Creative Concepts

It’s Columbus Day here in the US, and that means some people are taking a moment to reflect on our country’s history.  Whether or not Columbus truly “discovered” America is debatable, but one thing’s for sure: he must have been thrilled when he found it for the first time!  Wouldn’t you be?  A whole new world, filled with new opportunities… which other people outside his social circle just happened to have known about for years.

This got us thinking about celebrating a different discovery…

Last week, Arik Hanson cited the blog of our client, Bigelow Tea, as one of 4 examples of corporate blogs that set the bar high for branded communications.  We were thrilled for Bigelow Tea’s blog to have been “discovered,” because we invest a lot of time and effort into helping Bigelow produce a blog that they — and we — can truly be proud of.

And even if others have known about the blog long before Arik did, that doesn’t change the way Arik must have felt when he discovered a great blog that was “new” to him.

The web is filled with new information every day, but it’s also filled with endless archives of content that might not be knew to its creators or its intended audience, but which feels new every time it’s discovered by someone else.

Are you creating content that people will be thrilled to discover?

If you need help with that, come find us on Twitter or Facebook!

We’ll admit it: social media can be overwhelming.

Posting blog entries, updating Facebook, tagging photos, streaming videos, digging, stumbling, tweeting… and we haven’t even mentioned tracking feedback, gauging sentiment, following fans and solving problems.

Who has time for all this?

Well, we do, but that’s what we do every day.  And even we wouldn’t have time for everything we do if we didn’t have a few tools at hand that made everything a bit easier and kept us all a bit more sane.

If you’re trying to wrap your head around scaling your own social media solutions, here are 4 tips that might make everything more manageable.

1.  Social Media Platform Management — The moment you’re managing more than one social media channel at a time, your room for error — or for old-fashioned information overload — multiplies exponentially.  Jamie Beckland compiled a great comparison chart of social media management tools like HootSuite, CoTweet and SocialOomph, so you can find a solution that suits your needs without breaking your budget.

2.  Converge Your Channels — Does your Flickr account link to your blog?  Do you tweet links to your YouTube videos?  Do your employees’ LinkedIn profiles all point back to your company’s website and its Facebook page?  If boosting traffic is part of your social media strategy, make sure your channels are working together, not in isolation.

3.  Get Ahead and Stay Ahead — Not everything in social media happens in real time.  Yes, you need to engage your audience and answer their questions as they happen, but those promotional tweets you need to send about next week’s big sale can be scheduled a week in advance.  And any evergreen content on your website or blog can be referred to regularly, which means you don’t need to lay awake every night worrying about having something new to say tomorrow.

4.  Streamline Your Efforts — As important as it is to be everywhere online, it’s even more important to be where your audience is most active.  They may find you on Flickr, but they might interact with you most beneficially on Twitter or Facebook.  If time is of the essence — and it always is — figure out which of your channels yields the highest return on your investment.  Then, limit your efforts on the ancillary channels strictly to maintenance (unless circumstances change), and pour the bulk of your resources into what’s working.

And if it all still sounds like too much work, start with one simple question:

What don’t people know about your company?

Then, tell them.

Image by Katie W.

Is social media a sales driver and a marketing aid?  Absolutely.

But we also encourage our clients to think outside the box, and find innovative ways to surprise and delight their customers by using these tools in unconventional ways.  One way we do this is by studying how other sectors use these same tools in non-marketing ways, and then innovating in reverse.

For example, the folks at OnlineUniversities recently compiled a list of 100 Inspiring Ways to Use Social Media in the Classroom.  Their tips include:

• Study geography. Use a combination of Twitter and Google Earth to help teach geography-based lessons. This teacher used his network of Twitter followers to create an interactive lesson for his young students. Use her idea to spark your creativity for ways to use these two resources.
• Connect with other classrooms. Collaborate with another classroom, no matter where they are in the world, to expand learning opportunities.
• Window to daily life at school. Create a website like the one at University of Chicago Law School. that allows visitors to hear from students and professors about their daily life at law school.

Which made us wonder… if these approaches work in the classroom, how might they also work in the boardroom?  Or in R&D?  Or sales?

Such as…

• Get a global snapshot of your customers’ realities. Twitter makes it easy to follow users from around the world and receive their updates in real time.  By following your customers in different markets / time zones / continents, you’ll have a constant stream of incoming data that describes their lives and their needs.  And when they share breaking news in their region, your company has the opportunity to act on immediate information and stay ahead of the news cycle.
• Connect with brand evangelists. If consumers love your brand, they’ll want to know about new products and services ASAP.  You could send your top 100 customers the same email blast that you send to your other 99,000 customers… or you could invite those loyalists to take part in Twitter conversations, Facebook discussions and even Skype conferences.  Reward their support by offering them increased access and they’ll reward you with feedback, leads and sales, not because they have to, because your personalized outreach has made them a partner in your company’s growth.
• Provide a window on your company’s culture. To the consumer, every brand is a nameless, faceless corporation by default.  The more personalized and transparent a company becomes, the more a casual customer comes to think of that company as being familiar, rather than generic.  Find the best internal observers of what makes your company tick, and empower those employees to post descriptive, informative or witty updates about your day-to-day operations on Twitter and Facebook.  Catching a daily glimpse of life in your office helps your customers feel like they’re in the cubicles and manufacturing lines with you — and it gives them another reason to care about your success.

How else can you innovate with the same tools everyone else is using?

By using them to demonstrate your commitment to your customers, you’ll really give your audience something to talk about.

A recent survey from eMarketer outlines both the perceived benefits and the primary concerns that business executives have about social media.  Chief among their reservations: information security and employee productivity.

Considering that 51% of the survey’s non-social media-using respondents said they “don’t know enough about” social media, their concerns about security and productivity are understandable.  From the outside, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and other tools might seem like a waste of time when compared to what executives already know works.  And without exposure to the way these tools are commonly used, it’s easy to presume that these mysterious new services can somehow derail your business if they’re used improperly.

To calm these fears, Ford’s head of social media, Scott Monty, often cites an anecdote related to him by Tactical Transparency author Shel Holtz*:

“A friend sent me a PDF of an article from a business journal in which a company expressed reservations about this new technology over which everyone seemed to be abuzz. They decided that they would restrict employees’ use of it, because of the fear of corporate secrets getting out, of insider information making its way to Wall Street, and of employees wasting their time on it. For that reason, they set up the hardware on a single station in the middle of everyone’s desks so that everyone could see how people were using it.

“That PDF was an article from a 1930s business journal and the technology was the telephone.”

Concerns about information security and lost productivity are ultimately corporate fears about control (or lack thereof).  But employees’ actions within social media channels are nothing new.  People have already been talking about their jobs for generations; all these new tools do is make that discussion easier to join, share and track.  The fear of losing control is unfounded.

Or, as Monty himself likes to add: If you don’t trust your employees enough to not damage your brand with their online actions… why did you hire them in the first place?

* Incidentally, Monty has spoken at our biennial Business Smart Tools conferences; the next BST event will take place in 2011.

When we saw one of our clients, Bigelow Tea, mentioned in The Twitter Book (by Tim O’Reilly and Sarah Milstein) as a positive example of how businesses should use Twitter, we were ecstatic.

And then we realized we’d stopped taking our own advice.

In the book, O’Reilly and Milstein applaud Bigelow Tea for using conversational tweets to direct traffic to their tea-related blog posts, rather than those generic “New Blog Post: Topic X” auto-tweets, which most users have now begun to subconsciously tune out.  Naturally, we were pleased — until we realized the Twitter Tools plugin we’d just installed on the Bigelow Tea Blog was doing precisely what The Twitter Book had lauded us for not doing, all because we hadn’t double-checked the plugin’s default checkboxes.

So we disabled it.  (The auto-tweet part, not the whole plugin.)  Our lesson?  Sometimes a compliment can help you find even more ways to improve.  (And, while you’re at it: make sure you double-check the details…)

Well we are very excited about all the good stuff coming our/your way.  As you probably know we have our Business Smart Tools conference coming up tomorrow, Tuesday May 5th.  Speakers from Bigelow Tea, Pitney Bowes, Ford and PepsiCo will present, we will feature true social media experts and we will include breakout sessions on Twitter for Business, The Power of Video, Where do you begin Online and the ROI of Social Media (and a personal thank you to our great sponsors MarketWire, Everett Hall Associates, and CitySquares!)  You can’t beat this event for social media education and excitement especially seeing that you get lunch and a great networking cocktail party thrown in!  You can still register here.

We are also excited because we are right around the corner from launching our new website!  Flash based sites were cool how long ago…we know…too long ago, and that’s why we are updating it to reflect who we are, a PR and Social Media consultancy with fluency in communication both online and off via blogs, social networks, video and more.  Can’t wait!

And finally we are so excited about our new client Ouidad who are great people with a great product and service.  As you can see from my photo, I have naturally curly hair and well my curls were cured when I found Ouidad.  We have just launched their new blog so take a look and let us know what you think.

Well there will be more to report after the conference, after our new site goes live, after Ouidad has been up and running for a bit and after we announce or next newest client.

Stay Tuned!

Valorie

John C Havens of BlogTalkRadio and Speaker at the Business Smart Tools Conference interviews Valorie Luther about the Business Smart Tools conference and social media at large!

Download podcast here

Albert and Valorie take some time out for the Marketing Edge Podcast. Learn more about the Business Smart Tools Conference and join in the conversation that has begun here and will continue on May 5^th. To register, go here.

Well, I have had quite the week of events…not many but enough to make note of how others run their shows.  Attending the occassional conference or gathering is important to me because of chairing the Business Smart Tools Conference…I am like an an actor who goes out into the field to study for a role.  I need to know what others are producing, how they are conveying their messages and if there are any formats that work better than others.  I also need to know if our content is up to date and still important!!

What I discovered is that there are many people who can speak on a variety of topics, experts who have first hand knowledge of their subjects.  This is all fine and good but the information they bring to the table needs to be managed by talented, personable, respectful and knowledgeable moderators who know how to listen and can be flexible and go with what may work at that moment.  Information needs to be harnessed and released so the audience both understands and expands their thought process while listening which I would like to think is the ultimate learning experience. 

This is not an easy task and this week proved it. 

In NYC last week at this time I attended a tech PR conference.  Again, good speakers, horrible moderators.  They didn’t fully understand the knowledge base of the speakers and for sure didn’t get the information out that the PR audience really needed.  The one overriding message I walked away with was that PR practioners are horrible people who lie and spam and bloggers and the traditional media hate them.  Now, I half way agree wtih the lying and spamming part but hello…this was an audience of public relations professionals…teach them, guide them, instruct them.  It was a big opportunity to bring foes together for a merger of the minds but the chance was lost for everyone…the speakers and the audience walked away feeling the same way they did when they first walked into the room which should never happen at any successful conference.

I attended another event last night in Stamford.  Again, great topic.  An Exec Chairman who blogs.  Everyone wants to know about his process, what walls he encountered, what joys he has discovered and do the media really read the blog and more.  The speaker did very well.  The moderator tried to do some homework but I know this guy and he has resisted social media from day one so what is this moderator doing getting up and talking to Mr. Exec Chair about blogging when he barely understands the medium himself?  On top of that, the moderator scolded an attendee for asking a question before the question time…ever heard of the UnConferences like Podcamp?  They are very successful because of their flexibility.  Oh and how about the time he told people not to get on their soapboxes with long winded salesy questions that only promote their own business but we had to hear about how he blogged once and talked to the media and how fun it was?  Sorry…I will stop now.

Having said all of this, I am always on a quest to improve the Business Smart Tools Conference.  I learn every year what made it great and what needs to be improved and I work very hard at being a moderator who can prepare engaging questions that tend to the needs of the audience.  I also work hard at listening during the panels so I can go with the flow and make the next question relevant to where the conversation is going.

My and Creative Concepts’ goals for the Business Smart Tools conference remain the same every year.  I want this conference to be a place where the message matters and the content becomes a truly educational experience.  No cash sponsors to infuse the panels with a pitch, each speaker is chosen because of the expereinces they can share, and each demo company has something noteworthy to show in a way that is beyond the typical Web 2.0 company that doesn’t have a business plan or revenue stream.

Based on past responses from the attendees, we have done a good job but keep in mind that we never stop improving, listening and sharing content that teaches more than it preaches.

Join us May 5, 2009.  Stamford Marriott.  I will be the one listening and making sure the attendees get the biggest bang for their buck!

Hey is anyone out there listening to AM Radio anymore? Hope so because we were just featured on Greg Skidmore’s radio show and blog Business Catalyst on WGCH in Greenwich, CT. Here the podcast here.

Enjoy!