I try not to be one to jump on band wagons, which is why I’ve totally left the whole Google Buzz nonsense alone. That said, when I think there are other points to be made about situations involving companies, consumers and social media, if its a band wagon that’s rolling by then I’ll gladly step on, even momentarily. Such is the case with SouthWest Airlines, Kevin Smith and what we’ll have now forever refer the situation to as “FattyGate”

Does Size Really Matter?

Does the size of your Twitter following account for anything (1.6 million +)? How about the fact that you not only tweet, you blog and you even have a podcast? Add on top, you’ve acquired a cult following, write screenplays, produce and direct movies and even act in a few of those movies. Let me introduce you to Kevin Smith, the guy even owns a comic book store in Red Bank, New Jersey. I’ve been a huge fan ever since I found out he was the guy behind the movie Dogma – any guy that has the kahunas to cast George Carlin as a Catholic Cardinal and Alanis Morrisette as God, has one heck of a sense of humor in my book. I follow this guy on Twitter, read his blog and occasionally listen to his podcast. I do have to say though, I refrained from seeing Jersey Girl, too much Ben Affleck for me.

Now does the size of your Twitter following (who you actually converse with), number of fans on Facebook, and comments on your blog posts account for much? How about the reposting of your videos, and links to stories about your great customer service encounters, and ranking #1 in the airline industry for a slew of ‘good things’? Let me introduce you to SouthWest Airlines. I’m a huge fan of them too, ever since the weekend my father died and how well they treated me, SouthWest Airlines won me over.

I state all this in this manner to show a few points:

1. I like both of the parties involved
2. Both parties involved are extremely social media savvy
3. Both parties involved have very avid, emotionally attached fans.

This Isn’t About Kevin Smith Being Fat …. Or Is It?

Lets face it, we all know, heck even Kevin Smith knows, he’s no 136 lbs. Michael Jackson skinny.   That’s really not the point here, and Kevin even points it out in his blog, that it isn’t about him being over weight. This is more about being consistent and truthful with your policies. Here Kevin Smith has a point.

He also has a point about how all of this was handled. If your policy states the arm rests come down, you don’t impinge on other people’s space and you aren’t in need of a seat belt extender, then, why pull the “people of size” policy card?  Whether he originally purchased two seats or not, doesn’t matter at this point if you were claiming he is being pulled from the flight because of his size and but yet he’s passed all your ‘tests’ that he’s not in violation of that policy.

What would have been a little bit more wise on SouthWest’s part was to not put him on that flight because he had originally purchased the two seats, and they wanted to accommodate those two seats again.  Kevin claims to buy the two seats so he can avoid talking to strangers, not for weight reasons.  I’m sure SouthWest would have wanted to accommodate that wish because of who he is and understanding that maybe he just wants to be left alone at times, had they really thought this through.

What “FattyGate” Really Exposes…. SouthWest Airline’s Inconsistencies

What’s at the real root of the issue here is not the two blog posts blaming Kevin Smith for the incident (sorry SouthWest, but that’s how it comes off), but what they were admitting they were wrong with, the “person of size policy” and how it was handled.  Immediately after Kevin Smith started tweeting and posting his picture that he got on the next flight and wasn’t thrown off because he was fat, his fans, and other SouthWest passengers who’d heard about the situation started posting other pictures.  These were pictures that were showing passengers that looked twice the size of Kevin Smith, without the “two seat” rule and SouthWest not enforcing the policy.  Inconsistencies can be a real problem for anyone in social media, and now SouthWest knows that from experience.

Admitting Fault is Good Public Relations, Asking For Help is Golden

When you admit you are wrong, truly wrong, people are willing to forgive you.  When you ask for help in trying to correct what is wrong, people are even more willing to assist you.  When you admit your wrong, but yet say in a very round about way,  “we’re sorry, but it’s really your fault because you are fat“, by posting your policy at the bottom of the post that’s suppose to be an apology, that really isn’t a good way of winning over those people who you want forgiveness & help from.

Why SouthWest just doesn’t say, “you know what Kevin, you are right, we’re not consistent with our policies, this was our mistake we’d like your help to fix it,” is totally beyond me.  The guy has likely bought hundreds of tickets by now on the airline – anyone could see that in their system (i.e. he was a loyal customer).  They guy has a following.  They guy knows how to use social media.  Why not recognize this and work with it?  If anything, SouthWest has consistently been social media savvy, not stupid, so this really makes me wonder who’s steering the boat over there?

Hiding your inconsistencies by trying to push blame elsewhere isn’t wise in social media.  Any form of denial only brings a much larger magnifying glass into every thing else you are doing wrong and makes you the media’s next punching bag.   It will even get you on the front page of CNN for all the wrong reasons.

Situations like these have to be seen as opportunities, especially if you are in or planning to be in social media, other wise they’ll eat you alive.  Solving problems like these with the help of your audience or those who feel wronged, makes evangelists, rather than enemies… which would you rather have?

*Airline Passenger Photo Credit:  ButtonMonkey

A Candid Interview with Pauline Ores, Social Media Strategy, Principal Analyst, IBM Market Insights (Part 3)

With challenges, lessons learned, and strong social engagement experience under her cap, Pauline Ores shares with us the future of social media including issues, truths and where to place social media focus when it comes to business objectives.

1. Where are you heading with social media? 

Speed of adoption attests to quantity and breadth of social media value. Most people would agree by comparison, the value social media as a modified push marketing tactic is negligible. That said, as desktop publishing transformed the field of graphic arts, I have no doubt social media will transform the field of marketing― even if firms elect not to participate.  More and more consumers expect, if not demand, companies pay attention and stay in sync―in terms of product development, customer service, business strategies and models and more.

Personally, the is the aspect I find most interesting are the new interactions social tools and services enable―so in some ways, I’m less focused on social media then most. An unusual pursuit perhaps, but well supported here, as IBM has a long history of exploring problems from a variety of perspectives. At the same time I would never want to give up working with colleagues on the execution of near-term social media tactics and research, as that helps ensure longer-term plans add value.

2. There is a lot of wrestling between PR firms, digital agencies, and the new “social media” agencies about which of these firms are more equipped to offer strategy, research and execution services.  In your opinion, who should do what?  From the client side perspective, which pieces belong where?

Like any other engagement, the key is who, not which―it’s about who you will be working with at these firms vs. the types of firms. 

In terms of execution, my personal preference would always be to work with a team that has actual community building experience, a team that can point to a community or social platform they built―demonstrating they truly understand what it takes to people to join and actively participate. Too many people assume if their vendor understands social applications and platforms, and have personal experience using it themselves, i.e. their own blog, they have what it takes to build a community, which is not necessarily the case.

For strategy, I would lean towards the team that can deliver a social media strategy centered on business vs. social media activities. One that would articulate how an investment in social engagement program furthers the overall business strategy, delivers on the brand promise and helps the business evolve. This suggests a consultative-focused engagement, so their ability to closely collaborate with their clients would be another important factor.

3. What are some of the biggest issues in social media today?

What we might define as issues today stems from social media marketing’s need for a variety of supporting elements evolve―marketing, funding, business processes, resources, internal skills, etc.  Social engagement programs have different requirements but are of course, executed in an environment almost exclusively optimized for traditional marketing. For example, it is not uncommon for marketing programs to have a defined beginning and end, and be funded quarter-by-quarter whereas, in some instances you’d have social engagement programs that, ideally, never end.

In terms of execution, investment for new social media programs involves shifting funds from marketing activities that can demonstrate ROI, on the assumption the new social media program will provide more value, however social media rarely provides comparable measurements. We’re all faced with a similar challenge – measure marketing ROI and the unique value only social engagement programs can provide, with few if any social media measurement applications and standards.

In B2B arena prospects, clients and partners see great value in engaging employees, so locating subject matter experts and growing internal involvement can quickly become a bottleneck―not insurmountable, but again, specialized processes and applications would help.

Longer term, to be truly effective, as large scale social media programs are rarely contained in single department, we’ll need scalable systems capable of coordinating activity across different roles, departments, and divisions.  This system will need to manage the massive amount of ‘outside-in’ dialog, route this to the right teams, and help track value of both the internal and external contributions. Challenging, yes, but not impossible.

Taking a ‘helicopter’ view, this is the same lag in development we’ve seen time and time before.  As social media marketing teams discover and clarify their requirements, it is inevitable that marketing teams, agencies, and developers will spring up to address them, just as they did for search and web marketing. New organizations like the Social Media Advertising Consortium, SMAC.org, are working with clients, vendors, and agencies on common vocabulary, practices and metrics.

Thank you Pauline!
Pauline, it was great to be able to spend time with you and get a peek into how IBM is leading B2B companies with their enterprise social media development! No doubt we’ve all learned how it is possible for large companies to successfully implement social media in an effort to connect employees to each other and employees to customers. Thank you.

A Candid Interview with Pauline Ores, Social Media Strategy, Principal Analyst, IBM Market Insights (Part 2)

Pauline shared with us yesterday how IBM is strategically and tactically addressing social media. Today we’ll learn from Pauline why:

• Larger companies might just have an easier time implementing social media;
• Being a talented traffic controller is important;
• Basic training isn’t enough to ensure success; and
• A market researcher can help you take the garbage out.

1. How difficult is it for a company the size of IBM to implement enterprise social media development?

We are a very large firm with nearly 400,000 employees worldwide, but the advantage of a social approach is that size becomes an asset rather than an obstacle―as more members join and help develop the program, we get a more and more valuable contributions. The more teams join the easier it is for our enablement teams to understand how to best support, mentor, and guide their programs.  Having played such a large role in defining the program participants don’t need to be sold and furthermore, help spread the word.  So contrary to what you might expect, getting many different teams to collaborate speeds up the process.

2. What are some of the key challenges?

For us, beyond delivering actionable insights we have to ensure research results flow to all the right teams.  Obviously we share the resulting insights with teams that commission the research but there is potentially even more value to be gained by sharing these same insights with other departments. So our next challenge is to develop communication channels and connections to ensure we inform a variety of roles and teams, which as you can imagine could easily become a major air traffic control issue.  Ideally we can also track the impact these insights help deliver, demonstrating the value of our social media research and execution investments.

Social media has much more to do with who you are, as individual or a company, than what you do― it makes the boundaries around firms translucent if not transparent. IBM has a strong values-based culture and is committed to its clients―so for us, social media tools enable our teams to respond more quickly.  If your firm doesn’t have clarity in terms of brand values and/or doesn’t encourage staff to put customers first, I would suggest social media should be the last, not the first, step of a much longer process.

3. What advice can you give on internal skills development for social media?

Invest in and adopt social media and collaboration tools internally―they enable employees to quickly provide the much larger and more detailed responses external social media interactions often demand, as well as provide an internal sandbox where, assuming they’re new to these tools, they can learn and practice.

Realize that a few quick ‘101’ application tutorials, how to use Twitter, isn’t enough, as it’s not the tools that make it happen, it is what some refer to as ‘social engineering’ or community building practices. Having even a few resources with community building and engagement skills will ensure you have a program that delivers value for both internal and external participants―which again is key to success.

If you don’t have that expertise in-house seek outside help, but make sure any agencies or consultants can walk the walk and provide references of pointing to communities they built vs. pages, sites or applications. I can’t stress strongly enough how critical community building and engagement skills are to success. Locate the resources you have or hire in, then have those people mentor others to grow your corporate skill set.

4. How mature is the market when it comes to research tools (often called “buzz monitoring” or “listening” tools)?  What is the sophistication level of what is out there?

Not sure if you are referring to sophistication of the tools, processes or clients, but all three are evolving.  For clients, I think it’s important to realize social media research tools today are market research tools, and having market research professionals involved in the process provides value. Secondly, clients should realize the tools themselves are not a panacea, it’s very much GIGO― ‘garbage in, garbage out’―process, great results require a lot of upfront work and planning, which again is something a trained market research professional can provide.  IBM’s best-of-breed Market Insights team played a large role in increasing the value we get from these research tools.

Social Media are just tools, right? Wrong. Pauline shares why tomorrow.

In tomorrow’s final post Pauline will share with us why companies need to stay in sync, why social media is more than tools, and why the ‘who’ is more important than the what. HINT: Not all agencies are created equal.

A Candid Interview with Pauline Ores, Social Media Strategy, Principal Analyst, IBM Market Insights

Recently, I had the pleasure of meeting with Pauline Ores, Social Media Strategy, Principal Analyst, IBM Market Insights, where we discussed her role at IBM and where IBM is heading with their social media endeavors.

In this three-part series, Pauline will discuss the social insights practice, strategies and tactics, insights and lessons learned, how their employees are the core of social media, and the future of social media.

1. What is your role at IBM?

I’m focused on what IBM can do to accelerate and amplify the growing number of IBM employee-led social engagement programs, ensuring they benefit all participants, inside and outside the firm.

On a day-to-day basis I’m involved in two related but different activities. Tactically we’re defining how social media research should be used to inform measure and in some cases coordinate cross-IBM social engagement. We also consult with marketing teams helping them integrate social engagement approaches into their larger marketing activities―which isn’t to say we have all the answers, often it’s a matter of introducing teams who then help each other.  Strategically, I am focused on understanding how social media will transform the field and practice of marketing and communications.

2. Why is social media important at IBM?

Our strategy is to lead in the market with our employees―put our employees first as the ambassadors of our brand. Our role in marketing and communications has shifted from being the channel of communications to better enabling our employees to be the face of the company.

As you know, IBM has been researching and developing technology and solutions in the social computing space for decades―ranging from advanced text-analysis of unstructured content to collaboration software. The earliest adopters of social media were IT programmers, and in many ways they defined many of the basic tenets of today’s ‘Internet culture,’ and so we’re fortunate as it is an integral aspect of how we work with each other, as well as with clients and prospects.

3. What approach have you taken to enterprise social media development at IBM?

Personally, I’m a big believer in the ‘near and far’ approach―iterate quickly as a means of arriving at a working solution and, at the same time, reflect on how to best define the problem. Having been involved in the launch of several new fields, I’ve learned problem definition and scope, a ‘meta’ consideration that is all too often assumed, has an enormous impact on outcome.

Say for example, you set out to produce Wikipedia’s three million plus English articles―and by default, you rely on the same hierarchal, linear process used to produce print encyclopedias. In retrospect, it seems obvious this process won’t scale, but if Wikipedia didn’t exist, an unreflective ‘execution-driven’ approach would have started down that path, presumably cutting off any thought of such a large, living resource. My point here is that Wikipedia’s open and highly collaborative methods of production are an integral element of what it achieved.

Thinking about the best approach for an enterprise social media research and enablement program, we realized anything other than a social approach would quickly hamper development. We settled on a federated model, one where teams would retain control of their own funds yet benefit as a member of an enterprise-wide program.  The result: more teams than we imagined wanted to participate, which in turn has accelerated the program’s value in terms of research, collaboration and peer-to-peer education.

So, how did IBM implement social media across the enterprise?

Be sure to stop back tomorrow for part two of this interview series to find out! Pauline will share how IBM has addressed and implemented their enterprise social media development approach. HINT: Larger is sometimes better!

First a Little About the “Ethics” of Ghost Tweeting….

While at Search Engine Strategies Chicago I was interviewed by Web Pro News about the panel that I spoke on about Social Media and the ethics of “ghost tweeting”.  A lot of people had a lot to say about Guy Kawasaki and his use of Twitter back in March when he was the keynote speaker at SES NYC, most of it was not good in the eyes of the search marketing experts speaking about his keynote.  Granted, some of his tactics could definitely be classified as spammy, but at the end of the day, Guy Kawasaki is a marketer.

That being said, was his “Ghost Tweeting” ethical?  I’m more of the opinion it’s not a question of ethics, its more of a question of disclosure and expectations.  Knowing how busy Guy Kawasaki really is, most people likely wouldn’t have expected him to not be running his Twitter account by himself.  He’s got staff, he’s got help.  The problem with the situation was that he wasn’t disclosing it until Dave Fleet called him out on that fact.  Was his audience in an uproar about it?  Yes, some were, some stopped following, but since the disclosure, he’s gained more followers.

At the end of the day, its about the relationship you want to make with your audience.  Are you forming personal relationships with your audience, do they expect that from you?  Or are you just disseminating information like Guy does with his account?  There’s no real interaction going on, so the expectations are much lower. So what’s ethical, what’s not?  You’re audience is actually the one that will decide.  If you are trying to “trick” them by employing other people to tweet for you in a personal way, it will show through eventually.

And Then About Measuring Your Social Media….

Abby then went on to ask me about Measuring Your Social Media Strategy because Serengeti Communications put on a session about doing just that at SES Chicago.  Measuring has to be a key fundamental part of any Social Media Strategy you implement.  Without measuring how do you know what’s successful and what isn’t working?  What are you wasting your time on or what should you dedicate more resources too?  Along with that is your agency – SEO, PPC, PR or Advertising – selling you a laundry list of social media tactics because they know how to set up those types of things or is it because there’s been significant research done and you are going to be actively engaging with people in those social media channels?

It’s certainly not easy, and there’s no cookie cutter approach!

What is success?  What is failure?

When it comes to social media marketing, unless you have a plan to measure what your are doing how will you know?  There’s a lot to be said about planning your social media strategy, knowing where your audience is, understanding how they talk about you, getting something to go “viral”, accepting the negative with the positive, throwing up social media tactics like darts to a bulls-eye.  It’s subjects we’ve talked about here on Social Conversations, but unless you have a plan to measure what you are doing, you’ll never know if what you are doing is worth the investment you are putting into it.

While there’s a lot of numbers counting, and those numbers can be very subjective, you still need to have a social media measurement plan.  For example, counting the number of Twitter followers you have, isn’t really a great measure if you want to measure the quality of your reach. However if you are just starting up a Twitter account, monitoring and counting how many followers you are attaining on a daily or weekly basis can be decent way of gauging how you are progressing in the beginning.  Once you reach a certain threshold, counting the number of followers can be and overwhelming task to keep up with and weed out the spammers.  It’s the same for counting the number of fans you have, or friends on other social networking sites.  It can be a good “check” but it can’t be the be all end all to your measurement plan.

A social media marketing measurement plan needs to include a lot of checks and balances.  For example, how do you know if the content you are creating is really valuable to your audience?  Do you count the number of retweets you get?  Or is it the number of retweets from those “quality” followers that you’ve predefined on a list.  Maybe it’s the number of times your content has been embedded?  Perhaps the amount of traffic that is being driven to your page, or maybe even adding in how much time on site do the visitors coming into the content are averaging.

Then there’s the whole integration with “offline”, if you have those types of measurement.  Even if you are an online business, you likely still need to track something offline.  How are people hearing about you?  Did someone tell them to come to your Facebook page while they talked on a flight to San Diego?  Maybe they sat next to someone at a Coyotes hockey game and it was suggested they check out your video.  How do you account for and measure those aspects of your social media marketing efforts?

When it comes down to it, if you can’t measure it, you need to ask yourself if you should be really implementing that particular social media tactic?

Putting together a social media measurement plan should be an integral part of your social media strategy.  It makes sure your entire team is on the same page when it comes to what and how things are going to be measured.  It also gives your team the ammunition they need to prove or disprove that something is working to help or harm your brand or company.  How you are measuring is just as important as what you are measuring as well.  This is why it’s important that everyone from the C-Suite executives to your data analytics teams understand what the end goals are and what & how you are measuring to see if your efforts are helping you meet those goals.

At the end of the day do you want to really be answering the question from your CMO “Well why are we still doing this?” with “Well because Oprah’s on Twitter now!” ?

Child With Measuring Book Photo Credit:  Flickr User Goldberg

Archeology Team Measuring Photo Credit:  Flickr User Wessex Archeology

Who doesn’t love “free”?

Social media is free, isn’t it? Well in the very basic sense, yes social media is free.  Participating in social media if you are a community member, 9 times out of 10, is at no cost to you from the perspective of joining and engaging.  The only time these social media communities charge a fee is if you are upgrading to some sort of premium or pro account.  Think about Flickr in this case, if you don’t want to be limited on your daily uploads or want the analytics, you have to upgrade to the professional account.

From the community participant’s end, this is wonderful!  I get to share and connect with people who have the same interests as me without having to pay a fee, who doesn’t like that concept?  That’s why social media communities have been around long before the term “social media” had ever been coined.

Companies stepping into the idea of marketing in these social media communities with the mistaken idea that marketing within social media communities is “free” are a lot of times sadly mistaken at the end of their campaign’s run.  They find it’s failed, or rather they are under the impression that their marketing attempt failed and they also find there’s a lot more involved than they ever realized.  At the end of the day it isn’t free.  There’s a whole lot of investment that needs to go on in both resources and technology.

It really makes me curious why companies think they can just put up a Twitter account or a Facebook fan page and think “this is going to work” immediately.  A “Field of Dreams” Social Media is not, unfortunately if you build it, most likely they won’t come.  Companies spend millions developing new logos, planning public relations (PR) Events, doing keyword research for SEO and PPC, why should the concepts around social media marketing be any different?  The “free” barrier to entry is a huge misnomer and misleads a lot of marketing departments down the wrong path.

So what should a company plan to invest in when looking at a social media strategy?  Well that really depends a lot on what the company hopes to establish in the medium.  Is it increased buzz or brand lift?  How about increased sales or traffic to the site?  Could you want people to sign up for your email list, blog RSS or coupon distribution?  Become part of your own community?  Different goals require different strategies in social media, and they all require different levels and types of resource investment.

Here’s a quick list to keep in mind of what you’ll be investing in when you decide that social media is the next medium your company should become actively involved in.

• Investing in Understanding:   “Where Are We Now” in the Whole Social Media Sphere
  Do people even know who you are?  Is there any buzz about you?  Do they know the products you sell or the services you offer?
• Invest in Finding Your Audience
  Where are the conversations happening?  Who’s doing the talking about you?
• Invest in the Approach
  How do I interact with the social media communities that are talking about me, my industry, products or services?  How do I add value to their lives and not just be another “noise channel”
• Goals & Measurement Need Investment
  Free tools verses Paid Tools?  Free buzz monitoring tools give you limited data, can your strategy work with that limited data, or do you need more robust information?  What about your analytics, are the free tools going to give you enough information to connect the dots of traffic to buzz & engagement to conversions?  Have you even taken the time to plan what goals will make you successful?
• Employees are as Social Media Investment in their own right
  You pay your employees a salary or an hourly wage to preform tasks for you.  If one of their tasks has to do with social media, that’s definitely an investment that isn’t free by any means.  However, it isn’t just their time engaging you should be planning for, it’s their time researching, setting goals, training, developing and ultimately fortifying relationships with your audience that you really need to plan for investing in.

With investment in research, strategy and measurement companies can see return, or at least if there isn’t a return they can figure out why.  The investment of time and resources from the onset is likely the biggest factor of whether a company is going to succeed or fail.  Don’t you want the money and time you’ve invested to grow your social media strategy into a success rather than just having spaghetti being thrown at the wall?

Scrabble Letters Photo Credit:  Flickr User WonderWebby

Tree & Coins Photo Credit:  Flickr User Pfala

I’ve always been intrigued by Jeff Jarvis, ever since he single handily brought a firestorm down upon Dell and coined the term “Dell Hell” so seeing his keynote at Search Engine Strategies Chicago was at the top of my priority list.  I wasn’t disappointed this morning either, Jeff Jarvis hit some very relevant points with his presentation, especially when it came to this changing world of search, online marketing and “old media”.

I found his keynote very poignant, taking a look at how big media (newspapers) have really got it all wrong when it comes to Google.  Murdoch and some of the other media industry giants want to blame Google and paint Google as a monster, when in reality its their own lack of knowledge of how to operate in this new medium that is the actual boogie man in the closet for these media conglomerates.

I wrote about Murdoch’s idea to block out Google a few weeks ago, and I keep coming back to the same thoughts that Jeff Jarvis has.  Google’s not stealing content, Google is actually providing opportunities, it’s just that these old huge media companies don’t know how to properly and efficiently turn this opportunities to their favor, instead all they really want to do is blame someone and right now that easy target is Google.

Jarvis pointed out that the way the media outlets operate now is that they make people come to the news, they expect to dictate to the audience what is news and that they decide it.  That way of working is at an end.  People want the news that they want to find them.  This isn’t fairytale wishes either, with the internet this is going to be reality very soon.

Jeff Jarvis then questioned why haven’t these media companies gone the way of what YouTube has, by making everything embeddable?  By making things portable, you can reach more people and its easier for people to share what they think is important with their audiences.  There are some places experimenting with this already, The Guardian, Jarvis explained is one example.  The Guardian wants to be part of the fabric of the web and they are understanding that they need to come to you with their content.

At the end of the day, Google isn’t the enemy for newspapers.  As Eric Schmidt pointed out in his op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, Google offers 100,000 opportunities to newspapers a minute to win loyal readers.  They do that for FREE.  It’s not Google’s fault that “blustery” CEO’s like Murdoch can’t figure out how to capitalize on these opportunities that are being dropped on their virtual doorsteps

In the world of social media marketing, one of the ultimate attainments of any marketer is to claim that you had one of your social media content pieces “go viral”.  Going Viral means that your content that you’ve provided to your audience whether it’s a video, a blog post, an audio clip, an interactive flash game or even a photo has really connected with your audience enough that they have felt the need to pass it on, and their audiences have passed it on and so forth that this “spread” or “viral” passing on is now bring you new visitors to your content (and hopefully your site) in masses that are not normally seen to your site.

Having a piece go viral is great – right?!

I ask this because I see it happen a lot by happenstance or accident.  Companies put something out on their site with no plans on how to capitalize on the attention a media content piece gets once it does go viral.  There’s no goals set, there’s no actions to be taken, there’s no accountability.  Let’s just “shoot video” and put it out there.  Let’s just make this cool game and put it out there!  People will love it and people will come to our site.

Great!  They love it, they come to your site, they see your picture, watch your video or play your animated flash game, but what do they do next after maybe sharing it with their friends?

While getting the people to your site through viral content is cool and while gaining links to your viral content is cool, at the end of the day has it done anything to lift your brand perception or raise your bottom line by those visitors doing some other action other than viewing the viral content?  As someone who came from the search engine optimization (SEO) world I understand the implications of gaining links via viral content, and the affects of the influx of traffic can have.  But here’s the thing, are the links really pointing to the content you really want to be known for, or is it just for that one viral piece.

I have a friend in the industry who created this flash game for Christmas time.  This flash game hit it viral pretty big and every year around this time, he sees the traffic spike again because people love to play this game that involves reindeer and Santa.  All of a sudden around November it’s “new” again and people pass around the link.  The game draws a lot of traffic to the page and that page has gotten a lot of links.  You think that would be awesome right?

Here’s the reality of the viral piece – It hasn’t lead to any major leads or conversions for what he sells.

The game has nothing to really do with their business.  The people who play the game aren’t really their target audience.  There’s no action at the end of the game to encourage the player to visit just what their product can do.  The game itself has nothing to do with what the company sells.  While his “time on site” statistic and “new visitor” statistic rises, that’s not really telling the full story.  Of course they are going to rise because people are playing the game and passing it on to their friends – they aren’t rising because they are interested in the company’s products or services.

So when it comes to wanting successful “viral” content, there’s got to be a social media  strategy spelled out.  Writing a list about top 10 Thanksgiving cooking disasters isn’t great viral content for an automotive parts site, but it could be for a company that sells pots and pans.  Make sure you plan out your social media strategy when it comes to creating viral content, too, not just let it be another list item in the list of marketing tactics your agency has told you to deploy.  While accidental “viral” content can be seen as “hip & cool”, and maybe you might not have planned for it to go “viral”, you can still have it benefit your bottom line.  Take some time to figure out how it can positively affect your company, brand, products or services and re-adjust that “accidental viral content”.

If you are planning as part of your social media strategy to create viral content, make sure you look at all aspects of how it can positively affect your bottom line.  From increased subscribers to your blog to purchases on your site, make your viral content work for you, not against you!

This piece is a prelude to my Social Media Marketing Column on Search Engine Watch that will appear on Monday November 23, 2009.

While I’ve always taken the approach of sound strategy over just “throwing spaghetti against the wall” and deploying various marketing tactics (including SEO for Social Media), Serengeti’s CEO Nan Dawkins has put it quite eloquently as “tactics in the absence of strategy is like doing nothing at all“.  In social media this is never more true.  Just doing something in social media, like setting up a Twitter account because Oprah’s now doing it is likely one of the most errant reasons to venture into twitter if you are a business.

A Social Media Strategy isn’t about SEO coming first, or grabbing accounts on social media sites.  That should be an inherent and FUNDAMENTAL part of your social media strategy.  You honestly can’t have SEO first if you don’t know why you are doing a social media tactic in the first place.  Planning a social media strategy should come first.  That includes researching and understanding why you are going to do certain tactics over others, why you should be investing time and resources into something and understanding how to approach it, whether its optimizing the profile or just starting a conversation, planning the strategy is really what should come first in social media marketing.

There are many layers to a social media strategy, in my column on Monday I talk about 4 pieces of a strategy in social media that companies should consider, however there’s a lot more.  Beyond understanding your audience, setting goals, deciding how to approach the community and re-evaluation of your strategy there’s the other pieces you need to consider as well.  Strategy is much more than just a laundry list of sites that fit your keyword research that your SEO company tells you to fill out profiles on to gain another spot in the search engine rankings or starting a blog named on a key word that you really don’t have a prayer of ranking for.

In addition to the subjects I write about in Monday’s column, companies need to think about and plan how SEO, PPC and even EMail marketing fit into your overall social media strategy.  They should complement and aid your social media strategy, not be treated as separate entities “to be dealt with”.  Keyword research is just as fundamental to a successful social media strategy as it is to properly optimizing your website’s pages.  It’s not a question of when it should be done, its a matter of it fundamentally being done at the very beginning of ANY online marketing strategy.

Another layer of your social media strategy that should be considered is the whole issue of deciding who owns the conversation, who’s voice do you use,and  which members of your staff are best suited to implement what parts of your strategy.  Don’t forget bringing legal into the equation either, not including them in on how your strategy is formed from the start can have devastating consequences to your social media strategy.  Having your legal team help you out from the onset can make your social media strategy that much more sound as well as successful.

Have you thought about contingency plans?  What happens if one of your tactics gets misinterpreted and ends up being a huge public relations nightmare?  What is your plan to handle something like this?  What if one of your employees while thinking they were following your guidelines and ethics your company set in place, slipped up?  What if it’s found out your SEO was tweeting and writing your content for you, instead of someone from your company and it creates a firestorm?  Your social media strategy needs to account for issues like these that could arise.

As you can see while it’s easy, free and quick to grab those social media profiles and just start hammering away on them, the harder part is understanding if its really going to work for you.  Planning a strategy is never easy, but those companies that do end up being way more successful with their social media efforts than those companies who start accounts at random because they read and article or were told they “need to” and then abandon the accounts 6 months down the line because there’s no interaction going on and they feel social media has failed them.

Chess Photo Credit:  Flickr user pshutterbug
Map Photo Credit:  Flickr user New York Public Library