The Engaged Consumer

About nine months ago, I started a weekly podcast called the Quick-n-Dirty show with my friend and co-host, Jennifer Leggio (Jennifer is a blogger for ZDNet). Jennifer and I take turns recapping the shows on my personal blog and Jennifer's ZDNet blog but my colleague, Beth Lopez, recently convinced me that I should be cross-posting my re-caps here. If you'd like to see more recaps, you can go here.

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It's been a few weeks since my podcast partner in crime, Jennifer Leggio, and I have been able to do a Quick-n-Dirty podcast together. For two weeks in a row, travel prevented me from joining her on our weekly show. Fortunately, we had a couple of more than capable substitutes in Brian Solis (author and principal of FutureWorks) and Greg Matthews, director of innovation at Humana. Write ups from the shows with Brian and Greg can be found here and here on Jennifer's ZDNet blog.

This week, Jennifer and I were back in the saddle again with me broadcasting live from Jackson Hole, WY (yes, I took one for the team). We had an action packed show starting with our featured social network of the week, Hollrr. Neither Jennifer or I had had much of chance to play with Hollrr but saw some decent potential in this site that Mashable likens to "Foursquare for product discovery" (full review here). Both Jennifer and I appreciated Hollrr's off-the-shelf integration with other social networks like Twitter and Facebook and I personally look forward to getting product recommendations from friends and connections. Oh yeah, they have a pretty cool logo too.

Next up was our featured guest (and former "Twitterer of the week,") Simon Mainwaring. If you don't know Simon, you should. Officially, he is a branding consultant, advertising creative director, blogger, author and speaker. A former Nike creative at Wieden & Kennedy, Portland, and worldwide creative director for Motorola at Ogilvy, he now consults for brands and creative companies that are re-inventing their industries. During this week's show, Simon shared some fascinating updates from a recent trip he took to the Middle East as a guest of the Brookings Institute. The focus was on social media and foreign policy, two disciplines that traditionally don't share the same space. I won't pretend to do Simon's interview justice so just this one time, I'm MANDATING that you listen to at least Simon's portion of the show (starts about 7 mins in and runs for aproximately 25 minutes).

Speaking of "Twitterers of the week," this week's choice was principal of The Community Roundtable (and close friend), Jim Storer. As I mentioned during the show, nobody has done a better job at taking community management skills to Twitter than Jim. Regularly mixing helpful tips, humor, love of bacon and Red Sox commentary into his stream, Jim is a "must add" to anyone's Twitter follow list irrespective of what industry they are in.

Last but not least, our point/counterpoint focused on one of Jennifer's recent blog posts, Twitter: Becoming Nothing Special. Jennifer's post theorizes that the recent announcement of Yahoo's partnership with Twitter pushes them from "new shiny object" into the merely "ordinary" category. While Jennifer didn't see this as all bad, she wondered aloud if this might hurt Twitter's future potential. Taking the opposing side of this issue, I argued that this is exactly what Twitter (and social media) need. Making Twitter and other social networks like "electricity" -- something we don't ever even think about in spite of the critical role it plays in our daily lives -- is a good thing. To me, this means that it's so ingrained in our daily lives, personal and professional, that we can't live without it.

Looking forward to next week's show, Jennifer and I will switch places and I will be working with friend and founder of Oneforty, Laura Fitton, as my guest host. Jennifer will be attending the RSA Conference and thus will be out of pocket for this week's Quick-n-Dirty. I'm sure she'll want to listen to the show (as will you). Fortunately for her, our shows are archived here and on iTunes (search on "quickndirty").

This was originally posted on my friend Tommy Landry's blog, Return on Now, as a guest post on February 8, 2010.

Why is it that when it comes to conversation about social media, business-to-business (B2B) seems to draw the short stick every single time? As someone that does a lot of webcasts, blog posts and speaking gigs, the questions/comment that always comes up is, "what about B2B examples." Fortunately for me, I'm able to mention companies like BreakingPoint Systems and Hubspot that do a great job tapping into the power of social media but I often wish there were more examples (with public results) that I could discuss.

In thinking about this topic, one of the main reasons that B2B has taken a little longer to adopt social media into its marketing mix is that it's harder to do effectively. It's also feels risky because there is less control then there is in other channels. With that said, I personally believe that B2B companies stand to benefit the most from social media because they live and die based on the strength of their customer relationships. On top of that, many B2B companies actually know exactly know who their prospective customers are so seeking those folks out in a meaningful way and creating relationships with them can have a huge impact on the bottom line. Given that I'm a prescriptive kind of guy, I'd feel remiss if I didn't offer up some ways that companies can start thinking about putting social media into practice. There are obviously tons of ways but here are a few (including a diagram that provides more color commentary on item number three):

1. Start listening. This is easier to do than you think. Set up a Google alert for your company's name, your competitors' names and keywords for your industry. If you're already doing this, consider hiring a "listening" service like Techrigy, Radian6 or Meltwater Buzz. This will help you find out where all the relevant conversations in your space are happening.
2. Create a Twitter account for your business. However, resist the urge to put up links to press releases, product specs and links to press that are signing your business's praises (at least out of the gate). Instead, talk about things that people in your industry care about. For instance, if you create bill payment software, talk about the needs of small to medium sized businesses across the financial spectrum (payroll, credit, vendor managment, etc.) Link to reports and industry analysis. Point out other people's blog posts and magazine articles.
3. Set up a blog. Before you do this though, make sure you have someone (ideally internal) that is willing to commit to posting at least 5-6 times/month. This can be someone on your marketing, product, or PR teams or even better, one of your executives. Think about creating an editorial calendar to help guide your topics. Most importantly, spend time looking at other industry related blogs -- in fact, you should spend at least a month doing this before you set up your own blog. Be sure to comment on those blogs (talk about the topic, not your company). This will help with getting to know the relevant "social" people in the space.
4. Create an online community. Once you've gotten comfortable with items 1-3, start thinking about a online community. Ideally, this is for both customers and prospective customers. Some businesses feel more comfortable about creating private communities where customers can talk to one another. The key either way is to hire a great community manager and let them help you create relevant content via webinars, blog posts and conference calls (see diagram below). A community manager will also help you draw out your customers and insure that conversations stay relevant and productive.
5. Measure, measure, measure. This is less difficult than you might imagine. This really should start with looking at your current goals i.e. new customers, greater retention, larger share of wallet, referrals, etc. Then make sure you benchmark e.g. look at your webstats and current KPI's before you launch your social efforts. Then look at how your moving the bar over time. A key place to look is at your web analytics to see what kind of traffic and engagement your Twitter feed and/or blog efforts are driving. Also, it doesn't hurt to survey customers and ask them if your efforts are impacting their loyalty to your company.

A couple of months ago, I wrote a post titled, The Start of Something Bigger? It came on the heels of Ants Eye View's announcement that they had just joined forces with authors/consultants, Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell. Then last week white label community provider, Jive Software, announced that they had purchased listening platform, Filtrbox. All the while I watched with interest knowing that we had some big news of our own to announce in early January.

Let's start with the news since I know that nobody likes to be left hanging. Today, I'm  proud to announce that Powered Inc is launching a full-service social media agency through the acquisition of industry leaders crayon, Drillteam and StepChange. The reason we're so excited about this is because we feel that we are now better positioned to help brands (and their agencies) define and deliver comprehensive social media strategies that integrate with their traditional marketing mix. How shall we do this you ask? By leveraging tools and tactics such as Facebook, Twitter, blogger outreach, events, communities and mobile applications of course.

We felt like it was important to take this approach because up until now, marketers have lacked a "go to" resource that could meet all of their social needs. This does not diminish any of the smart, driven and successful other boutiques and consultancies out there that help their clients with their social initiatives but rather that none of them truly provide the end-to-end solutions necessary to meet all of a marketers needs -- at least not with scale. While this may not have been a big deal in 2009 when the entire economy took a mulligan, it will be in 2010 as social media moves from experiment to mission critical. Okay, I know you've probably got tons of questions. I'm going to try to preemptively answer a few below but you there will also be several opportunities to join us live this week:

• Today (01/11/10) on Twitter at 1:00 PM CT for a live press conference (hashtag, #powered)
• Tomorrow (01/12/10) on JaffeJuice: New Marketing Podcast.
• Thursay (01/14/10) on the Quick-n-Dirty Podcast show.

As for the answers, here goes...

Why didn’t Powered just develop these additional social media capabilities? We thought long and hard about the “build vs. buy” strategy, but in the end, we realized that we would dramatically increase our speed to market and add some serious talent (not to mention about 50 new brand relationships) to the Powered team by moving forward with these acquisitions.

Who are Crayon, Drillteam, StepChange?

• Crayon brings extensive experience as a strategic social marketing consultancy to the table. They work with Fortune 1000 brands to develop strategies that positively impact customer relationships through the integration of continuous online conversations into traditional marketing programs. Crayon President Joseph Jaffe and his entire team will join Powered’s robust staff of marketers, content creators and social media leaders, with crayon and Powered immediately merging their capabilities.
• Drillteam is an engagement marketing agency specializing in earned media.  Drillteam helps brands acquire and energize customer advocates, then sustain momentum through both offline events and online communities, and promotions on platforms like Facebook, niche blogs and Twitter.  Drillteam will retain its name and operate as a Powered company.
• StepChange enhances a brand’s reach by extending presence into social networks and mobile platforms through Facebook development/applications, social site development, mobile/apps and Widget Ads.  StepChange will retain its name and operate as a Powered company.

Will Joseph Jaffe (Crayon) be staying on? If so, what role will he play at Powered?
Who is Joe Jaffe? Of course we’re kidding. Joe will play a big role in the new organization as “Chief Interrupter” of the group. He will continue to challenge the industry by providing prolific thought leadership, vision and guidance via his Jaffe Juice blog, podcast and TV show, keynote and panel presence at industry events and conferences, as well as his three books (Life after the 30-second spot, Join the Conversation and soon to be released, Flip the Funnel). More importantly, he will serve as a valued resource to Powered clients to “interrupt” the status quo, think through their social strategy and help conceive and flesh out unique and specific ideas and programs in the space.

Does the industry need another agency?
The industry certainly doesn’t need another agency that does the same thing as its predecessors. To be perfectly honest, we’re not exactly enamored with the idea of being called an “agency” at all. But this isn’t about us: It’s about the world’s largest, loved and important brands and what they need. Many members of our leadership team have lived, and successfully navigated through, several key advances in brand management, communication and emerging media innovation—led by the rise, fall and rise again of digital. We see the gaping void, disconnect or chasm between identification of need and the ability to fully deliver against that need. Social media is not another color on the media flow chart and it is not a subservient subset of digital either. Instead, we see social as a truly pervasive and transformational category in of itself that spans the entire marketing gamut—and even beyond it (touching P.R., customer service, R&D, innovation and customer experience). For that reason, we believe that we will be one of the first—and certainly not the last—of specialist, best in class agents that are equipped, staffed and scaled to fully execute and activate against this growing capability, skill set, need and opportunity.

What is a Social Agency?
A Social Agency or social media agency is an entity that assists companies and brands in the new world of conversational marketing. The confluence of digital, virtual and peer-to-peer networks is causing consumers to act more as a collective than ever before, and they are demanding a truly two-way conversation. We are looking to be the partner that will help brands enter and be successful in that conversation, by building a successful strategy that:

• Connects business to social
• Joins and manages network presence
• Builds and manages branded communal spaces
• Connects conversationally through mobile and physical events

The Social Media Agency is the horizontal layer that must be centrally managed but also closely integrated with all of the traditional vertical functions of marketing, such as media, interactive, PR and creativ

What else am I missing? A lot I'm sure. But as you know, I'm pretty good at delivering updates real time through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, my blog, etc. Oh, we're also planning a couple of big blowouts at OMMA Social (January 26) and South by Southwest (SXSW Interactive) in mid-March.

Let's get it on! 

More gems from the bizdev, marketing and product teams here at Powered. As always, we love to share so this is just one more way we do so. Enjoy!

Beth Lopez (marketing)
This week's choice is the State of Interactive Agencies report by Sean Corcoran of Forrester.

Executive Summary of Report:  Although most interactive marketers would prefer to have one consolidated agency handling all of their digital needs, the ever-changing landscape requires the use of several agencies. These agencies are key to success because interactive marketers need to outsource certain skill sets, and because agencies help marketers stay ahead of the curve in a fast-changing industry. Moreover, many interactive marketers don’t trust their traditional brand agencies with interactive work. Yet the complexity of the interactive landscape is creating a fragmentation of interactive agencies, which in turn is creating a whole new set of challenges to marketers. Interactive marketers should prepare their organization for even more agency partners and educate their procurement teams on the value of these relationships.

DP Rabalais (marketing)
Although not a article, I think this is one of the most useful, practical, and measureable examples of brands using Facebook to not only engage and communicate with their customers, but also to listen to what they want.  BestBuy recently did an outstanding Voice of Customer outreach via Facebook.  They asked their Fans which vampire movies they liked the most.  Based on Fans input, Best Buy put the most popular movies on sale and promoted the sale back to their fans!

Doug Wick (bizdev)
This is a compilation of a lot of the 2010 prediction posts, including Mashable’s and Read Write Web’s. There are a lot of interesting predictions, most of them centering around brands taking a larger direct role in publishing content, mobile platforms become central to our lives, and the impact of real time information (which is significantly enhanced by mobile in terms of demand).

Bill Fanning (bizdev)
My shared post for this week comes from Brian Solis and is titled Facebook Brings Fans into Focus.  The post is a quick review of the latest features released by Facebook  making one's Fan page portable. Essentially, Facebook has a widget that allows you to put a light version of your Fan page directly on your website, making it more than just a static site. Just another step toward fulfilling the prediction that all websites will soon be social. 

Jay MacIntosh (bizdev)
As we saw last year, big brands were experimenting with social media. According to this study by Bazaarvoice and the CMO Club, 75% of CMOs didn’t attach any revenue expectations to their social spending in 2009. Perhaps, that’s one of the factors that made a $50k a facebook or twitter experiment seem more palatable than a six figure investment in a branded online community.

According to this survey, that’s about to change big time in 2010. This year 81% of CMOs are expecting their social media investments to drive 10% of their sales. I think there’s a compelling opportunity for Powered to provide the 2009 experimenters with a social marketing strategy and execution that ultimately pulls buying customers into their .com domains (aka branded online community). Of course, we’ll use outposts like facebook, twitter, search, etc. to create awareness and invite them to the community.

Don Sedota (product)
This is an entertaining re-cap about a big agency (Saatchi & Saatchi) that recently got in over their head with a social marketing campaign for Toyota. It goes to show that there really is a difference between an interactive agency and a social marketing agency. The big mistakes; lack of authenticity and lack of involvement by the brand.

Of particular interest is the winning/controversial video (embedded) and the fact that most of the comments on the article are from the future (it’s an Australian site).

What about you? Have a great article you want to share alongside the Powered team's finds? E-mail me at aaron DOT strout AT Powered DOT com or leave your idea in the comments. Just remember to include a quick description as to why you picked your link!

The other day, my boss handed me a recent AdAge article by B.L. Ochman titled Two Questions Every Marketer Should Ask Its Social-Media Agency. He didn't say anything but he had a smile on his face as he laid the article on my desk. The reason for the smile? B.L.'s two questions 1) Do they [the agency] walk the walk? and 2) do they have case studies were squarely in Powered's wheelhouse when it came to prospecting for new customer

Addressing B.L.'s first question, one of my top three priorities as the CMO of Powered is "walking the walk" or getting the company to eat its own dogfood. We blog (as evidenced here and on Powered's blog), we podcast, we engage in Twitter, etc. and not just infomercial style. We also speak at quite a few different events (social and marketing focused) and webcast. For this reason, we can feel comfortable preaching to our clients that "content is king" and that "giving before you get" has a huge impact on a client's return on investmen

As for B.L.'s second point, we are also big believers in case studies. To that end, we've worked hard with our customers like Sony and HP to come up with relevant write ups spelling out methodology and results. In the cases of Sony and HP, we were fortunate enough to have our numbers validated by MarketingProfs -- in the first instance via a third party interview with our client at Sony, in the second, our client at HP actually co-presesented their results (key slide below).

In addition to liking B.L.'s Ochman's two questions for the reasons I spelled out above, her article also got me thinking about how these questions are in some ways the equivalent of Fred Reichheld's now famous and widely used Net Promoter Score (NPS). If you're not familiar with NPS, it suggests that a barometer for any company's customer satisfaction should come down to one question i.e. "How likely is it that [your customer] would recommend [your] company to a friend or colleague?" If marketers start thinking this way when chosing a partner to help them with "social", knowing if the social media agency has in depth knowledge through practical application AND past success stories with clients seems pretty straightforwar

What do you think? Is this a good measure of a company's social media chops? If not, what else is missing? Or do you agree with Chris Brogan who feels like companies may be missing the boat by focusing too much on case studies?  

Simon Mainwaring is an author, blogger and speaker who comes from a big agency background (Wieden Kennedy, Saatchi and Ogilvy). Not too long after we started following one another on Twitter, I began noticing that Simon's updates contained a large dose of valuable links to articles, blog posts and research reports. Many of these reports were on the intersection of social, digital, advertising and marketing -- four areas that are all crucial to day-to-day role as CMO of Powered Inc.

After featuring Simon as "Twitterer of the week" on my weekly podcast show with Jennifer Leggio, I decided to invite Simon to do a Back to School podcast with me to talk about the future of advertising. During our conversation, we discussed the following topics:

• Advantages of social over traditional media (as summarized in his recent post on, top 10 advantages of social media over traditional).
• Why Simon thinks social media is easier to measure than traditional media.
• Ways traditional and social media “play nice in the sandbox?”
• Why do you think more companies aren’t getting “social?
• Why advertising agencies are having a difficult time "getting" it.
• Examples of a few companies that are mixing social and traditional well.
• A few blogs that Simon draws his inspiration from (I like the fact that this isn't your traditional fare):
  • Umair Haque's Harvard Business Review blog 
  • Maria Popova's Brainpicker blog 
  • PSFK

To download this podcast, right-mouse click here. If you want to hear more from Simon on "the Future of Advertising," check out this Blog Out Loud video on Youtube.

Prior to last week, I had not had the pleasure of attending the ANA's Masters of Marketing Conference. That was a mistake as this is obviously where the creme de la creme of the marketing/advertising world comes together for four and a half days to learn, network and golf (not necessarily in that order). In case there is any doubt, this is the list of speakers from the event:

• Mark Addicks, SVP, CMO, General Mills
• Frances Allen, Brand Marketing Officer, Dunkin' Brands
• Cynthia Ashworth, VP, Consumer Engagement, Dunkin' Brands
• Diane Brink, VP, Marketing, Global Technology Services, IBM
• Brad Casper, President and CEO, The Dial Corporation
• Joan Chow, EVP and CMO, ConAgra
• Andy England, CMO, MillerCoors
• Neil Golden, SVP, CMO, McDonald’s USA
• Jeffrey Hayzlett, CMO and VP, Eastman Kodak
• David Jones, Global CEO, Euro RSCG Worldwide
• Barry Judge, CMO, Best Buy
• Michael Keller, Chief Brand Officer, Dairy Queen
• Richard McDonald, SVP, Global Marketing, Fender Musical Instrument Corp.
• Stephen Quinn, EVP and CMO, Walmart U.S., Walmart Stores
• Eric Ryan, Chief Brand Architect, Co-Founder, Method
• Jonah Bloom, Editor, AdAge

Over the course of the three days that I was there, I had the opportunity to find out what was on the minds of the chief marketing officers (CMOs) and CEOs at some of the world's preeminent brands. I captured these learnings via video (using my newly purchased Zi8), Twitter and hand written notes. Obviously it's not easy distilling all the pearls of wisdom from such a smart group of people into one readable blog post so I'm breaking these learnings into three sections:

• Ten Twenty of my favorite quotes as captured via my (and others') Twitter streams
• Video and audio interviews with several industry luminaries.
• My five key take aways from the event

There were literally hundreds of tweets from the event so picking just ten is not an easy task. Fortunately, you can look back in the stream yourself at all the updates that were tagged with the #ANAMarketers hashtag from the event. I also went in and "favorited" about 50 of the best tweets so you can see that longer list of good tweets here. If there are tweets that you liked that I missed, feel free to add them in the comments below:

1. dwied 2.5% of shoppers make up 80% of most CPG volume. Note the 80/20 rule... no longer rules. #anamarketers (quoting Jeff Hayzlett, CMO of Kodak)
2. irinaskaya RT @ANAmarketers: DQ has built an online consumer following with its Blizzard Fan Club, Facebook page, Twitter & DQ blog #ANAmarketers
3. Hillary_Ashton @Fidelity CMO James Speros: set aside a portion of budget to experiment: [i say: this is just so key to innovation] #ANA #ANAmarketers
4. AaronStrout @BestBuyCMO says that employees are the differentiator. Products/prices are relatively equal. It's why they use 'em in ads. #ANAMarketers
5. nancyleibig #Fidelity's Speros-economic tsunami has fundamentally changed way that mktrs need to execute-fast & insight-driven #anamarketers
6. evantlevy Forget the 4 or 5Ps. I like this better: RT @melindabluett Kodak 4E's: Engage. Educate. Excite. Evangelize. #anamarketers
7. nancyleibig 1/2 of #kodak biggest products are new in the last 2 yrs. All are top 3 in their category. Biggest business turnaround. #anamarketers
8. AaronStrout Love it. Eric Ryan @MethodTweets jokes that the way businesses can manage "Twitter Effect" ala movie Bruno is "to make a better product" #ANAMarketers
9. dwied Competitors spent $15MM on toilet paper. Method spends $5.1MM on advertising. Brilliant assessment. #anamarketers
10. AaronStrout Schwab is sitting w/ SEC to figure out how to ease themselves into social media (still great hesitancy based on regulation) #ANAMarketers
11. MarthaAYoung David Jones, CEO of Havas Worldwide: The new world of marketing is open source. #ANAmarketers
12. MWellsatForbes #ANAMarketers Miss the ANA conference? Read about today's discussions here on Forbes.com. http://tiny.cc/Evr1Q
13. maadman123 Wow! From Google: 5 exabytes is the amount of ALL info we produced from pre-history to 2003. Today, we produce this in 2 days. #ANAmarketers
14. Hillary_Ashton Google CEO Eric Schmidt realtime feedback / openness creates a constant battle AND an opportunity #ANAmarketers
15. prnaylor @JonahBloom from advertising age says crowdsourcing displays that brands are owned by consumers. #anamarketers
16. Hillary_Ashton @JonahBloom, Advertising Age editor says trend in marketing - radical transparency see social media #anamarketers
17. AaronStrout Andy England, CMO of Miller Coors talks RE what sells beer. It's not sex but 1) segmentation 2) positioning 3) Execution #ANAMarketers
18. melindabluett RT @bwiener: Mc'D's guiding principle "Market what we serve rather than execute what we market".. authenticity is big theme #ANAmarketers
19. bwiener Verizon CMO "Brand marketing needs to reflect fundamental truth about brand"....can't hide behind advertising anymore #ANAmarketers
20. AaronStrout Walmart CMO's parting thought: Marketer's job is to get our company focused on creating true value for customers. #ana

Now for the multimedia portion of this blog post. Below you'll find interviews with AOL CEO, Tim Armstrong, Kodak CMO, Jeff Hayzlett and Method co-founder, Eric Ryan. VIDEO Tim Armstrong, CEO and chairman, AOL

VIDEO Jeff Hayzlett, CMO, Eastman Kodak Company

SIDEBAR: As promised, I mentioned to a few of the folks following my tweets from the event that I would share the Zi8/video tips that Jeff offered up prior to our interview. He uses his Zi8 quite a bit so I trust that he knows of which he speaks.

• Get an external mic (one of the best features of this camera). He said that you can get a wired boom mic, a wired lav or wireless lav. I think I'm leaning toward the last as it will be the least intrusive.
• If you do get a wired mic, that you get one with batteries so that it doesn't drain the rechargeable battery on the camera.
• Definitely use a tripod if shooting interviews. Although the Zi8 has an anti-jitter feature, it can pick up hand/arm movement, especially if the interview is longer than just a few minutes.

AUDIO Eric Ryan, co-founder and chief brand architect, Method (from a guest interview I did with Eric on Susan Bratton's Dishy Mix podcast show) Last but not least, here are my five key take aways:

1. While the social web appears to be gaining in importance, it's still not one of the top three things that most CMOs are focusing on.
2. In spite of many pundits (myself included) declaring that the world of advertising is dying a slow but painful death, the heads of marketing from the companies represented at this conference all show no signs of slowing down their ad spending. In fact, many mentioned that they plan to spend more next year.
3. Segmentation and a "back to basics" approach to marketing ruled the day. I heard several CMO's mention that their advice to other companies was to "simplify" and and "focus on what they did well."
4. I heard a lot less about measurement and ROI than I anticipated.
5. The speakers that did mention "social" spent more time focused things like Youtube videos, Facebook Fan pages and more campaign-oriented approaches than longer lasting, programmatic approaches (a mistake in this marketer's humble opinion).

This post originally ran on IMediaConnection's "Connecting the Marketing Community" section on 10/16/09.

For any business that's thinking about delving into the world of social, there are a few key words that you'll likely see pop up again and again, namely "transparency, authenticity, and credibility." While these terms aren't new and their relevance is certainly not limited to the world of social, understanding how they apply and their true value is crucial in the success of your efforts. In this article, I'll discuss why each is important and then provide some examples of companies that are doing a good job employing them.

Transparency
Getting comfortable with the level of openness -- both good, and bad -- that the social web brings to bear can be a difficult thing for companies at first. For many, it goes against the grain of "controlling the message" and "maintaining control of the brand." Being transparent means owning up to mistakes publicly, responding to negative or unflattering comments, and, most importantly, providing a level of access to your culture that was previously not possible. Understand that, contrary to popular belief, this does not mean completely opening up your corporate kimono to the public but rather adding a layer of "human" to your brand that may not have previously existed.

Authenticity
This is probably the most important of the three concepts -- at least in this social marketer's mind, mainly because it speaks to the level of trust a company wishes to elicit from customers. Authenticity is about creating good content that speaks to lifestyle vs. product, or essentially putting customers first (and really meaning it). It's about standing behind guarantees and being sincere when apologizing. Authenticity is also about not using social channels to push your marketing, PR, or brand agenda down customers' throats but rather engaging them in real dialog -- good, bad, or indifferent.

Credibility
This is really a byproduct of demonstrating a level of transparency and authenticity and continually delivering on that promise. Most importantly, it governs to what degree you can engage with customers on the social web. For instance, diving head first into Twitter and holding a Twitter press conference a day after you've opened up your account probably isn't going to fly. The same goes for launching a corporate blog and creating only one or two posts in the beginning to tout a new product. This doesn't mean that a company has to wait six months to a year before deriving benefit from your social endeavors, but rather that it must establish a level of credibility before looking for the "quo" part of the quid pro quo.

Who is doing it right? 
Let's start with Zappos, the online shoe store that recently hit $1 billion in annual sales (which was likely one of the things its acquirer, Amazon, found particularly attractive about the company). Transparency starts at the top with Zappos CEO, Tony Hsieh. Not only is Tony the company's lead voice on Twitter -- his handle is @zappos -- but Tony regularly speaks about corporate culture, best practices, training, and every other aspect of the business on a daily basis. I've actually seen him hand out his company's 500 plus page training manual (which was written by the employees) at conferences, almost as if he's daring competitors to try and be more transparent and open then Zappos. While a majority of businesses will never want to achieve this level of transparency, Hsieh and Zappos have backed up what they do in the public domain, with great results.

Moving onto authenticity, Best Buy has embraced it in a way that few have ever attempted. Best Buy put itself on the social map with the launch of its Blue Shirt Nation community -- a place for Best Buy employees to come together to share ideas and best practices inside the corporate firewall. The success of this venture led to the company's chief marketing officer, Barry Judge, not only signing up for Twitter and blog accounts but publicly discussing things like new ad campaigns, company layoffs, and the overall evolution of marketing within the company's four walls. If you're wondering why I'm using Judge and Best Buy as an example of "authenticity" versus "transparency," it's because Judge has done a nice job at not opening the kimono too wide and thus exposing himself or the company to too much scrutiny. Judge has found that nice balance of establishing Best Buy as authentic and approachable without some of the risk that Hsieh has assumed with Zappos.

Last up, we have credibility. Certainly both Zappos and Best Buy have earned a sense of credibility in the field based on their behavior, but I'll provide a third example of a company that embodies that trait and that is JetBlue. While this "darling" of the airline industry has done almost everything right over the past several years, it had a fairly major snafu about three years back when it stranded thousands of customers for hours on the tarmac at dozens of airports across the U.S. The public outcry from the millions of JetBlue customers that had come to love and trust the airline was well documented on the news and in the press. When former JetBlue CEO David Neelman posted an apology on YouTube (below) with the comments turned on, one of the reasons this tactic worked is because of JetBlue's credibility in the social space and that it was known as a company that cared about its customers. It took a while for customers to forgive JetBlue, but eventually they did. And Neelman's public apology was a major part of the healing process.

There are of course dozens of other examples of companies embracing transparency, authenticity, and credibility, but these three companies should provide some hope that the social web can be truly embraced with positive outcomes. And of course, not every company is going to be ready to fully commit to these concepts. But the more you can think about incorporating these into your social efforts, the greater chance of success you'll have down the road.

What about you? Is your company (or other companies you work with) doing a good job at embracing transparency, authenticity and credibility?

 As part of the latest "Back to School" podcast series I do for my company, Powered Inc., our goal is to focus on the intersection of business and social. The speakers are smart people who run the gamut of bloggers, authors, analysts, journalists and business practitioners. This months flavor focuses on tapping into social to drive purchase consideration. My guests were the smart (and fun) Jackie Huba and Rob Harles. Jackie is an author and business blogger while Rob is the VP of community for a company you may have heard of called Sears.

Right-mouse click to download.

During our conversation, we covered the following topics (hat tip to Doug Haslam of SHIFT for helping me craft these interview questions):

• Consideration may seem like the part of the buying cycle most helped by social media: agree or disagree?
• How do we let customers “Consider?” How much of it is an active engagement (for lack of a better word) with the customer, rather than a more passive approach of letting them consider?
• If passive is an approach, how hard is it for companies to let go and let customers do there thing, trusting they will stay in the cycle?
• How vital is content in the consideration cycle?

 

• Brand-produced vs user-produced?
• One over the other?
• A preferred mix ratio?

 

• Types of content that work best
• Might consideration be used as a tool to make existing customers more profitable (repeat buyers)?
• How do you measure Consideration?