My Name is Kate

Wikibrands – It Takes a Community to Build a Brand in 2011 – Guest Post – Sean Moffitt

Sean Moffitt is the author of “Wikibrands – Reinventing Your Business in a Customer-Controlled Marketplace” and this post is an advance preview of his Wikibrands February-March 59 Day, 59 City, North American Blog Tour celebrating the launch of his book, termed “a seminal book for business” by Don Tapscott. A chapter highlight summary of the book is available on wiki-brands.com. You can connect with the authors on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Having known Kate for awhile, I knew the standard for my guest post must be high to preview in advance of our virtual book tour. In Wikibrands, we cover off how the very best businesses and brands wake up each morning and put their “social, collaborative” pants on. Kate has always been a big advocate for communities, so I’d like this guest post to focus on Chapter 13 – Community Management – How to Build a Brand Garden not a Ghost Town.

For anybody that has ever tried to get an online community to develop and incubate itself to adulthood, you certainly realize if not before, then certainly after, that it’s as much a function of “sweat equity” as it is “technology genius” or “strategic savvy”. To maintain a thriving customer-centric Wikibrand, the concept of community management is likely the top motivation for keeping the pulse alive after the initial shallow love and novelty is gone. 

Congratulations to all that play that role today, perhaps less celebrated than other bank holidays, it’s International Community Manager Day today [ed - it was actually yesterday, January 24,  this was posted a day late] and these people earn their well-deserved props.

Community managers customarily wield their alchemy of communication skills, service mentality and conscience for the customer with aplomb and are the lifeblood of brands in socialized environments. Whereas the technology industry was quick to jump on hiring for these roles, the other segments of industry have been slower to embrace (in fact one of our book’s interviews with a community manager seemed to indicate downright contempt internally for the transparent and highly public profile and influence the community manager wielded).

A natural company reaction attempting a “toe in the water” Wikibrand experience - why can’t we just make “social” the Friday afternoon of an existing employee’s job or the domain of the new and enthusiastic intern?

Hmmm….how do I answer this delicately?

You are starving the top growth channel in one of the top business assets you own!

First of all, the role is damn tough. We’ve identified a list of 15 roles in Wikibrands that effective community managers play in evolved companies, that both time and experience-wise would leave poorer companies exposed if left as a hobby job activity. The demands are real and the skills of a corporate social convenor traverse the customer, brand and business operations landscape.

The other big reason is that this role is increasingly imperative to be filled in order to get past the superficial launch of a Branded Facebook page and get to the higher order benefits from building a real community. Wikibrands identifies the 5 tough and corporate calorie-consuming challenges to building true community – how to get people engaged, how to find enough time to support the effort, how to attract people to the community, how to get them to come back and how to get people to commit to join. Each one of them are individually tough tasks; put together they require a Mensa of Social.

Whether it’s a popular business, media or brand, we all know people that excel at these roles. I personally think of Frank Eliason who handles customer critique deftly at Comcast, or Amber Naslund who is Radian6’s exceptionally smart face to the world that simply gets the environment or Erin Bury, the young and ubiquitous first contact and line of defence for startup Sprouter.  They are special people. They are also a growing strata of digital life -  close to 60,000 professionals have identified themselves as community managers on LinkedIn.

People always ask me what skill set these people should hold. Yes, communication skills are key. Yes, a passion for the values and lifestyle of your brand or business is a big asset, but beyond all these integral talents, being great listeners is the hallmark of great community managers.  They just have a sixth sense about what people know, and the communities they support are the key beneficiaries.

Listening may seem really granola and amorphous, but communities that have a soul have this talent in spades. And it comes in four progressive levels:

1. Customer monitoring – you know what’s being said about you. 
2. Customer Culture – you know what your customers and influencers are doing and living through, 
3. Customer Centricity – your community knows you are actively involved and 
4. Customer Driven – your company is influenced and changed by customer feedback and engagement

So if you buy into our mantra and - as most successful brands have done over the last 20 years – need to build a community around your brand, then hopefully you’ll get your hands on Wikibrands. We have a passion for this approach for business and we feel like we have something important to say on the subject and love to connect over its many facets. Email, Tweets, Lattes or Pints – choose your lubricant for conversation.

Psst ... Kate here .. if you are inspired by what Sean has said and by the passion of community managers, you can check out one of the reasons I'm excited about Wikibrands and also download Chapter 11 - Community Development for free. And then make sure you get a copy of Wikibrands!

 

Some Thoughts on Measuring Social Media

I'm teaching a class at UBC on Social Media Fundamentals.  The curriculum is a mix between some light theory (what IS social media) and hands-on (how do I make a Facebook page).  As we discuss each social platform (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogging, etc), I make sure to offer different types of measures that are appropriate. The earlier we can get social media neophytes to understand that it isn't all about the follower count, the better!

Sadly, that message doesn't always come across.  Our final project is a "Social Media Action Plan" which is a 2-4 page document on what next step the student would take for her business/organization/non-profit in social media.  The SMAP must answer 5 key questions:

1. What will be my business’ first step into social media and why? Review the tools we discuss in class and evaluate their appropriateness for your business.
2. What success metrics will you track?
3. How will my team get involved in social media? What will be the impact on them?
4. Where will the content come from?
5. How will this initiative integrate with my other marcomm activities?

I've taught this class two times prior to the current session and a lot of people are still putting "Number of Followers, Number of Fans" in the "Success Metrics" section.

So this time, I'm trying a different tack.  In the class notes, I have this slide:

But sometimes, I understand that that is easier said than done. That's why I was delighted to find this piece on Social Media Measurement by Don Bartholomew, VP of Digital Research at Fleishman Hillard. Bartholomew discusses 5 things to forget and 5 things to learn about SMM. I love his 5 things to learn:

1. Measurable Objectives
2. Impact versus ROI
3. Hypothetical ROI Models
4. Integrated Digital Measurement
5. Attribution

Particularly for small and even medium business (heck, even for some folks in large organizations who have ended up in a social media marketing role with no formal marketing/analytics training), the discussions of Measurable Objectives and Hypothetical ROI Models. There are easy and detailed examples of how to create actual measurable objectives (hint, they don't start with marketing buzzwords like "Leverage") as well as how to have an intelligent plan for your marketing program around ROI calculation.

Really great stuff - especially for those of us who struggle with the analytical left-brained side of marketing.

 

Do You Own Your Social Media Initiatives?

It's been a few weeks since there was a great disturbance in the force: Yahoo announced internally that Delicious, the popular bookmarking service that I've been using since 2005, is a service in the "sunset" of it's life with Yahoo. And of course, the news was leaked and we all went ape shit.

Delicious has since responded on their blog that they are not immediately shutting down the service, but the announcement certainly got a lot of people thinking about where their content lives and what the longevity of those platforms is likely to be.

It's a question to ask about your overall social media initiatives. Sure, right now it may seem impossible that Facebook would ever go away. Or Twitter. But we've all heard "too big to fail" before.

If you didn't have Twitter and Facebook, would you have a social media strategy?

This is why it is so important for businesses to own the platform that is the focal point of their social media strategy.

I'm not saying don't have a Facebook page or don't run a contest on Twitter or don't experiment with new social media. Your customers are there right now, using these services.  You should be there too.  Listening and engaging.

But what happens when Facebook isn't all the rage. And Quora has lost its appeal. And gloofr is where all the kids are hanging out now? How much will you have to scramble to re-establish a presence with solid content and knowledgable community managers?

Here's what you can do to get a start on owning your own social media platform:

1. Start a blog. I know it sounds cliche. But there are a b'zillion reasons to blog (not the least of which Seth Godin says you should).

2. Put that blog on YOUR URL. I simply can't stress this enough. Why would you want your corporate/professional brand be associated with someone else? yourco.blogspot.com is not as professional as blog.yourco.com  And to the whole point of this article - what happens when Blogspot (or Typepad or Wordpress) goes away?  Even if your blog RUNS on one of those platforms, by owing your own blog/social media URL, you could migrate it to another platform if you wanted/needed to.

3. Use that blog as the starting point for your corporate social media hub. What's a social media hub? Dave Fleet offers a great diagram and model for understanding the place of a social media hub within your larger online presence.

A number of companies offer good examples of using their blog as a start for their social media hub - Whole Foods comes to mind.  Other organizations have taken it a step further - including their blogs and other social media profiles into one large hub.  Possibly the best example I've seen is Doubletree Destinations (Pizza Hut and H&M are also doing some interesting things in this area).

How are you mitigating risk vis a vis your social media presence potentially being owned by someone else and possibly going away? Or do you think this isn't really a risk - Facebook go braugh and all that? 

How to Engage Employees in Your Social Media Activities

I've been working with a client who is slowly engaging, from a corporate perspective, in social media. However, they happen to have a number of employees who are already individually engaged in social media. So the conversation has often turned to: what about our employees.

An informed and empowered employee base can be one of the most effective forces in social media.  By sharing your corporate use of social media with your employees and subsequently encouraging employees to share relevant and appropriate information about your corporate activities, you can leverage this force.

Key steps to empowering employees for social media:

1. Develop and share employee guidelines for social media usage.
2. Plan for employee outreach in communications that have a social media component.
3. Create a “social media channel” page for the Intranet.
4. Make employees aware of your social media monitoring and train them accordingly.

1. Give them clear guidelines for social media usage.
Employees want to know what they can and can't do.  Now generally, these guidelines don't have to be much different than your existing guidelines for employee communication to the media.  But adding in a few social-media specific notes can go a long way,e.g. if an employee posts about your company, they must disclose their relationship; don't discuss certain topics (especially anything that could be construed as "forward looking"); etc.

Chris Bordreaux maintains a great database of social media governance policies and guidelines.  I've found this to be an amazing resource and a good "reality check" for clients (and their legal teams) whose first impulse is to mandate every little aspect of social media, particularly on a per-channel basis. Personally, I'm a big fan of social media policies like Nordstrom's where it takes a plain-language philosophical approach, but with clear directives regarding customer information and what to do if you mess up.

2. Share your content or program on employee channels first with a message specifically written for them.

Your employees are on your team; treat them that way.  There is nothing worse than finding out from your neighbour or your spouse or your hair stylist that your company launched a cool new social media program or campaign. Tell your employees what you're up to and they can help you get the word out.  

For example, a few years ago, we did a social campaign with a Canadian corporation that netted 250K participants. Over 1/3 of those were driven through employee-initiated contacts. We gave employees a "sneak peek" of the campaign a few days early as well as a unique URL they could share with their family and friends - through this unique URL we were able to track the impact of employee contact - it was significant!

3. Create a place on the intranet where there are links to your social media channels and initiatives.
Just as it is important for organizations to have a public-facing social media hub so that official channels can be verified, your intranet should have something similar.  The content on your intranet can be augmented with a bit of background on the campaign as well as with any unique links or messages that you would like your employees to use when sharing the content or campaign.  It's also a great place to archive links to your campaigns.

4. Make employees aware of your social media monitoring activities.
One of the most frustrating things for employees who are active in the social media space is to see conversations happening about their employer and not knowing:

a)     if they themselves should respond; or

b)     if anyone in the organization is even seeing it;

c)     how and to whom they could report it.

Let your employees know that you are monitoring social media and that you evaluate each situation for response.  Give them an outlet for reporting conversations they are concerned about. A great example of this is included in Coca-Cola's social media guidelines for employees (the reference is actually in the print version rather than the online version).

And important component of making employees aware of your monitoring is making them aware that you are, in fact, monitoring their conversations as well. And perhaps how to change their privacy settings  In working with clients to set up their monitoring programs, I can't begin to describe the shocking things people are writing about their feelings about their companies and their co-workers. We all like to occasionally complain about work, but if you're going to post about these things on social media channels, make sure your privacy controls are in place!

A radical and refreshing step a company could take in regards to their employees and social media would be to both coach them on how to use it as well as how to protect themselves. Coca-Cola refers to something like this in their guidelines - an employee Social Media Certification Program.  (Personally, I would LOVE to see the curriculum from this program!) Programs like this can go a long way towards helping both organizations and their employees be better social media participants.

And even if you don't want to have a "certification program", engaging your social media champions (those who are already using social media tools on behalf of your organization) and inviting them to share their knowledge and experience with other employees is a solid step towards building a social-media-savvy organization.

 

I would love to hear your tips about how you work with and encourage your employees to engage in social media activities, either as official spokespeople or just simply an enthusiastic team member. Any sure-fire methods or pitfalls to avoid? Please leave a comment below!

Image Credit: David Armano

Recommitting to Blogging

I suck at blogging. I have for the last year, maybe even longer. And that really bugs me. I love blogging. So I am confessing my sins and recommitting myself. But I know that to be successful you need a plan. I tell clients all the time that an editorial calendar will ease their blogging pain and help them keep on track to their blogging goals. Why don't I simply take my own advice and create an editorial calendar?

I have two inspirations for my 2011 editorial calendar. The first is one that has actually stuck with me for years - Mike Stansone's Sansone's post about editorial calendars. His post is so simple and straightforward; I've thought about it often over the last few years.  It's a perfect model for an easy, breezy blog editorial calendar.

My other inspiration is a recent post from Gretchen Rubin (of the Happiness Project) who discussed choosing a one-word theme to "set the tone" for 2011. I decided to adopt this approach for my blog's editorial calendar. The one word gives me a consistent prompt but also allows me a fair bit of freedom.

So, here is my 2011 editorial calendar:

Monday = Inspire
Inspire encourages me to start the week off right. Also, I intend for this to be primarily visual (so an image or a video) though there is certainly room for an inspiring quotation or idea.

Tuesday = Advise
The main reason I started MNIK was to share ideas about digital marketing and social media.  We did a lot of interesting work last year and I'm about to start teaching my third class on social media at UBC - I certainly don't have a lack of war stories or insights about online marketing or best practices in social media. This is a day to get back to basics and what this blog is supposed to be about.

Wednesday = Shill
Some of what I blog about are product reviews. Sometimes technical products, sometimes books. Sometimes I've been asked to participate in a blogger outreach program. Or sometimes I want to (explicitly) promote my own clients or my own projects. So Wednesday is shill day - the day I'm not blogging for purely altruistic reasons ;)

Thursday = Geek
I am a geek at heart. Not just a technical geek (though certainly that) but also a word geek, a wine geek, a cooking geek. So expect some kind of technical tip or "how to" or app review or extreme geek piece on the origins of the word "kitty-corner". This might also be the day for infographics.

Friday = Discover
This is the day to share the new: a new blog, the day for my book summaries from my 2011 reading project, a new website. I also have an interview series I'm planning to start - this would be the day I share those as well.

I'm not planning on blogging on weekends.

This is my blogging plan for 2011. What do you think - doable? Are you recommitting to blogging or podcasting or some other form of online expression?

Photo Credit: keso