A Social Media Savvy CEO?

In one of my classes, the guest CEO/chairman speaker was Shelly Lazarus (Ogilvy & Mather). When asked about her involvement/interest in social media, she mentioned that it was not yet worth getting into it, as nobody is sure of the returns on that investment. With all the buzz about social media, I found the comment startling. However, that seems to be the view echoed by the CEO’s of the top 100 companies of the Fortune 500, as highlighted in a survey conducted by UBERCEO.

Key Takeaways:
• None of the Fortune 100 CEOs have a blog.
• Only two CEOs have Twitter accounts.
• No more than 19% of CEO’s have a personal Facebook page
• Just 13 CEO’s have LinkedIn profiles, only 3 having more than 10 connections.

As discussed in class, social media does provide an excellent platform for executives to connect and engage with their company's customers. And a lot of CEO’s are just doing that. A great example of a CEO who has used social media to his company's benefit is Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, who has over 1.6 million followers on Twitter. Clearly, Zappos (now acquired by Amazon) is not a Fortune 100 company, but it's of respectable size with roughly $1 billion in annual revenue.

The key question that comes to my mind is this: Is it realistic to expect that Fortune 100 CEOs can engage their customers with social media well? Clearly, the CEO’s face a lot of regulatory constraints, which places limits on what they can communicate. In addition, they risk offending customers, partners or the Board of Directors with the added risk of litigation. Another key factor is time. Can a CEO really follow “conventional” wisdom around being social and be willing to tweet four or five 100-character statements a day? That’s a lot of time for a CEO. Even if he or she manages to do it, do consumers really want to connect and engage with the CEOs of these companies? Warren Buffett has less than 31,000 Twitter followers! One of the most revered investors has a miniscule number of followers in comparison to Ashton Kutcher and Britney Spears. So, it's probably safe to say that consumers are not going to be terribly excited to tweet with Vikram Pandit, the CEO of Citigroup or Brian T. Moynihan, CEO of Bank of America. Most likely, all they care is the safety of their money in their bank account.

So, essentially, there are two sides to the story. Social media tools help the CEO to directly meet real customers and employees, without getting filtered by layers of mid management. In a way, it provides a first-hand knowledge gathering and monitoring framework which was unavailable to previous generation of CEO’s and can help them to be in tune with reality. At the same time, a half-hearted approach by CEOs will be easily picked up by customers and can cause incalculable damage to the brand. Social media is increasingly being used by brands in more sophisticated and enlightened ways and the CEO should exude that.

The other side is setting the balance between listening and disseminating. Initially, the CEO would have their CMO’s ghost write a blog to broadcast information, but didn’t pay much attention to comments from customers. That has changed now. Now, it’s more likely to be a two-way interaction and the pace of feedback makes it increasingly personalized. And every CEO will have a learning curve to get this balance right.

In the future, the Board of Directors will factor in “Social media skills” for evaluating potential CEO’s. So, this will have to be part of their arsenal to communicate with the Twitter and Facebook generation.

To quote Glen Hilton, CEO of ImageX media: A colleague asked “Whats your ROI on twitter”. I asked him what his ROI was with our relationship. He got it.
And in a crisis, having this kind of relationship with customers is invaluable. Just ask Akio Toyoda.

Aardvark is Terrible

Can someone please enlighten me on Google's decision to buy Aardvark for 50M? I have spent approximately 5 hours on the website today trying to figure out what Google saw in this company.

Things I have learned:

1) Site only has 90k users
2) The "experts" are pretty terrible
My question: Who is the most famous HBS professor?
Answer: This is very vague. There are many famous professors, especially the finance faculty.
3) Confused why I can't simply ask a question on my facebook status or twitter and get a response that way.

Thoughts on the site?

Search: What's the Big Deal?

Our class with Professor Rutz was a second go-around for me, and this time there were 3 key points that I took away:

• There is a value to both paid and unpaid search placement
• We are not the average internet users--while SOM students know "where to look" for organic search, the average internet user still seems to be fooled by paid search placement at the top of the screen
• It's crucial to test your model against a control group decision strategy to make sure that it's a useful tool, not just a pretty spreadsheet

However, a year after hearing the lecture for the first time, I've also got some opinions (and data) of my own.

Google's search functionality is losing ground. What's important now and for the future?

• Social search. Facebook has now overtaken Google in terms of page views, and in many cases is now the #1 referrer to any given website. That means we're now discovering branded content via our social graph more often than we're looking for anonymously linked content. This seems to be especially important for long tail content where consumers may not be seeking out the brand by name.
  
• Real time search. Twitter now serves 19 billion searches per month, more than both Yahoo and Bing (though still woefully short of Google's 88 billion). Where Google's algorithm focuses on linked content (giving particular weight to content that has been around a long time), Twitter turns this on its head and focuses on current content. This seems to be particularly important for brands who are focusing on thought leadership (policy issues, consultants, VC's, celebrities, journalists, etc)
  
• Push search. Foursquare "pushes" information to users about brands in their immediate area, rather than waiting for users to seek it out. Foursquare also rewards users for seeking out new information/brands. This puts control back in the hands of marketers, and seems to be very useful for consumer goods and local businesses.
  

I also vehemently disagree that SEO is something that should be left to the IT staff. The tools and techniques of Search Engine Optimization are at the fingertips of every marketer. Online copy should be written with SEO in mind. You can find more information on Copyblogger, and a bit more nuts and bolts from Avinash Kaushik.

How do you search for information?

Cause-Driven Social Media Management

In Social Media Management we’ve talked a lot about leveraging new media to pitch and push products, an angle of marketing I’ve never before had the opportunity to contemplate - there just aren’t all that many professional forest ecologists selling Snuggies, in my field…

I enrolled in the course because I am interested in working in the ENGO (environmental NGO) sphere, and wanted to learn to use the tools and strategy associated with social media and traditional marketing to disseminate ideas, rather than products, and to enroll supporters in causes and institutional missions, rather than purchasing sodas and Snuggie fan clubs. I’ve relished the opportunity to study the product side, however, because it’s so …different from anything I’ve been exposed to before, and has provided me with a diversity of food for thought to mull over as I think about how conservation practitioners can improve upon selling the product that is environmental conservation.

I’ve been having a lot of fun familiarizing myself with the social innovation/entrepreneurship enthusiast communities online this semester, and have built up a robust list of nonprofit and social entrepreneurship twitter feeds to follow, in addition to an already substantial blogroll. This post, “How Nonprofits can Leverage Geolocation Services,’ is a great example of the approach I’m trying to take in thinking about the role of new media in the ENGO sphere. I was particularly interested in the fact that Kanter is thinking about how FourSquare can be put to work for nonprofits, since it’s a question that I expect any nonprofits I begin working for this summer will be seeking to answer, as well.

Meredith

Digital Footprint

Digital footprint has been on my mind since I have been giving you guys feedback on your projects. This was emailed to me, and I thought that I would share this with you not so that you can apply for the grant (which of course you are welcome to do), but as an example of how valuable these skills are and how little companies know how to do effective digital marketing. Note the price tage = $1,000,000 per year (details to be discussed).



As background, NineSigma is in the innovation brokerage business. A company (the remains anonymous) solicits RFP (request for propsal) for an idea that requires a significant amount of creativity.



By the way, I probably will not apply for this, even though 1 mil per year could pay for a lot of post-docs!

Let's Talk Metrics, or What to do with TMI

One of the problems with social media metrics is there's just too much information available. In class today I mentioned a handful of links:

Social Media Metrics Tools

View more presentations from Devon Smith.

But where do you stop? Which metrics are the most important? Before you start talking strategy, it's helpful to get a lay of the land. We've talked about this as a "social media footprint," and I tend to like that image. You're looking for the digital footprints of a brand, collect enough of them and you can start to see the (social media) path they've chosen for themselves. Here are some of the metrics that made sense for Vocalo.org:

Social Media Footprint

View more documents from Devon Smith.

But once you know what you've got, how do you know where to spend your effort and monetary resources? One way is to create an index. Marc Schiller mentioned this. Basically, you want to give concrete values to both your efforts (things you post), and your impact (things other people post). I've worked on two different indicies, one for Facebook, and one for Twitter. It's a much longer report, so just check out page 5-10 for facebook, and pages 23-25 for Twitter.

Social Media in Theatre

View more documents from Devon Smith.

This was an example across firms in a single industry, you could also think of looking at a single firm across time.

Good luck!

30 Tips for Using Social Media in Your Business

30 Tips for Using Social Media in Your Business

How to Use Social Networking Sites to Drive Business

How to Use Social Networking Sites to Drive Business

WhoseTube? (monetizing social media)

The lead singer of OK Go, Damian Kulash, Jr., has an interesting op-ed in today's NYT that raises some hard questions about "monetizing" social media in the music industry.

For those of you who didn't catch it, OK Go's homemade YouTube video for "Here It Goes Again" was one of the hottest viral videos of 2006 and essentially launched that band's career. Many of those views came from blogs and websites that promoted the video by embedding it on their page. The band knows it, and their record label, EMI, knows it.

Unfortunately, EMI is now preventing YouTube from enabling the embedding capability of OK Go's newest videos. (otherwise, I would embed one or two to the post for ya'll to see). So, no one can post OK Go's videos to a blog or facebook feed or whatever.

EMI argues they are doing this because YouTube won't pay them any royalties when the video is viewed from non-youtube.com websites. Kulash argues that the economic benefits of wide-spread viralization of their videos would far outweigh the lost revenues from those not required to visit youtube.com to view them. I tend to agree.

But whose to blame here really? How has YouTube not been able to monetize embedded videos successfully? (and if they can't, why do I still see those annoying ads in every YouTube video I watch?). And why is EMI so close-minded when they saw the success that viral videos brought their clients 4 years ago?

Moreover, is the progress of successfully monetizing social media actually limiting the opportunities available for users to those which can be successfully monetized at all?

How Social Media Has Changed Us...

This post from Mashable is really interesting for anyone who has not already seen it.

In business school, it's all too easy to think of social media as just impacting the world of marketing but its influence runs much deeper than that.

I also strongly agree with the article's strong position against social media critics and their reasoning.

Monday Night Social Media Event at Black Bear

I got passed along to me info about an event run my New Media Haven. They are bringing in two guest speakers and are giving social media people time to network. It looks like there will be a lot of people attending. The event runs from 6-8. I may be there for the tail end.

To sign up and get more info, you can go to:

http://newmediahaven.eventbrite.com/

Simple Indulgence - Sporcle

NERD ALERT!!!


Sporcle is both the best and worst website that I have found on the internet.

I found it by chance when I was looking up Thomas and Friends.
It let me unleash my pent up geography, pop culture, and random knowledge.
But it didn't stop there. It was like the Energizer bunny. It kept going and going and going...
Now I can stay up until 4am each night trying different puzzles.

Sporcle.com <-- try it if you dare!!!

Chad Ocho Cinco: A Personal Branding Case Study

Marc Schiller, founder of Electric Artists, talks about the proliferation of personalized brands and the evolution of social media. The democratization of information has changed not only the marketing landscape. He referenced the idea of walking into a job interview telling the hiring manager across the desk from you:

“If you hire me, I’m bringing 20,000 people (read: twitter followers) with me. How will you handle that?”

A great example of this is NFL player, Chad Ocho Cinco. In the NFL, players enter into legal employment contracts that teams are authorized to break at any point. This leaves these players at the mercy of their employer with little recourse. So, to look at the current example as a Human Resources case study is more relevant than it seems.

Chad’s last name, Ocho Cinco, is a Spanish translation of 8-5, his uniform number. Known for countless league violations, he was fined during the 2006 season for altering the name on his jersey to read “OCHO CINCO” instead of “JOHNSON,” his legal name at the time. In the offseason, he legally changed his name to Chad Ocho Cinco in order to circumvent the NFL’s policy. Now you can see it in stat sheets, commentators refer to him as Ocho Cinco and his jersey reads the same.

He has always created a spectacle with his charisma and publicity stunts, which he has transitioned into social media. Currently, Chad has a UStream channel with 7,000 followers, a Motorola-sponsored Facebook fan page with over 15,000 followers, nearly 750,000 fans on Twitter under the handle, @OGOchocinco, and his very own iPhone app.

On Twitter, he has been commonly known to invite all of his followers to meetups across the country for a free dinner or a movie. He has also responded directly to fans that reached out while their friend was on his deathbed or just to get a pep talk. To reinforce the point, Motorola sponsored a 1,200-ticket giveaway to a home Bengals game in order to prevent a regional broadcast blackout of the game. He promoted this heavily on Twitter and was able to ensure the game was televised in the Cincinnati area.

What makes this so relevant to Schiller’s point is to look at Chad Ocho Cinco for what he is: an employee of the Cincinatti Bengals, and ultimately the NFL. The NFL established a strict social media policy for all employees and even fired some due to violations. When the Cincinnati Bengals were the main characters on HBO’s original series “Hard Knocks,” Ocho Cinco was temporarily banned from Twitter, UStream, Facebook and any other social media platforms to communicate with his fans.




Most recently, Ocho Cinco partnered with Motorol organized a full-blown media effort to cover the Super Bowl and enlisted other NFL players to join his OCNN press team. His and his team’s presence at Super Bowl media day received just as much, if not more, media coverage than the athletes actually competing in the game.

Sports figures and celebrities are clear prototypes for building a personal brand since it has become standard procedure for them, and Chad Ocho Cinco has mastered the art. The gift and the curse for the Cincinatti Bengals is that this guy has built his personal brand to the point where it is engaging fans at a higher level and undoubtedly increasing the fan loyalty to the NFL. However, as Ocho Cinco walks into the office of a team’s Director of Player Personnel, he can say, “If you hire me, I’m bringing 1 million people. How are you going to handle that?”

If they can continue to effectively manage the risk, then it is an extremely valuable asset. If they can’t, then it could become a toxic liability. For now, there’s only upside because Chad brings the loyalty of a million or more followers to the Bengals’ fan base. If I were a betting man, I’d wager my money that he retires in Cincinnati on that point alone.

When Expertise is required

I was reflecting on a comment Dina made in class yesterday that for doctors, the best referrals are in fact loyal customers, whereas for the Trap Rock Brewery amateurs were better. One clear difference between someone who chooses restaurants and someone who chooses medications or treatments is the amount of expertise and experience required to make a judgment.

For restaurants anyone who had a one time positive experience may choose to give a positive evaluation and that evaluation would for the most part seem considered credible. Even on websites like Yelp, we receive what we perceive to be credible feedback from people we have never met or whose reputation we are unfamiliar with. So in these situations, loose networks can lead to new referrals.

For doctors, however, expertise and experience must exceed beyond a single exposure. Drugs and treatments must not only go through an FDA approval process, but even after legal vetting, still undergo in office trials and get validation through conference presentations, or repeated doctor experiences. In this case, vouching for a product that turns out not to be credible has higher cost, so a harder bar to cross to get referrals, and since doctors are looking for people whose opinions they can honestly trust, rather than people who may be indirectly benefiting from either the product manufacturer or from the increased credibility of being perceived as an expert. So compared to restaurant customers, doctors are more wary and risk averse.

It would be interesting to determine whether there is a spectrum between customer risk aversion and product complexity to the amount of expertise required in a network referral. For instance between pharmaceuticals and restaurant visits are consumer electronics; some expertise is helpful, but it's not life or death - a high complexity product that doesn't automatically generate risk aversion. Another is vacations where product complexity is low, but where people are very concerned about having a bad experience.

Great example of a successful viral ad and lessons to be learned from it

The discussion about the Mountain Dew ad campaign and in particular the debate surrounding viral ad choice got me thinking about viral ads that have made an impression on me. I chose the 'Mock Opera' ad because it reminded me a little of a wildly successful ad in the UK which is known as being the ad campaign that really brought Cadbury's chocolate a great deal of success. It continues to have an impact today and the gorilla character has become something of an icon. A link to the ad is here.

I thought it related to the Mock Opera ad in several ways. Firstly, the use of a similarly older but popular song is a clever way of reaching older audiences (those familiar with the song) and new, younger audiences (through the character and the iconic song). Secondly, the character is fun and memorable, as the Dew Dudes are meant to be.

Some other facts about the ad:

• Part of a GBP6.2million campaign that began with screenings on the TV and in cinemas
• This grew into a billboard, print media and event sponsorship presence
• The premiere of the ad was shown during the final of Big Brother UK which was watched by some 14% of the British population (we like classy TV in the UK, clearly)
• Like with the Mountain Dew ads, it was broadcast at a major sporting event - it was the final ad shown during the 2007 rugby world cup (which England lost to South Africa...we do not talk about this...)
• It went viral shortly after airing on the TV - the youtube version received 500,000 hits just one week after launch. At the end of 2007 - 4 months in - it had been viewed approximately 6.7 million times
• Over 70 Facebook groups were then set up in tribute to the gorilla character
• A whole host of online parodies followed, only adding to the ad's perception in the minds of the consumer
• It then aired in Canada, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand where the song was occasionally adapted (eg. 'Total Eclipse of the Heart' in Australia) depending, presumably, on the market's affinity for Phil Collins...
• The campaign won a host of ad awards and market research suggested that 20% of the public viewed the brand more favourably following the launch

Key elements of the ad's success to my mind include the quirky character, popular yet older song and its originality/quirkiness in general. I think music is a key factor in viral campaigns due to its ability to transcend cultural and demographic boundaries. The parallels with 'Mock Opera' are therefore clear to me.

Social Media and Cost Cutting ?

Social Media is growing and impacting all domains of business. What I found interesting is how social media can help in decreasing cost of customer service, and thus saving the firm valuable funds.

A huge percentage of customer service calls result from unaware customers and not from technical or software issues. Increasingly however, in the wake of long customer wait lines and repeated touch points, many customers (like me!!) have started looking at online forums and customer reverts to solve some problems without approaching the customer service. This has a positive, and a negative impact. The positive impact is in lower costs of customer service, while the negative impact is that the customer has one less point of touch with the firm, and therefore one less opportunity to reach out with new products, sales and upgrades.

Any sales coming from social media networks will also perhaps be at lower costs of acquisitions, therefore increasing bottom-line. I am not sure, however, if there are exact ways to measure the indirect impact on costs through social media.

Maybe this is why firms have started regularly visiting online forums, chats and other social media networks to access product response and what customers are saying about the service. Its a great opportunity to get a real picture of the response, at a much lower cost than focus groups and sample distributions.

Our discussion about the crude "Labor of Love" concept from the Mountain Dew case having viral potential reminded me of a recent case of a similarly irreverent agency-produced ad that was intended to go viral. The "Scuzzy Suds" ad from Method was meant to raise awareness about the company's People Against Dirty campaign (itself a nifty application of social media), but its humor may have gone a bit too far. Watch it here and see what you think.

The ad apparently got 700k views and a five star rating on YouTube in its first week, but was pulled after a couple weeks due to a critical mass of highly negative responses on Method's website, possibly triggered by a Shakesville blog posting entitled "Today in Rape Culture."

My immediate response to the ad was that it had the potential to be a great concept but went too far by having the woman go forward with her shower. I also thought that Method's target market--youngish, forward-thinking women--would tend to react negatively to it. To me, that would make it a bad campaign, regardless of how many times it is viewed, or how funny the average guy finds it.

What do the youngish, forward-thinking women in the class think?

The Mythology of YouTube

If we want to know why (and how) a video goes viral, the top 5 most watched YouTube videos are a potential place to start.

This past year was the first time YouTube took official note of the top 5, so the older lists are a little challenging to reconstruct:

In 2009, (excluding music videos which turn out to have the absolute highest numbers) that's
1. Susan Boyle - Britain's Got Talent (120+ million views, 7:08)
2. David After Dentist (37+ million views, 1:59)
3. JK Wedding Entrance Dance (33+ million views, 5:10)
4. New Moon Movie Trailer (31+ million views, 1:49)
5. Evian Roller Babies (27+ million views, 1:01)

And in 2008:
1. Charlie Bit My Finger (~110 million views, 0:56)
2. Evolution of Dance (109+ million views, 6:00)
3. Achmed the Dead Terrorist (~80 million views, 9:48)
4. Jizz in My Pants (~20 million views, 2:33)
5. Britain's Got Talent's Connie Talbot (~20 million views, 4:57)

Finally in 2007:
1. Battle in the Kruger (22+ million views, 8:24)
2. South Carolina Miss Teen USA (20+ million views, 0:48)
3. Chris Crocker Defends Britney Spears (14+ million views, 2:43)
4. Esmee Denters sings Justin Timberlake (13+ million views, 2:42)
5. Tay Zonday sings Chocolate Rain (12+ million views, 4:53)


What sticks out?

Sources
User generated (7)
TV clip (7)
Advertising (1)

Clearly advertisers haven't broken the secret code to viral video success.

Content
Music-related (7)
Intended to be Funny (4)
Other (4)

With music videos capturing the absolute highest numbers, American Idol/Britain's Got Talent dominating traditional media, and music being featured in the majority of other top viewed videos, it stands to reason that viewers find music compelling.

Length
0-2 minutes (5)
2-4 minutes (3)
4-6 minutes (3)
6-8 minutes (2)
8-10 minutes (2)

YouTube caps upload length at 10 minutes, and the number of top viewed videos does decline the higher the run time is, but there are videos in every category. Thus, a video doesn't have to be short to be popular.

View Counts
2007 (12-22 million)
2008 (20-110 million)
2009 (27 to 120 million)

As YouTube's popularity has grown, so too have the view counts of the most popular videos, though there were fewer break out hits of 2009. Hard to tell if view counts rise because there are simply more viewers, or if a video actually has to work harder to break the top 5.

Gender
Men (6)
Women (4)
Groups (5)

Not statistically significant differences.

But there's a problem with this kind of analysis. Like we learned in problem framing, you can't just look at the positive cases, you also need to look at the negative cases. In short, YouTube is filled with crap that never gets seen. Much of it is funny, features music, and stays short, yet never gets a view count past 3 digits. So what gives?

The research I've done in Theatres on YouTube arrived at the same conclusion. And Tech Crunch recently found that the average YouTube video will

• Get 500 views
• 25% of those will happen in the first 4 days
• Only the first 30-60 seconds will be watched
• 55% of videos are discovered (the remaining 45% users were actively searching for)
  

But I tend to think the leap from 500 to 5 million is based on how you promote the video. Are you tweeting a bit.ly link out to your thousands of followers? Is the video embedded on your facebook page? Is the video well-tagged and clearly named on YouTube?

Unfortunately, there's little indication that high view counts translate to higher sales, though this webinar is pretty rad.

Until we can measure it better, it's even harder to predict success. But with Video SEO finally coming of age, maybe we'll finally figure out how to track how videos go viral so we can better hypothesize why.

And with the rise of non profits on YouTube, maybe it'll actually start to matter.

Wrong post in wrong blog..admin please delete..

Leadership in social media campaigns: big vs. small operations

When Teddy from Blue State Digital came in to speak to us, I asked him briefly how important he thought it was for the Obama social media campaign that Obama himself was tech-savvy. The answer was that (a) despite perceptions, he actually isn't tech-savvy and (b) this did not matter. I didn't have time to push him on this further but I think it raises a more interesting general question about leadership behind - and support for - social media campaigns in different settings.

It might not have been important for Obama to be tech-savvy or be familiar with online social networks because he had a plethora of tools, support, funding and people working for him who were effectively able to run the campaign for him. I imagine that this is similarly the case for many larger operations, whether they are campaigns, businesses or specific brands. But what about the smaller operation? For example, my brother owns a travel company based in Austria, France and Switzerland that is now 5 years old. They are really lagging behind in terms of utilising the potential of social networking. Neither my brother nor his business partner are particualrly tech-savvy and they have minimal administrative/support staff, preferring to concentrate headcount funds on on-the-ground operations. None of the current sales/marketing staff are comfortable/able to design a social media strategy for the business.

My question is how should smaller operations that may be constrained in terms of either headcount, expertise or both begin to kick-start and maintain a social media campaign? Is it feasible both in the short or long term? I'd be interested in any thoughts on this particular case or on the issue more geenrally.

Is this our moment? (social media & advocacy)

The video below is part of NRDC's social media campaign in support of the clean energy bill, and I think it's pretty impressive.

The video itself is certainly one of the most powerful I have seen on behalf of a specific piece of legislation. It's clear, enticing, uses lots of sexy actors and famous people (Cornel West!), and is, unlike many similar efforts, easily actionable. They actually found a way to not only embed the video itself, but also links to send your senator an email, upload your own video, and share the video on any number of social media sites.

They even urge the viewer to "share this" before they describe what the video is about.

Of course all the glamour and technology leaves me asking the one important question, will it actually make a difference in terms of advocacy? (or in business speak, does it further the marketing strategy and lead to tangible results?)

The video is extremely candid about advocacy in some ways (favorite line: "they [senators] don't even know how to use email" -- true story). But then it goes on to suggest "they [senators] know they gotta do something." Really? Having worked in the U.S. Senate, I can tell you that thousands upon thousands of emails are ignored routinely everyday, or at best, given a terse response of the Senator's already established position on the bill. Maybe, there's one swing vote here or there, but how many emails is Olympia Snowe getting these days really, and could should she possibly care any less?

The video also suggests that "we" (presumably young hip voters who watch this video) are watching and will oppose politicians who vote the wrong way. That seems like a bold claim too. It would make more sense if the video asked for donations towards a PAC, but it doesn't.

So at the end of the day, the only real, tangible, effectual action one can take with this video, is to share it with someone else. (I think the video actually suggests spamming everyone you know). Perhaps spreading the message is the real goal. Or perhaps its just to make NRDC look hip and relevant to the younger generation of future activists/donors.

Will any of that help pass the clean energy bill? I'm not so sure.

But the video sure is cool.

Can Social Media be a problem?

Social Media has, in many ways, redefined the process of marketing products and keeping consumers involved. Apple has managed social media well, with a huge following and countless interactions among users. In the recent introduction of the ipad, the social media has again been on overdrive - analyzing the product and giving opinions, details, etc.

However, since there have been some disappointing features of the ipad, the social media has been quick with the negative as well. They have refered to the lack of a webcam, trouble in keeping two applications running at the same time and its similarity to the iphone in all blogs, forums and chatrooms. Similarly, Toyota's recall of cars due to a gas medal problem has resulted in many comments in online forums and evreything and anything thats goes wrong with the car has been blamed on the gas pedal. So Toyota has not only to fight a faulty medal, but also a whole wave of negative publicity, incorrect rumors and lost confidence.

So can social media also be a disadvantage? Maybe yes, because just like Social Media can help increase the positive impact of a product, it can expand the negative effect of a loss of quality or an issue in the product itself. The resulting situation therefore moves beyond the solution of the problem, it presents a marketing nightmare as well.

So are there any ways to ensure that social media can be used for 'positive' marketing and to 'control' negative feedback? How do you ensure that 'rumors' are not transmitted through the social media? And more importantly, is it possible ...?

So, it is Saturday afternoon. My kids are napping, and I am catching up on class administrative stuff. I take a quick look at the blog. Now, the last time I looked at the blog, there were 3 posts (2 by me, and 1 by the TA). I am expecting to see 1-2 more posts.

Holy smoke! The blog is a-buzzing with activity. People are talking about "what the F**K is social media," can you have social media without the web, the power of engagement, the power of losing control, etc.

Whohoo! Great stuff. Made my day. I am getting an RSS feed for this now for sure!

New tools, same rules.

Very good example of the viral nature and impact of social interaction via the web.

As a more traditional example, Stephen Colbert was able to win a contest to name a room on the newest Nasa Space Station. If you wield the ratings of a media icon like Colbert, you can organize masses of people. The lesson is that online social media hasn't changed the rules, it changed the tools.

Some good networks for entrepreneurs...

This has been going through the grapevine, but its both interesting and useful so if you haven't taken a look yet it might be useful...

http://mashable.com/2009/03/12/entrepreneur-networks/

Social Media - The old fahsioned way

So I have been sitting here thinking about what social media looks like if you pull out the web. If you consider the movie "Fight Club", there is a whole group of bored 20 - 40 guys who through word of mouth marketing are able to generate a whole social movement. That's old fashioned social media. Or if you look at the original Go Daddy ads or other over the top advertisements, that were supposed to foster talk around the water cooler, there's another example.

So I was hoping all of you could help me flush out my list (and let me know if you think any of them don't actually work).

The water cooler - A product / TV show / ad was entertaining enough to be talked about at work. (I guess this one also is called the basis for viral marketing)

Advocates / ambassadors - People who love your product so much that they plug it all the time to friends and acquaintances. (I guess this one's the premise for buzz marketing).

The informal friend ask. These are like the confessional style ads:

A: "You know your hair looks great."

B: "Oh. Well my secret is Clairol. You should try it."

Business cards - when you hand someone a stack of business cards to pass them along to people they know to refer them to your product (maybe with coupon attached)

Gear - Clothes that advocate the brand. Free SOM T-shirts to wear at Welcome weekend...

Product boycotts - when there are people standing outside picketing telling you not to go into the store.

Any others?

Looking at these options, it seems that web based social media has the advantages of being potentially both trackable and cheaper, though I am always a fan of a free t-shirt.

Social Media and the iPad Brouhaha

The last few days have been gripped by the iPad hysteria..as WSJ aptly put it "Last time there was this much excitement about a tablet, it had some commandments written on it". To me what was really fascinating was the way Social Media played a pivotal..no..an almost all-pervasive role in building and feeding the hysteria.

Harken back to the days of iPhone launch..people were beginning to see the potential of crowd sourcing..it was more of a consumption pattern..news was being published by few quarters and consumed by many..Product leaks even if present did not worm their way into main stream consciousness..ergo when the man in Levis and black turtleneck took center stage to say they were launching 3 new devices..rolled into one..and you could control it with your pinkie!! It was total mayhem..the market knew Apple would launch a phone but something of this revolutionary proportions!! Not a fat chance..Apple's love for secrets and Jobs's showmanship had one upped the market.

Fast forward to late 2009, the eReader market is heating up with B&N entering the fray with the Nook to compete with the Kindle. The market is agog with the expectations of Apple launching a tablet based eBook reader. Product leaks come in thick and fast, with spyshots, potential spec leakage and people scouring the patent filings for potential clues of what the fabled tablet can do. The information is not only flowing in from nondescript quarters but is also being furiously propagated by the foragers. Leechers became Providers!!

2 days before the launch, Engadget ran this article and Gizmodo ran this snippet and everyone new what the tablet was going to be..(There were some good and bad surprises though, Apples A4 processor, the smart pricing structure and no contract 3G..no multitasking, no camera and no option for note taking!!)

News networks like CNN, WSJ and NYTimes relied on crowd sourced non authenticated data to publish speculative articles about the iPad..Were they crazy to do so?? Is this good journalism?? Most importantly is this the future?? Yes, Yes and YES!! It is simple statistics..it is truth in numbers and democratization of information..old schoolers can choose align with it and evolve or debunk it and perish..

So what does this mean for Apple and companies who have similar strategies?? On the positive side, for Apple it was a lot of hype and marketing at no extra cost. They have struck the eBook market when its hot and delivered to market expectations. Most importantly, they have earned a 60 - 90 day respite when they will fall back on their SVP iPhone Software, Scott Forstall, to come up with iPhone OS 4.0. I am speculating here that it will have multitasking and other nice bits which will make the iPad suddenly a must buy..time will tell..

On the flip side, with Apple aligning with more than one vendor (product components, manufacturing, content partnership, software development, etc.) on products such as iPad, maintaining a leak free ship is becoming increasingly hard. Ergo, the flash and awe effect is harder to achieve in its product launch. Is it time for Apple to rethink its secrecy strategy?? Maybe..

One a final note, someone in class asked the question..what is social media??

One version of the answer : It is a medium for contributing to and querying the larger social intelligence. It is a mechanism/ protocol by which multiple singleton twines of intelligence collude to form a thick strand of knowledge/ consciousness. Sounds like a line from a self help book dosent it?? :) But think about it..it actually is that..As a stand alone person you are limited by the amount of information you can absorb and recover. You use appendages like books, dairies, computers to store your information but again recovery and comprehension is limited by individual potential. Now look at a collection of people..coalesce them as one single entity..now imagine possibilities..that is social media..to me..

Do we need to define social media?

We spent a lot of time in class yesterday trying to define exactly what social media means. I'm not convinced we need a better definition (besides media that is social) and think its the kind of thing that "we know it when we see it".

Rather than spend time defining, we should look the aspects that many successful media campaigns have in common:

• Authentic third-party conversation, which can be on sites such as Facebook and Twitter, but can also occur through popular blogs. The blogs act as Gladwell's Mavens and Connectors for specialized topics
• Engagement in an activity which provides a benefit (typically entertainment or customized information) to the person interacting. Companies exist simply to set up generic engagement activities, like the countless "What _______ am I?" polls that end up in my Facebook news feed.
• A clear action that the person can take which draws more people to your content, such as Digging an article, sharing a funny video, or posting the latest song you downloaded from Free All Music.com into your Facebook news feed.

What the F**K is Social Media?

What the F**K is Social Media: One Year Later

View more presentations from Marta Kagan.

Another perspective on the challenges of defining social media, and how users want to interact with your brand.

A Foursquare Strategy

Foursquare is taking off like gangbusters, and it's got me excited about combining social media with actual social interactions. I think location is the next big buzz word in social media, so I've been on the hunt for new ideas. We haven't yet talked much about this in class, but last week, Rafael Gallegos of New York Theatre Workshop asked me, "We have foursquare checkins, but I'd really like to run a deal for the mayors but don't know how to begin. any thoughts?" So here's what I would do.

The BACKGROUND:

NYTW "provokes, produces and cultivates the work of artists whose visions inspire and challenge all of us." They're about 30 years old, located in the East Village, and have roughly a $5 million annual budget. They've got 2,756 fans on Facebook (posting about twice a day), 992 followers on Twitter (also tweeting about twice a day), just under 5,000 views total from their 6 YouTube uploads, and have thus far had 29 check-ins on Foursquare from 15 users.

Top Secret is their next production; tickets go on sale to general public Jan 29, and first preview is Feb 24, closing March 28. A shortened description of the play: It's 1971 and the nation is at war. A federal court blocks The New York Times from publishing the top-secret history of US invovlement in Vietnam. Washington Post publisher Katherine Graham has a single day to decide whether to print the Pentagon Papers.

Foursquare is just under a year old location-based mobile social networking game. Last known user count was ~ 200,000 but the press loves them, and they've got wicked cool ideas on how businesses (and users) can use them. Most importantly, they're open to suggestions.

The MISSION:

• Introduce new people to New York Theatre Workshop
• Have some fun with current NYTW audience members
• Establish connections with other interesting local businesses (and their employees/customers!)
• Test a new model for marketing

The SET UP:

Think secret scavenger hunt + free ticket give-away + social media. Users unlock "Top Secret" badges by checking in at businesses far and wide all over NYC (maybe elsewhere too?). Unlock enough badges, and users win free tickets to the show. Easy to adjust this one: start the game with 5 pairs of free tix to the first 5 folks who get to the final badge. If there's tons of interest, enter everyone else into a contest and give away 5 more pairs. So...badges. What do they look like? Maybe something like

• Muckracker: for checking in at the new york times and the village voice
• Presidential Pardon: for checking into a police station after 8pm
• Watergate Watch: for checking in to 3 hotels in NYC
• Theatre Nerd: for checking in to 3 places tagged theatre in NYC
• Spook Alert: for checking into the UN and a kinkos in the same week
• Pulitzer Prize: for acquiring all 5 badges above

The GAMEPLAN:

• Contact Foursquare to help with the 'badge across businesses' idea. They've already done similar in Chicago and Las Vegas.
• Refine the Gameplan ideas above. I'm not a dramaturg (ok, sometimes I am) and I haven't read the play. There are most definitely better clues and names that involve users with the contents of the play. Anyways: these are all preserved for prosterity online, and thus not very "secret" anymore.
• Put a foursquare widget on the front page of NYTW.org.
• Establish a dedicated twitter hashtag (#topsecret is already being used. #topsecretnytw is too long/confusing. maybe #topsecret79?)
• Tweet clues to users once a day. Make it fun. When folks start unlocking badges, congratulate them via twitter. Host a Twitter widget on the Top Secret page of NYTW.org that consolidates all of the hashtags so users can see what's going on in real time.
• Post (google image) photo clues to your Facebook fans. Encourage them to plot together collectively.
• Encourage users to upload YouTube video about their search for the Pulitzer. Grab a flip cam yourself and make some clues video-based rather than just text based.
• Inspire some inter-city competition by inviting American Repertory Theatre and Portland Center Stage to copy the model and use it for Paradise Lost and 39 Steps (both conveniently opening the same weekend).

The tools to MEASURE:

• Every day count @nytw79, #topsecret79, FB engagements, YouTube videos. The every day part is important because you're constantly testing out which promotion strategies are working best (text v. video v. photo, and on which platform)
• At the end of the game, compare the total ticket sales of Top Secret, the "new ticket buyers" for Top Secret, and the number of press articles generated by the game.
• Post game, survey (you remembered to collect email addresses, right?) users about their experience with the game. Is there increased awareness of NYTW? Are they more likely to consider going to NYTW in the future, even if they didn't attend Top Secret itself? etc. More questions will arise as the game is played out.

Why I think this will work

• NYTW has a staff member who is passionate about and interested in Foursquare
• NYTW is located in an urban environment with a relatively high penetration of FS users
• NYTW has some degree of experience using other social media platforms
• NYTW has a product (Top Secret) with a name practically built for game play
  
• Foursquare is in search of interesting business/non-profit uses of the game

It's by no means clear that Foursquare will win the location-game. There's also Gowalla, Yelp, and Loopt all making waves, even Twitter's going local. I think there are significant questions about how much time to invest in a platform that may or may not be around a year from now. But at least geolocation social media segments your potential ticket buying audience by physical location, and gives you fairly reliable click-stream data about social-media driven purchases.

I have a phonecall scheduled with the Foursquare guys later this week, and have to pitch this idea to them. So it's got to make strategic sense not only for the nonprofit, but also for the platform. Any thoughts on refining these ideas?

Social Media Campaign for a Local Non-Profit

Since everyone in the class is savy with social media (or soon will be!), I am asking for a favor in the sweet, innocent form of an initial blog post ...

The Greater New Haven Literacy Coalition is a non-profit focused on increasing literacy in our community, through programs and services such as reading to children and tutoring adults. It is comprised of several organizations (all non-profits focused on literacy) that decided to come together to pool their resources and collectively attract more volunteer help and donations. (Synergies ... who can resist that?) I recently joined their board and am working on the communications strategy. Here are a few thoughts. If you have suggestions/advice -- and especially, if you know of any great website designers -- please comment or talk to me in person! THANK YOU.

Proposal:

1) Create a Facebook page. This is in progress. The strategy for the page will be to fill in the immediate needs (i.e. volunteer dates, training locations, contact info, pep talks) AND solicit important volunteer feedback (volunteers tell their own stories - will help identify parts of volunteer process that are/aren't working and help to motivate/engage volunteers for retention/recruitment purposes).

2) Rehaul the existing website. **Need someone who has this capability.** The design and content needs updated so the various audience segments can find what they're looking for and be motiviated to take appropriate action. (A tool like Google forms for volunteer applications would be a good addition.)

3) Fundraising. *Need a solution for accepting donations via the website and Facebook page.* Any suggestions on tools (Paypal?) that work well would be helpful.

4) Email list. *Need a mass email tool.* Constant Contact is one suggestion I've received. Has anyone worked with them or do you have other suggestions? Once the email list is captured (and segemented), we would use it (quarterly?) to tell some inspiring stories about progress being made and remind about opportunity to donate/volunteer.

5) Tracking. *Need vendor suggestions.* Am looking for someting like a Hubspot - don't need anything too robust.

6) Visuals. The messaging will need augmented by great video clips and photos along the way - if you know of great photographers or videographers, please send me their contact details.

Social Media Timelines

As the class progresses I have become interested in the question of how often companies can/and or should revamp their social media campaigns/overall strategy.

Our final project group (Tim, Igor, Erika, and Mark) is working on the social media strategy for a real live start-up resume review company that is launching next week (My Resume Shop). As we met today to discuss what would be an appropriate strategy, I could not help but wonder how flexible our decisions were. Is it appropriate for companies to continuously test new concepts on facebook, twitter, and other social media websites or should these decisions be more strategic and long term. In essence, how long should a campaign or strategy be tested before the decision is made for its future use and what metrics are appropriate to judge success or failure. Looking forward to hearing all of your comments.

Useful information on using the blog

Hi everyone,

I just sent all of the students in MGT 554 an invitation to become authors on the blog. Here is some useful information for you to become an author on the blog and start posting comments!

1) Getting Started

Follow the link that I sent you to the blog and log into Blogger. Note: in order to log in, you need to have either a Gmail or a Twitter account (although some others will work as well.) Blogger will ask you which account you’d like to use to sign in. If you do not yet have a Gmail account, please set one up so that you can start posting! When you pick a name under which you will be posting, please use either your first name or first name and last initial (if someone in the class shares your name.)

2) Purpose of the Blog

Posting on the blog is an important part of your participation grade in MGT 554. Please post at least one entry every week. Both the frequency of posting and quality of your comments will affect your participation grade. You can comment on anything that you find interesting in the class: you can post an observation that you had about an article assigned for homework, a question or insight about class lecture or discussion, or a comment about a guest lecture. Also, feel free to post links to news articles, ads, videos, etc. that pertain to our class discussion – this also counts as participation! Just tell us why you though the article or video was interesting and how it relates to our class discussion. Most important, have fun with the blog! This should be an outlet for all of you guys to share material that pertains to social media, to ask questions, and to learn from each other.

3) Making Accessing the Blog Easier

To make the blog easier to access, just add it to your favorites in your web browser.

Alternatively, if you read a lot of blogs and use a Blog Aggregator such as Bloglines http://bloglines.com/ or Sharp Reader, you can easily add the Social Media Management blog to your feeds. If using Bloglines, first set up an account. Then simply go to My Feeds, click on Add at the top, and then type in the URL of our blog http://mgt554-social-media.blogspot.com/ into the Blog or Feed URL: window, and the blog will be added to your feeds. That way, you can always access it from Bloglines along with your other blogs. To learn more about different blog aggregators and RSS readers you can use, go to http://blogspace.com/rss/readers.

If you have any additional questions or difficulties joining the blog, email me at margarita.gorlin@yale.edu.

Enjoy!

How Obama Really Did It

In preparation for the Thursday, Jan 14 class, I wanted to provide additional resources for those of you who wanted to read up on the Obama campaign:

1) A New York Times article that discusses the use of social media
2) Edelman's (a PR firm) analysis of the success of the Obama social media campaign
3) A nice list of the components of the campaign
4) A panel discussion of the presidential e-campaigns

Welcome to MGT 554

Hello! This is a blog dedicated to social media management. The blog is a supplement to MGT 554, an elective class at the Yale School of Management, "Social Media Management." This is a private blog - only the course participants are able to view the contents of the posts.

Reading and contributing to this blog (either in the form of posts or comments on others' posts) are part of the requirements of the course.