Social by Design

Social by Design … not a new buzz phrase, but rather a business imperative.

For years I have been professing that social media is not a tactic, but rather has to be a way of life for brands. It is not about putting up a Facebook page and a Twitter feed and posting away. Social must be at the core of a marketing strategy. Yeah, I know … you’ll think someone named “SocialSteve” is likely to say that … how self-serving of me. But wait a minute and hear me out.

The most powerful call to action a marketer could hope for is to have one friend, one colleague, one family member refer to another a suggested product or service. This is due to the fact that the recommendation comes from an objective source, a trusted source. Let’s face it; an ad is a recommendation from a most subjective source.

Social by Design means putting a brand in the hands of your target audience to produce organic sharing and word of mouth. Social by Design yields brand amplification. Maybe the one brand that understands this most of all is Coca Cola. As Coke has an objective to double their business they look at programs that are Social by Design. As they state it, they are moving from creative excellence to content excellence. They call their content strategy “liquid content” and look for their target audience to be the source of brand proliferation. This video is a must see as it crystallizes what is meant by having a strategy that is Social by Design.

Part 2 is follows:

Social by Design is much deeper than brand advertisements. It is not about running the most creative Super Bowl ad that millions of viewers see once. It is about exponential amplification of brand content. And I am not talking about advertorial amplified brand content. Ads are rarely passed on from people to people. Value information, entertaining content – that is what is passed on. And brands can certainly be part of this mix. They need to think like publishers and be comfortable placing content generation in the hands of their audience as well. User generated content (UGC) programs not only provoke calls to action but gives participants incentives to have others view content and engage.

Social by design produces crowdsourcing in an organic way. It takes time but builds strong momentum.

This week, VISA touted their new “Social by Design” program built around their sponsorship of the upcoming Summer Olympic Games. This is the first time that VISA has built out the campaign from a social strategy. They emphasize it’s not an experiment but a sign of things to come. Mr. Burke (VISA global CMO for core products) said, “Will every campaign be social by design? There’s a very good chance of that. But definitely every program will incorporate a social strategy and that’s always a question we’ll ask.”

When discussing Social by Design, I’d be remiss if I did not mention Facebook in the discussion. From my search on the topic, they are putting out the most material on the topic. Facebook references three elements of social design: Identity, Conversation and Community. Community refers to the people we know and trust and who help us make decisions. Conversation refers to the various interactions we have with our communities. Identity refers to our own sense of self and how we are seen by our communities.

While I agree with this delineation, I find their explanation biased to a Facebook property. (You can read their full explanation if you like at referenced URL.) Facebook is one important piece of social exchanges, but it is far from the only sharing platform. Recognize that one platform does not define execution of a social design. People have numerous social identities on a multitude of platforms. They listen and engage in numerous ways (both online and off). The community (or people that help them make decisions as Facebook puts it) are clearly much wider than solely Facebook friends.

Social by Design means that the strategy starts with social thinking. It is not an afterthought. Here is how one should go about Social by Design:

1) Customer insights – target market wants, needs, interest, behaviors, influence sphere, purchase path, digital usage patterns
2) Thematic brainstorming – what are the topics that will attract your target audience and likely activate them
3) Motivation strategy – how will you get your target audience to get involved and engage
4) Proliferation plan – how will the content (brand, UGC, and earned media) flow exponentially

As you will notice, the social by design approach is heavily weighted towards your consumer – much more so about them than your brand. Social by design emphasizes what I call associated marketing. By associated marketing I mean that you look to have your brand associated with something that is very important to your target audience. Your brand consistently reinforces what is important to your audience as opposed to talking about your brand.

Once you start on the Social by Design path as suggested in the four steps above, then you can bolt on your existing marketing approach and plans as a next step. But start by being Social by Design.

Make It Happen!
Social Steve

Know What Successful Social Media Looks Like

I am really astounded at much of the conversation that the Facebook IPO has ignited. It appears that most people are equating Facebook and their valuation to a barometer for all of social media marketing success. This is ludicrous. Facebook’s valuation is simply speculation on Facebook’s revenue and profitability. Facebook’s revenue (at least so far) has been a measure of their ad revenue. Let’s be clear … Facebook ad revenue is simply a “digital display” offering. Display, although an important element of a holistic digital marketing plan, is not social media. So in the face of all the Facebook misconceptions, I want to set the record straight on social media success … you need to understand what it looks like before you can make sure you have a strategy to get it!

As I have defined in the past, social media is the combination of social + media or seeking or enjoying the companionship of others by the means of digital communication. I am a marketing executive and thus I look at social media from a marketing perspective. (Yes, there are other uses of social media beyond marketing.) As a marketer, we look to change consumer behavior and drive transactions. That is what successful marketers do.

Thus, as a social media strategist and marketing executive, I look at social media as one piece on an integrated marketing plan to change behavior and drive transactions. So it is those actual social media activities we need to concentrate on to change behaviors and drive transactions.

In the past, I have used the social media marketing funnel to describe the progression of changing behaviors and driving transactions. While the funnel shows a “typical” progression of the customer journey, the emergence of the digital world has turned typical to atypical. The funnel shows a linear sequence, even with its cyclic nature where advocacy re-feeds awareness. My experience examining customer behavior for the brands I work with reveals some slight variations. Yes, the funnel states are still there, and individual consumers can traverse the funnel states in a linear fashion, but we see more and more variations away from a linear movement as shown in the diagram below.

As we examine the new construct of social media relationships to change behavior and drive transactions, notice “conversion” is not part of the social media activities. Awareness, Consideration, and Loyalty states “tee up” a conversion. Social media is not a strong channel to promote a sale. (Yes, there are some examples where companies have done this successfully, but 95% of the time, social media should not be for direct conversion.) Think of forming a social media strategy to increases Awareness, Consideration, Loyalty, and Advocacy. Social media provokes these behaviors and these behavior changes drive transactions.

Awareness promotes consideration. Awareness can also drive a transaction. Consideration yields conversions and has a higher probability of doing so than simple awareness. After a purchase is made (conversion), social media activities can help to generate loyalty. Loyalty can result in repeat purchases as pictorially shown with a double arrow in the diagram above. Loyal customers can become advocates as well. You should think about post-sale follow up content and engagement to move your customers to a loyalty and advocacy state. And once you produce advocates you have a most powerful outcome. Advocates inspire awareness, consideration and loyalty. They work as the most trusted source of marketing your brand.

So when I say “Know What Successful Social Media Looks Like,” it means that you have a strategy and plan that consciously addresses how you are going to use social media to measurably increase awareness, consideration, loyalty, and advocacy. Not only do you need the plan, but you must measure results of your plan. Only in the rarest of rare situations does a social media plan hit perfection out of the gates. You modify your social tactics based on empirical results.

And how would you measure social media results? At MediaWhiz (the marketing agency where I head the social media practice), we have something called the Social Media BrandAction™ Index. This index is a complicated algorithm that has four sub-index variables that are measure – Awareness, Consideration, Loyalty, and Advocacy. Here are the inputs to the Social BrandAction™ Index.

Even if you have not derived a social media index equation, you should measure these parameters in the groupings as above and have a sense of your social media performance.

So hopefully now you have an idea what successful social media looks like. It is an ongoing effort that changes behavior and drives transactions. It is a continuous program that produces measurable results in awareness, consideration, loyalty, and advocacy. All of these elements contribute to the ultimate goal of conversion. But they not only contribute to conversion, they work to continue the relationship with the customers and strengthen brand reputation, loyalty, commitment and on going word of mouth marketing. Concentrate on your brand’s appropriate social activities that increase measured awareness, consideration, loyalty, and advocacy.

Make It Happen!
Social Steve

The Facebook Issue No One Wants To Discuss

So, you are tired of reading about Facebook this past week. From the controversy with GM pulling its $10M Facebook ad program early in the week to the Facebook IPO on Friday. And then the surprise wedding of Zuckerberg to his long time girlfriend on Saturday. And in all this coverage, no one put the real Facebook issue on the table.

Everyone is asking if Facebook ads provide a winning ROI and frankly that is the wrong question. Facebook should not be your social media program. It should be part of your social media program, but social media is bigger. And for that matter, social media is only a part of marketing (and other important business functions as well like customer support). To look at every single slice of a marketing program and see if there is an ROI does not make sense, at all. I’ll explain shortly.

Before I explain the ROI issue, let me first rewind the tape from this past week. I was asked to provide comments and answer some questions for a number of publications. As is always the case, my comments were taken out of context. I was asked about GM publicizing that they were pulling their Facebook ads and my thoughts on that. Here was my complete response …

“WSJ reports that General Motors plans to stop advertising on Facebook as GM marketing chief Joel Ewanick said the auto maker ‘is definitely reassessing our advertising on Facebook, although the content is effective and important.’

The news could not come at a worse time for Facebook, but states some strong commentary on both Facebook and GM.

First GM … this is the same company that went before Congress looking for hand-outs to save their fledging company. Was Ford in front of Congress? No. Is it a coincidence that Ford has an extremely productive social media program that is fully integrated into other marketing programs? No. What Ford does, that is absent from GMs social media effort, is that they have a strategy, plan, execution, and metrics that integrate ALL owned, earned, and PAID media endeavors. They do not have an isolated Facebook paid media program. Furthermore, I question if Ewanick understands that, on average, only 16% of brand postings on Facebook reach their ‘like’s’ newsfeed as revealed at the fMC on 2/29/11. He should look at Facebook’s reach generator (paid offering from Facebook) with regards to “content (being) effective and important.” The fact is that GM does not know how to integrate social media into a winning business strategy. The issue is not Facebook ads.

As for Facebook … this news is very detrimental for Facebook right before their IPO. It paints a picture that a struggling company cannot rely on Facebook to help turn them around, but the same could be said about any pure-play marketing advertisement program. The reality is that Facebook advertisement, by itself, is not a great use of precious marketing dollars. Facebook has done a poor job positioning and describing how their platform drives quantifiable business results. Facebook is not the equivalent of having a social media strategy and it is time for Facebook to communicate how they are PART of a winning solution and stop making ill-advised marketers believe they are THE social media solution.”

I was also asked what I thought Facebook going public would mean to the company and marketers using Facebook as one of their marketing channels. I provided some bullet comments as I will have an article in eContentMag.com (http://www.econtentmag.com/default.aspx) this coming week covering this topic. Here are the snippets I provided:

* As Forrester’s Josh Bernoff SVP, Idea Development tweeted this past week, “Buying Facebook shares? The original investors took their risks & will now get their rewards. Now the risk is passed on to you.” But investors are not the only ones taking on risk; marketers now have added risk with Facebook if they put all their social eggs solely in the Facebook basket.
* The fact that Facebook is now a public company means Zuckerberg and team need to answer to quarterly results.
* While Mark may continue to talk about the importance of sharing what’s going on with your connections, there will be deeper focus on revenue generation. The real question is whether Facebook can carry off both sides successfully.
* As Facebook feels increased revenue pressure, I see a potential user conflict.
* As Facebook introduces more ad and revenue tactics (such as the recently announced reach generator) it will be interesting to see how users react. It will be a delicate balance for Facebook to keep usage high while introducing greater revenue generation.
* Keeping Wall Street, brand advertisers, and users all happy and content at the same time will be one massive effort.

Here are the various places that published edited versions of my perspective and POV (point of view):

* USA Today – GM to stop buying ads on Facebook
* Media Post – Facebook Ads Need Traditional Measurement Tools To Determine ROI
* Media Bistro – GM’s Decision Not to Advertise On Facebook Not Such a Big Deal After All
* Business Insider – What Everyone On Madison Avenue Is Saying About Facebook
* New York Post – Social downshift: GM slashes $10M in Facebook ads

The real issues facing marketers is not Facebook ROI. Let’s start by looking at consumer buying behavior. Today, there are many components and influences that in totality lead to a purchase. For a moment, let’s just concentrate on digital use. We need to understand the plight of the consumer. They may hear about a product from a friend on a social community or in an email. They may look for the product or product category on Google or other search platforms. Seeing an ad on Facebook or other websites may work to remind them of their consideration. They may look for reviews online. A promotional ad may trigger an action. All of these things contribute to the purchase path and are important elements. Are we simply going to give “the last click” the credit for the conversion? Can we measure other contributing factors?

You see this gets complicated in the digital world we live in. I did not even mention offline marketing activities. They contribute to the purchase decision as well and make this ROI discussion even more difficult.

Thus, it is not an issue whether Facebook ads have an ROI for marketers, but rather there is a need for marketers to use digital display ads (Facebook and others) INTEGRATED in digital strategy. A digital strategy that includes owned, earned, and paid media. If you look at consumer digital behavior, they do not just go one place and make a purchase decision. They are using different tools (search, ads, social, reviews, etc) to make purchase decisions.

“Marketing ROI” is what should be measured. We should not try to place an ROI on each element of marketing. Yes, we should measure variables that show success or lack there of, but ROI is not a realistic measurement of Facebook ads. There are KPIs (key performance indicators) that should be measured such as click-throughs and impressions. Once again, these are attributes that “build up” to a sales conversion, but they should not be specific to the ROI equation.

It is time for marketers to have a much greater degree of knowledge and understanding of customer behavior and how they are using digital in their purchase decisions. Marketers must develop a marketing strategy and plan that INTEGRATES the digital channels their target market uses. Marketers must determine how they will measure each of the piece of their strategy, but ROI should be left as a metric for evaluation of the entire marketing program.

Make It Happen!
Social Steve

A Real Look at Social Media Influence

We talk about influence as if it is something new. Actually the definition has not changed in the past 1000 years or so, but tactics for influence engagement certainly have changed due to the digital revolution. And while many might consider my use of the term “digital revolution” trite, I think it deserves the entire superfluous connotation as I intended it to be. The fact is that the digital world, and even more importantly, the related behavior changes that have transpired are extremely important. Thus, we must look at “influence” as it relates to digital behaviors.

Let’s start with a couple basic definitions to ground us on the same plane …

Influence is “the capacity or power of persons or things to be a compelling force on or produce effects on the actions, behavior, opinions, etc., of others.” For marketers, influence is only valuable if it produces actions or changes behavior or opinions of others. This distinctive point is often missed. So as marketers, we want to focus on those individuals that do something to cause an action or behavior change in a significant number of people that favors the brand we represent. “Influence marketing focus on specific key individuals (or types of individual) rather than the target market as a whole.”

So before we have the “Klout (popular social influence scoring platform) should we care debate”, let’s make sure we understand why influence is important to brands. And second to that, let’s make sure we understand the types of influencers that are valuable to brands. I break this down in three groups:

1) Traditional influencers – these are the individuals that traditional PR agencies court. They are pinnacle media establishments (Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post) and celebrity-like figures (Mario Batali, Roger Ebert, Tim Gunn) in a specific area of subject expertise.
2) Emerging (digital) influencers – bloggers that have established a large audience following and drive thought leadership in a specific space. The poster child of emerging digital influencers is Robert Scoble. Scoble is a tech blogger whose rise to vast influence started from strong participation and guidance in Microsoft’s NetMeeting support newsgroups, and for maintaining a NetMeeting information website. Another example of an influential blogger emergence from nowhere is Tavi Gevinson who commanded quite a following for her fashion blog. At the prime age of 13, she was a special guest at New York Fashion week. (It still astounds me how she came up in conversations at ELLE Magazine when I worked with them.) Emerging digital influencers could also be blogs (PitchFork, Mashable, Gizmodo) rather than individuals by name.
3) Influencers by connection – here we have your everyday “Max” and “Maya.” People who have hundreds of friends … no let me correct that … hundreds of Fac book friends and Twitter followers. These people make posts and tweets and their connected friends react. “Saw a great movie.” “New sports drink was killer.” Their posts create response and action. If you represent a brand, you want to court these people to produce brand action.

Now we are ready to talk about social media influence and break through all the nonsense being thrown about. Start by answering these questions. What do you want to accomplish? (Actually, this question should be the start of every social media and marketing endeavor.) Are you looking for earned media (mentions of your brand on an influential blog) or people to share your brand with all their friends/connections? Is the influencer expecting or will they be motivated by receiving something in return? These are the sort of things you should determine first.

And before we get into the influence tool and platform discussion, let me say this right off the bat (to set the record straight, maybe raise some controversy) … a Klout score, by itself, is meaningless. Giving Mari Smith a free test drive on a new Chevy because she has a Klout score of 78 (very high) is down right stupid. Mari is a strong social media and relationship marketing thought leader. She is not an automotive influencer. If awarding her a free test drive for a week would even lead to a tweet like “Love the new Chevy,” I think her followers could smell something fishy.

Once you have YOUR influence marketing plan defined, then you are ready to talk about tools and platforms to assist you. Think about the types of influencers you want to work with as defined above. Probably you want a mix of the different types, but think about how you are going to connect with each to build a relationship. Think about the action you want to motivate them to do. Think about the bandwidth you are willing to allocate for each.

Now a bit about the influence tools. First off, it is important to remember that digital influence is new and emerging so I am certain that we will see much greater advancements over the next 18 months. The minds behind influencer platforms realize that it is not just about accurately scoring influence, but more importantly to allow brands to determine the influencer in their market space AND to make it easier to connect with these people. When both of these functions become easier for brand marketers to execute, then we will see the true value of digital influence tools come to fruition.

Let’s start with Klout since it is probably the best known influence tool. It is good to see Klout moving from a generic influence score and starting to score on topics. After all, if you are a wine and spirits company and you are about to launch a new line, do you really care about Mashable’s high influence score or are you more likely to want to identify nightlife and alcoholic beverage influencers. Personally, I do think there is too much focus on one’s Klout score for making important decisions. I do not think it tells enough of a story and individual’s specific influence capabilities to spawn brand action. At least not yet.

Kred is an emerging influence platform that is grounded in technical innovation from PeopleBrowser. They provide an influence index much like Klout, but they also produce an Outreach score. So not only is it important to score influence from a reach and subject matter expert perspective, but it is also valuable to understand a scoring for the degree of outbound engagement the individual performs. Kred also has “community” or topical social scoring. One of Kred’s differentiators is that they are transparent with regards to their scoring attributes. They literally show you how points are accumulated.

Appinions takes a slightly different approach. Appinions is a query based influence tool. If I want to understand who the influencers are of automotive or any other area, you can form a specific query to do so. Appinions does contextual scoring versus individual scoring. Contextual scoring measures the degree of action taken by others (quote you/blog about you, link to you, retweet you) based on what you say.

Klout, Kred, and Appinions pretty much provide you a list of emerging digital influencers. If you want to know who are the people talking about your brand and having strong influence on their connections, you can use a social media monitoring tool such as Radian6, Sysomos, and others to 1) find who mentions your brand, and then 2) evaluate their influence or authority level. Having used both Radian6 and Sysomos, I can tell you this approach is very labor intensive. I am looking for a better solution. I do not think anyone is there yet, but SocialChorus is in the right direction. They offer a way to identify “influencer by connections” and reach out to them to attempt to create brand ambassadors. This is often done on a rewards basis, so I throw some caution there. Sometimes your actions might be perceived a “bought influence” and if that is the perception, your influence marketing can backfire on you.

Moving forward, all of these platforms are opening up their APIs. This means that one company can do the influence scoring and provide another platform the data. I think what we will see going forward is integrated solutions among platform providers such that some will do the scoring and other will handle the engagement activities. This will be a power combined solution.

One of the things that none of these tools do well, is to cross correlate an individual on all the channels. For instance, the blogging I do here has no contribution to an influence score. If you are reading my post (or anyone else’s) there is a chance that I have some influence due to my social media guidance. But there is no correlation between the SocialSteve Blog, the @SocialSteve twitter account, and my quotes as Steve Goldner that show up in some marketing industry online trade blogs and news sites. This does not play into the algorithm of the influence tool.
There are a handful of key points you should consider in making influence marketing part of your strategy:

1) From a marketer’s perspective, not everyone is equal. Those that have a strong reach and following AND can drive brand action deserve greater attention and TLC (tender, loving care) from brand marketers as opposed to the general public.
2) There are different types of influencers that you want to engage with and build strong relationships with.
3) A platform or tool should not determine how you go about influence marketing. You should determine who you want to reach, how you plan to engage and go about building a relationship, and then determine the platform(s) to help you get there.

Make It Happen!
Social Steve

A Marketing Lesson about Brand Proliferation using Social Media

It happens just about every week. Someone asks me about social media because they are confused as a result of hearing some mumbo-jumbo. There are way too many “experts” complicating simple matters. Social media is very easy to understand if you get in the right frame of mind.

So here goes … let me give you the same straightforward lesson I ran through earlier this week.

Let’s start with the diagram below:

Brand

Your brand is at the core of it all. According to the American Marketing Association dictionary, a brand is the “name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other sellers.” Everything starts with the product or service you have and the identity you build for that product/service. You set the tone.

As we look for a target audience to socialize a brand, the brand must have value and distinction. Think about how you tell your friends about the places you go, the products you use, the services that make your life simpler. If you have a strong product/service value, chances are they will be talked about in a positive light and recommended. If you have a weak offering, your short comings will be socialized. Social media can not control your brand perception. Social media magnifies users’ experiences.

Content

Once you have developed a strong product and distinct branding around that product, then you need a content strategy. Think like a publisher. A publisher worries about producing content that people like and want to read or view. They create ways to make sure people come back and consume more. Your content should address specific areas of interest for your target market and not necessarily talk about your brand. The topics you cover should be tangentially related to your offerings. If you produce compelling content on a regular basis, you have the opportunity to engage with your audience. You have the opportunity to stay top of mind with regards to your brand. And you have an added reason for people to share some aspect of your brand. Content sharing is part of every day life and if the content that is shared is associated with your brand, that increases brand awareness and word of mouth marketing. Do not under estimate the importance of content as part of your marketing and social media strategy and plan.

Sharing

Once you have a solid content foundation and plan, then you are ready to start thinking about social media. Not before. Go out and engage in conversations relevant to your brand. I guarantee you that you will get in a conversation that hits on an area that you have covered in one of your pieces. You can then refer someone to that piece.

When you have content, you can post references to them, tweet about them. This starts the sharing momentum. Do not be disillusioned at slow starts. It takes time to build a reputation for having valued content that people share and refer back to. But stick with it.

From a tactical perspective, make sure that your content is easy to share. Consider social buttons and widgets incorporated on all your communication and content.

Advocates

As you start to see your content getting shared, you will find specific people that actively share your pieces on a regularly basis. You start to develop advocates. Make sure you reach out to them and say thanks. Engage with them one on one. Learn more about things that matter to them. Your advocates are not only the greatest ambassadors of your brand, but they also help you shape your brand such that it is stronger and of greater value for your target audience. (On a personal note, I have been blessed with a number of great advocates of my content. A big shout out and thank you to @easyleads, @Cannes53, @mantispulse, @dbvickery, @design58, @socialgreg, @ideaqueen30, @derekreesenyc, @TonyaHallRadio, @mikepoynton just to name a few, that have been advocates of my work.)

What I have defined here is really the mindset for a successfully integrated marketing – social media effort. If you want to dive into content strategy here are some other recommended article I wrote:

* 7 Tips for Blogging – Maybe Your Most Important Social Media Activity for Business
* Content is Super Important !!! (But Not King)
* 4 Ingredients to a Winning Content Strategy

If you are interested in increasing your engagement with your target audience to increase sharing and advocacy please check out:
* The Most Important Word for Marketing
* Why the Social Media Person Needs to Be More than Just the Social Media Person
* Digital PR and Outreach for Important Social Media Conversations

Winning social media is within your grasp. Don’t over complicate it!

Make It Happen,
Social Steve

Revisiting the Importance of Owned-Earned-Paid Media Integration

If you are not approaching owned, earned and paid media holistically as a one set integrated strategy and execution, you are not producing optimal results. No doubt!

Well over one year ago, I wrote a piece “Integrating Owned Media, Earned Media, and Paid Media.” I emphasized that a well coordinated plan weaves strategy and execution across owned, earned and paid media at three time intervals: pre-reveal, reveal, and post reveal.

As we now look at how social media practice and platforms are evolving, the lines between these media are becoming more blurred. Take Facebook for instance. As a brand, when you post some content, that is owned media working for your brand, right? But if you look at the actual Facebook rules and user behavior, maybe not – or at least maybe you should have incorporated some paid media to really maximize results. Confused? Let me explain.

Up until Feb. 29, 2012 (Facebook’s fMC) most brands thought that you post something on your Facebook wall and it will show up on your “likes’” newsfeed. Thus, simply placing “owned media” to reach your audience. Well actually, that is not what happens. It turns out that Facebook revealed that on average only 16% of your likes see your posts. This is due to their edge ranking – a Facebook algorithm that decides which stories appear in each user’s newsfeed. The edge ranking algorithm is based upon a) the degree of affinity between the person or brand posting and their “likes”, b) the post content type (picture, text, URL, etc.) , and c) the timeliness (or freshness) of the post. If you want to up your deliverability percentage, you can do two things: 1) work on the your factors that influence your edge ranking in relationship to your users such as number of responses and engagements as well as the three edge ranking criteria just mentioned, and 2) use Facebook newly announced reach generator to guarantee delivery to at least 70% of your likes. By the way, reach generator is a paid service offered by Facebook. So now your “owned media” effort can turn better results with some “paid media.”

I’ll give you another example relating earned media and paid media. In the social practice I head up at my agency (MediaWhiz LLC, a Hyper Marketing Inc. company) we have a social offering we deliver to clients called “digital influence and outreach.” Essentially digital influence and outreach is finding influencers within the brands vertical and pitching them content relevant to the brand. But it is more complicated than that. No influencer wants to be pitched brand content, understandably so. In order to be successful capturing earned media from influencers, you need to understand their wants, their needs. They want to be successful with their audience. Thus you must be sensitive to how the influencer appeals to their audience. You must produce content that works for the influencer. You must assess the intersection of what they want to accomplish and what you want to accomplish for your brand and NOT sell.

So where does the paid media come in? If some influential blogger is going to carry some content that references your brand in a story, it is beneficial for their reader to see other reinforcements of your brand via paid ads. Not to mention that the blogger is likely to favor your content if you support their blog with some paid media. I am not suggesting that you explicitly pay them off for support of your brand. But I am suggesting that you consider some paid placements where your brand will be highlighted to create some synergy. Think of this as added brand reminders for the influencers’ readers.

When you look at combining and integrating owned, earned and paid media consider these benefits for each media contribution to the overall big picture:
Owned media – should be used to constantly reinforce who you are and what you stand for. Your owned media is not an advertisement for your brand, but rather well thought out content that crafts the story of your brand and the expertise and value you deliver.

Earned media – here you should actively follow, engage and interact with topical influencers to build strong relationships, and work to stimulate content from others. I often call this associated marketing … it associates your brand with independent credible sources. The sources are viewed as authentic (no brand subjectivity) and they are trusted.

Paid media – is important. Social media (both owned and earned media as well as sharing) does not replace paid media. Social media provides an opportunity to make paid media work better. Paid media not only creates awareness, but also supports owned and earned media in that it reminds people of the brand.
While consumers do not draw lines between these media, each type does invoke a different consumer feeling or emotion. Think about how you react or value the different types from a brand. How do you feel about great brand content; an “authority” mentioning a brand; and seeing an ad from a brand? They hit different chords. Each plays a different, non-equal value. But as a brand, if you plan a coordinated media effort with different touch points of owned, earned and paid media, you have an opportunity to resonate on multiple emotions. And the impact on the consumer is stronger when they are orchestrated together.

So where do you begin? That is really dependent upon many factors and I could never recommend something here that works for all. But I will give you a few general pointers. Start by considering the points outlined above for each media type. Stay committed to owned media … constantly produce material that keeps your audience engaged and wanting to come back for more information and/or entertainment. Stay active building relationships with influencers. This takes time but “earning” the coverage and mention is quite valuable. And with regards to paid media, determine appropriate spend levels and periods focused around compelling events related to your brand … a release of a product, seasonal change that has direct ramifications to your offering, etc.

So many people say think big. I agree. But thinking big means thinking across all your media platforms to integrate your big creative ideas.

Make It Happen,
Social Steve

What You Say Versus What People Hear – A Simple Little Social Media Reminder

It has happened to all of us. We say something and it gets misinterpreted. Some 30 years ago, we began to see this with email communication. And now we see it even more problematic with social media.

The reality is that written and digital communication diminish (sometimes completely lose) the personality behind the sender. There is no inflection of voice and no body language being conveyed to complement the words being expressed. Do not discount the value lost.

Then there is complete stupidity with regards to the use of social media. One example is the Kenneth Cole debacle. During an up-rise in Cairo they tweeted – “Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online at URL -KC”. Another, maybe less known blunder was served by the hands of Walmart. Shortly after an earthquake struck Mexico and Walmart Mexico tweeted “Now we really made other stores shake with our prices.”

These examples are obvious poor attempts at being funny. Sometimes called snarky. Let me put it to you this way with regards to being snarky. If you feel that you do not have to appeal to an entire audience and you want to make some chuckle, feel free to be snarky. If you are a brand that wants to attract all, you need to be sensitive to all. Snarkiness rarely resonates with all. Snarkiness works for some people… people who determine, “I don’t care about the rest of the world. This is who I am.” If you are comfortable saying that, go for it. More power to you. (I have even felt this way at various stages in my life.) But brands do not have this luxury. And the voice of the brand should not as well.

Sometime back, I wrote an article “The Most Important Word for Marketing.” The article emphasized the importance of empathy – having a strong sensitivity for the feelings, thoughts, and/or attitudes of others. So being a strong social media brand communicator and engager is not just a simple matter of being snarky or not.

Earlier in my career, I often invoked the 24 hour rule on some of my email communications. That is, when I had something very important to say or I was addressing a controversial subject, I would write an email, save it, and then read it the next day to make sure the correspondence was of an appropriate tone. Unfortunately, we do not have that luxury in the digitally social world that is now. Timely communication and engagement are mandatory. Another issue is that our digital communication is brief and short on detail and explanation – often limited to 140 characters yet alone 140 words. So there are definite challenges.

While we may not have 24 hours to think it over, I still strongly suggest you take a few minutes, at least, and think before you hit the send button. Also, make your limited words count. Consider the following:

1) What is the intent of your communication? Is that what is actually written?
2) Think about how things will be received and heard as opposed to what you are writing and sending. This is often a fine line, but an imperative line that cannot be ignored.
3) Social media use by brands is not about selling, but rather about building relationships. The reality is that we are building relationships to eventually sell and build loyalty. So as you communicate your brand story, don’t think about what you are selling, think about what people are buying. Once again, a very fine line. What or how are people buying into your brand?
4) Given the evolution of a social world empowered by digital media, your brand really is not your brand. It is the people’s brand. Work to grow comfortable with this change and understand the ramifications.
5) Overall, be more astute to the existing and potential consumers of your brand and maybe just a little less about your company.

I do not think that anything I put forward here is earth shattering. Certainly you can read this and say yes, of course. But I cannot tell you how much I see this common sense fail in execution. Therefore, I feel it is necessary to run through a quick checklist that addresses the issues highlighted here before you hit the send button. It doesn’t take much time, but the quick confirmation will make your overall social media efforts drive stronger relationships and better measured results.

Also, remember what I stated upfront with regards to the shortcomings of digital communication … the lack of personal interaction. Thus, you must work harder to make your digital communication more humanistic, sincere, and real.

Make it Happen!
Social Steve