies who monitor social media and respond to opportunities pertaining to products and services they are selling have an opportunity to provide information to help consumers make decisions. Of course this should be done responsibly. Moment of decision = influence points

6.    Additional ways social media contributes to revenue: empowers evangelists to share their experiences; provides direct access to customers to collect feedback; enables direct sales like WOOT.

What’s a list without good evidence?

• Check out Peter Kim – the Dean of Social Design
• Chris Brogan on Social Media and the Sales Cycle
• Of course, we’ll add the Dell case study for good measure
• And some Fortune 500 stats cited on Cisco’s blog

Added bonus:

• The Godfather of Sales

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An unintended result of Sponsored Tweets is creating new benchmarks for social media and pr specialists using Twitter for their clients. Once a monetary value for a tweet is established through Sponsored Tweets that same value can be applied to determining the value of those participating in campaigns on Twitter without a monetary incentive.

On Tuesday I invited Loren Feldman of 1938Media to speak to my social media class. Loren argued that Twitter is filled with self-promotion: “No where else do people walk up to you & say “look what I wrote and how good it is’” [loosely paraphrased]. In response to those who take issue with advertising on Twitter, Loren has created a new hashtag “#myad.”

Advertising on Twitter is worth testing, especially if your client has a good creative message.  It’s up to the individual Twitter user to know the tolerance of their audience to advertising and to respect their audience accordingly. Those who advertise too frequently to their audience will lose them—and their ads will be less effective. Ideally, they will strike a good balance between monetizing content without interfering with the meaningful relationships they are creating.

I’ve seen many influential Twitter users, who run social an pr firms, do this for their client. They’re getting paid. How is this different?

One thing does surprise me….that Twitter isn’t getting a big piece of the ad marketplace their service is creating.

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Minutes into my conversation I found myself answering specific questions. “In what ways does your client support the gay and lesbian community,” and “what events have they attended that support this community last year.” These media sales reps communicated that their media was for sale contingent on my client’s sincere commitment to their audience. The reps knew their audience would not do business with those who astroturfed. And if their audience didn’t do business, they would have unhappy clients.

The same standards should be applied to social media. Some clients are not a fit for social media. They do not welcome collaboration or transparency, and their expectations are better suited for purchased media rather than earned media.

Then there are companies who are deeply aligned with social media. Shopping at WholeFoods yesterday I noticed two stickers on the door promoting their Twitter and Facebook presence. The importance of these stickers transcended a simple promotional significance. They are symbolic suggesting, “if you Tweet or FB us we’ll listen.” And although the meaning is different, I think they should be treated with as much significance as a business featuring a pink triangle.

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• Research: search for any topic, sort by views, downloads, and frequency. Mine for data, sources and new, fresh ideas.
• Interaction: connect with users sharing similar interests, those who embed and comment on your presentations
• Lead generation: attract visitors and generate leads with their new turnkey ad platform
• Social sharing: add character and context to your blog posts, tweets and social presence

I am considering their ad platform for three of our b2b clients. Certain data & use case info took me too long to find. I became frustrated and expressed it in a tweet:

Within minutes they responded:

And they continued to respond:

I asked for a number where I could discuss the issue on the phone. They provided one.

When I called, their CEO, Rashmi Sinha, answered. We spoke for 10 minutes. She provided the information I was looking for.
This a real example of the ROI of Social media. Their customer service efforts resulted in earning our business.
As soon as we start placing advertising on their site, I’ll be back with a review. Until then, I encourage you to try it!

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What makes this investment worthwhile is that it provides an authentic, human voice for your business, and it enables your company to demonstrate, through actions, that you are paying attention. This voice and its corresponding actions create real results, some of which are listed below.

Why blog for business

A low cost customer communication tool for small business. This works particularly well in defined niches. Even if your business operates in a highly competitive landscape, identify the point of view from which you can speak uniquely and credibly.

See: Yale Appliance blog

A tool to drive organic search. Keyword rich blog headlines, content producing incoming links, and the continuous supply of fresh content are factors contributing to effective search engine visibility.

See:  Seomoz for many SEO tools for your blog

A thought leader strategy. A company blog provides a platform for an executive to interact with their industry and establish themselves as credible in the field.

See: Ross Mayfield, Bob Lutz

A place to continue the conversation started on a social network. Facebook, Twitter, and online communications reveal different perspectives of a business within social media. A blog provides the space to share a more complete story and to expand on a point of view.

See: Zappos

A social media credibility builder. Have you interacted with a business on Twitter, clicked on their URL and arrived at their homepage? It creates a disconnect between an intimate conversation and a business agenda. The blog provides an appropriate greeting place for fans you’ve met in social networks in order to continue the conversation.

A response platform. Where will your business respond if a major mistake was made or you want to publicly thank an advocate or respond to a critic? Your blog provides an ideal platform for this.

See: JetBlue

A technique to build an identity which informs other marketing. Companies, like people, can clarify who they are through their interactions. The clarity benefits other marketing initiatives.

How to blog for business

There are many expert practitioners including Debbie Weil, Amanda Watlington and others with deeply informed perspectives. I have found the following steps successful in my work:

Outcomes –  “Measuring “new” media isn’t as different as measuring “old” media. The trick is to figure out what your goal is first.” Therefore, ask, “If the blog is successful, what will it achieve in a year?” Will it attract new customers? Provide a human face for the company? Secure speaking engagements for executives? Reveal actionable insights about customers? Getting agreement on the desired outcome is critically important. The outcome drives the strategy…I don’t believe you have to pick just one outcome; however, I do believe that if there are multiple outcomes they should be prioritized.

Audience – Is your blog written for current customers? Prospective customers? The industry in general? Knowing your audience is helpful to refining the message.

Key performance indicators – Common KPIs include blog visits, time on blog, number of subscriptions, number of comments per post, incoming links and mentions in social media. It’s important that the KPIs you measure are not only social media KPIs, but also business KPIs as well. For example, measure how the blog contributes to marketing, sales, HR, customer service and internal culture.

The big idea – What is the idea for the blog? I always test it with someone who has no knowledge of marketing or social media to make sure it is clear. For example, the Stonyfield Farm blog celebrates, “Cow”munities. Its big idea is to let fans look inside their company.

Content –  Create categories prior to developing an editorial calendar. If you are blogging for a company that makes matchbooks, consider starting by creating a list of topics. For example, the history of matchbooks; the future of matchbooks; the most valuable matchbooks; things you didn’t know about matchbooks. Each topic has the potential to become a series. Once the topics are developed, build your editorial calendar. Consider this helpful presentation to help spark content and style ideas.

Design – Knowing what you want to communicate first helps to define the design. There are several critical questions to answer: Which blogging platform will you use? Will you use a pre-existing template or create a custom one? If you are looking for a theme, consider these 100 amazing free themes for Wordpress.

Marketing – In what ways will you consistently market the whole blog and each individual post? What is the context for the blog? Who are its peers? Who will you feature in your blog roll?  When others are asked what your blog is about, ideally, how would you want them to respond?

See: 25 Tips for Marketing Your Blog

Integration – What is your plan to integrate the blog into your company’s culture? In what ways will you integrate the blog with the official website? Notice how Whole Foods integrates its blog under the Talk to Us tab. BTW, Whole Foods should consider changing it from “talk to us” to “talk with us.” To what extent will you maintain the look and feel of the website versus establishing a unique identity for the blog?

Management – Who is responsible for managing the blog content and design. What is the content and comment moderation policy? To what extent are legal, HR and other stakeholders involved? The earlier in the planning phase you can uncover constraints and considerations the better.

Additional resources

Basics:
The Bloggers Glossary
Blog Terms Glossary
Technorati’s Blogging 101

Strategy:
27 Resources to evaluate the ROI of blogging
10 Harsh Truths about Corporate Blogging
Agenda of the corporate blog

Examples:
See this list of examples from the Fortune 500
One of my favorite examples of a corporate blog

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It’s uninteresting to follow a company I care about and only read their replies to their customers. I’m going to generalize and say that we follow companies because we like their products and services, we want discounts, special access to promotions, to get closer to a world view we share as well as a response to our questions.

If the majority of a company’s responses are @ replies, it signifies a company is listening. However, listening alone is not compelling, especially if a company’s responses are not directed at you.

Check it out for yourself. Go to these Twitter accounts and see:

@Starbucks
@JetBlue
@Wholefoods

There is another side to this discussion. If we think of the brand as a person and Twitter its voice, the account consisting of a majority of @ replies is approachable. Customers feel that can ask a question and receive a response, evidenced by the account’s activity. It communicates something real about the brand.

I am in favor of a balanced approachability strategy that signifies you are listening, while also providing engaging content. We track the ratio of @ replies in our tweet stream for clients as a metric that helps us navigate this.

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