As part of a recent project I was looking at a bunch of corporate fan pages on Facebook today.  There are fan pages for nearly everything you can think of, do you like your office chair?- it’s probably got a fan page.

I’ve looked at a lot of facebook fan pages for a lot of different brands and found one theme in common.  A total lack of engagement.

There are page after page of brands, big and small who are not engaging with their customers, fans, and advocates.  Don’t even think of asking a question, even something as important as where can I buy it?  Because you won’t get an answer.  But there is one page that is doing it right and it’s most likely the last place you’d expect- AT&T. 

Full disclosure I’m a customer of AT&T but not in any other way connected with AT&T, they don’t pay me anything in any way.  Of course if you work there and wanted to fix my bill for 2010 I wouldn’t object.

AT&T has taken a lot of heat recently about the very successful Verizon Maps commercial series.  They’ve reacted with a commercial series and simultaneously launched their AT&T Communications Page on Facebook.  I doubt that the two are related but they occurred at about the same time.

What AT&T is doing that every other brand should emulate is they are engaging the users.  When someone asks a reasonable question they get an answer.  Even when others aren’t so reasonable, see the example below:

Even when people aren’t quite so polite AT&T responds:

And you’ll notice that what I predicted in my first blog post about the AT&T Facebook account is happening- that is the advocates are coming out and defending the company against attacks.  Notice the two people who responded to Mike above, they are advocates defending AT&T.  I’ve seen this behavior before and expect it will continue.  Here is what I said back on 12/16/09:

I think in the long run AT&T will come out on top with this Facebook outreach if they have the fortitude to stick with it and take the slings and arrows of outrageous competition.  Over time, the fact that they are willing to listen will bring out their supporters and advocates.  I’ve seen it before in social networks where the brand doesn’t need to defend themselves because their advocates will do it for them.  But it takes some time to build up the social capitol for that to happen.
The AT&T Facebook Fan Page-Analysis and Prediction

It appears that AT&T has built up their social capital rather quickly with their excellent responsiveness.  The AT&T responses are peppered with customer service reps email addresses.  And it appears that many people are involved.  This seems to be a well coordinated and orchestrated effort by the company to try to make a difference using Facebook.

The account is very active with comments constantly being added.  The variety of questions and responses range from “how do unlock my XYZ-123 type phone”, which is answered with another personal email for the customer service rep who knows about these phones.  To “how much will calls cost me in Cairo Egypt?” Which is answered with a link to a site that tells you exactly what will work and how much it will cost.

All in all, this the most impressive Facebook Brand page I’ve had the pleasure of running across.  My congratulations to the AT&T team for putting this in place and making it work at 100+ year old bureaucratic company.  I think this will go a long way in helping to mend the damaged public relations they are suffering now.

Posted via email from ckieff’s posterous

Mobile:

* With the introduction of Google’s Android I’ll predict that you will be able to buy an iPhone and an Android for under $50 by the end of 2010. It may go all the way to “free” with a 2 year contract.
* Verizon’s Android users will discover the tremendous data needs that real smart phones place on a data network. AT&T will still suck for iPhone users, but Verizon will suck just as much by year’s end for Android users too. This is because using a smart phone as, for example a location aware, active GPS device will require constant data transmission. That’s not happened with Verizon’s network yet and we’re seeing AT&T being crushed under the pressure of the currently expensive and relatively low volume (in relation to all cell phones) of the iPhone. Check out my review of the free crowd sourced GPS mobile app Waze for a glimpse of the future.
* Retailers will discover that well to do people who have disposable income are the majority of the people carrying smart phones. This will fuel a mobile location aware advertising rush.
* Companies will discover that smart phones allow people to circumvent firewalls blocking access to sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. And Companies will also discover that they can’t prevent employees from using, Facebook, uploading video of outrageous behavior. Which will cause further embarrassment in the social sphere for some major names who have been avoiding the social sphere until now.

Social Networks

* There will be new social networks created in 2010, but no one will care. I believe that Facebook has crossed the point of no return. It is not populated mainly by technically savvy people any longer which means there will be stronger inertia to moving to on to the next shiny new thing. The primary growth in Facebook is people over 35 years old, and this group isn’t easy to move. The mass exodus that killed Friendster and MySpace was fueled by younger people more adept and comfortable with technology than the latest wave of Facebook users. For these reasons I feel that Facebook has now become Googleized and is ingrained into the public consciousness and will not be easily replaced.
* Twitter will evolve into a Professional Communicator’s Platform, but maintain its fringe status. With only 30MM users it remains a curiosity with flattening growth. I observed this most recently a holiday parties where I asked “civilians” what they thought of Twitter. Universally people found it to be a curiosity and poorly understood. It is most useful for those of us wishing to reach many people at once, most people don’t want to do that. Therefore it will become even more the place to find bloggers and influencers.

Online Marketing

* For real legitimate online B2B or B2C marketing email will remain the top marketing tool. That is because it is still the most effective and ubiquitous tool available.
* Many companies will discover the effectiveness of using social media for touch points and maintaining contact with clients, either via Facebook, YouTube or Twitter. Many others will discover social media for customer service.
* Too many companies will try social media in a ham handed way with repurposed material from other media and fail miserably. They will fail because they will try to broadcast a monologue instead of preparing to engage in a dialog.

Give me 1 Good Reason why you won’t be looking at mobile and social media marketing in 2010?

On the Pro side, a large part of Salesforce’s business is customer service oriented. And adding any Twitter integration will bring Twitter into corporate approval more easily. And finding people complaining about your products on Twitter is rapidly becoming essential for every business.

On the Con side overlooking Twitter’s ability to be a lead source and info source on your latest prospects is a big oversight. Especially for a company called- Salesforce. (You’d think they would focus on sales a little more.)

And doing sales work on Twitter is very easy, looking up people who work for company XYZ, or with title ABC is very easy especially with services like Twellow.

Having worked with Salesforce for the last year, I would say it is sorely needing some social media tools. Perhaps they exist in the add-ons arena but I never found anything satisfactory. It seems to me that a service which finds your contacts on; Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc. should be very valuable for any sales team.

This in my estimation is a miss. Looking to social media as only a, “reactionary fix the problems type of medium,” ignores the benefits entirely.

Give me 1 Good Reason why Salesforce didn’t include sales team support in their Twitter Rollout.

Others see the challenge in the fact that people waste lots of time online at these sites not getting work done. This is a big issue because managers are very concerned with waste and inefficiency in the office. That’s the reason many major corporations walled off the social media sites to begin with. (If you work at many major companies they don’t allow employees to access Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, etc.) They said it was for security to prevent viruses, but it was really for efficiency. They see it as wasting time.

However, I don’t think that’s the biggest issue. The biggest issue facing Social Marketing is trust.

Chris Brogan speaks of this in his new book “Trust Agents” which is an excellent read and you should buy it today. It’s a very difficult thing for a company to trust that people will represent the company properly. To trust that the employees will do the best thing for the company.

The issue is that it all gets recorded for posterity in Google. “We can’t have something like that out there for anyone to find on Google.”

We confuse the fact of “it’s in Google so everyone can see it” with the fact of “how many people will see it?”

Mike Moran made an excellent point of this in his book “Do it Wrong Quickly” (another excellent read) pointing out that today you can make a mistake and put it on the web and then quickly fix it. And the only people who see the error are those who happened along when it was there. (And that too many marketers are still thinking in terms of ink on paper as being impossible to fix.)

One of the cornerstones of friendship is the idea that you’ll forgive a friend’s misstep. When a friend says something mean you chalk it up to them having a bad day. When the clerk at the 7-11 is mean you think they’re always like that.

If your business can establish a relationship with your customer they will forgive the occasional transgression. Without that relationship, they will think you dropped the ball and go looking elsewhere for a supplier.

Managers need to learn to trust that the inevitable mistakes your employees will make can be fixed because of the relationships they develop with your customers. This is the biggest challenge in social media, learning to trust the relationships.

Give me 1 Good Reason why you don’t trust your employees.

Tanks for reading,

Chris

It’s the exchange of these little nothings that creates a relationship. That’s what takes a communication from dry boring corporate speak and turns it into a slice of life. A way for people to get to know you and learn to value you as a person. It’s what takes you out of the list as just another info provider tool and makes you FRIEND.

This is the idea of social media and the idea of creating a relationship. That you value someone enough to listen to their squabbles, the little thing that’s a part of their life. It’s what’s in a real relationship.

And this is the hardest part for many managers and those schooled in the old ways of marketing to get. It’s important that you don’t think that every time a person decides to give you some of their time, that it’s an opportunity for you to use it as you see fit. Sometimes, the best thing to do with it is to give it right back to them.

It is my opinion that Ripple6 has a fine product and many wonderful people. I recommend anyone who is considering choosing Ripple6 as a business partner to continue your discussions with them. Of the many white label solutions available in the market today Ripple6 is one of the best.

These are extremely exciting times for those of us in social media, digital marketing and strategy. I’m very excited about the opportunities opening in the field of social marketing. My strong background in social media coupled with my experience in online advertising, B2B marketing, SEO and blogging create a strong suite of experience to help you with your online marketing needs.My Cirriculum Vitea is found here.

I welcome inquiries from those interested in working with me. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions. I can be reached at ckieff@gmail.com and on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter with the contact buttons on the side panel of this blog.

I am also available for speaking engagements and interviews please contact me via the email listed above.

Robert Scoble and I following a meeting in June 2009.

“@ckieff @newmediajim @cbarger @georgegsmithjr @scobleizer @jetblue Re @chrisbrogan at http://bit.ly/4qTdP, do you tweet about competition?about 23 hours ago from web

When and how should one talk about your competitors in a Social Media environment?  Here are my thoughts on the matter:

I believe that there are several over-riding considerations you need remember.

1. Google has very long memory- everything you Tweet, comment upon in a blog, or write in your own blog will be remembered.  (Some day I’ll most likely meet Seth Godin and regret writing that post titled “The stupidest thing Seth Godin ever said“.)
2. There are jokes in many industries that the people at trade shows all stay in the same place and the booths (and companies) just move around them from year to year.  This means that your competitor this year is likely to be your colleague next year.  Many if not most industries are incestuous.
3. Only speak with certainty about that which you know with certainty.  This will most likely exclude your competitor’s products if they are more complex than a doorknob.

With these as guidelines I seldom find the need to discuss my competition online or off.   It’s always better to talk about yourself than to speak of others especially in a competitive environment.  In the fields I’ve found myself in the products have been so complex that it’s difficult to know which features a competitor has or lacks with any certainty, and it’s likely to change in the next week anyway.

However, I do find that I have occasion to talk about people who happen to be employed by my competitors such as Brian Person here.  And the rules in that case apply and I’m happy that Google has a long memory because Brian deserves the accolades.

Now Ari in our discussion today also when on to ask, would I recommend a competitor to a customer if my company couldn’t fit their needs?  With a very complex product like the products I’ve worked with much of my life- it becomes apparent very quickly if you have a fit or not.   For instance if you need a forklift, you don’t need a dump truck.  That’s the stark difference for my products, either we have a close match or you’re looking for something entirely different.  So it’s rare that we have a close match but a competitor is clearly better- because there are so many factors involved in the decision.  A competitor may be better on the left side, but we are superior on the right- etc.  So the decision is very complex and it doesn’t lend itself to easily recommending a better fit for the customer’s needs. So I rarely find myself in the position that I need to make that choice.

But if you hold a gun to my head and ask me would I recommend a competitor if the situation arose?  I can confidently say that “Yes I will.” Because I also know that people have long memories and many of the people I’ve worked with over the years I’ll have the opportunity to work with again.  And this isn’t the only opportunity I’ll have with them.  I value my relationships more than my short term gain, because in the long term the gain is much, much greater.

Tanks for reading.

Chris

This seems reasonable until you start to dig into it a little.  What about someone who doesn’t have a blog but has thousands of followers on Digg, Twitter, Stumbleupon, etc. etc.  What about Facebook, and Digg, etc who received ad revenue from Google for ads for the skin cream?  What about Google who received ad revenue for these same ads?

What about when the skin cream manufacturer offers free samples to 1000’s of people via Facebook and invites them to come back and talk about it?  This after all is the essence of social media, crowd sourcing and viral marketing.  If a few of these people make false claims is the manufacturer liable for them?

It’s very easy to see how the lawsuits will begin targeting the deep pockets of Facebook, Google etc.  But the real losers in this are the public.  Companies won’t want to promote their products via social media.  Bloggers won’t get samples to write about.  But most importantly, Companies will require bloggers to submit product reviews for approval. This will kill the independent blogger review of any product online.  How can you believe someone who had to have their article approved by the vendor?

Jeremiah Owyang will need to revise his list of sponsored blogs because they are going to go away.  Why would I or anyone else want to put our reputation on the line when we have to get the vendor’s legal approval?  If the article is critical, the vendor will pressure me to change it.  As a corporate PR person I know I will if given the opportunity to impact a blogger writing about my company’s products.  David Meerman Scott also has an interesting story on this from the perspective of book reviews.

Many will say that it’s a good thing for sponsored blog posts to go away.  But it’s not, because the largest impact will be on the small company starting out who wants to get noticed by the big boys.  They don’t have the resources to vet each article, so their lawyer will tell them not to send out free samples of that new organic soap you’ve made.  And big popular writers will not be willing to submit each article to a dozen different companies for review.  And that will be the thing that hurts us all.

I titled this article Social ME-dia because one of the great equalizers about social media is that it’s all about ME.  What I say online in Twitter, and in my blog are my responsibility.  I also write the blog for my company and what is said there is the official statement of the company.  In each case the responsibility for any statements made is squarely on the shoulders of the owner of the blog?  I am responsible for the things I say, not someone else. Making some company responsible for my actions simply because they gave me a sample of their product is foolish.

I want to publically ask my blogger collegues and the FTC to not make the deep pockets of companies responsible for this.  It has the ability to stifle and pervert the nature of internet marketing in ways that we cannot forsee.  Make the individual responsible for their words.

Friend Request Accepted

Perhaps I’m the last person in New York to see this, or notice it but I snapped this picture on the E train this morning on the way to work.

A sign that social media is moving into the main stream?

Now Valley Wag complained  about this last month saying that New Yorkers will hate them.  I can’t speak for all NY’ers, or for any actually because I’m a commuter not a resident.  But I don’t think it’s half bad.

What I do think is noteworthy is that Dentyne feels that social media terms like “friend request accepted” are main stream enough to use them as the key to their ads.

There are others:

Send and Receive

The original instant message

I think this a sign that social media is moving into the mainstream of the social conscienceness.   And as a social media practicioner I find that encouraging.

What do you think?

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Facebook- Spark a Conversation

Moderated by Charlene Li, Co-author, Groundswell, and Thought Leader, Altimeter Group
Panelists:
Paula Drumm, VP Digital Marketing, H&R Block
Walt Freese, Chief Euphoria Officer, Ben & Jerry’s
Elias Plishner, SVP, Worldwide Digital Marketing Strategy, Columbia TriStar Marketing Group

CL Q: how do you spark a conversation.

Elias; in movies take prod from 0 to max awareness in 6 weeks and then on to 0 in a few months.

Calendar year 600-700 films. Look for uber fans on Facebook, etc. They look for people with mentions of films in profiles. Why, they are going to see the film anyway? Because they are thought leaders.

Walt: Ben & Jerry’s, built on non-traditional marketing. Facebook is a natural extension to the brand allows them to converse with the fan base.

CL: What did you do in detail?

Walt: B&J decided to give free ice cream to everyone one day a year. They used Facebook to allow people to give free cones to friends on Facebook. 500K free cones were given away as part of the promotion for the free ice cream day.

Elias: Gifting is a big idea in movies. They gave away a smoking pineapple which was popular with women (don’t know why). It seems that gifting on Facebook is a more female activity that gets a female audience

Paula: how do you get people talking about taxes? A portion of the audience gets a sense of accomplishment when hey get their taxes done. It’s a way to build trust in the H&R Block brand. They get people talking about the success of doing their taxes on their own. They tested lots of ideas to build trust, 2^nd life island, Facebook fan groups etc. They used gifts on Facebook too, money bag for friends. 250K people gave that gift on tax day.

Paula: on Twitter, use it as an outreach mechanism. They decided that it’s a better way to engage with people not to do outreach- one who got it. HR Block in my cross-hairs, in a Comcast cares way to find problems and fix them as a brand. They changed opinions of a blogger from a critic to a proponent. 

CL: to spark the conversation you need to listen first this way you can learn how to get into the conversation.

CL: How does advertising help to spark the conversation?

Ben & Jerry’s doesn’t use advertising. They are counterculture so they don’t like to do traditional mktg. They use, PR(others talking about them), event marketing, and no advertising. They do a lot more social marketing, social networking. They use Facebook, and twitter, scoopshots, event and guerrilla marketing and other forms that engage the consumer. They are glad to see the demise of normal talking at the consumer.

H&R advertising to push people to Facebook pages and MySpace profile, and YouTube. They are seeking to have consumers build trust. They created Truman Green a YouTube character created as a quirky person to engage with. Advertising was used to promote Truman Green, not H&R Block. They found this advertising to be much more effective than traditional advertising.

B&J Social marketing is to create lifetime customers not to get a transaction. If you want transactions use a coupon not social media.

H&R Social is successful in driving transactions. Customer interaction does lead to transactions which can then be used to prove ROI of the effort. H&R has proven this.

Elias: ads need to be telling a story. For second Grudge movie they found a real college student- but the whole thing was a publicity stunt. The story was that the student was given a tour of the movie set etc. And then the second day the student was missing. This part of the effort was the stunt.

CL: How do you measure this type of social engagement? They use standard audience survey techniques with response cards in theaters etc. they use comments and fan pages and page views. But they are not very reliable.

Elias : have big arguments on whether to leave comments on for social sites. They usually do leave them on. H&R leaves comments on as well. They are moderated for decency and language but are left intact despite the fact that some are critical of the company.

B&J loves the comments and interaction. They believe that the truth will come out and be exposed by the audience if the company isn’t transparent.

H&R what’s the ROI of ignoring social media? The cost of actually interacting on SM is very low as a % of the total marketing budget. The ROI is very high because you need to be involved now so you aren’t playing catch up later on. H&R is convinced that SM is going to be the major part of the advertising media mix in coming years.

Elias: has a new head of Social Media.

B&J customers who give negative feedback are doing a favor because if you can respond and turn the situation around you will have a more avid fan and promoter for the company than if you had before. But you must respond.

Audience Q: How do you get vertical apps like Facebook and twitter to bleed over to the website? They use widgets. They develop a hub idea so their community of interested fans can use a single site as the base for information which is then spread across the various sites.

Elias: We use apps and widgets but did not have such great success. They are moving to not recreating the wheel, so they use existing successful apps in the space. They found success lately with Flixster etc.

B&J used Social media to create a peace mosaic and tried to pull people to the B&J site. This was a mistake. They should have had the customers stay within the community. H&R agrees with B&J and Elias on this point. You aren’t trying to move them to your place, you are trying to meet them in their place.

Biggest surprise per H&R. They had a perception that few of their core community would be in places like 2^nd life. They found a bunch of “tax professionals” in 2^nd life. They have an H&R block island in 2^nd life. And they have employed these fans in their social media niches to support the brand.

Q: what about success on line and failure in the real world. Elias: there are plenty of campaigns where more people are visiting the web site than are seeing the film, Snakes on a plane.

Q: How is Facebook an extension to TV or is it in addition to TV advertising? H&R online doesn’t replace TV it’s just another avenue. Elias: online is complimentary to offline. There is much crossover between media. Like can you use outdoor for mobile phones to access online.

CL: did you take money from other budgets? B&J no. H&R every year is diff. They use testing funds to explorer new connections with consumers. Elias: Yes online budget is going up and others are not expanding. So yes it taking funds from other media.

———————————–

My take-away from the event? The question from the audience; “how do get this traffic from the social media sites to your web page?”

The answer the panel gave which is correct.. You don’t.  The idea of social interaction is that you meet them in their place not yours.  We’ve still got a long way to go to train marketers in how social media works.

Please let me know if you think I should continue this type of blogging in the comments below.