Social Media Needs Real Strategy

This video is well worth the watch. If you are a digital strategist, you will be cheering. If you are new to social media in your marketing mix, it may change your life.

Newell Rubbermaid: Social Media from a Multi-Brand Perspective, by Bert DuMars; presented by GasPedal and the SMBC from GasPedal on Vimeo.

Key things to really hear:

  • The importance of understanding the culture of Twitter, Facebook or other platforms
  • Don’t start with the technology. Facebook might not be right for your goals.
  • You have to immerse yourself, not just publish.
  • Don’t just talk about business, have fun.
  • It’s an eco-system – how does social media fit with your entire PR & Marketing plan?
  • Scale it! Test and Learn
  • Monetize when the time or place is right

X-posted on RTCRM Sparkblog

ePatient 2009: Boomers in the Fourth Turning

Recently I had the honor of presenting at the inaugural ePatient 2009 conference.  I have to say it was one of the best conferences I’ve been to in or out of Pharma.  I was part of the “Pecha Kucha” session, so my deck is 20 slides and 20 seconds a slide, per the proscribed format.

I’m posting with my script so it makes some kind of sense.  Thanks to Melissa Love, a talented RTCRM Art Director for the fabulous mood boards.

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Twitter and YouTube: How to Reach Consumers and Media

In September I presented to the Food Marketing Institute.  It was a great experience!  They were really specific that they wanted people to be able to walk away feeling like they really got how to engage with Twitter and YouTube.  They didn’t want another general “social media” presentation.

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We Heart Mad Men

x-posted from RTCRM Spark Blog

My "Mad Men" Self

I’m not sure I know anyone who works in advertising who doesn’t love the show Mad Men. Their season 3 promotion allows you to create your Mad Men avatar! I had to jump right on this. That’s me in the bright blue in the middle.

I noticed that the cartoon versions of Don Draper and Roger Sterling (left) are looking a lot like RTC’s Matt Connor and Jeff Ross. Does that make Barry Kessel the Bertram Cooper of RTC?

Needless to say, I think this promotion is a brilliant use of social media and viral marketing. Check the Twitter avatar of half the people who work in advertising and they have changed over to Mad Men avatars in the past few days. But the question always becomes, how do you prove success on promotions like this. RTC wasn’t involved in this promotion, but here’s what I’d do. Until the show airs, you can’t determine real ROI of increased viewers. So, right now we’d be watching the leading indicators. But what are those leading indicators? Here are a few of the stats we’d be watching:

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The Future of Bookstores

On my way home last night I was checking twitter on my blackberry before pulling out my Kindle
to read for the rest of the commute home.  Yes, please process that sentence.  I’m that girl.

It was a post by uber-geek Wil Wheaton that caught my attention:

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Back Channel Networking

(x-posted on RTCRM.com)

Despite my outgoing personality and insane level on social media involvment, I’m not very good at the conference/cocktail party networking thing.  I attribute this to my being an INTJ and a Virgo.  The “I” of INTJ means I tend to be introverted, and not comfy making small talk with tons of strangers. The Virgo means that I like to control situations and have things neat and orderly (not my house, just my life).

Nutshell is I suck at just chatting up strangers unless I have some specific thing I wish to say to them.

Thank goodness for the “back-channel.” I’m at the ePharma Marketing Summit and if it weren’t for Twitter (and my colleague Croom), I wouldn’t have spoken to a soul.   Twitter is the introduction to a whole bunch of new people and thanks to one smart person, Shwen, we had a “tweeple” lunch yesterday where many of us met in person.  Social media and technology has opened up an entirely new avenue of conference and post-conference networking.

Here’s my approach:

  1. Twitter during the conference. always using the conference “tweme” code (trust me they all have them now, and they are usually pretty simple to figure out). I do it almost as a way of taking notes on what is being said more than commenting and giving my opinions.
  2. Start following interesting conference tweeple, be sure to “@” them when they say something interesting and “retweet” good posts by other people. Be sure to look for the official conference Twitter person. There’s probably one there.
  3. Ask at least a couple of public questions during QA sessions, if you can come up with anything good. It gives other people a reason to come and talk to you! Do start with your name. I’m terrible about remembering that part. Today I would have been the “woman in lavender.”
  4. Organize tweeple meals or at least attend them. You can just listen and nod attentively, if nothing else.
  5. When you do talk to people in person don’t just take the business card and file it away.  That night, the next morning — hit LinkedIn.com! Send them a network invite( mention that you just met them at the conference, refer to your conversation to jog their memory).

My boss insists that I at least talk to a couple of people at every conference and convince at least one person that I know what I’m talking about when it comes to social media, so I’ll get invited to participate on panels at future conferences.  I guess you could call the whole approach “influencer networking.” Often conference back-channels can be thoroughly overwhelming and distracting,  thank goodness for the back-channel at ePharma or I’d never speak to anyone!

[tags]networking, social networking, conferences, back channel, twitter, linkedin[/tags]

Gary Vaynerchuk (Wine Library), Building Personal Brand Within the Social Media Landscape

 

I have nothing I can possibly add to this.

5 Myths of Social Media & Marketing

(x-posted from RTCRM Blog)

Last week I had the privelege of speaking at a 4As (American Association of Advertising Agencies) meeting of Kansas City advertising agencies executives. They were in NYC for a day of marketing & advertising fun for the Kansas City Council Board of Governors meeting at AAAA headquarters. It was quite a full bill of speakers with topics ranging from trends in media planning to consumer insights, and of course social media.

I decided to take advantage of SlideShare.net to socialize my social media presentation to the folks at AAAA, and anyone else who might be interested.

This is the second or third time I’ve done this presentation, and I’m now inspired to do a part two. So look out for the 5 Myths of Social Media & Marketing (Part II) in the near future. Here are the Ten Myths of Social Media & Marketing, the first five are covered in this presentation:

  1. Social computing is a niche activity
  2. Only a few people are involved in social computing/media
  3. Only millenials are into social media
  4. It doesn’t matter if your audience are "inactives"
  5. Social computing has hit its peak
  6. If you build it they will come
  7. Social media is free
  8. I should build a community for my brand
  9. Social media has no trackable ROI
  10. Blogging is done

[tags]social media, presentation, myths, marketing, 4as, aaaa[/tags]

Social Media Presentation Madness

I’ll be heading up to NYC this week for a fun-filled day of Social Media presentations.  The day will start off with a presentation to the American Association of Advertising Agencies, better know as the 4As.  Their are having their annual Kansas City day where executives from KC agencies come to the Big Apple for their fill of marketing presentation goodness.    I’m part of a fairly intimidating bill of speakers during the day.  Thankfully, I’m early on so I get to set the bar.  Can’t say if it will be a high-bar or low-bar — but still.  Then I head of to RTCRM’s NYC office on Madison Avenue to give the same presentation to the team at our NYC office.

This will be the 4th or 5th time I’ve done this particular presentation to either staff or clients, so I’ve got the shtick pretty down.  I’m also grateful that this is a topic I’m more than well enough versed in that if I need to go off script, I can.  I’m never sure how much people know about social media from a marketing context.  Sometimes the basic presentation is a “duh” for people, so if the information I planned on presenting doesn’t thrill and chill — I can just move into something more compelling for them.

Truthfully, this really doesn’t happen often.  The data in the “5 Myths of Social Media and Marketing” presentation I developed really is new to most people.  Marketers, understandably, stick to the tried and true most of the time.  Another factor in my favor is that while they may see the data, they may not really know how to apply it to their clients or marketing plans yet.  And, frankly, most people have lives so they don’t follow this nonsense like I do.   Thank goodness for that or I wouldn’t be nearly as employable.

I’m also hoping to be able to post this presentation deck to SlideShare in the near future.  Been talking to the folks at RTCRM about posting it to the blog, with fairly good results.  Of course, most of the time I’m busy working on client business or pitches — hence the long gaps in my professional blogging here and at RTCRMs blog. I do find time to post to Twitter.  Thank goodness for the low pressure of micro-blogging.

[tags]presentations, blogging, social media, 4as, aaaa, advertising[/tags]

DCK: Twitter me This

(x-posted from RTCRM Spark Blog)

There’s been lots of buzz around Twitter since it launched in 2006. Twitter really came onto the scene at 2006’s SXSW conference and has been growing steadily since. Lots of brands are jumping on the Twitter wagon and more are wondering why anyone would care. At today’s Digital Coffee Klatch (DCK) for the RTCRM staff in DC, we’ll be discussing what Twitter is and how it is used for personal and marketing reasons.

One of the biggest issues right now with social media and marketing is that people seem to forget to match the technology to the business goals. There are specific types of social media technologies that lend themselves to specific types of business goals. Before jumping on the Twitter wagon you should know what it is you want to achieve and how you will measure success.

However, it’s good to have an understanding of what Twitter is first.

Here is the dicussion guide used at the Digital Coffee Klatch, I hope it helps to illuminate Twitter and the marketing possibilities for you. Questions? Twitter @carlenlea.

Meet Twitter

Brands using Twitter
Questions for Discussion: Why use Twitter? Is it good for Awareness, Aquistion, or Retention? What are key business or marketing goals that Twitter would be a good tactic to achieve? How would you measure success? What are the operational issues to plan for?

Tools to Manage your Brand Reputation

Twitter Alternatives

Cool stuff with Twitter

Twitter Terms:

  • Tweets = Twitter Posts
  • @username = reply to someone else
  • #word = twitter meme

[tags]twitter, lunch and learn, social media, education, coffee klatch[/tags]

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