Highway to Hale

Sorry for the delay, but last week got a little crazy. I officially (and successfully) ended my college career (at Augustana College) this past weekend with two Bachelor of Arts Degrees; one with a major in Communications/Business and the other with a major in Psychology. Apparently I already miss classes because all I’ve done is read and thought about (possibly come up with?) the 3Es of social media marketing. Engage. Empower. Exchange.

It seems like acronyms are a divine gift in the marketing world. Someday, a marketing messiah will be born uttering the four P’s as their first words. But today, I bring you my personal (feel free to adapt and slap in a book) Social Media Marketing E’s of Success (SMMES, if you will).

• Engage - A ton of focus has been directed at the idea of engaging communities while using social media. It is perhaps the single most important idea in the social media world. No social media pitch has ended without a mention of engaging customers and building long term relationships. To me, this means beginning conversations and joining customers where they are. This should not take the form of marketing as much as it takes the form of organic conversation. Much of engagement in the corporate instance is offering answers where/when questions are posed.

Consider Jeremiah Owyang and his Web Strategy Blog. His target recently has been to connect online communities in real-life situations. He has been running around the globe and setting up tweetups for users in communities that have not yet jumped on the bandwagon. Jeremiah attends and speaks to as many attendees as is humanly possible in a short amount of time and he is always willing to share his views on the future of web strategy. When questions are asked, Jeremiah does his best to answer honestly as part of an organic conversation (in person, blog, or twitter).

For a corporate example, look to the Minnesota Timberwolves. It’s a big deal when an NBA basketball team invites fans out for a drink or speaks to them directly using social media. So, the Timberwolves do just that (although they have been noticeably more silent since the end of a terrible season) using Tweetups, Twitter, and blogs. Fans WANT to be in a conversation with THEIR brand.

• Empower – Put the power in the hands of consumers. Business people as a group are a pretty controlling handful of individuals. Feeling uneasy yet? Change does that. When customers feel like they have a stake in a brand, they are loyal. Enable consumers to feel confident about your product. Give consumers the means to discuss the product (forums, blogs, etc.). Once you have provided content, turn it over to the public.

Again, look to Jeremiah Owyang’s tweetups. Obviously, he can’t be at every tweetup in the world, so he tasks the community members to follow through once he has started the trend. Owyang’s blog offers tips about hosting tweetups, including possible locations, events, and even conversations. Dan Schawbel even makes a living by empowering the public through teaching personal branding techniques.

Look at Threadless for the ultimate brand example of empowerment in the social media space. Their entire business model is built on user generated content. If you design a T-shirt, users vote on it. If you get enough votes, Threadless pays you and prints the shirt. Users have all of the power. As a result, users are interested and connected to the brand. Twitter recognized how passionate users are when they feel like they have power and the two companies have teamed up to create twitter.threadless.com.

• Exchange – The other day, I asked if it is time to stop calling Twitter a social network and start calling it a social exchange. I believe social media are most closely related to conversation on the media spectrum. Thus far, Twitter has made the largest stride to use social media as a social exchange, but others need to follow suit. There is a reason YouTube offers reply videos and nearly every blogging platform allows comments. Social media/exchange implies that we are using those features. Everything is an exchange. I am expecting something from you (something different from everybody generally), so I had better give you something in return.

As a brand, what do you want? Whatever it is, it deserves something in return. In many cases, it’s as simple as a comment or an answer to a question. Brands have the ability to be valuable members of the online community if they are willing to collaborate. Individuals such as Chris Brogan, Robert Scoble, and David Armano have nailed the idea of social exchange. They are always willing to get out in the community, offer reviews, and collaborate with others to enhance the value of ideas (of their own and others). People will respond to brands that are willing to exchange information rather than simply try to harvest all of the information floating around.

The 3Es can be executed in various forms, but they are all common factors in successful social media usage that I have encountered. When used correctly, they lead to the formation of a strong community built on top of a strong brand. Who knows? Your brand might even be integrated into society and become a verb like Google someday if your online presence is strong enough…”looks like it’s going to sjhalestorm this week.”

D[space][username][space] (no comma).

That’s what a DM looks like on Twitter. I’ve screwed it up, you’ve probably done it too. Is it a big deal? It might not have been big news last week, but I did notice Chris Brogan failing a DM and shooting his cell phone number to his 70,000+ followers. That’s all for now on that subject.

The big news this past week was the change in how Twitter users will experience @ replies. To be more accurate, it has to do with how approximately 3% of Twitter users will experience @ replies (according to the Twitter Blog). As I earn my Social Media MBA (look to @arikhanson and his blog for that reference), the change in replies makes it difficult to connect with important influencers, but what does it mean for brands and companies on Twitter?

It may have only been 3% of users capitalizing on the ability to creep in on the conversations of others, but those 3% were passionate about the subject and using Twitter intelligently. Evan Williams was forced to respond within hours of the change because the hashtag #fixreplies became the top trending topic on Twitter. I understand the rationale that the users, in general, might not want to see partial conversations of those they follow, but I disagree that the option should be removed. Rather than promote running away from partial conversations, the option should have been roled out the other way. Force people to see half-conversations and let them choose whether they want to jump in and follow the other side or simply ignore the few tweets pertaining to a specific superfluous topic.

The most powerful words in social media marketing are engage and empower. The option to see one side of the conversation promotes both engagement and empowerment. Take @mnChevy for example: a car lover and follower asks when Chevy’s newest addition will hit the streets. This car lover has a bunch of followers that aren’t yet aware of the mnChevy account, so they miss the tweet and Chevy misses out on the chance to engage and empower their target market. On the other side, mnChevy answers the question, replying to the car lover. Many of mnChevy’s followers are interested in the release of a new product, but rather than ask, they assume they will look it up online somewhere later…and forget about it. Those followers also miss the tweet about the release; another missed opportunity. Just because a user did not ask the question, you cannot assume they were not interested in the answer.

That would be an isolated case, but an important example. Whether you scale the example up or down, the idea does not promote community. How many networking events have you attended where you join a conversation in which you only know one side? You build your network by meeting the other side and gaining a contact. Your community expands – empowerment through engagement.

How can you remedy the situation as a brand on Twitter? Fairly easy actually. If you want to simultaneously reply to a follower and broadcast the message to all followers (whether they are following the subject of the reply or not), simply do not put the @ reply at the beginning of the tweet. Either put the name later in the tweet, or add a character (such as a period) before the @ reply and Twitter will not recognize the tweet as an @ reply. This way, all of your followers see your reply and have the opportunity to engage the subject of the reply and build a community around a common brand (your brand). Information reaches a larger audience, communities reach higher levels, everybody wins.

What do you think about the changes? Were you part of the 3% that noticed? Does your position on the topic change as you consider personal use of Twitter vs brand use? Do you run a corporate account that was impacted by the change?

Why is social media so scary for traditional marketers? Because social media acknowledges that consumers are getting smarter. Smarter consumers means that marketers have to get smarter. Not a comfortable thought for the people who are currently considered marketing pros.

It is no longer enough to get your product in the right place for the right price with the right promotion. Of course those things all help (a lot), but social media gives the ability to join the right conversation. Consumers have been doing their best to avoid marketing messages for quite some time now, but the goal of social media is to provide a forum in which consumers want to engage. It doesn’t take a leap of faith to agree that engaging consumers is more beneficial than shoving a message in the face of an unwilling listener.

Another scary aspect of social media is that it often includes a waiting game. Consumers do not want their lives (conversations) intruded upon, but they do welcome answers when they pose a question. Prior to even pitching a social media plan, you have to listen to, analyze, and track conversations about the product. After you’ve listened, you better become the expert, because you need to jump head first into the communities that discuss your products. By “jump head first” I do not mean START SELLING! I mean be a member of the community. Add value, answer questions, be transparent.

Perhaps the most difficult aspect of social media for traditional marketers to grasp is the idea that (before engaging) they must ask whether they are contributing to the conversation or selling. Selling is going to lead to avoidance, contributing value will lead to engagement. Transparency is one of the keys here. People will talk about your brand (both positively and negatively) whether you are there to hear it and engage in it or not.

The difficulty that comes with engaging customers is what draws me to social media. It’s an art of sorts. If traditional marketing is a blacksmith (forcing metal into unnatural, yet strong, forms), then social media marketing is glass blowing (strategically forming glass into an organic form with intelligent persuasion). Like blown glass, no two social media plans are exactly the same.

Agree? Disagree? Like to add? Looking forward to your comments.

There has been quite a bit going on in the SM world lately (a few Facebook changes, Twitter’s horrible retention rate, a realization that some professors simply don’t understand SM, possible errors with Twitter’s retention rate data…etc.), but things are crazy around here, so I offer you some updates about some things happening in the life of Scott Hale.

First, I’ve been fortunate to jump on a project with my friends over at Deep Bench called Mrs. Dude’s Boob Fund. I’ll let the link do the talking, but its a great true-life story of sacrifice, love, mothers, and breast cancer. While the story is heartwarming, the goal is to raise a bunch of money for breast cancer research so nobody lives the story over again. A donation makes a great Mother’s Day gift and some really great people over at Enthusem will send your mother a card for her special day letting her know that you have made a donation in her name. To make things better, a donation of $75 or more will also get your mother a sterling bracelet. So, if you have some money, please donate. If you have the time, tweet about the fund. If you tweet, @ reply to Ellen (@theellenshow) so the Boob Fund can make a television appearance and raise a healthy stash of cash in the attempt to eradicate breast cancer.

Enough promo for a fun project for a wonderful cause I’ve had the joy of working on with a couple other dudes that could not identify a boob if it walked up and smacked them in the face. On to promo for the sjhalestorm family of networks. I created a Flickr account yesterday. Of course, the account name is sjhalestorm and you can find the account at http://www.flickr.com/photos/scotthale. Why did I wait so long to join one of the hottest SM sites on the interwebs? I do not have an answer for this, but now you can check out a bunch of photos I’ve taken throughout the year for the campus newspaper. Obviously, the editors don’t use all of the pictures I give them, so think of this as a behind-the-scenes tour. I failed to read the fine print and uploaded a bunch of recent pictures and hit my monthly limit within one download. Next month, look out for a variety of graphic design projects and photos that I took outside of news assignments. I also joined FriendFeed…so subscribe to that if that’s what you’re in to.

Finally, I’m doing everything I can to avoid Swine Flu (the illness and the conversation – still trending on Twitter). I suggest you do the same. Also, note my latest addition to the blog – a Twitter widget that lets you know my last five tweets. This probably is not as exciting to you as it is to me, but I’d love to chat with you on Twitter.

Does your agency have an interactive/integrated marketing unit? Does that unit need some help? Shoot me a tweet or an email if you or anybody you know answered yes to these questions because, while I’ve had some conversations about my plans starting in May, I still have not nailed down any plans. Graduation is near and I wouldn’t call what I have “senioritis” because it is simply excitement to start doing more interesting things and start helping out the real world.