Blogging

Late last week, Lee, Jolina and I attended the event, Dual Reality: Who Controls Social Media in the Enterprise, sponsored by the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association (MIMA). As we sat in the front row, eagerly awaiting the discussion panel to emerge, we reviewed the roster of panelists, including Interactive Directors (titles varying from one company to the next) from Fortune 500 Companies such as Target, Best Buy, General Mills, and Fingerhut. The question in everyone’s mind was: How are corporations really leveraging social media to reach customers online?

The answer is that most companies, large and small are still figuring out where social media as a communication and engagement platform fits. It’s a process of try, test and try again. Organizationally, adopting social media has it’s challenges as Jeremiah Owyang describes in his post Tire, Tower and Wheel.

When asked how Corporations are monitoring these conversations, the response across the board included ‘ratings and reviews’. Customers are talking about your company online and the companies that are doing well with social media are being responsive, not just sitting back and watching, said Gary Koelling, Creative Director of Social Technology for Best Buy.

The panel agreed, responsiveness is key to engaging customers socially, offering some tips on how to respond:

• Be authentic in your response
• Provide value to your customer
• Give tools that empower your customers to be evangelists

Who is doing well with social media? Jason Kleckner, Manager of Information Architecture for Target Corp, believes Circuit City is leading in terms of live chat and customer feedback. Ernest & Young was also named by the panel as a benchmark for their innovation with social media.

So, what does it mean to be social? Jim Cuene, Director of Interactive for General Mills states the ‘how can I help you’ mindset of the retail industry is more easily transferable to social media than it is from mass brands. Where Gary Koelling with Best Buy believes if we did a psychoanalysis of Fortune 500 Companies today, most would come across as sociopaths because of the lack of social engagement with their customers. Our culture has let Corporations get away with being non-social for so long. The challenge today is the introduction of new interactive technology like Facebook and Digg is forcing Corporations to be social.

The panel offered the following advice to Corporations looking to give social media a try:

• Listen to your customers
  
• Follow along with the conversation
  
• Try new tactics to engage your audience
  
• When you fail, try again!

I’m reading a great book right now titled, Do It Wrong Quickly: How the Web Changes the Old Marketing Rules by Mike Moran. The book lends advice to companies looking to interact with their customers online, and discusses different tactics to try and how to get started. I would recommend reading this book for some great ideas to get you started

How are you measuring social media, and justifying expenditures? Gary Koelling with Best Buy sees social media as an opportunity cost, what are you losing by not engaging with your customers? New social technology is allowing companies to reach customers at a lower cost then ever before. The beauty of social media is that you don’t have to roll out a ten million dollar program. If you can’t engage your customers socially for next to free, then you are listening to the wrong advice.

In terms of ROI, Jim Cuene with General Mills believes that if you are pulling funds from your marketing or advertising budget for social media, you won’t see a return on investment. Rather, social media should be a part of product development. Brad Smith, VP of eCommerce & Digital Marketing with Fingerhut, adds that the consumers have always owned the brand; Corporations are really just accelerating product development.

It’s hard to determine an ROI for social media. Relationships are part of the measurement, and are something you build over an extended period of time, not typically seen as an immediate result. Participation is the value. People are interacting with each other like normal people again, which is a shift from the past 60 years said Koelling with Best Buy.

Corporations have to deliver on brand promises. The brand has to stand for something, and social media is a great channel to communicate your position. The challenge is to find the authentic voice of the brand online.

What are your future predictions for social media? As seen in the evolution of email over the past five years, technology will continue to evolve and help people connect. Sharing information online is just going to keep getting faster and easier. Brands will have to act more like people. We will start to see an evolution in brand trust because of it. Cuene with General Mills comments that we have to start treating each individual person as a media outlet, everyone can write about your brand, share pictures and tell stories online.

The online experience will continue to become more important with advanced applications, images and content to engage visitors.

One of the key messages from this panel was that the best way to get started with social media is to try, experiment with different tactics and channels to reach your customers, and when they don’t work, try again.

I’m curious, what different social tactics has your company tried that have either failed miserably or have helped to make a connection with your customers online?

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Adopting Social Media in the Enterprise

Someone that I’ve wanted to interview as much as Robert Scoble is Guy Kawasaki. Guy is an enthusiastic promoter and marketer which are qualities Online Marketing Blog readers can appreciate a great deal. In this interview, he talks briefly about his most recent project, Alltop as well as changes he would make to Twitter, business blogging advice and a curious admission that he doesn’t understand SEO.

You have such a long and well published history working with technology and web based ventures ranging from your time at Apple to Garage Ventures to what you’re doing with Truemors and now Alltop. What are 2 or 3 things most people don’t know about you?

I don’t know if there are 2-3 things that most people don’t know about me. My life is a pretty open book.

You’re no stranger to marketing and promotion and the “brand of Guy Kawasaki” is known world wide. What tips do you have for online marketers that want to stand out from the crowd?

The only tip that really matters is this: “Market something good.” That’s the secret. It’s very hard to market a piece of crap. It’s very easy to market something good. I believe all marketing is based on good products and services.

blog.guykawasaki.com is listed on the Technorati 100 (out of 100 million+ blogs) and plenty of other exclusive lists. What part does the blog play in your own online marketing strategy? What other confirmations that you “kick ass” do you get as a result of blogging?

I hope you don’t think it’s a conscious, well-conceived plan. I just blog when I can about what I get a fancy for. These days I probably spend as much time Twittering as blogging. I just go in these streaks where I get obsessed with something. The most delightful confirmation that I kick ass, by a long shot, is how mommy bloggers have embraced me. Now that’s a tough audience.

What are a few of your top tips for business owners, entrepreneurs or corporate types that are trying to make sense out of using blogs?

Honestly, they shouldn’t blog because they think it will make money in a direct way like selling advertising or even an indirect way like building a brand. They should do it for the pure pleasure of it. Any other benefits are cream.

You’ve been involved with WebmasterWorld Pubcon as a speaker two years in a row (keynote then moderator) as well as a speaker for Elite Retreat where in both cases, marketing online and SEO are focal topics. How much of SEO that you see being promoted online do you think is snake oil and how much is the real deal?

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t understand SEO at all. My entire approach to SEO is to try to write good stuff. Then I assume that Google will find it. That’s it. End of discussion. I spend zero cycles worrying about “SEO.”

It was with great disappointment we learned the “semantic computational algorithm” that organizes Alltop feeds is a myth, but were very happy to see Online Marketing Blog included on the SEO Alltop Page, so you are redeemed. What are the key lessons you have learned (do’s and don’ts) from creating and promoting Alltop?

Alltop is only two months old. I don’t know if enough time has gone by to learn much yet. I will tell you this: Alltop is the most satisfying work that I’ve done since working on the Macintosh. It brings me great joy to help unknown sites and blogs get traffic and to help people discover information on the Internet.

It’s clear Twitter has been good to you (follow Guy here). If you owned Twitter, where would you take it in terms of new features? How would you monetize it? What do you think about the idea of people selling their social networking accounts like Twitter on eBay?

The first feature I would add is “reliability.” Then I would add an address book. Then the ability to “thread” replies and direct messages—when you have lots of people following you, keeping track of stuff is very, very hard.

It it were me, AFTER I fixed and added what I just listed, I would charge people to be on Twitter. Millions of people were paying $30/month for AOL. I’d gladly pay for a better Twitter service.

People are selling their Twitter accounts? I had no idea. How much do you think I could get for mine?

How do you stay updated with what’s new and what’s working in online marketing? Do you have favorite books, forums, newsletters, blogs, web sites, conferences, test web sites or any other information resources?

Do you really want to know how I do it? I don’t read any blogs on a regular basis. There are a handful of people who forward me stuff when they think it will interest me. That’s what I read. Other than that, I am so busy answering email, tweeting, blogging, and working on Alltop and Truemors that I don’t have time to do anything else.

Your work with venture capital and startups is legendary and undoubtedly, you’ve formed opinions about the kinds of characteristics that make a successful entrepreneur. What’s more important: sheer talent, a great network, creativity, business smarts, passion and drive or something else?

First of all, I’m hardly “legendary” as an entrepreneur or venture capitalist. I haven’t started or funded any multi-billion or even multi-hundred million dollar companies. Having said this, it won’t stop me from answering your question. My answer is that the most important factor is luck. The second most important is the willingness to grind it out. It also seems to me that the people who are lucky grind it out and the people who grind it out get lucky.

Thanks Guy!

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Interview: Guy Kawasaki on Alltop, Twitter and Blogging

Jeremiah Owyang posted recently asking his readers what conferences they would be attending in the coming months and I thought that would be a great question for Online Marketing Blog readers as well.

Over the past 3 years we’ve been focused on search marketing conferences but have expanded more into direct marketing, interactive and PR. We’ll continue that trend the rest of this year but with more conferences outside of search as our online marketing agency evolves.

Conferences that I’m attending in the coming months include:

• May: ACCM in Florida
• Jun: PRSA Digital Impact in NYC
• Jul: ad:tech in Chicago
• Aug: Search Engine Strategies in San Jose
• Sep: Blogworld Expo in Las Vegas
• Oct: DMA08 in Vegas
• Oct PRSA International Conference in Detroit
• Nov: Pubcon in Vegas

Personally, I try my best to limit conferences to one per month and those I am speaking at. The above list is not comprehensive for the TopRank team of course, since we do typically blog most SES and SMX conferences. We’ll definitely be at SMX Advanced this year as well as SES Chicago in December. It just won’t be me that attends. There are several other events that I may attend or speak at, I’m just not confirmed that far out.

There are many other great conferences with programming that touches on search, social, interactive and PR the rest of this year. What conferences are you attending in the coming months and remainder of 2008?

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What Conferences Are You Attending?