As I continue to espouse the need to think about how social media pull needs to become part of the dialogue, I figured I would continue to create some thought starters around social media pull and how it relates to doing a better job with your social media program.
In my last post, I created a "scenario" to think about changing how social media campaign management could look if folks were more interested in understanding content along the way towards doing a better job of "pushing" the right stuff to the right places and to the right people.
I thought I would tackle a different way to think about Facebook.
Typcially every company prides itself on its community management efforts when creating and maintaining their FACEBOOK FANPAGE. In fact, there is great debate about how important this is to a successful social media program. There is tons of evidence that each fan is worth some amount of money and how important interacting with you community is to making your business run.
I won't call bull shit on this thought...I think it is valid, but I would have to argue that in my adventures around the social media landscape people really have no clue as to what value this really provides. In fact every single metrics tool I have seen for Facebook is really just a lot of cool stats with little to no depth behind them.
For instance, I have been quoted the social media riot act by many digital people when they talk about their PTAT scores. And I have to ask, "they may be talking about this, but do you know what they are really saying and whether it is positive or negative?". The answer is usually a deflate no we don't but they are talking about it. How can you truly measure the impact of something if you have no idea what the nuance is. Statistics that move when you do something is definitely a response, I won't disagree with that, but insight comes from understanding not movement.
So what if you could "understand" not only that they were talking about it or commenting about it, but really know overall whether your captive audience was speaking positively or negatively? Wouldn't that bring the insight you need to do a few important things?
#1 - understand your audience
If you can tease out what they like or dislike within this conversation, you can really start to think about the cause and effect of you creating content for your community. Instead of driving an unstructured dialogue you can listen better so you can know what they want to talk about or are responsive to. Knowledge is power and understanding is part of that equation
#2 - Control the dialogue
If you could understand your audience you can actually now "drive the
discussion" in an informed way. This is the value of pulling from this
captive audience gets more valuable when you can start a "listen and learn loop" with your community. By pulling (and understanding your audience) you can better push to drive the messages you want and then learn and loop from there.
#3 - Know your consumer target
This is an important one. There is a ton of discussion around using social media to make sure you are talking to your target audience (or consumer demographic in business). If you can actually make sense of and then control your fan audience you are actually talking to your consumer. Couldn't it be argued that your Facebook Fanpage audience is your target demographic. It doesn't matter what their age is or where they come from...the point of a fanpage is to talk to people who love your brand. And this may be the biggest secret...your fanpage is your demographic and understand the captive dialogue is the path to a real time understanding of your consumer all the time.
Now this brings me to the point of this post. As a use case, many companies are trying to figure out how to better sell to their customers. So you have a sales team and the are responsible to sell products or services to these customers. I used to be the customer and I had many suppliers come to me telling me they understood my consumer and I used to laugh. With social media understanding and the ability to look at a FanPage, a sales team can easily study their potential clients core consumers to be better prepared to sell. It is the ability to look at a meandering demographic day by day to really track what is most important to the consumers of your customer. This is a sort of slam dunk way to be better prepared to sell using social media pull as a method.
The question is who hast he technology to really understand what is in that captive audience.
Stay tuned....the answer might come soon.....
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Being PULLY so you can way more PUSHY
One of my great blindspots over the last year is my focus on talking about social media from a minority perspective. What do I mean? As described in an earlier post, there is social media pull technology and social media push technology.
The post Links are here "link 1" and "link 2"
This segmented view of the social media market is something that opened my eyes to the fact that my conversation with the world was very lopsided. And while I am definitely fluent in social media pull language and technology, I am not as fluent in social media push. And where there is awareness, there is learning.
In fact, a great moment in clarity happened this week. We recently hired a very talented new person in our company. As we sat down to get acquainted, I started to share this idea of push/pull with her. As I described to her this idea she stopped me and told me this simple concept was very helpful because since starting at our company she was feeling lost as she learned what we are doing. She then told me that she had been working in social media for a long time, but wasn't quite sure why our language sounded so different. As we talked, she confirmed for me that she now understood the difference which would help her think through this problem because now she could see why. It made me tell her, I need to learn your language as well.
In order to further crystallize this methodology of thinking about social media push/pull, I thought I would take a couple of use cases that people think about in their social media lives and bring this concept to bear with some thought starters on how to make it work.
In my work, I hear a lot of different use cases that are interesting to folks. They include such things as campaign management, new product innovation, B2B selling and issues management. I will start with Campaign tracking and do the other ones in other posts to come.
Let's pick them off one at a time...
Campaign Management - People always ask us if there is a good way to manage campaigns, because people are looking to understand their social media ROI when promoting their brands. We can all agree that a campaign by its nature is push marketing whether it is social or not. The mistake people who are not well versed in pull social media make is when they want to measure their campaign effectiveness they tend to stop short of really pulling key information to help their campaign. They usually want to pull the metrics of their launched campaign. This can include tracking buzz, sentiment or other simple volume based metrics. They never really go deeper the way they now can.
How about a new scenario. You are about to launch a new campaign for your brand. Before you even design it couldn't you take the time to study where people are talking about your brand. You could study where the most positive sentiment is on what websites. This PULL would allow you to more accurate target where you PUSH your message. In fact, when you are searching for the where, you could actually figure out what they like or dislike about your brand on that particular target. Armed with more information of where they talk and what they like or dislike you can now craft more targeted message in the place you now push. You single messaged campaign could be segmented across a similar but targeted social geographies (website etc). Now you launch the campaign in a different way. Because you can understand using PULL the reaction in-flight you learn that of the 5 customized and targeted campaigns 3 of them hit the mark as you expect, but 2 of them do not. In fact 1 of the 2 could use the message from one of the other successful campaigns. Now because you studied it in flight, you can adjust and adapt to make sure the message you want hits your target in their soul. After it is over, you can track and measure what went right or wrong.
Where is the ROI?
The ROI is founded in the simple fact that by first understanding where to push and what message you could push, you have the power to really understand what is important rather than simply hope. Yes you know your consumer, but the cost to do so is so much higher when done traditionally versus simply using social media analytics to learn. So you have probably saved money using social versus traditional means. Second, figuring out yourself quickly and inexpensively where people are talking about your brands as well as elements of your campaign allows you to more effectively tighten your message and deliver it where it counts. One of my big complaints about PUSHERS is they have lost the notion that they are simply pushing more and more content to a world that is creating it faster then they are. Do a search sometime on topics similar to or around your brand. You will find that in your space no matter how big your brand is, it is still a small part of a much bigger conversation pie. And lastly, by learning more quickly about the success of your campaign you can take those learning and more quickly create the next more successful campaign without waiting weeks for the traditional measure to tell you your effectiveness.
The disconnect is no one's fault but as I learned in the innovation world...
If you don't have clear operational definitions then you will simply be saying two different things. Pushers and Pullers don't speak the same language and because of that the ability to use social media data is severely diminished because no one is looking at the total picture...
The post Links are here "link 1" and "link 2"
This segmented view of the social media market is something that opened my eyes to the fact that my conversation with the world was very lopsided. And while I am definitely fluent in social media pull language and technology, I am not as fluent in social media push. And where there is awareness, there is learning.
In fact, a great moment in clarity happened this week. We recently hired a very talented new person in our company. As we sat down to get acquainted, I started to share this idea of push/pull with her. As I described to her this idea she stopped me and told me this simple concept was very helpful because since starting at our company she was feeling lost as she learned what we are doing. She then told me that she had been working in social media for a long time, but wasn't quite sure why our language sounded so different. As we talked, she confirmed for me that she now understood the difference which would help her think through this problem because now she could see why. It made me tell her, I need to learn your language as well.
In order to further crystallize this methodology of thinking about social media push/pull, I thought I would take a couple of use cases that people think about in their social media lives and bring this concept to bear with some thought starters on how to make it work.
In my work, I hear a lot of different use cases that are interesting to folks. They include such things as campaign management, new product innovation, B2B selling and issues management. I will start with Campaign tracking and do the other ones in other posts to come.
Let's pick them off one at a time...
Campaign Management - People always ask us if there is a good way to manage campaigns, because people are looking to understand their social media ROI when promoting their brands. We can all agree that a campaign by its nature is push marketing whether it is social or not. The mistake people who are not well versed in pull social media make is when they want to measure their campaign effectiveness they tend to stop short of really pulling key information to help their campaign. They usually want to pull the metrics of their launched campaign. This can include tracking buzz, sentiment or other simple volume based metrics. They never really go deeper the way they now can.
How about a new scenario. You are about to launch a new campaign for your brand. Before you even design it couldn't you take the time to study where people are talking about your brand. You could study where the most positive sentiment is on what websites. This PULL would allow you to more accurate target where you PUSH your message. In fact, when you are searching for the where, you could actually figure out what they like or dislike about your brand on that particular target. Armed with more information of where they talk and what they like or dislike you can now craft more targeted message in the place you now push. You single messaged campaign could be segmented across a similar but targeted social geographies (website etc). Now you launch the campaign in a different way. Because you can understand using PULL the reaction in-flight you learn that of the 5 customized and targeted campaigns 3 of them hit the mark as you expect, but 2 of them do not. In fact 1 of the 2 could use the message from one of the other successful campaigns. Now because you studied it in flight, you can adjust and adapt to make sure the message you want hits your target in their soul. After it is over, you can track and measure what went right or wrong.
Where is the ROI?
The ROI is founded in the simple fact that by first understanding where to push and what message you could push, you have the power to really understand what is important rather than simply hope. Yes you know your consumer, but the cost to do so is so much higher when done traditionally versus simply using social media analytics to learn. So you have probably saved money using social versus traditional means. Second, figuring out yourself quickly and inexpensively where people are talking about your brands as well as elements of your campaign allows you to more effectively tighten your message and deliver it where it counts. One of my big complaints about PUSHERS is they have lost the notion that they are simply pushing more and more content to a world that is creating it faster then they are. Do a search sometime on topics similar to or around your brand. You will find that in your space no matter how big your brand is, it is still a small part of a much bigger conversation pie. And lastly, by learning more quickly about the success of your campaign you can take those learning and more quickly create the next more successful campaign without waiting weeks for the traditional measure to tell you your effectiveness.
The disconnect is no one's fault but as I learned in the innovation world...
If you don't have clear operational definitions then you will simply be saying two different things. Pushers and Pullers don't speak the same language and because of that the ability to use social media data is severely diminished because no one is looking at the total picture...
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
What is a Chief Evangelist? Besides CRAZY!
I have been thinking a great deal about the following question...
What is a chief evangelist? I am one (at least my card says so), but what the hell does this really mean?
Here is a scenario that I live through every day now. I meet someone (it can be at home or at work) when I inevitably tell them my title/role (either by giving them a card or telling them my role) they do one of three things
1. They laugh with a smirk like my job is bullshit
2. They are really interested and curious
3. They are actually envious because my card is cooler than their card (which is a funny reaction to me).
The reality is this. I work in a role (and have my whole career) that is mushy, squishy and for many an easy way to totally dismiss the value we try to bring everyday to our work.
In fact, I often will react to all of the differing reactions to try and defuse the awkwardness by saying, "I don't know what it means either, but that's the title they gave me." My response is to try to bring jokey clarity to to the moment. What moment? The fact that people are trying nicely not to admit they have no idea what I actually do in a role they can't fit into a traditional box. And as I have learned for many years, when people don't understand it they often ostracize you or ignore what you can do to help. Jeez, I have had people I am interviewing for jobs questioning why they are even talking to me at the beginning of the interview because if the title can't be tied to legitimate revenue generation in a way they understand it, then the person must be a laughing joke that no one pays attention to.
For me...it is my career. I have lived on the front end of the business since I started in it. I have held following roles over 15 years.
New Products and Technology Scientist (the easiest to follow)
Technology Broker (Huh?)
Open Innovation Networker (Squeeze me?)
Global Vice President of Innovation (How the hell do you measure that?)
Chief Evangelist (Hardy har har).
I am clear on what I do, and now I understand that it is my fault they don't understand the wacky path my career has taken me. In fact, I have bubbled it down the following way. I am two things an Innovation Navy Seal and a Muse.
Innovation Navy Seal - I like to land on the beach before the army gets there, use my specialized skills to identify the opportunity to take the beach so I can guide the army onto the beach successfully. I don't need much help to figure out the path, but to actually take the beach I need the resources the army brings so they can successfully take the beach quickly and with limited casualties. If I were in charge of the beach everyone might die, because I can't manage the details of actually taking the beach. After giving them the path to the take the beach, I leave for the next one.
Muse - It is fun to be part of working with partners to provide a different spin on things. You are there to help partner to make it bigger, broader, and different. You don't own that decision, but through strong relationships you help work to see things collaboratively that are usually missed. You help partner to make ideas bigger and better with the knowledge your partner has but you don't.
I am digressing. Why write about this when talking about a chief evangelist? Because it needs a definition that helps one avoid the laugh...
Here is my definition based on my experience doing weird jobs for many years.
A Chief Evangelist is the CTO of the marketplace.
After two years of doing this job, it has become clear that this role is very important to help shape the direction the market is going. It is not about shaping the market from a business perspective as much as a cultural one. It is about working with both the sales function, the product function, the marketing function and the services function to understand what helps create new deals, what makes people say yes to them and ultimately what it takes to manage those deals once they are signed. It is about bringing the needs of the customer to the development of the product with recommendations focused on bringing the greatest total value to the greatest number of customers. It is about helping be part of sending the message to the market by shouting out the wonders of your offering and how it helps create and do unique things for the market.
Being a Chief Evangelist is about helping people see over the horizon why this new idea is worth investing in, why it is worth doing so with your company and why you are going to help them champion this new idea across their company.
Being a Chief Evangelist is about being willing to push the envelope on behalf of your partner by standing next to them when they fight within their organization as well as with your own organization. Without your support those who believe in change need the help of someone who understands not only what that change can bring, but why it is important and how to show people where they must walk to get value from it.
Being a chief evangelist is helping coalesce the needs of the market with the efforts of your organization. The market speaks one way and you are responsible to make sure the market's broad descriptions can be prioritized and discussed in your organization in a way the brings the maximum revenue growth.
Being a chief evangelist is about showing others the skills they need to more successfully convince others why they need to buy into the change your company is selling.
Being a chief evangelist is to have a thick skin for those who simply think that careers are something that are made up of roles and not based on the skills we acquire. For many years, I have built skills as the center of my efforts and figure the roles will find me. As an evangelist, I am a change agent who works to bring tangible value to any situation that it is needed. I want to own the start (Innovation Navy Seal) but not the implementation. Why is that more valuable? Because the market is constantly changing and to be the best navy seal one can be we must live on the edge and not on the beach too long.
I have been given career advice for years not to talk about being an innovator or a change agent because it scares most people off and makes them believe you are not valuable and full of fluff. While I agree this has definitely been a challenge for me in my time in Corporate America, I ignore it. Why? Because there is a need for those interested in the challenge of working at the front of the funnel. And while I never dismiss the advice that one needs to bring tangible value, I am finding that by focusing on building the unique perspectives and skills to take on these difficult roles, one is able to bring change faster and tangible value more quickly.
More concretely...How does an innovator describe what they do at the highest level. I give credit to a very inspirational man, John Jenson (link here), who helped me when I was down. He helped me define what I do...
Here it is...
All companies have two things; their products and services they create and their balance sheet. You need one to drive the other. Between these two incredibly important things is a hole. This hole is filled with things like culture, processes and new ideas. All of them build both your products and services and the balance sheet, but when you don't have them you end up having a mess. A change agents job is to make sure that hole is filled and a strong bridge is built. I work on making that bridge strong and unassailable.
A chief evangelist does the same, only for a companies' products and services that are constantly changing for a balance sheet this trying desperately to gain a foothold so it can grow.
Being a CTO for the marketplace is as important as being a CTO who builds great technology for the marketplace.
Without a Chief Evangelist and a CTO you could run the risk of being to slow in a market that moves faster than ever....
Without a Chief Evangelist and a CTO you could run the risk of being to slow in a market that moves faster than ever....
Saturday, September 8, 2012
The elusive social media ROI - Pinteresting!
We are all trying to figure out how social can actually help drive business. It is a problem on the tip of everyone's tongue and while people are often clamoring for the answer, they continue to blindly do the things they do because they now have to.
No one ignores the impact of social. It is becoming impossible. What is impossible is the human resistance to getting out of the box about how it applies to what you are doing.
In my last few posts I have spent a ton of time expanding what I am learning by bringing the concept of push and pull into the dialogue. This realization that so much of this ROI discussion continues to be about creating content as opposed to learning from it something that I believe must stop soon. Why? Because without thinking about the picture in a total and complete way it is like trying to go from zero to 180 miles an hour in five second with a scooter as opposed to a Ducati.
Just like everyone, I am on the hunt for ways to apply social in a meaningful way. A while ago I wrote a post about why we won't see the dotcom bust again (post here). In this post, one of my key ideas is what the rise of twitter and facebook brought about the ability for individual nanocapitalists (what is a nanocapitalist?) to be able to easily and freely market oneself. I got this idea from watching my sister. She is a world class photographer who is continuing to successfully build her brand through the free marketing she does on social. She was a wizard at drumming up new wedding clients using facebook. She blogs consistently about what she does that is special and now...she has unlocked value from a place that everyone is struggling to understand.
What has she unlocked and been able to articulate...PINTEREST.
Yes...pinterest. I have to say...and maybe it is a guy thing, but I don't get it. I still don't get it and frankly one cannot get everything on social because we all innovate differently. That being said, I recently read a post my sister wrote about pinterest and what blew me away is the actual ROI she is creating through it.
See her post here...(link to kristin chalmers photography blog post).
If you read this it will make total sense. It did when I read it. But let's dig into it a bit.
Firstly, Kristin Chalmers uses pinterest to "communicate" with her clients. She does this in a unique way. Some of the greatest successes in business come from hybrid mash ups. When a market research firm goes beyond survey's to actually bring unusual methods like video or social they have morphed. When an innovation firm integrates technology based ways to understand the consumer quickly and more cheaply they own the space because they a ton more with less. And when a photographer goes beyond simply taking orders and focusing simply on the what the customers wants and makes production partnership that forces her clients out of the box, you get wedding innovation.
See the excerpt below to see what I mean...
"Plan your wedding and let your vendors know your vision – This part is tricky and I have a love hate relationship with how Pinterest helps but can also make photographers and other vendors a little frustrated. This is really the inspiration of my post and I will get to the bad stuff about the Wedding Boards and Pinterest issues a little later.
Here is why I love it! – I love sharing ideas with my couples via Pinterest. For example, I have a bride in December of this year who told me that she really loves pine cones. So one night I searched around on the web for pine cone bouquets, center pieces and and even cake decor. From there I pinned all kinds of beautiful images to my “wedding ideas” board and then “tagged” her so that these images on my board were sent to her board directly as well as sending her an email of the actual “pins” that I just put on my board. I know, that sounds a bit confusing but if you are a Pinner, you get it."
Here is one of the most innovative examples of my concept of PUSH and PULL (Post on subject here). She has frigging figured out the balance of push and pull in social using pinterest for god sake. Rather than simply sharing it, she actually gets value from it to help CONNECT with clients.
1. She PULL directly from her client what they like. (PINECONES)
2. She PULLS from THE CROWD to learn what is possible about PINECONES.
3. Then she PUSHES content from what she PULLED to help them think (MORE PINECONES) about what they might like.
4. They are now partnering quickly and effectively to decide which direction to take.
Why is there ROI? Because through simple communication, my sister has figured out how to move clients from simply telling her what to do to engaging in a dialogue where they are collaborating with all the data in the world to come up with something better. This creates tangible and innovative value from her service and over time methods like this will enable her to charge higher prices.
And here I am writing about it marketing her genius as an innovative wedding photographer to the social media community (the few that read this blog).
Innovation comes from all angles and social has opened the box on the ways we can come up with collaborative ideas to create, influence and learn...even at 41 a brother can still learn from his older sister.
Read the rest of her post...it is mind blowing. It is a novel fit in what is becoming a clearer puzzle in the quest to leverage social media for business.
Social media...its not just for breakfast anymore. This clearly moves the clock up 5 minutes to 9:20. I am getting hungry for lunch...maybe when people start to find balance in push and pull, will we get closer to social media high noon; the minute those who are behind will be shot in the back.
No one ignores the impact of social. It is becoming impossible. What is impossible is the human resistance to getting out of the box about how it applies to what you are doing.
In my last few posts I have spent a ton of time expanding what I am learning by bringing the concept of push and pull into the dialogue. This realization that so much of this ROI discussion continues to be about creating content as opposed to learning from it something that I believe must stop soon. Why? Because without thinking about the picture in a total and complete way it is like trying to go from zero to 180 miles an hour in five second with a scooter as opposed to a Ducati.
Just like everyone, I am on the hunt for ways to apply social in a meaningful way. A while ago I wrote a post about why we won't see the dotcom bust again (post here). In this post, one of my key ideas is what the rise of twitter and facebook brought about the ability for individual nanocapitalists (what is a nanocapitalist?) to be able to easily and freely market oneself. I got this idea from watching my sister. She is a world class photographer who is continuing to successfully build her brand through the free marketing she does on social. She was a wizard at drumming up new wedding clients using facebook. She blogs consistently about what she does that is special and now...she has unlocked value from a place that everyone is struggling to understand.
What has she unlocked and been able to articulate...PINTEREST.
Yes...pinterest. I have to say...and maybe it is a guy thing, but I don't get it. I still don't get it and frankly one cannot get everything on social because we all innovate differently. That being said, I recently read a post my sister wrote about pinterest and what blew me away is the actual ROI she is creating through it.
See her post here...(link to kristin chalmers photography blog post).
If you read this it will make total sense. It did when I read it. But let's dig into it a bit.
Firstly, Kristin Chalmers uses pinterest to "communicate" with her clients. She does this in a unique way. Some of the greatest successes in business come from hybrid mash ups. When a market research firm goes beyond survey's to actually bring unusual methods like video or social they have morphed. When an innovation firm integrates technology based ways to understand the consumer quickly and more cheaply they own the space because they a ton more with less. And when a photographer goes beyond simply taking orders and focusing simply on the what the customers wants and makes production partnership that forces her clients out of the box, you get wedding innovation.
See the excerpt below to see what I mean...
"Plan your wedding and let your vendors know your vision – This part is tricky and I have a love hate relationship with how Pinterest helps but can also make photographers and other vendors a little frustrated. This is really the inspiration of my post and I will get to the bad stuff about the Wedding Boards and Pinterest issues a little later.
Here is why I love it! – I love sharing ideas with my couples via Pinterest. For example, I have a bride in December of this year who told me that she really loves pine cones. So one night I searched around on the web for pine cone bouquets, center pieces and and even cake decor. From there I pinned all kinds of beautiful images to my “wedding ideas” board and then “tagged” her so that these images on my board were sent to her board directly as well as sending her an email of the actual “pins” that I just put on my board. I know, that sounds a bit confusing but if you are a Pinner, you get it."
Here is one of the most innovative examples of my concept of PUSH and PULL (Post on subject here). She has frigging figured out the balance of push and pull in social using pinterest for god sake. Rather than simply sharing it, she actually gets value from it to help CONNECT with clients.
1. She PULL directly from her client what they like. (PINECONES)
2. She PULLS from THE CROWD to learn what is possible about PINECONES.
3. Then she PUSHES content from what she PULLED to help them think (MORE PINECONES) about what they might like.
4. They are now partnering quickly and effectively to decide which direction to take.
Why is there ROI? Because through simple communication, my sister has figured out how to move clients from simply telling her what to do to engaging in a dialogue where they are collaborating with all the data in the world to come up with something better. This creates tangible and innovative value from her service and over time methods like this will enable her to charge higher prices.
And here I am writing about it marketing her genius as an innovative wedding photographer to the social media community (the few that read this blog).
Innovation comes from all angles and social has opened the box on the ways we can come up with collaborative ideas to create, influence and learn...even at 41 a brother can still learn from his older sister.
Read the rest of her post...it is mind blowing. It is a novel fit in what is becoming a clearer puzzle in the quest to leverage social media for business.
Social media...its not just for breakfast anymore. This clearly moves the clock up 5 minutes to 9:20. I am getting hungry for lunch...maybe when people start to find balance in push and pull, will we get closer to social media high noon; the minute those who are behind will be shot in the back.
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
You have to Co-Opt the message not drown in it
Very recently I wrote about push and pull in social media. In an effort for self growth, it is important to force yourself into uncomfortable positions. One of the places I have been challenging myself lately is to think bigger about the social media market/problem. In a recent post, I spent a lot of time discussing the importance of being a social media puller and not a pusher. Pull being learning from the content so you can push better. The below view is how I see the social media marketplace as a whole. It gives one some context around the market's development. What I am advocating here is that entire market wont' settle until PULL and PUSH are in balance which seems a ways away.
This is the social media market's current reality. When people talk about having a social program, it is my hypothesis that 80% of the program (and their cultural focus) is centered on creating successful programs to drive consumer behavior. I like to simplify it down to social media "push". This includes activities like engagement, e-mail campaigns, SEO efforts and other things of this nature. These are efforts to create content that is PUSHED out into the social marketplace.
The other 20% of the market is actually starting to think about pull. What is PULL? This is pulling data from the Social Marketplace into the Corporate Landscape. It is what most people call a social listening program. And in most cases, there is an immense amount of pressure on the social practice to create ROI from their listening programs. Everyone wants to know why they should invest in listening if they can't for sure know whether it is accurate or even tells them that their PUSH was successful. And even though they continue to send this message, most companies are getting very comfortable increasing their PUSH efforts because they feel it is creating viable ROI. I won't try to refute that belief here, although much of my experience working in the PULL market suggests that most people believe it is of value but can't prove it?
My question is this? How can you successfully Co-Opt the social message that is being created if you don't understand what people are thinking about it prior to crafting that message? In my opinion companies have to get a whole lot better at PULLING first to PUSH effectively. This is similar to polling consumers on what you message should be before crafting and launching it.
In socal PULLING...the data is all there waiting to be combing and analyzed, but most don't trust it as they blindly PUSH content out into the world. This seems like a broken process to me, because it is only half complete.
In fact, I would argue people who are not staffing their social efforts in a 50/50 manner are wasting their resources because the amount of PUSHED content both from companies and consumers escalates daily at a rate that is mind boggling. So doesn't it make sense that by PULLING first, you can focus your PUSH to the right folks talking about the right things in the right places.
This type of internal process (where application meets reality for social media tools) is the culture shift that will add efficiency and excellence to any social media program, because you can now optimize how you do things rather than increase what you are doing to reach the consumer.
In essence...you will Co-Opt the message rather than letting it Co-Opt you...
This is the social media market's current reality. When people talk about having a social program, it is my hypothesis that 80% of the program (and their cultural focus) is centered on creating successful programs to drive consumer behavior. I like to simplify it down to social media "push". This includes activities like engagement, e-mail campaigns, SEO efforts and other things of this nature. These are efforts to create content that is PUSHED out into the social marketplace.
The other 20% of the market is actually starting to think about pull. What is PULL? This is pulling data from the Social Marketplace into the Corporate Landscape. It is what most people call a social listening program. And in most cases, there is an immense amount of pressure on the social practice to create ROI from their listening programs. Everyone wants to know why they should invest in listening if they can't for sure know whether it is accurate or even tells them that their PUSH was successful. And even though they continue to send this message, most companies are getting very comfortable increasing their PUSH efforts because they feel it is creating viable ROI. I won't try to refute that belief here, although much of my experience working in the PULL market suggests that most people believe it is of value but can't prove it?
My question is this? How can you successfully Co-Opt the social message that is being created if you don't understand what people are thinking about it prior to crafting that message? In my opinion companies have to get a whole lot better at PULLING first to PUSH effectively. This is similar to polling consumers on what you message should be before crafting and launching it.
In socal PULLING...the data is all there waiting to be combing and analyzed, but most don't trust it as they blindly PUSH content out into the world. This seems like a broken process to me, because it is only half complete.
In fact, I would argue people who are not staffing their social efforts in a 50/50 manner are wasting their resources because the amount of PUSHED content both from companies and consumers escalates daily at a rate that is mind boggling. So doesn't it make sense that by PULLING first, you can focus your PUSH to the right folks talking about the right things in the right places.
This type of internal process (where application meets reality for social media tools) is the culture shift that will add efficiency and excellence to any social media program, because you can now optimize how you do things rather than increase what you are doing to reach the consumer.
In essence...you will Co-Opt the message rather than letting it Co-Opt you...
Tuesday, August 14, 2012
The need for owning your social media speed...
Let's face it, social media is fast. Real fast. In fact, they don't call it going viral for nothing. So this begs a very serious question. If social media is becoming an extremely important part of running your business, then why are so many organizations letting other organization run their social media programs?
Ask yourself this, if you willing to let an agency or other firm or even a contractor own the reporting on your social media successes, messages or failures aren't you basically saying that viral is slow?
If we look at this question from a simple workflow perspective and not an I am better than you are perspective, we can see that the logic of outsourcing social media can be a huge mistake. Why? Because between the cultural context that is lost by your third party doing (and not being part of your organization), the sheer clunkiness of the human hand off between organization AND the fact the partners never have your business interests completely in mind, you run the risk of losing the ability to react to the virality of social media.
Essentially, in this vendors humble opinion (and I work in services for a social media company as a piece of my role) if you outsource your social media listening/understanding program, you can't catch and throw what social media brings to you in the time you have to answer what is going on. There is too much gunk in the system when you don't own it yourself.
Who knows a companies operations, culture, processes and method better than those who are part of it? What I am suggesting is this...if you want to be able to operate at the speed of viral you need to be willing to slowly grow your internal resources to make your social media program work
Why does this work? For several reasons. For one, building a process internally that allows social media learnings to flow cannot be created from the outside in. You can't trust someone who doesn't live inside your company to create a process better than yourself (I can hear the $MM/project consultants calling bullshit on me...but hey isn't this the point of this post...you are selling services that don't live in the shit so to speak). Secondly, by bringing in new blood who understands social (they could have worked for your consultants) you can take their external knowledge and blend it with your internal culture to ensure that you get the best of both. And lastly, you will be better able to do to social what it can do to you. You can bring your knowledge and power to bear in a time frame that is meaningful.
Why would I write all this? Because as a social media story teller able to show organizations how social can help them, I am constantly preaching (pun intended) that all I can do is present strategy and insights that make my client say, "huh...I didn't know it could do that." They must know how it is relevant to the business. They must know the context by which an activity happens. they must know how it can either hurt or help the organization better than me. And lastly, their pride for their brand or company will always be greater than the contractor that serves them. I am merely a shill who can see neat things, but doesn't ultimately understand its potential impact on the organization...they must own it.
In fact, the more my clients begin to own developing the insights, processes and metrics for their social media program the more effectively they are becoming. To do that, you can't simply say it is interesting and can you hire someone for me to do it. You have to own it culturally and functionally.
They often say that innovation and change must work to escape the antibodies of the culture of the company you are trying to change. But if innovation (or in this case social media) is a virus in the corporate body, isn't creating a vaccine by introducing DNA from the virus itself into the body (in this case social media talent) the way to cure the disease so you don't keep getting sick???
Ask yourself this, if you willing to let an agency or other firm or even a contractor own the reporting on your social media successes, messages or failures aren't you basically saying that viral is slow?
If we look at this question from a simple workflow perspective and not an I am better than you are perspective, we can see that the logic of outsourcing social media can be a huge mistake. Why? Because between the cultural context that is lost by your third party doing (and not being part of your organization), the sheer clunkiness of the human hand off between organization AND the fact the partners never have your business interests completely in mind, you run the risk of losing the ability to react to the virality of social media.
Essentially, in this vendors humble opinion (and I work in services for a social media company as a piece of my role) if you outsource your social media listening/understanding program, you can't catch and throw what social media brings to you in the time you have to answer what is going on. There is too much gunk in the system when you don't own it yourself.
Who knows a companies operations, culture, processes and method better than those who are part of it? What I am suggesting is this...if you want to be able to operate at the speed of viral you need to be willing to slowly grow your internal resources to make your social media program work
Why does this work? For several reasons. For one, building a process internally that allows social media learnings to flow cannot be created from the outside in. You can't trust someone who doesn't live inside your company to create a process better than yourself (I can hear the $MM/project consultants calling bullshit on me...but hey isn't this the point of this post...you are selling services that don't live in the shit so to speak). Secondly, by bringing in new blood who understands social (they could have worked for your consultants) you can take their external knowledge and blend it with your internal culture to ensure that you get the best of both. And lastly, you will be better able to do to social what it can do to you. You can bring your knowledge and power to bear in a time frame that is meaningful.
Why would I write all this? Because as a social media story teller able to show organizations how social can help them, I am constantly preaching (pun intended) that all I can do is present strategy and insights that make my client say, "huh...I didn't know it could do that." They must know how it is relevant to the business. They must know the context by which an activity happens. they must know how it can either hurt or help the organization better than me. And lastly, their pride for their brand or company will always be greater than the contractor that serves them. I am merely a shill who can see neat things, but doesn't ultimately understand its potential impact on the organization...they must own it.
In fact, the more my clients begin to own developing the insights, processes and metrics for their social media program the more effectively they are becoming. To do that, you can't simply say it is interesting and can you hire someone for me to do it. You have to own it culturally and functionally.
They often say that innovation and change must work to escape the antibodies of the culture of the company you are trying to change. But if innovation (or in this case social media) is a virus in the corporate body, isn't creating a vaccine by introducing DNA from the virus itself into the body (in this case social media talent) the way to cure the disease so you don't keep getting sick???
Sunday, August 12, 2012
Why push needs to become pull...
The long delays usually encompass deep thought and more importantly implementation. For the past two months I have been knee deep in the social media battle. From hearing people's fears about whether they should even believe the validity of social media to working with true believers hell bent of making their own organization take responsibility for building their own capability. The spectrum is still vast.
Using the time analogy...it's still 9:15 on its way to high noon. I say no change because I amazed at how little consistency there is around the social media landscape. It is still a free for all. The confusion is baffling.
In fact, I had the chance to sit on panel recently and got to ask my favorite two questions of the audience once more. 1. Do you trust social media as a data source? Less than 5 percent of the 300 people raised their hands. 2. When you make a purchase online how many of you read about it before buying. Everyone's hands go up. 18 months of asking this question...no change. And change is what everything is about these days.
What does all this confusion mean? I think it means a lot of things, but most importantly that this is going to be a long slog and there will be major casualties along the way. In fact, I can see it already. Why? Because I have had the pleasure of working with two organizations in particular that are slowly embracing the need for change. And in both cases, the champions who have true vision for what is need and really understand social media the results come quickly and with great impact to those who are resistant.
But what is the secret of their success? They believe in pull.....
What is social media pull? It is different than push I can tell you. As someone who works on the pull side (I will explain in a moment), I have been blind a bit to how much push is going on. What is the push then? It is the creation of content. It is the modes, methods and tools that work the help people and companies drive the information flow. It is about working to control the message, to drive engagement and and increase the interaction with each other and companies' consumers. This is a critical part of the puzzle. Why? Because push is what made social possible. If people didn't create the content, then there would be nothing for people to read, react to and protest or embrace.
We must all pay homage to the great data push of the last 5 years. It has fundamentally changed how things work in the world. We have seen regimes fall, companies thrive, and people gain favor from their own backyard (blogging). The problem becomes noise. There is now so much content that the noise in the maelstrom is deafening.
Today, I am here to make a case for the opportunity that is falling on deaf ears created by the content fever. It is the case for pull. If push is the creation of content, pull is the antonym. It is about learning from what is pushed, listening to it, measuring it and understand its potential impact on what we push. Pull is about what must happen now. Companies continue to push messages out unaware of what else will be pushed by their decisions. When Chick Fila deciding to go public with its message against gay marriage they didn't really count what it could become with what else could be pushed. In fact, I saw an article showing how much it affected their companies sentiment with consumers. Their push created negative push and if they had just pulled ahead of voicing their beliefs they may have decided to keep them to themselves. Papa John's..same thing...don't get political without expecting the push to push back.
Link to article...in Masahable
Social media analytics, listening or whatever you want to call it gives one the power to understand the chaotic flow of the push. If you decide you are going to filter everything around you in an effort to gain some measure of control by understanding you can win. How many companies are currently planning their next push based campaign leaving no room during the event to use pull as a means of adjusting and optimizing the message they have set in stone prior. Better yet, how many companies used pull before they even planned their plan. Imagine if they used pull to learn first, then plan and then leave space to co-opt the push that is naturally created during their effort.
It would enable one to run their organization in a more fluid way. They would essentially embrace the idea that they don't control their brands as they did and it is important to pay homage the vast push that continues to grow by the second. The push controls them and their success is in a entities' ability to control its own reaction to how things used to be.
Well...they aren't the same anymore. We all know the world is different. My advice from the battlefield is this. Stop thinking that you can take your same old marketing messages to the virtual world. You can't control it. How much evidence do you need? The message is often a fart in the wind. You may go back to your organization and tell the tell of the likes you created, or the views you had, but either way if you don't really listen or learn from the push, then you are just being pushy.
Don't be pushy...be pully first...it will help you be even more pushy then you realize.
Using the time analogy...it's still 9:15 on its way to high noon. I say no change because I amazed at how little consistency there is around the social media landscape. It is still a free for all. The confusion is baffling.
In fact, I had the chance to sit on panel recently and got to ask my favorite two questions of the audience once more. 1. Do you trust social media as a data source? Less than 5 percent of the 300 people raised their hands. 2. When you make a purchase online how many of you read about it before buying. Everyone's hands go up. 18 months of asking this question...no change. And change is what everything is about these days.
What does all this confusion mean? I think it means a lot of things, but most importantly that this is going to be a long slog and there will be major casualties along the way. In fact, I can see it already. Why? Because I have had the pleasure of working with two organizations in particular that are slowly embracing the need for change. And in both cases, the champions who have true vision for what is need and really understand social media the results come quickly and with great impact to those who are resistant.
But what is the secret of their success? They believe in pull.....
What is social media pull? It is different than push I can tell you. As someone who works on the pull side (I will explain in a moment), I have been blind a bit to how much push is going on. What is the push then? It is the creation of content. It is the modes, methods and tools that work the help people and companies drive the information flow. It is about working to control the message, to drive engagement and and increase the interaction with each other and companies' consumers. This is a critical part of the puzzle. Why? Because push is what made social possible. If people didn't create the content, then there would be nothing for people to read, react to and protest or embrace.
We must all pay homage to the great data push of the last 5 years. It has fundamentally changed how things work in the world. We have seen regimes fall, companies thrive, and people gain favor from their own backyard (blogging). The problem becomes noise. There is now so much content that the noise in the maelstrom is deafening.
Today, I am here to make a case for the opportunity that is falling on deaf ears created by the content fever. It is the case for pull. If push is the creation of content, pull is the antonym. It is about learning from what is pushed, listening to it, measuring it and understand its potential impact on what we push. Pull is about what must happen now. Companies continue to push messages out unaware of what else will be pushed by their decisions. When Chick Fila deciding to go public with its message against gay marriage they didn't really count what it could become with what else could be pushed. In fact, I saw an article showing how much it affected their companies sentiment with consumers. Their push created negative push and if they had just pulled ahead of voicing their beliefs they may have decided to keep them to themselves. Papa John's..same thing...don't get political without expecting the push to push back.
Link to article...in Masahable
Social media analytics, listening or whatever you want to call it gives one the power to understand the chaotic flow of the push. If you decide you are going to filter everything around you in an effort to gain some measure of control by understanding you can win. How many companies are currently planning their next push based campaign leaving no room during the event to use pull as a means of adjusting and optimizing the message they have set in stone prior. Better yet, how many companies used pull before they even planned their plan. Imagine if they used pull to learn first, then plan and then leave space to co-opt the push that is naturally created during their effort.
It would enable one to run their organization in a more fluid way. They would essentially embrace the idea that they don't control their brands as they did and it is important to pay homage the vast push that continues to grow by the second. The push controls them and their success is in a entities' ability to control its own reaction to how things used to be.
Well...they aren't the same anymore. We all know the world is different. My advice from the battlefield is this. Stop thinking that you can take your same old marketing messages to the virtual world. You can't control it. How much evidence do you need? The message is often a fart in the wind. You may go back to your organization and tell the tell of the likes you created, or the views you had, but either way if you don't really listen or learn from the push, then you are just being pushy.
Don't be pushy...be pully first...it will help you be even more pushy then you realize.
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