JitterJam – Integrated Social Marketing Software for Business

In social media, personal connections inspire trust whether in an individual or in a brand. Connecting personally helps brands to develop relationships with consumers and promote advocacy. The challenge is identifying potential advocates. One effective solution is utilizing user-generated content, which allows willing advocates to step forward and help promote your brand. This can be much cheaper for your business, and it will be fun for your customers.

The most common method for gathering user-generated content is asking users to share brand testimonials or a specific brand experience through a video. Consumers are inclined to trust the opinion of customers more than the voice of the company, because consumers are unpaid and don’t have their own agenda. A consumer taking time out of their day to share their positive experience with others is an endorsement of the brand in itself.

A recent video campaign using this strategy was the Ten Second Challenge from Aflac, which asked fans to explain what the company does in only ten seconds through a creative video. While these videos are funny, they also communicate the brand’s message through the credible voice of a consumer. This is a main strength of brand advocacy, and user-generated content accomplishes this and more.

Another campaign leveraging user-generated videos is Tillamook Cheese, who gathered similar videos and used them as the basis of a TV advertising campaign. Since the video campaign, they have expanded their efforts and are now asking their fans for notes that  “Share the Loaf.” This new campaign builds upon existing relationships and fosters new connections through engagement.

User-generated content is beneficial to businesses because the value it adds to a company far exceeds its cost. This campaign strategy can be implemented on social networks like Facebook for almost no cost, while simultaneously identifying the best potential brand advocates. The connections formed with these users give your brand the opportunity to build loyal customer relationships through engagement, which is the first step towards developing brand advocacy.

If you have time, spend a few minutes of your Friday watching these videos or checking out Toyota’s campaign, and see how user-generated content campaigns can be successful and fun at the same time! If your company has used this strategy before what were the results, what worked and what didn’t? And how would you recommend other companies implement their own campaigns?

“Social CRM is being hocked by monitoring services, market research firms, traditional sales software and — if you can believe it — Twitter applications. Brand managers, marketing managers and agencies everywhere are anxious to get them some of that social CRM, by golly. Sadly, most of them don’t even know what CRM stands for.”

“There are a lot of companies out there who claim they have a good Social CRM tool. I’m sure several of them will jump in the comments and lay it on thick. But one that I’ve been experimenting with I really like is JitterJam.”

Read Jason’s Social Media Explorer blog post here.

In the era of social business on the web, reputations are determined by how companies act in the public eye. Whether positive or negative, sentiment can spread very quickly across social networks with the potential to become viral. To take advantage of this, marketers have begun to publicize their socially responsible activities through cause marketing campaigns. Cause marketing has helped companies build brand loyalty, increase engagement with consumers, improve brand reputation, and—most importantly—do good for the community.

The Pepsi Refresh Project is one of the largest and most popular cause marketing campaigns, and recently committed $1.3 million to the gulf coast alone! The campaign is structured so that users vote on grant ideas submitted either by other users or by well-known celebrity figures, allowing everyone to feel like they are doing a bit of good along the way. This creates huge engagement opportunities on Facebook and Twitter and motivates people to share the initiative with others as well.

Dawn Dish Soap has also turned heads with their Everyday Wildlife Champion initiative, which promises to donate a dollar to rescuing wildlife for every bottle of Dawn product purchased. To activate this donation you have to go to their website, where you will see plenty of cute animal pictures, and then enter the activation code from the bottle.  By enabling consumers to complete the donation, Dawn makes them the ones responsible for doing good.

The common denominator in both of these campaigns is finding important charitable causes that consumers feel passionate about and that genuinely reflect the company’s values. Both campaigns move the responsibility of involvement to consumers, empowering them to contribute, and making them feel good about their actions. Additionally, cause marketing motivates consumers to share with the brand and with other consumers creating an opportunity to develop engagement into long-term customer loyalty.

There are plenty of great opportunities to get involved with cause marketing right now, whether you are donating a dollar through Dawn or beginning your own cause marketing campaign. Just remember, with a little creativity you can do an awful lot of good! What other cause marketing initiatives have you seen and participated in? What about the campaigns made you want to participate?

Photo Credit: LittleMan

Consumers love freebies and companies love new leads and contact growth. To satisfy both parties, companies can use contests to reward consumers for participation and simultaneously build their own community. Here are three steps to help you create your own successful contest:

1.  Conceptualize

• Before you begin planning your contest, identify specific goals for the campaign. These could be simply gaining more fans and followers to build your contact database, or building customer loyalty, brand advocacy, and community engagement. Be sure that the value you will gain from the contest matches the value of the prize to the consumer
• The success of a contest hinges on targeting the correct consumers, which will let you gain long-term customer value from participants. Identify an idea or concept that will appeal to your target market, and not just the largest number of people.
• Lastly, decide which format is the best for your contest. The format and rules should be based off of your concept and your goals for the campaign, and will affect how and when you choose the contest winner.

2.  Promote and Run

• Because contests have a set time line for entering and for announcing winners, they will dictate the timetable for your marketing activities. You should promote your contest a few weeks prior to the campaign launch and during the campaign at key time junctures (being sure NOT to spam).
• Your target market should determine the best promotion channels for your campaign. Social broadcasts on Facebook and Twitter will increase your reach, but if your audience receives company updates through newsletters or press releases these channels will be more effective.
• A key part of your strategy is the campaign’s call to action. How will you attract your target market and how will they enter? It is most important that the action of entering the contest benefits your company.

3.  Measure

• Measuring short-term success is as simple as recording brand mentions, conversation volume, contact growth, or sales figures depending on your campaign goals.
• Long-term success will be dependent on these numbers remaining elevated, and developing new contacts into customers. To gain more value from new contacts you can implement a customer loyalty program that rewards continued support and engagement, and would allow you to track which future sales resulted from the contest.

Ultimately you are the person that knows your target market best, and this should determine how you plan your campaign. If you follow these steps and appeal to your desired audience, your contest is sure to be fun and successful for everybody!

Have you used a contest or a sweepstakes as a marketing tool before? Tell us about it! What strategies did you choose to use and what successes were you able to achieve?

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

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?

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!

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.

St. Patrick’s Day is upon us, and that seemed to me like a perfect excuse to bring Fun Stuff Friday to Wednesday. So, here’s a fun tip on using real world events to promote your brand and produce measurable results.

Every year in March, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) holds tournaments to decide the national champions in both men’s and women’s basketball. This is where the term March Madness comes from, of course. Last year, in March 2009, I put a spin on the phenomenon to help increase the number of user interactions on my pop culture blog, Geek Force Five.

Between March 10 and March 17 (the start of the tournament), Geek Force Five users submitted suggestions by e-mail to help determine the top 16 pop culture obsessions in four categories: Movies/TV, Games/Technology, Comics, and Music. These obsessions were then pitted against each other within four brackets, just as basketball squads are paired off in the real-life NCAA tournament. Users were asked to comment and vote to determine the eventual winner. There was a Sweet Sixteen, an Elite Eight, and, finally, a Final Four.

Over the course of those four weeks, user interactions numbered 1,534 (comments + votes). That represented a 12x increase in the number of user interactions versus the previous four-week period.  To say the promotion was a success would be an understatement. Several of the more prolific commentators from that month eventually became contributors to the site, and the rise in popularity over those four weeks was one factor which led to the site being awarded a Best of NH award in 2009 from New Hampshire Magazine. And all of this was the result of a well-timed promotion.

Have you had any success using real world events or holidays to help promote your business? Leave your success stories in the comments below.

And have a Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Many of the products we use (or are advised to use) in social media are free to access. But no product, regardless of the price tag or lack thereof, is free to use. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about WordPress, Twitter, Facebook, or the latest and greatest service that bloggers, Twitterers, and Facebookers are raving about — there are always costs involved, particularly in staff time.

Here are four particular cost areas to consider:

Resources. You need people to make these things look good, and you need people to keep them running. WordPress blogs come out of the box looking very much like thousands of other WordPress blogs. They also end up looking like very lonely places if they’re not updated on a regular basis. It’s blatantly obvious to even the most casual Web user — whether they’re 100% conscious of this or not — when the blog or Website they’re looking at has a cookie-cutter design. And users are also well aware of the virtual tumbleweeds rolling by on sites where there’s less life than they’d find in a ghost town.

Setting up a Twitter account provides similar hurdles. And while it is theoretically easy to change your background, to fill out your full profile, and to tweet on a regular basis, theoretical ease isn’t quite the same as actual ease. You need to get it done, or you need someone to get it done for you. And it takes time!

Dedication. We live in the age of the Next Big Thing, in a world where it’s ridiculously easy to find something new to obsess over, something new to occupy our precious free time. If you’re not delivering constant content through your marketing channels, people will forget about you and move on. Regardless of your market, it is crucial to keep customers engaged in the product and the message year round, on a weekly (if not daily) basis.

The flip side of that, of course, is not to overdo it. But I’m a believer in going all-out, then listening to your audience, seeing if they’re feeling oversaturated, and only reigning things in as necessary.

Messaging. Just as press releases, white papers, and other more traditional marketing efforts require serious thought, so too do social media campaigns. It’s harder to create a meaningful message in 140 characters than you would think. And then there’s the issue of how well the information coming through these new channels is tying in with the rest of your marketing message. It’s easy enough to hand responsibility for your Twitter profile and your Facebook fan page off to an Intern. But if that Intern isn’t clued into the master plan, you could be sending out messages that are erroneous, poorly executed, or, in the worst-case scenario, flat-out false. Once something’s out there on the Internet, it’s out there to stay. And that means that, even if you do farm this work out to someone else, a portion of your workday is going to have to be devoted to making sure that the messages which come out from your brand, regardless of which channel they are distributed through, are on point.

Monitoring. You also need to track how effective these free messages you’re sending really are. Ask yourself: which posts, tweets, and status updates are driving the most traffic? Which are generating conversation in the comments section? And which are being shared on Facebook, or retweeted on Twitter? If you can’t answer these questions now, you need to find a way to answer them. Because, while these products might be free to access, there are always going to be costs associated with actually using them. And you need to be able to justify those costs, whether to yourself, or to your boss, or to your shareholders. Or else you may be out of a job. Or out of business.

Does this mean that you need a full-time staffer whose sole purpose is to execute your social media masterplan? Well, no. It would be nice, but it’s not 100% necessary. What you need, at minimum, is someone who is thinking constantly about how to put these free tools to good use, and how to get the most bang for your staff-time buck.

Photo Credit: free-sign by koka_sexton. CC BY.