Time 25:21

In this podcast we highlight two major issues 1) The idea of resonance as implemented by promoted Tweets and interpreted by Brian Solis at a recent presentation in Minneapolis, and 2) We dig a bit deeper into the 9 ways marketing is being transformed in a conversation with college curriculum developer and instructor Mia Lee

We have a winner for the drawing for Brian Solis’ book Engage with my commentary in the margins where necessary – Ken Okumura of Minneapolis and a Marketing Edge listener is the winner of Engage. Solis was a guest on the Marketing Edge prior to his presentation in Minneapolis on July 27.

I attended his presentation which was thought provoking. One of his key areas for social media moving forward is the concept of resonance. It’s a word Solis combines with Relevance and Significance as a major way to determine value of social object. A social object is a piece of digital content, a tweet, a photo, etc. As companies continue to find ways to engage social commnities and platforms look for ways to garner advertising dollars, measuring the investment of time and dollars is being refined.

Measurement includes Retweets, mentions, clicks, actions, influence etc. During Solis’s presentations I tweeted this :

@WichitaCindy on Twiter asked me why. The reason for the excitement is because it’s a chance to engage and perhaps have an impact on anything, products, service, government etc. The reason for the nausea is caused by the many ways popularity and influence can be manipulated. The irony is that as consumers we revolt against advertising, even coming up with technologies to circumvent ads and now on social media those same consumers may well be part of message, and I don’t mean that in a good way. I mean just because you get a $5 coupon for a burger if you get your friends to fan a restautant doesn’t make it any less of an advertisement. In some respects we are being coopted under the guise of being social.

This is a fine line, and I hope I’m not the guy throwing sand in the social media sandbox, but the potential exists and there are plenty of tactics being used that contribute to search and klout. For more on resonance see Jeramiah Owyang of the Altimiter Group. The Solis event was produced by Jen Kane who does a wonderful job on these events.

9 Ways Marketing is Being Transformed

A while back I did a post on 9 Ways Marketing is Being Transformed. The beginnings of this post was an exchange on Twitter with WebbieGirl AKA Mia Lee instructor and program curriculum developer of digital marketing workshops. Mia developed a popular e-marketing program at the Wichita Area Technical College for social marketing.

In this podcast we get into some of the ways marketing is changing, including

1. 1. Very public behavior – privacy or not
2. 2. Ability to call bull – corporate transparency
3. 3. Everyone is a media outlet – content marketing at its best
4. 4. Consumers are marketers – How to build a community of passionate customers
5. 5. Social culture vs. social tactics – Companies will benefit by adopting their culture to the social web
6. 6. Consumers have an active role – the more you interact the better the information companies will provide
7. 7. Personal brand networks matter – Instead of direct mail lists, online networks will preform better
8. 8. Knowing how the system is gamed – the more social is quantified the more participants will try to gain an advantage, ethically or unethically.
9. 9. Product development will dominate marketing – the social web will recreate how products are researched and developed

Have any to add?

Time 21:36

The tables have turned in five years. Back then social media zealots were telling company execs, “you don’t get it”. They loved to bring out charts of percentage growth and the ever referenced “if Facebook was a country…” It took among other things, two election cycles, (the US and Iran), numerous gadget launches, a pop star’s death, a golf icon’s fall from grace, the year-long roll out of the first “social” car (you can comment which car you think I’m referring to here), and a World Cup for executives to retort, “We get it now.”

And now it’s their turn to say to the social media business community, “you don’t get it.” The it for them is how companies work for anyone to move from side project freak show to bonafide, no snickering business function. The holy grail for social media practitioners is Engagement, the holy grail for corporate executives is Process. The mutual nirvana are the key performance indicators (KPI) that give each side a reference point for their work.

Engagement means dialogue, participation, exchange of ideas

Process means your work is part of a decision oriented workflow system with predetermined actions to be taken based on certain events

KPI means “a metric that helps you understand how you are doing against your objectives.” This definition is from Avinash Kaushik from an excellent post on different types of measurement.

In this Marketing Edge podcast with Brain Solis, we discuss how to support the social media champion in an organization by understanding how to fit social into the company’s goals. Even the smallest pilot project needs to be structured in a way that will assimilate into the larger picture if it is to succeed.

I love when Solis says every champion hits a ceiling. You can’t just walk into a meeting of senior executives, say the world is going this way, and they will come along. His latest book Engage Solis peels the onion back a few layers than most social media books by examining how to work social media into the corporate process. The journey to achieve getting social media included in corporate processes is what Solis calls the last mile. He has written about the last mile in social media on his blog BrianSolis.com

I look at the culture of the business to determine whether the last mile will be a walk in the park or the last mile of a long journey across a desert. I highlight social culture vs social tactics in a podcast called, Is Your Company Social At Its Core ? It’s the story of a small, but growing premium ice cream brand, Izzys Ice Cream, and how their culture is spawning sophisticated uses of social technology.

Fun for Listeners

We are going to do a few neat things with this podcast and post.

First we have a drawing to win Solis’ book Engage. Email MarketingEdge AT providentpartners.net and put Engage in the subject line. This is not just a copy of the book, but it is the copy I have read and included comments in the margins, kind of like a combination book and blog. The physical replication of social media, only slower with fewer people, but unique nonetheless.

Second, we invite you to join Brian Solis in Minneapolis, July 27 at 6PM at Solera in Minneapolis. It’s an event An Evening with Brian Solis, sponsored by the Minnesota chapter of PRSA, register for the event today, it will be enlightening and inspiring. Hat tip to Jen Kane for leading this event.