Conversation Agent

More Agent, a Little Less Conversation

I have a bias for action, always have. This need to do is becoming particularly obvious at this time, especially with all the talk that goes on.

We think together a lot, more ideas bubble to the surface, more desire to see something good done.

We live in an age where there should be no excuses, no reasons why we cannot act - on our dreams, on our work, on making something amazing happen.

That is why it's all the more disappointing when companies do not embrace the tools to lean forward into the issues, communicate better, more effectively, with customers. The opportunity is right when something goes wrong. At the time of this writing, I have no power and have been on hold with PECO energy for an hour. I'm hanging up.

This is not the way to connect with customers in a noisy world. There is no amount of marketing material the energy provider will be able to throw at me to make me do something. The time to act is now, on the customer service line. And the nice messaging on low emissions goes out the window when hundreds or thousands of customers are running their generators because they know they'll get nowhere with you.

There is an action as a reaction to lack of action, if that makes sense. Not doing anything is also an action and it has consequences - for people and in this case, the environment.

But I don't like to dwell on the negative, I do believe in karma and I like the good kind - for me and for the rest of us.

I wanted to introduce you to this gem from Tom Asacker, who's been an inspiration through his work and in the comments to this blog recently. It's called A Little Less Conversation - connecting with customers in a noisy world. It's written as a conversation between Tom and a business executive after an event.

Some pearls of wisdom (in bold), with my own additional thoughts:

• you can no longer benchmark and model the past in order to be successful in the future - just because you can, it does not mean you should. If you haven't read it, I urge you to read the conversation we had with Frank Eliason from Comcast.

It turns out that today I also lost my modem and called the regular Comcast line. A technician got back to me within minutes, held on the phone while I figured out what happened, and then came to repair it. He even explained what to do in case of an outage - little he knew.

Frank has given me hope, the company is backing him up with action. This is important to establish a connection. There is no loyalty program that will make up for letting down your customers. There is no stronger trust than that acquired by coming through.

• to construct their views of reality, people combine what they sense with what they already think, feel, and believe - truth is subjective, and that's why it's so hard to regain trust once you lost it. It goes to memory.

• the most valuable and scarce thing is a strong brand protected by an organization with unique capabilities to appeal to customers' changing priorities and preferences and ultimately, make them happy - do I need to elaborate? If you don't know what would make your customers happy, ask them. They'll tell you.

• people don't dislike change, not really. What they abhor is the unknown, because they can't envision it - no vision, no action. Hence the importance of communications. So that we're clear, listening is a big part of communications, or you won't know that communication in fact did take place.

• branding is about creating your essence by working with customers to uniquely add value to their lives - value is what the customer thinks, not the company. 

• you are what you do (and why you do it) - are you doing the right things?

There are many more. I wanted to give you what resonated the most with me. I'm with Tom, we need a little less conversation. I say we need more "agent". What about you?

The Agency Side of Business: Shiv Singh, Razorfish

The first time I had a chance to meet a Razorfish team in late 2000 and was impressed by their ideas. Shiv Singh and I crossed paths early on in my blogging and I've been reading his work since. He just announced the launch of Fluent, the Social Influence Marketing report. There are some interesting observations in the report, some of which I will need to think about.

I would be really interested in David Alston's and Olivier Blanchard's take on SIM as related to measurement and engagement. Maybe we can start a conversation with Shiv here in the comments.

I asked Shiv for his take on the agency side of business.

How did you come to join Razorfish and when did you become the company's Global Social Media Lead?

Shiv: I came to Razorfish over ten years ago and have worked in its Boston, San Francisco, London and New York offices. I actually came to Razorfish through a company that was acquired by it back in 1999.

At that time Razorfish focused on creating useful, usable and desirable user experiences for the web. It didn’t do much in the media side of the business. I moved into the role of the company’s VP & Global Social Media Lead two years ago.

Has your focus been exploring alternatives to traditional advertising or has it evolved to that point? How do you decide what is best to integrate in marketing and communications activities? Does a company culture play a role in that?

Shiv: Yes, that has definitely been a part of my job. But I’d emphasize that the focus is also very much on how marketing as a whole is changing and how marketers need to take advantage of these new opportunities while also revisiting some of the core assumptions that have driven marketing for decades. This is about more than advertising but marketing more broadly too.

What’s interesting is that on the advertising front, we’re seeing that social media being the perfect complement to all the traditional forms of advertising. It doesn’t replace advertising as we know it but extends it enabling companies to form much deeper, longer term emotionally driven and more balanced relationships with consumers.

The best way to integrate these other forms of advertising is to first understand what works and what doesn’t. But then it is extremely important to know the brand and the permission that the brand has to do certain things digitally. That is really the most important factor.

After that it comes down to judgment, imagination, risk taking and metrics. That’s how we decide. We make mistakes as we get the various marketing activities to work for each other and with each other but we learn a lot along the way. And our clients respect that.

You have been an active participant in many social networks and have direct experience with social media. How much did your direct involvement help you feel you understand its dynamics well enough to explain them to your clients?

Is your decision to experiment with certain tools based on potential client work with them? How do you prioritize where you're spending learning time?

Shiv: Yes, my active participation has made a huge difference for my own learning and it dates back to my participation with The Well back in the 1990s. When I start to learn about something now its less driven by a specific client need and more by a curiosity.

Invariably, a lot of my friends keep me tapped into the latest and greatest innovations in the social web and that serves as a nice prioritization filter. That’s one of the many advantages to working with some really smart people in a large agency. I also run a wine magazine (with an accompanying blog) and that helps me always practice what I preach and think as a brand and not just as an agency person.

It's not enough to explore and participate too though. I do a lot of reading and my past research into social network theory helps me frame the trends, the dynamics of the space, the technologies and human behavior in simple and easy to understand terms. My graduate research gave me a mental model that makes everything far more digestible. I try to keep up with the research by reading the journals but that’s difficult sometimes.

From the corporate side I have not been impressed with some agencies over the years. Creative that did not sell and account teams that did not understand the business have by and large been a problem.

Social media is transforming work, the dynamics and business models. Yet, it seems that agencies have underestimated this shift.

As an agency that made a really good transition from digital to engagement, does Razorfish have the opposite challenge - that of educating and enlightening clients?

Shiv: I sometimes feel that folks on the agency side of the industry underestimate their clients. Our clients are more cautious than us for good reasons. Their jobs are typically on the line, they’re less likely to be over the top on a specific phenomena and they’re always constrained by the politics of their organization.

Over the years, I’ve learnt as much from many of my clients as I have from internal teams. So rather than saying we’re tasked with educating and enlightening our clients, I’d say we learn equally from each other even about new phenomena like social media which can turn a business inside out.

Regarding the shift that social media has caused, it is indeed huge. And everybody from the agencies to the brands and the technology vendors are figuring out how social media is transforming their businesses and their relationships with other players in their ecosystem.

In the case of Razorfish, being digital at the core definitely puts us at an advantage. All our employees were highly active on the social platforms before the phenomena hit the mainstream. In fact, many of us have been designing and marketing on websites with core social elements for a number of years now.

We recognize that the recent shift is huge (the turning point for us was a year and a half ago when we said that social media is resulting in a whole new form of marketing as important as brand marketing and direct response. See your 2008 Digital Outlook Report for more on that).

Every day we learn something more about it and try to harness the best thinking from within our company and from the industry at large to our clients. Fundamentally, we believe that brands can’t push messages anymore. They must participate...they must do.

Credibility and value are the currency of social media. Companies are struggling to figure this one out, especially those that are used to think in terms of their messages.

You have an advantage over internal resources in companies: as an outsider, your advice may be followed. How do you work with companies to help them build better relationships with their customers?

Shiv: We continuously ask our clients to put themselves in the shoes of their customers and imagine a world in which every brand that their customers interact with is trying to engage in a conversation or follow them on twitter.

That’s when they realize that it can all feel like a fish market. How do you succeed in a world like that? Only by providing better value exchanges and what we consider to be a better ROE – return on emotion. And by making your brand one about doing and not just about pushing messages.

What do you think is in store for agencies in the next 3-5 years? Will agencies rethink their dependency on media? Is there a new model in sight?

Shiv: I think agencies are about to transform significantly. Firstly the separation between digital and traditional agencies is going to continue to blur. Separating those two worlds doesn’t make sense anymore. Everything is digital even TV is going digital.

Secondly, agencies are going to realize that a big idea with multiple executions needs to be replaced by the notion of many small ideas that are created in response to consumer behavior and are adapted, changed or pulled as consumers interact with it. These small ideas when strung together create the brand story. To think along these lines requires a totally different mindset and organizational structure for many agencies.

I also believe that agencies are going to need to focus on business transformation. Helping businesses transform themselves through digital technologies to increase the value they provide consumers.

It isn’t going to be just about marketing but how can you reorient your organization to engage with consumers in real time, incorporate their thinking into everything from product development and customer service and yes also serve as the influencers for your brand. The agencies that can play this role too and move beyond the strict worlds of advertising will win.

The dependence on media is already reducing. The new model will have to be a more consultancy oriented one.

What is your personal secret sauce? How do you influence your colleagues and team?

Shiv: Secret sauce? I’m not sure if have anything specific though I would say a few things help me a lot – I seek out mentors who provide me with valuable advice and guidance. I also follow their careers so that I can understand not only how they think but what decisions they make and why.

Secondly, I try to practice what I preach and get my hands as dirty as possible. I learn the most when I work with teams on the ground and that’s one of the special benefits with working for Razorfish – lots of really smart people who are generous with their time, energetic and collaborative.

And thirdly, I believe in the Woody Allen philosophy that 80% of success is showing up. I try to show up as much as possible and be there for my clients, teams and peers. Everything else tends to fall into place.

In terms of influencing colleagues and teams, I depend on the wisdom of the crowds within the agency to do the influencing. The best ideas always rise to the top and by promoting an active community of social media enthusiasts who debate every facet of social media vigorously, a lot of ideas get tested by the community. I influence through this community just as they influence me and keep me straight.

Who would be your ideal client?

Shiv: A client that gives us permission to help them transform their business via digital top to bottom. We’ve got the innovative thinkers, the experience and know the realities of the corporate world. We’re ready for any challenge!

_______

I don't know about you, but the idea of small chunks of contribution to knowledge and relationships to form the whole resonates with me. It's probably why I took to social media so readily, I've been operating at that level, in analog or digital space, for a number of years.

These were my questions. What questions do you have for Shiv?

[image for Social Networking Conference, 2009]

Social Media as Modern Telephone, Frank Eliason, Comcast

[0:45 on investment in social media during hard-times, courtesy of Radian6]

He struck me as the real deal from the first time I contacted him via Twitter. In the last year plus, Frank Eliason has become the face and experience of Comcast for many of us. Rather than me talking about him I thought it a good idea to let him talk directly with you here. Our conversation:

Can you talk a little bit about your background? How you got to Comcast.

Frank: I have always been a simple Customer Service guy. My background prior to Comcast was Vanguard Investments, followed by Advanta Bank. While at Advanta I learned the power of the Customer story in implementing change.

I have found Customer Service operations are always centered on numbers, but change was rare. When you drilled into the numbers and use the Customer story, change happens fast. People, including the C-suite, are Customers too and they can easily relate to a bad experience.

While I was at Advanta we did a lot to improve the experience. One day I was putting together the annual report for Advanta, and it was to include Customer calls as the background. It was at that point I realized how far we moved the needle. That was around February, 2007. I decided at that time I would seek a company I can have a strong impact on the Customer experience. The only company I applied to was Comcast.

I joined Comcast as a Customer Service manager in September, 2007. On my 4th day we were asked to locate a blogger and reach out to them. Since that time, when we had time, we continued to do that. At the time we were only reaching out via phone.

In December, 2007 I was asked why we were not posting on the blogs. I did not realize that we were allowed to do that due to my background in financial services (that would not have been permitted in those worlds). So we started to post to blogs when we could not identify the Customer.

Bloggers loved it! They blog for a reason: to be heard. They loved that we were listening. In February, 2008 it became my role, and I was asked to hire a few people to help. Going back to what I learned at Advanta, I started to share the story via a daily newsletter. Today that goes to about 3000 people within all levels of management.

Believe it or not, prior to this role, I was not on Facebook, or Twitter. Besides a limited amount of activity on LinkedIn, my only experience in social media was a website I had for our daughter Gia when she was born premature. She spent the first 3 months in the NICU and we created the website to communicate with family.

We later used it to educate people about Cystic Fibrosis and to support fund raising efforts for charities close to our heart. At the age of 3, Gia was diagnosed with liver cancer, so again we turned to the website to keep people up to date and teach them about the form of cancer she had. She passed away in July, 2004. Later when her sisters were born, we created our family website. Today I also have a blog of my own.

Business Week called you "the most famous customer service manager in the US" in an article that detailed how you help customers on Twitter. I remember when I reached out to you on Twitter early on asking for an interview and your response was something like "I'm busy helping customers now".

There's been an evolution from stories of disbelief to the NYT and BW featuring your work in a positive light. What has changed inside Comcast through this transition in the media? Are you getting more support?

Frank: To us this is just another contact channel, just like email, phone or chat. This is just a preferred method of support for some Customers. When we set out our goals were simple: Listen to our Customers and help when we can. That is all we strive to do.

We were already in a transformation when we started this. Comcast has been working hard at improving the overall experience for our Customers. This was just a small part of that effort.

I have always had support from all levels of management regarding our efforts. They saw value in meeting Customers where they already are, and have provided us free reign to do just that, wherever we think is appropriate to achieve our goals. The support I received extended to if I would require additional staffing, I know they would continue to support me. I am so grateful for having a leadership team that is open to trying new things.

Even though you are known and your work is respected online, you're talking with one sliver of Comcast customer base. I imagine that NPS metrics are rolled up at C-level. Have you seen an influencing effect of the positive sentiment your work created and is creating online in other areas of consumer sentiment for Comcast?

Frank: It is hard to say, because we are doing so much to improve the Customer experience throughout the organization, that positive improvement truly highlights all of those efforts. I think the preferred measurement for the C-Suite has been how we have taken what we have learned from Customers and truly improved the experience for all Customers.

Unlike typical measurements of performance, my team is measured on effectiveness and improvements they make for our Customers. I teach them to be proactive and find solutions to problems they encounter. If something is broken for others they are encouraged to find solutions.

In an interview with Lee Odden at TopRank blog, you talked about the two criteria that you look at for getting involved in media at a tactical level: Searchability and Timeliness. You talked about Twitter and Google, but you have since expanded your toolkit.

How did you convince Comcast to make the investment? How do you structure your reports to senior management? This is something that would be helpful to your peers who are looking to ask their organizations to make the investment.

Frank: Ultimately we look for any space that is efficient in helping us meet our goals of listening and helping Customers. I think for us it was easy because Comcast already wanted to find ways to improve the experience. We also started gradually assisting Customers, and each time we did, Customer would let it be known how pleased they were to have the assistance.

We were also learning, and continue to learn every day. The main report we do to management is our daily rollup (also goes to anyone that requests it internally, no matter the level). We refer to it as the Comcast Online Pulse. The goal of the report is to provide an at a glance review of conversation about Comcast. It is our way of sharing the story, which as I learned at Advanta, is very powerful.

What is the best move you made on behalf of the business to date? Why?

Frank: Wow, this is a tough question for me. I have not believed anything I have done is that special. To me it is common sense to help Customers in need. I stepped away to think. I think the best move I have made was to really hire a great, passionate team that strives to create the right experience with every Customer they come in contact with.

They are a huge credit to the success we have had. They all were hired internally but each brings new experience and a unique background to our effort. They also love finding ways we can improve as the organization. I absolutely love every one of them (don’t tell them, I do not want it to go to their heads).

You and I talked about the fact that we both view social media involvement as a team activity with many players with complementary roles. Is Comcast learning more about social media as an organization? Do you share best practices and learning internally, beyond the communications group?

Frank: We are constantly learning in this space and we meet regularly to share what we learn. These discussions include PR, Customer Service, marketing and many other teams in the organization. We continue to learn in our help forums, external forums, Facebook, Twitter, external blogs, and even our corporate blog. These discussions help us understand what is working, and what is not. We encourage all areas to be involved in social media.

You recently came to the realization that, yeah, you actually do marketing when you're helping customers. What's in store for the future? What do you envision for the organization and where do you see your role evolving?

Frank: It is hard to predict where I see my role evolving. I love helping companies improve the service for their Customers. I love the social media space, but the Customer will always be the first love. But I do see a convergence of marketing, PR and service.

This space is not about ads; it’s about building relationships and having conversations with your Customer and prospective Customers. I think in the coming years you will see more companies encouraging their employees throughout the company to be a part of social media spaces.

I also think companies will see the benefits of crowd sourcing to learn more from the community. This already happens in places like forums, but think about how different products impact each other. Think about how your computer interacts with your router, modem, to the internet through your internet service provider, then to other server beyond your ISP’s network.

Those are a lot of parts working together, or in some cases, not. How does a Customer know where to begin? There is not an easy way for any of those companies involved in the products to answer every aspect to find a solution. But there are always people on the net that have had a similar experience. I think we will see evolutions that will make this all work to provide the best support to Customers.

_____

Thank you, Frank. I was really touched by Gia's story and what must have been such an emotional roller coaster for you and your family.

Today at Fast Company Expert blog we talk about how when it comes to customer service, action speaks louder than words. You'll see how this matters when it comes to using social media, especially as you start executing.

Own Your Story Again

Customer service is the new marketing because it is grounded in competency, people, and contact - all things that can help you with innovation and relationships and that cannot easily be outsourced. They in turn create the experience your customers have that contributes to your story - that of your company and your brand.

I thought about how owning your story is the true business currency these days as I read the telling dialogue reported in Douglas Rushkoff's book Life, Inc. (you can find chapters at Boing Boing):

I’m regularly called in by companies looking to improve what they call their “stories” -- the way consumers and shareholders alike perceive them. But when I interrogate them about what their companies actually do, many are befuddled. One CEO called me from what he said was a major American television manufacturer. I happened to know at the time that there were no televisions manufactured in the United States. But I went along with the charade.

“So you make television sets?” I asked. “Where?”

“Well, we outsource the actual manufacturing to Korea.”

“Okay, then, you design the televisions?”

“Well, we outsource that to an industrial design firm in San Francisco.”

“So you market the televisions?”

“Yes,” he answered proudly. “Well,” he qualified, “we work with an agency in New York. But I am directly involved in the final decisions.”

Fulfillment and delivery were handled by a major shipping company, and accounting was done “out of house,” as well.

Just what story was I supposed to tell? The company no longer did anything at all, except serve as the placeholder on processes that happened in other places.

Branding, marketing, and public relations are not a substitute for maintaining a semblance of competence. These activities simply play back what the business is doing. The value needs to be baked into the business to show up in communications. And the business needs to interact with customers, employees and people in general to create its own story.

Businesses that do not seem to have a clear path to help employees participate in that very value they created are starting to show that discrepancy in the customer experience. Which in turn shows up as customer dissatisfaction or poor customer experience that ends up being a problem for sales. Customers have replaced consumers, even though we still behave as the latter in many ways.

Is the Internet the place where you can own your story again? After all, we know that value can be created from anywhere, where people can participate in the value they created, for example:

• Firefox by Mozilla - better and safer than Microsoft Internet Explorer (I would also add faster)
• Wikipedia by crowd sourcing - broader and more comprehensive and often more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica (I could add more interesting)
• YouTube by crowd sourcing - more diverse and filled with talent than what Hollywood proposes (often formulaic and playing just to the center of the bell curve)
• Itex by members - where B2B can barter services crating a cashless economy
• Support groups for people with rare diseases
• Open source projects
• ... and more

But wait, isn't the pipe that is keeping me connected something I rent from a corporation? Isn't the software I'm using to post something I pay for every year? Aren't all my clicks and online navigation being monitored and tracked by marketers that will push the appropriate content my way? Are we simply trading one form of controlled experience - that of television - with another - that of the technologies and tools we've become so accustomed to?

Reading Rushkoff is quite the sobering experience.

There is so much discussion about what to do and what not to do, about definitions, about real value online today. Let's think for a moment here - do we own our story when we worry about the number of friends or followers we have and judge others using this very metric? Do we add value when we measure what we can learn from a post based upon the number of comments it receives?

Are we outsourcing our own critical thinking to others? Do we pitch before engaging? Do we expect value without giving value ourselves? I'm a strong believer in the pursuit of knowledge at the service of human potential. If it's true that we're in the attention economy, our measure of success is the actual connection formed between people and between ideas and people.

Genuine conversation between people may be less easy to exploit, but it's a whole lot stickier than any Web property or shiny object of the day. The very essence of human potential is paid off in the concept of community, where service becomes the main currency. Service goes hand in hand with empathy and compassion.

As for the word customer, I leave you to some interesting etymology discoveries.

Today at Fast Company Expert blog we talk about how you can get the most out of customer service - and this is valid both for the company and the customer.

[six word story by zen]

Is Your Company Thinking that Social Media is a Job?

I'm asking because technically, it really isn't.

Let's take a step back and think about the strong word in the term social media. We've had all kind of media for ages - print, then the novelty of radio, then video that supposedly killed the radio stars (they also said that sound in movies would never take off, oh my), then the Web.

Well, there have been many technologies in between and now plenty in continuous development (and fashion), I'm just skipping through this.

The progression is easy to see even within each medium and format. I remember when television commercials had their own time slot, then they became more intertwined with the programming, to the point that now you Tivo them (imagine a language plastic enough to make verbs out of product names).

We're seeing the same devolution online where media companies sell more and more interrupting ads because ads online do not really deliver the same results as they did and still do in print - not even close. But you can measure your lack of results with ever increasing levels of precision.

That's why you integrate off line and online and advertising with many other tools in your marketing communications mix.

Why do we ignore the ads better online? It turns out that to be effective, online ads need to be by companies and products you want to notice in the first place. Amazing how everyone is noticing the online Apple ads at the New York Times talk to other ads now, for example. We ignore the others because when we're online, we're there to be social.

Sure, we're social animals offline, but online amplifies our behavior. We expect to talk back or even initiate a conversation. And in the case we are just sitting on the fence or observing, we want to find out what our friends or peers are saying about a product or service before we go to the company's Web site or we take action in any way.

Why do people go online in the first place? For many reasons - self-expression, loneliness, intellectual curiosity, networking and relationships, narcissism, entertainment, community, intellectual stimulation, peer pressure, collaboration, globalization, common interests, modern life demands, to feel human. I could go on. In social media people want to share. If you want an example of that, look at what happened after the death of Michael Jackson.

While people want to share, marketers want to sell.

Indulge me on a lateral example before we get to the crux of this post. Think about the other sexy and trendy topic - that of green and sustainability. Companies focus their attention on things - namely their products and buildings - rather than the effects that their policies have on people. Jeffrey Pfeffer (hat tip Mark Earls) writes:

[...] companies and their management practices also have profound effects on human beings and the social environment.  And the evidence suggests that, in many instances, these effects are even more pervasive and more harmful than the effects on the physical world. 

As a few examples, companies in the United States have cut health insurance to both their active employees and retirees, causing problems in accessing health care.  Many organizations have either curtailed completely or diminished their contributions to employees‟ retirement, and have thereby shifted the financial risks of having enough resources to retire to their workers. 

Such actions have increased financial stress.  And the waves of downsizing and economic insecurity created by wage givebacks and involuntary, part-time work have had profound affects on both psychological and physical well-being. 

Human nature doesn't change, but human behavior does.

This social media thing is not just about a series of tools that whomever you hire needs to be more or less proficient in using to help your business. There's an awesome discussion on job titles and skills led by Olivier Blanchard (read the comments).

If you did approach media as new channels, then to gain a presence there, you need a team. Let me say that again - this is not the job of one person. Even with a team, without the support - or alignment - of the whole business, you are like the company that slaps a coat of "green" paint and checks the box on sustainability. 

Because it is direct to customer and prospect, social media can help you in many areas:

• customer service - gathering information and recommendations in addition to real time support
• research and analysis - tracking new trends, gathering feedback
• marketing - bringing ideas back into the business and products to a market that wants them
• public relations - communicating efficiently with stakeholders
• product development - R&D, finding problems to solve
• innovation - collaboration, inspiration, influencing

But it won't do those things for you. Before you have a culture where sharing is not only possible, but encouraged, you need to a have qualified and experienced team of people leading the organization there. People who are able to analyze issues, problem solve, recommend, implement, learn, and give you the business results you seek along with the proof of return on your investment. Your returns will be proportional to your ability to align the organization behind this team.

Depending on the challenges your organization faces, you may look to hire marketers, communicators, customer service reps, and public relations professionals (exemplary list), who understand the dynamics of social media and have used those tools for business. There's a big difference between using these tools to just hang out and to generate conversions.

My colleagues responsible for SEO and SEM know and understand marketing, for example. It's important that you stay grounded in that because SEO is but one sliver on Web and online presence. You can be optimized all you want, if the content has no value and does not map to your buyer's needs, you get a lot of first dates and no game.

The true spirit and message of The Cluetrain Manifesto was not that companies would learn to market in new channels. If I cannot persuade you to read the book (it's free), Geoff Livingston will, so read his post. Geoff quotes Locke:

We long to be part of a world that makes sense rather than accept the accidental alienation imposed by market forces too large to grasp, to even contemplate. And this longing is not mere wistful nostalgia, not just some unreconstructed adolescent dream. It is living evidence of heart, of what makes us most human. But companies don’t like us human. They leverage our longing for their own ends… Our role is to consume.

There is a lot more going on here than meets the eye. This is about people re-adjusting and rebalancing the very idea of business. Building a sustainable company should consider the human as well as the physical dimensions of company actions. Social media tools have brought this conversation to the fore. 

Best practices for utilizing the tools are being developed as we speak.

There are professionals out there who are broadening the scope of their business knowledge by researching, and observing, and doing. If we look at a group of prominent names in social networks at the moment we can see that these professionals are grounded in business skills.

Amber Naslund has experience in fund raising and brand building, Olivier Blanchard has built brands, CK is a marketer with more than ten years in solo business in NYC (if you can make it there...), Frank Eliason has deep experience setting up and managing customer service support, Chris Brogan has built his practice learning part time - an overnight success years in the making, Peter Kim joined the conversation from the research and analyst side after being in marketing. I could go on.

Your applicant should be excited about your business if they want a job in your company.

They should know marketing, understand communications, have worked in customer support, or have been in the trenches with public relations. Those are the foundational knowledge, experience, and skills that will guarantee your programs and dialogue with customers and prospects will make business sense.

Plus, these newly created positions that incorporate the digital space in social networks are the work of a team, not of a lone ranger. As I said in on Twitter just last week, depending on your product and service needs, you may need a content curator, a community facilitator and a team of experienced product development conversationalists. 

Just to take one of the points on Olivier's list:

Applicant actually knows how to use Twitter to help your company build brand equity online and offline without having to DM people for help.

You need to know not just how but what building brand equity means in the first place.

As for those companies looking to hire professionals who understand how to use these tools - you need to first figure out what your objectives are, then hire someone who has extensive experience solving problems in that area.

If you come across a really good candidate, he/she will be all over social media. She/he understands this is a game changing thing and has taken steps to learn, integrate, adapt, even coach the team, and get results already.

We will talk about how you get there in a subsequent post. Questions?

Social Media Program Lifecycle

Or as Gianluca Arnesano calls it, the only slide you need to know. I translated the word campaign as program, because I do really believe that it's a cycle with a long tail that probably nearly doesn't wear off or go to zero. This is the work of Italian agency Frozen Frogs born out of the work the agency has been doing with consumer goods companies. 

It's a brilliant rendition of the dynamics of attention, something Gianluca has been working with for a number of years.In this graphic, which he explains in the PDF offered at the post, he distinguishes between the actions of the company and/or agency, which are designed to create higher, artificial buzz, and the reactions of the public involved. You can see in the graphic, how those generate lower buzz, yet genuine (here we say authentic) engagement.

This seems to be the week of engagement, the newest marketing and social media buzzword. Are your activities buzz worthy? Let's take a look.

On the higher-buzz, false engagement type-A activities, we have things like:

• blogger dinners - you need to understand that a sit down dinner with great food is a major social element of the Italian culture
• social aperitifs - that's my second favored activity, a glass of good wine and great company
• buzz paradise - I'd be curious to learn more on this one
• spamming 2.0 - this is awesome that an agency (and a company) would admit its own heavy tactics
• product sampling - for some categories or products there is still no equally engaging substitute for the tactile experience of driving, or tasting, or touching the item itself
• Facebook apps
• Videos

There is some doping of the engagement levels in this phase. Customers do not really live the product here - the environment and context created around the promotion is artificial. This is the phase where the agency and/or company are and need to be highly active. Pumping content out, cross promoting on different platforms, and involving networks and respective influentials.

On the lower buzz, genuine engagement type-B side of the graph, we have various discovery moments by real customers who:

• discover the company and the product itself
• find new product uses
• uncover potential defects and malfunctions
• call customer support
• send in complaints
• write spontaneous reviews
• ask for advice on forums and boards

In this phase, customer engagement becomes real immersion. This is the right moment for the company to capitalize on the feedback received during the first phase. A and B are the critical phases of the project.

What's important?

Launch and SEO effect are part of a continuum, they're not isolated moments. People are important - what they think, do, and say in the long tail has repercussions for your business. The social media lifecycle has a feedback loop, which is where new marketing comes in. Some questions for you:

• What cultural barriers in your company will prevent you from listening to and talking with your customers on the B side of the graph?
• How will search evolution affect what you do on the A side?
• How will you use what you learn to develop better products and services?
• How will you sustain and nurture that engagement on your side of the conversation?
• What transformation will your company be willing to undergo to sustain communication and relationships over the long haul?

Your turn. What questions do you have?

Page 2

Google started it. Social media, especially with tools like FriendFeed, magnified it - page one is the place to be. The top of page one is especially the place to be. Those few days when Conversation Agent was at number five on AdAge Power150 many checked out this blog from that list. From number 16? Not so much.

Go on Twitter and you probably check only the first screen. Same conversation with the updates on LinkedIn and Facebook. History is something we studied in school, we live very much in the here and now with social media. Something that did not start with social, it started with news media. Social has one thing that makes this different - relationships.

With relationships we go way back. So much so that in those tools where the ability to have conversation is built in, older thoughts, chats, links or images that you share may pop back up again to the top. They have a chance to be new once more or new to you. The conversation is alive in digital format. Any one participant can activate it by commenting, bookmarking, and sharing. This should give you some thoughts on having a team vs. a Lone Ranger approach online (and in life).

So if your Web strategy is to refresh content on a continuous basis, remember that the archives play an important role in the great scheme of things. This blog, for example, has 888 posts and when I search for my name, the list of posts that comes up with the URL represents older posts that had quite a bit of traffic coming into them.

Notice also what ranks high in search. Does this give you ideas on the importance of integrating certain tools in your marketing communications strategy? I don't usually visit my blog from my own search. Way back, when the search button in my blog was not pulling up the posts I wanted to find for reference I occasionally used Google search.

When I was more active with comment on other blogs instead of FriendFeed, there were posts from other, high ranking, blogs with my comments that came up with a search on my name - page one high. What happens beyond page one? What happens if there are no comments?

Comments depend on many things.

For you to get more than a few, timing is a factor. Context matters. If everyone is thinking and talking about something and you happen to come by at the right time and place on that topic, your post, article, Web page - properly circulated - gets attention. Chances are that properly circulated means filtered in by your friends and connections.

Back to the Web pages, because I know that today search engine optimization (SEO) is becoming such a buzzword, even as much as "social media me this", "social media me that". I'd like an SEO strategy with a side of SEM, please. Such narrow focus may get you the same results a successful Digg gets you - an injection of traffic that comes over for a one moment stand. When it's all over, nobody may even remember your name. 

What makes people come back is the same set of ideas that make no difference if you're on page one or page two - valuable content and connections. Those pages then get more traffic because more people find them useful and share them. They become page one for your site. With social tags, they may become evergreen for some topics on Delicious. Also StumbleUpon and Reddit have a long tail on traffic to your site vs. Digg.

With distributed conversations, participation, a culture of sharing and linking, do we know anymore what page one is? Is it ok to be on page 2?

[images of my Google name page one and page 2 or side A and B]

How to Write an Email that Stands Out

Especially in a crowded inbox.

A couple of weeks ago, I gave a presentation about using social media for career management and development to a group of professionals who took the time to come out and connect on a Saturday morning.

We had really good participation and many asked questions throughout the presentation, which makes it interesting and engaging for everyone in the room. A true conversation.

Several attendees followed ups to have more conversations and with LinkedIn invitations, which I usually accept only after a face to face conversation.

Right after the presentation, one person provided such wonderful feedback  that I almost wished I was still logged on to ask her if she'd be willing to share it on LinkedIn for everyone to see - feedback is welcome at any time.

And that is why this note I received a few days later really made me stop and read carefully. Notice how much care and interest the author took in writing it so that it would not come across as promotional or self serving in any way.  Yet it carries the message across even by making it about the presentation and the morning and not the writer.

Memorable? You bet. [republished with permission]

Subject: Thank you for the dynamic presentation on Saturday, 6/13 @ Villanova

Thank you for a most engaging presentation this past Saturday. It was my inaugural event with the group, and a great introduction. I'm sure you can appreciate my lack of desire to dress up and travel over 30 miles on a Saturday - perhaps you felt the same. I'm glad I made the effort.

In typical business format, this e-mail would have encompassed just two short paragraphs. However, since you admitted that you write long blogs, and your style is conversational – yes, I found your web site, read some postings and subscribed to the blog – I feel confident that my ramblings are appropriate. Please read on.

While I listened intently during your presentation, I also absorbed a lot of external elements surrounding the brand of you. Allow me to qualify this statement. I’ve spent the bulk of my career in retail, and training and development, and over the years I’ve honed my ability to look at the details to understand the brand. If I visit a retail establishment, I watch what is happening and what isn’t; if I attend a training session or meeting, I sit near the back and observe what people do and when they do it. Interestingly, at Saturday’s presentation, I was 2 rows from the back.

With that said, here are three observations about the brand of you that I jotted down, along with my comments:

• No nonsense, with a smile – you provide information with a grain of salt, and expect that people will adapt it to their own process. In my Mother’s terms, ‘get over it, and if you can’t, go under!”
• Humorous PowerPoint – you don’t take yourself too seriously. Interestingly, this is a great way to put people at ease.
• Extensive speaking – you used the PowerPoint slides as a framework and provided a lot of content behind each slide. AKA, you didn’t read the slides- a presentation nightmare!

I fancy myself a bit of a writer, and have, over the past few months, turned that skill to crafting resumes and cover letters for peers. I share this because I agonized over the crafting of this e-mail to you, the Conversation Agent. I am certain that perfection is a self-imposed internal madness. Fortunately, I’ve adjusted well to it…and made it to the end of this note.

Thanks again for an inspiring presentation. I really do appreciate your message and delivery. The session was one of my best Saturday mornings to date.

Brian P. Corcoran

The mentions about his career and experience are contextual to the intent of the email, which was to provide feedback to me. I was sold. This is how you write a marketing communications piece, a pitch letter, any outreach communication that will make an impression.

It wasn't so much the words that were contained in the note - as beautifully flowing as it is. I did admire the syntax and brevity. What I remembered most though was how I felt about it. Because he provided context with the story.

He started with the payoff - this is good news. Framed his state of mind with a very brief history of his conflict - a Saturday, new to the group, did not know what to expect - to resolution. He's done his homework and is matching the style to mine as observed so far. Then the longer description that sets the stage for providing the feedback. Not taking himself too seriously, either he wraps where he started.

Here are some things to think about when you write an email to connect:

• do you have a goal? I'm asking this because sometimes the email I get is just a bland pitch, and there is no clear call to action.
• what do you want the recipient to do? That would be the call to action.
• how are you going to relate to them? This is the part where people read the blog or learn about the other not just so that they can propose appropriate content, although that works well, but so they can also get the tone right. Relating is key to get to the next one.
• how will your email make them feel? This moves you from just another unknown entity in an inbox to a person who's paid attention. This is not the touchy feeling part, it's the value part, the meaning part.
• where are you going to fit in? Notice how he weaved in his experience as a proof point or qualifier for his remarks.

I believe him when he writes he agonized over writing the email.

I write a lot every day - for the Web, emails, letters, blog posts, articles - and getting the tone right is what makes a piece of communication connect with its intended audience. Tone is as important as content. How you say something is as if not more important than what you say - as a speaker and writer.

What would you have done to connect with a speaker you learned from? Have you written an email that hit the sweet spot in connecting you to someone? What can you teach us about your success? Have you been on the receiving end of a well crafted and relevant email? What made you read on and reply?

___________

Related posts:

How to Write a Business Recommendation

Business Uses for LinkedIn

Blogging at Work if You Don't Have a Blog

Many companies and marketing communications professionals are thinking about social media. But starting a blog seems daunting. If you're among them, I'm certain you've considered who's going to write consistently, who will moderate comments, how closely you will need to watch to see if anyone comes, and you probably also worry that nobody will come at all.

Blogging doesn't need to happen on blogs alone.

In fact, increasingly, social media is showing us that it's very possible to do something that budget cuts and lack of feedback loops have taken away from marketing's arsenal. Something that is so valuable because it provides context and can yield scale. That something is integration.

Take a look at any number of social media tools and you will see that the moment when they really took off was the very same moment when they integrated with other tools. Integration has been as valuable a feature (and benefit to users) as comments, threads, @replies, questions and answers.

Proof points

When LinkedIn introduced questions and answers, it gave people the ability to interact more easily with each other without needing to be connected directly. That expanded the pool of potential networking opportunities exponentially.

Within the span of a couple of months, the membership grew by more than 300%. Then LinkedIn went ahead and introduced another integration - that of applications. Now you can syndicate your blog posts, post your slides from SlideShare and share your reading list from Amazon all in one place.

Today this network has more than 41MM members. Can you blog on LinkedIn? Absolutely. We'll learn how in a moment.

___________

On Twitter it was users who started the @ replies as well as the # hashtags. The result was that now people could begin to track conversations even if they were not present at the very moment that a message was sent their way. This social network grew exponentially once people started meeting and chatting with each other.

Even in the short time that I've been on Twitter (since October 2007) it's amazing how much this tool has matured. Less fail whales, more people. Another tipping point was the integration of talk and then use of the tool by main stream media. For the first time we saw how a person could become more syndicated or followed than a media network.

From the time when I wrote this post, Twitter grew by 10MM visitors in the US alone. They also call what you can do on Twitter microblogging. You'll learn how to put that to work for you.

___________

Do you use Delicious at all? After reading this post you might consider giving it a try. From the site,

Delicious is a social bookmarking service that allows users to tag, save, manage and share web pages from a centralized source. With emphasis on the power of the community, Delicious greatly improves how people discover, remember and share on the Internet.

The keywords here are sharing, tags, and centralized page. Because Delicious allows you to store information, catalogue it, and comment on it, it will come in handy if you're planning to be a librarian for a certain topic. Does this give you ideas yet? We'll use a different word a little later.

_________

We're not done, yet. Although SlideShare just crossed the 1M user mark last December, it may still come in handy. We said earlier that you can now showcase your presentations on your LinkedIn profile when you use the application to do that. How about integration with your own Web site?

Did you know that you can comment on, bookmark and share presentations from the site? Would that be important in an integrated marketing communications strategy? You bet.

I'm going to stop here, we can pick up other tools and talk about their growth and your opportunities in a separate post (or more than one).

Participation is content

I've said it before, but it bears repeating. Participation is content because it is what will activate your content in the context of the conversation. Remember when you worried about nobody coming to your blog? It's the same with content in other places - you've got to interact to activate it.

Before you go ahead and start using these tools, ask yourself two questions:

1. Where are your customers and why are they there? (i.e., personal vs. professional) – as a first step, I recommend analyzing that.
2. Where are influencers or professionals who could be talking with our customers (i.e., analysts, trade bloggers, media, consultants in the space, etc.). Peer-to-peer recommendations and online conversations are affecting how people make decisions and buy. I recommend analyzing this, too.

To increase the effectiveness of your activities, you need to integrate three basic components – research / intelligence, content development, and measurement. Remember that relationships are key in social media, so you will need to expand your thinking to direct and indirect links.

Blogging without a blog

What does blogging without a blog look like on some of these tools? Keep in the back of your mind that all of this information is available to search - every single one of your digital words can be searched and retrieved, so handle with care.

This is not meant to be a full list, if this type of post interest you, I have much more where this is coming from. To get your feet wet, you might try a few activities.

Ideas for LinkedIn -

• ask great questions
• be generous in answering questions 
• fine tune your profile, look at keywords, descriptions, recommendations
• give recommendations
• join or start a group
• update your status message, at a minimum

If you're a consultant or are seeking new career opportunities these small steps might be the most important ones you can take.

Ideas for Twitter -

• join or start and moderate a valuable # hashtag chat (#CmtyChat, #socialmedia)
• update the network on something valuable, for example tax tips during tax season (@HRBlock)
• use it as an extension of your customer service team (@Comcastcares and now @cz Verizon)
• give visibility to your company by letting some key people share information about their work (Zappos)
• run contests and fun activities (@natgeochannel)

If you think that you cannot have a content marketing strategy with outcomes on Twitter, think again. There's a whole lot you can learn even if you just share other people's content.

Ideas for Delicious -

• differentiate your content by using consistent tags
• post links and descriptions to your content
• comment on articles by adding a tag (maximum of 255 words)
• save industry news in a specific category to one page 

With some research and a little bit of work and care, you might just be headed towards becoming a thought leader in a specific category or topic that people then choose to syndicate in other places.

Ideas for SlideShare -

• create short and very visual decks to go with your press releases or articles
• use small slide decks as an invitation to participate to an event
• search for an find other, like-minded companies or individuals and comment on their slides
• synchronize audio to visuals for a follow up deck after an event

These are low tech ideas to extend and anticipate events so that the people who cannot attend may still get a taste of the content. They are also useful reminders for those who participated. You can still provide deeper content for conversion.
_______

You can see probably better how all of these tools are easily integrated into one strategy. Whether you support marketing or public relations, these are ways to create content in social media or as I wrote up top to blog, without blogging. In the back of your mind, I'm sure you also held dear your SEO strategy and that these are all micro interactions that will allow you to develop relationships over time.

One last thing, but not least. If you think that comments are not marketing, think again. Read this post by Shannon Paul on comment marketing for beginners.

Next time we will go a little bit deeper into one or two of these tools. Does this make sense? What questions do you have? Have you tried some of these suggestions? What worked, what could you do better?

Corporate Bloggers: Look Outside the Walls, not Inside for Content Ideas

Feel uninspired? Need more time to think about a post? Dreading the moment when you will sit down to write?

It's probably because you're literally drawing inspiration and ideas only from one pool of experience - your company's. Don't get me wrong, it's important to ground what you say in your organization's bread and butter, it's what makes the business unique, different, a contribution.

What makes a blog approachable, lively, and... a blog is its contact with the rest of the world - all those people who do not live your reality day in day out. Some of them are customers, partners, potential employees and colleagues. How can you possibly see your own world through their eyes?

It's like the ebb and tide isn't it? An ocean of content out there, and you in there working diligently to extract and prop up every last crystal of sand while all sorts of fun things are happening on the waves outside. Dive in, jump over the walls, and play outside.

There are many sources of great content you can take back and mold into interesting posts. A few ideas on where to turn for inspiration:

•  industry news as selected by your peers and connections on LinkedIn, in trade magazine blogs (look in the comments section, too), and forums - I found Toolbox for IT as a case study in a book and met Dennis Stevenson when he linked to this blog.

• conversations with customers and partners - I might be the chatty kind, but I find reason to ask what customers are thinking about and reading whenever I can. Many of the posts I've been writing recently are a result of questions I receive during presentations and feedback I received in the survey I ran a couple of weeks ago.

• comments in competitors' and industry analysts blogs - why not? You could have the answers or make a go at an interesting exploration. It might give you an opportunity to invite guests for interviews at your blog as well. Consultants or independents might make for an interesting opinion piece.

• participation in the comments to the posts of others - I hear you, there are so many hours in a day. Same hours I have at my disposal, in case you wondered. It really is important to become a member of a community, and to do that you want to show good manners. Pick one or two blogs per day, make it a habit and it won't seem so daunting. You'll be surprised at how quickly you can get attention when you give yours.

• bookmarks by customers or people you'd consider part of your community of practice - look into Delicious, FriendFeed, and Bloglines, for example. We'll do a deeper dive on the tools. For now, just remember to check them out.

• presentations at events that would be a fit with your subject matter - virtual events are also a possibility. Another option is to search for tags or topics in SlideShare. It did pass the one million mark members last December, so there is quite a bit of inventory in there. What are people resonating with? Conversely, what knowledge whole exists that you could fill?

• public conversations about a subject matter of interest to others - you probably saw those thematic hashtags on Twitter. Some example are #blogchat hosted by Mack Collier, #journchat hosted by PR Sarah Evans, #pr2.0chat hosted by Beth Harte. You can find those trending topics on the right hand side. FriendFeed doesn't have the reach of Twitter, but it could be good if the people you're connecting with are there. There's a bloggers discussion room, for example.

• colleagues in other kinds of jobs at your company - people in customer facing positions will see the world differently than you or someone who may not be delivering a service or product directly. In that sense, they do work and operate outside the confines of your walls. I bet you that those associates Disney casts as characters in the parks know how to tell a family is having fun in the rides.

Your job as communicator, writer, editor is to understand what you can say and how you can say it. You'll have good streaks and dry spells. What I find most useful during those leaner times is a nice walk on the beach to see who's out there.

What about you? Where do you find inspiration? What's the hardest part of balancing the company's message and the community's needs and wants? Who helps you the most?

__________

Related posts:

Top Ten Reasons Why Your Company Should not Have a Blog

3 Things You Should Know Before Starting a Blog

Corporate Blogs