I don’t normally gush, but if you want an amazing example of a broadcast journalist who truly understands the power of online community, look no further than Stephen Clark’s participation on Twitter. Stephen is a local news anchor in Detroit for ABC affiliate, WXYZ who became very active on Twitter around the same time I was ramping up to move to Seattle in 2009.

Yes, I’m back in Detroit, but I already covered this.

These days it’s relatively easy to find journalists on Twitter, but journalists who truly participate in the community with the common folk online are still pretty rare.

Stephen doesn’t just tweet, he does the unthinkable for many in mainstream media: he actually participates in the Detroit social media community! He goes to local Tweetups and other events, he replies to people, he jokes, he shares useful information, and even he once guilted me into having cupcakes sent to him (long story). I also had the pleasure of finally meeting him in real life at a recent planning meeting for Jeff Pulver’s 140 Characters Conference that will make its way to Detroit on October 20.

Over time many who follow him on Twitter started using the #backchannel hashtag to discuss what was being covered during his 11 p.m. broadcast. The other night, WXYZ aired a story about a wheelchair ramp that was stolen and sold for scrap. According to Steven, before the story was over backchannelers were volunteering to get together and build a new ramp, and the inspiration for #Backchannel v2 was born.

Community-Driven Broadcast News

What started out as a bit of fun has grown into something incredibly meaningful to the community members who participate.

“I want you to stop complaining that all you see on TV is bad news and give me some good news,” Stephen dared. Yeah, we see more than our fair share of bad news in Detroit, and bad news about Detroit. Don’t get me started on this…

How to Pitch the #Backchannel Community

Notice, Stephen is still in control of what he shares with his community — this isn’t a bad thing. However, he is willing to give the real power to the community by allowing them to vote on what stories will be compelling enough for a mainstream local news audience. From Stephen’s announcement on his blog:

Starting immediately I want you to find the stories that I will cover on Channel 7. I want you to find the good people doing good things in your community. I want you to tell me about the interesting characters and fascinating sights that make your communities special. I want you to stop complaining that all you see on TV is bad news and give me some good news.

There is just one catch, of course:

I don’t want you just to tell me about it. I want you so show me… It doesn’t have to be perfect and polished. Just take your flip camera or iPhone and shoot some video. Show us the pictures of why it is a compelling story… Post the video on YouTube or Vimeo or wherever and hashtag a synopsis to the #backchannel…

Once content is pitched to the #backchannel community, Stephen will post the content on his blog — if the community agrees that the WXYZ (channel 7) audience would find the content compelling, he will “grab my “junior correspondent’s” camera gear and shoot the story for broadcast.” If the content passes muster, he may just try to push the #backchannel story as-is to the “suits” for approval to post on the station’s website or incorporate the #backchannel footage into his official story for broadcast. Full details on Stephen Clark’s blog.

New Media: New Possibilities and Players

Is it just me, or does the penetration of the spirit of collaboration into broadcast channels make you incredibly excited for the possibilities to come? Who are the gems in your local area showing up to participate in your online communities — the ones who don’t just ask you to click on their links, but the ones who truly have some skin in the game? If you’re a journalist, how are you urging your audience to help you create?

Stephen Clark’s #Backchannel: Leveraging Twitter in Broadcast Journalism is a post from: Very Official Blog

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Not so very long ago, conversation around user experience with respect to web design centered around the notion of a website as a single destination. A sticky site built around the assumption that visitors always use the front door aka the home page was the basic approach. While many of these elements in a conversation are still relevant, when it comes to the public facing pages of any website, or the presentation layer, it’s important to think about how those pages can create relevant experiences for visitors who arrive from social sites, and visitors who wish to share your content on social sites.

Anyone who has ever clicked through from a Twitter profile to a company home page without any real context for what the company is about understands how strange that can feel. Landing on your static home page from a social network can feel like a total disconnect. Add to that fact most company about pages do little to explain what the company does, and you may not lose a customer for life, but your business will definitely lose opportunities to create a relevant experiences these individuals.

Tomorrow I will speak on a panel about the future of social media at the Internet User Experience conference in Ann Arbor, Michigan with Chris Barger, Joe LaMuraglia Shauna Nicholson and Dave Murray.

The future of social media is about deeper integration into the overall experience someone has with a brand online – this definitely includes everything from the brand’s domain to customer service calls and online communication, to sharing in social networks and offline events. For professionals in the industry, this will mean learning to dig deeper than simply “joining the conversation” to developing the necessary skills to guide web processes and strategies that accrue to achieving real business goals. This means creating processes and workflows and creating cross-functional teams to create truly integrated projects and programs.

Social media doesn’t have an ROI problem, it has an integration problem: Putting social media into a clearly defined silo ensures its failure to make an impact where it counts.

Since social networks have proven their ability to drive traffic, it’s becoming more and more important to position your site with many relevant entry points, clear calls to action and easy sharing functionality.

The nice thing is that many of the principles involved with thinking of multiple entry and exit points into a site based on relevance are the same principles good SEO strategists have been employing for years. The social component is simply adding on another layer — not just thinking about how your content can be found, but making it attractive and conducive to sharing in social networks beyond your website.

I am not a user experience design expert, but I’ve worked with a few and these are my thoughts on how social media can be considered in the user experience design process.

If I Can’t Find it How Can I Have an Experience?

For the record, SEO is still extremely important — just because social networks can drive traffic doesn’t mean you get to skip the importance of search. The last stat I read indicated that roughly 80% of all online activity begins with search. Social’s influence is on the rise, but search cannot be ignored.

Rethinking the Landing Page

Landing pages give companies unlimited opportunities to create relevant experiences for users from a variety of sources. These can be tracked and tested and easily changed to support campaigns and short term goals as well.

Content NOT Content

I find it extremely helpful when having conversations about content to create clear distinctions between what is considered static “content” versus what we call interactive “content.” To those with advertising, coding or design backgrounds, everything on a site is content. Often a social site will require different strategies for content based on whether it’s considered static or interactive. Interactive content often requires an editorial strategy while static content requires a more sales-oriented strategy. Make sense?

Share Buttons and RSS

In 2010, these should be a no-brainer. If someone wants to see a business case for adding share buttons and RSS, tell them it’s a requirement for entering the marketplace. It’s a baseline entry requirement. You need share buttons and RSS for the same reason 7-11 requires you to wear pants. The sign says no shoes, no shirt, no service because in this day and age pants are a given. So are share buttons and RSS. This battle has already been fought and won. Let’s move on, but be nicer about it than I am here.

Optimize for Sharing

Not all content automatically shares well just because you install a button. Test how well your content looks when you share items to places like Facebook. Does the thumbnail image come up, or does the site pull up the image of a banner ad when you attempt to share the article? Does every piece of interactive content on your site have its own URL? Do images, documents and videos offer embed codes? Each social network has published tips on how to optimize your images and other content for their particular site. I’m not linking to the information because it often changes and moves. If you have trouble locating good resources for this, let me know and I’ll see if I can help.

Don’t Force the Relationship

Nothing says “I lack confidence” in my own attractiveness than a registration requirement or one of those defector detectors that pop up when you hit your browser’s back button. Get better at asking for people to opt into your content. If the numbers are indicating a lack of interest, then change your content strategy. Nothing helps take the emotion and unqualified opinions out of conversations like good, strong data :)

Microsites and vanity URLs or Social Sites and Shortened URLs?

The microsite used to be a given, but many are rethinking this approach in favor of using social networks for similar campaign-style marketing. There are pros and cons to each, but social tools offer more flexibility and eat up a smaller piece of the budget than simply building from scratch each time.

What Else?

This is the quick list I was able to jot down in my notes prior to tomorrow’s panel discussion at IUE10. If you have other ideas on making user experience more social, and vice versa, please let me know. I know many of you are skilled in user experience design and are very clued into how best to use social media. Please help us bridge the communication gap for me and others here and give us your tips in the comments.

Photo Credit: annotated

How to Socialize User Experience Design: Thinking Outside Your Website is a post from: Very Official Blog

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In a recent customer satisfaction report popular sites like Facebook and YouTube fared worse than Wikipedia even though the majority of respondents admitted visiting the other social sites more often. Twitter was notably absent from the data, but (just a guess) may have been included in the “all others” category outside of those sites named directly.

For some perspective on the lack of consumer satisfaction, Facebook beat out MySpace by only one point, 64 to 63, on a 100-point scale. The study, conducted by Foresee Results, scored social sites according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, which is used to measure customer satisfaction on everything from athletic shoes to pet food and credit unions. The aggregate social media site score placed it between airlines and property/casualty insurance.

While I think there may be a lot missing in how satisfaction is calculated on the web, since a site’s popularity has to do with the fact that the people are there. If all my friends left Facebook I would have no reason to visit the site ever again.

Flipping the Switch from Free to Commercial

One major theme found in the dissatisfaction of social sites is that the strategy of moving from a free site without advertising to a commercial site WITH advertising is a tricky maneuver.

Commercialization of social media sites may be impacting satisfaction. The strategy of starting out as a free service with no advertising or revenue source is an effective way to build traffic and loyalty, as is evidenced across all of these sites. However, starting out that way also trained customers to expect an experience on these sites that is relatively unencumbered by advertising and commercialization. As most of these sites have transitioned to generating revenue, the resulting commercialization has brought severe downward pressure on customer satisfaction, which opens the door for challengers.

Finding the right balance between making money through intrusive advertising and satisfying customers is critical, especially in the social media sphere. We expect to see ads on a news web- site like CNN.com, but our expectations on a social media site are for far less intrusive marketing and commercialization. Wikipedia’s non-profit model has allowed it to avoid the path of com- mercialization, and it is no coincidence that it has the highest satisfaction in this category. Of course sites like Facebook and MySpace need to make money, but the evolution from free content to a revenue model needs to be planned very carefully and executed flawlessly, while keeping in mind consumer expectations and needs at every turn. A big part of meeting those expectations is managing them from very early on in the maturity of the business model.

Francois Gossieaux has been saying this for years — flipping the switch from a social relationship to a transactional relationship, and vice versa, is nearly impossible; human beings seem to be hard-wired against making that move.

It’s About the People, Stupid

The question I can’t help but ask is, if people are unsatisfied with the site, but the site remains popular, how important is customer satisfaction? How important are social sites if they’re just the box we play in to connect with others? YouTube may be the exception here since the primary focus for most users is to share content, or host content so they can share it elsewhere.

What Does it Mean to be Satisfied?

I really wish studies like this provided access to the battery of questions or actual transcripts of interviews. I can’t help but think that satisfaction with the site isn’t colored with other feelings of guilt for spending too much time on the site, fear over the privacy issues touted in the media, a misunderstanding of what the site is supposed to provide… I just can’t help but think that satisfaction with a site I use to connect with other humans might be measured differently than my level of satisfaction with a pair of running shoes.

Since I was stymied by the results of this survey, I decided to ask others on Twitter:

1. 
   ShannonPaul What does it mean when the most popular social networks have the lowest satisfaction scores among users? 20 Jul 2010 from web
2. 
   AlbertMaruggi @ShannonPaul it means they probably should use social media to address their customer satisfaction issues, DOH : ) 20 Jul 2010 from HootSuite in reply to ShannonPaul
3. 
   sparker9 @ShannonPaul Strongly suggests that quality is not where you expect to find it, and popularity is overvalued. 20 Jul 2010 from web in reply to ShannonPaul
4. 
   PhilGerb @ShannonPaul those networks have the highest user expectations? 20 Jul 2010 from Seesmic for Android in reply to ShannonPaul
5. 
   RonPloof @ShannonPaul It means that something has to change. 20 Jul 2010 from TweetDeck in reply to ShannonPaul
6. 
   webby2001 @ShannonPaul Only that they’ve grown beyond their early passionate users. I’d be shocked if it were they other way around. 20 Jul 2010 from TweetDeck in reply to ShannonPaul
7. 
   PhilGerb @ShannonPaul or that they have the highest percentage of responsive people who take the time and care enough to complain? 20 Jul 2010 from Seesmic for Android in reply to ShannonPaul
8. 
   adamcohen @ShannonPaul I think it means no one has come up with the ideal product yet, and more innovation will come from those who can figure it out. 20 Jul 2010 from TweetDeck in reply to ShannonPaul
9. 
   BaselinerEY @ShannonPaul I too wonder. My satisfaction is waning because of the quality of content. People are more insightful elsewhere. 20 Jul 2010 from TweetDeck in reply to ShannonPaul
10. 
    DanaCadman @ShannonPaul I believe it means people aren’t finding online what they r looking 4. Q: What r people looking 4 online? 20 Jul 2010 from web in reply to ShannonPaul

— this quote was brought to you by quoteurl

What are We Looking For?

I contemplate these things because as someone who tries to help businesses and individuals make sense of how to connect online, I often wonder if anyone really knows what they want.

Are people in social networks really unsatisfied with the sites themselves, or with each other?

Photo Credit: Leo Reynolds

Disclosure: My employer is a customer of Foresee Results.

Why Do the Most Popular Social Networks Fail to Satisfy Consumers? is a post from: Very Official Blog

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Despite so much noise about how social media has radically changed the rules of PR and marketing, the fascination with social media influencers is proof of a persistent desire in our industry to take the same old shotgun approach to publicity and dress it up in a new media veneer.

In the influencer game, everyone with high enough readership, or an audience large enough to be considered influential gets pitched for campaigns without a lot of thought to whether the message they’re asking these influencers to deliver is relevant to those in his/her network. Even Virgin America is jumping on the social media influencer bandwagon with free tickets to what it considers influential Twitter users.

Doesn’t this dance sound familiar? Simply pitch everyone with a soapbox tall enough to carry your message to their audience?

Stop Schmoozing and Find People Who Actually Care

It doesn’t matter how much influence someone wields if the message is irrelevant to their audience.

When this happens, the audience predictably tunes out. Everyone loses. A friend of mine once described this phenomenon with the analogy of tapping an influential hippie to talk to their audience about deodorant. Silly, yes, but you get the point.

When a message is relevant enough, and the delivery is passionate enough, that relevance leads to resonance, which can actually create mass influence. Martin Luther King, Jr., Cindy Sheehan and Michael Moore are all examples of individuals who were basically nobodies without a relevant message, whether or not you agree with their position or politics. Many of the people who influence me on a daily basis do so through being relevant (none of them are famous for the sake of being famous). When it resonates, I listen.

Influence may be able to create short-term buzz, but a relevant message can spark a movement.

I’m not recommending you ignore people who are influential, but journalists have been preaching the gospel of relevance to PR practitioners for years. There is nothing new about switching players in the same old game.

Social media tools offer new ways for companies and brands to increase perceived relevance with consumers, journalists and stakeholders of many stripes. The fascination with influencers in social media marketing seems downright, well… retro.

Little Bloggers Grow Up Fast

This is a message I received loud and clear from Liz Strauss a couple years ago. Since I’m only two years into publishing this blog, you might consider me a testament to her theory. Make friends with those online participants and content creators who truly care about your company, your mission and your brand, or who are passionate about something aligned with the mission of your business (some might call this common ground). That may not get the short term spike in online buzz you’re looking for, but you may just spark a real, lasting movement.

At the very least, shouldn’t we all be thinking about both influence AND relevance in equal measure?

Photo Credit: MightyBoyBrian

Why Relevance Trumps Influence in Every Type of Media (Not Just Social) is a post from: Very Official Blog

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Social media marketing relies more on listening than broadcasting for good reason: Broadcasting doesn’t have the same impact as traditional media channels, and listening helps us measure and adapt to become more relevant to consumers.

There’s a great quote from Jim Farley, Ford’s Group V.P. of Global Marketing, contained in the video posted below about the end game with social media marketing that says: “You can’t just say it, you have to get the people to say it to each other.” [Emphasis added]

This is why measuring output is the wrong approach in social media marketing, although many might extend that argument to all digital PR and marketing in general.

It’s never about what we say in social networks about our own efforts, but about what others say about us. Is our product good enough? Is our branding, positioning, messaging, etc. sticky enough for ordinary folks to talk positively about us?

This video, Social Media ROI: Socialnomics, has some great case examples of brands and individuals who’ve experienced a wide range of success with social media marketing.

Establishing Relevance

Focusing on what others say about your company, your industry and your communities can help your business take the right steps to become more relevant to its stakeholders. It’s not about simply looking for opportunities to drop messaging into ordinary conversation, but about finding shared interests, shared benefits and shared rewards for others in the communities where your brand interacts.

How do we measure? We focus on the conversations, intentions (search), web traffic, downloads and conversions, while keeping in mind that all of that data is only ever a snapshot of a much bigger picture that includes offline interactions that we may never be able to capture.

The brands mentioned in the above video offer encouraging examples of some great outcomes with social media marketing. If they only told us their output, how impressive would that be? Think about it.

The new way to shape public opinion doesn’t rest on our ability to broadcast in these new channels, but on how we use new channels to connect and build relevance.

Make sense?

How are you working to shift the focus in your company from internal to external? From output to outcomes?

Socialnomics video by Erik Qualman. Follow @equalman on Twitter.

Note: I found this video on a great post about social media mythbusting by Lisa Barone over on Outspoken Media. It’s a great post chock-full of useful information. When you’re done here, you should check that out.

Social Media Measurement Should Focus on Outcomes, Not Output is a post from: Very Official Blog

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The problem with any new function in a business is deciding how it fits with existing operations. This could be the reason we see so many social media programs that operate in a sort of silo apart from other outreach.

The following list of questions and resources should provide a comprehensive roadmap for developing a strong social media strategy with clear organizational alignment. This is going to be a long post, so let’s get started!

The Foundation

1. Is Your Social Media Presence an Experiment?

If you’re not the kind of business that is open to experimenting with social media, skip to question #2. It’s really okay if you’re planning to experiment with social media in your business as long as the others in your business or client company understand that you’re experimenting. There are way different expectations when what you’re doing is clearly an experiment. There is also something positive to be said for exploring what is possible with something new and trying some different tactics before developing a clear plan with explicit goals and objectives. Having an experimental strategy is okay as long as everyone is on the same page. However, having a clear sense of the business strategy and needs of the organization should still help inform your approach.

2. What is Your Company’s Overarching Business Strategy?

Is your business about innovation, or being a fast follower in the marketplace? Is it about providing the best value or the best service? What is the overall value proposition? If you don’t know the answers to these questions, start digging. Or, if you’re the founder or CEO of a startup, think about the answers to these questions before launching a social media presence UNLESS you’re experimenting, but it’s good to know you’re experimenting (rather than failing). If you don’t know who you are, how will I know who you are? Beyond making sure there’s alignment, identifying the overall business strategy of your organization will help you prioritize where you should start — whether marketing could use some extension into social sites, or whether HR is struggling to recruit necessary talent.

3. What is the Parent Strategy?

Social media strategy should typically be a subset of an existing strategy — will yours be a subset of an HR, marketing, PR, customer service strategy, etc? Stand alone social media strategies tend to either operate in a silo — or naturally creep into other areas of business. The natural growth into existing areas of business can often create conflict over who should own, what budget should be responsible for operations, etc. If you’re experimenting, it’s good to think about how conflicts should be handled should this natural creep arise. If you’re planning strategically, it’s probably better to do your homework up front and clearly prioritize how social media will ideally spread into other areas of operations and make recommendations according to this prioritization schedule. Most social media proponents can readily identify several areas of business that can benefit from some form of social media integration — customer service, public relations, marketing, human resources, etc. Although there may be plenty of opportunities, it’s best to prioritize where to act first based on the dictates of the overarching business strategy. If your company prides itself on innovation, marketing might be the best place to focus social media integration, or maybe  start inside the organization to speed up collaboration. Companies focused on superior service might naturally lean toward beginning with customer service. Companies with a long sales cycle may benefit from applying social media strategy to public relations as a way to soften the market and increase brand awareness, share of voice, etc. For companies in a short sales cycle, marketing would probably be a better fit… Make sense?

4. How Will Social Media Boost the Effectiveness of the Parent Strategy?

This piece done right should provide the meat of your business case for allocating resources and identify which budget should get tapped for this social media strategy. As a side note, this piece should also consider the internal audience. How social media savvy is your organization as a whole? Depending on the current level of understanding, you may need to include some guidelines for approach that may be considered industry best practices in order to clearly manage expectations and explain how the company’s approach needs to be different in social channels, and how it will remain the same. Other items to consider in this section:

• Include data to support your thesis that social media will indeed boost the effectiveness of the parent strategy.
• Explain the social dynamics at play here and how they will ultimately contribute to the success of the organization. A social presence often requires giving something meaningful to the public while asking for little-to-nothing in return. Explain the benefits of sharing, promoting others and reciprocity… even if it seems obvious.
• Put some skin in the game! If you want some of the budget, get ready to take on some of the work. Assign part of the parent strategy goals directly to your social media strategy
• Select the RIGHT parent strategy goals for your social presence and assign social media-specific sub-goals. Outline exactly how achieving social media goals will accrue toward the goals of the parent strategy. For instance, if you’re assuming a piece of the sales goals, make sure to outline how social interactions will accrue to an actual sale — and be clear about how the channel should NOT be used i.e. to solicit sales directly or pump marketing messages into social channels all day long.

Taking on responsibility for existing goals will also help determine how much of the budget your efforts should receive. Can you make that work, or will you need to negotiate to increase the budget of the parent strategy? Adding on extra budget specifically for social media might work best, but consider carefully whether a stand-alone social media budget will make sense in the long term as use of social technology becomes more integrated into existing business practices.

Defining the Scope of Conversation*

5. What feeling do we want to inspire in others through our interactions?

What’s the takeaway for them beyond a “positive brand experience.” Get specific. If your brand is fun, it’s probably a good idea to extend that spirit of fun into your social web presence.

6. Will we be proactive in our conversations? Reactive? Both?

If you’re using social media to address customer service issues, a reactive strategy might be best unless you’re incorporating a loyalty or rewards program into the strategy. This can be flexible, but there should be primary and secondary purposes for the presence on the social web for branded profiles.

7. What are the on-brand messages we hope to deliver?

These should account for fewer than 20% of your interactions, but this is an important 20%. Keep in mind that these key messages should be adapted (not copied word for word) for establishing a point of view on the social web.

8. How will changes and updates to the on-brand messages be communicated within the team?

Staying on the same page is important for establishing a consistent presence and preventing mis-communication or misinformation from spreading in social networks.

9. How will on-brand messages be adapted for conversation in social networks. Examples are helpful.

As Phil Gomes says, “Having a ‘message’ is fine, it’s ‘messaging’ that sucks

.”

9. What types of messages or updates can we provide that are off-brand, but still relevant?

There is still a relevance quotient that needs to be considered with respect to a branded social media presence. When you open up conversation to anything other than your brand, or give carte blanche to promoting others in general, you’re no longer focused on the wants and needs of your customers, but on the interpretation of the individual responsible for interacting on behalf of the brand. There should be room for improvisation, but the purpose behind the presence should not just be open to anyone’s interpretation. People follow branded social profiles for different reasons than they follow people. Some of the same principles apply, but not all of them. The question for anyone manning the front lines of a brand’s social presence is to consider points of conversation that are a good fit with the brand’s image, company stakeholders AND meaningful to its consumers? These off-brand (but within scope) messages should account for more than 80% of interactions on the social web.

10. What types of updates or issues are off limits for discussion?

How will you respond if a customer/stakeholder/community member initiates a conversation around a topic that is off limits for discussion? Do you explain why you cannot engage in this type of discourse? Ignore it? How will you handle hecklers? Trolls?

11. Will the company seek to leverage personal employee profiles?

Word of mouth marketing and recruiting efforts in social networks often work best with employee support. How will you ask for employee support in social networks without making it a requirement? How will that communication be handled? How will you respect the rights of employees and encourage willful participation? Many companies still do not allow employee access to social media sites — is this something that will need to be addressed? *Scope of conversation should only be applied to branded presences on the social web (not personal social profiles)

Forrester’s POST method

12. People

Who are you trying to reach? Assess the social media use and conversation of your customers, potential customers or other stakeholders the parent strategy needs to reach. There is a lot of existing data about who uses social media as well as monitoring services that will help you get a clear snapshot of online conversations related to your parent strategy’s objectives

13.  Objectives

Define a subset of objectives related specifically to social media and explain how they will be measured with respect to the goals of the parent strategy

14. Strategy

The missing ingredient in most social media strategies is actual strategy. Don’t skimp here. Outline exactly how the approach in the social strategy will bridge the gap between customer/stakeholder needs, existing online conversations and the company’s positioning. A well-conceived scope of conversation should come in handy here (see points 5 through 11). A good social strategy should work to increase the relevance of the brand, product or service for the people its trying to reach. How will yours accomplish this?

15. Technology

Select the technology that will help you create alignment between the people you are trying to reach. This is the place to identify specific tactics i.e. a Facebook page, a blog, a branded community, an ambassador program for influential bloggers, a Twitter profile, Foursquare loyalty program, etc. More on Forrester’s original POST method

Measurement and Reporting

16. What actions should your presence encourage?

Will you be looking primarily at increases in brand mentions? On-site engagement? Branded keyword search activity? More web traffic? Newsletter subscriptions? Pick two primary actions to focus on — they should be in natural alignment with the particular objectives of your social media and parent strategies. For more guidance on what to measure and when, see Amber Naslund’s three step series on social media measurement.

17. How will these actions accrue?

Increased activity is a way of showing early signs of life. Social media often pays off with a sort of balloon payment — short term growth tends to be spotty and small, with a bit spike in activity at a certain point that grows exponentially over time. Identifying the actions that will eventually accrue toward accomplishment of the social media strategy goals and objectives AND parent strategy goals and objectives will help keep everyone on the same page and prevent premature calculation errors

18. How will insights be shared?

How will social media insights be shared with others on the team? Department? Other departments? Executive leadership? Will you create a dashboard? Send out weekly reports? Monthly reports? This step not only keeps everyone on the same page — it helps facilitate natural discovery within the company. When presented with social media data, people in other disciplines and departments start to get curious, which inspires real learning beyond required training and professional development.

Creation and Deployment

19. Will you need development resources for launching a new site or blog?

What will the requirements be for site or application development? (don’t forget about mobile compatibility) Do you have in-house resources or will you need to put together an RFP? You may need to team up with a product manager, or a project manager to help create technical requirements and get on a development team’s schedule. Don’t forget, landing pages and other elements highlighting your social media presence may need to be incorporated into your existing company website.

20. Will you need creative resources?

A blog, new website, social profile background images, etc. may require some design work to customize the branded presence. You may also need to resize existing logos or re-orient them so they render properly on your branded social profiles. Many companies also create avatar badges for employees to use with their personal profile picture.

21. Will you need editorial content for your blog? An editorial calendar?

22. What is your timeline for launch?

Is there a natural lifecycle to this strategy? Is it long-term or short-term?

23. Prioritize needs vs. wants for launch.

What needs to be in place before launch, what elements are more iterative or okay to add later?

Education and Process Definition

24. Will there be a need for training?

How will training be handled to make sure everyone on your team is up for the task? Who will be responsible for training?

25. Are there company policies or regulatory processes that need consideration?

Many industries require prior approval for certain types of interaction as well as archiving and the use of legal disclaimers. How will you work within the rules? What will the workflow look like in order to adhere to these guidelines?

26. What about job descriptions and accountability?

If employees see social media responsibilities as something outside their actual job, how will accountability be encouraged?

Flexibility and Iteration

27. How will you re-evaluate your existing strategy?

Having a social media presence often has unexpected benefits, but to leverage them, you may need to be opportunistic, and up to date on current events and trends. How will you formalize the need to constantly re-evaluate your existing strategy without undermining its relevance?

28. How do you plan to adapt to the shifting demands of the social web where your company participates?

A social presence benefits from being responsive to the needs of the community stakeholders. This may require you to dig into issues outside of your department on occasion. How will the importance of answering these questions in a timely manner be prioritized in areas outside of your department or business unit?

Want More?

Here is a list of other resources for developing your social media strategy, or avoiding some of the common mistakes:

From Social Media to Social Strategy by Umair Haque

Develop a Social Media Strategy in Seven Steps by Jay Baer (he’s better at brevity than I am :)

5 Reasons Why Social Media Failed You by CT Moore

The 3 Types of Social Media Strategy by Tac Anderson

Social Media Strategy from A to Z by Tamar Weinberg

The Key to Developing a Social Media Strategy by Jason Falls

Real Strategy Should Align and Accrue

Still with me? I chose to beef up the first section of this post because I think each of those steps are important for setting up your social media strategy for successful integration into business processes and held up to the same standards of accountability as other departments and initiatives. Social media needs all hands on deck in one way or another. Preparing others with this expectation will help in the long run and prevent a lot of misunderstanding. Social media tends to erode operational silos whether anyone likes it or not. Silos and complicated hierarchies inhibit most businesses’ ability to thrive on the social web. However, a good social media strategy with organizational alignment should not only outline the actions that need doing, but also explain how we need to be in order to be successful. Social media is anything but a one-size-fits-all solution, but I hope having this type of comprehensive check list of questions and resources would give anyone looking to integrate social media in their business a helpful guide. At the very least, I hope this post helps get you thinking about true integration and organizational alignment beyond a bolt-on type of social media strategy. I realize there’s a lot of heavy lifting here, but I can see the payoff in this approach. Can you? Update: June 4, 2010 – Sergio Balegno stopped by and provided me with a link to the MarketingSherpa Social Marketing ROAD Map Handbook [PDF]  he helped develop. The report is available for purchase, but the excerpt alone has a lot of valuable information. Photo Credit: Yes, i’m guccio

How To Develop a Social Media Strategy: A Roadmap for Integration is a post from: Very Official Blog

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Traditional advertising gets a lot of criticism in the social media space. Many say ads don’t work anymore on an increasingly savvy audience, but what if that’s only part right? Sure, fewer people may actually click, but what if examining the overall effectiveness of campaigns sometimes requires a longer view?

What if Impressions Really DO Matter?

Like having interactions in social networks, encountering ads also becomes a part of our online experience. Just because I don’t click on an ad doesn’t mean that ad didn’t leave an impression. What if we only think we ignore ads online? A report from GroupM Search and comScore released late last year confirms this idea.

Search reveals consumer intent, but a branded social media presence, and advertising that includes paid search help shape that consumer intent.

The report found consumers who were exposed to a brand's social media presence as well as paid search advertising were more likely to search on keywords associated with the lower part of the funnel, like the company name and names of products

It seems that no matter how much we ask, some consumers simply prefer not to click. However, when they do encounter something of interest, they’ll instead Google the name of the company or product. The results resonate with me because I am this type of consumer.

Rather than focusing on what department should own social media, maybe it’s better to think about how social media can compliment other marketing and advertising activities. Below is a list of my ideas on how to align a social media presence with other types of advertising.

How to Influence Discovery: Aligning Social with Paid Search and Advertising

1. Find out what search terms your company or product teams are bidding on and integrate them into descriptions/bios on social profiles
2. Upload images of display ads into Flickr (lots of photo sharing sites out there, I prefer Flickr) and tag with the search terms the company or product teams are bidding on. Use those images in blog posts or Facebook updates about current promotions
3. Coordinate backgrounds of social profiles to reflect creative elements in recent display campaigns
4. Include links to social profiles in display ads when possible
5. Write blog posts on current promotions without being salesy – simply give the facts of the promotion and link to the pre-sell, or landing page for the promotion
6. Embed TV commercials on YouTube, or even Flash animations used in online ads. There are actually people who think advertising is interesting and they may just happen to be at the outer rim of your funnel.
7. Blog about your new commercial and embed it in the blog post, then ask for customer feedback.
8. Take still shots of your TV or animation and upload those to Flickr tagged with keywords your paid search team is bidding on

This list by no means applies to everyone at every time, but rather is meant to spark the conversation and get you thinking about how you can build a more integrated presence for consumers. Notice this post really isn’t about the conversation or approach piece – that’s a different set of tactics for a different post.

But What About Measurement?

There are many ways to look at multitouch measurement, but if nothing else, look at increased branded keyword search over time. If you’re coordinating this effort with creative redesigns, new campaigns and design refreshes you may even see little peaks in this behavior, but you might not.

You may simply see a nice, steady upward trend. Nothing wrong with that… just make sure you have a site that can convert that new traffic.

To Be Continued…

Do you have other ideas you would like to see added to this list? How can you integrate all your marketing and communications activities so rather than competing for money and glory inside the company, they work in harmony to attract the right consumers?

8 Ways to Integrate Social Media and Online Advertising is a post from: Very Official Blog

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I decided to write this simply because SO much has changed since I started using Twitter more than two years ago, and I can’t help thinking getting started must be different now than it was back then.

It may be hard to believe, but back in 2008, the biggest celebrities using Twitter were Guy Kawasaki and Leo Laporte. Since then, I’ve taught several others how to use the service, but I can’t help but wonder how different it is for those just getting started today.

I realize many people who read this blog are active Twitter users, but I thought some of you might have insight I don’t. If you are new to Twitter, I am especially interested to hear your questions and frustrations. It’s a much noisier place than it was back when I was introduced to the site.

In many ways, Twitter is a lot like other social places online — I tend to think if you’ve been a blog contributor, member on an active message board, forum or gaming community, you’re likely to get the hang of Twitter pretty quickly. However, learning to navigate the social web is still new and intimidating for most people — especially now that Twitter updates are aggregated all kinds of places online, including the Library of Congress. Today, Twitter feels more like a stage in many ways, than a simple place to talk and share online.

How brands use Twitter is a different discussion altogether, although some of my Twitter updates on my personal Twitter account may fall under the category of “brand management” or “company promotion,” this is only because it’s nearly impossible to separate personal from professional personas on the web. What I would like to discuss here is how to get started today with a personal Twitter account.

Since I’m asking you to share, I thought it might be helpful if I shared how I use Twitter at the moment for personal and professional purposes.

How I Started Using Twitter in 2008: Discovery and Participation

• Followed online publications and breaking news accounts
• Searched for people in my local area to follow
• Followed people who had a lot of followers
• Followed people who were involved in the tech community – bloggers, developers, etc.
• Followed other PR pros and the people they were interacting with
• Followed people who would post something interesting on the public timeline
• Posted links to articles and other items of interest
• Asked questions about things others would post
• Asked for advice from others who seemed to be getting a lot out of Twitter
• Commented on blog posts others were linking to from Twitter
• I didn’t worry about whether people followed me back or not, although when I first started getting followers, I did feel pretty excited about that and would do my best to check out their blogs/websites to learn more about them
• I didn’t follow people en masse. I did so over time — maybe 20 or so on a given day, when I felt inclined to do some poking around

How I Use Twitter in 2010: What’s in it for THEM?

For better or worse, my use of Twitter is much less about discovering new people than it is about keeping up with established contacts and the flow of information. I’m lucky that more people tend to follow me, and I can discover new people by reciprocating. I also tend to follow more people I meet in real life since more of them are also on Twitter.

• Keep up with personal and professional contacts – @replies, retweets and some general chatter*
• Share links I find useful, interesting or funny – Or, links I think others following me might find useful, interesting or funny
• Share links to things I’ve written, or articles written about me (but make sure I share LOTS of other things, too)
• Share links and information about events I may be attending, interested in, or giving a presentation
• Share links to resources and tools that make the work of social media easier. Since I work in social media, this is my sweet spot, you might do well to share links to resources and tools used in your line of work. For example, I regularly share links for FeedMyInbox with other social media professionals working with companies in regulated industries that need to archive information on branded social profiles. Since most social networks have RSS feeds for profile information, FeedMyInbox turns any new update posted to a social profile into an individual email message. Long story short, this easily integrates social media archiving into an existing email archive, rather than creating a need for an entirely new archiving solution.
• Share links to job opportunities I think others might find interesting
• Answer questions about the company I’m working for*
• Share links about, or created by the company I work for*
• Search for relevant keywords related to my interests –  I search for industry and topical references regularly. Google’s aggregation of Twitter updates into real-time search often saves me an extra step these days, but I often search for terms when I’m on Twitter as a quick pulse check.
• Retweet links others post on Twitter that I find interesting, or think others will find interesting. I often comment on articles posted to Twitter before retweeting when I have time and interest.
• Answer questions others post on Twitter — informal polls, requests for help, etc.
• Chat it up – Twitter is full of many organized chats that take place at regular times related to specific topics. Chats are tracked using hashtags i.e. #journchat, #IMCchat (integrated marketing chat), #blogchat. etc. #Journchat was started by Sarah Evans (@PRSarahEvans) as a means of bringing PR professionals and journalists together on Twitter to discuss matters related to their industries, and how they might work together better. Here is an open list of current Twitter chats on Google Docs (If yours isn’t there, feel free to add it to the list).
• Make friends and get smart — when someone posts something funny or something that resonates with me, I might choose to chime in or ask them about their point of view. I even get into some pretty heated, yet respectful, debates this way. I don’t think networking always needs to be insipid cheerleading, but can involve spirited discussions full of disagreements. This may or may not be your style — I just enjoy a challenging discussion even if it means I might eat crow from time to time.

*Any time I post information about an employer or any type of sponsored information, I disclose my relationship to the company. This has always been a tenet of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association ethics, but the FTC decided to make it the law as of of December 1, 2009.

Your Turn

If you’re just getting started today, how do you do things differently? In 2008, there wasn’t the amount of spam, or aggressive follower accounts, or even big name celebrities on Twitter. The only journalist I knew of on Twitter at that time was Jim Long. While I think others use Twitter differently than I do, I do think some ways are more effective than others to build your online presence — especially when you don’t have the built-in brand equity or social capital of a global consumer brand or international celebrity.

I realize I didn’t even touch on the applications and tools like URL shorteners. Is anyone still confounded by the actual mechanics of posting, or are people more hung up on the performance aspect associated with online interaction?

Do the tactics I listed above still hold true, or are things a little different for those just getting started today? What do you tell someone who is just starting out today?

Photo by Clevercupcakes

How is Being New to Twitter Different in 2010? is a post from: Very Official Blog

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It’s official: I recently accepted a new position as social media manager with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan (BCBSM) — and that move means a return home to Detroit.

I’ll be wrapping things up here in Seattle for the remainder of this month and starting the new role at BCBSM June 7.

As excited as I am to enter this new phase, it’s also bittersweet. I’ve made many great friends in Seattle and I will miss people I worked with for more than a year at PEAK6 Online in the Seattle and Chicago offices. I’ve learned so much this last year, and I’m thankful to have had the chance to attend Gnomedex and several Social Media Club events in Seattle and Chicago as a result of so much time spent in each city.

Leaving is never easy, especially when it involves a cross-country relocation, but returning to the Detroit community and family is something my husband and I are excited about. Plus, I know many of the people I connect with on a regular basis at social media events, blogs and Twitter will still be there.

I’m also extremely excited to begin my new role. What struck me most throughout this process, is that the BCBSM organization is heading down the social media path for the right reasons. They see it as an opportunity to better connect with all stakeholders, including consumers, so they can serve the needs of each. I think that’s very cool!

Working for a nonprofit healthcare organization also means I’ll get to learn all about social media communications with respect to HIPAA regulation — the challenges and solutions. As I continue to learn and grow professionally, I will look forward to sharing what I learn along the way here with you.

The past few years have been a wild ride and I am grateful you’re still here with me, no matter where I choose to call home.

Photo by ifmuth

A New Role and a Return Home to Detroit is a post from: Very Official Blog

For every person who leaves a comment or answers a survey or poll question, there are roughly 99 who do nothing in response — they don’t share, comment or link to your content from their blog.

For most people online, social networking is still a spectator sport.

We can definitely reason that the participation on any given website or social network influences those who do not participate, but how they may be influenced by that interaction could vary more than we think.

Are Lurkers the Dark Matter of the Internet?

SAS CMO Jim Davis and I had a great discussion at the SAS Global Forum last week in Seattle where the company launched its new Social Media Analytics platform. [Disclosure: I was invited by the company to attend the event free of charge and they fed me dinner.]

Since SAS is all about data, the company sees the enormous potential for business intelligence within amount of data people like you and I are generating via the social web. But, I wanted to talk about what we can’t see in social networks and my concern that some companies might try to exert too much control over sentiment even if it wasn’t in their best interest.

It was an interesting conversation and one I won’t soon forget. The answer, it seems, is organization-wide integration of data.

Even though social media is extremely important for a company’s online presence and their ability to adapt to their operations to the demand of the real-time web, there are still way more people consuming than creating.

Most estimates conclude 1% of community members contribute content. I believe this percentage is higher when we think of sharing links and other social behaviors, but the majority are just searching and consuming.

How do we measure the impact all of this data must be having on the silent majority, aka the lurkers, and vice versa?

How Much Negative Sentiment is Actually a Bad Thing?

We all love a good debate. Lovefests between like minded individuals get boring fast, especially for third-party obsevers. Even the Brady Bunch would occasionally scrap.

Conflict can sometimes have the potential to keep things interesting, as long as it illustrates a greater issue or larger truth (and sometimes even when it doesn’t). Getting everyone possible to express positive sentiments about your company, product or yourself isn’t always desirable, but finding the right people to be customers, stakeholders and partners is, right?

My point here is that sometimes when we’re online, we forget we’re on stage. Although we can focus on the interaction, the interaction is public and potentially long lasting.

How much value will lurkers observe in social interactions that net nothing but good vibes? Will it be real enough for them to trust?

My worry isn’t about long-standing negative impact to reputation (something I think still keeps too many businesses sidelined with regard to online social interaction), but rather how this focus on changing sentiment might eclipse real business goals. Can businesses get comfortable with having a point of view and tolerating divergent opinions?

If your company’s goal is to be popular, great. If your goal is to be successful, well that’s probably something different.

Even Apple gets a little hate, and for good reason.

Mentions or Impressions, or Both?

The lurkers are why I think having integrated analytics that get beyond one-to-one measurement and delve into multitouch capabilities is crucial.

Silos don’t work with respect to communications OR data.

These lurkers may not be leaving comments or uploading profile pics, but they may be doing things like purchasing, opting into premium subscriptions and conducting purchase-related research for things they will ultimately buy offline.

Research suggests lurkers may also do things like search for branded keywords once they’ve encountered some of your marketing information in search, social networks, or encountered some of your display ads. This means they’re much more likely to search for the name of your company, product or service after encountering your marketing messages elsewhere online. If we attribute this behavior to search alone, we’re missing a big piece of the puzzle.

Maybe online ads really do work, just not always in the way we think they should (via a click).

Chart Courtesy of the Project For Excellence In Journalism and the Pew Internet & American Life Project

I’m just thinking out loud here, but even if everything online is ultimately measurable, business is still driven by human behavior; and human behavior is rarely understood in a one-to-one measurement where the causes and effects line up perfectly like dominos.

Digging Deeper

No matter how hard we try, data will never be a substitute for insight, and forcing sentiment change should never be a business goal, especially when it goes against the overall strategy.

I think it’s time we stop looking for easy answers and quick wins with social media and start asking better questions. What do you think?

Photo Credit: Argonne National Laboratory

What Most Online Metrics Won’t Show You is a post from: Very Official Blog

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