SCOUT - Corporate Blogging

Social Media Engagement Correlates To financial Performance

2009-07-20T20:39:59Z

The results are in and social media is a winner. Social media has been heartily embraced by most of the world, and a new study from Engagementdb shows that when companies use social media and use it well, they are almost certain to reap quantifiable financial rewards.

This truly groundbreaking social media study written by Charlene Li and Wetpaint, uses a robust statistical analysis to measure how Business Week's top 100 brands are using social media to achieve financial success. The study’s goals were to measure “how deeply engaged the top 100 global brands are in a variety of social media channels and, more importantly, understand if higher engagement is correlated with financial performance”.

Each of the 100 brands was graded based on their social media engagement (how many social media channels they were engaged in and how deeply they were engaged). The report states that “While no one yet has the data to determine direct cause and effect, what we do find is a financial correlation between those who are deeply engaged and those who outperform their peers. Those who are most engaged have “sustained strong revenue and margin growth in spite of the current economy.” The report ascribes this to “social media engagement promoting a customer-oriented mindset…which allows a company to identify and meet customer needs in the marketplace, generating superior profits.”

Successful social media strategies engaged by four companies profiled in the report include: Blogging, Facebook pages, twitter, YouTube channels, discussion forums, wikis, and others. Best social media practices included: engaging with a company (like Backbone Media) to help formulate your strategy, allowing employees time to fulfill their blogging or tweeting obligations, getting buy-in from top management while having an internal social media champion, and cross channel engagement.

The report emphasizes that quality of social media engagement is critical to success. For example, blog content should be regularly updated, comments should receive responses, and networking needs to be ongoing. The authors state that “doing it all may not be for you — but you must do something” so you don’t fall behind your competitors. Finally, it is better to identify a few channels that you can truly be engaged in rather than spreading yourself all over the place and not being as active as your audience expects you to be.

The top 10 companies for using social media strategies to their financial benefit are:

Starbucks, Dell, eBay, Google, Microsoft, Thomson Reuters, Nike, Amazon, SAP, and a tie for tenth between Yahoo! and Intel.

When Mixing Business with Twitter and Facebook Remember What Mom Always Says

2009-01-22T20:01:34Z

Remember how your mom always said, 'if you don't have anything nice to say don't say anything at all'? James Andrews, an executive vice president from Ketchum PR is wishing he heeded those words while twittering about his recent trip to Memphis. The story is titled How Not to be a Key Online Influencer, is covered responsibly by David Henderson on his blog. I think that this story is destined to be a cautionary tale that social media communications experts are sure to be adding into their Power Point presentations right after the slide titled "Kryptonite Blogging Fiasco".

To summerize... Andrews flew to Memphis to visit FedEx, one of his agency’s biggest clients. On his arrival in Memphis he published a tweet (a short post on Twitter.com) that said "True confession but I’m in one of those towns where I scratch my head and say, ‘I would die if I had to live here.”. The tweet was quickly discovered by someone at Fedex that was 'following' Andrews on Twitter and resulted in a scathing written admonishment from the FedEx Corporate Communications team and I'm sure very cloudy home coming at Ketchum in Atlanta. Wanna get away? BTW in Twitter a Follower is like a Friend on Facebook. A Follower can see the tweets of the other people they are following.

In a world of sugar coated PR and glossy lofty corporate sentiments, I always find it refreshing when someone can eloquently speak their mind while being critical but not come off looking like a kermudgen. The masters can walk away with thought leadership and respect and possibly a few enemies. This is a very important skill for food or movie critics and bloggers alike. Many would say that open / casual discussion is what makes social media so important and popular. While a good zinger among friends and controversy keeps things interesting, and a good restaurant or product review is helpful to the consumer, when it's done on a social media setting like Twitter or Facebook it can be a very risky practice. There's a fine line between being critical or just poking fun and being insulting and dumb.

Now, I will admit to sympathizing with Andrews. In my own experience with blogging and Facebook i have found that these publishing tools can lull me, a multitasking type -- into a false sense of obscurity. Just like people mis speak, I can mis-tweet or mis-facebook, or mis-blog comment. Sometimes it's a typo because the text is so small. Sometimes I publish before I'm finished out of disgust, or publishing late at night after a glass of wine.

The Ketchum fiasco is not the first case of professional stupidity on the internet and it will not be the last. Social Media publishing tools offer otherwise responsible professionals and companies the noose in which to hang our selves. Does it mean we should not embrace them or close off our companies to social media all together? No, of course not. It simply means that companies now and in the future need to get serious about making social media best practices part of their business rather than an obscure interest managed by one or two folks or 'the agency'. Also, companies need to put social media education right up there with the other major topics in the employee handbook.

Notes: Thanks to Debbie Weil for bringing this story to my attention via Facebook.

[Added January 26, 2009 at 12:43 PM:] Scout Blogging / Backbone Media produced Corporate Guidelines for Using Blogs and Forums a few years ago but I believe that they are still pertinent today.

Scout Launches Just Venting, New Corporate Blog for Goodway Technologies

2008-12-05T22:02:46Z

Scout and parent company Backbone Media, recently launched Just Venting, our newest client blogging strategy for Goodway Technologies. Goodway is a manufacturer of a wide range of high quality, industrial strength cleaning systems. We named it Just Venting because its content is targeted toward HVAC professionals, building engineers, and facilities managers. These are the folks that make sure your office building, hospital, school or university is clean, not falling apart and being efficiently (cost effectively) heated and cooled.

The businss goal of the blog is introduce new qualified prospects to the Goodway brand by providing useful topical information. As you will see by looking at the blog's welcome post, and post categories such as Green Buildings & Green Technology and Sick Building Syndrome, our strategy is designed to attract the facilities manager audience by publishing an ongoing series of high quality informative, optimized posts on a strategic set of topics. It's no accident that these 'topics' usually correspond with popular industry keywords.

Check out the site and let us know what you think.

PRSA to hold Digital Impact Summit in New York

2008-04-17T21:39:45Z

It’s happening. The mainstream PR profession is really getting serious about how to achieve client goals by combining PR with social media, AND search engine optimization best practices. The latest proof of this is The Digital Impact Conference hosted by the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), Cision and Medialink. I’m proud to announce that I will be speaking at this important two day conference designed to help PR and Marketing professionals understand how to align their business strategies with emerging technologies.

My session is titled “How a Little SEO Can Go a Long Way or the Wrong Way”. If the clever title isn’t enough for you to start reserving your tickets and packing your bags, here’s a quick teaser about my session.

Title: How a little SEO Can Go a Long Way or the Wrong way

Session Summary: For some companies, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be the difference between success and failure. In this session you will learn how an established computer company’s lack of SEO savvy reduced the impact of an otherwise good marketing and PR effort. You will also learn how SEO and strategic blogging catapulted a little Internet startup to success, achieving top search engine rankings along with blog buzz and national media coverage. Come see why PR professionals are uniquely suited to tap into some of that Search Engine Marketing budget, and learn how to better your business by avoiding the top ten things companies do to kill their natural search engine rankings.

This session is on Monday June 9 (Day One) and it will follow Lee Odden’s general session about SEO where he will discuss strategic approaches to getting in the news and how SEO affects social media. The keynote speakers are Josh Bernoff, principal analyst at Forrester Research and David Carr, columnist, Monday Business section, New York Times. The conference is packed with great sessions and speakers so check out prsa.org info page for the latest info and how to reserve your spot.

Last but not least, I want to sincerely thank Bryan Person, one of the most selfless bloggers on the internet for nudging the folks at PRSA to offer me this slot. Thanks Bryan! See you all in the big city.

Scout Blogging and SEO Client Destined for Mega-Millions According to Donny Deutch

2008-02-27T15:45:21Z

We have reason to celebrate here at Scout this month. One of our clients, Internet startup denim retailer TrueJeans, is getting some mass media recognition for its concept along with its search engine marketing results. Just over a year ago, the folks at TrueJeans hired us to help promote their website and brand with Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing Pay-Per Click Campaigns (PPC), and blogging strategy. Over the past year we've been able to achieve some great results by following Backbone's philosophy that the three keys to search engine marketing success are indexability, relevancy and links. For TrueJeans, we optimized their existing website's content and introduced a blog to initiate continually updated, relevant content, and to encourage community awareness, discussion and links from other sites.

What prompted this entry in the first place is that TrueJeans has made an appearance on CNBC's popular financial segment "The Big Idea" with Donny Deutsch! Their 'Minute to Millions' interview can be seen below in the video segment included in this post.

For anyone unfamiliar with the show, what happens is this: Donny Deutsch brings in a representative or representatives of a budding business venture. He then pairs them up with a couple of industry experts and, after interviewing the business hopefuls, gives the experts one minute to elaborate on why they think the business will or will not succeed. He asks them such questions as "What do you see as the obstacles for this business?" "Is there an edge here?" "Is this really a 'Big Idea'?" The feedback is important for the guests in moving forward with their business plans, and of course, they get exposure! Happily for TrueJeans, the results were all positive. The experts had some great feedback, and in the end, they got the thumbs up from Donny confirming that TrueJeans' service is definitely a Big Idea.

Donny points out during their mini-interview that they had earned a top-ranking position on Google for the extremely competitive term "jeans", which, in this technological age of fierce online competition, is a major point in their favor. TrueJeans was new to the blogging and SEO scene in January 2007 when we first initiated our services, but by the Summer, we had helped them to reach the top five, then top three, and eventually number one position on organic search rankings in Google for "jeans". This has really helped to bring in a plethora of new business by helping denim shoppers to find their site quickly and easily when searching.

As one of our original blogging clients, TrueJeans has had a strong vision from the get-go. We couldn't be happier for them throughout their continued success. This is yet another feather in their cap to add to the already growing list of accomplishments including networking with influential bloggers, helping more and more readers find their perfect fit, partnering with the National Eating Disorders Association to combat unhealthy body image, and even traveling to Hollywood to help celebrities find their perfect pair of jeans for TV's Access Hollywood!

We don't want to take all the credit for their success, of course, but we like to think that the blog has really had a profound impact on the wonderful opportunities that have come their way this past year. Keep up the good work, guys!

Scout Launches New Corporate blog for Carlisle Wide Plank Floors

2008-01-22T20:07:33Z

I'm pleased to announce the launch of our latest corporate blog, Surface for our client, Carlisle Wide Plank Floors. Carlise is a hardwood flooring company that produces and sells very high quality hardwood floors made from old growth trees and recycled wood.

If you're looking for a great example of a company that's right for blogging, this is it. I mean everyone we've meet at the company from the President down to the receptionist is truly passionate about working at Carlisle, the customers they work with, and especially about the wood. If you don't believe me just watch this video of company President, Don Carlisle talking about the wood.

They have been an amazing client so far providing us with great feedback every step of the way and lots of access to their top sales and customer support people. We used this access to understand the needs and interests of their clients. After speaking with these folks we realized it also makes sense to make them the bloggers because they are the people that the clients most want to speak with.

Our established online marketing goals for the project center around brand awareness and search engine marketing. Together we have developed a strategy to create a discussion with their audience that that goes beyond product centric terms like hardwood flooring wood grains & styles to also delve into more customer centric topics like home decor styles, green living and forestry.

Now that we are past the blog community research design and development phase, the Scout team and I are looking forward to providing Carlisle with daily Scout Reports that help their bloggers key in on topics and keywords that are relevant to our overall marketing strategy. Please check out the blog and let us know what you think.

Reflections on our Second Year as a Strategic Blogging Service

2007-12-26T15:00:00Z

The holidays are upon us, and things have been picking up here in the Scout office this season! With some new clients getting ready to launch their blogs, and another client's blog underway, we've hardly had time to dedicate to this blog! But that just means that we've been busy, and that's certainly a good thing. Reflecting back on this year, we're proud to have helped many clients develop blogging and social media strategies.

Appistry. This company helped us to really develop a broad understanding of what's happening out there in the most deep-rooted industry of blogging - technology. Since technology experts were the first ones taking advantage of the Internet, it only makes sense that they were also the first ones to blog. While social media and blogging has certainly evolved over the years, we found that there's a very rich network of blogs and other social media outlets dedicated to the sharing of technological knowledge, from Java programming tips and tricks, to the more business-oriented strategies for upper level IT managers and CIOs. Appistry develops a product that they have entitled "application fabrics", which offer clients with ways to ensure their data is safe, secure, and accessible. We found ourselves plunged into forums and blogs stretching from Microsoft to Apple, Sun Microsystems to freelance coding enthusiasts. We're grateful to this client for helping to expand our realm of knowledge not only of these technological concepts, but of the audience and participators in technology-driven social media.

TrueJeans. TrueJeans has provided us with a glimpse into another very active social media community - fashion. As a new company breaking into business by offering an online tool to help men and women find the 'perfect fitting jeans', TrueJeans has an edge to offer in an extremely competitive, cutthroat industry. Through our research for TrueJeans, we've been exposed to the many different faces of fashion in blogging and social media. We've found that forums are not only constantly populated with bargain hunters and upscale fashionistas, but with men looking for a great fit as well! Blogs are brimming with celebrity style reports and online coupons. There are fashion shows and behind the scenes fashion interviews on YouTube. For TrueJeans, launching their blog has really been a window to their customers. It's helped them to stay on top of the latest trends as well as make their voice heard about social issues like Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty, and TrueJeans' recent partnership with the National Eating Disorder Association to help women be aware of these diseases and learn to embrace their bodies-both efforts of which we at Scout are proud to be a part of.

Spherion. As one of the top employers in America, and North America's 6^th largest staffing firm, Spherion is no stranger to connecting to people and finding out what their strengths are. We were delighted to be able to provide a way to further reach out to their audience - prospective job applicants, companies looking to hire, retirees, recent college grads, really anybody looking for, leaving, or currently at a job. Through our research for and communication with Spherion, we discovered that the development of their blog, The Big Time, was just what people were looking for. More and more people are turning to the Web for advice and knowledge, just as more and more people are turning to the Web for job postings and business communication. By exploring these areas of the blogosphere and forums, we were able to provide Spherion with the advice needed to establish an authoritative career blog.

In addition to these 'big three', we've also helped a medical device company monitor medical forums, and a market research firm develop a strong strategy should they decide to venture into corporate blogging someday. We have to keep them anonymous for now, but that doesn't mean that we haven't valued our partnerships with them and wish them the very best.

Carlisle Wide Plank Floors. As for up and coming projects, we're looking forward to launching a blog next month called Surface for a New Hampshire-based hardwood flooring company called Carlisle Wide Plank Floors. The blog will have multiple authors and we've already met all of them and can say firsthand that they're a great group of people! We'll leave it at that for now, but there'll be more news ahead once we're up and running, so be sure to check back later in January.

HomeAire. We've also just launched our first client blog utilizing our new content services, air quality company HomeAire's Clearing the Air blog, and you can read all about it in our previous entry.

For now, we're excited to ring in the new year with some new endeavors, and continue help our current clients stay on the cutting edge of social media in their industries. As we develop more and more understanding of different niches and industries, we're excited to see how we might be able to help similar companies in the future!

Announcing a New Blog for Living Greener and Cleaner

2007-12-21T18:34:37Z

One of our newest clients, HomeAire.com, just officially launched their corporate blog, "Clearing the Air" last week. HomeAire is a subsidiary of Spruce Environmental Technologies, a company of super nice folks up in Ward Hill, MA who are passionate about the air we breathe. They offer products ranging from indoor air purifiers to central vacuums, dryer booster fans, and radon testing kits. After getting to know them and familiarizing ourselves with their products and services, I think we're all feeling the need to check our air and get tested for radon. Who knew it was so prevalent in homes today?

The reason I'm talking about this client in particular is because HomeAire marks a new turn for us in the Scout services road. We've been trying to figure out new ways to better serve our clients, and one thing that has always stuck out has been the fact that often times, clients want a corporate blog, and they understand the benefits and agree with the concept, but they either don't have the time, or don't want to be writing it themselves. Upper level executives are particularly busy, so having the pressure of their jobs heightened by the pending topics sent to them by the Scout team can cause them to feel overwhelmed.

Taking these thoughts into consideration, we've expanded our services to include content development. Now, companies have the option of either: a.) going the more traditional route of having our blogging team send over topic ideas with strategic advice, coaching the company's bloggers on what to write about and how to optimize for search results, or b.) the new approach of directly writing the content for the blog, optimized and approved by the company. This still allows executives and employees the option of updating the blog if they so choose, but the pressure of frequently writing enriched content is eliminated.

Now, you may be thinking, "but I thought you were against ghost blogging!" There's a fine line there, between what constitutes ghostwriting and what doesn't. By submitting posts under the username of "The HomeAire blogging team", we're acknowledging that we are working as their blogging team, without appending another individual's name to our content. Understandably, this can be a touchy subject with many, but we like the happy compromise and the opportunities that this allows. If someone comments on the blog, a knowledgeable representative from HomeAire can directly respond without causing confusion of having different names.

We're really excited about this new venture and hopefully other clients will see the value in our content writing services in the future. Feel free to head over to HomeAire's blog to see some of our work, and happy holidays!

How Blogging Can Get You Press Coverage

2007-10-15T16:33:13Z

For anyone wondering how blogging can help your company's brand awareness and thought leadership profile via press coverage, here are a few real life examples of how blogging has helped generate press coverage for my business.

In August I posted some advice on the best way for a company to handle a bad Consumer Generated Media thread. Last week I was contacted by Vawn Himmelsbach, a writer from ITBusiness.ca, an electronic news outlet owned by IT World Canada. The reporter, told me that she found my blog post using Google's regular search (not blog search). Last week Vawn published her story called "How do you stop a disgruntled employee blogger?" and if you read the piece you will see that I was quoted heavily throughout the story.

Here's another example. In March 2007 I asked "Should corporate blogs use ghostwriters?". That lead to a call from a reporter Tony Kontze, a reporter for Investors Business Daily and this story called "Writing Blogs Can Be Hard, So Get ‘Help’". Unfortunately, you can't read this piece without setting up a trial subscription but if you do you will also see that the reporter cited me repeatedly and gave me the last word.

How did I do it? Very simple. In both cases I took questions that I was hearing over and over again from my target audience and tried to offer my own insight and perspective on the matter. I laid it out there and cited a few related posts that helped make my point. Days, months or years later a journalist does a search in Google, finds my post and says here's a person that will give me a good quote or two. I made their job very easy. How is this different from traditional PR and media relations? I'm not a PR expert but I think reporters like to dig things up on their own but they're not out there pounding the pavement, their using the instant and relevant gratification of your typical Google search or the more timely search power of blog search engines like Technorati.

Simple things you can do. Talk to your customers, and monitor the blogs. At conferences listen to the questions that people are asking the 'expert panel'. Talk to your sales people and people on the front lines with your customer. Figure out what the reporters in your industry are going to be looking for in the next 2 - 10 months, pounce on the issues surrounding the big hairy questions and make sure you post it on a blog that does a decent job at getting indexed by Google.

Now, it may seem like I'm taking this opportunity to toot my own horn, and I am, but here's my point. I'm a big advocate of blogging but I don't blog every day. In fact my average blog post is about one per month. However, my blog posts deliver relevant search traffic to my site, get me invited to speak at conferences, inlinks, and del.icio.us social media bookmarks and quoted in major and minor publications. Here are two clear cases of how blogging can help put your business (in this case a small company) in front of journalists at the critical moment when they are conducting their research and looking for relevant voice.

How can I drive more traffic to my blog?

2007-08-30T16:50:53Z

I recently was contacted by Yehuda Berlinger, a professional blogger who runs a blog about being a blogger looking for corporate blogging positions called Blogging Without a Wire and another blog about gaming.

He had a few great questions. I answered his email and then asked him if it would be alright to use my response in a blog post. With Yehuda’s permission, below are his questions and my (as usual) long winded answer. Any bloggers out there that have more to say, Yehuda and I would love to hear your comments. I would also like to put out a call for anyone that wants to be a guest blogger on this subject.

1. Yehuda’s Personal blogging question: While my own blog (http://jergames.blogspot.com) is doing "well" in terms of PR, it still has very little traffic (200 tracked visitors a day) resulting in only token monetization ($300 a month). I know that's better than most, but I feel like I have the potential to do so much better. How do I start really moving forward on my own blog?

2: Yehuda’s Corporate blogging question: I recently got, and left, a job as a corporate blogger. The expectation was that I will drive lots of traffic and lots of results. But my own blog took two years to get where it is today, and, while high in PR, it's low in traffic. If what I think I can do as a corporate blogger (create daily posts, control the corporate conversation, be the friendly face of the company) is so much different from what people expect from a corporate blogger (drive traffic and sales), am I pursuing the wrong thing?

First of all, congratulations on the 200 visitors per day, that’s a pretty good start. What you are asking about is a big question and a challenge that my team and I are faced with as well. It's true that blogs can drive traffic and lead to sales but I think what you are experiencing is something I, and I think many of our colleagues, are encountering as they try to instill social media participating practices into the corporate process. A lot of companies shut down or ignore the concept that there is such a thing as blogging best practices and that's not something you can just slap on the production line (believe me I've tried) and start to see spikes in sales and traffic.

The bad news is that most of my answers require a significant investment of someone's time and brain power. Here's the opportunity or good news --- the fact that it’s hard to tap into blogging traffic makes corporate blogging a great value for the companies and people who master the art. Doing this takes a lot of time and effort and, depending on what the client is paying you, it may or may not be something that you can systematically provide as part of your arrangement. As professional bloggers, we need to sell the client and get the resources we need to prove the case for them. Once we get their buy-in, we need their support or a level of authority to go out and transparently blog on their behalf.

I think there are a couple of components to driving traffic. They are:

The actual setup of the blog,
Keyword research and targeting,
Community research,
Ongoing monitoring for keywords and identified blog feeds,
Quality commenting,
Quality posting,
Social media promotion and blogger outreach.

All of these are very important, but I think that monitoring and commenting are the keys to driving traffic.

There are also some other factors that play into the mix:

Who you are (commercial vs. independent blogger, due to the fact that many bloggers have their own commercial agenda. Just a hunch, but sometimes I feel that a blogging community is more apt to promote the independent voice than point traffic to a commercial entity even if the content is insightful and useful). This contradicts a point I will make below hosting the blog under the company domain but it does not override that advice.
How stimulating or controversial you are (do your posts spark discussion or outrage), or how inquisitive / conversational you are (some bloggers have a knack for getting the conversation started by raising questions and then keeping the conversation going. This requires dedication, vulnerability and passion on the blogger’s side because they’re saying 'I don’t have all the answers').

So, to answer your question, here are some things to try if you have not already.

Optimizing the technical setup of the blog: If it’s a commercial blog, I think the ideal is when the blog is part of the company domain. For example, company.com/blog. My rationale… presumably, the company website has been around for awhile and this is an advantage over a brand new domain or a company.blogspot.com URL. If a company is going to invest in blogging, they might as well leverage this advantage and let the content and links that the blog generates boost the corporate website’s page rank and, as I like to say, overall content footprint. In my experience a sub-folder (.com/blog) is better for SEO than a sub-domain (blog.company.com). Also see my previous post written about this. In the past I've written about Should you host your own corporate blog or use a service and The Ups and Downs of Multiple Website Identities.
Making SEO more than just an afterthought: Also, you want to make sure your blog has some of the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) basics. Each blog post creates a permalink. Make sure the permalink page uses a title tag that includes the title of the blog post. Also, tag and categorize the post with a category or tag name that is relevant but also part of your target keyword list (see next two items for how to discover keywords).
Keyword Research: Do some keyword research around your topic and figure out the relevant terms that attract the most searchers per month. There are some OK free tools out there for doing this: Webmaster Toolkit or SeoBook's Tools and Gagets. I assume that you are probably already aware of these. There’s also a commercial product called Trellian which is what my SEO department uses.
Subjective Input: After you have developed your keyword list, give each of the phrases your own relevancy score. I like to use a scale of .01 – 1.0. A 1.0 is a dead-on match meaning that this term is very likely to be a qualified visitor. I would give a broad general term like “game” a lower score (because it is likely that only a fraction of the people searching on this term are interested in your what you are offering). You can then use these scores as a way to adjust and filter against your search frequency and post frequency (see next item). I use Excel to calculate by multiplying frequency by the score.
Blog and Social Media Community profiling: Once you have figured out your best list of terms, use Icerocket.com to check the post frequency about those terms. If the term is searched a lot and posted about a lot you know that if you optimized a post around that term then it is likely to attract a larger share of attention. You can also look at it another way. If the relevant term is searched a lot but not posted on a lot, that could be an opportunity to post about something that is of interest to searchers but does not have a lot of completion in the social media search engines like Technorati.com. This means that your post will stay in the social media searches longer because it’s not getting pushed down into obscurity, but generating a high frequency of noise around the term. Assuming that the term is a popular search phase, it’s likely to garner some extra traffic and attention due to the decreased level of completion in the blogosphere.
Content Strategy: Think about your audience. What are they interested in and what are the popular blogs that they are reading? Develop a profile of the bloggers who are reaching your audience. Read through their blog and look at who’s commenting and visit their blogs as well. Develop a matrix of the community and really try and identify the influencers and the active participants in the community. Create a blog roll on your site of these blogs that will help the bloggers develop an awareness of your site. Develop a strategy that will lead them to reference some of the work you’re doing (Admittedly, this is the toughest part but that’s the price we have to pay for greatness).
Timely Monitoring and Quick Response: Start monitoring all the blogs and important keyword on a daily basis. You should be on the lookout for blog posts that you can add value to by either commenting or posting about. If you see a post that you think you can add value to, comment now and write a post later.
Comment, comment comment: A good insightful comment on a popular or even not so popular blog can drive a significant amount of traffic and awareness to your blog. More importantly, comments will help you develop a trust within the community and with that blogger. Don’t assume one or two good comments are going to do the trick. It needs to be a consistent process that is guided by your monitoring. The earlier that you can spot a good comment opportunity and make a comment, the better chance you have of getting your thoughts into the mix and gaining some visibility and respect from the community.
Use blogging best practices for outreach: A lot of people talk about how gaining the attention of influencers and getting them to blog about you is a great way to generate traffic. Of course that’s true but some people look at influential bloggers as a PR opportunities (visualize a juicy sizzling steak) and try to pitch them using traditional media relations techniques. This might work sometimes but it could backfire (see the Bad Pitch Blog). I would say developing trust through a comment is a far better approach than directly pitching a blogger to write about you. Of course, this approach takes more time, but luckily you did not ask me how to be efficient. Then try and develop relationships with not only the big influencers, but some of the more passionate and lesser known bloggers by commenting and reacting and adding value to what they are saying on their blogs. Commenting on blogs is one of the best ways to direct people to your site. Make sure your comment adds value to what is being said.
Cultivate Inbound links: The ideal is when this happens naturally; you write a nice post and a blogger finds it and cites your page. That generates traffic and a link. However you can also give this process a nudge. This is a tricky area and it takes a certain chutzpa to do it but reach out to the bloggers and ask them to feed back to you on what you have written. You never know what they’re going to say, if anything, but I think that if you genuinely try to solicit their advices, it’s likely to lead to some link love down the road. I know that this also seems a little like you have an hidden agenda, but really you’re trying to be included in the conversation that’s going on, and sometimes you have to put your client or yourself on the line a little bit. Initially you may receive feedback that’s not entirely positive, but that’s something to build off of.
More tips and tactics: Here’s a good article I found that talks about some of the technical, feed related ways to promote a site.
Create something new: Create a tool, academic research, do a poll/survey or produce some resources that will create some thought leadership or be of interest to your target community. I've done this for my own company (Corporate Blogging Survey , the Blogging Success Study, Corporate Guidelines for Using Blogs and Forums , 10 Tips for Becoming a Great Corporate Blogger ) and it continues to be a great source of links and traffic to my site.
Social media networking: If you have not already developed a presence in the large social media networking communities such as MySpace, LinkedIn, Facebook, MyBlogLog, those are a great resource. Or, target more focused communities that focus on a certain industry. A great new example of this is MyRegan, a community of communicators. You can also engage in micro blogging with things like Twitter and Pownce.

Of course there are entire books (See below) written on this subject so by no means do I think my list is the authoritative list of ways and means. Let me know what you think. Did I tell you things you already knew or do you find some value in this? What really works for you? Let me know what points you like. Again, I’m sure you’re already doing a lot of this.

Books:
The Corporate Blogging Book by Debbie Weil
Strategies and Tools for Corporate Blogging by John Cass
What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging and Podcasting - Ted Demopoulos
The New Influencers: A Marketer's Guide to the New Social Media - by Paul Gillin
Blogging for Business: Everything You Need to Know and Why You Should Care by Shel Holtz

Blog Marketing by Jeremy Wright
Naked Conversations by Shel by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel

Signs of a Tipping Point for Corporate Participation in Social Media

2007-08-22T21:13:31Z

According to the new PR wiki there are over 130 corporate and business blogs and more than 8% of the Fortune 500 is blogging. To borrow a line from Abram Sauer's recent post titled Connected?,

"If you’re not already one of them, you’ve probably thought about it. And it just gets more tempting."

I’m sure it’s tempting but I think most big companies would like to put consumer generated media back in the bottle. Why? Because it’s stripping down their control of the message and putting them in a position to act. In this new world, one consumer's opinion can outweigh anything the company can say about itself. Companies are now in the tough position of needing to act and risk getting it wrong, or ignore and seed the conversation to the consumer and possibly a more aggressive and agile competitor. The good news for people who want to see more corporate participation in social media is that it's definitely something that's on the radar now and I believe will see more investment in this area starting this fall and into 2008.

This is my anecdotal perception of what's going on; Social media awareness has reached a point where marketers know it's something they need to budget for. They are searching, gathering information, downloading white papers, going to conferences and talking to vendors about services offerings, options and of course, costs.

With four major clients (Spherion, True Jeans, Appistry and a TBA) I've been marketing and selling social media services since March, 06. However, I would say there has been a big up tic in interest since last spring. A lot more companies are calling me to investigate doing something with social media (either monitoring, blogging, commenting, or podcasting mostly). In July I participated in a Frost and Sullivan Marketing East Conference attended by hundreds of senior marketing executives from fortune 1000 companies. Many of them were asking questions that indicate to me that they are beyond the 'what is a blog?' stage and into the 'what should our strategy be?', 'how','how much' and 'when' phase. Here are some of the questions…

What different tactics would an industry leader take vs. a new entrant in the consumer generated sites?
Any advice on how marketers at big companies can convince corporate compliance that blogging is a good idea?
What is the best way for a company to handle a bad Consumer Generated Media thread and how can you avoid this from happening in the first place?

This suggests to me that 2008 will be a major year for corporate social media strategies and initiatives. I think that the adopters that come on in 2008 will ~~drive~~ force even reluctant companies (possibly kicking and screaming) to budget for it and then finally participate in 2009.

Why are companies reluctant? Large companies want to see statistics, but social media participation is hard to measure and ROI is difficult to predict. In my experience this is also a catch twenty two because even when a company has bought into social media services, there are no guarantees the company will allow a vendor to implement a tracking system that will properly measure ROI. From personal experience I've had trouble getting IT to dedicate the minimal required effort to implement the tracking.

Another part of the reluctance on the company's side is concurrently, online marketing departments are hitting a stride and comfort level with more predictable, measurable and systematic online marketing tools such as search engine marketing and online ad sponsorship. Now marketers are being prodded to use their marketing brains to crack consumer generated media, which, at its core, is a culture that is the opposite of PR and marketing spin. It’s a new job for marketing and communications managers. This post Google world makes me wonder if marketers will ever have a 'cushy' job. I can imagine them thinking thoughts like:

'Oh great, now I've got to monitor bloggers because what they say can impact my business.
'My CEO needs to be blogging if we want to maintain our thought leadership position.'
'My product developers should be encouraged and empowered to blog too.'
'Let me go home at 5pm and spend some time with family for goodness sake.'

Don't get me wrong. I'll be the first person to tell you that some companies should not blog or engage in social media. A lot of companies are simply not ready to take the leap. My advice is to take baby steps. Social media monitoring is something that should be within reach of any company. Here's what every company should be monitoring.

Unfortunately for the companies with deep pockets, the reality is that participation in social media is more than just doing a little homework and then spending like you’re Vonage on a pre-IPO market grab. Once you understand blogging culture and what social media participation for your company really means, you realize that (in many cases) making it work requires a grasp of blogging best practices, goals, strategic thinking and a cultural shift that stretches beyond the boundaries of a marketing and communications department.

Take it for what it's worth but I think that starting in late 2007 and by the end 2008 we will see a surge in the number of companies either dipping their toes in by increasing their blog monitoring efforts, or getting up to their waists by combining some sort of monitoring and participation effort (with either textual blogging, podcasting, video blogging, social network participation, a combination of all). I'm not saying all of them will be successful but I think it will be the critical mass or tipping point that will make corporate social media strategies a standard part of business by the end 2009.

I think that 2007 and 2008 will produce a wide range of brand name companies participating in social media. This will produce a few high profile case study reports that garner widespread business media coverage beyond the blogs into mainstream business media. Mainstream media is already providing a steady drum beat about how the customer is in charge.

If you want some signs of the tipping point, check out this passage from Perry Evans at Evans INC’s blog post titled Against the Gain. It summarizes s The Sunday NY Times article on how AOL is struggling to shift along with online consumer behavior.

"To simplify, searching isn’t so obviously the center of the future universe. The old adage of browsing is rapidly taking on a new life form - call it social, call it exploring, call it stumbling - consumers are rapidly adopting new forms of information navigation that do not follow the paradigm of Search. Media is in a fundamental shift beyond search into personal and community exploration and interaction, and it feels (to me) to be approaching a tipping point.

Perhaps the future no longer belongs solely to the Search Box?"

I also have a theory that for every company that enters the blogosphere there will be three more competitors saying ‘Oh shoot, now we’ve got to get in there too’. What would that create? Ideally it would be a collection of consumers and company personalities maintaining a dialog that is mutually beneficial. The reality will be more of a mix between (to borrow a phrase) clued in socially responsible companies (participating, adding value to the conversation and helping consumers) and clueless (companies that are not aware of social media culture, benefits and best practices) companies trying to inauthentically game the system.

I wish I could use a less pompous term than clueless. However, I've spoken to some companies that are paying people to find blog posts that relate to their products, and then drop in a comment that says nice things about their products as if it were a real consumer. This kind of tactic is a threat to social media because it will drown out the real consumer generated dialog. The good news is that this particular company was willing to listen to me when I told them there was a more authentic way to go that would probably result in better results (But I digress). Ignorance is bliss but this tells me that education is very important to the future success of corporate social media strategies.

Here's Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson reading a chapter from their new book called How to Do Everything with Podcasting. Download the 22-minute conversation here or listen below (MP3, 10Mb). There is a section around minute 4 that i will paraphrase

'Exactly what can podcasting do for a business? To be frank that's the wrong question. Podcasting should be applied as should any communications tool as a solution not a goal in and of itself. No business should ever begin the process of creating and launching a podcast with a statement that sounds like this... By God, we aught to be podcasting. Instead it ought to come up in discussions about ways to reach audiences to convey particular messages or to address specific situations and problems'.
Listen to this podcast now:

To me, this 22 minute listen is a great way to start the education process. Burn it on a CD and give it to your CEO to play on her ride home from work. Maybe when she's done she will subscribe to the For Immediate Release Podcast - which is another great first step. Is it possible to have two first steps? Hmm, let me think about that :)

If I’m right then social media is an opportunity for some companies to take some risks and gain ground with consumers while the other guys are contemplating their navels. The companies that do it right will prescribe to this philosophy that I lifted from a March 2000 interview with David Weinberger about 'Cluetrain Manifesto'.

"Companies that erect a fortress storefront on the Net and send goods out for sale, but immediately hoist the drawbridge at the first sight of a peasant rebellion, will fail. Only those businesses that "decloak" and engage with consumers online will have a fighting chance of succeeding."

That's all I've got for now. I know there's a lot here to digest but I really want some feedback. I'm sure there is someone out there who can pick on some of my thoughts. I know at least one person.

One Way to Explain a Corporate Social Media Strategy

2007-08-17T18:00:44Z

Recently i was asked by a prospective client to help explain social media to her senior executives in a way that they would understand. She asked me to keep it to a page or two. I wanted to get across the benefits of social media but I also wanted to address some common misunderstandings that people have when it comes to participation and measuring ROI. Here's a version of what I gave her with all the company references taken out. I'd love to hear any feedback. Best regards, Stephen >>>

Corporate Social Media Strategy

One of the strengths of social media is that it attracts enthusiastic and influential community members into publicly accessible & searchable networks. Within these networks, people share thoughts and observations and engage in conversations, sometimes directly coinciding with a particular need for a product (like a discussion where someone mentions difficulty in finding a good Internet access provider in the area, for example). Other times, the conversation may relate more to practical issues that identify a person or group as part of a certain target market or segment (for example, an active blogging community discussing farming conditions in a region, or broader farming related topics). These conversations not only provide insight into the community at large, but also provide an opportunity to research, target, and positively engage with an audience.

Strategic monitoring of and participation in consumer generated media conversations represents a competitive edge for companies trying to:

Build a closer relationship with or understanding of the customer
Improve search engine rankings, increase brand awareness
Establish thought leadership.
Stay in front of issues
Learn from customer insights
Monitor for consumer sentiment about their brand.

The beauty of a social media strategy is that all or some of these benefits can be accomplished with a single strategy. It all depends on goals and resources.

Also see: Corporate Blogging Survey Executive Summary

Misunderstandings in Social Media

The value of social media engagement is often misunderstood by people who are accustomed to a mass marketing approach or online media metrics. One of the common mistakes companies can make when attempting to tap this opportunity is to perceive this access as way to jump in and talk about their products or value proposition and create linkage to a particular promotion. It’s easy to realize why this approach is wrong if you understand that the reason people read blogs is to find real opinions and to know what their contemporaries are thinking. Blog readers generally approach blogs in this way:

Blogging is an opportunity to take part in a conversation or start one.
Bloggers are willing to hear from your corporation but they don’t’ want ‘corporate speak’ or a sales pitch.
They will appreciate it if you respect their community.
In a crisis situation they want you to address their concerns even if you don’t have the answers.

The third attribute, respect, is an important tactic to keep in mind. You show respect by researching the topic and community before entering the discussion. Readers will be more receptive if you can reference previous comments or posts from the community to add insight or thought leadership to the conversation that is already active in their community. Essentially, a great social media strategy focuses on becoming a great corporate blogger

Also see:Ten Tips for Becoming a Great Corporate Blogger).

What Successful Bloggers Do

Blogging is more than just writing. There is a lot of legwork involved with putting a post together and promoting it after it has been published.

Here is a fictitious successful blogger named Amanda B. Reckondwyth (thanks Car Guys). Amanda is passionate about her topic, she knows her community and monitors over 60 related blog feeds on a daily basis. She’s looking for conversations and comment threads that intersect with her or her company’s interests, monitoring news, industry buzz and specific bloggers that she regards as authorities to an audience that she cares about. Amanda is also watching for specific keywords. When she sees a blog post, comment thread, or something in the news that sparks her interest, Amanda writes a blog post about it or visits the respective blog and leaves an insightful comment.

If Amanda writes a comment, her name and URL are attached and provide her with a link, credit and visibility.
If Amanda writes a post, she will cite (provide a hyperlink to) her sources, categorize it, add keyword tags, and publish. Automatically this then pings the social media search engines and alerts the people that have subscribed to her blog’s feed. The post is also picked up in the major search engines.
Before or after publishing, Amanda may also do some outreach to notify certain bloggers about the post and solicit their input.
Amanda knows her audience and therefore her comment or post addresses something that is more likely to generate attention and discussion.
Because Amanda is a successful blogger, her community knows who she is. She has the credibility within her community, thereby giving her content a better chance of propagation.
The bloggers that she has reached out to have now publicized the post’s existence to their audiences and it is attracting readership. People start to comment and Amanda stays engaged with the conversation until it has run its course.
Finally, the posts and ensuing threads stay online as content that can continue to draw attention in the future.

Success breads success. The more successful Amanda is in her blogging efforts the more people react and pickup on her stream of thinking. Practically speaking this creates a snowballing increase in readership and blogger citations (links) and all the other benefits of a successful social media strategy.

Also See:
What Should Every Company Be Monitoring @ the NewPR/wiki
Blogging Success Study we conducted with Northeastern University

Measuring Social Media Success

Many marketers will look at the engagement as simply an interaction between finite groups of people (two or several) that may be viewed by tens, hundreds or thousands of people over time. Basic online marketing metrics such as unique visitors, impressions, search traffic, conversion rates will only tell part of the story.

With a strategic approach, each engagement will be designed to support multiple goals at once. Successful encounters can result in a number of benefits ranging from heightened brand awareness through word of mouth buzz, to customer insights that improve your products. Here are some suggested methods for measuring return.

Goal: Dramatically Increase volume of leads from the website via organic search.
Measurement: Set tracking cookie on incoming visitors to the blog down to specific conversion points.
Goal: Dramatically increase company’s brand awareness and thought leadership presence.
Measurement: Track brand mentions via traditional and online media sources, and blogs. Also track requests media interviews and speaking opportunities.
Goal: Dramatically Increase volume of leads.
Measurement: Set tracking cookie on incoming visitors to the blog down to specific conversion points.
Goal: Optimize the blog to give it the best chance of attaining top organic search positions for the most relevant keywords.
Measurement: Weekly website position reports compared with benchmark web position reports.
Goal: Dramatically increase online link popularity.
Measurement: Improved search engine rankings compared with benchmark web position reports.
Goal: Improved connection with the customer.
Measurement: Benchmark and analyze the volume and content of comments on your blog and on blogs that you do not control.

Also see these posts regarding Social Media and Blogging ROI:
Calculating ROI of Blogging is Easier than it Looks
Mounting a PR Case for Blogging ROI from an SEO Perspective
Blogging ROI Proof is for Pansies

Negative Blog Comments: How to prepare for and handle a bad Consumer Generated Media Thread

2007-08-04T07:29:34Z

What is the best way for a company to handle a bad Consumer Generated Media thread and how can you avoid this from happening in the first place? A senior marketing executive recently asked me this question during a panel discussion at the Frost and Sullivan Sales and Marketing conference in Alexandra, Virgina. The best way to handle a bad consumer generated media thread is to first be prepared to act quickly. If a response is warranted, be transparent, and address the person from a sincerely helpful and curious point of view.

The way I would define a bad Consumer Generated Media thread is one person negatively comments, blogs or forum posts about a company or product and that entry generates a string of follow-on comments within the initial thread that are generally skewed in a negative way against the company. In more severe cases the thread will spread via pickup from outside blogs and ultimately make its way to more traditional forms of media, and social consciousness. Negative threads are inevitable for large companies and are a threat to any company concerned about its public image.

Usually this question comes up after the negative thread has started. What can you do then? The best advice is to evaluate who started the thread, how it started and who’s participating in it now. Is it someone anonymously trolling for a fight or was it an influential blogger trying to be constructive and engaging?

As Mack Collier writes, you can either Ignore them, Antagonize them, Attempt to pacify them, or Address them. I agree with Mack when he says "Address them, This is always the best course of action. You can't please all your customers all the time, but you CAN listen to them. Let them speak their peace, and see if they are trying to bring to your attention problems in your business processes that can be addressed and corrected." Read carefully what the blogger is saying and ask questions.

Sometimes it is best not to feed the animals. However, I believe that a negative thread handled well can take a potentially negative situation and turn it into something really positive. This is because avid bloggers are the ones who influence the discussions in social media. They tend to appreciate when a company is transparent, listens, asks questions, comes clean in some way or at least shows a little social media savvy in their approach. When a company addresses a blogger’s concern it says to that blogger and to the lurkers in that community something about your company. It says we’re human, we’re listening, we’re concerned because you’re concerned and we’re trying to make things better.

Being prepared for these questions requires research and monitoring of RSS feeds and forums. The way to be prepared is to research the blogosphere and develop a landscape of the blogosphere that matters to your business most. Think about your target audiences and segments. Use social media search tools like Technorati.com and IceRocket.com and blogsearch.google.com that index RSS feeds and profile the important blogging communities, social media networks that attract these audiences and bloggers that influence the discussions around your brand, products or services. Within these communities you will find key influencers and a number of active blogs. Create a dossier of profiles of the individual blogs and their bloggers, and the blogs that they read. A profile could contain what they write about, who reads it, a rating of their relative popularity and influence within a given community. This is research your marketing and communications and PR teams should have anyway. If they do not, it’s a good way to broaden everyone’s sphere of market intelligence and influence.

Start monitoring all your important sites and keywords with a feed reader tool. Adding a feed into a tool is simple. We like Google Reader. A good RSS feed reader will allow you to efficiently scan content for conversations (or threads) that may have a potential impact your business. This research is the foundation for a number of benefits. Here’s an abbreviated list…

It will prepare you with a starting point for who should be on your radar.
In a crisis situation this will save you time. Time is the difference between watching helplessly from the sidelines and having an opportunity to steer or influence the discussion in a positive direction.
Share the information with internal communications. Monitoring and paying attention to social media will give your team and your company a better sense of the community, what they like to talk about, who’s talking, and (most important for later when disaster strikes) how to communicate with them. The value of listening goes beyond marketing and communications. Product developers will be better informed about the customers needs.
This process will enable you to stay on top of the major discussions so you can be informed about the hot topics. More immortality, it will also improve your sensitivity to potential minefields that are unique to consumer generated media best practices and the particular social media community.
Part of the question is how to avoid negative threads. Since you are actively monitoring you will often see an opportunity to add value by commenting on a recent blog post or its ensuing thread. Go ahead and make your comment but don’t come off as a huckster by making a smart comment or giving advice then writing something self promotional at the end. Take the Good Samaritan approach. Offer advice and look for nothing in return. Your name and link are usually included with your comment and that’s all you really need. If you can participate and establish some connections with bloggers and communities before the next bomb drops it may give a boost in goodwill points with that community. They will be more receptive to see your side.
Goodwill from participation will also position you to divert negative threads from happening in the first place.

Maybe your company is considering a social media strategy of its own someday. This process is the logical first step into educating your team in how consumer generated media really works and how to participate in it.

Want to See How Viral Marketing and Social Media Works?

2007-06-19T07:13:42Z

I just came across The Break Up viral video ad skit, by way of Doug Karr at The Marketing Technology Blog. I think this video, the story it tells, and how it is now being told, and distribued is a brilliant living example of the power of viral marketing and social media.

The Break Up
Uploaded by Geert Desager - Trade Manager Marketing Manager at Microsoft

The film is called The Break Up and it was produced in a collaboration between Geert Desager's team at Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions and Openhere, a Belgium based ad agency. Bravo Geert, what's great about this little spot it that it puts all the buzz words like 'conversation marketing' and 'social media' and my favorite 'the customer is in control' into context. Thanks to you and Microsoft for moving the conversation miles forward.

According Geert, the "film" was inspired by a Business Week article by David Armano titled, It's the Conversation Economy, Stupid. The article is another credible mainstream source that puts the shift in consumer behavior into context.

Touching Memorial Day Tributes

2007-05-28T15:57:14Z

Over the past few weeks I've noticed some very touching Memorial Day tributes to American War Veterans. Here's one that I've been drivng past on my way to work. On Friday, I stoped in to get a closer look and take a few pictures. The memorial is called Field of Flags and it was put up by members of the Unitarian Universalist Church in Westborough, MA. It's overwhelmingly sad to stand among these flags and realize that every one of the 3729 (as of May 33) represents a dead soldier and a living group of family and friends going through the pain of loss. Another sobering thougt is that the number is increasing all the time. Here's a link to the latest Department of Defense Casulity Fact Sheet.

While we're on the subject, here is a touching tribute to the troops with a special song by country singer Tim McGraw.