This week’s social media DOs and DON’Ts: marketing buzz, social media KPIs, social media measurement ROI, Twitter success metrics, best web analytics, luxury brand, reputation, brand management, and other happenings we came across while surfing the internet, blogging and posting on Facebook, Identi.ca, Naijapulse, Google Buzz, or Twitter.

Our focus includes Google going at it again, luxury brands trying China on for size, the World Economic Forum’s new cross-media campaign, Ferrari’s forced recall and other heavyweight brands’ trials and tribulations.

In case you missed previous weeks’ memorable moments on social media monitoring, just point your browser to:

ComMetrics weekly review – social media going’s on

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Top off your subscription by visiting the ComMetrics University and signing up for our latest webinar:

Wednesday, September 15 – Warum das Outsourcen von Social Media Marketing meistens nicht funktioniert (Why outsourcing social media marketing usually fails)
8:30 Uhr in German, 16:00 hours CEST (7:00 hours PST) in English.

So here come the highs, lows and oddities I discovered through my various social media channels.

Monday

I found a great graphic showing Google’s various acquisitions the last few years for various reasons, from eliminating market competition to expanding its revenue stream.

=> Google’s acquisition appetite – graphic

Tuesday

At the heart of any online social network (OSN) is staying in touch with friends, family and business associates, as well as clients.

Last week I mentioned Google’s release of an application allowing users to call landline phones from Google Mail (Gmail), thanks to its acquisition of Gizmo5.

What is so great about a phone service? Over 90 percent of users in most countries check their email at least once every workday. Gmail now gives you the opportunity to use Google Buzz, place phone calls, and chat using Google Talk, with much more to come, I am sure.

I admit, I love Gmail and thanks to Chris Lang and Chris Kunzler I am actually starting to figure out Google Buzz’s usefulness and why simply copying your Twitter status updates to Google Buzz does not help:

=> Urs E. Gattiker – Google Buzz 101

Gmail is a great way to get people to log in to Google on a daily basis. More importantly, the added services such as using Google Docs for word processing or checking your blog’s Google Analytics encourages people to stay logged on throughout the day.

This allows Google to gain valuable insights into user behavior that in turn help ‘personalize’ various services, including search and advertising. The end result should keep the gravy train running for Google.

If everything works as intended, Google is off to a good start for offering users a real and competitive alternative to Facebook.

Wednesday

A recent study reveals that internet users in Brazil, Russia, India, China, and Indonesia (the so-called BRICI countries) account for one third of the world’s internet population.

- At 400 million, China’s internet population is the largest. Primary usage is for instant messaging, online music, video and games.

- Half of India’s internet connections are dial-up, so most people log on for a short time to check email, and visit necessary websites.

- Brazil and Russia’s users focus on search and email.

=> Press Release – September 1, 2010 – BRICI Will Have 1.2 Billion Internet Users by 2015, Says The Boston Consulting Group

The report also points out that the importance of the cost and availability of broadband connections and third-generation mobile services.

BRICI countries currently account for 610 million Internet users, and a staggering 1.8 billion mobile-phone connections. The report predicts that by 2015, their 1.2 billion users will dwarf the US and Japan.

Aguiar, M., Boutenko, V., Michael, D. Rastogi, V., Subramanian, A, & Zhou, Y. (September 2010) Report: The Internet’s new billion. Digital consumers in Brazil, Russia, India, China, and Indonesia. Boston, MA: The Boston Consulting Group (32 pages)

Note: While some claim that Brazil’s advertising market is similar to the US, making the country an interesting target, social networks are a different story. While Brazil has many Orkut users (Google’s social network), Facebook dominates the US.

Comments: What is your take on this? Please share your thoughts below.

Thursday

Asian affluence has resulted in brands growing increasingly dependent on their Chinese sales numbers to make ends meet. As the chart shows, growth rates are still much higher in China than anywhere else and continue to be near 35 percent per year.

More and more luxury brands are trying to move their manufacturing to China, which still boasts 30 percent lower costs than India. Some suggest that fashion’s center of gravity is continuing to shift east, in manufacturing as well as consumer terms.

Will consumers go for Made in Asia? Is there still a negative connotation or have perceptions improved? What do YOU think?

Friday

This week I came across an advertising campaign announcing the World Economic Forum’s Technology Pioneers. What makes it interesting is that it illustrates another cross-media campaign and plenty of money was spent on full-page print ads, among other things (see right).

Congratulations to the Tech Pioneers 2011!

It surely succeeded in getting some blogger-news destinations, such as ReadWriteWeb, to create big write-ups about these companies.

But was this campaign successful? Your guess is as good as mine.

For me, naming 31 companies tech pioneers raises several issues, such as the selection process. Given some of the companies on the list, it is clear that one must carefully define what a pioneer is or not.

For instance, offering customized training online is cute, but is it pioneering? Allowing people to download white papers on one website is great, but others do the same; what makes one a pioneer and the other not? Important questions to which we should get answers before accepting such a list.

Sunday

“…the 458 Italia continues the Ferrari tradition of putting the thrill into driving.”

Having to recall all 1,248 of the 458 Italia model (€197,000 in Italy, including taxes), Ferrari (a division of Italy’s Fiat group) is red-faced. The car, produced up until early August, was recalled after five (two in China and one each in California, Paris and Switzerland) caught fire.

Apparently, glue had been applied incorrectly, resulting in leakage onto the exhaust. Metal fasteners will be used instead of glue on the cars that were assembled incorrectly. Pictures and video posted to the internet forced Ferrari to take action in order to protect its brand. How much damage will this do? Remember Toyota.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Thought? Questions? Comments? Please let us know in the comments!

Article source: ComMetrics weekly review: Ferrari loses, WEF blunders as Asia soars

This week’s social media DOs and DON’Ts: Social media measurement, marketing buzz tidbits, tools and other happenings we came across while surfing the internet, blogging and posting on Facebook, Identi.ca, Naijapulse or Twitter.

Our focus includes Roger Federer attempting viral marketing at SuisseEmex 2010, Google trying to attract more users for its services, 7 social media failure rules, the best actionable analytics for your weblog, and other heavyweight brands’ trials and tribulations.

In case you missed previous weeks’ memorable moments on social media monitoring, just point your browser to:

ComMetrics weekly review – social media going’s on

So here come the highs, lows and oddities I discovered through my various social media channels.

Tuesday

This week starts off with a video featuring tennis star Roger Federer. Apparently, Gillette was hoping it would play on our collective fascination with ‘real or fake’ when it hit the web in mid-August.

This video was filmed during a shoot for Gillette Fusion, in partnership with the British Skin Foundation: Federer knocks a soda can off a crew member’s head.

I guess if you create a somewhat unbelievable, but good-quality, video and throw in a famous dude, the rest is history… a viral marketer’s dream… I just wish we could afford such a brand ambassador.

Click here to view the embedded video.

But I wonder what this adds to Gillette Fusion’s or the British Skin Foundation’s brand. It comes across as a cute gimmick, but so what? Is this what the money I spent on my last blade replacements paid for?

Wednesday

On Wednesday, yours truly gave a presentation about the best actionable metrics for your weblog at the SuisseEMEX tradeshow in Zurich.

I decided to bring my friend Roger Federer along – at least in virtual form – and used his video to illustrate some of my points:

- How much are 4 million YouTube views worth to sponsors? Or is this just another number that adds little value to your bottom line?
- Could this video actually damage the Gillette Fusion brand, since it seems to be such a waste of money?
- Might it damage people’s trust in the British Skin Foundation, since they were associated with a shoot that was clearly a fake event?

You can view the slides here, OR download them (in German, these slides cover what this blog is all about:  actionable analytics and metrics for weblogs):

Download the presentation slides – SuisseEmex 2010 – Zurich – pdf file (1 MB)

Tradeshow organizers should make a video available in a week or so. I will keep you posted.

Thursday

Listening to many presentations about social media during SuisseEMEX 2010, I prepared 7 social media failure rules below:

1. Social media communication is not new. Only some of the tools (e.g., blogs, emails, RSS) and platforms (e.g., Flickr and YouTube) we use to engage AND share with others are. In business, interpersonal contact is still king.

2. Maintaining a presence on only one social media platform is risky. Especially since they’re here today and gone tomorrow… witness Bebo and MySpace.

3. Quality versus quantity. Social media marketing is all about pull (vs. traditional push marketing, such as exhibiting at SuisseEmex), requiring content that is attractive to your target audience (videos, white papers, etc.).

4. Avoid the ‘constant self-promoter’ trap from all angles. Just because you have followers on Twitter, Google Buzz or friends on Facebook does not mean you have an audience that wants to engage and cares about your content. By the same token, avoid connecting or engaging with people who have nothing substantive to offer you.

5. If the data do not result in action, don’t measure. Developing useful metrics takes time and effort!

6. Concerted attempts to create viral marketing or word-of-mouth videos fail. Instead of producing a flash in the pan, or worse a flop, stick to your guns and produce quality content for your clients.

7. Social media is rapidly evolving. That means you and your skills must evolve just as rapidly – no seminar needed. Invest just 10 minutes a week in skills upgrading by signing up for this blog’s content via email:

Top off your subscription by visiting the ComMetrics University and signing yourself and your team members up for our latest webinar (Wednesday, September 1 – Richtlinien für die Nutzung von sozialen Medien im Betrieb at 8:30 – GMT + 2).

Friday

I just came a cross this report again, which summarizes the issues and poses some intriguing questions that every social media evangelist should ponder to ensure they can demonstrate how much these efforts add value to an organization’s bottom line.

To download the 33-page report, click the image. Make sure to read pages 4 – 10, or thereabouts, for the juiciest bits.

For me, the book raises three important questions:

- How do I measure social media return on investment (ROI)?
- What are social media best practices?
- How do I manage my time best with social media?

What do YOU think? Please, let me know by leaving a comment below!

Sunday

Previously, we told you about Google trying to gain market share and not lose the ultimate battle over users and advertising with Facebook:

=> ComMetrics weekly review: Google Me teams up with Louis Vuitton (see Tuesday)

In the past, Google tried to leverage its 180 million Gmail users to launch Google Buzz, with mixed success.

This week, Google made another attempt to leverage this user base by launching phone calls from Gmail to fixed-line or mobile numbers. Calls within or to the US and Canada are free. Rates for calls to Asia or Europe are very low.

I tried to place a call to Canada this week, but the sound was not that great. My friend called across Seattle and said his sound was tinny… so there is still room for improvement before we can agree that call quality is ‘really good’, as claimed by Google.

To introduce the service, Google made this cute video. Who knows, it may even go viral.

Click here to view the embedded video.

P.S. – By the end of June 2010, Skype averaged 124 million users a month (it has 560 million registered users), but only about 6 percent or 8.1 million are paying clients (they average about US$96 per year). In 2008, Skype carried about 8 percent of combined international phone traffic or 33 billion minutes, which was 41 percent more than in 2007. How much it is today, we can only guess.

Article source: ComMetrics weekly review: 7 roads to a social media flop

What is your opinion? Please share, discuss and leave a comment below.

This week’s social media DOs and DON’Ts: Social media measurement, marketing buzz tidbits, tools and other happenings we came across while surfing the internet, blogging and posting on Facebook, Identi.ca, Naijapulse or Twitter.

Our focus includes Google Android taking over Apple’s iOS, how Tod’s took a page from Louis Vuitton and improved on it, and after Google Street View’s nightmare in the making, Google drones come to the rescue, and other heavyweight brands’ trials and tribulations.

In case you missed previous weeks’ memorable moments on social media monitoring, just point your browser to:

ComMetrics weekly review – social media going’s on

Don’t miss the upcoming week! Sign up right now with your email to get social media metrics insights first:

So here come the highs, lows and oddities I discovered through my various social media channels.

Monday

In January 2010, Google Android tried to gain market share while Apple pushed up its revenue stream with the help of iPhone, specifically by hooking its users with iOS, which increases its revenue share from telecom service providers:

Apple, Google and China: What you should know

However, the reality is that Google’s Android mobiles are marching ahead and had already overtaken global iPhone sales by the end of the second quarter of 2010.

This growth comes largely at the expense of Nokia and RIM (Research In Motion, the makers of BlackBerry) and has provided a boost to struggling handset makers like Motorola and Sony Ericsson.

Nevertheless, while Google’s Android operating system is free, it makes it harder for device makers to differentiate their products.

2010-08-12 Oracle filed a lawsuit in federal court in San Francisco alleging that Google violated copyright with the Android mobile phone platform and infringed on Oracle’s intellectual property pertaining to Java. Google has vowed to fight the suit.

Some experts suggest that Oracle’s lawsuit against Google highlights the internet company’s relatively weak patent portfolio. Had Google had a portfolio equivalent to Oracle’s, they would certainly have agreed to a broad cross-licensing deal, which is generally the case between technology companies with extensive patent rights.

Tuesday

Once upon a time, Google unsuccessfully tried to leverage its 180 million Gmail users to launch Google Buzz.

While Google Buzz is a smart attempt to integrate Twitter with Facebook’s commenting and ‘like’ system, it has yet to work well with Google Search and the buzz has pretty much died.

Then we had Google Wave, another example of a me-too product by Google, offered with somewhat limited fanfare. Apparently, Google has decided it failed and will be closing down the service by December 2010.

Still, Gmail and Google Talk, as well as Google’s Android smartphone operating system are stellar successes. These applications and services have helped Google remain the number one search engine in most markets.

For instance, Google is served up most search advertising and hauled in US$23.5 billion (Correction – see comments, this number should be billion, of course not as it million as recorded) last year, while Facebook is expected to make between US$1 and US$2 billion in 2010.

2010-08-12 Google bought Jambool, a company that runs virtual currency systems for social games, including those on Facebook. Also this month, Google took over Slide, a major developer of Facebook applications. It had previously invested US$100 million in Zynga, the largest developer of social games, with 700 employees and US$200 million in revenues in 2009.

Now Google wants to marshall this pool of acquired brain power, internal human capital, ideas and resources to build a destination for social games and applications called Google Me.

Of course, this is done in the hope that users will flock there and build another mammoth social network like Facebook. But Google is facing an uphill battle.

For starters, a Facebook, LinkedIn or Xing user moving to Google Me faces high switching costs: it will be time-consuming to transfer their network of friends and contacts, including wall posts and pictures.

Moreover, if a friend has not joined, you cannot connect with them on Google Me. The problem is, that being active on Facebook and Google Me takes more time than staying in touch through one system. Another example of the winner taking a disproportionate market share, making it nearly impossible for others to get enough traction to survive… remember Bebo?

Google has tried social networking with Orkut (very popular only in Brasil), but Google Me will have to do a lot better than that if they have any hope of making a dent in Facebook’s success.

Wednesday

This week I came across another study about German web users. Unfortunately, the online-produced report does not clarify the methodology used to collect data. For instance, I wonder if the average person really knows whether they are on a weblog versus a webpage (e.g., Economist.com), when both offer commenting and sharing their content on Twitter and Facebook. Nor does the study distinguish between work-related use of the Internet versus private.

And while maybe only 8 percent produce content for a blog (it is unclear whether a blog comment counts), and even fewer produce a video, these numbers have been growing. In fact, considering that probably less than 1 percent of a blog’s visitors to a particular post write a comment or share it with their Twitter followers, 8 percent seems a pretty high number indeed. (By the way, how about leaving a comment below and joining this exclusive club?)

If you read German, have a look yourself
=> ARD/ZDF-Onlinestudie 2010

I also wonder if the average user realizes that they are producing content every time they upload a picture, share it with some friends via an online service, post or comment on a friend’s Facebook wall (e.g., leave a thumbs up – I like this), etc.

Finally, with a response rate of about 70 percent, I am curious about possible response bias. For instance, I refuse to answer such online surveys because I feel my time is better spent doing something else. Did certain groups (e.g., professionals, younger individuals, high income earners and geeks) maybe not participate and are disproportionately under-represented in the findings?

On another note, Facebook announced its geo-locate service, which can be suppressed for now, but cannot be cancelled once activated, something privacy advocates and commissioners want to change.

Friday

Louis Vuitton followed the tradition of luxury brands associating themselves with famous people by cultivating a relationship with famous soccer players Maradona, Pelé and Zidane.

Gucci followed common practice and emphasized heritage by featuring the artisans who craft their products, implying that tradition and history are somehow linked to their quality. A further step in this game is illustrated by the autumn/winter campaign of Tod’s, an Italian luxury accessories brand.

It features people such as Lord Mountbatten’s granddaughter India Hicks, her sons Felix and Armory Flint Wood, American heiresses Lauren Remington Platt and Ashley Wilcox Platt, English artist Hugo Guinness of the Guinness dynasty, and American movie producer James Johnson of the Johnson and Johnson family, naturally all wearing Tod’s shoes.

Photographer Elliott Erwitt uses London and the English countryside as his backdrop. This aids in portraying the elegance and flair of his subjects, both models and products, including handbags. Presumably, the ads give people a peek into a world they would not otherwise see.

In the age of financial crises and high unemployment, such timeless privilege imbues relatively discreet accessories with an atavistic appeal.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sunday

Microdrones GmbH has confirmed that the first of its mini-drones has been delivered to Google, allowing the latter to spy on people from the skies. CEO Sven Juerss says, “Wir haben gute Chancen, mit Google dauerhaft ins Geschäft zu kommen.” (We have a good chance of building a long-term business relationship with Google.)

This technology can be used to provide an even better service for Google Earth, however, it can also be misused to invade people’s privacy, such as taking pictures of people having a backyard barbecue. This may well turn out to be a greater threat than Google’s Street View.

Google street view runs afoul of German data commissioners… (see Saturday)
Google FIRST: George Orwell says hello; mini-drones coming our way – how to remove your house from Google Street View

Click here to view the embedded video.

Microdrones GmbH’s official client list reads like a who’s who – ranging from the research to defense establishments.

Article source: ComMetrics weekly review: Google Me teams up with Louis Vuitton

What is your opinion? Please share, discuss and leave a comment below.

We started a series entitled, Social Media DOs and DON’Ts, which provides checklists, tips and tricks to help you leverage your social media skills even better.

Today we focus on how to leverage social media in your hunt for a job or contract. Bosses search the web to find information about each of us; this post addresses how to ensure they find information that shows we know our stuff and would be a valuable addition to their team.

But first, sign up with your email to be among the first to get our next blog post.

1. Invisible candidate syndrome

Whatever method you use to look for a job or land another contract, if no one knows about your talents and skills, they cannot hire you.

Sounds easy, but as we pointed out on 2008-12-17, people are increasingly self-employed, accounting for nearly a third of the US workforce – up more than 25 percent in the last few years.

The financial crisis has not helped unemployment figures anywhere. As a result, more people have started supplementing their income with freelance work or started their own business, even in Europe, where self-employment statistics are lower. To make matters worse, there are several unemployed workers for every job opening (see right).

Tweaking your resume, searching job boards, and perfecting your cover letter has become the minimum work required. Even more is needed to increase visibility and secure that dream job or contract.

2. Social media DO’s and DON’Ts – follow your policy and be careful

Social media is a wonderful tool to increase your visibility. However, you must be careful about what you post to Twitter, Facebook, etc.

In fact, any pictures that landed on the Internet, such as snapshots of you attending the last Street Parade in Zurich, Carneval in Rio and so forth may not impress your future boss or potential client. Worse, they can still be found decades later.

Tip – Better safe than sorry. Follow the ComMetrics – Social media policy DOs and DON’Ts: 8 essentials for using social media smartly.

3. Set a timetable and start today

Having a digital footprint that impresses your boss requires that you start crawling before learning to walk. Creating an impressive digital footprint with content that shows your expertise, know-how and competitive edge takes time.

Don’t forget that qualifying for the 2012 Olympic Games in London takes so much training that unless you have already started, you certainly will not make it.

Budget at least six months to get yourself into the best start-position before the key interview happens.

Tip – With social media, things tend to take more time than you think. If you budget two hours a week, be prepared to double that time in order to produce the quality content required to have a positive impact.

Remember, the purpose is to land your dream job and/or that new contract/sale you want. Behave accordingly – focus, focus, focus.

4. Starting your own quality-content blog helps

Micro-blogging with Identi.ca, Naijapulse or Twitter, as well as using Facebook, LinkedIn, Xing or Viadeo is definitely important, but content related to your work and expertise (e.g., discussing industry-related matters) is still the most important component when building a personal brand people trust.

Blogging allows you to create quality content that is relevant to your key audience in the industry or business you want to focus on.

The more interesting or relevant the content of your blog to your target audience, the more it will support your reputation and the better people will learn that you know your stuff. You may even become known as an expert of sorts.

As important, your blog content must be easily found and indexed by your reader’s favorite search engine, which also has the added benefit of attracting search traffic months later and making the blog’s archive a great resource.

The simple truth is that few people are renowned enough. Whenever somebody reads a great blog post, white paper or other content, the author(s) gain(s) a certain level of credibility with the reader.

This is merely a first, though very important, step to landing the job.

Tip – Before you start blogging, make sure you avoid the classic beginner’s mistakes: ComMetrics – Increasing blogging effectiveness: 6-step strategy

Learn from Briana Ford, who created a blog with a bio and great content that showed off her skills to recruiters and bosses alike BEFORE she entered the job market. That’s what I call a jump-start.

5. Join business-related social networks

Having a Twitter account that provides links to interesting content like @lgmassmedia and a social networking profile that puts your skills in the right spotlight, such as LinkedIn, always improves career prospects.

Ensuring that you tweet about your new blog content and listing it on various networks also helps. The key is to find the networks whose members include your target audience, whether potential employers or prospective clients.

Tip – In order to properly launch your career, your profile must be interesting (see Briana Ford’s on LinkedIn or Florian Richter’s on Xing).

6. Read, engage and discuss on social networks

Most people’s profiles on networks such as Xing , LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook list memberships in plenty of groups. But those groups can thrive only if people read the shared content and engage. Most importantly, writing quality content that contributes to discussions is critical to building your reputation.

Group members that are never ’seen’ become victims of the old adage, ‘out of sight, out of mind’.

If you’re wondering what LinkedIn has to do with a blog, take note. Unlike your blog content, most information you post to a group you help moderate on Xing or LinkedIn is difficult for non-members to find. Nevertheless, you can link to content on your blog, as long as it is relevant to the group’s discussion.

Another way to increase your group visibility is to add some new but relevant information to an older post (whether your own or someone else’s) so it comes up again in the most recent timeline of the group.

Tip – Check out ComMetrics – Building a social networking reputation: 4 golden rules or how Joyce Treptow shares on Social Media Monitoring.

7. Best face forward – appearances matter online too

Attributes like trustworthiness, ambition and intelligence are generally recommended profile information, but it is all in the eye of the beholder.

Profiles without pictures just kind of fade into the background, but an engaging profile picture may work for one industry, but not for another line of business or country.

Tip – Just because a picture – helps you get more followers does not mean that the ones following are those you want and need to get another contract and/or job. Nevertheless, it does help to have as many blog readers or Twitter followers as you can get.

8. Leverage your time

Using social media is time-consuming and like a garden, it requires regular attention, pruning and so forth. Tweeting one week and being silent for a couple thereafter does not help building relationships.

Out of sight is out of mind, so regular posts with links to interesting material are key. Staying focused on relevant content for your readers also helps keep your audience happy and save time.

Tip – 3 golden rules for social media marketing

8. What is your social media baseline?

Once you have established your blog, social network profiles and so forth it is time to take an initial baseline measure. Then you can start benchmarking and tracking your progress with My.ComMetrics.com or other software.

Unique visitor traffic can be a navel-gazing kind of metric, because unless those visitors are current clients or can help you clinch a sale, high traffic may not help your company’s bottom line or land you the job you need to pay the bills.

Tip – Make sure that your metrics link to your objectives (i.e. getting a job and/or new contract). Unless unique pageviews come from those who can help you reach your objective, the number has no significance.

Bottom line
Following these essentials will help establish your digital footprint with content that is relevant to your target audience(s) and helps build your personal reputation.

Have an opinion on this? Did we forget a social media DO or DON’T that you know about? Please share in the comments; I love to hear what works for you!

Article source: ComMetrics – Social media DOs and DON’Ts: 8 job search tips

We started a series entitled, Social Media DOs and DON’Ts, which provides checklists, tips and tricks to help you leverage your social media skills even better.

Today we focus on how to handle social media in case of a crisis, such as the BP oil spill or a product recall. Social media has become an increasingly important tool for crisis-management.

Below we outline a plan and, most importantly, how it must be tried and tested to withstand a potential onslaught. Examples and videos illustrate what works and what fails when online activist groups like Greenpeace mount an attack against your brand.

But first, sign up with your email to be among the first to get our next blog post.

1. Speed is critical

If the event has been identified such as a faulty product, whatever should be done (e.g., product recall) must be done quickly.

As well, the decision must be communicated fast and a response (e.g., on Facebook, YouTube video, etc.) must be done quickly if not within the hour of the day you discovered the attack.

Example
Unflattering publicity: A news report shows some unsavory practices at Domino’s Pizza.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Domino’s responds with a clever, though slightly over the top video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Testing: Is your team ready to start preparing your coordinated response within 30 minutes of such an incident? Practice such a situation with two or more drills each year to see if your team is up to the challenge.

2. The messenger(s) should be whoever does it best

The company’s chairman or chief executive officer – whether the positions are held by one person or two – should be the face or faces of its crisis response.

Unfortunately, few company chiefs play well to the cameras.

The drubbings received by BP’s British chief executive Tony Hayward, its Swedish chairman Carl-Henric Svanbert, and Toyota chief executive Akio Toyoda, suggest that a company might want to rethink this approach.

Example
How to win the battle: Virgin Group chairman Sir Richard Branson cut short a holiday when a Virgin train derailed in 2007, killing one woman. He painted the driver as a hero, said Virgin’s trains were ‘built like tanks’ and – perhaps most important – looked genuinely upset.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Testing: How well do the people chosen to respond in case of a public relations disaster come across on various media channels (e.g., different methods are required for television than print-media)?

3. Saying nothing is never good

The ‘no comment’ statement might satisfy your lawyers but represents media-suicide and infuriates the public.

Furthermore, silence is often perceived as guilt. Accordingly, talking straight and accepting partial responsibility quickly is likely to protect your brand better than using carefully crafted statements that may smack of legalese and evasion. Accordingly, if the company’s representative communicates unequivocal resolve, compassion, concern and engagement, the words become less important.

After all, the company can still seek indemnification in the event subsequent investigation shows other parties are more culpable.

Example
Being polite could be misconstrued as guilt or lack of feeling: Mr Toyoda and his lieutenant Mr Inada (president of Toyota USA) using a translator and speaking in halting English during their testimony does not help either come across as trustworthy and convincing.

Click here to view the embedded video.

In some countries, being aggressive and unrepenting is positive: As Brooksley Born interrogates him, Lloyd Blankfein’s lucid testimony comes across well, without any admission of wrongdoing or much insight. He is rather cocky, but he got away with it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Testing: How well will your statement or testimony be received by consumers or clients in key markets? Prepare your 30-second sound bite and check whether it gets the message across by reviewing the material.

Test whether those responsible for preparing the initial statement for the company’s spokesperson are up to the task – can they deliver within the time-frame given?

4. Saying the wrong thing backfires – but what’s the ‘wrong thing’?

These days an off-the-cuff remark such as BP chairman Svanberg’s talk of ‘the small people’ gets passed around the world within hours on the web. Such statements clearly undermine any trust the public may have in subsequent communications.

When Deutsche Bank CEO Josef Ackermann gave a victory sign during his court appearance at the Mannesmann trial, it became a symbol of arrogance to the German public (see right). Ultimately, he avoided any conviction of breach of fiduciary duty as a Mannesmann board member during the Mannesmann/Vodafon takeover battle at a re-trial. Mr Ackermann settled without admitting guilt, paying €3.2 million. Nevertheless, the German public remains wary of this guy.

Example
BP CEO Tony Hayward saying, ”I’d like my life back,” was perceived as a slap in the face of thousands of Gulf Coast residents whose lives and economic livelihoods had been turned upside down by his company’s actions. It was the beginning of his subsequent downfall and replacement.

Click here to view the embedded video.

When Lloyd Blankfein said he was just a banker ‘doing God’s work’ (page 4, second-last paragraph), the world knew it within hours. The fallout was far beyond the statement’s importance in the overall interview but the media had a field day.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Testing: What may seem cool, funny or humorous to your peers can be perceived as offensive by others. Test and try to minimize the risk for collateral damage or refrain from making light of the situation altogether.

5. Being incommunicado is not an option – ever

Social media use by consumers, activists and journalists never stops, whether on weekends, overnight or during holidays. It is 24/7/365, all the way.

So if Greenpeace starts a negative publicity campaign late Friday afternoon, the company cannot ignore it until Monday, by which time the news has spread like wildfire. Even if the company provides media and bloggers with important facts by Tuesday, the risk remains that it is too little, too late.

Example
Nestlé’s team demonstrates how not to respond to a Greenpeace attack on your brand - KitKat.

Even rational arguments provided to the media two weeks after the disaster started will not help. For instance, according to Nestlé CEO Mr Brabeck-Letmathe, the social media team forgot to share some facts, such as Nestlé and other food producers buying about 0.7 percent of world production of palm trees, but European governments’ policy on increasing the amount of energy that comes from bio-fuels is the bigger culprit.

While this suggests that the message should be something like “don’t use bio-fuels”, the issue was never raised in the social media fight regarding his use of palm oil from Sinar Mas and its reputation. When it was finally mentioned, it was lost in the shuffle.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Testing: How can and does the company monitor social media in relevant markets outside ‘regular’ business hours (24/7/365 approach required for global brand)? For instance, how well can it respond to an onslaught of negative comments on social media networks, thereby influencing discussions with facts, not opinions? Have you tried it, did it work or was it a Nestlé-type flop? Put an emergency response team in place that can take action within 30 minutes of learning of any online brand attack.

6. Respond to humorous brand attacks with a smile

The Internet has changed things in part by empowering consumers to produce content and share their material using social networks. Increasingly, consumers are using humor to get the message across. The company has three choices:

- ignore the attack at your own peril,
- try to respond in kind (e.g., leave a comment on the blog post or on YouTube were the video was posted), and/or,
- produce a humorous response (e.g., on corporate blog or YouTube channel).

Even being proactive and responding quickly does not mean you are in control of the situation, but it does enable you to influence the discussion with facts.

Example
What might happen if BP was responsible for cleaning up a coffee spill at a meeting.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Increasingly, Facebook is getting into hot water about privacy issues and sharing users’ data with advertisers. This video makes a bit of fun of CEO Zuckerberg and how he believes we should address privacy concerns.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Testing: Humor does not play well across cultures and/or languages. Make sure you do not overplay your hand and use what is tried and tested.

Bottom line – the social media disaster drill is a must
If your company follows the above DOs and DON’Ts, a level of savvy and understanding can be attained that allows for effective use of this technology to leverage your brand.

We advise preparing a 30-second sound bite AND a 200-word statement that addresses and answers:

- what went wrong,
- how it will be fixed, and
- what will happen to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

The core message will always be wrapped in these three main points and adhere to the cardinal rules of crisis communication:

=> tell the truth, tell it all, tell it fast.

Most important is to test how well your response meets the above six criteria, create a strategy for quickly establishing contact with key people to handle such emergencies and test your procedures to make sure everybody knows what to do, when.

Remember, as a student you knew exactly what to do when the fire alarm went off at school thanks to all those fire drills. The same is required to handle a public relations disaster or attack on your brand. Without testing how well your strategy works, your effective damage control will fail during a real disaster and may actually exacerbate the problem instead of limiting the damage.

Have an opinion on this? Did we forget a DO or DON’T for social media that you know about? Please share in the comments; I love to hear what works for you!

Article source: ComMetrics – Social media DO’s and DON’Ts: 6 remedies for any emergency

Companies using social media to improve engagement require web relations specialists for constant monitoring. This means that staff spend their time on Twitter or Facebook engaging with clients and helping them find solutions when problems arise.

An increasing number of companies have accepted social media as part of their public relations and communications strategy. These tools can drive sales and help you reach new markets; they can also create public relations nightmares.

2 weeks ago we discussed

ComMetrics – Social media DOs and DON’Ts: 8 pivotal tips

This week we address other social media DOs and DON’Ts for companies that want to blaze a trail down the path to better engagement while being ready for a possible public relations disaster.

But first, sign up to be among the first to get our next blog post.

Planning for an emergency situation means designing railroad tracks and switches in a way that ensures a smooth and safe ride. A similar objective should be accomplished to prepare the company for an effective response in a public relations disaster.  If you missed some of the previous post, please check:

Find more DOs and DON’ts in social media

Below we outline issues that must be resolved long before a crisis occurs.

1. A crisis is a matter ignored – know the company’s issues and risks

Ambush marketing attacks by companies that had not paid to be an official sponsor of the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa were a real threat to the organizers.

Unfortunately, as the Bavaria ladies demonstrated, FIFA was once again caught unprepared. Taking the ladies out of the stadium and subsequently charging two of them in a Johannesburg court turned public opinion firmly against FIFA.

The public favored the ladies and instead demanded that Bavaria Brewery’s owner be charged for the illegal stunt in which the women were involved.

Being prepared for a possible onslaught before it happens means understanding the issues so the company knows how to respond properly.

2. Prepare for the crisis

Most office buildings, schools and universities have a checklist that spells out simple steps for each employee or student to follow in case of a fire. Not only is the plan in place, but there are usually several fire drills throughout the year to see how well the check list and implemented procedures work.

Similarly, preparing for a public relations disaster requires having a plan in place that really works. The best-laid plans flop when put to the test if various scenarios have not been taken into consideration or drills are not practiced every three to six months.

3. Who communicates what?

Unfortunately, those best-laid plans also fail to deliver the goods if it is unclear who is responsible for what: who marshals the troops, who will be the public face?

Put differently, who is and who is not authorized to comment?

Therefore, your crisis road map must be clearly understood at all levels of the company. Remember though, while only some will give interviews, staff will continue to use social media to share information with the masses, with or without authorization (e.g., their Facebook wall).

Accordingly, ensure channels are ready that enable the company to inform employees about its response and where online videos, briefs and white papers can be downloaded by the public and media for additional insight.

Better employees share the right information than guess what the company will do or has already done to fix the problem, especially since the media will always go elsewhere to fill the story if the company remains silent. They will also likely use pictures of closed company doors, executives walking off muttering “no comment”, and other unflattering images.

4. Who monitors social media and how?

Besides blogs, micro-blogs (e.g., Twitter, Naijapulse) and Facebook (non-English content is growing fast here), who will monitor Japan’s Mixi, Tencent QQ in China and Vkontakte of Russia if these markets are important to your brand?

Toyota USA assigned eight people in Los Angeles to monitor social media during its recall crisis. Great, but somehow Toyota forgot to marshal regional resources and combine and share their insights across the organization, given the likely inability of the Los Angeles staff to monitor networks in Russia, China or Japan.

Social media requires a monitor beyond local markets and institutionalized ways for sharing this information in order to protect the brand.

5. Show genuine empathy and concern

Ensure that an expression of regret for an incident or adverse outcome (as long as it is not an admission of responsibility) cannot be used as an admission of liability under applicable law.

When Virgin’s train derailed, Richard Branson became the company’s public face of the crisis, showing empathy as well as genuine concern for the train passengers who suffered. He also defended the train engineer and made it clear that the disaster was not due to that employee’s actions.

A somewhat different approach was demonstrated on 2010-06-17, when BP’s former CEO Tony Hayward told a US congressional energy subcommittee that he was “deeply sorry,” going on to tell the often fractious hearing that, “I understand the seriousness of the situation, the frustrations and fears that continue to be voiced.” He said BP had “made a lot of major changes” since he became chief executive and that he was “distraught” by the Gulf spill.

“It’s clear to me that you don’t want to answer our questions,” Representative Henry Waxman stated.

This hearing did not help BP get its message across, since Mr Hayward failed to follow what we suggested in our third point:

=> tell the truth, tell it all and tell it fast; then explain what went wrong, how it will be fixed and what will be done to prevent a repeat.

Mr Hayward followed legal advice and refused to comment or evaded questions when the public wanted clear answers on how the Deepwater Horizon disaster would be fixed – yesterday.

Bottom line
We advise preparing a 30-second sound bite that addresses and answers:

- what went wrong,
- how it will be fixed, and
- what will happen to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

The core message will always be wrapped in these three main points and adhere to the cardinal rules of crisis communication:

=> tell the truth, tell it all, tell it fast.

If you and your staff follow the above guidelines, you can achieve better risk-management, and most importantly, more effective use of this technology to leverage your brand, which should help your bottom line.

We will continue our DOs and DON’Ts series throughout the summer, so please join us.

Have an opinion on this? Did we forget a DO or DON’T for effectively preparing for a possible public relations or media onslaught that you know about? Please share in the comments; I love to hear what works for you!

Article source: ComMetrics – Social media DO’s and DON’Ts: 5 hints for successful crisis-management

Next week watch out for: Social media DO’s and DON’Ts: 8 critical steps for emergencies

Companies using social media to improve engagement require web relations specialists for constant monitoring. This means that staff spend their time on Twitter or Facebook engaging with clients and helping them find solutions when problems arise.

An increasing number of companies have accepted social media as part of their public relations and communications strategy. These tools can drive sales and help you reach new markets; they can also create public relations nightmares.

Last week we discussed

ComMetrics – Social media DOs and DON’Ts: 8 pivotal tips

This week we address other social media DOs and DON’Ts for companies that want to blaze a trail down the path to better engagement.

But first, sign up to be among the first to get our next blog post.

When undertaking a longer trip, such as biking across the Sahara, having the right supplies along is critical to making the journey successful. Hence, most adventurers use checklists evolved over years, based on their own, colleagues’ and other experts’ experiences.

With those checklists, the risk of taking the wrong things along is reduced.

While a checklist makes it easier to pack the right things, a social media policy helps manage risk and ensures the company stays compliant and does not run afoul of legislation while using the tools offered by social media networks.

The ComMetrics Social Media Policy (started in 2007 with five rules) is a working document to help employees of ComMetrics (a division of CyTRAP Labs GmbH) use social media wisely. Thanks to feedback from staff and experts we instituted these eight golden rules.

1. Do to others as you would have done to you

This means always be nice, truthful and respect the other individual. Never embarrass or make fun of others online.

2. Once you post it, you can’t take it back

Besides avoiding foul language, remember that a party image posted online from your friend’s mobile phone might haunt you in the future, whether you are applying for a job or getting married.

Also ensure that the source you link to (e.g., a research report) can withstand regulatory scrutiny (e.g., possible conflicts of interest are disclosed – see FDA regulations) and will not damage your reputation (e.g., badly disguised sales pitch, low-quality white paper).

3. Never reveal too much information

This can do damage in any number of ways, including violating company-client privilege, opening your organization to sanctions, voiding patent rights, revealing trade secrets, or violating copyright.

Email, instant messaging, Twitter, Facebook, voicemails, as well as the entire contents of your private PC, smartphone or iPad if used for any work-related reason are fully discoverable and the first place lawyers look when building a case.

Lastly, it is just as easy to ’spill the beans’ in a social setting as it is online. Be careful and you will be fine.

4. Remember that cyberspace links your professional and private lives

Friends and clients will not only find your corporate blog posts, but your private Facebook page and personal Twitter account, and draw their own conclusions. Be cautious before putting anything ‘out there’.

5. Engage honestly and truthfully

Interact and connect with clients. If you cannot help someone directly regarding any of your services, products and so forth, send them to the appropriate department, person or social media channel.

Follow up personally or make sure a colleague does so within 24 hours. In today’s virtual world time is of the essence and your public holiday or weekend may be a client’s normal workday!

6. Verify your privacy and security settings

How much data you reveal – such as email or phone number – should be set in your security options or privacy settings (e.g., what information is visible to anyone).

Before you post any images or videos online (e.g., holiday snapshots on Facebook), get explicit permission from anyone included, so as not to violate any personal rights and/or privacy regulation(s).

Be careful which links you visit and make sure any materials you download are scanned by your computer’s security software.

7. Watch the clock when using social networks

Visiting your personal Facebook page takes time away from getting tasks done for which you get paid; accordingly, use your time wisely while at work and make your social media engagement beneficial to the company. Please do not let such usage interfere with maintaining your high performance.

8. Lead from above

As a boss, team leader or manager, you should lead by example. If you are an infrequent and/or sloppy social media user, your bad habits may spread to your colleagues and/or subordinates.

To reduce the risk to yourself, your team and the company, set a good example and review social media use with your team – the good, the bad and the ugly – to learn from mistakes and successes.

This policy is in addition to other existing policies.

We wish you all the best success with engaging in social and private networks. May it advance your career and in turn assist us in our efforts to provide clients with more value.

In this case as in all, we feel that the best way to deal with effective use of social media in the workplace is by persuasion and example, NOT by removing liberty.

For more resources visit the ComMetrics social media policy and scroll to the bottom for tools and much more.

Bottom line
If your staff follow the guidelines above, you can achieve better risk-management. Most importantly, the effective use of this technology to leverage your brand should help your bottom line.

We will continue our DOs and DON’Ts series throughout the summer, so please join us.

Have an opinion on this? Did we forget a DO or DON’T for an effective social media policy that you know about? Please share in the comments; I love to hear what works for you!

Article source: ComMetrics – Social media policy DOs and DON’Ts: 8 essentials

Companies using social media marketing as part of brand management require staff to do the job right. In theory, engagement requires web relations specialists who constantly monitor the channel, meaning staff spend their time on Twitter or Facebook engaging with clients and helping them find solutions when problems arise.

An increasing number of companies has accepted social media as part of their public relations and communications strategy. These tools can drive sales and help you reach new markets; they can also create public relations nightmares.

So while social media has gone mainstream, quite a few companies continue to struggle with achieving effective engagement. This post addresses the social media DOs and DON’Ts for companies that want to keep up with their engaged community.

==> Update 2010-07-28 – ComMetrics – Social media policy DOs and DON’Ts: 8 essentials

If you missed a few of these posts, please check:

Find more DOs and DON’ts in social media

But first, sign up with your email to be among the first to get our next blog post.

Effective social media use that achieves desired results: How to get there

Here are some tips on how companies can use social media smartly as part of their business strategy.

1. Answer the critics: It is important to listen and respond to all clients, not just those who rave about your company and product(s).
2. Empower users to engage: This means giving them a voice and content to work with; allowing them to comment on blog posts and NOT removing negative comments from user forums, blogs, etc., but responding respectfully with facts.
3. Be personable: It is a delicate balance to strike between being a personable social media user and representing the brand in a professional way on personal Twitter or Facebook accounts.
4. Empower your staff: Everybody is a social media evangelist and to make it work properly, staff across the enterprise must be empowered to leverage social media in support of the brand and its product(s).
5. Tend your garden: Social media takes effort and time, whereby better customer service and client engagement help build a dedicated following – word-of-mouth marketing supports the company’s sales efforts.
6. Start, set and re-assess proper objectives: Do not expect to do it perfectly right from the start, but rather start today than tomorrow and watch the trends in order to make adjustments as needed.
7. Provide staff with guidance: Decide what guidance to give all staff on expressing their own, and their company’s opinions through their personal social media channels. Corporate social media guidelines are a prerequisite.
8. Connect with your audience: Whatever tool or channel you try, social media content is read by people from different countries, cultures, religions and levels of education, requiring that you write like the average wise and polite person on the street, and speak the lingua franca (universal language) so people get the message right away.

Bottom line
If the company follows the above DOs and DON’Ts, a level of savvy and understanding can be attained that allows the effective use of this technology to leverage your brand.

We will continue our DOs and DON’Ts series throughout the summer, so please join us.

Have an opinion on this? Did we forget a DO or DON’T for social media that you know about? Please share in the comments; I love to hear what works for you!

Article source: ComMetrics – Social media DOs and DON’Ts: 8 pivotal tips

The importance of marketing metrics is skyrocketing thanks to the challenges of the current economy – and the higher performance expectations brought with it.

But how do you turn data into dollars when you don’t have the right metrics to tell you why you’re getting your current results? How do you prevent future failure?

The key is actionable metrics: data that help you understand the ‘why’ behind a result, while supporting your efforts to reach higher performance targets. Such metrics are the little heroes of the data world, because they deliver actionable insights to help you make smart decisions that positively affect your bottom line.

Step 1: You need more than just eyeballs

On Wednesday (2010-06-23), Coca-Cola became the second company to sponsor a trending topic on Twitter and the first to do so for the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa tournament.

Coke’s Twitter messages congratulated the England and US teams, linked to videos on YouTube and invited people to “share their celebration” of their teams’ successes.

In just 24 hours, Coca-Cola’s first Promoted Trend garnered 86 million impressions and an engagement rate of 6 percent, according to Global Interactive Marketing Vice President Carol Kruse.

However, pageviews and unique visitors are not necessarily best practice when it comes to useful Key Performance Indicator(s) (KPIs).

Unique visitors come in many guises and while these web analytics are interesting, exactly what decisions will be made based on these numbers? Most importantly, how could this affect the bottom line? While this might matter less for Coca-Cola or Starbucks, it makes a huge difference for a medium-sized business.

Tip 1: Metrics are in the eye of the beholder - whatever you decide to use, you have to use what is most important to you and your stakeholders and make sure your stakeholders understand it all.

=> ComMetrics – 6 steps for starting social media activity measurement

Step 2: Focus on operating - not financial – metrics

Primarily using traffic or volume to measure potential success may not result in profits.

It is critical to understand the most important drivers or operating metrics when it comes to success or failure. Accordingly, you must address what contribution(s) for achieving the company’s operating metrics, such as higher customer retention, will come from social media efforts.

Tip 2: Agree on the operating metrics you want to use and define down how social media should help you accomplish these KPIs in writing.

=> ComMetrics – social media: Metrics to know and metrics to skip FAQ #3
=> ComMetrics – KPI experts’ top 5 secrets

We illustrate the above using three examples:

Example 1 – restaurant: The restaurant’s Twitter followers may receive a daily code around 10:30. If the code is used before 11:30 or after 13:30 to order lunch, a 10 percent discount is given.

Here, the idea is to satisfy regulars while enticing them to come before or after the lunch rush in order not to have to wait to be seated. In turn, lunch hour walk-ins have a better chance of getting seated right away. Accordingly, the percentage of clients forced to wait before getting a table during lunch time – an important operating metric – is lowered.

Example 2 – business brochures: Most businesses need a brochure to explain their product(s) or the company’s mission and services. To reduce costs - an operating metric – a smaller number is printed.

In one case, we found that beyond the 1,000 print brochures, another 600 (fictitious number) were downloaded from the internet. Here social media not only helped save costs, but it also increased diffusion of the information.

Example 3 – advisory services: Many businesses start groups on social networks such as LinkedIn, Xing or Viadeo (some suggest that there are four types of social networks). Unfortunately, building a social networking group’s membership while supporting the company’s brand and reputation takes time – a few months to build a following and hard work each week to provide valuable content that keeps the group alive and kicking.

As a consultant, one needs contracts (an operating metric) and social media (e.g., visibility) can help increase opportunities. However, rarely does one get a call from a group member to bid for a job. Often, it starts with meeting a Social Media Monitoring group member at a conference or networking event, which facilitates building a better rapport that might ultimately result in the chance to bid for a job or another subscription for one of our services.

=> ComMetrics – why social networking groups fail
=> ComMetrics – Recipe for success: Facebook, LinkedIn and Xing metrics
=> ComMetrics – 3 golden rules for best practice: LinkedIn and Xing

Bottom line
Metrics may appear accurate, objective and simple. But rarely – if ever – is it that simple (see example 1) and often social media’s contribution comes in a more elusive or roundabout way (see example 3).

Whatever we decide to do, cost-benefit analysis is required to obtain more insight into whether the effort is justified.

Figure out the benefits of social media and how these help with key operators in the business. If stakeholders need convincing, ask for the same type of analysis for newspaper ads or attending an exhibition. It is hard to show a clear link between an advertising campaign and sales in most businesses, except possibly consumer products. Often advertising helps with operators, but not the bottom line – the same applies for social media.

More resources
=> Measuring ROI: Why it fails
=> Budgeting for SM: Cost-benefit analysis vs. ROI
=> Using the right blog metrics
=> Engaging comments: Where is the beef?
=> 3 metrics: Impact, influence and outcome

What is your take? How do you see these issues? Have you tried to apply any of these approaches to any company you manage? What operating metrics are supported best by social media activities?

Please let us know in the comments!

Article source: ComMetrics – Boosting ROI through social media measurement
Podcast: ComMetrics University – Coffee break webinar: Turning social media metrics into money – get slides and listen to podcast

Are you sure that your company’s cross-media campaign is working? Besides using Twitter, Identi.ca, Naijapulse and so forth, is your advertising money well-spent?

If you want to know more, we outline four tips that will help improve your experience below.

You can get updates for this blog on Twitter by following @ComMetrics, get a free subscription by RSS, or get new posts via email:

Missed this week’s webinar, if you hurry, you can still join next Wednesday’s webinar.

Defining cross-media marketing is difficult, but we can define cross-channel marketing using four characteristics:

A. It plays across platforms, such as publishing an Information Security (InfoSec) advisory on a webpage, distributing it via email and producing a podcast and/or video, as well as printing it in a daily.
B. It offers special content, like additional material related to a TV show or a handbook that can be watched online or read on a corporate blog.
C. It encourages more engagement with the brand, such as inviting TV viewers online to write the story for next season’s opening episode after a season finale.
D. It enables sharing of content, for example, users may re-edit content such as videos, and re-distribute it.

But how does this work for the Microsoft Kin smartphone, Swiss PostBus (the yellow postal vehicles we love), NBC (making your brand’s promotion with social media a contest) and Toyota (re-building its brand and reputation for quality)? We outline these four cases and their mixed successes below.

Microsoft Kin – will it sell?

Microsoft tried using various social media means and platforms, including live concerts. A month after its launch, the episode below had about 6,000 views.

I find this and other episodes interesting, since discovering if online acquaintances are true friends or just jerks is an issue for most of us. The video is a clever way of promoting a product across platforms with the help of special content.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Matthew Gain – Microsoft Kin social media marketing – a case study
But its microsite loads too slowly: Kin – the campaign’s online hub

Tip 1: Do not focus on one particular channel. This special content definitely plays across platforms, offers special content and allows sharing (categories A, B & D). But the question is whether the campaign will help convince clients to purchase the Microsoft Kin. The answer is not clear to me at this point.

Swiss PostBus – just advertise your Facebook page in print

Recently, I was riding a beautiful yellow PostBus (part of the Swiss public transport network) and saw an ad (about the size of a sheet of paper) about its summer sweepstakes, including many interesting prices. The promotion also mentioned the organization’s Facebook fanpage, launched on March 7, 2010.

This is a good example of cross-media where print and online merge. However, it does not guarantee immediate success.

Finally, without a clear purpose (besides giving away prizes), a Facebook fanpage does not make much sense, nor are the benefits of becoming a fan obvious to me. And the Swiss PostBus marketing crew has not managed to adjust the campaign for better leverage before summer descends.

SM Media Monitoring group – Swiss PostBus – fumbling with Facebook

Tip 2: Start small and constantly test it out. While it offers special content to Facebook fans and sweepstakes participants, it does not seem to work that well across channels (e.g. Facebook page not integrated with corporate webpage – category A), nor foster greater brand-engagement among customers (category C).

If things do not work as planned, remember to always have a plan B, like a reserve parachute. Be ready to revise and improve your strategy DURING the campaign – not after.

Toyota – just trust your ad agency… NOT

We all know how Toyota managed to recently destroy its brand. Now it has embarked on a costly media campaign to restore it to its former glory – good luck!

The ad at the right was published in the lower right-hand corner of the front page of the Financial Times, as well as a follow-up ad on page three of the same issue in the UK, Europe and Middle East editions.

The link provided points to a webpage with a video, which takes too much time to load and whose message is clear but not necessarily convincing (i.e. why should I care about paint when the brakes are the problem?). Worst is that the narrator’s accent is hard to comprehend for most of the people who see the ad.

Tip 3: Keep it relevant to your target audience. This is special content (category B) offered across platforms (category A). However, it fails to increase customer engagement (category C), since the message is hardly convincing considering the company’s tarnished reputation for quality. It is also unlikely that customers will try to share this content (category D).

ComMetrics – Toyota: How to commit brand and reputation suicide

NBC and Tasti – affinity and loyalty programs that could damage your reputation

For those of us who do not know, NBC is one of the four major US TV networks and is owned by General Electric. ‘Fan It’ is an initiative aimed at turning social-media users into an ad hoc promotional team for the network.

The so-called affinity program provides exclusive incentives and rewards for fans in return for promoting, interacting with and discussing all of the network’s new and returning 2010-2011 programs. The program, which utilizes social media platforms including NBC’s own myNBC as well as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and FourSquare, launched May 17, 2010.

SM Media Monitoring group – NBC and Fan it – will it work or just be another nuisance?

Tip 4: Adapting and re-inventing the old stuff could flop badly. What NBC does certainly plays across platforms like MySpace or Twitter (category A) and viewers can also share a link that leads to somewhere particular to view more exclusive content or backstage video footage (category B).

However, I am not sure if tweeting about a TV show is what I understand under improving engagement (category C). And even without an affinity program, viewers were able to share content easily (category D). Having a friend promote a show is one thing. Seeing such promotional tweets on my Facebook wall may seem like spam. The risk for NBC and potential damage to its brand must be managed and it is unclear whether NBC or Fan-it have addressed that.

P.S. - Tasti D-Lite, a dairy-based soft serve frozen dessert, was the first to offer such a loyalty program.  Customers who enroll in the Tasti D-Lite program can sign in online and connect their Twitter and Foursquare accounts to their myTasti.com loyalty account.

Whenever they use the loyalty card, they get points AND this information gets posted to their Twitter and Foursqure accounts. Will some people get upset about receiving such tweets? I certainly don’t need to know that you just bought a myTasti.com product and got points for doing so… Do I?

Take-aways
Following the above suggestions and exhibiting similar characteristics in our networking lives means being liked, and if you are liked you can be more effective.

1. Who wants to be constantly engaged with their butter, soft-drink, deodorant or other brand? Get real! I want to spend time online with my friends instead of my brand. Once the novelty wears off, people will have to limit the time they spend online scanning tweets or wall posts on Facebook. Hence, quality content that is relevant to the target-audience is key.

2. Turn that noise off! Using cross-media marketing (see Adobe/Apple ad fight) can work, but negative publicity may splatter a bit of dirt on all involved parties. Apple will offer Adobe Flash if customers just demand it, otherwise it will continue to refuse, regardless of what Adobe wants.

Xing SM Monitoring – more cases about social media and marketing flops and successes

What is your take? How do you see these issues? Have you tried to apply any of these approaches to any brand you manage. Are you participating in such kind of loyalty programs?
Worked, failed – share, please! Please let us know in the comments!

Article source: ComMetrics – 4 roads to success? Microsoft, NBC, Toyota and PostBus

Also, please check out our upcoming complimentary ComMetrics University coffee break webinars and register yourself for the next one – Twitter: Glorified messaging autoresponder?

Social media, social networking and blogging are not just new tools; they are part of the revolution in marketing that started some twenty years ago when the internet became mass market.

This article clarifies how social media tools and channels such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn can make a real difference if used correctly and what this means for you.

Power shift
The internet provides massive amounts of information, leading to a power shift from seller to buyer.

In the early days, providing search engines with the right keywords was essential to finding anything, but people soon tired of the ’sales dish’. Instead, they sought independent information and reviews, leading to the growth of article and review sites, some of which have transformed themselves into blogs.

This means we now have a growing body of people who use the internet to inform their purchasing decisions, so businesses must learn more about those customers’ purchasing challenges.

Buyers have never been so well-informed, because information is only a few clicks away. Great! But, this causes a huge dilemma for sellers, who aren’t used to being challenged.

We now have:

- knowledgeable buyers,
- buyers who don’t respond to ‘We are the Best’ messages, and
- buyers who ask questions about how a product or service compares to competitors

This means, sellers have some options, such as:

Ignore the revolution. There are plenty of people who do not fully use the internet and never will. They are likely to be older, and therefore decreasing in numbers and economic clout.


Dabble in social media. This is about migrating from offline to online. For example, sales brochures become blog posts, while tweets are about forthcoming sales or special offers. It’s more about continuing as before with these new tools, which is fine for the new internet user. Numbers of people who haven’t really used the internet to educate themselves are also shrinking, given the time personal computing has been around.


Learn to master. Recognize that buyers will educate themselves before buying, so to grow, be where prospective buyers are. Speak their language at a pace that suits them.


Take the lead. Accept that the buyer is king and uses the internet and social media to engage on their terms. This isn’t about having a string of tweets cascade into all the other social networking sites that accept Twitter. It’s about understanding how prospective buyers want to engage with you and using the appropriate channels to do that.


From my perspective, this is where sellers are in relation to buyers (see graph at right), though I welcome different perspectives. There is a huge opportunity gap for sellers to learn how to use social media and become leaders in their market. Since social media is about conversation and networking, the viral element can help any seller gain leadership.

Click here to view the embedded video.

1. Facebook Fan Page
Give your buyers and prospects a place to comment and ask questions during a teleseminar, conference or even respond to consultation documents. Yes, it’s a public space but not all the material needs to be divulged. After all, it’s about conversing with people who have said they are interested in you and your position.
Connect on Facebook with ComMetrics and MaxWeb.


2. Twitter
There are lots of ways to use this tool, such as giving information on topics you know interest your market. If your buyers are Human Resources managers, then information on employment law, payroll and employee engagement would be of interest regardless of what you are offering. Ask for comments on your blog posts and respond to mentions. If people have taken the trouble to send you a message, acknowledge them just as you would in the ‘real world’.
Choose from the 100 best Twitter tools.


3. LinkedIn
Join appropriate groups or learn what makes a good group and start your own. Good groups have discussions where people learn more about each other and relationships are fostered. The opportunities are endless. Wander in to LinkedIn’s Answers section and answer a few questions; this builds credibility with a large audience. Finally, have a complete profile, so people can see who you are and what you do.
New to LinkedIn – How to Use LinkedIn video.
Time management – 3 golden rules for best practice: Xing and LinkedIn.

And remember that any social media activity can be used in conjunction with your continuing offline marketing.

Pull beats push
Sellers have been pushing messages for the past 50 years, but this has lost some of its effect. There are big changes afoot, as evidenced by the diminishing circulation of printed newspapers, the fortunes of commercial TV stations and the move from print media to online.

People are no longer willing to be fed information and have message pushed at them.

The day of attracting people with good content is upon us. Those who seize the day now are likely to have a sustainable advantage in their marketplace, just like those who had a website in the early 1990s.

For push-adverse buyers, sellers have to adopt a passive method of enticement. One way is to make better use of Lead Magnets on your website and blog, though they have yet to gain their rightful place in the marketing mix. Make sure you use them to continue the conversation.

Bottom line
Buyers are more powerful now and this will continue for some time to come. If you want your marketing to be effective, take the time to understand what social media offers. Used in conjunction with traditional marketing, it will catapult your firm to market-leader in your field.

Please, leave a comment! We love to hear your thoughts: how do you feel about Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and your business? What is your experience with this subject? Have any tips to make sure we use social media more effectively? Please share your insights.

P.S. - Visit My.ComMetrics (register yourself – benchmark your blog(s) => improve performance). You can get updates for this blog on Twitter by following @ComMetrics or get a free subscription by RSS, or get new posts via email:

Article source: ComMetrics –  Social media: What is so special? ]]> http://commetrics.com/articles/tips-for-doing-it-smarter/feed/ 38 http://commetrics.com/articles/struggle-making-people-pay-for-news/ http://commetrics.com/articles/struggle-making-people-pay-for-news/#comments Wed, 20 May 2009 23:00:09 +0000 Urs E. Gattiker http://commetrics.com/?p=2062

The global downturn may have bottomed out, but shrinking advertising revenue has forced newspapers to tighten their belts:
- New York Times: 1,300 editorial staff, 54 percent of revenue from advertising, big losses in Q1 of 2009
- Financial Times: 550 editorial staff, faltering advertising in Q1 of 2009
- Tages Anzeiger: 177 editorial staff after May 2009 cuts of 50 full-time editorial positions
All newspapers are feeling the pain, most due to lower spending on real estate, automotive, help-wanted and movie or theatre ads. Will this trend continue and will ever more newspapers be filing for bankruptcy?

Things change
When I was growing up, my parents read the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Mon – Sat, three editions daily!) and the local Anzeiger des Bezirkes Horgen (thrice weekly). As a young adult in Los Angeles, there was the Los Angeles Times (daily), the Progress Bulletin (daily), the Daily Report (daily) and the Claremont Courier (twice weekly). Today, the LA Times is under bankruptcy protection, the Anzeiger des Bezirkes Horgen is part of a larger group, the Daily Report and the Progress Bulletin have merged to become the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, and the Neue Zürcher Zeitung only publishes once a day.

Trend 1: The overall market size of paying newspaper subscribers continues to shrink – fewer people are willing to take the time to read a newspaper and even fewer (especially the young) will part with their hard-earned cash for this service.

The allure of a zero
Many cities are ‘blessed’ with a free daily that is distributed at railway stations or other high-traffic public places.

We ourselves have experienced that even additional intelligence and analysis does not make some people (see image at right) willing to register in order to download content for free.

Trend 2: Resistance to paying for news in print or online is increasing, in part because it is already available for ‘free’ somewhere else.

Of course, this does not address quality or depth of reporting and insights provided through ‘free’ news vs. paid content. Nevertheless, ‘free’ is so popular that quality concerns seem too small to sway many to paying for content.

Watch the trends
To make matters even more complicated, it is becoming more difficult to easily assess whether paid content really is better than ‘free’ content. In part, this is the fault of newspapers themselves. For instance, newspapers increasingly publish supplements that carry little editorial content but much glossy advertising (e.g., How to Spend It from the Financial Times).

A similar problem is illustrated by the LA Times, which decided to provide ad space on the front page for a fake news story (see yellow highlighted story in image at left).

Such and other developments mean making a distinction between quality editorial and paid content ever tougher for subscribers. As a result, reluctance to pay for anything is growing.

Unfortunately, publishing a digital version of the newspaper does not appear to be the answer to decreasing subscriptions and lower advertising rates for the printed version of the paper. For instance, a monthly Kindle subscription for the Financial Times is $9.99, plus tax in the US. Rumour has it that Amazon wants 70 percent of such subscription revenue and the right to republish the newspaper’s stories on other portable devices. Making a mere $25 from an annual digital subscription as the content provider leaves something to be desired from a capitalist’s point of view.

Multi-platform distribution (e.g., using video, digital and print channels) is here to stay, but it will not stop media houses’ revenue-erosion. Worst is that not only did print advertising drop, but online advertising growth seems to have slowed as well in the first quarter of 2009.

Trend 3: Newspapers are becoming ever more dependent on different revenue streams, making the protection of news content from advertising interference a growing challenge.

Bottom line
A viable strategy for stopping the revenue-erosion for news providers requires addressing two key issues:

1) using content across platforms: a two-hour interview with an expert can result in different content for different platforms – besides publishing the interview in print, it can also be made available as video (in part or complete) and/or an edited version can be made available to subscribers as a free podcast; and,
2) finding different revenue streams: a newspaper can explore different ways to generate revenue in addition to advertising, such as delegate fees collected for attending workshops, conferences, cultural events, etc. as organized and promoted by the newspaper.

The above indicates that a shrinking market with ever greater competition requires innovative use of high quality content. Most importantly, the latter helps in distinguishing oneself from the free sheets that may re-print corporate press releases or syndicated stories as delivered to them by such services as Bloomberg or Reuters. Survival of the fittest in a shrinking market for paid content requires savvy and innovative use of both technology and content to produce a desirable product for the niche market of consumers who are willing to pay for what they get.

Also of interest: results from the 2009 FT ComMetrics Blog Index.

You might as well avoid some of the mistakes I made as a blogger. Here are some of the things you should avoid from doing, thereby saving yourself much time and effort

Recently somebody asked me something similar to:

Hi Urs I launched a blog called xyz and I am trying to build it up and get mor readers and traffic. Any guidance let me know please.

At the recent Going Sole conference a person who I met and will hopefully collaborate with soon asked something similar to:

Urs, how can I make sure I do neither waste time with my blog nor upset my clients with posts that are not relevant to them?

Well, learning from my mistakes will help you save time and succeed faster. Below I share some of the lessons I learned during the last four years or so.

1 – I know my target group

Nice but sometimes you just do not because things may change. Of course, defining the target group one intends to write for before starting to blog is a smart move. An example might be:

Academic: this reader may be interested to hear about the latest research results and teaching cases, methods, etc. in the discipline you have chosen (e.g., HRM or a sub-discipline such as recruiting and selection?).

Micro business: this reader might be your customers or those that you are trying to convince purchasing your product and services – so writing about the industry or matters that relate to your product without pushing the latter could be the way to go.

Whatever you do, read here about how to figure out the objectives you should set for yourself before embarking on a blogging venture:

Sensible Metrics Make a Difference or Why Less Traffic is Better

I had defined my target group – current and potential clients. To my surprise, however, people I never expected to read my social media blog began subscribing and sending me feedback or leaving comments.

So here I was two months into the ComMetrics venture. I was forced to re-analyze what I did and as a result thereof, I began re-focusing my content somewhat to satisfy this slightly more diverse readership I had. Not easy to do and I am still having a hard time.

My advice: Define your focus group but keep a careful watch. 3 months after launch, you should re-assess. Are your subscribers the people you targeted for originally, or are people with slightly different interests also part of your readership? Therefore, are some adjustments warranted?

2 – long haul – it is all about serving a need

Like all projects including doing great research or building a successful business, being a successful blogger does not happen over night.

What one can do right from the start is to decide what kind of blog one wants to launch and maintain. For instance, should it address professional things or else do you want to write about your hobbies or going on a hike with your family.

What is easiest for you? I prefer deciding what focus, subject, topics my blog will cover before I start a new blog. Most important is that I choose a subject, discipline or issue that I can be sure of I will still care very much about in 24 months. For instance, I launched EU-IST in fall 2000. It began covering information security and regulatory matters as far as they pertained to InfoSec, such as privacy or data security breach. With time, I learned from my readers that covering regulatory issues made some hard-core security geeks unhappy.

Finally I caved in and went ahead and launched EU-Regustand.

People read blogs for different purposes and our understanding is still limited how the social media domain works as explained here:

Social media – defining a concept

My advice: Time means change. Make sure that in a few months time your readership still consists of those people you wanted when you launched the blog. Changes might be required. Think about it as changing your product or releasing a software update with new or slightly different features. Nothing wrong with that if you are sure it serves a need.

Many of the EU-IST readers also subscribe to EU-Regustand, while some prefer subscribing to one of the two only. It does not matter to me; important is only that the readers get what they want.

3 – long or short-haul – it is all about branding

To succeed in the long term you have to start with something that gets your fancy. Hence, the subject you write about should still be of interest to you in a year’s time. This is why I find requiring students to write a blog for a course a bit of a waste of time. One tries to cope with the teacher’s demand to write a blog in order to get a decent grade. Unfortunately, rarely if ever does one get the feeling that the student’s heart is into it.

As well, at the beginning you may want to save yourself a few bucks or euros. One way to do this might be to have your blog hosted on such a service as Blogspot. This seems silly because the time you spend writing for your blog is surely valuable to you and your family. In fact, you could do something else than spending several hours on this project each week. So why not spend a few euros or dollars more and have your blog on your own domain?

To illustrate, our blog runs on:

http://ComMetrics.com but it could also be on:

http://blog.ComMetices.com or http://ComMetrics.com/blog

It is all about branding so you want to get the backlinks to your own domain and not somebody’ else’s. Accordingly, decide carefully and remember that free is usually not free as this story outlines below:

Before You Start a Corporate Blog, Tie Your Shoe Laces Properly

My advice: Do not mix hobby and profession unless they are the same. Focus on one and do it well. Second, host your blog on a domain that you own – branding is important.

4 – usability is the key – keep it simple stupid (KISS)

So hear you are, you know who your target group is, what you want to blog about and have found a domain name on which you want to host your blog. What about when people come to your blog. How convenient is it for them to find what they need to find?

Somewhere else, I wrote about the fact that you should offer your people to get your content via e-mail and/or RSS feed.

marketing 101 – what have high heels, cobblestone pavements & WordPress in common?

As well, people may visit your blog from around the globe. Accordingly, many may not have English as their first language. In addition, their Internet connection may not be as fast as yours may be. As well, using Java Script may slow down loading of your pages and having pictures load and change at random on your web page may not make the surf experience faster either. We explained this in more detail here:

social media – ropes to skip – Twitter – FAQ #2

Finally, the background you use is also important. Dark background might make it more difficult for readers to read your content. So why not make it easier on your visitors and use a lighter background?

My advice: Focus groups are not needed but using common sense when deciding about what you will offer and how you will do it does help a lot. If in doubt, just ask some of your readers for feedback. Keep it simple stupid – KISS.

5 – post whenever you want

At the beginning, I posted whenever I had time, felt like posting or had something interesting to say. Unfortunately, things do not work this way. Depending upon where your readers are, the weekend may not be used to surf or read blog posts in some countries.

Since I regularly study our server statistics, I discovered that, for instance, in Europe most traffic on our websites happens on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Hence, making sure that you post on those days does help.

As well, posting once every week throughout the year is far better than releasing four posts in one week for the month of June. We address this in more detail here:

4 Critical Steps Toward Better Serving Your Market Niche

Some highly successful bloggers urge us all to post each day to get ever more traffic. Unfortunately, running a business and writing thoughtful or at least helpful posts like this one takes time. Often I spend 2.5 – 3.5 hours to write and research for one post including finding the links I need to better illustrate matters.

I do not know about you, your family situation and your social life. You might have more time. Nevertheless, for me 3 posts are all I can handle and the result takes time away from other activities such as watching TV – which I can justify I think .

My advice: Post regularly one or two posts each week during Tue – Thursday. Striving for quality means posting once is better than two times rubbish.

Nevertheless, this post went out on a Saturday. During weekends sometimes an interesting post can attract traffic from quarters you might rarely ever get any. One reason could be that fewer news stories are being released on weekends. We will see if I succeeded with this one – I keep you posted.

Bottom Line

If you can address the above four points and find a solution that fits your needs, you will save yourself unnecessary work and plenty of time. Stay tuned, we have a follow-up story on this issue within a week. I will again discuss some more practical issues that we should discuss.

My Promise – Readers’ Pay Back Time

Mention my blog in your post using this link/code:

launching a blog – ropes to skip #1 – start right

The code looks like

<a href=”http://commetrics.com/?p=119″ title=”getting your blog tipped by ComMetrics” target=”_blank”>launching a blog – ropes to skip #1 – start right </a>

Drop me a line in the comments of this post with a link to your post that has the above code – link.

My promise: I will spend a couple minutes reviewing your layout, usability, SEO, and your latest posts to find something that will help tweak your website or blog.

I will make an effort to make the tip unique to every blog or website.

Most importantly, I will enter your blog into our database to track and benchmark your blog. This will give you the chance to get access to charts showing the trend of your blog’s performance in a few weeks time, free, of course.

Tidbit

You Tube video – Jaap Stronks and Urs E. Gattiker – commenting on Going Solo