Krista Montes de Oca
Media Program Analyst

Social media has given us the tools to search anyone and anything we could possibly want to find. It’s also made it impossible to hide. We’re quicker to judge based on what we find on the internet, or by word of mouth. It’s not easy for companies and brands to hide anymore. Brands can do their best to market themselves the way they want, but in the end, it’s perceptions of the readers and consumers that are going to drive the brand.

With social media, it’s important for these companies to adapt to these means, and embrace the way they can be seen by their customers. The first step is for companies to be prepared for their transparency when thinking about social media and their marketing. The second step would be to engage the consumers in conversations around the brand, and help them understand your values and what you offer. It’s important to know what the customers want to hear. In some ways, allowing your customers to be your marketers for you, could spread the word even faster and be of great benefit to you.  Being open is the key to surviving social media, so don’t close yourself off!

Andrew Bates
Social Media Practice Lead

There has always been a logical need for businesses and organizations to quantify all marketing and branding efforts.  Online marketing and social media are no different.  Our customers are constantly looking to social and new media as cost effective and measurable resources to drive sales, gain audience, lower costs, and improve brand sentiment.

Most have already found consistent ways to gauge the value of ecommerce, search engine optimization, and search engine marketing.  Although large brands like Dell and Dunkin Donuts have already shown considerable profits and operational efficiencies via social advertising, many still struggle with the concept.  So much so that Stefanie Berliant , one of EyeTraffic’s SEM and Digital Media Advertising leads, blogged about MarketingSherpa’s 2009 Social Media Marketing & PR Benchmark Guide last year.

Forrester Research has yet again prepared an incredibly detailed 2010 report on social media ROI.  Although this report is not free, it is worth every penny.  I wont give away all of the amazing information, but I want to highlight some of the ways marketing and communications managers can validate their organization’s social and new media activities.

Augie Ray of Forrester details everything from ways to measure these activities, to concepts like risk mitigation, and he provides tangible case studies for each concept covered in this report.  Beyond the analytic tactics and tools that we use very day to help our customers, he covers some other very important issues with concrete examples.

Here are just a few insights that caught my eye:

• Activities that get in the way of achieving objectives
• Failing to attribute results to those channels and investments that deliver the results
• Asking, is the organization better prepared to note and respond to attacks or problems that affect reputation?
• Avoiding short-term gains coming at the expense of long-term brand health

A couple great case studies:

• Petco.com lowered product return rates significantly by allowing user generated reviews
• 1-800-Flowers continues to drive consistent ecommerce sales via Facebook

I won’t go into too much detail.  This is a report that all social media agencies and CMO’s should purchase and keep handy.  Does your organization employ any of these strategies?

@AndrewBates

Krista Montes de Oca
Media Program Analyst

The summer is really heating up, and vacations are in full swing. Are you wondering where the hot spots are in the city or at the beach? Pressure to pack everything you could possibly need for a week a little too overwhelming? Leave it to social media to do the hard work for you.

Social media tools are connecting you to friends and strangers; updating you on the whereabouts of those you “follow,” and giving you the utmost resources of news and information you could possibly need. And if you didn’t know it before, social media can help you with both the tedious and fun aspects of traveling…just in time for your summer vacations! Here are just three ways social media has come to bring you the best tips for your getaway: Before your vacation:

1. Before your vacation: Before you start booking hotels and plane tickets, check out the deals you could be getting. Hotels and airlines, as well as resorts are offering specials and packages like you’ve never seen before. Airlines are looking to their valued and frequent customers, and creating trips and packages for their travels. Back in April, a blog post shared how digital media could help enhance the experience of airlines, and now in July, we’re sharing how social media has evolved into the tools they are now. Airlines such as United Airlines and JetBlue offer specials through Twitter; Check out @UnitedAirlines for their “Twares,” and @JetBlueCheeps to find out more about how these airlines are reaching out through social media.

2. Planning your itinerary: If you’re spontaneous and have decided to travel by yourself, but wouldn’t mind making new friends along the way, then GlobeTrooper might be the best outlet for you. You can search for people who are along your route, or someone who might be residing or visiting your destination. Finding a fellow snorkeler or hiker could yield itself to be a great time, especially if you couldn’t convince any hometown friends to ride the wave with you.

3. During vacation: Are you too busy to keep track of exciting moments that happened during vacation? Don’t have the time to put together a scrapbook? Well, the application, Trip Journal lets you create that scrapbook right on the spot. Uploading pictures and writing content to create keepsakes for a lifetime, right at your fingertips. Your family and friends who follow you on Twitter and Facebook will enjoy the updates from your vacation in real time!

These, along with at least 13 other iPhone applications can help make your travel easier and more fun for all. There are tools to help locate the best places at your destination, rest stops along your route, and for those wanting a more educational experience, some options for you. If you were hesitating about planning your next vacation, fear no more! Use the social media resources that are at your fingertips!

Ryan Moss
Lead Strategist

Back in April we discussed how the NFL embraced social media during its annual draft as it made the push to turn the event into a “prime time event.” Now in June the NBA held its draft and as expected social media played a prominent role.

Nearly every team leveraged social media to keep their fans up to date with the latest information and also engage them in conversations.  One of the most popular tools used was  “Twackle”, which allows a team  to compile all related chatter from Twitter in one place. Through the use of this tool anyone could see what was being said about the team and who was saying it, whether it be media members, bloggers, fans, celebrities or players. Through the use of this tool fans can easily see all the relevant conversations in one place and at the same time the team can observe what is being said about them.

A Twackle page specifically for the NBA draft was also created, aggregating all relevant Tweets and news posts in one central location. Several of the top prospects in the draft also had their own Twackle pages, including John Wall who was taken with the first overall pick by the Washington Wizards.

While most teams focused on aggregating online conversations, the Minnesota Timberwolves took a different route. The team held its annual draft party at its practice facility with the event being hosted by Jonah Ballow (Timberwolves.com editor/writer) and John Focke (Timberwolves radio studio host). What made this event unique was the fact the team encouraged fans to submit questions to Ballow and Focke through the team’s Facebook and Twitter pages. This allowed fans who couldn’t attend the event to still participate. At the same time for those fans who did attend the draft party, the team setup a video booth where fans could shoot videos welcome the new draft picks to Minnesota and then upload them directly to YouTube.

Several other teams embraced social media in different ways, but teams weren’t the only ones using social media during the draft as several prominent and lesser known players posted updates throughout the draft. These continuous updates allowed fans to stay up to date and interact with team representatives and players.

It’s great to see that the NBA and its teams have embraced social media and understand that the benefits of utilizing it.

Lead Strategist

For most college coaches their main concerns are how their team performs, that their players stay out of legal and academic trouble and that they recruit well. To help them with recruiting many college coaches have utilized social media to promote their team and their accomplishments. But now, social media has begun to play a role in keeping players out of trouble. As more and more college athletes start using Twitter, Facebook, etc. coaches and universities are becoming increasingly concerned about what content is being published by their players.

One of the first big incidents occurred on the night of the Presidential election when Buck Burnette, an offensive lineman for the Texas Longhorns, posted a racial slur when referencing the newly elected President, Barack Obama. Burnette was kicked off the team the next day, but the damage had already been done and schools all across the country took notice. But, while schools noticed many athletes did not and they continued to use social media to talk about visiting strip clubs on recruiting trips (which is illegal), trash talking upcoming opponents and other topics that didn’t make their coaches or schools very happy at all.

“As a PR person I’m not a big fan of social media,” Chad Moller, Missouri’s assistant athletics director for media relations told the Columbia Missourian.”… For the life of me I don’t understand why people want everyone to know what they’re up to 24 hours a day.”

While Moller may not understand why social media sites appeal to people, he does understand how important it is for his school and every other school to monitor what is being said by their athletes. To help solve this problem,  Kevin Long created UDiligence, which is a service that monitors social networking activity of college athletes for their coaches. Long’s company has a system in place that will automatically search athletes’ Facebook, Twitter and MySpace pages for any of the 414 “racy words” currently flagged by UDiligence. If a post contains one of these words a notification email is automatically sent to a member of the school or coaching staff.

What Long has essentially done is take the concept of social media monitoring that is offered by various online marketing services company and apply it specifically to college athletes. This is a great idea and it will be very interesting to see how many schools adopt Udiligence or similar programs. One thing that’s for sure is if coaches don’t adopt some kind of program they will be forced to deal with these outside distractions thus taking time away from their primary tasks.

It’s 12:30 p.m. at Denver International Airport and my flight, Delta #2244, should’ve been in the air an hour ago. Instead, I have another 120 minutes to kill before I board – hopefully. The ticket counters are jammed, Delta employees are frantic, and forsaken passengers are struggling to navigate a voice-response system that wouldn’t work if they called in a library, much less a cacophonous airport.

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand you. Can you repeat that?” “I’m sorry, I still don’t understand you. Can you repeat that?”

That might as well be motto of the airline industry at this point. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand you.” Apologetic, yet ineffective. We’ve been saying it for years, Delta – and United, American, Frontier, et alia – you’re just not listening and you’ve had your fingers in your ears for decades. Social media gave us a loudspeaker and it’s destroying you – it’s lynching you. United breaks guitars, Delta misstated its fees under watchful eyes of frequent flyers, and American Airlines offered free flights on Twitter during the earthquake in Haiti – by mistake.

Time and again, digital media are not-so-slowly taking airlines to task and chipping away at the last reserves of goodwill these companies clutch. However, as much of a sore spot as digital channels have been for air travel, they have the potential to be a boon – an under-the-seat life preserver in a water landing of vitriol.

Airlines need to reach out and grab the digital media life vest before it floats away. Here are three ways digital media could be used to make air travel better for everyone:

1. Smartphone apps and (better) mobile websites. The self-serve kiosk was a huge step forward, but a passenger’s mobile phone has the potential to be a much more powerful tool to help both customers and airlines execute efficient, real-time air travel experiences. Develop apps that don’t just allow me to show my boarding pass (which is inexcusably limited to so few passengers, airlines, devices, and airports anyway), but I want to change my seat, upgrade cabins, order my in-flight beverage, sign-up for a frequent flyer account, purchase tickets, et cetera, et cetera. There is incredible potential with the growth of smartphones – and the best airlines can do is an electronic boarding pass and laughably late SMS alerts? Half of the airlines don’t even have mobile websites. Sigh.

The Delta information vacuum really sucks.

2. Crowdsourcing. As firms in various industries begin to embrace the wisdom of crowds, air travel appears to have perfect industry DNA to capitalize on a tested approach – millions of customers a day with plenty of feedback and countless points of contact. Passengers spend at least two hours apiece traveling even the shortest distances from A to B. Search, purchase, transit, check-in, security, gate, flight, and so on. Each step of the process needs to be examined, and not from the trees, but beyond the forest. Just like MyStarbucksIdea, airlines can improve this experience from beginning to end by tapping an incredible source of customer feedback. I’m sure customers have plenty of constructive things to say – it’s time to listen and understand them.

3. Location-based services. Airports are perfect candidates to partner with geosocial networks like Foursquare, Gowalla, and BrightKite to enrich the airport experience. As one of the sadistic people who enjoy airports, I’d be thrilled to know where to eat, what bistros have wifi, what concourses have coffee at 11 p.m., and so on. However, even a more common passenger could benefit from augmented reality to get updates on flight information, shuttle services, gate changes, and even the best place pass the time during a delay or get a salad among the greasy food courts that litter airports. Even a well-planned airport like DIA is an information vacuum – give us the information and it’ll mean fewer headaches for everyone.

Of course, this list could go on and on if we discussed the potential with Twitter and Facebook, but airlines are gun-shy after so many crash-and-burn debacles. The one advantage of the predicament these firms have put themselves in is an opportunity to change. Airlines will never be mistaken for being nimble (despite jaguars on the tails of some Frontier planes), but, as Tyler Durden said, “Once you have lost everything, you’re free to do anything.” Any airline could see this as an opportunity to achieve a competitive advantage.

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand you. Can you repeat that?” I’m done repeating it – I’m just hoping high-speed rail lays track before I go hoarse. Time to find out what gate I’m at now.

Lead Strategist

For the first time ever the NFL Draft has become a “prime time event.” The draft was previously held on Saturday and Sunday, but this year the draft was moved to Thursday night, Friday night and Saturday afternoon in hopes of attracting a larger TV audience. Television coverage of the first round started at 7:30 PM on Thursday April 23rd and according to an NFL spokesman ratings were up over 30% from last year.

While the shift to prime time TV was a big change for the NFL, the league also fully embraced social media, especially Twitter, which likely also helped increase the number of viewers. The league created the hash tag #nfldraft and aggregated Twitter posts on its website. This gave fans the chance to express their thoughts and opinions and at the same time, league officials like Commissioner Roger Goodell also joined the conversation with their own posts. As NFL.com General Manager Laura Goldberg said “The key to the NFL’s online social media draft strategy was recognizing that conversations are happening in a lot of different places. We want to make sure we’re aggregating comments no matter where they are.”

By creating this online community centered around the NFL draft, league officials are hoping to not only promote the draft but also continue to increase loyalty with their fans. The results have been great so far. On Wednesday the NFL draft joined Justin Bieber and Glee as the most popular topics of the day. This popularity is expected to continue until the day after the draft ends, Sunday.

The NFL has proven that using Social Media can be very beneficial to promote their annual draft and it will be interesting to see how the NBA adopts social media for their upcoming draft in June.

Two months ago, I purchased Marketing Sherpa’s 2010 Social Media Marketing Benchmark Report. But after receiving it, I must admit that I’ve procrastinated a bit and have not given it the attention it really deserves. That said, I am so glad that other members of my team didn’t follow my example – and have actually read the benchmark report cover-to-cover.

My social media practice lead (Andrew Bates) recently shared with me some points that he read in the report that resonated well with me. As an online marketing consultant, I am constantly asked if social media truly impacts SEO rankings – or is that a myth. Believe me, I have explained and re-explained to clients how social media is a MUST-have for any SEO engagement. But the following two points from the benchmark report serve as a testament to why:

POINT #1: 69% of marketers using social media score its effectiveness at improving search engine rankings at three or higher on a scale of one-to-five, according to Marketing Sherpa’s 2010 Social Media Marketing Benchmark Report

POINT#2: Marketers also are successfully using social media for targeted search goals including:

• Improving search rankings — 91%
• Increasing traffic from targeted keywords — 90%
• Expanding content shown in universal search results — 89%
• Improving the ROI from search programs — 80%
• Generating more qualified leads — 78%

The report goes on to include five SEO social media trends to guide an integrated approach:

• Trend #1. A solid social strategy must come first
• Trend #2. Search engines are increasingly indexing social content
• Trend #3. Social media builds inbound links
• Trend #4. Search and social data complement each other
• Trend #5. On-site social media is a powerful content generator

In short, Marketing Sherpa’s 2010 Social Media Marketing Benchmark Report is a MUST READ for anyone targeting online social media as part any integrated marketing approach. And since I’ve already spent good-money to buy the report, it looks like I’ve just lined-up my reading-homework for this week.

To learn more about this benchmark report – CLICK HERE.

Like most marketers, I get the eMarketer Daily for insightful research on digital marketing every morning. Much of the data that flows into my inbox reinforces the notions we have about digital marketing: you need a strategy, mobile marketing is on the rise, many companies are shifting budgets online. The other week, I read two reports that came three days apart and I couldn’t help but laugh:

• Consumers Demand Engagement
• Engagement on Social Networks Top Priority for Marketers

It’s that simple: 1 + 1 = 2. Engagement makes everyone happy! Why then, when everyone seems to be working toward the same dynamic, are so many brands struggling with social media success?

One word: interpretation. The two sides are playing in the same ballpark, but one’s thinking baseball while the other is sinking stakes for cricket. Marketers still have a skewed perception of what engagement means to consumers, or don’t really know at all. The most difficult part is establishing a shared definition of a valuable relationship online. For consumers, it could be everything from personalized homepages to tête-à-tête interactions via social networks.

Let’s establish what we can confidently assume about how consumers see engagement:

• It should provide value for the end-user.

That’s it! That’s literally it. Everything else we identify with engagement is hearsay. Including:

• It should be personal and customized.
• It should be two-way.
• It should have mutual benefit.
• It should be genuine.
• It should make the consumer feel good inside or part of a community.

Sure, those are a few idealistic qualities we assume should be part of the engagement equation, but they don’t have to be. I don’t care about 1800Hotels being genuine on Twitter, I just want to save money. They could offer me a coupon code and call me “cheap jerk” in the same tweet and I wouldn’t really mind. Sure, I’d rather they treat me with more respect, but I came for the coupon code, not to feel like it’s my personal travel agent. And, honestly, I don’t care if they lose money on the deal or if even address me individually. Again, I just want to save money, especially in a situation in which I want instant gratification.

Again, it’d be great if engagement was that simple and brands could just plug a few criteria in a social media algorithm and *BOOM!* there’s your strategy, but that’s not the case. We can’t assume consumers want us to care or even be authentic, they just want value. So, what is a marketer to do? Here are three key tips for coming together over engagement:

1) Know your customers’ definition. They have unique needs, values, and expectations of your brand. Don’t assume because you’re GM that you should mimic Ford’s social media strategy. Like every community or group, they have their own associations and levels of intimacy.

2) Don’t just listen, ASK! Listening is one of the highly-touted benefits of social media initiatives. But why don’t you just ask? Your customers will be more than happy to tell you what they want and that’s when you can listen. Within reason, see what your customers want and make it happen.

3) Adjust, adjust, adjust. You might not get it right the first time. Or the second, third, or fourth. Customer needs, expectations, and precedents change – and not just because of what you do, but what competitors do too. Social media can change if customers aren’t responding or getting value. Don’t get social media strategy ADD, but feel free to come from different angles if the current isn’t proving successful.

When you’re talking to consumers, make sure you’re speaking the same language. Otherwise, you’re both left wanting. Maybe you need to join them and play some pick-up cricket for a change. Just watch out for the rib ticklers.