Strategic Public Relations

Entrepreneurs Inspire Trading Cards, Help Kiva

It’s amazing to see social media and cause marketing mix**.

These additives combine to inspire and, most importantly, do the right thing in the process.

My employer, Empower MediaMarketing, brings us one example in Empower 25. On the company’s 25th anniversary, we decided to give back instead of looking back. As the site details, it couldn't have gone better for all involved. The benefits of social media will continue to help The Brighton Center.

And the event served as a catalyst for teams throughout Empower. These teams had social media training, are aware of the agency’s social media policy, but needed to see it in action for everything to really click. An even more recent example, and the subject of this post, comes from Evan Carmichael.

Entrepreneur Heroes Trading Cards
Carmichael worked with 33 bloggers to pick 30 entrepreneurs that inspire them. The end result is this set of trading cards. Who inspires Guy Kawasaki? Steve Rubel? Darren Rowse? Seth Godin? Chris Brogan? These trading cards are a cool way to find out. Nerd worship? Maybe. But we’ve seen stranger examples. The cards got my attention as they provide insight into who inspires some of the folks we read, retweet and interact with online and in real life -- all while helping raise money for Kiva.

Win a Set of Trading Cards
You can win a set of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak trading cards -- as seen here. I have three sets to give away. They’re heavy duty swag with authenticity holograms and cases for each card. Just comment on this post. Or follow me on Twitter, than @ me on or DM me about the trading cards. The contest ends in one week, on Wednesday, April 7th at Noon.

Help Kiva
Your other option is to buy a set of trading cards. Profits from sales go to support entrepreneurs in Africa that set up their businesses through the micro-lending organization Kiva. More than 825 Entrepreneurs have been helped so far.

**To see even more examples, and do a deeper dive on cause marketing, check out “The Next Evolution of Marketing: Marketing with Meaning” by Bob Gilbreath.

Facebook Makes it Easier to Interact with Brands

Fan, Friend, Follow, Like -- all of these words have taken on new levels of meaning thanks to social media. It may have even motivated Facebook’s just-announced changes around Fan and Like.

Fan Pages will still function the same way, but “people will soon be able to connect with your Page by clicking 'Like' rather than 'Become a Fan.' People already 'Like' their friends' status updates, photos and links on a daily basis. In fact, people click 'Like' almost two times more than they click 'Become a Fan' everyday. 'Like' offers a simple, consistent way for people to connect with the things they are interested in. These lighter-weight actions mean people will make more connections across the site, including with your Facebook Page.”

“I DO like you in that way”
Social media has driven several “lighter-weight actions.” While it used to be about minimizing clicks, social media technology and design eliminates them if possible. Technologies like OAuth and Facebook Connect make it simple to login to sites and Twitter has tweaked itself to make Retweeting and Following possible without leaving the current screen. The use of “light box” design has also become prevalent to ensure users can quickly and easily Tweet, vote, login and more without leaving the current screen. This also eliminates the need for a new window or dialog box which can be blocked by browsers that can assume it’s a pop-up ad.

Connect the Dots
The Facebook news doesn’t require any immediate actions. Over time it will be easy to phase in Like, instead of Become a Fan. But taking a quick inventory of where a brand flies its Facebook flag is a proactive move. In fact, a smarter move is to review a brand’s customer touch points and make sure Facebook and Twitter buttons are used where it makes sense. This does not mean brands should festoon everything possible with Twitter and Facebook badges. But marketers have hard-earned, established connections with customers, including web sites and e-mail newsletters. Some of these connections are an obvious opportunity to promote a brand’s social media presence. It can benefit acquisition but, more importantly, it also lets the customer choose how they interact with a brand.

Related:
Facebook Friends Are Not Created Equal: Filter Connections to Find Relationships
Facebook Wants You to “Like” Brands
The Spectrum of Online Friendship 

Facebook uploaded by Balakov
Cross-posted to my work blog, Social Study

Age of Conversation 3: It's Time to Get Busy

Gavin Heaton and Drew McLellan's "Age of Conversation" project is about to publish a third book. "AOC3: It's Time to Get Busy" could be available as early as next month.

I'm proud to note I participated in this edition of the series. "From pitch to participate – a new model for social media relations" is my 400-word contribution. It joins 99 other submissions from the amazing line up of folks you see below. The book's authors are a great mix of leading social thinkers, marketers & creatives -- new and familiar voices.

All proceeds from the sale of the "Age of Conversation" books go to charity. Expect more news here as the book is published.

Adam Joseph	Priyanka Sachar	Mark Earls
Cory Coley-Christakos	Stefan Erschwendner	Paul Hebert
Jeff De Cagna	Thomas Clifford	Phil Gerbyshak
Jon Burg	Toby Bloomberg	Shambhu Neil Vineberg
Joseph Jaffe	Uwe Hook	Steve Roesler
Michael E. Rubin	anibal casso	Steve Woodruff
Steve Sponder	Becky Carroll	Tim Tyler
Chris Wilson	Beth Harte	Tinu Abayomi-Paul
Dan Schawbel	Carol Bodensteiner	Trey Pennington
David Weinfeld	Dan Sitter	Vanessa DiMauro
Ed Brenegar	David Zinger	Brett T. T. Macfarlane
Efrain Mendicuti	Deb Brown	Brian Reich
Gaurav Mishra	Dennis Deery	C.B. Whittemore
Gordon Whitehead	Heather Rast	Cam Beck
Hajj E. Flemings	Joan Endicott	Cathryn Hrudicka
Jeroen Verkroost	Karen D. Swim	Christopher Morris
Joe Pulizzi	Leah Otto	Corentin Monot
Karalee Evans	Leigh Durst	David Berkowitz
Kevin Jessop	Lesley Lambert	Duane Brown
Peter Korchnak	Mark Price	Dustin Jacobsen
Piet Wulleman	Mike Maddaloni	Ernie Mosteller
Scott Townsend	Nick Burcher	Frank Stiefler
Steve Olenski	Rich Nadworny	John Rosen
Tim Jackson	Suzanne Hull	Len Kendall
Amber Naslund	Wayne Buckhanan	Mark McGuinness
Caroline Melberg	Andy Drish	Oleksandr Skorokhod
Claire Grinton	Angela Maiers	Paul Williams
Gary Cohen	Armando Alves	Sam Ismail
Gautam Ramdurai	B.J. Smith	Tamera Kremer
Eaon Pritchard	Brendan Tripp	Adelino de Almeida
Jacob Morgan	Casey Hibbard	Andy Hunter
Julian Cole	Debra Helwig	Anjali Ramachandran
Jye Smith	Drew McLellan	Craig Wilson
Karin Hermans	Emily Reed	David Petherick
Katie Harris	Gavin Heaton	Dennis Price
Mark Levy	George Jenkins	Doug Mitchell
Mark W. Schaefer	Helge Tenno	Douglas Hanna
Marshall Sponder	James Stevens	Ian Lurie
Ryan Hanser	Jenny Meade	Jeff Larche
Sacha Tueni and Katherine Maher	David Svet	Jessica Hagy
Simon Payn	Joanne Austin-Olsen	Mark Avnet
Stanley Johnson	Marilyn Pratt	Mark Hancock
Steve Kellogg	Michelle Beckham-Corbin	Michelle Chmielewski
Amy Mengel	Veronique Rabuteau	Peter Komendowski
Andrea Vascellari	Timothy L Johnson	Phil Osborne
Beth Wampler	Amy Jussel	Rick Liebling
Eric Brody	Arun Rajagopal	Dr Letitia Wright
Hugh de Winton	David Koopmans	Aki Spicer
Jeff Wallace	Don Frederiksen	Charles Sipe
Katie McIntyre	James G Lindberg & Sandra Renshaw	David Reich
Lynae Johnson	Jasmin Tragas	Deborah Chaddock Brown
Mike O'Toole	Jeanne Dininni	Iqbal Mohammed
Morriss M. Partee	Katie Chatfield	Jeff Cutler
Pete Jones	Riku Vassinen	Jeff Garrison
Kevin Dugan	Tiphereth Gloria	Mike Sansone
Lori Magno	Valerie Simon	Nettie Hartsock
Mark Goren		Peter Salvitti

The Art of Strategic Neglect

This infographic from We Love Datavis reminded me of a dusty post from the first iteration of "Strategic Public Relations" -- circa October 2002.

After eight years, it still applies. So in honor of St. Patrick's Day, I am foisting this content on you once again.

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One of my mentors always told me about the art of strategic neglect. He took the concept from the book "On Becoming a Servant-Leader."

It's a fancy way to talk about basic time management and effectively managing your work.

Basically your customers are an infinite vessel. You could work 24/7 on their requests and never be "DONE" with your work. As a result, you must practice the art of strategic neglect. Strategic neglect realizes that there is typically more work to be done than there is time and energy to do.

Therefore it becomes just as important to know what to neglect as it is to know what to do. Prioritize your projects, focus on the most important item and neglect those less important items until they become a priority. You will be more effective.

Things to do/Time uploaded by theonlyone

Finding Your Social Voice

Sharing, friending, commenting, checking in, retweeting…the level of participation social media platforms have ushered into the business world have delivered opportunity as well as issues.

Consider the average marketing planning cycle. Many marketers organize around an annual plan with campaign strategies that have specific start and end dates. But you can’t flip Twitter and Facebook on the day a campaign begins, expect results and then flip them back off at the end of the campaign. Social media is a commitment not a campaign.

Can You Hear Me Now?
Consider a brand’s social media presence to a telephone. If you turn the phone on and give the number out to consumers, that phone is expected to work 24/7/365. This can create a challenge when identifying the right resources and the right content required to engage with consumers across social media platforms.

Goals Drive Resources
In a recent article, MarketingProfs’ Ann Handley outlined the varied approaches to supporting a Twitter account, blog or other social platform as well as the pros and cons for each approach. But in all instances she suggests supporting them with a specific person that is identified by name and can even be found on Google. Putting a name in front of a brand is not always well-received. Brands are used to being anonymous and in line with exacting identity standards created to achieve a single, consistent brand voice.

Brand Voice vs. Social Voice
But social participation works best when it is done by an individual. That may sound silly or obvious. But many companies operate its Facebook page or its Twitter account anonymously without identifying the person actually responding to customer inquiries and comments. This detracts from the effectiveness of the effort.

Companies including Sharpie, Sodexo and Best Buy all have their own unique social voice and it’s brought each brand positive results.

Making Marker Fanatics
CPG brands know their fans and Sharpie is no different. Positioning themselves as enabling creativity, Sharpie has gone from being a marker to being an unmatched design tool harnessing creativity and amplifying self-expression. A quick search of Flickr alone shows how extreme this can become. By personifying their brand through folks like “Sharpie Susan” Wassel, they have a fan club that continues to grow and inspire itself.

An Appetizing Corporate Culture
Sodexo relies on social media to help detail its culture. The foodservice giant has to staff a 100,000 person -- and growing -- workforce. Kerry Noone personifies its HR function with amazing results. Noone notes that Twitter alone has saved them $300K in Monster.com advertising.

Listening. And Responding
Best Buy has evolved the farthest by pushing its brand and its social voice to ultimately become one and the same. Through Barry Judge’s self-admitted experiment, opening the doors to direct customer input and using Twitter to connect it’s blue shirts to any customer on Twitter, it’s been an evolution for the electronics retailer.

As detailed below in a comparison created by Shiv Singh, you can see how a brand's voice and its social voice differ. But in all instances, Best Buy’s used social media to become a customer service channel and connect real customers to real employees. It’s even apparent in Best Buy's advertising. The results have helped the brand immeasurably in the very competitive market of consumer electronics.

Social Voice Best Practices
As sites like Twitter attract brands, some stumble when it comes to finding their voice. Should the tweets/status updates be made by one person or multiple? Should these people be identified or should they remain anonymous? While there are several approaches, the more a brand is represented by a real person the more engaged it can become with its customers. Here are some basic tips to consider.

1. What does Google already say about the people representing your brand?
2. Sign Tweets/Posts. Something as simple as ending tweets sent on my work account with ^KD show when it’s me doing the tweeting.
3. A picture will help reinforce that real people are behind the brand. This could be the avatar, this could be the background, but the more attempts at making a personal connection, the better. This is actually one we need to implement. Our Twitter page needs the personal touch of a pic.
4. If a brand does not have the staff for multiple people representing the brand, it should consider promoting “online office hours” noting when the brand is most likely online.
5. Consider that a person representing doesn’t have to be the brand, they merely help reinforce it.
6. This person should have a passion for the brand. It won’t work if “Skippy the Wonder Intern**” is updating a brand’s Facebook page.
7. Consider any online tool to help make a connection. While a brand might focus on Facebook and Twitter, sites like Flickr, Twitpic, YouTube and Whrrl (http://whrrl.com/ ) to tell a richer story. Keep in mind that all of these sites lead back to the brand.

The end result of understanding and finding a brand’s social voice can bring dividends in customer satisfaction, human resources, research and development more. It all depends on a brand’s goals and focus.

** Hat Tip to friend and blogger Daniel Lally who, while never having met Skippy, created him to personify the intern shouldered with “doing Twitter” and “making the Facebook.”

Cross-posted to Empower MediaMarketing's blog, Social Study.

Blogwell Cincinnati Helps Brands Tune Up, Measure Up or Catch Up

Blogwell is winding through Cincinnati on April 7th and Cincinnati Social Media is proud to be partnering with them on the event.

According to the folks from GasPedal and Social Media Business Council:

Duke Energy, AT&T, Hilton Worldwide, Tyson, Dell, Procter & Gamble, General Mills, and Rogers Communications share case studies in corporate social media. You’ll learn how to get started, get past roadblocks, and make your social media program phenomenal.

Get practical, how-to advice on creating great content, getting management buy-in, educating employees, keeping lawyers and regulators happy, simple and ethical disclosure, and engaging fans. You’ll ask questions, discover new ideas, and get answers from people who have been there, done that — all in four hours for $250.

While this event is worth attending just for the above line-up, the adage about the best conversations taking place in the hallways usually applies to social media events like this. Meeting some of your online friends and colleagues in person, and making new ones, is another takeaway you'll have with Blogwell Cincinnati. 

But Wait, There's More!
To ensure that's the case, Cincinnati Social Media is hosting a Tweet Up the night before Blogwell Cincinnati. Stay tuned for details, but all speakers and attendees are invited to attend and get a jump start on the co-mingling. Speaking of Cincinnati Social Media, members are entitled to a 20 percent discount off admission to BlogWell. If you're not a member of Cincinnati Social Media, head over to our LinkedIn Group to sign up. We'll be providing the discount code to our members shortly (like within 24 hours of this post shortly).

In the meantime, mark your calendars and get registered. If you're out of market (road trip!) but cannot attend (dang it), you can bet there will be some content streaming freely from Duke Energy Center that day. There will be two official Blogwell live bloggers in addition to the live tweeting and other random content that is sure to be published.

Facebook Starts Sharing (more) and Selling

Facebook innovations continue as the popular social media platform tries to maintain its lead over other online destinations. Competition is a healthy motivator based on all of the recent Facebook news, including a redesign, more granular privacy controls and eliminating application notifications.

More recently, Facebook announced eCommerce plans as well as a new ShareThis capability that shows what news is trending on Facebook.

Facebook Starts Selling
According to Silicon Alley Insider:

“As it builds out its own store internally, strikes a deal with online-payment platform PayPal and allows marketers to test e-commerce apps, [Facebook] is starting to look more and more like a giant, global shopping mall."

Virtual goods are already sold through Facebook and brands including Pampers, The Limited and 1-800-Flowers are already using it to sell products. With more than 400 million Facebook members around the world, other brands are certainly considering turning their fan page into a form of instant gratification.

It will be interesting to see if retailers shift gears from using fan pages to push customers in-store with special coupons and Facebook-only promotions. For now the experience seems best for one-off, impulse buys. Perhaps over time Facebook could be used to create a big enough shopping cart that it will rival eCommerce sales on a retailer’s own site.

Share and Share, You Like?
On the heels of a Pew Internet study showing that more consumers get their news via a social media platform, ShareThis unveils Share Stream. It monitors news being shared on Facebook and organizes it based on popularity. According to TechCrunch:

“The Share Stream can be filtered by trending or real-time topics, by source, by what everyone is sharing, or only by what your friends are sharing."

ShareThis notes that Facebook is now being used more than email to share news through its network. And the service promises to do the same with Twitter, Google Buzz, LinkedIn, MySpace, Yahoo and MSN in the future.

Data as Content
News sites including CNN have been serving up stories based on popularity for some time now. But seeing what’s hot on a closed network like Facebook is “kind of a big deal.” ShareThis can even give registered users statistics on how news and links they share are being passed along. It’s a great example of using data to create content based on consumer media consumption habits.

Turning data into content is an unrealized opportunity for a majority of brands. An unrelated example can be found on the Zappos site. By taking a small piece of data – the style of shoe purchased and the customer’s state of residence – Zappos has created a real time view of what shoes are being bought across the nation as they’re purchased.

Neither ShareThis nor Zappos are invading user privacy in doing this. But reevaluating a company’s data as potential content is a creative, untapped approach to engaging consumers online.

Cross-posted to my work blog, Social Study.