I’m pleased thrilled to welcome Andrea Pietkiewicz to the Thornley Fallis team.

Andrea joins our social media team this week, bringing with her over 12 years of agency experience with companies such as BBDO and Cossette.

I’m a firm believer that the lines between the communications disciplines are blurring. Public relations agencies no longer compete against each other, and they no longer only need to execute pure PR campaigns – they go up against other types of agencies and are required to plan and sometimes execute cross-functional strategies.

While Andrea shares our vision of social media as a means for long-term engagement, her experience not only adds strength to our social media  but also further expands our ability to perform in this evolving environment.

Oh, and Andrea is also a “Master Scuba Diver Trainer” which I believe gets you a jedi robe and a light saber…

Andrea blogs at beyondthebuzz.wordpress.com and you can find her on Twitter at @scubagirl15.

Welcome, Andrea!

As social media has grown in acceptance within companies over the past few years, one debate never seems to go away – whether agencies should be involved in social media communications, or whether the only way to maintain an “authentic voice” is for companies to undertake it all themselves.

Agencies can help

Not surprisingly (given that I work for a PR agency), I sit in the camp that says that agencies have a significant role to play for many companies. For sure, companies can do some or all of these things themselves, but there’s no reason agencies can’t help without compromising the company’s efforts.

Here are 15 different activities an agency can undertake – legitimately and effectively – to help companies engage in social media.

Getting started

1. Baseline audits

One of the first steps in any communications initiative should be an online audit to both understand the current environment and to set a baseline for measuring results of future activities.

2. Audience research

Alongside an initial audit, learning to understand your target audiences is a foundational piece of a communications strategy, be it online or offline.

3. Corporate policies

Whether your company is engaged in social media or not, it is important to set boundaries around social media. If you are engaging in proactive outreach online, it becomes a somewhat  more involved process covering more areas (for a quick start, check out this ebook on corporate social media policies)

4. Workflow processes

What happens when you spot an issue? When someone asks a question? When someone discusses your company with other people? When someone criticizes you? Who is involved in the response? What will you (and won’t you) respond to?

These are the kinds of questions you need to consider before the occasion arises, and which experienced agencies have encountered often enough to help you answer.

5. Social media training

While it doesn’t take much expertise to send a tweet, the norms of communicating in social media channels can require education and explanation. Social media can require a bit of a departure from the way companies have traditionally communicated. It doesn’t mean anarchy, but traditional “messaging” approaches don’t fly so well in these informal channels. Agencies can help to transfer the necessary knowledge around this to clients new to the social media realm.

6. Social media scoping

You don’t need to be everywhere online. Twitter and Facebook might not be the right places – perhaps your audience is primarily hangs out on forums or message boards. An agency can help to scope-out the right places for your company to establish a presence online.

Strategic planning

7. Strategic development

Agencies can bring together a wide variety of communications experiences and expertise that make them well placed to assist with or lead the strategic development process for social media for their clients.

8. Campaign ideas

Right now my perspective of the ideal approach to social media is a foundational long-term strategypaired with well thought-out campaigns that provide spikes in attention and engagement. As above, agencies can bring together creative minds to design those campaigns.

9. Campaign extension

Unfortunately, PR is still often at a point where it is called-in last minute to support other initiatives, whether it’s announcing something that’s already decided or supporting a marketing/advertising program. At those points, it can be difficult to come up with anything effective that benefits the organization. Agencies aren’t a silver bullet, but again they can contribute ideas.

Execution

10. Ongoing monitoring

Monitoring can be very resource-intensive, especially if your company has a significant footprint online or in peoples’ minds. Agencies are well placed to help deal with this pressure.

11. Online engagement

This is one area that I’ll rarely recommend the agency take on. It’s a lot of work and requires a thorough understanding of the online environment, but it’s something that (in most cases) should be done in-house. It allows for shorter approvals processes (important in a fast-moving conversation) and a more authentic voice.

Still, sometimes companies either can’t or aren’t ready to take this on. It may be resource issues, uncertainty over the medium, trust issues or a variety of other legitimate reasons, but there are times when an agency can undertake this work, as long as it’s transparent. It’s not ideal, but it’s possible, with the goal that, over time, the company will in-source this work.

Regardless, agencies can help to advise companies on their outreach – be it advice wording and norms or on whether in fact to engage or not with specific people.

12. Influencer outreach

I used to call this “blogger outreach” but online influencers are so much broader than just bloggers nowadays. Just as agencies undertake media relations activities in traditional public relations, so they can also reach out to online influencers in the new form PR has taken.

13. Issues management

If your company is interesting and matters to people, they will talk about you. That talk won’t always be positive. Sometimes it’s something you’ve done; sometimes it’s something about your product; sometimes it’s “news.” The list goes on. Regardless, monitoring for issues, identifying them early and coming up with suitable responses isn’t easy.

Full-service

14. Design and creative

More often than not, you’ll need some kind of design work done for your social media properties. Maybe it’s a Twitter background; maybe it’s a Facebook page or YouTube channel design; maybe it’s something more involved such as a stand-alone site. Either way, a full-service agency can help if you don’t have the in-house resources to undertake this work.

15. Development

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and their ilk are tremendously powerful sites, and they may well be where your audience hangs out. Still, there are times when they just may not suffice, or where you want to build on top of the platform they provide – Facebook or mobile apps, for example.

What do you think? Are there other areas I’m missing?

In recent weeks, I’ve become fascinated with the location-based social network Foursquare. While I’ve been using location-based apps on my Blackberry and iPod Touch for a while (Google Maps is a good example), Foursquare is the first service that has made me stop and think about the potential of hyper-local marketing on mobile devices, not just down the line but right now.

I’ve had a couple of interesting conversations with April Dunford (wannabe Mayor of Thornley Fallis) recently, which have really spurred that thinking.

Foursquare?

If you haven’t tried Foursquare yet (and most people haven’t), here’s the deal.

Foursquare describes itself as “50% friend-finder, 30% social cityguide, 20% nightlife game.” If you live in a city that’s currently supported, whenever you arrive at a new place you can “check in” to tell the service you’re there.

Each time you “check in” you earn points, which go towards a “leaderboard” of you and the people to whom you’ve chosen to connect. If you’ve visited a place more than anyone else in the last 60 days, you become the “mayor.” It’s largely meaningless, but cute.

So far, nice and simple. And right now, that’s where the service ends. That’s a problem, because the people signing-up for the service can get bored – quickly – if there’s nothing more.

Potential

Right now Foursquare seems to be focused on growing the number of cities it supports. I’m not sure that’s the right approach. If I were them, I would work to build a critical mass of people in a few cities by building-out the product to the meet its full potential.

The team announced a campaign yesterday to allow a company to sponsor its homepage by donating to a charity, so they’re clearly open to ideas. So, let’s stop and think for a minute about Foursquare’s room for enhancements.

Friends

At present, when you check Foursquare, you can see where your friends have checked-in in the last three hours. That’s lovely, but if someone was somewhere three hours ago (unless it’s work or home) they’re probably not there any more.

However, if you were to check into a hotel downtown, it would be great to know if your buddy Steve had recently checked-in somewhere nearby – you could give him a call and see what he’s up to. Maybe the app could pop up an SMS window or offer to dial his number.

Simple, but effective – enabling real-world meetups.

Offers

As a fairly heavy Foursquare user, the company knows where I hang out. I spend my days at the Thornley Fallis offices; I go to the same places for dinner a fair bit – that sort of thing. That kind of real-world behaviour offers an opportunity for them to present me with offers. If I were to be offered $10 off a meal in an area in which I already hang out, I’d be highly likely to take advantage of the offer.

It’s a powerful concept, which can branch off in various directions:

• A straight customer acquisition play, pushed to any user in the area;
• A limited-scope acquisition play – offered the first time a user checks in to a place (OrderIt.ca does this when you order from new restaurants through their service – this is a similar concept);
• A loyalty play by tying the offers to a certain number of visits to the location in question – a bit like a rewards card.

Similarly, we’ve already heard about “Mayor Specials” (for example at Coffee Groundz in Houston, Texas) where the mayor of a certain location gets special treatment. There’s room for a concerted push in this area, beyond their own website, to the owners of businesses that have proven popular with users.

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Google has made its billions from providing contextually relevant ads to its users. Google Maps goes one further, providing slightly more targeting based on your search. Foursquare can go even deeper, targeting the areas that you frequent.

This is gold. Online retailers have a relatively easy solution to generating traffic – online ads drive people to your website. Real-world businesses have a different problem. It’s harder to drive people through your door through the current web channels.

Imagine, though, that I received ads targeted to the place where I am now, whenever I checked in. As a small business owner, why on earth wouldn’t you want to invest in ads targeted people who you know are right outside your door? The conversions are a little harder to measure than through an e-commerce site, but it’s a powerful concept.

Focus

All of these things require one foundational step: focus,

Foursquare needs to focus on developing a critical mass in its core markets. Only with a significant number of users in a market does Foursquare become a viable investment for businesses. Right now, just one Toronto business is running a Foursquare promotion, and only one person has checked-in there.

New York, Boston, Toronto – wherever these markets are, the Foursquare team should think about how they can drive deeper adoption of the tool in those communities, first from a consumer perspective and then from a business perspective – where the clear business model lies.

What do you think? Have you tried Foursquare? Where do you think the potential lies?

The growth of smart phones – from a consumer perspective, the iPhone in particular but also Blackberries – has really driven mobile apps into the limelight at a faster rate than almost any technology out there recently.

Over the last couple of years, and especially the last few months, we’ve seen mobile applications vault more and more into the mainstream. We’re at the point now where many people don’t think twice about downloading the latest Facebook, Google Maps or gaming application to use on their mobile device – any more than they would about downloading something to their desktop.

Mobile apps even appearing for business functions now (beyond regular email) – email campaign service Constant Contact launched an iPhone app yesterday to let people check in on their email campaigns, for example.

(Caveat: Of course, many people aren’t there yet. I know plenty of people whose phones don’t even have bluetooth, let alone data plans)

So, if mobile apps are becoming a current “big thing,” what’s next?

My take: local.

Keeping it local

While as sites like Yelp have leveraged user reviews at a local level, the best mobile apps over the next couple of years will pair GPS, cell tower or manually-set location information with contextual content.

Consider FourSquare. I started playing around with FourSquare fairly recently. Essentially, it’s a social network that lets you tell your contacts where you are right now. There are a bunch of other game-playing features wrapped around it, but it’s basically a location-based social network.

Think for a minute about the potential simple extensions to a network like this:

• Know when your friends are in the same neighbourhood as you
• Receive special offers from businesses in the area (check in at a subway station and get a $10-off coupon for a nearby restaurant, for example)
• Ensure ads are targeted to only come from businesses in the neighbourhoods you frequent, or even the kinds of places you visit

Take that kind of thinking and consider the optional extensions to your favourite apps. I might like to know which nearby restaurants my Facebook friends have eaten at. I might want to be notified about breaking news from near my location, whereas I might have to proactively check a news app to get other news.

Of course, this doesn’t apply to every application. I won’t go as far as Kate Imbach and suggest that you care what your neighbours are eating, but there are plenty of extremely interesting applications even for recipe-based sites (perhaps showing you which stores in your area stock the ingredients you need).

Stop and think for a moment – could your company or your clients be working location-based applications into their marketing mix?

What do you think?

(Additional: I’m on the look-out for good books on mobile marketing, especially those considering topics like this. If you know of any, let me know in the comments!)

Companies with faceless brands have some of the greatest opportunities in social media.

I’ve written on this topic before – there are several reasons why the opportunities are so great, but one stands out: the bar is set low for them. No-one expects to see them reaching out and engaging with people; when they do, it’s both noteworthy and newsworthy for many people.

Let me give you an example.

Putting a face on the Toronto Maple Leafs

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a quick note on Twitter:

“Just picked up two Leafs tickets for next week. I’m a glutton for punishment.”

Cue amused responses from numerous people. Among the replies, though, was this, from @MapleLeafs:

“@davefleet – OUCH! Dave. What game u coming too?” [sic]

The very fact that the Leafs replied to my tweet made me sit up and notice. Then, via a direct message, came this:

“For the TB game Tues, let me know when u arrive, and if u have time, i can show u some behind the scenes stuff.”

To cut a long story short, when we arrived at the game we were met by Jonathan Sinden, part of the Leafs interactive department and the man behind the official Maple Leafs Twitter account. Sinden joined the Leafs a few months ago after hearing that they were looking for someone to help them with social media.

Sinden took us on a tour behind the scenes at the stadium, including heading into the production centre (a truck!) from where the Sportsnet and Leafs TV shows are produced, which travels with the Leafs to every game (and through which they apparently almost never do tours on game day). Exceptionally cool. Now, if only the Leafs would start winning…

No longer a black hole

See what Sinden did here, with an investment of a couple of tweets and about 20 minutes of his time?

He put a face on a faceless organization.

Sinden did more than just show us around. He candidly answered our questions, he showed that the organization does care about the fans, and he gave us an experience that we would otherwise never have had. The Leafs became more than a blank, faceless organization and became much more personable. What’s more, this cost almost nothing to do.

How about you? What can your organization do to engage with its fans?

What do you think?

As I mentioned recently, I’ve been working my way through the book/audiobook of Mitch Joel’s Six Pixels of Separation for a while now. Well, I’ve finally finished it… here’s my take…

The Good

• Well-written – Six Pixels of Separation is written in Mitch’s usual friendly, candid style. Though the 270+ pages of content took me a while to get through, it certainly wasn’t because it was a hard read.
• Well-targeted – social media is reaching a point where small businesses can effectively use it to build a presence online. There are a lot of people out there who don’t know how to go about it. This book aims at them, and keeps its beady eye on that audience throughout.
• Good background – throughout the book, Mitch makes reference to the ways that traditional marketing works, and the ways social media marketing differs from that. It’s a useful perspective for people new to the field.
• Good primer – Mitch takes his readers on a well-constructed tour through most of the basic elements of social media marketing. If you’re new to this stuff, it’s a great primer. If you’re a recent convert, it’s a good reminder.

The Not So Good

• Nothing new – Take this one with a pinch of salt as I’m not the target. Whether it’s Join the Conversation or even back to ClueTrain, this book adds little that hasn’t been said before.
• Same people – listen to Media Hacks or to Mitch’s podcast? You’ll have heard either directly from or about most of the people mentioned in this book.
• Not so practical – this book is all about “why,” not “how.” If you’re looking for the “how” of social media, look elsewhere.

The Take-Aways

• Nowadays, everyone researches things online. When they do that, you want them to find as much good content about you as possible.
• Control is a myth. If you matter to people then they are talking about you, whether you know about it or not and whether you like it or not. The only choice is whether you participate.
• Content is king.
• Social media lets you choose and define your own niche, and own it.
• Mobile marketing is emerging as a powerful channel.

Who should buy this book

Not you.

This book is targeted at small business owners who are still searching for the “why” of social media. If you’re reading this site, you’re probably beyond the “why” and into the “how.” You won’t learn much new from this book.

You.

(See what I did there?)

If you’re into social media or the evolution of marketing, you’ll probably enjoy this book. Unlike some other books out there, it’s not a string of blog posts strung together but a well written, cohesive book that flows well. So, if you’re looking for something to reinforce your general thoughts on social media, this is a good start.

The Conclusion

Most of the criticisms above are based on my prior knowledge – I live and work in this space and I either know or know of almost everyone mentioned in the book, so I’m clearly not the in the sweet spot. This book just isn’t targeted at me.

Despite those minor criticisms, though, I really enjoyed this book – enough that I was willing to pay for the audiobook as well as the hard-back copy. It’s easy to absorb, easy to understand and hard to put down. I’d happily recommend it to a small or medium-sized business owner looking to learn more about this space.

There’s my brief take. Have you read Mitch’s book? What did you think?

A hypothetical scenario for you: your communications director comes to you and tells you that thanks to their department’s activities, there were 200 mentions of your brand online, of which three quarters were positive in tone.

Is that good news? Is it bad?

My answer: I have no idea.

Why? Because there’s no context.

Context, please

As social media begins to mature as a communications opportunity, the pressure to demonstrate measurable results will only increase. However, that measurement needs to have context.

Having three quarters of conversations about you be positve may actually be a bad thing if 80 or 85 per cent are usually positive. Two hundred conversations may actually be a drop in volume compared to the norm. Without context, you have no way of knowing.

Telling me that our online outreach increased the proportion of positive conversations by 15 per cent to 75 per cent means a lot more than just the number alone.

What’s your baseline?

People often talk about social media being a long-term proposition. We need to think about measuring social media in the same terms. That means setting baselines – investing a small amount of effort to draw a line in the sand, from which you can measure your results. Sometimes the baseline may be zero, but in most situations that won’t be the case.

How do you draw that line? Here are a few options:

• Do a conversation audit – use free or professional listening tools to look at online metrics over a period of time
• Conduct some market research – commission a few questions in an omnibus poll to measure how things stand
• Analyze your website statistics – traffic volume, sources, conversions, etc

The way you measure your baseline is up to you. The most important thing is that you do it.

For communicators to justify their budgets, they need to show the delta – i.e. the difference between before and after. Without “the before,” you have nothing.

Make sense?

(Image: Shutterstock)

I’m going to take a guess and say that around 5-10% of what I write on this site misses the mark. Maybe I’m wrong about something, or I write something to which people don’t relate, or I write badly.

I know when this happens because on those posts I’m deafened by the silence in the comments. When I get it really wrong, people will tell me but for more things it usually just gets really quiet.

For many of us, especially those thinking from a corporate perspective the fear of the consequences being wrong online is a little greater than that associated with a personal blog. The fear of critics; of trolls; of brand damage; of financial or legal consequences in severe situations can be great. It requires a bit of a shift in thinking to realize that, in conversational channels, it’s ok to be wrong occasionally.

Why should you be ok with being wrong occasionally online?

• Admitting you’re wrong is, in its own way, a powerful way to connect with people. It brings you down from your pedestal.
• You can learn from the comments you’ll receive from your readers.
• No-one is perfect. If you’re never wrong, it likely means you’re not breaking out into new territory. That gets boring pretty quickly. Few people really want to be boring.

Of course, we’re talking about opinions here. When it comes to financial, competitive or IR information you can’t mess around. However, if you’re using social media to connect with people, many times we’re going to find ourselves giving opinions.

It’s ok to be wrong.

What do you think? Are you ok with being wrong occasionally?

(Image credit: gundolf)

It’s hard to argue nowadays that search isn’t important. It’s not often, though, that you see a real-world product completely base its advertising around it.

Check out these ads for the movie 2012, being launched on November 13:

No website on either of them – just an instruction to “Search: 2012.”

If the website for this movie didn’t make it onto the top few pages of search results, through either organic or paid search. The movie would be in trouble, as the URL isn’t obvious either (whowillsurvive2012.com).

Fortunately for the studio, the movie tops the organic results (especially fortunate given there’s no sign of paid search):

Would you be confident enough in your website’s SEO to leave your URL out of your ads?

The concept of the “personal brand” is still quite controversial. Not in whether it’s possible to build a significant personal brand (it clearly is), but in whether it’s the right thing to do.

Over the past few years we’ve seen lots of people develop strong personal brands through social media, and levered those brands to develop their careers.

Recently, I’ve noticed what seems like an increasing use of auto-reply emails by many people with strong personal brands.

They usually read something like this (but far more eloquent):

“Thanks for your email. Please note that it may take me a while to get back to you, as I get a large volume of email.”

I got to thinking about a fundamental problem with big personal brands (this isn’t a shot at people with them – just exploring the issue):

*You* aren’t scaleable

The problem with building a strong personal brand through social media is that you are the brand – not your product, service or company. That means that as it grows, you get additional attention. Unfortunately, your time can’t scale to go along with the additional attention.

Something has to give. You have to either lengthen your work day even more, find efficiencies somewhere, sacrifice some other element of your day to handle the flow or start to lose the connection that likely helped to build your brand in the first place.

*You* can’t be delegated

Can you offload some of this work to someone else? You can, but you are the brand, not them. That means people want to connect with you – they want to work with you; they want your input.

Over time, in my own small way, I’ve wrestled with jamming 28 hours of activities into a 24 hour day. Meanwhile, I’ve watched as much higher-profile people have wrestled publicly with this problem. Almost uniformly, they’ve been forced to cut back on the interaction that built their brands in the first place.

Can personal brands be a liability? Is it acceptable for people who’ve built their careers around connection to disconnect slightly? Or is it an understandable side-effect of success?

What do *you* think?

(Image credit: ralaenin)