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The Marketing Edge, one of the longest running marketing and public relations podcasts.
Host Albert Maruggi weaves his 25 years of marketing and PR experience across business, technology and national public affairs in interviews with newsmakers, authors and business leaders.
Maruggi is a frequent speaker and conducts workshop sessions on new media. For more information or to discuss your business challenges and goals, e-mail him.
It’s nutty, plenty of companies are running around trying to figure out social media. The answer and examples are right under your nose. It dawned on me while watching Jeff Pulver go through his networking techniques at a recent social media breakfast in Minneapolis.
This conversation shows companies how to approach social media from a perspective that many sales people have practiced in their professional communities for decades, one relationship at a time. I use sales only to get the attention here of many marketers, sales people and decision makers because these days there is a premium on getting sales, but as my colleagues know, social media goes well beyond a sale.
Pulver, employs interesting networking techniques during his sessions that would do any Rotary member proud. I use the Rotary example because this is an organization tied to both a business networking group that also has a history of giving back to its local community, a critical concept of social media.
Using social media tools like Facebook, Twitter and others to promote his events, and tapping that group to invite others who are not using social media. Pulver creates a meeting of the digital and physical worlds.
Years ago Pulver wrote “the more digital we become the more need for face-to-face meetings.” His perspective is grounded in good old fashion interpersonal communications and you may say borrow from the work of sociologist Henri Tajfel who is noted for his work in social identity and minimal groups experiments.
It is the kind activity that is at the heart of every good salesperson, every productive chamber of commerce, and every professional association worth their salt to their members. It is about people and their willingness to participate with each other.
People who are neck deep in social media tend to get a little over the top about technology, and new applications, mashups etc, etc, etc, and can loose the essence of what all these tools are supposed to do, make it easier to meet other people, period. It is a foundation to share stories, pass on interesting information that will help people do something, like find the right product, get better healthcare, enjoy a new restaurant, improve their job performance, and the list is endless.
Pulver’s sessions are a must for both social media geek and the person that still carries around a Day Runner paper planner. Both have more in common than you might think.
Here’s a new way to look at your marketing department, as a newsroom. Why? Because it is a powerful way to tell a story, a way to insert your company into news cycles, a way to be a part of the action, a way to be a thought leader, and a way to create dynamic valued information that works with a sales cycle.
Companies are not limited to brochures, more importantly; their audiences are accustomed to getting all kinds of formats, when and where they want it.
Here is a list to help determine if your company can tap into a newsroom.
Do you have internal or access to expertise in your field
Are you impacted by external events such as regulations, markets, safety
Does your company improve the human condition such as healthcare, adoption, and poverty
Author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR David Meerman Scott gives his take on the newsroom angle in a wonderful post about how the real estate industry can benefit from it.
Scott and I get into the topic in this interview on the Marketing Edge podcast. It was recorded on October 13, the day his popular book came out in paperback. Scott will be appearing at the Minneapols/St. Paul Social Media Breakfast on October, 31
(Disclosure:A client of Provident Partners) Softbrands manufacturing is a good example of treating their company as a newsroom. Under their brand Fourth Shift Edition http://www.fourthshiftedition.com/ website, they use video, podcasts, a blog, and twitter, they tap the right format and network to engage in a conversation, get ideas, insert their ideas into news cycles and other objectives.
Do you have what it takes to be a news organization inside your company? Leave a comment here or call the comment line 206-600-6887
Social media continues to work its way around the innovative companies in the Fortune 500. It pays when you have products that can inspire an emotional commitment, oh say like a ‘65 Mustang.
Ford is laying out a great social media plan for the introduction of the 2010 Mustang model. The Marketing Edge guest in this episode is Scott Monty, the Global Digital and Multimedia Communications Manager for Ford Motor Company. Monty also authors the Social Media Marketing blog. The added bonus of this podcast is Monty in search of an experienced social media practitioner to join his team at Ford. He describes the high level job of Global Digital Communications Manager within the communications team at Ford and where you can apply.
Monty is a thoughtful person with a flair for the creative. In this interview he highlights how an older company is quickly wrapping its arms and heads around social media. When you listen to the scope of where social media plays in a large corporation, you realize how, over time, it can help shape a corporate culture.
————————————————————————————————– PARENT BLOGGERS
This month we’d like to give parent bloggers of young childern a first look at a new social network. Two qualities that make this parenting social network different is the long-term goal, to help improve America’s education system, and the ability to track a child’s development using new research and charts from one of the leading pediatric centers in the country. If you are a parent blogger, and would like to review the beta site, send me an email at Marketing Edge at ProvidentPartners dot Net with the word Parent in the subject line.
This month’s contest is a membership to Minnpost.com, the new online journal with outstanding writers, editors, and columnists. If you’d like to support journalism at its highest levels that provide local and national coverage, send me an email at MarketingEdge at ProvidentPartners dot Net with MinnPost in the subject line. We will draw a winner in mid November.
Early this morning www.twitter.com/newsgang shared this article from CNN.com about how Wall Street arrived at its financial crisis and how to avoid it in the future. It highlights how short-sightedness and incentive compensation plans contributed to taking on higher risk. Another aspect of the crisis is how financially connected we are globally.
It is a long held belief of mine that some aspects of our corporate culture, finance, and legal to name two, need to change if social media is to become integrated into America’s regular business environment. Today social media is discounted by corporate executives at worst and politely accepted as a pilot project by most others. Yes there certainly are corporate leaders like Sun,Coca-Cola, GM, Ford and others, but I don’t think I’d get an argument with the statement “social media is still in an early adopter phase in corporate America.”
The connection between the Federal bailout of international financial services firms and social media is captured in some of the elements that I believe will be part of the response to this mess. Those elements are:
1) Greater transparency and disclosure – social media loves and rewards both
2) Institutional incentives that are longer term in nature – this will allow more discussion about imperfections in a company without as much hysteria of how it will impact this quarter’s investor call.
3) Accommodations for the interconnected nature of economies – social media connects individuals from different cultures all the time, perhaps we can take this from a micro level to a broader understanding without it becoming an issue of national pride, but instead one of social growth (Robert Scoble told me this is more a wish than a reality, but I’m an optimist)
Last year at the Society of New Communications Research symposium we had several excellent group conversations about the limitations placed by the finance and legal departments on social media implementation in a corporate environment. Finance is clearly concerned about monthly and quarterly impact to stock price and other metrics within its jurisdiction. Legal is concerned with that any admission on the web, direct or indirect, of imperfection would be seized upon by a zealous trial lawyer in our litigious society.
We surely have a long way to go in addressing these cultural obstacles. As the dust settles around Wall Street, the blame assessed and the remedies constructed to prevent a reoccurrence, watch for these elements of longer-term corporate perspective incentives and greater disclosure. These characteristics will help social media advocates change a corporate culture in ways that will allow the organization to see greater benefit from social media.
By the way, the next Society for New Communications Research symposium is being held in Boston, November 14, I’m sure we’ll pick up this topic and many others, here’s the social media and PR agenda.
Marketing is at a cross roads and I believe social media will force a major crash of competing values. The crossroad is a dilemma presented by a society based, for the most part, on consumption, a global economy accessible to all, and the wonderful raw rules of capitalism. This mash up has caused a society to feel wanting for genuine substance, generations to reflect on their contribution to the greater good, and a crisis of conscience. This has manifested in a number of ways including increasing calls for volunteerism, greater individual philanthropic giving, and a negative public opinion of the country’s direction.
Marketers are a major part of the issue, why? For generations, marketers have devised ways to generate demand, create locked-in recurring revenue customers, and increase profits. Hey, this is not a knock on marketers, it is just the way the system works.
Oh yes I’m sure someone from the American Marketing Association or Harvard Business will chime in with “no, marketers are focused on delivering customer value and being the voice of the customer to the company. And a company that doesn’t treat its customers well will cease being a profitable company; or words to that effect.
The truth is a little bit of both I suspect. However, the mood of the country, still the most powerful economy on the planet, long held as a model for economic freedom and capitalism, is disillusionment with our economic model. Compassionate capitalism is a concept that has been around for a while now, and chipping away at some of the root causes of our dilemma.
What role does social media play in this intersection and how can it prevent a pile up?
1) Opens dialogue that strips away the corporate façade
2) Creates a way for individuals and companies to acknowledge faults without unwarranted penalty
3) Potentially facilitates a place for communities to develop around shared objectives that benefit the whole allowing consumers to mold a company’s contribution to society
Early adopter companies are making inroads in using social media to achieve tangible business goals.
The H&R Block income tax services brand is quickly building on its brick-and-mortar foundation by effectively using social media tools, including Facebook and Twitter.
Amy Worley is the director of digital marketing for the venerable tax service corporation, and with a supportive senior management team, she’s giving H&R Block a nimble, personable face for online users.
The key to their effectiveness is being a part of the community. Worley and a small team monitor Twitter and offer suggestions through H&R Block’s Twitter profile. Amy has been on Twitter for nearly a year. She understands how it works from being an active member of the community. Her team has developed a quick action approach to people that tweet about H&R Block or taxes and offer a response.
Whether it was me tweeting today or Robert Scoble, who tweeted that he was in an H&R Block office a while ago, the company has responded in quick Twitter fashion. It had the same quick response when I tweeted today with Chris Brogan about filing taxes at the 11th hour. That has little to do with technology and everything to do with customer service (or potential-customer service), both listening and reacting.
The agency 360i worked on this program with H&R Block.
It’s the same approach on other communities in which H&R Block is a participant. Enjoy this podcast.
I’ll feature more of this and other social media practices at the NewComm Forum sponsored by the Society for New Communications Research in Sonoma, California, April 22-25.
Gary Koelling and Steve Bendt were Best Buy advertising guys in search of better information about the customer experience. Their first stop was the blue shirt sales associates on the floor of Best Buy stores who interact with customers everyday.
In their quest they developed an internal communications platform that generated thousands of conversations across the company. The result, more information, more issues, more solutions, more ideas, more impact — and a corporate culture that is beginning to appreciate that buy-in brings out the best in employees.
I visited Best Buy to interview Gary and Steve who are now senior managers for social technology based on the success of their 18 month experiment. They acknowledge that their focus on listening to the type of environment the employees wanted was essential for the employees participation. Without that they knew they would have nothing.
The images in this post are from Best Buy’s Blue Shirt Nation social network. Fun and interesting. Certainly designed to set a certain mood and create a welcoming atmosphere. They were inspired by Blue Shirt Nation users as Steve and Gary listened to their thoughts about making the site user-friendly.
Here’s my take on what they found as essential elements to a successful corporate social network platform.
Bottom up process to let users of the site help build the platform
Management that is willing to discover what their employees are capable of innovating
A willingness to act on the good ideas hashed out in the conversation of the group
Listen all the time to the conversations inspired by the users.
On a technology note, Blue Shirt Nation was built with the open source code Drupal www.drupal.org.
I will have more on this topic at a presentation I’m giving at the Society for New Communications Research NewComm Forum www.newcommforum.com April 22-25, in Sonoma County, CA – A host of great speakers including Shel Holtz, Paul Gillin, and Joseph Jaffe among others.
Creative marketing takes time to, well, create, and time to execute. So when I saw a case study about Hubspot’s inbound marketing system on Marketing Sherpa I was intrigued by their approach. Instead of a typical “we are greater than sliced bread” marketing, the Hubspot internet marketingcreated a unique website that invited businesses to use a small part of the Hubspot system. That part of the system is called website grader and businesses by the thousands visited www.websitegrader.com to enter their website. The website is then graded on a series of attributes that search engines look for in ranking sites on a scale of 100. We start this conversation at about the 4:00 mark in this podcast.
Provident Partners, thank God, first pulled an 85, however, still room for improvement. That’s why we have on this podcast Mike Volpe, Vice President of Marketing for Hubspot. We get into the 5 key areas essential to getting a passing grade and increasing the odds you’ll achieve your search ranking goals. And yes, we use the www.providentpartners.net site as the “patient” in this visit to the search engine doctor. Volpe starts this commentary at about the 19:00 mark in the podcast.
5 Key Areas to Improve your website’s rankings are
1) Title on all pages can change
2) Keywords and descriptions meta tags of page content for each page
3) Put blog on a company URL and integrate into your website
4) Domain renewal – sign up for as many years as you can afford
5) Permanent redirect for yourcompanydoman.com and the other for www.yourcompanydomain.com
This Example Can Apply to Other Businesses
Volpe is an excellent marketer who realized Hubspot needed a way to break out in a crowded field of marketing platforms. I believe the tactics used in this campaign can be replicated by other marketers for a variety of product launches, professions and industries. The keys are as follows:
1) Create a web presence that allows prospects to experience part of your product or service.
2) Product needs to have remarkable elements
3) Take the time to understand the interests of the bloggers that write about your space
4) Include was to invite comparison between the status quo and life with your product or service
Some readers might say, well this works for a web-based software product, but how can it apply to other areas. Ok, let me take that one on.
A business consultancy can create an assessment tool in their area of expertise. Technomic Asia a consultant group has an China Readiness assessment tool to measure a company’s ability to compete in the China market.
A winery can have a dinner selection with multiple choice of wines to select, your choice will be compared against what a famous Sommelier recommend with that same meal.
A furniture store, design, or organization consultant can allow users to help themselves using your website. For example Ikea has done a great job with their space planner portion of their website. They depict your space and you manipulate their furniture in it. This is slick and it worked for me two years ago when we redesigned the Provident Partners office space.
If you have other tips on getting good search rankings, we invite you to share them here with other readers.
January 2008 Book Drawing Giveaway
This month we are holding a drawing to win the book The New Influencers by Paul Gillin. Here’s my review of the book posted on Media Bulleye . To be in the drawing, email me at marketingedge@providentpartners.net Good luck. For every entry, comment, and completed survey Provident Partners will donate a food item to a St. Paul, MN food shelter.
Put a taste of the Iowa caucus into your corporate communications. This will be an ongoing theme on the Marketing Edge during this election year. My premise is that social media is like oxygen to the embers of ideas. The networks and groups formed using social media resembles grassroots organizations and therefore companies need to take a page from political campaigns.
He also was at the White House for President Bush in 2005 – 2007 as the director of internet and e-communications. David was also recently recognized by PR Week in their 40 Under 40 issue.
Having spent a decade in political communications, and a few years covering politics as a reporter, social media has the potential to help change society, because of the speed with which it can spreading ideas, and the ability to galvanize more people around an issue/brand faster.
Look, the civil rights movement didn’t need social media; but the same fundamental tactics for grassroots organization and communication skills are now necessary for companies who wish to participate in, not market with, social media. There is more of a movement in social media than a marketplace.
If I was to crystallize the general difference of perspective between political communications and corporate communications pre-social media into a bumper sticker, it would be this:
Don’t just buy it, be a part of it.
Brand champions may say this is the same as Lovemarks. I agree, and in the world of politics and on the battle field of ideas that shape a society, people have died for the brand they love.
In this discussion David and I touch on the use of social media, the fragmentation of information sources, and the mysterious mix of mainstream media quantity with social media passion.
Another interesting take on measuring social media in this presidential campaign is the Spartan Political Performance Index. Stay tuned as this election year, creative minds will tweek, shape, and test all forms of social media. The winners will be those observers in corporate marketers who can see applications for their brands.
Plenty of attention is given to participating in blogs, join the conversation, be open, be authentic, yada yada yada. The early adopters have tested the social media space with ample case studies for dozens of new books and information for panel discussions.
The hidden winners in the blogosphere who get a fraction of the fanfare are market researchers. This podcast is dedicated to the corporate executives who are skeptics of joining the conversation, but as you’ll hear here, have considerable reason to at least listen to it, it being first the podcast and then the thousands of conversations taking place on the web daily.
Look at just one segment of commentary and social media, www.tripadvisor.com, they have more than 10 million reviews of hotels. Forrester research shows that 36 percent of travelers look at reviews and of them, 73 percent report the reviews affect their choices. More from an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer - It’s just the tip of the iceberg known as the blogosphere, but in reality is a bunch of people talking just like they do at parties, conference rooms, or ball games. The only difference is online, you can listen in on them.
This podcast is the second and concluding episode of a conversation with Umbria founder Howard Kaushansky. Umbria, at www.umbrialistens.com is one of a handful of companies that provide detailed insights into what people are taking about in blogs, and reviewers’ comments on the web and to a great extent who is saying it.
The bottom line is this
1) There are millions of comments being made on the web about nearly every industry or profession.
2) Even if your company has no intention of starting a blog, the comments that exist can provide significant insight into your company, your competitors, and your market.
3) Blogs and social media is not just a playground of the younger generation, middle age baby boomers use social media, blogs, and travel sites just as much as the 18 -24 year old set.
On another note, Marketing Edge listener Alison Coffey is the winner of the Join the Conversation book drawing. Our next book is Paul Gillin’s The New Influencers. To throw your name in the drawing send me an email at marketingedge@providentpartners.net with the words New Influencers in the subject line.
Gary Koelling and Steve Bendt were 
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