JitterJam® Social CRM

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!

During our previous two Creativity Coffees, we continued the discussion about online communities by drilling down into the Voice of the Brand. We talked about whether or not it matters if an individual’s personality shines through a brand in Voice of the Brand—Who is Talking as well as about What is Your Brand’s Voice, that is, how businesses should determine the “social voice” of their brand on Twitter, Facebook, etc.

In this week’s discussion, we focused on an issue that has been bouncing from blog to blog–Who Owns Social Marketing in a Company? In fact, I recently read a blog post that emphatically claimed that PR should wholly own social media in a company since it’s a PR function to speak to the public. Given that there are many ways that social media is being used in businesses, is this a viable stance? Who owns the strategy behind the tactical use of social media? How should companies go about creating different social accounts for different purposes? These are real problems that businesses are facing as they become more engaged in social marketing, and we thought it would be a great topic for thought and discussion. Here are the ideas that came out of our Creativity Coffee.

1. Adoption of social media/social marketing is usually driven by a specific initiative within a company; that drives “ownership.”
• While social marketing is starting to be “baked in” to the marketing strategies of large brands and companies, we’re mostly hearing about brand “initiatives” that utilize social media channels. The genesis of the use of social marketing within a company is usually through a single initiative that generally drives the initial “owner” of social marketing within a company.
• However, marketers within a company are recognizing the potential value of social marketing and are already baking resources into their budgets. HOW this budget is used, and the strategies behind these resources vary wildly from company to company.
2. There are not many stories of company-wide implementations of social marketing—YET.
• However, companies like Best Buy have integrated social marketing into their corporate strategy and culture and many groups and individuals have “ownership” and responsibility for social marketing.
• BestBuy’s @twelpforce is actually a collective account with individuals registering and then tweeting with the hashtag #twelpforce. They have clear guidelines for tweeting for twelpforce and are driving personal interest in social media into the corporate strategy for customer service and differentiation.
• BestBuy has driven social media to be a part of their corporate culture. But HOW do you go about incorporating social into a corporate culture? Does the prevalence of use of social media by your employees drive you to integrate that into your culture, or do you try to spur the early adopters in your company to lead the charge (and drive others to get involved)? How do you separate the personal from the brand’s voice? BestBuy used a technical solution (retweeting anything with a specific hashtag sent by one of their registered employees), but how do you manage the policies and procedures. Lots of food for thought.
3. It’s hard to pinpoint who owns social marketing in a company—or who SHOULD own it.
• Initiatives drive initial owners
• Initiatives within different departments can drive further implementation and Use Cases
• There is no RIGHT answer for all businesses; “It depends” reigns again; each business has different goals and needs
4. There are clear “points of origin” and use cases—and multiple owners.
• Marketing: Lead generation, brand awareness, brand analysis, performance marketing, commerce, community development, customer loyalty, customer engagement, customer referral
• Public Relations: PR and News, Press relations
• Product Management / Marketing: Community development, product development and innovation
• Customer Service/Support: Customer service, customer feedback
• Sales: Lead generation, revenue generation, sales promotion
5. Favorite quote of the day: “Search marketing and social marketing are like lobsters and pandas. They are both animals, but they are VERY different.”
• Search = Transactional
• Social = Referrals

All this talk about different points of origin and use cases for social marketing got our gears turning. We’ve decided that we’re going to have a series of discussions around Social Marketing Use Cases. our next Idea Spark Creativity Coffee marks the beginning of this series. The first use case we’ll discuss is Using Social Marketing for Lead Generation on Friday, October 22. Given the goal to generate more leads, how can social marketing help businesses achieve that goal? How will social channels add to that goal? Which social channels should businesses use? Join us for a lively discussion!
 
Photo Credit: mwookie

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!

During our previous Creativity Coffee, we continued the discussion about online communities by drilling down into the Voice of the Brand—Who is Talking to determine whether or not it matters if the actual person behind a brand’s social account(s) matters to the consumers who are interacting with the brand.

In this week’s discussion, we continued the conversation by going even deeper and discussing what the voice of the brand should be. What is the tone and personality of a brand’s social “voice” via their Twitter, Facebook and other social accounts? How do they determine that voice? Here are the ideas that came out of our discussion.

1. The brand’s voice is not necessarily a reflection of the company culture—but it could be.
• A brand is trying to appeal to the demographic of its target customer. That demographic may not be reflected in the demographics of the company’s employees or its environment and culture.
• However, some brands are very tied to their corporate culture (e.g. Zappos). The voice of the brand is very personal to that culture (Tony) and therefore is driven by that culture.
2. Brand voice is closely tied to social strategy.
• Is the social strategy tied to a particular campaign? A brand image that already exists (mascot, spokesperson)? The social marketing strategy for the brand and the purpose of the particular social account should drive the way the brand approaches its voice. Is the strategy to drive content? Is it to engage in social discussion? Provide customer service? All these approaches may require a different voice—informative, friendly, professional, funny, helpful, provocative, evocative—and a different account for the particular purpose/use.
3. Personalizing the brand versus personifying a brand.
• Personalizing. Brands that are the most successful on the social web are speaking TO individuals. They are humanizing the brand and bringing the discussion to a one to one conversation. They are making consumers feel, “They care about me…they listen to me…they make me feel special.”
• Personifying. This is very different to attaching a personna to the brand; that is, identifying a specific person to a brand’s social identity (Dunkin’ Dave). As we discussed in Part 1 of this conversation, this can be disadvantageous to a brand if/when that employee leaves the company; the social equity that the particular employee has created walks with that employee.
4. How should a brand determine their voice and tone?
• Marketing Strategy. The brand voice should support the mission of the company and/or the brand marketing strategy.
• Social Role and Strategy. The brand voice for each social account should reflect the role and goals of the account (customer support, deals only, specific product, etc.) as well as the social and marketing strategy for the brand. Is the point to inform (e.g @breakingnews)? Engage individuals (e.g. @starbucks)? Provide better service (e.g. @comcastcares)? The voice used to communicate needs to reflect that strategy and role of the account to the brand as well as the voice of the consumers the brand is trying to engage. @comcastcares will have a different voice than @burtonsnowboard.
• Brand Identity. The tone of the brand’s social voice also needs to be in line with the overall brand identity. It can be driven by a particular marketing campaign (e.g. @crunchiscalling) to promote brand messaging and overall brand impressions. But how does this impact the brand in the long term? Is brand impression enough?

Our next Idea Spark Creativity Coffee covers the larger issue of Who Owns Social Marketing in a Company? Is it Marketing? PR? Customer Service? If there are multiple accounts and owners, how do they interact? Who drives the strategy? Please 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!

During our previous Creativity Coffee, we continued the discussion about online communities by talking about the Role of the Community Manager—what does a community manager do? What are the objectives? What kind of skills does he/she need? We expanded on that discussion this week by focusing in on the voice of the brand. While the community manager is the person behind a brand’s social presence, is it important for that “real life” person (and personality) to shine through? Or are consumers not concerned with the “man behind the curtain” but more focused on interacting with the brand and the brand’s personality on its own? Should the person behind the brand’s social accounts be “transparent” to consumers? Should there be a name and a personality tied to the brand?

1. The case of Dunkin’ Dave.
• Dunkin’ Donuts Twitter account was managed by Dave Puner AKA Dunkin’ Dave. During that time, Dave put a personal voice on the Dunkin’ Donuts Twitter account and provided interactive customer service and brand conversation. People started to respond to Dave’s friendly, conversational and helpful tone and the Dunkin’ Donuts Twitter following blossomed.
• But Dave moved on to another position. Did it hurt Dunkin’ Donuts to equate their social presence to a single person’s identity? Would it have been better to have masked Dave’s identity and let Dave’s personality become the brand’s personality?
2. Social media is a case of mixed norms.
• Economic Norm. In the case of advertising (TV, web, etc.), people understand what’s going on. They are being presented economic incentives of some kind; the messaging is about product value, special deals, etc. The media is in charge of the message.
• Social Norm. In a social (face-to-face) communication, the boundaries and rules are clear. Social etiquette (hopefully) drives the tone and flow of conversation.
• Social Networks Use Social Norms. In social networks, conversations are “owned” by the participants and are governed by the communication “rules” of social norms.
• How do brands participate? Businesses who have traditionally worked by the rules of economic norms are now faced with a different set of rules of engagement. So how does this apply to the question “who is the voice of the brand?” If you’re engaged in a situation where the rules are governed by social norms, it makes sense to put a “person” in front of the brand.
• But it’s not that simple. Like the Dunkin’ Dave situation, people change jobs. If a brand equates its social identity with a specific person and that person leaves the company, the social equity built by that person walks as well.
3. The voice of the brand should be a reflection of the brand’s image.
• Brand Personality/Image. The personality of the brand’s social account should not be a reflection of the specific personality of the employee but a reflection of the brand’s image.
• Mascots. A brand’s personality can also be tied to a mascot (e.g. Chester Cheetah). The mascot drives much of the brand’s identity (“It Ain’t Easy Being Cheesy”) and the voice of the social account can be that of the mascot.
• Strong Personality Embedded in the Brand. If a brand has a strong personality attached to its identity (e.g. Ben & Jerry’s), the voice of the brand MAY be associated with that personality. Even if that person isn’t driving the brand’s social engagement, the brand’s social voice may need to reflect the personality associated with the brand.
4. In most cases, consumers are looking to connect with the brand—not the person(s) manning the social account(s).
• Following a Brand. In general, consumers are looking to following a brand, not “Dunkin’ Dave.” That is, unless the brand makes the person the spotlight.
• Customer Service is the Exception. When it comes to customer service, it’s important for individuals to identify the person addressing their concerns; consumers want to know who they are dealing with.
• Personally Identifiable Content. When the content itself is identified with an individual (e.g. blog post by a specific author) it’s less important to specify the author of the person sharing that content. But if the content itself isn’t personally identifiable and there’s authority/credibility associated with it…then exposing the authorship of the person sharing the content can be important.

Is your brand being represented by a specific person? Is their name or personality exposed by your brand?

In Part 2 of the Voice of the Brand discussion, we’ll talk about tone of voice of the brand. We hope you can join us!

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 Communities. We discussed the types of social communities and how brands can take advantage of the existing communities that have organically formed. This week’s discussion continued that conversation by focusing on the role of the community manager for a brand or a business. What does that community manager do?

An online community manager, in essence, plays a role as a public voice of the company (tone, content, conversation) on social networks. So what are the community manager’s responsibilities? Look at the recent job description for an Online Community Manager for a media company in NYC:

Your role will be to act as the eyes and ears across social networks and new media platforms. You’ll monitor for discussions and sentiments amongst existing and new fans, and personally engage with those communities. You’ll also act as the fan advocate for the marketing team, providing feedback and regular reports for internal dissemination.

Responsibilities:

• Creatively and proactively interact with online communities across all platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, selected blogs and message board systems.
• Work directly with creative team and client to help develop an ongoing communication strategy and publishing calendar based on marketing objectives and community feedback.
• Maintain a master list of fan-generated social profiles, sites and user-generated content.
• Answer questions and engage in conversations where necessary as directed by the team.
• Work with our conversation monitoring tools to track online conversations and sentiment.
• Compile weekly reports on all interactions, with recommendations for possible course correction.
• Help identify & engage advocates.
• Proactively communicate issues, opportunities and insights to the team.
• Host and/or participate in live chat events.

Essentially, the community manager is the social liason for the company or brand. They speak for the company publicly, they engage current and potential customers, they alert the company when there’s an issue or opportunity, and they essentially can become the voice of the customer internally. This is an essential role that needs to be filled carefully and deliberately. The business or brand needs to evaluate what their objectives are for the role and then find the right person to fill the role.

1. What are the business objectives of having a community manager?
• Awareness. Conversations are happening regardless of whether businesses and brands are listening. Having awareness of what people are saying has value. Some companies want to take the first step of listening before developing their content and conversational goals and approach. The community manager can take the first step to measure buzz, sentiment, identifying influencers and reporting on the strength and value of each social community and more.
• Engagement. The community manager’s primary role is to join and engage the communities of individuals talking about or around the business’ brands and markets. The business objective of that engagement, however, varies from company to company, brand to brand and department to department.
• Adding value. Whatever the brand or business wants to accomplish, a key objective of the community manager should be to add value. Brands live in multiple communities, and they should get to know the community to best determine how the can add value. Is it information? Deals? Humor and entertainment? Providing unique content? Answering questions? When joining existing communities, the rules of engagement are driven by the members. By studying and identifying the best ways to engage without being seen as a “spammy company just out to sell,” a business has a better chance of gaining the trust and acceptance of the entire group.
• Developing advocacy. In brand-sponsored communities, it’s often a primary goal to identify key contributors and develop them into advocates that help drive content within the community, manage the various user-driven forums, and engage other users to join and contribute. In organically-formed communities, advocacy is driven by cultivating trusted relationships within the community and building relationships from initial light touch (exposing people to the brand’s participation in the communities) to public enthusiastic support and engagement of others.
2. Aside from core communications and social media skills, what skills does the community manager need to have?
• Balance. The community manager needs to marry the goals/rules of the community with the needs of the company. Balancing these needs takes planning and a genuine interest in adding value, sharing great content and information, and having the skills and maturity to understand how to engage and respond to individuals with differing agendas and sensitivities.
• Communications and teamwork skills. While the responsibility of being the “voice” of a business can be tricky, ensuring that the “voice” of the customer gets back to and integrated into various organizations within the company.
• Drive and initiative. The community manager gets to see how people are interacting with the brand on a daily basis. This interaction is the perfect environment to grow new ideas for the brand to investigate with the hopes of engaging their customers even further. However, it’s up to the community manager to both identify and convey these potential new avenues of success.
• Genuine interest and enthusiasm for the brand. If the brand’s community manager doesn’t have genuine interest in the company’s products or market, that lack of interest will be (or become) obvious to the members of the community. The voice of the brand is the voice of the community manager; his or her interests and personality will come through in their communications. Brands need to make sure they hire for those interests as well as the core skills (communications, social media experience, currency on technology, creativity, etc.).

What criteria do you use to hire and develop your community manager? What skills have you found to be the most important?

We’ll be chatting more about social communities, including who the voice of the brand should be in a business and where social marketing lives in a company. Please join us for Creativity Coffee and voice your ideas and opinions!

Image Credit: svilen001

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?

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!

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?

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!