Posts tagged social media
How to become a CMO in 10 tweets or less
Feb 1st
This headline is just a bit ridiculous, of course! But I did want to make a point that social media works in amazing and unanticipated ways. This week, I’m featuring personal case studies to show how the social web can provide legitimate business benefits, sometimes when you least expect it!
The first example is about how I became the Chief Marketing Officer of Freesource … without ever meeting my new boss.
About a year ago I saw notice on a LinkedIn Group that the American Marketing Association was offering a webinar on using the social web to make your business more efficient. The presenter was a guy named Nathan Egan, a former LinkedIn exec who had just started a company called Freesource. The price was right — free — so I attended. Nathan seemed like a bright guy and at the end of the webinar, he invited the participants to follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn, so I did.
Getting on the radar
Through Twitter, I appeared on Nathan’s radar and he began reading my blog. The topics I wrote about resonated with him, and, like many readers of {grow}, one day he called me to talk through some of his business problems. We continued to support each other and toss ideas around over a period of months.
Nathan assembled a great team and Freesource grew quickly as businesses sought the company’s advice on using the social web to make their businesses more productive and efficient. As the client base grew, he needed a wide variety of resources to support projects, and, since I can do a wide variety of things, I seemed to fit the bill! Nathan began sending me paid assignments to fill in the many white spaces of a start-up company.
I loved the work because our views on business and marketing were aligned and I absolutely bought into his vision of how the new media could work for a corporation. As Nathan’s trust in me grew, he provided more important, strategic assignments.
Freesource quickly became one of the largest and most respected social media marketing agencies in the country. Nathan no longer had time to work on the critical marketing functions of his company and asked me if I could help. I recently agreed to become CMO on a part-time basis and help him through this exciting growth phase.
The success formula
This is a good time to reflect on that important formula I introduced a few months ago:
Connections + Meaningful content + Authentic helpfulness = Business benefits
How this worked in the real world:
- I was active on LinkedIn and established relevant new business connections.
- By providing meaningful content through Twitter, I appeared on Nathan’s radar screen. Ideas from my blog grabbed his attention.
- We offered authentic helpfulness to each other without regard of any future “pay-back.” This built trust and a dialogue that led to a mutually-beneficial business partnership.
The more I’ve studied success stories in the social media space, the more I am convinced that this formula really does work. This week, I’ll share a couple other examples to show how.
How does this fit with your own experiences on the social web?
This is part of a series on the unexpected business benefits of the social web. You might enjoy these other articles:
Part 2: On Twitter, even casual tweets can create business benefits
It worked for Zappos. It probably won’t work for you.
Jan 24th
Zappos* is a successful company with a well-publicized, aggressive employee use of social media. In fact, it may be the most famous social media model in all of blogdom. They have 13 blogs, 50,000 videos and their employees tweet like rabbits in heat. It’s worked for them and it’s a wonderful case study. I get it. But it’s probably the wrong model for most companies.
And here’s the point where the waves of Zappo-sniffing social media purists come crashing down on me. So be it. This is dangerous stuff.
It is relatively safe to blog and tweet about shoes. But in many companies, the risk of an all-employee social media free love policy will far outweigh the benefits. For many important companies all it will take is one Twitter-induced SEC violation, a leak of vital competitive information, or a national defense breach, and the hammer will come down on the use of social media forever. Policies are usually made to deal with the lowest common denominator.
Is this a leadership issue? Not necessarily. There are irresponsible people everywhere. There are disgruntled employees even in the best-managed companies. Where corruption can occur it will occur. Welcome to the human race.
So what’s the answer?
Under the following conditions, the Zappos model might be ideal:
- Company culture supports employee engagement
- Company leadership understands the model
- Customer base is active on the social web in a meaningful way
- Benefits outweigh risk of security breach
If just one of these conditions are not met, the free love policy cannot work.
That’s not to say that social media won’t work in some form with almost any company if there is appropriate training, role clarity, effective policy and boundaries. But you have to fit the tactics to the strategy — and the culture — just like any initiative.
A marketing leader has to make effective decisions based on what IS, not on what you WISH for. You can’t “will” a social media effort to work in your company just because it worked in the Zappos corporate culture.
For an excellent and thorough perspective on the need for effective and appropriate corporate social media policies, I recommend Kent Huffman’s recent post on the subject.
OK, your turn. Let ‘er rip!
*If you are unfamiliar with the Zappos social media model, Jeff Bullas has written wonderful case studies on this company:
A primer on social media “listening”
Jan 14th
I’ve spent a lot of time studying social media “listening tools” and found this site via Sidney Eve Matrix (follow!). This slide deck by Stefan Betzhold (follow!) compares both free and paid options and I found it very useful.
The idea of monitoring and measuring is crucial to social media marketing, whether for a company or your own personal brand. It is also the most dynamic and exciting area of marketing right now. If you haven’t put together a personal “listening” platform, this side deck is a good place to start! Click and enjoy!
This is also a good example of effectively using Slideshare to promote a concept and a company. Do you have slide presentations suitable to share with the world? Why not get a little extra “oomph” out of your effort by posting on Slideshare?
Kernels of truth on social media marketing
Jan 13th
If I leave a conference with a few “kernels of truth” I can gnaw on and think about, I consider the time well-spent. Here are a few nuggets I picked up at the Social Fresh conference held in Nashville this week.
“Movements make their audience feel like rockstars.”
To me, the highlight of the conference was a talk by Geno Church. Geno, of Brains on Fire, is an engaging speaker and discussed the distinction between marketing plans and a cultural movement. The most amazing case study of the day was work he had done for Fiskars Scissors (I guess you could call it cutting-edge). By enlisting scrap-book enthusiasts (The Fiska-teers) to contribute as bloggers, they created an army of passionate Fiskar users. If you can make scissors exciting, this guy can market about anything!
“People fill information voids with rumors. Your strategy is simple. Don’t allow information voids.”
Another super-bright guy I met was Dan Zarrella. Dan spends his time poring over Twitter statistics to determine the secret sauce that makes something go viral. He applied evolutionary theory, mathematical principles and psychology to his study. A few Twitter items that people pay attention to:
- Warnings
- “Social proof” as evidenced by large numbers of tweets
- Bigger, bolder, louder statements
- Tweets with “you”
- Tweets that are personalized
- Tweets that occur later in the week
“The biggest failure in social media marketing is not doing anything.”
Paula Berg, who just left her job with Southwest Airlines told some riveting stories about the social web and crisis communications. Remember when the USAir flight went down in the Hudson and the first news and photos came through Twitter. USAir did not have a Twitter account … but started one that day! She also talked about the trust-selling strategy on Twitter, noting that the airline had been on Twitter since 2007 but did not attempt to make a sale through the channel until 2009. When they did, they set a single-day sales record — only using the social web!
Paula also provided an entertaining case study about a rap-singing flight attendant that became a national phenomenon.
“If you don’t think it’s about BUSINESS your gonna be out of a job!”
This was a refreshing and encouraging statement from Jason Falls, an admitted recovering social media purist. He has distanced himself from the “it’s all about community crowd” and in fact playfully made fun of them. Nice to see capitalism creep into the social conversation.
Illustration: Christian Science Monitor
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-Mark SchaeferFollow Mark
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