JitterJam – Integrated Social Marketing Software for Business

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 week’s Creativity Coffee focused on Characteristics of Key Influencers—who they are and how you recognize them. But once you do identify key influencers and others you have engaged/desire to engage in social conversation on behalf of your brand or business, what kind of information should you be gathering on these people? Why is it important to do so? This was the topic of our last Creativity Coffee—Social Profiles.

1. What’s a Social Profile?
• Core component of a Social CRM. The social profile is the heart of a Social Consumer Relationship Management system. It provides a 360-degree view of the individual and enables the brand to target its communications, marketing, messaging, promotions and outreach based upon the wealth of information collected and summarized within the Social CRM.
• Collection of data versus usage. Each brand/company has their own view of an individual. The information gathered in a social profile is only as powerful as the way the brand uses it. Unique tagging and customization is critical to enabling the brand to create highly segmented groups for specific messaging, handling and engagement only if that brand decides to created targeted messages!
2. What are the components of a social profile?
• Contact points. Contact information is no longer limited just email or snail mail addresses. Social profiles are multi-dimensional and include contact points from a variety of traditional and “new media” sources—blogs, Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, etc. People can also have multiple identities that map to either their professional or personal associations, interests and networks.
• Activity profile. A social profile includes a record of an individual’s relevant social communications and activities. This includes direct communications with your company, but also expands to public social communications that pertain to your brand, your market, your products, your company, or even your competitors. Brands want a view not only of a person’s influence within social communities but also their engagement within those communities. The social profile should provide that information.
• Communications analysis. The social profile should include a history of every communications between the brand and the individual, but it should also provide an analysis of the social conversations that the individual has had. How engaged is that individual? Have their conversations been positive, negative, neutral? How often have they mentioned or discussed the brand’s products? What communities are they engaged in? How often have they been exposed to the brand’s communications?
• Segmentation and customization. While a system’s core data and analysis is essential to developing a view of the individual’s personna, it’s the brand’s own definitions of important segmentation that makes or breaks the value of the social profile. Enabling multiple custom categories or tags within the social profile enables the brand to (even on the fly) define an essential way of defining an individual in relation to the brand for later use in communications, messaging and marketing.
• Influence analysis. The social profile should include ways for the brand to evaluate a person’s standing within the social community—how much that person can influence and reach others.
• Preferences. Interests and communications preferences need to be an integral part o the social profile. How they want to be contacted, how often, which channels and what they want to receive…these are essential and should be strictly adhered to.
3. How can brands use the Social Profile?
• Targeted marketing. At the end of the day, everyone wants to sell their products. Using all the intelligence developed in the social profile, the marketer now has the opportunity to fine tune their messages, offers, communications and engagement with a willing and interested audience. Higher response and action rates will ensue.
• “Free” data. Much of what we’re gathering into the social profile is freely available data. Marketers pay a high price for lists that include demographics and psychographics. Using the right tool, all that “free” data can create a powerful profile.
• Adjusting the tenor of a conversation. Using the social profile will help the brand determine the best way not only to reach an individual but to speak to them in a way that is appealing, desired and appropriate.

Are you developing social profiles on your social contacts? How are you using those profiles to drive your social marketing?

Image Credit: Hilde Vanstraelen

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 week’s Creativity Coffee focused on Social Marketing Business Objectives. One of those objectives was to identify and develop advocates. A large part of that group of social advocates are the influencers—those people whom others follow, engage and seek out for advice, information and even entertainment. A mention, endorsement or positive review from an influencer can go much further than an advertising campaign; this kind of endorsement is seen as more credible, spontaneous and genuine by the social public. Brands are trying to bring those influencers into the fold—to engage them with their brand and to provide them with a positive brand experience. But how do they identify which individuals are key influencers? We originally touched on core characteristics of influencers in an earlier discussion and blog post, but we wanted to dive deeper into the subject. That was the topic of this past week’s Creativity Coffee, and here are some ideas that came from that discussion.

1. How do influencers emerge in a group?
• Teamwork dynamics. Taking an analogy of teamwork exercises, leaders naturally emerge from a group based upon their characteristics that make them a fit for specific roles. The organizer. The leader, the idea person. The doer. Typically, people are drawn to the roles they play in other aspects of life in which they have skill and recognition.
• Personal characteristics. A role is most effectively filled by the person whose intrinsic characteristics—charisma, attention to detail, sensitivities, intellect, ability—are the best match with the requirements of that role.
• Influencers in the digital social community are like those in teams. Online communities are made of loose associations of people talking about common interests. How do influencers emerge on the Social Web? Similar to the team dynamic, natural leaders emerge. Charisma, expertise, organizational skills, problem-solving skills, diplomacy, engagement and involvement of others, and even humor help the natural leader drive the growth and health of a digital community.
• Presence is also key. Involvement, presence, frequency of participation, value of content and persistence within the community also drive people to emerge as the core leaders and influencers in the digital space.
2. How do you identify the influencers on the Social Web?
• Look who’s talking. Which individuals are the most vocal in a specific community? But that shouldn’t be the only measure. Just because someone talks a lot doesn’t mean that others see value in what they say.
• Engagement is key. Do others respond to an individual? Are they engaged in conversation? Do they comment on the person’s posts, links, content, questions, comments? Does the person’s style have an appeal to your target audience? Is that appeal appropriate for your brand? You’re looking for someone who resonates with your target market.
• Don’t discount charisma, personality and ethics. Trust and influence go hand in hand. Even though someone may be engaged and vocal, they can be so in a way that may be more controversial than productive. Make sure to evaluate how the individual’s personality has a positive or negative influence on others. Are they engaging or are they complaining? Do they “play nice” or are they trying to stir the pot? Jerks may attract people due to their controversial nature, but is this someone you want engaged with your brand?
• Your personal experiences can guide you. Think about the communities in which you are engaged personally. Which individuals are the key positive influencers—that emerge to organize the group, that you go to for information, whose opinion matters to others. Ask yourself why that person influences you. Now think of another leader or active member of that organization that is less influential; while engaged, that person’s opinion has less weight because of their personality, ethics or lack of positive impact. We all know how to identify those influencers to target and those to avoid. “Everything you need to know, you learned in 4th grade.”
3. How do you find these influencers?
• Search and Listen. Make sure you’re searching across Twitter, Facebook, blogs, email lists, and other social communities for people talking about your product, your brand, your market or items related to your target customer (events, topics, people, news).
• Evaluate Influence. Look at the depth and breadth of reach—friends, followers, blog subscribers, etc.—as a first indicator (JitterJam’s Jitterater does a great job at this). Dig deeper using some of the characteristics mentioned above to determine potential fit with your brand’s identity. Look further than the last few postings; see how long they’ve been in the social space, how often they engage others and how others respond.

So now that you’ve identified an influencer, how do you start a dialogue? We’ve posted some ideas on Starting a Dialogue with a Consumer that might help you. Have you identified the key influencers in your market? How have you done so, and how are you engaging those individuals? Let us know!

Image Credit: svilen001

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!

It’s no big news that more and more businesses are diving into social marketing—500 million Facebook users are just too hard to pass up! But aside from the obvious audience potential, businesses need to set clear objectives for their social marketing activities in order to develop measurable value for their effort. What are the core business objectives for social marketing? What should businesses be striving to accomplish?

1. Brand awareness.
• Basic objective. It’s a common and basic objective for a brand or business to want to increase brand awareness through social marketing.
• Measurement. Brand impressions are the core measurement, based upon the social following and tangible results from those brand impressions, including web traffic and SEO.
2. Grow the social community.
• After the brand or business has established their social presence, the next objective usually is to grow that follower or fan base. The same metrics apply—number of friends/followers, brand impressions, web traffic and SEO.
3. Identify and develop advocates.
• Inexpensive marketing, sales force. It’s less expensive to develop brand advocates than to run advertising campaigns. Additionally, brand advocates voices are seen as more “genuine” to consumers than the brands themselves.
• Product claims made by brands are met with resistance.“No one believes advertising; we live in a time of disbelief.”
• Consumer brand advocates provide an authentic voice. Authenticity is key. Brand advocates speak to their target segment(s) and enable authentic messages that resonate with their peers. You can’t create and run enough ads and messages to blanket all the potential target segments.
• What makes a good brand advocate? They need to have established expertise. Whether it’s your peer, your uncle or a blogger, people will look at their prior content to see if their opinions are valuable and reliable.
• How do you find and engage a brand advocate? Well, we won’t lie. JitterJam does this very well. But in general, you need to search through the Social Web to find these voices. You then need to evaluate their engagement with your brand, their influence and reach, their prior content, their engagement with others, etc. You want to engage people with genuine enthusiasm for the brand. Use social searches to find those conversations and begin your outreach.
• How does sentiment analysis fit in? Overall sentiment analysis can help you determine how your social marketing is being received. You can track the trends and see the long-term impact of your outreach and advocacy. You can then try to correlate that sentiment analysis with the impact to your business.
4. Provide new channel for customer feedback.
• You may or may not find the true customer voice. Many companies ask direct questions to elicit feedback, but they often don’t get much response. Curb your expectations.
• Larger brands have a better chance to get feedback. Consumers are usually more willing to respond to a larger brand. You need a larger audience to capture that small vocal percentage. However, that vocal public may not be wholly representative of your market. Social media is like talk radio. Those on the extremes are the ones most likely to “call in.”
5. Provide new channel for customer service.
• Be ready. Customer service over public social media channels can have an extremely positive impact on how consumers view your brand. But a single poor experience can also become a very public, viral spiral of negativity and a PR nightmare. Make sure you are prepared to provide excellent service and have policies (including a very clear escalation process) in place to ensure customer satisfaction.
• One size does not fit all. You are not going to be able to please all the people all the time. However, how you handle the situation and work towards resolution will help you even if you can’t completely satisfy the customer. Make sure all your staff is responsive and execute well. They are not only providing customer service, they are acting in a PR role as well.

What are your business objectives for social marketing? How are you measuring your success! Let us know!

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!

The last two Creativity Coffee discussions centered around Social Etiquette and Facebook Etiquette—the rules of engagement. If you are aware of the rules of engagement, what are some acceptable and effective practices for outreach to engage a new consumer with the hopes of starting a dialogue? Here are the ideas sparked during our last Creativity Coffee.

1. How do you open the dialogue?
• Thanks. Has a consumer made a positive comment about your brand? Thank them. Be genuine.
• Question. Has a consumer made a comment about looking for a product in your market? Have they stated a preference? Ask them a question to see if they will engage with you. Make sure it’s not a direct sales pitch like, “Have you tried our product?” or you could immediately alienate the consumer. However, if someone states that they are looking for a specific type of product that fits your product line, ask a question about what they need. Be on the lookout for a response—and your opening for creating a dialogue!
• Comment. Did someone post a comment, a link, a tidbit that fits your product or market? Comment back to the consumer with a compliment, a suggestion or a helpful piece of information. For instance, if someone posted a picture of their cute dog and you’re a dog food company, comment back with an opening like, “Love that picture of spot. You should enter it into our Dog of the Month contest—Spot is so cute! Here’s the link…” Or if someone is concerned about what they’re feeding their dog, you should comment about what proper nutritional elements are in a good dog food and what could be causing problems. Be helpful and provide value. Don’t try to sell. Remember, you’re trying to be social!
2. Make it personal.
• No robots. Social consumers are savvy. If they see a comment from you that’s repeated over and over (think “scripted”), they will quickly be able to see your lack of personality and shy away from engaging. Who wants to talk to a robot?
• Be specific. Use the contact’s name. Address specifics about their comment, question, posting, etc.
• Be genuine. You’re speaking for your company, but your personality shines through in your dialogue. Make sure that your comments pertain to your real interest in the consumer…not fake enthusiasm. If it’s fake, someone will notice. If your brand is a known public brand, they might even call you on it.
3. Use a contest to draw people in.
• Use some sort of contest to get people to engage with you.
• The pet pictures example mentioned above doesn’t have to be for a pet brand. Recently, a community bank used a community pet photo contest to engage more deeply with the local community. Better yet, this kind of contest is viral—people will share their entry with family and friends in order to get votes! Be careful—make sure you do not misuse registration information. Registering for a contest should not automatically cause an opt-in for marketing communications. Use the opportunity to ASK for an opt-in, but don’t make it the default. If you do, you’ll alienate potential customers and tarnish your brand.
• You can use both digital and traditional media to promote your contest.
4. Use content that truly engages people and reflects your company’s values.
• Community causes. Whether your “community” is local, national or international, you can connect with consumers who share your values. Many companies are supporting causes that reflect their core values, and these causes can be a vital way to connect with the community.
• Use social media to publicize. Reflect the messages used to create awareness in other media on social media as well. Use social media to report on progress, share stories and to get people engaged.
• Example: Dawn Saves Wildlife. A dollar from every purchase (when a code is entered onto their website) is donated by Dawn to saving wildlife. This spurs purchases and engagement and resonates with people who care about ecology and animal welfare.
• Example: Supporting local charities. A community bank donates money to a local non-profit and posts the pictures of the donation ceremony on Facebook. Tons of people “like” and “share” the story and picture with others. A press release may have been picked up by a local paper and, for most part, ignored. But this kind of community work is a great positive social PR story.
5. Take your time, try different mixes and be patient.
• Some markets are harder than others. For instance, how does a CPA engage with potential customers?
• Use the Five C’s of Following People.
• Try different mixes and types of content, from informational, educational, fun and conversational. Make sure that you interject some product information as well, but not too much (less than half of your content should be product-based).
• Blog. It’s one of the key ways to continue to add content to your website to increase search engine rankings and to be found organically.
• Stick with it. All this takes time and resources. Make sure you stick with it, or your brand will be seen as anti-social, dis-engaged, a dead stick.

What is working for you? What kinds of conversations have you started lately? Have they resulted in new customers? Join the conversation!

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!

The last Creativity Coffee discussion centered around Social Etiquette. What rules do businesses and brands need to follow to ensure that they are not creating social SPAM? We had far too little time to fully cover the topic, so we continued the conversation by focusing on social etiquette for a single social channel—Facebook. Here are the highlights of the discussion.

1. A Facebook “fan” is like an annuity—a gift that keeps on giving.
• A Facebook fan provides an ongoing value stream.
• Your wall posts/updates are seen by all your fans, but also potentially by all your fans’ friends. One fan can fuel hundreds of brand impressions.
• The real “value” of a Facebook fan is an unknown. That is, until you begin to drive engagement with your fans.
2. Facebook outreach to non-fans is tricky. When is it okay? How do you do it without “freaking out” the consumer?
• As we discussed in our last session, Facebook’s closed networks and less-than-public personal updates make it a difficult platform to use for “discovery” of new brand fans. Search results are limited to those who choose to make all their status updates open to everyone.
• When you do come across a public (everyone) status update that is associated with your brand/market/product, what do you do?
• Use the context of the person’s update (and prior updates). Be respectful. If it’s a negative comment or a complaint, identify yourself and ask if you can be of assistance in resolving the situation. Remember that your posts/comments to a person’s wall is from YOU, the page admin, not BrandX, so identifying yourself is important.
• Offer value. If the status update is a positive comment, identify yourself (Facebook manager for BrandX), thank them enthusiastically for the comment, and invite them to “like” your page and opt-in for future offers. If the person tends to like offers (you can tell via their news stream), you might take the risk to provide a coupon or offer as well. This is really discretionary and should be used only when clearly appropriate.
3. There are coupon fans and non-fans. And they’re both on Facebook.
• Sometimes, it seems to be black or white, love or hate for “offers”. Listen before you engage. View the status updates from a person to see if they are amenable to receiving an offer before sending one to them. Make sure you have a plan, and a respectful one at that, for what triggers your brand to engage with a consumer on Facebook, BASED ON something they said from status update.
• Context is king. At times, people post on Facebook to be social and aren’t interested in potential “offers.” Other times, they are shopping, researching, chatting about brands and products, and it IS appropriate to engage them in your brand even further and even incent them to try your product. Use the info you know about a user, and offer them something targeted that will be meaningful to them. Send the appropriate message.
• While it’s fine to post incentive offers like coupon links, promotion codes and special “Facebook-only” deals on your fan page, make sure that these are NOT the only pieces of content you share on your Fan page. You want to draw people to engage, communicate and deepen the love of your brand. Don’t forget to be social, have discussions with fans, ask them questions, make them smile, provide them with a fun and lively place they want to visit often.
4. Let them opt-in.
• Facebook is a social network. While your fan page is a primary channel for your brand’s consumer engagement, it’s always good give your fans other ways to connect with you.
• Give your fans a way to opt-in to other communication channels (email, Twitter, mobile) and to other communication types (newsletter, coupons, events, etc.) JitterJam’s Make Me Happy™ permission marketing Facebook app works well here!
5. You don’t know what a fan is worth until you know.
• A fan or like you make today may not produce for months….stay the course, be patient, give to get.
• Example: Gary Vaynerchuk – the gift economy. If you don’t know someone, how to you get in their good graces..bring a gift. The same holds true for digital/Facebook etiquette. Come with a gift.
6. Make sure you’re ready for negative comments.
• Whether it’s about your product or about how you’re marketing via Facebook, make sure you’re ready to publicly handle negative comments in a positive way.
• Making decisions on what to say and how to handle potentially sensitive and explosive issues (e.g. the Capri Sun moldy drink debacle) shouldn’t be in the hands of an intern. Make sure you have a fast and effective process for escalation and resolution.
• Not everyone is going to love being contacted by your brand. Be respectful and always make sure you follow any requests to disengage swiftly. Don’t make a lost connection a bad connection.

How are you handling Facebook outreach and engagement? What have resulted in higher engagement by your fans? Please let us know!

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?

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!

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.

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.

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!

Have you ever searched through Twitter to find conversations about your brand, your product, your market? How about Google? How many conversations did you find? Too few? Too many? Too many irrelevant conversations? How do you refine that search to find the true voices talking about your brand, your product, your market?

One of the biggest challenges in searching for conversations about your brand on the real-time web is creating effective search criteria. Twitter complicates this even more with its 140 character limit, and when you’re using the same criteria over multiple channels, it gets even more challenging to filter out the noise and bring back only relevant conversations. Here are a few tips to increase the relevance of your search results.

1. Search is a trial-and-error process.
• You probably won’t get it right the first time, nor should you expect to!
• Conversations are very fluid. A search that works well today may not work work tomorrow. Make sure you’re checking your results and trying new search criteria often.
2. Your brand, product name or company name is (just) the start.
• Try different combinations of keywords to hone in on chatter surrounding your brand.
• Using keywords to exclude conversations is just as important as keywords to find/return conversations.
• If you have a name that is associated with more than just your brand/product/company, your challenge is to filter out everything but the conversations that focus on your business or market. Look at the recurring keywords in the irrelevant results and use them to start narrowing your search.
3. Try different search criteria for different social channels.
• While it might be tempting to try an all-inclusive search across all available channels, you have a great deal more flexibility in searching for relevant blogs than relevant Twitter posts and can utilize more keywords. If your results are too broad, try tailoring the search for each social channel type.
4. Focus on finding your target market—not just chatter about your brand.
• Find out what people within your target market are talking about (trending topics). A good place to start is your current base of Twitter followers. Use this “target market” search to find relevant people rather than just conversations around your brand or market, and then start engaging those who are talking.
• Find events that to your target market and join in on the chatter about that event. This is also a way to identify events that you may want to participate in or sponsor in the future.
5. Think of different ways that your product or brand can be described and search using those descriptive keywords in your search. Let’s use a snack food with a brand name of “CrackerX” as an example.
• By alternative name or title. Search for people who want a “cracker, snack, munchie, or food.” Look for people talking about alternative types and brands of product in the market as well—”chips, popcorn, Doritos.”
• By description. Search for conversations about “crunchy, fun, healthy” with “snacks, food, munchies, treats” to narrow the search to your product’s specific category.
• By timing. Use events and timing to search for chatter—”game-day, BBQ, after-school, party, tail-gating” and more.
• By people, demographics. Look for a way to identify groups that your target market identifies with—a social object, a “tribe” to which they belong (or is a fan of). “SMU, UCLA, Patriots, Celtics, PTA” and more.
6. Marketers (and Agencies), you’ve already done the homework! Use what you already know!
• Use the psychographic and demographic profiles that you’ve created in defining your target market(s) to find core keywords for your searches.
• Bring your search engine keywords to your social search as well!

These are just a few ideas to help you refine your search. Do you have any special tips or tricks? Post them here!

Want to find relevant conversations on the real-time web and start engaging those who are talking? Try JitterJam and see how it can help your social marketing efforts.