Hey Ashton, Reach is not the Same Thing as Influence

You might have heard about Ashton Kutcher's race to 1,000,000 followers on Twitter. Today he even appeared on Oprah to discuss his use of the popular microblogging tool. Check it out below:



Oprah asked "Why did you want a million people following everything you're doing?"

Kutcher responded "In some ways this is a kind of commentary on the state of media. I believe we're at a place now with social media where one person's voice can be as powerful as an entire news network."

Uh, Really? So having 1 million passive "followers" on Twitter makes the star of "Dude Where's My Car?" as "powerful" as CNN? Okay, I don't want to be too hard on Ashton. He seems like a cool guy. I definitely agree with him that Twitter can be a powerful tool for communicating. But you've still got to communicate something of value to be considered influential.

Don't Get Caught Up in a Race to Get More Followers

Kutcher went on to say social media can make "one person's voice as powerful as an entire news network. That's the power of the social web. You through your own stream can actually have a voice as loud as an entire media network." (those are my italics, of course)

Notice that he used the word "loud."


Loud is not the same thing as influential.

America's Next Top Model has higher ratings (meaning more viewers) than Meet the Press. Does that mean Tyra is more influential than Russert, Brokaw or Gregory? Of course not (though she is definitely louder.)

Reach is Not the Same Thing as Influence

Before I follow someone on Twitter, I like to see who they are following and who follows them. I also look at the kinds of tweets they send. Too many "Good morning twitterverse" tweets and I won't follow them. I have enough noise to try to filter during my workday.

The Real Power of the Social Web

Robert Scoble and Michael Arrington have highly engaged followers. Kutcher isn't tyring to have a conversation with all 1,100,000 followers. He is only following 80 people. He is building an audience. Scoble actually follows more people than follows him. He's listening. He's conversing with others. He's not just broadcasting his life. It's a two-way conversation. That's the real power of the social web.

Gaming Twitter

It is definitely possible to "game" twitter. I have seen plenty of people on Twitter who have gained thousands of followers in a couple weeks but apparently don't have much to actually say themselves. They use techniques such as following thousands of people and then unfollowing those who don't follow them back within 24 hours. Or they use tools to autofollow people.

Be Wary of Anyone Who Thinks That Twitter is a Good Sales Channel

Many of the Twitter "gamers" portray themselves as "social media experts" or SEO gurus. Usually they have something to sell. Some of them might even have more followers than some of the original social media thought leaders. They have a lot of reach. But they don't have the same amount of influence.

Twitter is a great way to share ideas and network with people. But those who try to sell too aggressively are rarely received well in the world of social media.

Ashton Kutcher was Right

Kutcher was right about this: social media definitely gives anyone who wants a voice a platform to be heard. But to be truly influential you have to say something of value.

What Your Company Can Learn From Domino's Social Media Nightmare

It's amazing how much damage to a brand two jerks can do with a camera and a YouTube account.

We've heard stories about the sleeping Comcast technician, Motrin moms, Dell Hell and more.
But this gross video sets the bar for social media disasters. (You can see it here if you really want to, but you have to promise to read Brian Solis' great post first.)

Learning From the Social Media Crisis

If you examine almost every corporate social media crisis, the company that experienced it later chose to embrace social media. Comcast has since embraced social media. They empowered Frank Eliason and his team to use Twitter to provide customer service. Dell launched Ideastorm.
Your company may not experience a crisis of the same magnitude as the Domino's debacle (let's hope not.) But chances are you will have a social media crisis some day.

If you haven't seen it yet, watch this video of how Dominoes chose to respond.



Lessons to Learn From Domino's

Robert Scoble started a great discussion on Friendfeed about why Domino's response is going to be the textbook for other companies to learn from when it comes to social media crises. Here are some of the best points:

1. Respond Quickly
   
2. Video is more powerful than words
3. Let the CEO respond
4. Speak Like a real person ("it sickens me.") The didn't use marketing speak
   
5. Respond where the crisis started, not just on your own platform
6. Embrace the Influencers - He thanked influencers for helping Dominos understand the issue and making sure that others knew about it
7. Take bold steps to demonstrate that the crisis is over (They closed the store to "sanitize" it)
   
8. Be decisive (they immediately fired the employees and pressed criminal charges)

Don't Wait Until a Crisis to Embrace Social Media

Domino's has since started its own Twitter account. This is a good way to communicate with customers. But you don't need to wait for a crisis to start using these tools. During a crisis, an established blog, Facebook Page, YouTube Channel, Twitter account can instantly get your side of the story out to the world. If you wait to address an issue or hope it goes away, you lose the ability to frame the story the way you would describe it. And it rarely goes away.


Put in Place a Crisis Response Plan Now

• Identify potential crises and who will respond in each case
  
• Have Communications Channels in place
• Develop a basic template for responding to crises

Which companies have you seen do a good job in communicating during a crisis?

My Prescription for a Good Corporate Blog

Corporate Blogs Aren't Trusted

Don't take my word for it. Forrester Research found that most people just don't trust them. In fact, only 16% of online consumers who read corporate blogs say they trust them. But that doesn't mean companies should stop. Along with the diagnosis, Forresters's Jeremiah Owyang gave a great health checkup for corporate blogs. Below is a prescription that should lead to better corporate blogs.

Embrace "Personal Brands"

Some companies are worried about their employees gaining too much brand recognition.

I for one don't  really care what the name of the blog is, or which company the blogger works for. If Chris Brogan left Crosstech Media or if Steve Rubel left Edelman, I'd still follow them. That's because they offer good content that helps me do my job.

Worry less about hiring people with "personal brands" because they might eventually leave. In today's job market, excepting contract employees, anyone can leave at any time for a better gig. The focus should be on hiring smart employees and if they have "personal brands," benefit while you have them. Make sure they want to stay and you might hold onto them for a while.

Readers Don't Care Which Company You're With

Too many companies make the mistake of  thinking that people will automatically want to tune into their new corporate blog because of the company. Maybe Google can do this, but chances are your company isn't  that important in the average blog reader's eyes. Content is key.

Your Blog Readers Are Opting In to Receive Future Content. But That's a Precarious Trust. 

People aren't going to subscribe to receive content that isn't of value. If a blogger or a twitter user writes about topics that don't interest me I simply un-subscribe. And I don't think twice about it. I'm not concerned with the Twitter etiquette some espouse. Waste my time and you're gone. I have enough noise in my life.

Give Away Some Valuable Information For Free

At Omniture, we have a few bloggers that write about very specific topics. For example, Adam Greco, gives tips and tricks on how to get more out of SiteCatalyst. His blog has become our most popular one because each post provides helpful tips that can help web analysts do their job better. I'm convinced that to be successful, a corporate blog needs to give away some information for free (rather than charging consulting fees for it.) There is a fine line here, but if done correctly, even companies that rely on consulting dollars will realize more revenue because their potential clients can see the value of these services.

Be Patient with Twitter

If you're using Twitter as a marketing tool to promote your blog content, remember that it won't pay off immediately. You can't just send links to your own content. Sometimes people with 10 Twitter followers decide to follow 1,000  people. This never works. Usually the account is shut down for spamming. It takes time to build a genuine audience on Twitter. People aren't going to flock to you, well unless you are Shaquille O'Neal, Dave Matthews or Al Gore.

Monitoring and Responding

In the next few posts I'm going to talk about creating a framework for engaging your customers and potential customers online. My company uses the following steps: Monitor, Respond, Influence, Publish

Monitor

So you've decided that it's important to participate in the conversation about your brand online. The problem is there are so many places to watch. Depending on the size of your organization, this could easily be a full-time job.

Luckily, there are several tools out there that help (some are free- some cost a lot.)

Free Tools

• The Social media firehose was created by social media guru Kingsley Joseph at Salesforce.com.
• For Twitter, Twitter Search (formerly Summize) and Tweetscan help you monitor keywords in real-time.
• Friendfeed is a good place to identify trends.
  
• Identify the influential forums in your industry. Is there an online discussion in your industry?

Paid Tools (this is not meant to be a comprehensive list, but includes some of the more common tools. Feel free to leave a comment if you want to recommend others)

Less Expensive Tools

• Andiamo, Buzz Logic, Radian6, Trackur

High end solutions (expensive but impressive. These solutions do much more than just monitor. Visible Technlogies, for example, offers an engagement module where you can respond to posts directly from the interface. Some companies choose a solution like Cymfony that helps them gather competitive intelligence.)

• Visible Technologies, Cymfony, BuzzMetrics, Collective Intellect
  

Remember that companies can't "join the conversation." Only employees at your company can do that. Jeremiah Owyang and Peter Kim both commented recently about this. Social media allows individuals to communicate with other individuals. You can easily run into trouble if you view social media tools as just another avenue to broadcast content.

Respond

It might make sense for a product manager to leave a comment regarding the product that he or she works with. Maybe a customer service expert should be the one to address issues, rather than PR. The main rule here is: Be Transparent. Whoever chooses to respond - be sure to divulge your relationship with a company. No good can come of pretending to be someone you aren't.

It might help to put together standard responses for certain issues that occur regularly. (If this is the case, make sure you are passing this information along to the appropriate department. For example, if you continually see complaints about your product online, there is a good chance that a large percentage of your customers are experiencing this same issue.) If you are using a standard response, be sure to customize your response to each instance. No one wants to read the same statement over and over again. (Here's an interesting podcast about how Comcast's Frank Eliason does this.)

Leave comments on blogs or forums. Here a few good reasons to leave comments:

• address customer service issues publicly
• refute inaccurate statements about your company or products
• clarify your company's position on an issue
• Recognize other companies or individuals in your space
• Add value to the conversation

Suggestions?

What are you doing to monitor and respond to posts involving your brand? I'd love any suggestions.

Next time I'll discuss the other parts to our framework: influence and publish.

How does your company keep track of what is being said online?

Can Social Media Help Your Business?

Well, that's the point of this blog.

I moderated a clinic last week at the Utah Technology Council on PR & Social Media. I saved the presentation I gave on Slideshare in case you want to see it. (I like Slideshare a lot, but I agree with Kevin Dugan, who says "without detailed speaker notes, SlideShare can be like watching the TV when it's on mute.")

The presentation is a good starting point, but the blog format is a great way to explore some of these concepts more in-depth. In the next several posts I'll write about how you can set up an effective social media program for your company. To start off, I'll answer a few basic questions that I hear regularly:

Who "Owns" Social Media in Your Organization?
I think it helps to designate one person at your work that "owns" social media. For our company, it made sense for it to be run by PR. At your company, it might be someone in marketing or product management, or whoever is passionate about social media. The ultimate goal is to get your whole organization to embrace social media, but you should at least begin with a social media champion. It is also important that you get at least one executive "sponsor" of social media within your company. Michael Dell was a huge proponent of engaging with customers online, and helped instill a social media culture at Dell.

It should be noted that these techniques can be used for well-established companies and emerging companies. In fact, I don't know a lot of people like me who get to spend most of their time on social media strategy at work. If you're using the right tools the right way, social media should actually help you do your job better.

Which Social Media Tools Should I Use?
It depends. You shouldn't worry about tools until you have a strategy in place. (see Josh Bernoff's POST Method)

It might not make sense to try to create a "viral video" for YouTube or to make a podcast. I've seen companies whose competitors start doing something with social media and the immediate reaction is "we need one of those too!" If the social media tool isn't aligned with your overall strategy then it probably isn't worth the time.

Where Should I Start?
Well, where are your customers and potential customers right now?

At Omniture, we first began with an audit of all the content online in the areas of Web analytics, online marketing, search marketing, etc. We tried to identify the top influencers in each category. Which bloggers are leading the discussion? Start by following the thought leaders and where they are producing content. We found that a lot of the influencers in our space are on an industry message board and blogs. In the past few months, more have begun to use Twitter to communicate short messages. We monitor everything but decided to first focus on these main areas.

Create a Blogger Relations Program
There a two categories of bloggers. The first creates much of the original content online, the other "directs traffic" by linking and pointing their readers to good content online. You should try to incorporate both types of bloggers in your outreach. Before you ever reach out to a blogger you should first read the blog and understand what they cover. It has been covered ad nauseum elsewhere, but basic PR rules apply when interacting with bloggers. Don't try to pitch a blogger something he or she doesn't cover, don't spam, etc.

This is a good stopping point. Next post I'll cover developing a framework for monitoring and responding to posts about your brand.