LaughlinOutLoud

We, as marketers, are accountable for value. Measured. Assumed. Attributed. Demonstrable. Everything we do should have a basis in moving needles. Two weeks ago, I wrote about brand community value. Asking “What’s the ROI of marketing?” seems to be the equivalent of breathing.

What’s the ROI of social media? Of TV? Of PR? Of a successful customer service program? I once heard someone observe that one of the cruel ironies of advertising is the number of people who chose the profession as a way to avoid math. On a related note, I have an urgent announcement to college juniors struggling with Accounting. Advertising is no longer as clear a career path.

Which brings me back to math. High school math, to be specific. One of my most clear memories of Algebra is as applicable a lesson to the ROI of marketing as I’ve heard. The more variables you know, the easier the equation.

The same goes for the ROI of your marketing program. What’s the ROI of social media? It depends on a number of factors, including but not limited to: What’s the value of a visitor to your website? What’s the value of a qualified lead? What’s the value of positive customer experience? What about the lack of negative buzz?

When you understand the value of your variables, the ROI equation gets a lot easier. As you walk slowly to the chalkboard, start by figuring out what you already know.

I’ve always thought the phrase “math problem” was a misnomer. The only math problem I know of is if you think you don’t like math. Math is a tool that can help prove your worth.

A few weeks ago, the internet was abuzz with facts and figures breathlessly reporting the newly-calculated value of a Facebook fan. Two of the most talked about studies had very different findings about how to value brand communities.

A study by Vitrue assessed the average Facebook fan at $3.60 – based on a model of media impressions. On the other end of the spectrum, a study by Syncapse featured a more complex approach and a much higher valuation – $136.38.

Both are good examples that your outputs are only as good as your inputs.

The studies’ flaws have been well-documented elsewhere. And I won’t spend time on the methodology of either except to say this: The value of your fans – whoever they are, online or off – depends mostly on how you connect with them. How you inspire them. How you turn them on. And that is a key element that is missing from both formulas.

ROI models struggle with the qualitative. It’s always been my soapbox with average ROI’s of media. They can’t take into account the value of the creative. Good creative moves mountains. Mediocre creative doesn’t.

We live in an Age Of Engagement. Leaving that out of a formula to determine the value of your brand community is the equivalent of Einstein settling on e=c².

A crisis can occur at any time, at any place. It’s a serious situation. Something bad has happened to a company, community or individual that requires immediate attention and action. It can be a workplace injury; a shooting at a crowded mall; a fire at a restaurant; a chemical spill at a plant.  All of these situations can occur. We just don’t know when. So it’s important to be prepared for crisis communication. Preparation allows us to manage the situation and respond right away.

There are two key words in the last paragraph. Manage and respond. They’re part of the old school communication model and definitely part of the new school.

Social media, primarily Twitter and Facebook, has changed the way public relations professionals manage and respond to a crisis. It’s a critical part of planning now.

Sure, the fundamentals still apply and provide the foundation for responding and managing a crisis situation well. Social media adds another element though. Suddenly, employees, community activists and passersby, among others, can be sources of information for the media.

So how do you successfully incorporate social media into your crisis communication plan? And have you updated it recently to include social media? If you haven’t, now’s a good time to dust it off and give it a look.

Crisis Communication Guidelines 2.0

1. Does your company/organization have a Twitter feed or Facebook page? If so, who oversees it and how do you plan on managing the flow of information? If the company/organization is not active on social media, it’s time to participate.
2. Who on the crisis communication team uses and is knowledgeable about social media? If there currently isn’t someone, a person needs to be identified to lead the effort.
3. What employees or staff members have Twitter accounts and Facebook profiles? It would be good to know in advance. Often, they can be sources of information for the outside world and you’ll want to develop employee/staff guidelines for a crisis situation, so the message is controlled, consistent and factual.
4. What reporters do you know that are using social media? What media outlets? It’s imperative to round up this information and connect with them so you can provide timely updates and know what’s being said about your brand and the situation.
5. Developments can happen fast in a crisis situation and often information is disseminated on-the-go. Are you set up to be mobile? A good starting point is to have a laptop, Wi-Fi connector and smart phone available. If you don’t have a smart phone, is there one ready? Is it loaded with the proper apps and addresses? Is there an extra battery and charger set aside as well?
6. Are you set up to share information online and via social networks? In other words, posting written and video statements to the company/organization website, a newswire, PitchEngine.com, Twitter and Facebook?
7. Are you optimizing your online content? It’s important that this happens and a skilled professional who understands search engine optimization assist with it. The better this is done, the higher up you’ll be on search engine result pages. Who’s your go-to person to accomplish this?

These are just a few thoughts for incorporating social media into your crisis communication plan. If you haven’t done it or have not reviewed your plan recently, there’s no time like the present.

What else would you add to this list?

If I had to guess, most CEOs are more bewildered than ever by how to evaluate or develop strategies around influencing the bloggers who influence brands.  Sure we all know that angry bloggers are bad for brands and happy bloggers are good.  But that doesn’t write a manual for how to influence them.

Then there’s the question, just how many bloggers are there anyway.  Is anyone keeping score?  So, I did a search.  Back in 2006 the number was estimated at 50 million.  By 2007 the number was over 70 million according to The Blog Herald. More recent numbers are harder to come by.  I suppose it’s like thinking about the federal deficit.  After you pass well into the trillions you lose interest in that actual number.  Does anyone including McDonalds know how many burgers they’ve sold anymore?

The point is it’s never been easy to develop a strategy for engaging bloggers on behalf of brands.  The numbers are numbing.  Unless you’re McDonalds there are more bloggers than there are people in most brand’s target audiences.

Which is exactly why social media and open channels are so important.  Brand managers may be reluctant to create channels in which their brands might be ranted against, but the benefits of a dialogue versus a monologue are too big to argue against.  With an open channel you don’t have to spend time trying to find the bloggers you need to reach, they’ll find you.  In no time you’ll know what makes them happy and what makes them mad.

The reality of a digitally driven media culture is that transparency is unavoidable.  One-way marketing channels are not only obsolete they’re impossible.  It’s like protectionism versus globalism.  We can be nostalgic about our own little corner of it, but we’re one big open noisy world.

So what’s the best strategy?  After you open the channels.  It’s tactics.

What do women want? So goes the question of movies, marketers and men. What Women Want, the movie, was named after this eternal query. It featured Mel Gibson as Nick Marshall, an advertising exec who experienced professional and romantic success once he was able to read the minds of women. The predictable plotline followed Gibson’s rise to demise, then back to everyday guy when he learned his lesson. (Bonus lesson:  Don’t cross-dress during a thunderstorm).

Nick relied on stealing ideas from his female colleague for campaign concepts that would appeal to women consumers. And according to She-Conomy.com, appealing to women consumers is important: Women are responsible for 85% of all consumer purchases – ranging from food to vacations to PCs.

If ‘What Women Want’ was made now, Nick would probably be better off checking Facebook statuses, downloading videos from YouTube or monitoring his TweetDeck; the rise of social media gives marketers a broader reach of what women really want. So, Nick Marshall, here a few brands you could learn from:

Medela
The breast pump brand’s site offers many ways for expectant and new moms to connect with each other and with experts in the field. There’s also plenty of information about breastfeeding, and a link to an active Facebook page featuring lots of mom interaction. Aside from being able to provide an incredibly dynamic outlet for their consumers, Medela is able to watch and learn from these interactions in order to shape the way they do business.

Kotex
The feminine care brand is complementing its “tell-it-to-me-straight commercials” for its new line of tampons, U by Kotex. A microsite with consumer interaction functionality allows women to engage in a space that feels secure and intimate for this private issue, and get questions answered by a health expert, a mom and a peer. Kotex is able to position themselves as a resource on the topic while also collecting market intelligence.

Coach
Holiday “Blog-a-day”

During the 2009 Holiday season, Coach enlisted popular fashion bloggers and vloggers to boost their holiday sales. The “Blog-a-day” program lasted 30 days, and featured a different site or video link with merchandise overviews, reviews and best of all – giveaways for the readers.  Coach was able to activate many new networks of ambassadors, interact with their audiences through credible sources and drive online sales through direct links from the featured sites.

These are just a few of many examples and we can anticipate that the way brands can speak to and interact with female consumers will continue to evolve. So marketers take heed – we are no longer just telling women what they want – they can tell us. We just need to listen.

A recent post about social media on Clickz by Christopher Heine resurfaced last year’s mammoth of a digital ad story where Skittles took, according to critics, a “reckless” jump into the social scene. The well-known company replaced its website with an uncensored stream of consumer posts, filling their home page with content that any rational advertiser would see as corporate suicide – and they took a lot of flack. How could they make such a careless decision – leaving their website open for public vandalism and letting social conversations reshape perceptions around their brand?

The results? Well, beyond the large amount of publicity they gained through word of mouth buzz and coverage of their social stunt, “The brand increased its presence on the social site from around 600,000 fans, pre-Twitter-experiment, to 3.5 million by 2009’s end.”

Many corporations are calculated risk averters. Standards, rules, and processes are put in place to avoid any chance of threat, error, or failure – something that is most often associated with the “unknown”.  Social media – although having been around for a few years now – has a mountain of unknowns due to the transparency that takes place between consumers and brands.  I mean, what’s riskier than putting your trust in the hands of strangers – allowing them to push out messages you have no say over?

Apprehensive to abandon their control, many brands manipulate the medium to protect themselves from potentially harmful consumer messages. As a vehicle fully driven by consumer conversation and content, this ultimately stifles the potential of social media. Ironic how the piece of social that businesses are most scared of… is the secret ingredient that makes it so powerful.

It’s brands like Skittles who have fully embraced social media for what it is that are getting the most out of what it is powered to do. I commend brands like Skittles for their bravery. They put a trust in their consumers that few other brands have the strength to do.

Chat Roulette is another one of those things that I (a) can’t believe exist (b) can’t figure out the appeal of and (c) can’t seem to turn away from.

chat roulette from Casey Neistat on Vimeo.

The video provides a great summary of the newly-minted phenomena. For those who are new to the concept, it couldn’t be simpler. The website randomly connects you to a video chat partner. You chat until one of you moves on. (This act is called “nexting” and, at first, it’s hard not to take personally.)  You are then randomly connected with someone else.

The concept fascinates me. It’s the internet – anonymity + social networking + user-generated content + addictive behavior + sense of discovery – in a nutshell. More than that, it’s a real window into the global village. Real people. Real lives. Real grown men dressed in catsuits.

And, to me, it’s a great reminder. That people are not rational. They are not expected. And they are not stock images. Whether or not I’m ever able to carry on a real, live video chat with a randomly selected stranger (let’s just say I get “nexted” – a lot), it’s good to be reminded that they’re out there. And even when they have nothing better to do, most people have very little patience or attention for what you have to say.

OK— I consider myself a good listener. But if I heard people talking about me – good or bad – I think I’d want to jump in.  And here at the end of 2009, well into the age of social media, you can hear people talking about your brand all the time. But maybe you haven’t taken the plunge. Maybe you don’t have more than a few Facebook fans and haven’t tweeted a word.  Not to worry. Just take this one piece of advice from the social media gurus and put it at the top of that New Year’s resolution list: Listen before you leap.

Healthcare marketers know about listening. What other industry is required to continuously collect customer satisfaction data and make it publicly available? (HCAHPS) But social media gives us a chance to hear more than survey results. Now we can hear conversations.

While there are sophisticated social media monitoring tools like BuzzStream,  I’d suggest that a healthy dose of curiosity and a few free tools like Google Alerts and Google Blogsearch combined with searches on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook can be a great start.

Listening is a favorite topic of social media gurus like Brian Chappel. Writing on Jim Tobin’s Ignite Social Media blog, he says there are four things to listen for. I’ve added a comment here and there for healthcare marketers.

• Listen to and about your competition and their marketing. You’ll hear them talking. You’ll hear their patients. It’s even HIPPA-compliant to listen!

• Listen for your fans—and do respond. It’s never too early to ask a friend or fan to link to you and ask if you can link them. Grow a relationship. Sooner or later everyone cares about healthcare.

• Listen to what’s on people’s minds—are more people talking about having babies or getting hip replacements? Take note of where you could contribute. Listen for ideas, too. Eventually you’ll want to collaborate with consumers on solving problems or improving services.

• Listen to what people are saying about you. I’m listing this one last because, for many healthcare marketers, it’s the hardest. So practice first. Take notes. Consider the different ways you could respond. Individually or publicly? In words or in actions? At the marketing/PR level, the leadership level or departmental level?

Social media puts a community of healthcare consumers on your desktop—where you can (and should) listen before you leap. Wishing you a happy (and healthful) new year!

I get asked all the time what’s going to happen to advertising in the future. Good question… I wonder about that a lot. It’s hard to know where to turn your head next. Truth is, advertising hinges on the future of media, just like a lot of businesses.

Mobile and social media are changing faster than you can keep up with. What’s interesting is that the focus has been on two discussions. 1.) The death of print media. and 2.) The convergence of on-line and broadcast, or TVs and computers. On top of that, everyone’s expecting mobile and social media to be game changers, if they aren’t already.

The great thing about the future is that it’s always different than what we think it’s going to be. Well, if you’re wondering how traditional print magazines ever hope to survive in the future, as soon as next year, check out this article about traditional content and the Apple tablet. It’s from a web-site that’s speculating about the new Apple tablet rumored for 2010 release and how Time, Inc. is creating content in anticipation. Is it print any more? Is it a computer anymore? Is it a TV? Is it the internet?

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. And then some. I can’t wait!

The great thing about the future is it’s always different than what we think it’s going to be. I’m not sure about the future, but I do know it’s great in demo form.

It’s always nice to get confirmation that we’re doing the right thing when it comes to social media.

Last night, a group of Laughlin social media staff and I attended the ‘Obama For President: Interactive Strategy’ event hosted by MIMA (Milwaukee’s Interactive Marketing Association). Thomas Gensemer, Managing Partner of Blue State Digital, shared his insights, strategies, and lessons learned from executing Obama’s social media campaign.

Although I am standing by the notion that social media is not a campaign – I will refer to it as that for the purpose of this blog.

After hearing the genius that went into creating Obama’s social media strategy, I learned that no matter the campaign size, big or small, the key to success lies in the targeting of the message. So, whether it’s email, video, photos, or an interactive platform, each social media channel should harness a different message.

Take for example Obama’s email marketing strategy. Although email marketing doesn’t necessarily fall under social media, the lessons learned from this example can be applied to any two-way conversation.

Obama’s team knew that they couldn’t send out one, mass email to all of his supporters. They knew that the message needed to cater to each specific person, their interests, and their behavioral data. Hours of research went into making sense of this data and the results came back with an interesting insight.

Out of 13 million email subscribers, there were 300 segmented groups of people with similar interests. Obama’s personalized approach raised millions of dollars for the campaign because they were targeting the right person at the right time.

Now, if the notion of customized messages, delivered at the right time, to the right person, makes sense for a campaign as large as the Presidential election, imagine it for your corporate social media strategy…