Convince and Convert Blog: Where Social Media and Email Collide

I saw my mom the other day. She’s a pretty hip lady for 64. She was a high school teacher for about 30 years, and was always a student fave. Stylish. Knew the music. Knew the scene. Thought Patrick Swayze was hot. 

Now, in her semi-retirement, she’s the editor for an online-only newspaper. She takes digital photos, uses a content management system, writes a little SEO copy. 

She was asking about Convince & Convert and how it was going. I told her it was coming along nicely, that subscriptions to the blog were way up, and that people like Chris Brogan were saying favorable things about it. 

“Chris Brogan? Who’s that? Doesn’t he play for the Coyotes?” she asked. 

While I was surprised at how imposing a character Brogan is when I met him recently at Marketing Profs Digital Mixer, I’m pretty sure that he in fact does not play hockey in the NHL. (photo by Brian Solis)

And there’s the lesson.

Social media makes it simple to get wrapped up in our world. Reading blogs, tracking tweets, doing consulting. It’s easy to overlook that none of this passes the Mom test. 

SEO passes the Mom test. Email passes. Tivo passes. iPhone passes (at least conceptually). Of course there are elements of social media that pass (MySpace, and increasingly Facebook). But as a discipline, social media and its practitioners absolutely do not pass. Not even Chris Brogan and Gary Vaynerchuk. 

Keep it Real

I find conferences exacerbate this effect. I was at PodCampAZ recently (hat tip to Brogan and Chris Penn for starting it all, and high five to Evo Terra and Brent Spore for a great job on this year’s AZ version). I probably shouldn’t have been, but I was flat out astonished at the number of content creators in the audience. Watching a live stream of a room that I was in, and having that stream coming from the laptop of the guy sitting next to me was Matrix-esque. 

The fact that in 550 years we’ve gone from the invention of the printing press to a world where every kid with a cell phone is a potential real-time broadcaster is exhilarating. But it doesn’t pass the Mom test. The recent Forrester technographics study update backs me up. Only 21 percent of Internet users are classified as content creators. 25+ percent of people are unlikely to create online content any time soon. 

The Time Will Come

It’s easy to become frustrated with brands that don’t get it. Marketing directors that refuse to engage in social media. Twitter spammers. Bad pitches from PR folks  that have never read your blog. (nice case study from Dave Fleet) And on and on.

But what we can’t forget as an industry (if it can even be called that) is that we are at the very tip of the spear. We’re where SEO was 10 years ago. Where television was 50 years ago.

We can’t expect a business community that has been fundamentally operating under the same marketing principles since the invention of the newspaper to immediately embrace this new opportunity en masse, regardless of how obvious the benefits of doing so may appear to us. 

As my Mom used to tell me, “Be Patient. Your Time Will Come.” And when she knows Brogan, we’ll know it has indeed arrived. 

Do you agree? Does social media fail the Mom test for now? Are we overeager about social media?

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As discussed recently in “Why Are We So Scared of Our Customers?” and “Presto, How Social Media Makes Bad News Good” I’m seeing the fear of negativity preventing more companies from embracing social media. 

The typical social media objection is that if the company has a conversation with consumers in a public forum, the company will be forced to respond to inadequacies, and doing so will just make it worse. Consequently, many large brands are now engaged in social media “listening” campaigns, but not engaging with consumers directly. 

Sometimes Letting Go Allows You to Steer

Of course, listening is better than ignoring, but actually getting involved with your customers online doesn’t give you less control, it gives you MORE control. If you give customers a legitimate, easy-to-use mechanism for interacting with you and amongst themselves, a large component of the feedback about you is likely to end up within that mechanism. And then you can do something about it. 

Consider Comcast. What is a better circumstance for the company, listening but not engaging while customers post videos like this (which you’ve probably seen since the original has been viewed 1.35 million+ times on YouTube), or engaging and actually encouraging customer feedback and complaint via Twitter (@comcastcares)? (read bottom up for killer customer service on Twitter from Frank Eliason at Comcast)

Control Via Facilitation

Dell has a Project RED application on Facebook. Within the forums, there are several consumer complaints about Project RED and how much it actually helps Africa, versus being a craven marketing ploy. While Dell itself doesn’t appear to be engaging in the dialog, it is facilitating the conversation (with other consumers defending Dell vociferously).

And because all of this is happening on an official Dell production, they have MORE control over it than if it was happening on a blog or some other Facebook page. They could comment officially. They could take down the forums. They could reach out privately to negative commenters. 

If this conversation was taking place on some other blog, Dell’s options would be greatly curtailed.

Creating a mechanism for customer feedback using social media is the post-modern equivalent of the suggestion box. Brands that don’t do it because they don’t want to loose control don’t understand that facilitation provides control, it doesn’t eliminate it. 

What do you think? Do you have examples of brands facilitating customer dialog using social media? Your comments are my food.

In corporate conference rooms, a major complaint about social media is that it forces companies to get involved with dissatisfied customers in a public forum.

The historic imperative has been to ignore complaints publicly, and deal with them privately via form letters and an occasional telephone call from a customer service representative.

The rule of thumb has been that you never engage directly with a brand critic, because it adds credibility and weight to their arguments if the company acknowledges them.

If You Don’t Put Your Head in the Sand, You’ll Never Get Any in Your Eyes

This ostrich tactic is absolutely the wrong way to handle criticism in a wired world. Ignoring the problem just makes it worse, as citizen bloggers will ramp up the outrage if their concerns aren’t addressed.

Instead of looking at social media as being forced to “handle” a “negative”, brands should view it as an opportunity to improve, grow and thrive. It’s the ultimate canary in the coal mine. If your company has legitimate problems with its operations (and most customer complaints have at least a kernel (and usually a cob) of truth), social media is the greatest opportunity of all time.

By listening, you not only learn what those problems are (with no focus group expense, by the way) but by responding to issues authentically and sympathetically (Zappos, Dell, Comcast et al), you can actually gain more customers than are lost because of the original problem.

And this isn’t just a big company scenario. If you run a restaurant and your weekday lunch-time chef is much worse than your weekend dinner-time chef, it’s entirely possible that a blogger or podcaster (like me via Hottie & The Fatso) will complain about it eventually. As a restaurant owner, wouldn’t you want to know that? You not only learn a critical piece of information about your own organization, but it gives you the chance to set your restaurant apart. A simple blog comment like this would do the trick:

“Wow. Really interesting to hear your perspective on our lunch vs. dinner quality differences. We of course strive for consistently great experiences at all times, and I’ll be auditing our lunch and dinner service immediately to get us back on track. Many thanks for your observation. We hope you’ll join us again for lunch soon and give us another chance.”

It’s about listening to your customers and humanizing your company. And once you commit to it, every piece of “bad news” you discover through social media gives you a chance to make it good. 

Because of its simplicity and immediacy, Twitter enables brands to win the 1:1 battle with customers and potential customers in ways that even other social media constructs cannot. The density of Eureka! moments on Twitter is quite high, and if brands use it right, it’s the ultimate weapon for turning lemons into lemonade.

Let’s examine two recent personal examples:

Twitter Done Right, Conference Style

Recently, I was a speaker at the ExactTarget Connections conference in Indianapolis. Like all good digital marketing geeks, I was monitoring the Twitter conversation by setting up a search for “#ET08″ (the official conference hashtag) and “Exacttarget” on my Twitellator Pro iphone app. (this can also be done using http://search.twitter.com).

I come across the tweet below from Andrew Eklund, CEO of Ciceron, a Web marketing firm in Minneapolis.

Note that this conference had sold out at 1,200 attendees. A possibly soon to be disappointed Mr. Eklund was headed to the hotel from the airport. However, Dawn DeVirgilio runs the @ExactTarget Twitter account and was also monitoring conference tweets.

She rushed to the registration desk, signed up Mr. Eklund for the conference, and had a name badge and complete registration package ready and waiting by the time he made it to the hotel 15 minutes after his initial tweet.

That’s the power of Twitter-driven customer service.

Twitter Done Right, Reply Style

Social media is all about timeliness. I have an RSS feed of any tweets that mention my name or company name. Apparently, folks at the National Hockey League are doing the same thing.

My recent post about the NHL’s new ad campaign and its missing social media and digital marketing ingredients was answered almost immediately by Mike DiLorenzo, the Director of Corporate Communications for the league:

I then had a very interesting series of email exchanges with Mr. DiLorenzo about the NHL and its future social media plans. Fantastic! Talk about listening and responding with an authentic voice. To think that an NHL executive found my post through Twitter, acknowledged its merit, and then talked to me about it within 18 hours is simply extraordinary.

Twitter Done Wrong, Travel Style

I’ve spoken at a ton of conferences lately, and while I’ve been absolutely blessed with on-time airline travel, I’ve been bedeviled by a series of crappy hotel rooms. The nadir may have been the Westin in Indianapolis, where I must have had the worst room on the property. I sent out this missive via Twitter:

No response whatsoever from the hotel or Westin corporate. Given that nothing incites passion like travel, you’d think social media monitoring would be a MUST for a company like Westin. Evidently not.

I’m no Chris Brogan, Joseph Jaffe, or Jason Falls (yet), but I do have ~475 followers on Twitter (and a 92 on Twitter Grader). That’s 475 people (in theory) that saw me bitch about the Westin in Indianapolis (including at least 15 people who were staying at the same hotel). Can I determine the precise consequences for Westin as a result? No, but I don’t think it’ll help them. And I won’t be back.

Do you have stories of good or bad Twitter usage? Comment ‘em

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As part of my panel on social media at the Worldcom PR conference in Montreal recently (see post below), I created these “7 Deadly Sins of Social Media.”

Are you willing to admit your sins in the comments?

1. Deafness

Actively listening to what’s being said about your brand is at the core of social media.

2. Slowness

Social media is a NOW environment, not a “we’re working on the December issue in July” industry.

If it takes you too long to react, the opportunity can vanish.

3. Caution

Companies have to empower their agencies to facilitate social media conversations. Agencies have to empower their employees to handle social media on behalf of clients.

If you’re afraid, you’re not in the game.

4. Phoniness

Social media users – especially social network members – are cagey. They can smell b.s. three clicks away.

Resist the temptation to create your own reviews and other falsehoods. It doesn’t work.

5. Greed

The whole point of social media is for people to let other people know what’s good and righteous.

If you refuse to link to other sites or don’t create and distribute good content, etc. you are not being a good social media citizen – and it will get noticed.

6. Inflexibility

Think of social media as its own world with its own rules.

Don’t try to “social media-ize” your existing marketing and message. It doesn’t work.

7. Seriousness

Much of the social media’s appeal is based on humor and satire.

If you or your company can’t handle getting made fun of on occasion, you may want to rethink your social media plans.

Download the sins as a PDF>>

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Why, What, When & How to Implement Social Media Campaigns

Just finished moderating a rousing panel discussion in Montreal at the Worldcom Americas conference. (Worldcom is the world’s largest collective of independent PR firms) Joined by Mike Corak from Off Madison Ave, Stefan Pollack from the Pollack PR Marketing Group, and Diego Biasi from Business Press (all the way from Milan), we addressed an invigorated group of PR firm principals.

Lots of great questions about the nuts and bolts of social media.

That was the intention of our presentation, to focus on the specifics, not just the usual “social media is important” pabulum.

Comments on the presentation most welcome.

View or download here via Slideshare:

Will the Crest Weekly Toothpaste Launch Work?

In a sign that the guys who control ad budgets are getting the value of interactive advertising faster than the agencies that place it, P&G announced recently that they are introducing their new Crest Weekly toothpaste almost entirely through the blogosphere.

Samples of Crest Weekly were sent to prominent bloggers (as well as 600,000 Moms) in an effort to trigger an underground viral effect. P&G marketing honchos say that Crest Weekly is an unconventional product. You use it weekly to augment your regular brushing - it has more grit in it to give you that “just back from the dentist, but not numbed or broke” feeling. Thus, it is difficult to explain on TV.

While that makes sense, I suspect the famous data hounds at P&G are also cooking up a little test to see if social media can really carry the water for a launch.

It appears - at least for now - that it cannot, but results are inconclusive.

Ironic Lack of Word of Mouth for Oral Care Product

My search for blog posts, Tweets and other signposts indicating that bloggers indeed used Crest Weekly and wrote about it turned up fairly low volume - although Ariana Huffington’s smile looks a little brighter these days.

I found 10 separate blog posts, on well-targeted sites (beauty, women’s, shopping). I also found just one Tweet (from one of the bloggers promoting her post).

My favorite among them was Tia Williams’ “Crest In Show” post that artfully wove in her background as the daughter of a dentist. Nice!

P&G has not said how many bloggers were given samples, but they did disclose that they began arriving in early August. The product launches in stores next week (mid-September).

The Cavities in the Crest Weekly Launch

There are two fundamental problems with the Crest Weekly approach.

1. They actually sent the product out too early. Blogging is a NOW thing, not a “we’re working on the December issue in August” thing. Sending out samples 6 weeks before the product launches when one use of the product will clearly communicate the benefits to the blogger is too long of a lead time.

It will be very interesting to see if blog posts about Crest Weekly intensify next week when the product launches. I suspect some bloggers are holding their posts until closer to launch. If you find some new ones on Google Blog Search or Technorati, please let me know.

2. The tactic overwhelmed the strategy. The notion that a major consumer goods manufacturer would launch a product via social media is so novel (for now) that the buzz around it became about the marketing approach rather than about the toothpaste. In fact, there are actually more blog posts (including one more once I click Publish) about the social media launch then about Crest Weekly and its magical teeth scouring properties.

Hopefully, P&G won’t interpret this to-date tepid response from the blogosphere as a sign that social media won’t work, and will instead adjust its tactical plan next time around for greater success.

In a related story, Kellogg announced today that the ROI on their digital marketing for Special K cereal (blogs, ads, microsite) is superior to the ROI for traditional advertising. While this isn’t shocking to yours truly - a well-targeted and well-executed digital program will almost always beat traditional in a pure ROI fight - for a company like Kellogg to put that information in print (Ad Week) is a quite the watershed.

Have you launched a product or brand using heavy social media? Did P&G do the Crest Weekly program right, or wrong? Please tell us your story in the comments.

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