JitterJam – Integrated Social Marketing Software for Business

One hundred and forty-seven years ago today, a man was born that would revolutionize the American economy, and forever change how people conducted business.  His name was Henry Ford, and he built his business with unorthodox practices that still influence companies today.

His most significant contribution to the American economy was the assembly line, which through teamwork and delegating tasks allowed him to lower costs, improve quality, and produce more.  In this day and age these characteristics can be just as powerful for businesses, and they are still present, especially in social media.  This is because social media is a team effort that everyone must take part in to create an effective presence.  Assigning different people to different channels and mediums of social media based on their skills is also an effective practice–one that is rooted in Ford’s production philosophy.

Ford also turned heads by paying wages that were around twice the industry average, by teaching employees to read and write, and by shortening the workweek.  These practices significantly reduced worker turnover and simultaneously increased employee productivity and well-being.  While our employers today are usually unable to pay us twice the norm, benefits like healthcare and 401Ks, educational reimbursement and employee development and training are widespread and help increase productivity and employee loyalty; all are results of the employment practices that began with Henry Ford.

Henry Ford’s success drove the wide adoption of his business practices.  In the constantly changing environment of social media, differentiation is vitally necessary to be successful, and we can learn this lesson by looking back at Ford.  Some of the most memorable recent social media campaigns (like the Old Spice video and Twitter campaign) were successful because, like Henry Ford, they were groundbreaking and different from anything that had ever been done before.

Henry Ford’s contributions to American business practice were influential and significant enough that it seems appropriate to recognize him today on his birthday.  Whether he was organizing company picnics or implementing his assembly line, he was a transformative force for positive change in his workplace.  Which characteristics of your workplace are related to Henry Ford’s?  How have these helped to make your company and its employees successful?

Photo Credit: Khaane

This Idea Spark blog post is the result of the discussion during our Friday morning Creativity Coffee. If you’d like to join us (in person or via web/phone conference), please sign up here. There’s no charge or obligation. We just love ideas and open discussion!

Don’t Create Social SPAM

For businesses and brands, interacting on the social web isn’t easy. While individuals see social networks as a place to voice their opinions, post random thoughts, hold conversations or shout and rant, businesses who are trying to engage current and potential customers must tread carefully. Social networks are public venues, and any public communication could become a PR coup or a quickly escalating PR nightmare.

Given the thin ice that businesses and brands skate on in the public space, what rules do they follow to ensure that they are not creating social SPAM? Here are a few ideas that came out of our Creativity Coffee.

1. There’s a different expectation of privacy on Twitter versus on Facebook.
• People on Facebook have a greater perception of privacy even though their settings might make them more public than they desire. They believe that what they post is accessible by their friends (or network) but is not in the public domain.
• On Twitter, unless your tweets are protected, there is no expectation of privacy. The service in itself is a public forum for social commentary and communications.
• Brand outreach and engagement on Twitter is going to be a bit easier for “new” contacts due to the public nature of Twitter and the open environment. Facebook’s closed networks and less-than-public updates make it a difficult platform to use for “discovery” of new brand fans.
2. Example: A brand mention on Twitter vs. Facebook and the brand outreach possibilities
• A consumer, Mary, updates both her Twitter and Facebook status with “I love my Mazda.” Mazda does not have a prior social relationship with Mary. What can Mazda do to engage her?
• Twitter
• Mary’s tweet shows up on Mazda’s social search. Mazda is not following her and she’s not following Mazda.
• Mazda follows Mary. This is generally acceptable.
• Mazda retweets Mary’s comment. This is generally acceptable. The consumer may even notice the retweet and start following Mazda on Twitter.
• Mazda @ messages Mary with a “thank you”. This is generally acceptable.
• Mazda @ messages Mary with a promotional offer. This is very questionable. Mary has no prior relationship with Mazda, and she might see this as social SPAM and block Mazda from future communications.
• Mazda Direct Messages (DMs) Mary with a promotional offer. This is unacceptable. Mary has no prior relationship with Mazda and has not opted to receive promotional messages from them. This is social SPAM. Don’t do it.
• Facebook
• Mary’s Facebook status update shows up on Mazda’s social search. Mary is not a fan of Mazda’s Facebook page.
• There’s not much that Mazda can do from an outreach standpoint here. Any message sent directly to Mary (assuming that she is open to non-friends sending her messages) could be construed as SPAM. Messages sent by Mazda would actually be sent by the Mazda page administrator’s Facebook account to Mary, not by the Mazda page. Facebook was not created as a business-focused network, and the ability for brands to market TO Facebook members is limited to their page fans (I can’t say “likers” without snickering).
• The Mazda page administrator could try to “friend” Mary, but Mary would most likely not know this person and have no reason to friend the page admin.
• Mazda CAN use sophisticated tools to find out Mary’s social profile and try to contact her in a manner that is acceptable to her (perhaps Mary is on the Mazda email list and is open to offers). The best Mazda can do at this point is to understand what Mary is saying about them on Facebook and try to get Mary to Like their Facebook page in another way.
• Twitter is a much more friendly network for brands to discover new voices. However, Facebook DOES have advantages over Twitter as a gathering place for engaged consumers.
3. Permission is the key.
• You need to use the same kind of opt-ins for social marketing as you do for email marketing.
• You want to ensure that you don’t alienate a current/potential customer. It’s critical that you ask them to opt-in to receive promotional messages from you. If they don’t, do not send them promotional messages (DMs, Facebook messages).
• DMs are self-regulating. If you blow trust with your contact, they will sever their connection with you.
4. You need to be mindful of not only WHAT you say, but how often you speak.
• With Facebook, a your wall posts/updates will show up on your fans’ walls and will create a brand impression to all those who are friends with your fan. However, if you post to Facebook constantly, your fans may tire of the constant chatter and “unlike” your page. Make sure your content is valuable and not annoyingly frequent.
• Twitter is a little more forgiving, but your brand impressions may be less frequent due to the higher instance of chatter.
• In both cases, note that your status updates are fleeting; they pass by your fans and friends and may not register at all.

Facebook has lots of advantages for the brand once you get consumers to engage (“Like” your brand’s page). In this coming Friday’s Creativity Coffee, we’ll talk about Facebook Etiquette. Please join the conversation!

Do you have policies and procedures in place for your public social networks? What are you rules for social etiquette? Have you had an instance where your social outreach backfired? How did you handle it?

A few weeks ago, the FourSquare mayorship of our office was up for grabs.  Over time, a clear winner began to emerge, and the competition became one-sided.  While the battle is now basically over, it illustrated how good-natured competitions within the office can be fun for everyone.

These competitions increase dialogue between coworkers, offering more opportunities for them to connect with one another at work.  This provides another way for employees to get to know each other better, and will create a livelier office environment.  These are some other fun ideas for office competitions:

• Team Events – Separate the office into several teams, and create a fun competition that encourages everyone to participate.  Some events can be beneficial to an entire community as well, like a food charity drive or a recycling contest, while also improving valuable intangibles such as teamwork and overall morale within the office. Provide incentives for participation and rewards to everyone for their engagement.

• Office Olympics – Plan to annually take a full afternoon out of the office for this event.  Choose multiple activities, and develop a scoring method that aggregates accomplishments at the end of the day to determine the top three finishers.  Some of the easier events to run are paper and wastebasket free throw shooting, rubber band archery (shoot at a safe target not at coworkers), and the crucial best coffee contest (judged by all).

• Out-of-Office Challenges – This is more of an activity than a competition. Spend a day at a ropes course completing group challenges with all members of your office.  This teaches people to think together creatively to solve problems and accomplish tasks.  This is a great activity to help each individual build confidence and the team to develop skills outside of the office environment.

Prizes for all of these activities can be tickets to a concert or sporting event, an extra personal day, cash prizes, or anything else that coworkers would see as an incentive.  Be sure to ask for feedback from coworkers after events, so the next competition is even more fun than the last one.  What other ideas and suggestions do you have for office competitions?  How has your office used these in the past?

This Idea Spark blog post is the result of the discussion during our Friday morning Creativity Coffee. If you’d like to join us (in person or via web/phone conference), please sign up here. There’s no charge or obligation. We just love ideas and open discussion!

Last Friday’s Creativity Coffee topic centered around email and social marketing. Is it complementary? Does one size fit all?

Ben & Jerry’s recently announced that it would be discontinuing email newsletters in favor of updates and offers on social media. eMarketer just reported findings by Crossview that of consumers surveyed, 37% preferred to get promotions via email, 18% via mobile, and only 9% via social media. Is Ben & Jerry’s leaving many loyal customers without a valued way to connect? Should they have considered balancing email and social media? How do email and social marketing play together? What are their points of intersection and points of departure?

Here are some ideas and discussion points from the conversation.

1. Email and social are complementary marketing channels
• Email lists can drive people to engage in direct communications via social channels.
• Social channels can drive people to accept permission-based email marketing newsletters and updates.
• But how are these channels different? Should the same rules apply? Are the methods converging?
2. Email and Social Media differ as marketing systems.

	Email		Social Media
Frequency	Daily, weekly and/or monthly		Depends on intent—from constant (customer service) to hourly or daily
Usage	Message-based. Composed messages with specific targeted messaging & promotions, content and calls to action.		Conversational. 1-to-1 dialogue, content to share, direct and broadcast messaging, promotions & calls to action.
Opt-In	Yes. People who opt-in expect (and welcome) promotional messages.		No. People may Follow/Like your social accounts, but it is NOT an explicit opt-in to receive promotional messages.
Sticky?	Yes. Your messages are stored in the recipient’s inbox and accessed at their leisure.		Some. Your public messages are fleeting and are seen if your “audience” is watching. Your directed messages (@, DM, FB msg) are accessed at a recipient’s leisure.
State	Passive. People see email as a passive medium. They get to it when they have time/if it interests them.		Active. People see social as an active medium. “Being part of the conversation” where a conversation is live, now, real time.

3. Different channel, different message? Sometimes.
• Some people desire to publish different content on different channels—using unique content for each channel. This works in some chases, but is hard to manage and maintain.
• Other people publish the same content across all channels (e.g. blog post via email, link to blog post and topical info via social media). This ensures that all contacts get the same broadcast message.
• It’s hard to say what’s right or wrong; it depends upon the overall marketing goals and strategy and how each channel plays into that strategy.
• Personalization is key—you don’t want to bombard the same person multiple times with the same message across multiple channels unless that’s what they’ve asked for.
• It also helps to identify the types of messaging/communications you send out, and then determine the right channel for each. Create a matrix to help you define a standard way of communicating your messages. Once you do this, people will come to rely on your particular style of messaging.

Msg Type		Email		Blog		Facebook		Twitter
Type 1		X		X		X		X
Type 2		X		X
Type 3		X
Type 4						X		X

• Example: CopyBlogger. Copyblogger is a valuable and insightful blog on marketing and copywriting for online marketers. They update their content daily, and they blast the same messaging across all channels. But people rely on that style and know that they can “catch up” with the content in a variety of ways.
• Example: Chris Brogan. Chris blogs often and is very social. His blog is useful and valuable and frequent. But his email newsletter is fairly infrequent. People know that when they receive an email newsletter from Chris, it will be very informative and is worth opening and reading. Thus, his open rates for email will be high because his content and channel strategy has helped set a level of trust and expectation that people can rely upon.
4. Robots are not social.
• Automated messages via email are desirable (e.g. auto responder upon subscribe).
• Automated messages via social channels are NOT desirable. Social media is conversational. An automated message tells a contact that you’re not interested in engaging in a conversation with them.
5. The permission-based (opt-in) marketing rules that apply to email MUST also be applied to social marketing.
• If someone Follows you on Twitter or Likes your page on Facebook, they are opening up the possibility of being exposed to your content and to engage with you in a conversation.
• This first step of engagement does NOT equal permission to market to those contacts!
• You MUST get explicit permission to send marketing messages over social channels. Otherwise, you are sending SPAM.
• People perceive a higher level of intimacy via social and mobile channels. Your use of those channels without explicit permission will break down any rust you’ve built with your contacts AND may get your marked as a SPAMMER with Twitter, Facebook and mobile operators. Your accounts can (and will) be shut down.
6. Email and social marketing “lists” are currently in separate silos (JitterJam note: Not when you’re using JitterJam!)
• Merging those silos is imperative if you’re going to have an effective and productive multi-channel marketing capability.
• As stated above, getting permission to market is very personal; you must get permission for each channel.

As you can see, we have pretty lively discussions early on a Friday morning!

How are you using email and social marketing? Are you applying the same rules for permission-based marketing to social as you have with email? How are the response and activity rates changing with the inclusion of social in the marketing mix? Was Ben & Jerry’s right to ditch email for social? Let us know what you think!

And don’t forget, you’re welcome to join the conversation!

Thankfully, the oppressive heat wave that took over New England last week has, for the moment, moved on.  Hopefully, our brains (and computers) have now recovered and returned to a safe operating temperature.

Beating the summer heat is one thing, but unfortunately the ongoing challenge of slowing sales in the summer cannot be solved with air conditioning, and it continues to test how creative and resourceful companies can be.  With this in mind, here are three activities to help prevent your business from fading in the summer sun.

Attend a Relevant Event. Give yourself the opportunity to make new connections and further develop existing ones.  Personal interaction adds an element to a business relationship that cannot be attained online, and it could be the building block that changes a casual contact into a customer.  In addition, attending an industry event will generate more website traffic and more conversation surrounding your brand—two more sources for new leads.

Start A(nother) Company Blog. If you do not have a company blog, begin one. If you have one, start another on a topic related to your market, your brand or the values or causes you want to showcase. Blogs create another communication channel that will highlight your industry knowledge, your company’s values, or your product in use.  Content quality and frequency are very important—you want people discussing and sharing your content and coming back often. Increasing your level of influence and sparking relevant consumer discussion will both improve credibility and generate more buzz for your company.

Get More Chatty. Participate more actively in conversations that are engaging your target market(s).  Whether or not the topics are relevant to your business, these conversations can help you learn more about your potential customers.  Sharing your thoughts and comments adds a level of social interaction that will make potential customers feel that your company is a part of their community and shares their interests.  This chatter may not be the main focus of your social engagement, but it will certainly help build awareness of your company or brand.

While there are many more strategies for increasing sales when business becomes slow, these are three techniques that, with continued practice, will all provide long-term value to your company as well as providing a short-term boost.  Ultimately, discovering more activities that will help your business fight the seasonally slow pace of summer is only limited by your creativity.

What challenges has your business encountered this summer, and subsequently what activities are you now implementing?

This Idea Spark blog post is the result of the discussion during our Friday morning Creativity Coffee. If you’d like to join us (in person or via web/phone conference), please sign up here. There’s no charge or obligation. We just love ideas and open discussion!

Our last Creativity Coffee generated a few very thought-provoking ideas. The topic of the week—identifying influencers—is a topic of interest to brand marketers around the globe. What are the hallmarks of an “influencer?” How do we identify and reach them? Are the same criteria applicable across brands, or is it very specific to a product, a market, or even a target market? Here’s some food for thought.

1. What is an influencer?
• Has credibility. A genuine voice is important. Is this person a subject-matter expert?
• Has a voice. People listen and comment on what this individual says.
• People relate. People relate to this individual on some level.
• People trust them. An influencer has established credibility through impartiality and expertise. People see their voice as genuine. Peers can be influencers—and often are; people tend to trust their peers more than companies or brands.
• Has a following. Friends/followers is an indicator. But…
2. It’s not just a numbers game.
• Numbers are only the start. Numbers signify the potential reach of an individual, but it’s not the whole story.
• If someone has 10,000 followers on Twitter, does that make them a key influencer? Or a number jockey?
3. Engagement is key.
• Seeing how much other people are sharing an individual’s content is key to identifying an influencer.
• How often is the individual engaging with others?
• How often are they tweeted/retweeted?
• How many people comment on their blog and engage in discussion?
4. Influence is very market-dependent, but there’s a method to every market.
• Who is in your target market?
• What communities attract that target? Where are they active?
• Who are the most active people in those communities? These are the potential influencers (positive and negative).
• Follow the breadcrumbs: Twitter lists, people being retweeted, people who put out great content, people who have tons of blog comments and hits…
• Recency and relevancy are important. Are they posting content and comments that are trending? Are they relevant to your target market? How often are they engaging in that community?
5. Does celebrity = influence? Sometimes.
• Celebrities are influential when there is relevance. Basketball players and sports apparel are a natural fit—”on brand.”
• In most cases, the celebrity is influential both offline and online.
• Celebrities may have lots of followers, but are they heard? Are people paying attention?

How have you identified the influencers in your market? More importantly, how have you engaged them?

Please let us know what you think. Comment below, or join us (live or via conference) for our weekly Creativity Coffee.

While following the Tour de France the other day, it occurred to me that this exhausting bike race shares many similarities with a company’s social media strategy.  Amidst the crowded peloton (the large central pack of racers), cyclists vie for position, but despite their best efforts they can easily get lost in the crowd.  Typically, the teams with the best performance over the course of the race succeed through consistency and leadership, and by dealing with bumps in the road smoothly (literally and figuratively).  Just as these characteristics allow elite cyclists to succeed, they are also the driving forces for strategic social media success within a company.

• Be Consistent – Like the Tour de France, social media success does not happen overnight.  Both challenges are long journeys that require continual effort, and with each day new successes and failures will emerge.  But don’t be intimidated!  A strong and constant social media presence will bring value to your brand and will be worth the investment.

• Adapt – From year to year the landscape of your competition will change.  In cycling improved riders will emerge each year, and less motivated riders will slow with time.  In social media this process can happen much faster due to the nature of the Internet.  You must be willing to adapt your social strategy to this change by expanding your social presence through another channel, beginning new practices to better serve your customers, or simply by getting better at what you currently do. Be vigilant and continue to emerge on the top.

• Manage Crises – When Lance Armstrong popped a tire on Stage 3 of this year’s race, he lost significant time; but his race team dealt with the situation quickly enough for him to still finish in the top twenty.  Your company’s social media presence is the infrastructure that allows them to listen to what your customers are saying, so you know immediately when a problem arises.  Responding to a crisis swiftly and properly will ensure that your company loses minimal ground, if any at all.  This is absolutely necessary in today’s culture where bad news spreads like wildfire.

• Unify – While one person wins the Tour de France, his team—which consists of many other cyclists—is largely responsible for the victory.  The team protects the biker from the competition and allows him to draft off of them, doing just as much work as the individual winner.  Similarly, effective social media strategy requires that your company or brand team unify and embrace a single strategy to move towards a common goal.

There are many other social media lessons we can learn from this cycling race and from other sporting events, but these are some of the main pillars of an effective social media strategy.  Fortunately for us, we don’t have to burn 10,000 calories a day to learn these lessons!  What other lessons have you learned about social media from real-world events?

This Idea Spark blog post is the result of the discussion during our Friday morning Creativity Coffee. If you’d like to join us (in person or via web/phone conference), please sign up here. There’s no charge or obligation. We just love ideas and open discussion!

As we have stated in the introduction to our JitterJam Advisor program information, it’s important to lay the proper foundation and determine the goals and strategies of your social marketing efforts in order to achieve measurable success. A strong strategy and implementation plan will have you achieve your business goals, increase your visibility and grow your business. But 59% of businesses engaged in social media/social marketing admit to not having a strategy! So how do they know if what they are doing is working?

During our last Creativity Coffee, we discussed why it’s important to have a social marketing strategy and what needs to be included in that strategy. It was a lively and varied discussion. Here are a few key take-aways.

1. Ready-Fire-Aim is not a social marketing strategy.
• Many companies are trying things to see what “sticks” but don’t have a method to their madness nor a way to measure the success of their experimentation.
• While experimentation is fine, there needs to be goals behind the brand’s social marketing efforts; experimenting with tactics to achieve those goals can be part of that strategy.
• “Brand impressions” may be a goal, but even brand impressions need to lead to something tangible.
2. It’s the Wild Wild West out there. Beware of snake oil salesmen.
• Picking the right consultant or agency to help develop and implement your strategy is vitally important.
• Look for good/bad signs that the consultant or agency you’re looking to hire has the expertise they claim to have. Are they using social marketing tactics for their own lead generation? How are they executing social marketing for other clients? Do the even have a Twitter account? How effective is it?
• Just because an agency has social marketing services, it doesn’t mean that they have expertise. Ask questions regarding other strategies and campaigns they have executed. How did they measure success? What were the goals? Did they reach them?
3. What are the components of a social marketing strategy?
• Goals and objectives. What do you want to achieve through social marketing? How do they relate to your business’ overall goals? While ‘brand awareness’ is always a goal (measured by brand mentions through social channels), what specifically can social marketing deliver? Website visitors? Revenue/purchases? Repeat business? Higher customer satisfaction? Product feedback and ideas?
• Strategy to achieve those objectives. What is the driving idea behind achieving your goals? Like the goals, the strategy should complement and supplement the overall company strategies. Using a football metaphor, the social marketing strategy is like the offensive strategy. It needs to fit with the game strategy, the defensive strategy, etc. How does the social marketing strategy fit with the overall marketing strategy (the game strategy)?
• Tactics. What are the specific actions you are going to take to implement that strategy? These are the “post content to Twitter and Facebook” types of items. In the football metaphor, these are the specific plays and players that you use to achieve a win.
• Success criteria, measurement and review. If your goal isn’t explicitly a measurable figure, how are you going to measure the success of your efforts? How are you going to review and measure your progress, adjust the strategy and tactics as needed, and move forward?

So, has your business created and implemented a social marketing strategy? Why or why not? How has social marketing improved your business/brand? We’d love to hear from you!

Need some help developing your Social Marketing strategy? JitterJam is now offering Advisory Services to help you get more out of your efforts.

In celebration of Independence Day, here are a few links to social media outlets for our government. Hope you have a great holiday!

The White House

The White House is in the social media groove. Have you ever known an administration to have a blog, a Twitter account and an email newsletter and more? Here are links to the White House social accounts and channels.

• White House Twitter Account
• White House Blog
• Sign up for White House email updates
• White House Group on LinkedIn
• Official White House Flickr account
• White House YouTube channel
• White House Vimeo channel
• White House Podcast
• White House Myspace account

Senate and House

Are your Senators or Representatives on Twitter? Find out and get some great stats and info on their use of social media.

• SourceWatch list of Senators and Members of Congress Who Tweet
• Adam Zuckerman Congrissional Twitter Usage stats

GovTwit

GovTwit has an exceptional list of government Twitter IDs and tags. Find the ones you want to follow. This list includes those in media that comment and report on governmental activities, local and state government, agencies, etc. You can also add to the list by recommending someone.

• GovTwit

There are thousands of sites, accounts, blogs, videos and photos related to our government that gives us unprecedented access to news and information (and sometimes mis-information). Your voice and your vote is important. Make sure you use both!

Happy Independence Day!