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

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]

I have nothing I can possibly add to this.

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]

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]

“Natural or not, finding oneself in an ad unexpectedly is a worrisome prospect. I enjoy Facebook and the fun my friends and I have therein. And I have been careful not to join a group that might come back to bite me. Still, I shouldn’t have to worry about my face–or rather the faces of my daughters–ending up in an ad.”

I don’t know how many people have come across these ads yet, but in effect they turn you, the Facebook user, into a product spokesperson.  Ostensibly this happens with your permission, but most people really have no idea what they have agreed to.

Working in this industry and as focused on social media and emerging technologies as I am, the first reports about this issue with Facebook’s Social Ad platform really got my attention.  When I discovered that making myself a “fan” of a company or brand gave them the right to use my face and name in their ads on Facebook – unless I expressly blocked them from doing so — kind of bothered me.

In Facebook’s defence, they have some pretty solid privacy controls for users.   Most people just don’t even know they are there, which benefits Facebook’s advertisers.  I have my privacy settings now to block anyone from using my name and face in their ads.  This is why privacy literacy is so important.  It’s really on the users to make sure they know what is going on, because it benefits companies like Facebook to not really tell you.

Here’s a few recent articles on Facebook’s ad programs and privacy concerns:

• What Is Stuart Elliott Doing On Facebook Shilling For Canadian Club? – Online Media Daily
• MoveOn Launches Privacy Campaign Against Facebook Social Ads – Marketing Vox
• Are Facebook’s Social Ads Illegal? - Bits, New York Times Blog
• Apologetic, Facebook Changes Ad Program – New York Times

[tags]privacy, facebook, social ads[/tags]

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I think I’m officially in love with “Bonafide Marketing Genius.”  No, it’s not just for dropping the f-bomb in this presentation. It’s for voicing what every client and have the people I work with ask me — and then giving a great, clear, concise explanation.

~ I tip my hat to, BMG!

Thanks to B.L. Ochman for pointing this out!

[tags]social media, plain english, presentation[/tags]

I scoffed at Brand Tags when it launched, but this article from Digital Influence Mapping has compelled me to check it out again.  The battle of the brands was interesting, but what I’m really finding fascinating is the “guess the brands” section.

It took me all of 11 seconds of looking at the tags to determine Bose Audio and 21 seconds to figure out another tag cloud was Second Life.  It took me about 10 seconds to guess Jif Peanut Butter, but I spelled it wrong, so they didn’t count it.

As the site points out: “the basic idea of this site is that a brand exists entirely in people’s heads. Therefore, whatever it is they say a brand is, is what it is.”  This is a really interesting way to see what people think of well known brands.  I’ve also found Amazon’s experiment with user tags to be a similiar, but real-world example of this same idea.  Anyone can add a tag to a product.  I’ve seen some really interesting tags that surprised me.  For example, someone is clearly on a mission against homeopathic treatments because you’ll find many tags like “junk science” and “total crap” on those products.    There’s a potentially serious brand management issues here.

We can add user tagging to the long list of UGC that companies need to get really smart about really fast.  If nothing else, they should be listening.

[tags]brands, tagging, relationship marketing, brand tags[/tags]

A lot of my clients at RTCRM are pharma companies, so I read quite a few Pharma blogs. They are constantly complaining about the lack of Web 2.0 and social Web elements in Pharma marketing. For example this article from World of DTC Marketing touches on many issues that I encounter when working with clients, but never gets to the true issues that we and our clients are dealing with.

Has this blogger and every other Pharma Marketing blogger never heard about FDA regulations? That’s why Pharma can’t move beyond Web 1.0 — they don’t have the technical & legal processes in place to deal with Adverse Event reporting. They are also extremely, and somewhat understandably, risk adverse. The major issue with Pharma marketing is that the lawyers run the show and too few organizations are educating them or working with them to craft processes to mitigate risk.

Another major issue is risk. Getting truly engaged in the social Web can help put a “human” face on a Pharma company if it’s done well, but it opens companies up to more risk and different kinds of risks than they may be used to dealing with. The other question is should they focus their social Web efforts on consumers or healthcare professionals? Direct to consumer (DTC) advertising is something that pharma companies debate the merits of and a lot of consumers think it’s a bad thing. Pharma is making some really interesting inroads to the social Web with healthcare professionals via sites like Sermo.

One last, very ignored issue, is patient privacy. There is a lot of question about how pharma companies getting involved in social media may be a conflict with HIPPA and other privacy regulations. Zack Rodman wrote two detailed posts about privacy issues on the RTCRM blog. These begin to detail how complicated an issue this can be for pharma companies and pharma marketers.

Believe me, I’d like to see more of my clients move incorporate social computing into their marketing plans, but I want them to do it the right way. Set some organizational foundations, test the waters, and determine if there’s a decent ROI before jumping in head first and having an expensive disaster to clean up.

Please, pharma bloggers, find a new drum beat. How about some constructive suggestions instead of just complaints?

[tags]pharma marketing, DTC marketing, social media marketing, social media, pharma[/tags]

I love when a company actually takes the time to know its customers well enough that they would think of a promotion like this. Jones Soda is a quirky micro-brew soft drink company that makes bizarre soda flavors like Turkey & Gravy for Thanksgiving and Jelly Doughnut for Hannukah. To be fair, they also make more mainstream flavors like Rootbeer and Cola, but I think their limited editions are far more interesting.

But…I digress.

Recently Jones Soda launched a promotion with ICanHasCheezburger to create a new label for their sodas. Beyond this they’ve created the ultimate in Web mashup experience. You can order a 12-pack of Jones Soda with your own customized “LOLcat” label for your soda. Now if you’ve never heard of ICanHasCheezburber or LOL cats, you’ve missed out on one the Web latest and greatest time wasters. Heck, there’s even an LOL Cat translation of the bible now. By the way, LOL cat is a generic term. You can really use any animal for this, hence the Hippo shot above.

Jones Soda cements their “hipster” status by joining forces with the ican crew and clearly knows that this site and the LOLcat experience appeals to their customers. I’ll be really curious to see how they don on sales. Even I’m considering it buying my own custom 12-pack.

[tags]jones soda, lolcat, i can has cheezburger, internet, promotions, marketing[/tags]