Social Media Group Acquires Livingston Communications

Today Maggie Fox of Social Media Group, which is headquartered in Toronto and has offices in Calgary and Washington, DC and Geoff Livingston of Livingston Communications based in Washington, DC join forces.

What this means is that there will be one company, Social Media Group, which will acquire The Buzz Bin and Blog Potomac as part of the deal. The acquisition of Livingston Communications will be completed in August, 2008.

This is good news for companies starting to ramp up their social media efforts. Traditional, full service agencies have been scrambling to add social media to their suite of offerings and what I have seen so far has left me wanting. According to their release, this deal crates the largest independent social media marketing firm in North America.

Social media is not just a wrapper, a cool package that you apply to the old models - it's an entirely different way of opening communications and collaboration channels with employees and customers. New dynamics and new demands for marketers and public relations professionals. Social media engages a company from its core and is a very demanding - and rewarding - proposition. Think long term, think participatory, think "always on".

That is why it's a good idea to work with a team that understands what it feels like to be in a two-way conversation with your business. I asked Geoff to expand on the news.

In your release, you state that companies are desperate for qualified social media marketing and communications services - would you like to expand on that? Would you work with internal staff? Do you take over? What does an ideal mix look like to you today?

Geoff: Companies know they need to evolve their communications — externally and internally — towards the social form. Not necessarily as a complete switch, but more as an integrated evolution. To do that, they need strong, experience based guidance to help them bridge the gap and transform into two-way communication-based organizations.

What’s available to them on the market is often a wide range of traditional PR and ad agencies carpetbagging their “social media” practice, or consultants claiming to be social media experts. These consultants include people who have achieved personal brand fame on the Internet, but don’t understand basic marketing or business strategy and cannot really help companies transform.

Transformation is the key. It’s not a switch you turn on. For many businesses this is an educational process that requires cultural shifts. Experience guiding other organizations through that... And aligning social media to achieve actual business objectives is essential.

A couple of days ago, we talked about PR 2.0. Where do you think social media fits - is it with marketing, PR or does it depend on what the company does?

Geoff: It depends on the company. Social engagement transforms companies, and so two-way communications can affect many different aspects of the company from our PR and marketing echo chamber to workflow and talent management. That makes this a toolset that can do just about anything you like. It is very much a reflection of a company’s personality and soul.

There has been a lot of discussion around ROI. Both in terms of what return means and how to measure it. Will you support companies with the ability to research and measure the outcome of their efforts?

Geoff: We have Social Media Group’s Conversation Index to measure results at any given point of time. More importantly, we believe that performance benchmarks are set at the beginning. ROI is the result, and results have to be in mind before even the strategy is crafted.

So, to paraphrase Yogi Berra, it’s hard to go somewhere if you don’t where that is. And similarly, no communications program should ever be launched without an end goal in mind. Measurement, is simply tying benchmarks to see if the goal is being achieved. It’s common sense.

Often one of the issues I hear being discussed about is that of monitoring tools. Do you have a way to assist companies with listening and responding? What's your philosophy around how fast and when to respond?

Geoff: We have a process for this, too (painfully forged by experience). Unfortunately, there’s no silver bullet for tools, but our process includes the use of Radian6, Twitter Search, Technorati and Google currently. Our system provides a daily round-up of general conversation, and also triggers crisis PR for negative posts of a certain assigned authority. It’s been working very well, and I’m pretty happy with it.

My feeling is you have to respond to a negative post within 3 hours if you hope to stymie the blood flow. Reputation is now shaped by not only negative opinion, or a response, but how fast you do it. A response two days later, while important to the blogger, is still a little late, and by then, you’ve lost your opportunity to converse with the readers, and perhaps stop the spread of negative opinion.

[image courtesy of Geoff Livingston]

Comments

[gianandrea facchini]

I agree with Geoff on most of his answers. On my side, while I'm using Radian6 to partly support my company, I think that it is a need to build your own tailored made tool.
And yes, timing is crucial but giving the right answer is far more crucial to engage someone in a conversation.

[Toby]

Valeria - Thanks for asking about SMG's monitoring process. not only is following the conversation important as a 'participant' but as Geoff points out for reputation management. Great interview.

[maggiefox]

Hey Valeria, thank you so much for the story and your thoughtful questions. We are absolutely thrilled that Geoff has agreed to team up with us, exciting times!

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Gianandrea - I am borrowing from what the guys at Dell did here. I do think that showing you are listening and engaged is more important than giving a right answer. It shows intention and respect. At the same time, it is important to go get the answer, of course. No empty promises.

@Toby - I liked that you had Maggie and Geoff in your conversation. Until today I had heard great things about Maggie, but had not met her.

@Maggie - As a marketer on the client side, I am constantly amazed at the gap that full service agencies have and are trying to cover up for. These are indeed exciting times. With the combined talents and experience, SMG has the opportunity to add capacity towards increasing demand. Congratulations on the move!

[Geoff Livingston]

Valeria:

You have been a good friend for some time. I remember last August when it was you and I going toe to toe blogging while the rest of the blogosphere slept. You deserve all of your success. Thanks for having me.

I have a great CEO, and look forward to working with her.

GL