Category Archives: Social Media

Social Media Draws a Crowd

Social Media Draws a Crowd

Start-Ups and Established Agencies Look to Carve a Niche in Online Action

By Suzanne Vranica

From Wall Street Journal

As more and more advertising dollars flow into social media, some Madison Avenue firms are seeking to grab a piece of the action. But it will be a tough fight as the space is overrun with companies seeking to own the segment, from start-ups to public-relations firms.

Universal McCann, the media-buying firm owned by Interpublic Group of Cos., is bolstering its social-media offering by launching a practice this week called Rally. The division will help marketers develop campaigns, track online chatter about their brands and measure how those campaigns perform. Headed by Heidi Browning, a former MySpace executive, Rally will house several new social-media hires. MySpace, like The Wall Street Journal, is owned by News Corp.

Publicis Groupe‘s digital umbrella organization, Vivaki, says it also will open a social-media consulting practice by the end of the year. The new group will pool Publicis’ social-media tools and experts and use them to beef up the social-media practices that many of Publicis’ agencies have already established. Rishad Tobaccowala, chief strategy officer at Vivaki, says he is willing to use his mergers-and-acquisitions budget to bolster the practice if needed.

The push to form a more formidable presence in social-media advertising is being fueled by the increasing number of marketers who are eager to figure out how they can use sites such as Facebook Inc., which has almost 500 million users, and Twitter, with more than 120 million registered users, as a marketing weapon.

“Social media is now part of all our clients’ plans; we can’t not be in this space,” says Matt Seiler, chief executive of Universal McCann.

Ad spending on social networks world-wide is expected to rise 14% this year to $2.5 billion, according to research firm eMarketer. Although social media represents only a fraction of the $55 billion online-ad market, it is one of the fastest-growing segments.

Some corporations have taken a hands-on role in crafting their efforts: PepsiCo Inc.’s Gatorade, for example, recently created its “Mission Control Center,” which is set up like a broadcast-television control room and is charged with monitoring the sports drink around the clock across social-media networks.

But as marketers look to make bigger commitments, they are increasingly seeking experts to navigate the burgeoning space.

Earlier this year, Chrysler Group LLC tapped New Media Strategies, a unit of publisher MeredithCorp., to handle its social-media tasks. In March Kraft Foods Inc. hired 360i, a digital ad agency owned by Japan’s largest ad company, Dentsu Inc. The agency has been tasked with monitoring the social-media sites for some of its brands such as Oreo and Jell-O. It also develops campaigns. The agency recently created the “World’s Fan of the Week” promotion that appears on Oreo’s Facebook page.

Microsoft Corp. is currently searching for a social-media firm to handle duties for its Xbox videogame system, work that is now handled by several of Xbox’s agencies, according to people familiar with the matter. Asset-management firm State Street Corp. also has begun looking at firms. A spokeswoman for Microsoft declined to comment.

“We have talked to some PR firms that appear to have established valid expertise over the years, and we are also interested in the new social-media firms that are bubbling up,” says Hannah Grove, State Street’s head of global marketing.

Creative ad agencies, digital ad firms, social-media boutiques, public-relations outfits and publishing companies are all clambering to offer advice, all claiming to be best suited to handle the task.

“You can’t walk out your house without bumping into a social-media expert today, says Sean Corcoran, an analyst at Forrester Research. “The reality is the space is still very much a Wild West.”

Analysts say many marketers are more interested in hiring smaller firms that have expertise in the field. Last year Domino’s Pizza Inc. hired New Media Strategies, a word-of-mouth marketing firm, as its agency of record for social media.

“A lot of companies right now that specialize in PR or advertising are trying to do this on the side and the thing we liked in NMS is they specialize in social media,” said Chris Brandon, a spokesman for the pizza chain.

Analysts and ad executives say the space won’t be dominated by small competitors for long because advertising holding companies and bigger public-relations firms will likely ramp up acquiring the smaller boutique firms, much like they have done with other digital areas such as search advertising.

“I do think this is the year for consolidation in social media,” says Ms. Browning, president of Universal McCann’s Rally unit.

Write to Suzanne Vranica at [email protected]

Google aims to make app creation easy

Google aims to make app creation easy

By John D. Sutter

From CNN.com


(CNN) — It’s not uncommon these days for people to know how to build websites and create blogs. That’s largely because sites like WordPress, Blogger and Tumblr have simplified the process, so you don’t have to be a code wonk to publish.

Now, Google is trying to make smartphone app creation easy, too.

On Monday, the company announced a program called App Inventor, which claims to make app development easy enough for schoolkids.

“App Inventor requires NO programming knowledge,” Google says on its new website for the program. “This is because instead of writing code, you visually design the way the app looks and use blocks to specify the app’s behavior.”

News sites have compared App Inventor to building with Lego blocks.

Google says it tested the program with kids.

“For the past year, we’ve been testing App Inventor in classrooms around the United States, and we’ve found that it opens up the world of computer programming to students in new and powerful ways,” the company says on its official blog.

The program is an extension of research and product development done by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

MIT’s Lifelong Kindergarten Group created a building-blocks version of code programming for kids called Scratch, which Google says was one inspiration for its new app creator. The school’sScheller Teacher Education Program also gave Google some code to make the project possible.

Eric Klopfer, an associate professor at MIT and director of that program, said he hopes App Inventor gets young people — particularly those in middle school and high school — more interested in how phones and computers operate.

“It’s not as easy as using a word processor, which is pretty close to what blogs have gotten to. It’s not as easy as that,” he said of App Inventor, “but it’s a big leap forward.”

The new program is an apparent attempt by Google to both democratize app development and increase the number of apps that are available for smartphones that run Google’s Android operating system.

The number of Android apps has been growing in recent months, but there are only about half as many apps available for download on the Android Market as there are from Apple’s popular App Store, which services the iPhone and iPad.

Fortune: The coming Android app explosion

Some tech bloggers criticized Google on Monday for looking to up the number of Android apps instead of improving their quality. Others questioned whether non-techie developers could create apps that are worth using.

“They have to hope it doesn’t backfire and simply flood the Android Market with more junk apps than already exist,” writes MG Siegler on the blog TechCrunch.

On the blog Mashable, which is a CNN Tech partner site, Pete Cashmore writes that App Inventor may lead to a number of “cookie cutter” apps that are fairly useless, but it also may have long-term positive effects for Google.

“If App Inventor is so simple that schoolchildren can make apps, some of those same children will soon become coders themselves … and perhaps choose to develop Android apps rather than iPhone,” Cashmore writes.

The blog The Next Web says app quality may suffer, but that won’t hurt the overall usefulness of Google’s Android Market for apps.

“Will it negatively impact the Android Market? It’s not likely,” writes Brad McCarty. “Let’s face it, even though we’re approaching 100,000 applications in the Market, the good ones rise to the top very quickly. There are literally thousands of useless, trash-directed applications, but they tend to get buried in a hurry.”

Google is not the first company to try to make app development simple. Nokia tried a similar program this year, according to Engadget, but Google may be the first company that is big enough to popularize the idea.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

To learn more about the program, go to Google’s App Inventorinformation page. To download the program, you have to fill out a form telling Google why you would like access to it.

Watch a video preview of the program

Unleash Your Inner Guerrilla Marketer

Unleash Your Inner Guerrilla Marketer

Social media is the ultimate energy vs. money marketing tool–put it to work for your business.

By Barbara Findlay Schenck

From Entrepreneur.com

Jay Conrad Levinson coined the term “guerrilla marketing” in the 1980s, defining it as an approach for “achieving conventional goals, such as profits and joy, with unconventional methods, such as investing energy instead of money.”

With four words–energy instead of money–Levinson won the hearts and influenced themarketing plans of entrepreneurs everywhere. His concept fueled the sale of 14 million books, leveling the playing field between marketing-budget haves and have-nots and inspiring a long-standing preference among small-business leaders for innovative, low-cost, high-energy communications over textbook, big-dollar tactics.

Viewing Social Media as a Guerrilla Marketing Tool
Yet small businesses, the original guerrilla marketing advocates, have been hesitant about investing effort–which is about all that’s required–in the fastest-growing, most innovative and unconventional communication channel of the day.

“If a business can devote just an hour every other day it can achieve social media presence that nurtures leads and keeps people engaged,” says Peter Wylie, lead researcher for the Emerging Media Research Council of  Three Ships Media. “But small businesses have a wait-and-see attitude because they don’t understand what’s involved and they overestimate the commitment of time required.”

Social Media Deliver Online Presence and Customer Interaction
“University of Maryland research shows that only a quarter of small businesses have social media presence,” Wylie says, “and many don’t have websites at all. Yet U.S. adults spend increasingly more time online, with social media their No. 1 activity behind search.”

For the many companies that don’t have a site, social media offer a bargain-basement deal for achieving both online presence and social media participation.

Wylie recommends that businesses begin with two easy, practically cost-free steps. “A business can achieve online presence with nothing more than a WordPress blog and a Facebook business page,” he says. “The tools are so simple, so easy, and free.”

Social Media Success Tips
“For businesses with a large customer base, Facebook is the initial place to be,” Wylie says. “For consultative companies, a business blog written by real people in conversational language is a great vehicle. Either tool, or both combined, let businesses provide evergreen responses to customer questions while developing customer interest and interaction.”

Wylie offers these tips:

  • Be useful. Use social media to talk about more than just your business. Give local perspective, behind-the-scenes information, and advice outside the confines of your market niche. Provide long-term value and inspire repeat visits by adding links to places your customers would want to go for related information. Additionally, of course, provide a clear description of what your business does and how to contact you online and offline.
  • Deliver value. Incentives, discounts and promotions provide site-visitor benefits, prompt repeat visits, and allow you to track customer interactions. Also consider adding value with online surveys (free through sites like SurveyMonkey) that let people voice and view opinions.
  • Be consistent and conversational. Commit to keeping your social media sites routinely updated with short entries that are written as if you’re talking to someone over the counter. Entries don’t have to be perfect. They do have to be current and interesting to customers, otherwise people won’t bother to check back regularly. The Three Ships Media blog is a good example of how you can spread writing responsibility among members of your business team.
  • Be competitive. Do some online sleuthing to learn what competitors are up to in social media. Seeing that those you’re up against are already online, growing their awareness levels and deepening their interactions with customers, may give you just the incentive you need to get started.
  • Be relevant. As you build social media presence, Wylie says to continually ask yourself, “Why should people come to this site? What unique values and benefits separate us from competitors? Are we telling our story and demonstrating our distinction? Are we showing expertise in a non-salesy way? Are we delivering long-term value more than advertising messages?”

Answer yes to those last three questions and you have a formula for turning social media into the newest guerrilla marketing tool in your marketing arsenal.

Barbara Findlay Schenck is a small-business strategist, the author of SmallBusiness Marketing for Dummies and the co-author of Branding for Dummies, Selling Your Business for Dummies and Business Plans Kit for Dummies.

Popularity, Ego, and Influence – What Is the Influence Project?

Popularity, Ego, and Influence – What Is the Influence Project?

By Mark Borden

From Fast Company Magazine Online

Influence Project

In roughly 24 hours, nearly 6,000 people have registered to participate in an experiment we started called The Influence Project. It’s been written about by TechCrunchThe Huffington PostThe New York Times, and a score of personal blogs. While it hasn’t taken off the way as quickly as the David After Dentist or Yosemitebear Mountain Giant Rainbow videos, it’s off to a good enough start to bust our servers (briefly). But like anything that gains traction on the Web, the reactions have been mixed, ranging from the vitriolic to the pretty damn amusing.

One side effect of instant popularity is that most people are unaware of the evolution of this idea, and how the thing actually works. The Influence Project is a byproduct of a story I wrote in the May issue of Fast Company about the ad and marketing shop Mekanism. Mekanism told me they could make just about anything go viral. So I asked them to create a viral marketing campaign for Fast Company (they were not paid for this, but did it because it sounded like fun). In return, I would document the process and see if they could deliver. Mekanism came back with pitches ranging from a Twittering Business Jesus who responds to prayers from companies in distress, to a jingoistic campaign titled Fuck China (we passed on both, but you can still see the full brief). Instead, we settled on an idea called The Cover Project—so named because everyone who participates would get their photo in a story that might hit the cover of a fall Fast Company issue. We’ve changed the name since then, because the editorial story I wanted to pursue, the story that is constantly evolving and morphing, is the story of influence and influencers and how they are employed to both spread or kill ideas on the Internet. And voila—The Influence Project.

We’ve created a platform where anyone can see what happens to his or her social network when people are asked to take an action. The scoring is based partly on how many people click on the link to your profile, and partly on a bonus awarded to people who get others inside their network to sign up and take part. (Someone with 100,000 followers who only gets 100 people to join the project is less influential than someone with 150 followers who gets 100 people to join.) We didn’t give guidance on how people should pursue their influence goals. Some people may engage in deception to get others to click on their link (hello 4Chan), some may use tactics that feel like spam to boost their results (hello, SEO consultants). Some may want to use charity as a lever to push engagement–go ahead, we won’t stop you. Is that inappropriate? Is that unfair? Is that a popularity contest? Maybe. But it’s also reflective of behavior that happens on the Internet every day.

The project is an experiment, one that should inform us and be enjoyable for participants. It is not being paid for by a sponsor–although we’d be thrilled to have one. Your email address will not be sold to anyone. It is an editorial investigation.

Yes, we hope to be able to name the most influential person online in our November issue. But that issue will do much more, looking at influence from all kinds of different perspectives. And along the way, I’ll be writing daily on the subject of influence–occasionally focusing on the project, but mostly writing about interesting people I learn about along the way, and how they create and wield their own online influence. Which brings me back to the main point of our project: It’s a wild, unwieldy, imperfect, and hopefully fun way to take a look at the wild, unwieldy, imperfect and certainly fun world of social media.

Six Steps to Successful Blogger Outreach

Six Steps to Successful Blogger Outreach

By Norah Carroll

From LavaRow.com

According to a 2009 Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey, 90 percent of Internet consumers have some degree of trust in recommendations from people they know; only 62 percent place their trust in television advertisements, and the numbers are even lower for other forms of traditional advertising. So what does this mean for social media?

Read the rest of the article here.

5 YouTube Channels for Small Business Advice

5 YouTube Channels for Small Biz Advice

By Matt Silverman

From Mashable.com

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

YouTube is an often overlooked tool for business, not only as an engagement and marketing platform, but as an educational resource. There are YouTube channels dedicated to sound business advice, but distilling them from oceans of video junk can be a daunting task.

We’ve pulled out five subscription-worthy channels that produce regular, valuable content, and whose viewerships are already substantial. Adding these to your daily diet of social business resources is another great way to stay on top of trends and gather up new ideas for your business.


1. Harvard Business Publishing


At over 17,000 subscribers, Harvard Business School’s YouTube channel produces regular “ideacasts” with a focus on “practical insights, tools and resources.” The show offers interviews with prominent Harvard professors, authors, and business leaders who speak to issues in markets large and small.

 

2. Google Business


Make no mistake, the Google Business YouTube channel is a promotional tool for Google’sGoogle products. But there’s no sales pitch here — just really valuable insights on how to use many of the free and low-cost platforms offered by the search giant. Looking to optimize your AdWords campaign or glean a better view of the marketplace through search analysis? Stacks of short, well-produced instructional videos are at your fingertips with a subscription here.

3. U.S. Small Business Administration


Of all the places to find valuable resources online, you may not immediately think of the U.S. Government. But the Small Business Administration has done a good job stocking their YouTube channel with important information about government initiatives, government loans, legislative changes, and general small business advice about technology and marketing.

4. Robert Scoble’s Channel


Known as a Twitter influencer and blogger in the entrepreneurial tech scene, Robert “Scobleizer” Scoble’s YouTube channel is loaded with candid interviews with some of today’s hottest startup pros. The channel is less about hypothetical business advice, and all about what entrepreneurs are actually doing in the tech space. At the very least, it’s interesting stuff. At most, it offers concrete insights from some of the industry’s thought leaders that you can bring back to your own work.

5. Fast Forward


Google and The Wharton School of Business have partnered to develop a YouTube channel dedicated exclusively to InternetInternet marketing — a field that has been a boon for many small businesses looking to expand their reach on the social web. The channel offers up piles of short, easily digestible interviews with business leaders, CEOs, and entrepreneurs who discuss the goals and challenges of savvy web marketing.

52 Cool Facts About Social Media

52 Cool Facts About Social Media

By Danny Brown

From DannyBrown.me

As social media continues to gain acceptance as a bona-fide communications platform, I thought it might be fun to have a cool fact about it for every week of the year.

So, here are ten facts about the five most well-known social media outlets – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and blogging – with two more bonus facts thrown in just for fun. (And to get to the figure of a fact a week for a year).

Enjoy!

Facebook

1. The average Facebook user has 130 friends.
2. More than 25 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) is shared each month.
3. Over 300,000 users helped translate the site through the translations application.
4. More than 150 million people engage with Facebook on external websites every month.
5. Two-thirds of comScore’s U.S. Top 100 websites and half of comScore’s Global Top 100 websites have integrated with Facebook.
6. There are more than 100 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.
7. People that access Facebook via mobile are twice as active than non-mobile users (think about that when designing your Facebook page).
8. The average Facebook user is connected to 60 pages, groups and events.
9. People spend over 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook.
10. There are more than 1 million entrepreneurs and developers from 180 countries on Facebook.

Statistics from Facebook press office.

Twitter

11. Twitter’s web platform only accounts for a quarter of its users – 75% use third-party apps.
12. Twitter gets more than 300,000 new users every day.
13. There are currently 110 million users of Twitter’s services.
14. Twitter receives 180 million unique visits each month.
15. There are more than 600 million searches on Twitter every day.
16. Twitter started as a simple SMS-text service.
17. Over 60% of Twitter use is outside the U.S.
18. There are more than 50,000 third-party apps for Twitter.
19. Twitter has donated access to all of its tweets to the Library of Congress for research and preservation.
20. More than a third of users access Twitter via their mobile phone.

Statistics from Twitter and the Chirp Conference.

LinkedIn

21. LinkedIn is the oldest of the four sites in this post, having been created on May 5 2003.
22. There are more than 70 million users worldwide.
23. Members of LinkedIn come from more than 200 countries from every continent.
24. LinkedIn is available in six native languages – English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.
25. Oracle’s Chief Financial Officer, Jeff Epstein, was headhunted for the position via his LinkedIn profile.
26. 80% of companies use LinkedIn as a recruitment tool.
27. A new member joins LinkedIn every second.
28. LinkedIn receives almost 12 million unique visitors per day.
29. Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are on LinkedIn.
30. Recruiters account for 1-in-20 LinkedIn profiles.

Statistics from LinkedIn press centre and SysComm International.

YouTube

31. The very first video uploaded was called “Me at the Zoo”, on 23rd April 2005.
32. By June 2006, more than 65,000 videos were being uploaded every day.
33. YouTube receives more than 2 billion viewers per day.
34. Every minute, 24 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube.
35. The U.S. accounts for 70% of YouTube users.
36. Over half of YouTube’s users are under 20 years old.
37. You would need to live for around 1,000 years to watch all the videos currently on YouTube.
38. YouTube is available in 19 countries and 12 languages.
39. Music videos account for 20% of uploads.
40. YouTube uses the same amount of bandwidth as the entire Internet used in 2000.

Statistics from YouTube press centre.

Blogging

41. 77% of Internet users read blogs.
42. There are currently 133 million blogs listed on leading blog directory Technorati.
43. 60% of bloggers are between the ages 18-44.
44. One in five bloggers update their blogs daily.
45. Two thirds of bloggers are male.
46. Corporate blogging accounts for 14% of blogs.
47. 15% of bloggers spend 10 hours a week blogging.
48. More than half of all bloggers are married and/or parents.
49. More than 50% of bloggers have more than one blog.
50. Bloggers use an average of five different social sites to drive traffic to their blog.

Statistics from Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere 2009.

Bonus Facts

51. 90% of Internet users know at least one social network.
52. The average social user has 195 friends.

Statistics from Online Media Gazette.

So there you have it – a fact for every week of the year, just in case you need it for your next presentation or tweet-up, and want to let folks know why social media isn’t so dorky after all.

Cheers!

The Definitive Case for B2B Social Media Marketing

The Definitive Case for B2B Social Media Marketing

How Kinaxis, a supply chain management solutions provider based in Ottawa, is achieving extraordinary results via social media marketing.

By Drew Neisser

From Fast Company Magazine Online

While most B2B marketers are scratching the surface, Kirsten Watson and her team at Kinaxis are digging deep into the rich veins of social media and finding gold. And while my metaphor may be tired, the 2009 versus 2008 results are anything but:

  • 2.7 times increase in website traffic
  • 3.2 times increase in conversion
  • 5.3 times increase in blog traffic
  • 6.0 times increase in registration of community members

How Kinaxis did all this and more is both instructive and inspiring especially given the extraordinary humility with which Watson shared her story. After I reassured her that Kinaxis was way ahead of the pack, Watson noted, “When you’re in the trenches, head down at the desk, you always feel like you’re playing catch up.” From my perspective, the only catching up to do here is for my readers, who I hope will see this as the definitive case for B2B social media marketing.

1. Innovation Rolls Down Hill

Perhaps the theme I hear most often is the importance of the CEO in inspiring marketing innovation.  Well guess what?  It’s true for our Canadian neighbors too. “It started in late 2007, when our CEO Doug Colbeth came to us,” noted Watson, adding, “He is the visionary type and was noticing all the social media stuff on the rise and wanted to know if there was an opportunity there for us.”  Thinking that social media was mainly Facebook and not seeing a fit, Watson and her team started reading all they could including Groundswell, the seminal book that according to Watson, “Sets the stage for what all the social media stuff really means.”

2. Experts are Worth the Investment

Knowing what you don’t know is tough and knowing when to pay for outside expertise is even tougher.  Noted Watson on the decision to spend $70,000 with Forrester on research, “Our company isn’t big enough, so we needed outside help and engaged Forrester to help us understand our audience.”  Added Watson, “if we don’t understand the audience we’re trying to reach, how in the world could we build an infrastructure to engage them?” Forrester’s recommendation to build a community was unexpected but the data was quite strong. Offered Watson, “So we executed on all of their recommendations, the biggest being the community.”

3. Patience is Rewarded Especially When it Comes to Blogging

Our blog is a huge part of our social media strategy but that’s been going on since 2005,” noted Watson, who added “We were banging our heads against the wall, questioning if it was worth the investment of time.”  That is no longer the case, noted Watson, “Our blog today is one of the industry’s leading blogs; we get a lot of leadership points off our blog because we’re quite careful about the quality of the content.”  This sensitivity to their readers provided a strong foundation for their newer social media activities, added Watson, “We’re never trying to be over-promotional and we’re always talking about real issues.”

4.  SEO is More than a Side Benefit of Social Media

“The biggest thing for us has been about finding ‘religion’ in SEO,” noted Watson when explaining her top lessons learned.  “Start with really understanding the keywords that are important to your marketplace and then build your campaign in as integrated way as possible,” she added.  Kinaxis has an editorial calendar based on key industry topics, writes a monthly whitepaper and then extends that content to Slideshare (PowerPoint presentations), YouTube (videos of the author), blogs, LinkedIn groups and newsletters. Offered Watson, “We understand things like keyword density, interlinking, back-linking,” thus helping to turn social media content into gold.

5. Building Community Means Letting the People Speak

In July 2009, Kinaxis launched a community for supply chain management enthusiasts with a hope and a prayer.  The hope was that they would get a few hundred members and a prayer that it would attract new customers as well as their current.  One year later, the community now has over 2760 members, 75% of whom are not current Kinaxis customers. Watson advised avoiding any kind of corporate messaging in the community, “When you understand the social media revolution; it’s owned by the people and not us. “ She added, “You have to be open, be honest, encompass all ideas and let people communicate how they like.”

6. Holy Hockey Player Batman; Even Supply Chain Experts are People Too

All too often, B2B marketing efforts are restrained by a deadly seriousness that simply ignores the humanity of the target.  Not so for Kinaxis.  Comedy content has been a long-standing component of their web efforts and it became an important part of the community when it launched. “Comedy has been a great draw, since at the end of the day, it gets back to the whole notion that people are people,” she chuckled. “Our business world and personal world do intersect,” noted Watson. “I don’t think there’s anything but good things that come from a company showing its personality and that it has a sense of humor,” concluded Watson.

7. Keep it Fresh by Taking Calculated Risks

In early 2010, Kinaxis opened its blog up to outside bloggers, a calculated risk that has already paid off.  5 leading industry experts are now posting content along with 18 Kinaxis employees, helping to drive site traffic and improve organic search performance.  “These bloggers can even go on and post a contrary view to the way we see things which adds more credibility to the blog,” noted Watson, who also added, “None of our posts are preapproved—it’s all or nothing.”  Understanding the need for experimentation, Watson acknowledged, “We don’t expect to get it right every time and there’s still so much learning to do,” revealing the refreshing humility I mentioned upfront.

8.  Track Everything and Revel in the Love of Your Sales Force

Though measurement is still considered a work in progress, how Kinaxis monitors its social media progress is first rate.  Noted Watson, “We’re tracking all of the traditional stuff like keyword searches, website hits and conversions but its hard to track what created what.” Taking things a step further, Kinaxis uses a scoring system to monitor qualified leads against a number of criteria including industry, revenue range and title.   She added that leads, “Hit a threshold value of points that then tells us this is a market qualified lead; they’re all tracked by SalesForce, so we can look back and see where our best qualified leads came from,” thus generating the on-going love and appreciation of the Kinaxis sales force.

Final note: While Kinaxis is far from a household name, if you are in the Supply Chain Management business there is a pretty good chance you’ve heard of them, laughed with them or even given them a piece of your mind. And if you haven’t, they just added a “community manager” to increase the odds that you will soon and that this fast-growing privately-held Canadian company will continue to lead the way in social media marketing.

Guy Kawasaki on the Power of Social Media

Guy Kawasaki on the Power of Social Media

Entrepreneur Says Security, Privacy Concerns Are ‘Massively Overblown’

By Tom Field

From Alltop.com


Listen to this Podcast

Maximizing social media – it isn’t about strategy; it’s all about tactics. That’s the message from entrepreneur and venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki.

“There is no strategy for social media; you just dive in,” Kawasaki says. “I think strategy is vastly overrated when it comes to social media.”

In an exclusive interview, Kawasaki discusses the power of social media, including:

  • Why social media tactics are more important than strategy;
  • How security and privacy concerns are “massively overblown”;
  • What organizations need to do to harness the power of social media.

Kawasaki is a founding partner and entrepreneur-in-residence at Garage Technology Ventures. He is also the co-founder of Alltop.com, an “online magazine rack” of popular topics on the web. Previously, he was an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer, Inc. Guy is the author of nine books including Reality Check, The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way. He has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College.

TOM FIELD: How do you tap the power of social media? Hi, this is Tom Field, editorial director with Information Security Media Group. And we’re talking today with Guy Kawasaki, well known as a founding partner and entrepreneur in residence at Garage Technology Ventures. Guy, thanks so much for joining me.

Guy, you’ve got a diverse resume, and you’ve got a lot on your plate. What are some of the hottest items on your plate right now?

GUY KAWASAKI: I’m working on a new book that should be out in March of 2011 called Enchantment. That is: how to change what people will do. That occupies me, and I have a website called Alltop, which is a news aggregation site. Think of it as an online magazine rack. So, between that and being a venture capitalist, I’m pretty busy.

FIELD: You’ve got deep experience obviously in entrepreneurial ventures, in innovation. When you think of those topics, where does social media fit into innovation and entrepreneurial ventures?

KAWASAKI: Let’s draw a line in the sand. It is 2010, and there still is a recession going on. That’s the bad news. The good news is: It’s cheaper than ever to be an entrepreneur for several reasons. Think of all the things that you need as an entrepreneur. You need tools. But tools are free because of open source. You need people, and people are cheap or free because everybody’s unemployed. You need marketing, and this is where social media comes in. Marketing is free or very cheap because of your ability to directly reach out to bloggers and to use Facebook and MySpace and Twitter and various kinds of social sites. So, marketing is free.

And as far as putting your stuff up in the cloud, that’s very inexpensive for terabytes of data, whereas before you’d have to buy your own servers. So, the place for social media is as this free marketing platform that was really not available before.

FIELD: Guy, what excites you about how organizations use social media today?

KAWASAKI: I just love the fact that it’s really democratized marketing. It used to be that if you had a few million dollars to run a Super Bowl commercial and to hire an ad agency, you were in the ad and marketing business. Today you need a free Twitter account and a free Facebook account, and it’s off to the races. I just love when it’s no longer a rich person’s game.

FIELD: So flipside of that. I asked you what excites you about social media and organizations. What scares you about how organizations use social media?

KAWASAKI: Really, nothing. We’re very early in the social media game. It’s like 15 years ago in the internet business. And the internet, if we can remember correctly, started off as sort of as a personal expression – “This is my website …” It was only meant to communicate with my friends and relatives, and today companies are selling shoes, right? And back then the first ads were a travesty. It was a crime against humanity. When you searched in Google and you saw sponsored links, that was just wrong — how could people do this? “This is not the Internet. It’s supposed to be about information and social responsibility” and blah, blah, blah.

And now think about it today, right? Everything has a banner ad on it. Everything is sponsored links. Everything is marketing. That’s where social media’s going to end up. It is a platform.

FIELD: What are you thoughts about the security concerns?

KAWASAKI: Security concerns are massively overblown. Let’s take this whole Facebook thing. A lot of these people are flattering themselves so much — they think that their data is so valuable and so precious and so private and so confidential that these evil people at Facebook and these evil marketers are going to use it to, what — sell them a BMW? Sure, you don’t want your credit card account out there and all that kind of stuff, but … don’t do stupid things and publicize it on the internet. It’s that simple.

My attitude with Facebook is that it’s hosting millions of photographs and millions of lines of text and information — been doing that all for free, right? So, it’s like you got invited to someone’s house for dinner. You go to the dinner, you eat, you love it, and then after a while you say, “Oh, but I don’t like what you’re doing to me because you’re telling other people that I’m at your dinner.” You’re an invited guest; if you don’t like it, leave.

This is not a popular attitude, but these services provide such value that you either shouldn’t complain, or at least if you complain you should complain from the constructive perspective of trying to help them improve it. But to get all high and mighty and to have this moral indignation … I once got into an argument with somebody, and he said “The reason why Facebook has to listen to me is because I provide them with such valuable data that I’m doing them a favor.”

“What drug are you on? What data do you provide that is so valuable that Facebook has to create an infrastructure and store all your stuff for you for free that you think that you’re doing them a favor?” I don’t get it. So maybe you shouldn’t have asked me that question.

FIELD: As you look around at organizations and how they use social media, where are they just missing the boat?

KAWASAKI: I don’t know if they’re missing the boat so much as the boat is still being constructed. Again, put yourself in the place of the Internet. If you asked this question, ‘Where are companies missing the boat?’ of websites 15 years ago, it would have had a lot of answers. They were only brochure-ware, they weren’t interactive, they didn’t have shopping carts, they didn’t have adequate security for transmission of your credit card. There are all these fundamental problems back then and … like with social media today, they’ll get fixed.

It’s too harsh to say that people are missing the boat. Yes, brands could do social media better. On the other hand, it’s so early; slide people a break. It’s a brave, new world here.

FIELD: So look ahead, five years from now how do you see organizations using social media?

KAWASAKI: I’m not a visionary. I have no clue. I would have never, ever predicted the success, for example, of Facebook or Twitter. Now, everybody who’s a pundit today can say, “Oh, yeah, I know it was going to happen. I knew it was going to be successful,” but — let’s take the case of Twitter:

When Twitter started three or four years ago, if somebody came to you and said, “Well, we’re going to have this system where people can send a whole 140-character update out into the Internet, and people who follow them are going to find out their cat rolled over, the line at Starbucks is long, they just got took a shower — isn’t that a great idea?” And who among us would have said, “Oh, yeah, you know, that Twitter; that’s going to change the world.”

And so the point is that was only two or three years ago, and you’re asking me to predict five years? I can’t. Nobody can. And if anybody tells me they can, they’re lying.

FIELD: Based on what you know now, what you see, what do organizations need to do just to maximize the power of social media that’s in their hands right now?

KAWASAKI: They need to just dive in and try it, and this is another debate. I’ve been getting into a lot of debates recently online. So somebody posted a thing where he asked so-called experts, of which I do not consider myself one, how do you create the strategy for social media? So all these pundits said “you set the goals, you do all kinds of strategic stuff.” I’m the only person who said, “There is no strategy for social media. For social media you just dive in.” You open up a Facebook account or a Twitter account, and you just try stuff. And what works, works; and what doesn’t work, doesn’t work.

And all these people went into a big huff. “That’s like building a house without architectural plans. That’s like going on a trip without a map.” And you know what? They missed the boat with social media. Social media is not building a house. When you build a house, you are digging a foundation. You are laying concrete. You’re putting up posts. You have rebar in there. There are four by fours going up. There are beams going up. You are building a very, very permanent thing. If you don’t have architectural plans, you have a problem.

Social media is not like building a house. Social media is like carrying your sleeping bag around with you and … I guess I could get myself into trouble here because I’m not exactly a camper. But it seems to me that if you go to a campsite and you put your sleeping bag down, within some reason you should say, “I shouldn’t be next to the latrine, and I shouldn’t be next to the water because it’s low tide now.” But within those sort of general parameters, you put your sleeping bag down and you go to sleep, right? And if you find out that you’re sleeping in a bad place, you get your sleeping bag and you move. It’s that simple.

And social media is like that today. I don’t think people have crafted a deep strategy for where they’re going to put their sleeping bag. So, don’t worry so much about strategy, just focus on tactics. How are you using Twitter? How are you using Facebook? What kind of emails are you sending out? What kind of videos are publicizing? Strategy is vastly overrated when it comes to social media.

FIELD: How has social media changed the way you communicate personally and professionally?

KAWASAKI: I was email centric for the first, I don’t know, 20 years or so. And I’m kind of getting Twitter centric right now. I wish every message to me was only 140 characters. That would be a lovely thing. Do you know how much better the world would be if email were limited to 140 characters? Oh, the world would be such a better place.

FIELD: How does this effect the books that you research and write?

KAWASAKI: Certainly when I finish a book, I’m going to market it heavily through Twitter. That’s the beauty of having 300,000 followers. How could you have reached 300,000 people 15 years ago? I’d like to hear the answer to that question. Very few people had 300,000 email addresses in their database. That’s at the backend, marketing. But for writing a book, I found Twitter and blogging to be so valuable. One of the most difficult parts for me of writing a book is to find good examples to illustrate my concepts. Now I go on Twitter or I go with my blog and I say, “Hey, I need to find an example of an employee who enchanted you as a boss.” I put that out to 300,000 of my closest friends, and I get 15 responses, and of the 15 two or three are good enough for the book.

I don’t know how I would have done that before. Prior to social media, many business books cited the same psychological studies. How many times have we read about Post-It Notes at 3M, right? And Southwest Airlines and Virgin and iPod? I mean, there are 25 business examples that explain everything in the world. It’s because finding good examples was so hard.

FIELD: So in other words we’re going to end up looking back and saying there was before social media, and there was after?

KAWASAKI: We are already looking back and saying there was before and after internet. We’re going to look back and say there was before and after social media.

FIELD: We’ve been talking about social media. We’ve been talking with Guy Kawasaki. For Information Security Media Group, I’m Tom Field. Thank you very much.

Companies Using Social Media Without Game Plan

Companies Using Social Media Without Game Plan

From MarketingProfs.com

Despite widespread adoption of social media marketing, most companies are still learning how to integrate those efforts into their overall corporate strategies: 78% of surveyed companies say they actively use social media, but just 41% say those efforts are part of a strategic game plan, according to a survey from Digital Brand Expressions (DBE).

Overall, Marketing is in charge of social media: 71% of companies that now work from a strategic plan say the marketing department has primary responsibility for creating and maintaining the firm’s social media presence; 29% cite communication departments, and 16% cite the executive team.

Below, other findings Social Media Without a Parachute, a DBE study based on a survey of 100 companies.

Although social media is now being applied throughout the enterprise, 94% of companies who work from a social media plan say they use the channel for marketing; 71% cite public relations, and 55% cite sales-related activities.

Just 26% of companies leverage social media for customer service, and only 16% say their human resources department uses it for activities such as recruiting, employee retention, and training and development.

Among the companies that work from a social media communications plan, most planning-related activities center around operational issues, such as allocating resources for ongoing social media efforts (90%) and registering branded usernames on key social media sites (77%).
Other social media plan-related activities:

  • Researching brand competitors’ and key stakeholders’ social media use: 74%
  • Setting up metrics/tracking methods to measure ROI: 71%
  • Specifying proper configurations of account settings on key social sites: 55%
  • Planning for ongoing monitoring of brand reputation in the social media environment: 52%
  • Developing protocols and policies for ongoing communications, including how to respond to positive/negative comments on social media websites: 45%
  • Distributing guidelines for employees regarding general use of social media for personal and professional use: 39%

Looking for real, hard data that can help you match social media tools and tactics to your marketing goals? The State of Social Media Marketing, a 240-page original research report from MarketingProfs, gives you the inside scoop on how 5,140 marketing pros are using social media to create winning campaigns, measure ROI, and reach audiences in new and exciting ways.


Companies’ priorities are different when asked what they want as part of their social media communications plans. Allocating resources for social media is still top of mind (76%), but developing protocols and policies is more of a concern (71%), compared with the 45% of companies that now focus on such activities as part of a plan.

Similarly, planning for ongoing monitoring of brand reputation is a key concern (71%), compared with the 52% of companies that now focus on it.

The most dramatic concern is in how social media use is spreading throughout the organization: 67% of companies cite a need for developing protocols and policies for social media use across departments (e.g., guidelines for Sales, Customer Service, and Human Resources), but just 39% of companies now focus on such activities as part of their plan.

Asked which department should have primary responsibility for social media, 74% of companies say social media should be marketing’s responsibility, but over one-half (51%) view the channel as a corporate communications function and 28% say it should be the responsibility of the executive team.

About the data: Findings are from a survey of 100 companies conducted by Digital Brand Expressions in May 2010.