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1/30/2010
Update: Forget to include link to my post from yesterday on Doing Social Media Right.
Woke up this morning to a blanket of snow here in North Carolina. As I warmed myself with some coffee I did a little web perusing and ran across a great series of articles by Mark Miller around a SharePoint community event he helped organize and drive lately (The Anatomy of a SharePoint Event: Set Up for SPSEMEA, The Anatomy of a SharePoint Event: Opening the Doors at SPSEMEA, and The Anatomy of a SharePoint Event: SPSEMEA Post Mortem). Reading them got me thinking. Here we see a group of enthusiastic people coming together to sponsor a high quality event that has tremendous benefits for my company with no support from my own organization. These kind of community events happen countless times, in countless industries again with little to no corporate support most often because there is no awareness of these events on the part of the organization due to lack of engagement by them. So, coffee cup in hand, here are some of my thoughts around what organizations should be considering and how they should be engaging community groups.
When corporations creating compelling products/services/brands that have a positive effect on peoples personal or professional lives the reaction in the user base can be astounding. Take a look at the fan pages for cars. I was recently checking out the Sharpy blog, my wife is a Sharpy fanatic ;-) , and was amazed at the type of customer enthusiasm present. Lately I have been talking about the role and use of social media in engaging customers. I have talked about dedicated roles, methods of online interaction and presence establishment. What I haven't addressed though is the support of those organic efforts that arise out of support for the brand by the same social media efforts. Case in point is support of SharePoint community based efforts.
Corresponding with the explosive rise in popularity of SharePoint has been a rise in grass roots community efforts around SharePoint. Here in North Carolina alone I am aware of 5, count ‘em 5!, SharePoint user groups. The SharePoint Saturday events, which started as a single one off event where some SharePoint professionals donated their time for a day to reach out to their local community has now grown to a worldwide phenomena (this February they are having their first SharePoint Saturday Iceland!! Would I love to be there!) with top notch experts flying in from all over at no expense to attendees. Just over a week ago we witnessed a new type of community driven event in which web 2.0 technology was utilized to deliver a SharePoint conference, free of charge, to a large number of users across Europe, who may otherwise never have the opportunity to attend a SharePoint conference. Using a combination of a website, Microsoft LiveMeeting, and web based chat, attendees were able to tune in to more than 20 hours of high quality SharePoint content delivered by top notch experts, including 8 MVP’s, remotely. There is a great 3 part series detailing the set up/planning, also what happened during the event, and finally a post mortem of the event) The innovation of an inspired community base can be simply amazing as evidenced by these type of efforts.
This type of groundswell, irrespective of the industry, is just the sort of efforts that should be supported, and engaged by the social media evangelism arm of a organization. Engaging with these groups, supporting their efforts, and ensuring they have access to the latest information, is in the best interests of any organization. The axiom that if you aren’t engaging your users and helping to drive the conversation then you will be invariably the subject of it holds true here. If your product/brand is popular enough to drive community interest then it is popular enough to drive news and reporting, not all of which may be grounded in facts. Engaging and supporting communities ensures that these great efforts have access to facts and helps insulate them from FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) that are often driven by a misinformed media seeking a provocative story. Furthermore, and most importantly, by engaging these community resources you develop true relationships with their constituents, who in turn become evangelistic advocates further scaling your organizations social media efforts. The question is how to recognize and reach out to these groups?
Traditional marketing and partner programs are ill equipped to recognize and engage community groundswell groups. Partner relationship staff are already maxed out and have a focus that is much different from that required with community groups. Traditional marketing groups while well intentioned will be viewed dubiously as their efforts are recognized as purely sales oriented. The answer is in leveraging dedicated social media resources. As I have previously mentioned social media evangelists are folks who are passionate about a product/service/brand. They are serving in roles where they are engaging other, building relationships, and by virtue of their engagement and assistance building community… just like community groups! These social media resources are uniquely qualified to engage these community resources, participate in their events, and offer support to help them grow and prosper. They will be welcome in ways that traditional corporate resources never will be as they are seen as trusted resources having a track record of interest in, and concern for, the broader community. Through the creation of an interactive social media website, such as the one detailed here, The evangelists can provide a resource to provide exposure for these groups as well as a way of assisting in the coordination and support of community activities. Featuring, and shout outs to, the great work being done by the community through features such as webisodes should be done to provide validation of the great work being done. The communities engaged by the social media resources should also be supplied with materials, prizes and such to help them with their activities as well as supply them with the latest information. These groups are helping the organization through their activities and because they genuinely care about their fellow enthusiasts. It is only fitting that those within the organization who are tasked with reaching out, who genuinely care about fellow enthusiasts, be empowered to effectively reach out and engage these community resources.
So ask yourself does your organization have the pieces and resources in place to effectively support and engage community efforts taking place around your products/brand/services? If not what are your plans to put those in place? If you do have the pieces in place are you effectively engaged and supporting your community efforts? In his Anatomy of a SharePoint Event series Mark Miller did a great job of breaking down preparation, delivery, and post mortem analysis of that events efforts and effectiveness. This is something every organization should do regularly in evaluating their community focused efforts. Well time for me to sign off and great ready to romp through the snow with my 12 year old daughter. A little bit of “community” outreach and support here at home. ;-)
![socialmediasamurai[1]](/Lists/Posts/Attachments/352/socialmediasamurai1_thumb_2A3F73F4.jpg "SocialMediaSamurai")
1/29/2010
Update: At the end of this post I have added two new links that show some of what is being done in the corporate world. The first article is titled "A Day in the Life of a Twintern." The second is "The Big Money Facebook 50."
When I saw this article last night it right out smacked me in the face…. in a good way. I have been harping on the need to leverage social media as a corporation. Most companies really don’t get it and seem endlessly stuck in the same patterns of marketing and sales like a hamster on a wheel. However clearly change is afoot. Those companies who grasp the power now are positioning themselves as the thought leaders in the area, are building the customer relationships and brand loyalty for the future. Those that aren’t will increasingly find themselves marginalized and the topic of digital conversation rather than driving the conversations. We see some companies clearly “getting it.” Google with their recent announcement around building up a Social Web Team (see Google beefing up new 'Social Web Team'), Dell with their clearly defined profits via Twitter promotions (see Twitter drives $3m sales for Dell). Really shining a light on the use of Social Media is Pepsi. This year rather than spending $20 million on a Super Bowl Commercial they are using the money for a Social Media campaign (oh what I could do with $20 million to spend on Social Media for Microsoft…. never happen… but with even a fraction of that…). Here is a company looking to engage their customers rather than simply market at them. If they stay the course they have the opportunity to truly do something special.
Use of social media requires commitment and staying the course to be effective over the long haul. The payoff in terms of customer relationship, product improvements, and brand loyalty however are tremendous. My hat is off to these companies and others who “get it” and are moving forward transforming the way they reach out to their customers. They are showing the way to move forward in this new virtual social age. So the question is how are you and your organization formally engaging in social media? Do you have a focused strategy with the right folks in place? Or are you still stuck in the old way of marketing and sales or worse yet packaging up old school marketing and trying to pass it off as being social?
I highly recommend reading the two Mashable articles on what Pepsi is doing as they really point to a positive model of engagement. Then if you have time check out my three posts from a few weeks back where I discuss the social media evangelist role and some areas of focus. They are done with an eye to a technical company but you can easily abstract the ideas to a number of industries.
My 3 Series Post on Social Media Technical Evangelism and tools:
Updated Article Additions:
1/8/2010
**Note** This is a cross post originally posted to the SharePoint Experts Blog
The other night Joel Oleson and his family were in town at the conclusion of a family vacation so he, his family, and some of us local SharePointers as well as some of our family members got together for some southern barbeque for dinner. It was a low key, informal hangout kind of night but it really got me thinking about one of the most unique aspects of SharePoint that truly sets it, and SharePoint enthusiasts apart, and that is the incredibly strong, people oriented community.
Way back when I first got involved with SharePoint (when they were coming up with the first beta code named of Tahoe) the whole premise of the product was to create a central location for people to share ideas and information. Over the years as the technology has advanced, its usage skyrocketed, the products ability to connect, to facilitate socialization, has also increased. Along the way though that concept of socialization, of connecting people and not simply interchanging data has crossed over from the virtual world of corporate work in to the very fabric countless folks lives.
Following the 2003 release I remember thinking how it would be nice to start a local SharePoint group to provide some networking and regular updates. With the generosity of Arpan Shah from the SharePoint team I got some money so that we could provide some give-away prizes at our monthly meetings as well as provide pizza and soda. I remember thinking it would be nice to get 20-30 folks together monthly. I was overwhelmed, and humbled when we started to have to reserve the two connecting presentation rooms in the Malvern PA office, open the dividers as we were packing both rooms with folks standing around the edges as well. The best thing I remember was that while we all ostensibly showed up initially for the technology, it soon became apparent that folks mainly started coming to see each other. Friendships were being formed, talk after presentations quickly shifted to hobbies, families, folks planning to get together. Real community was being formed and not just a user group.
In the years since those early days I relocated to the south, and have seen the technology continue to advance and increase it’s impact at customers. As great as those advances have been they real pale in comparison to what I truly feel is the primary reason for SharePoint’s phenomenal success, the people. User groups are everywhere. Organizations like the ISPA, SharePoint Saturday, and more are everywhere. The reason for their success is so very evident whenever you attend any of the SharePoint organization or user group events, it’s the people. You have folks like Muhanad Omar who, along with a number of other super folks, tirelessly give of themselves to help other in the Middle East set up and build community. Folks like Bob Fox and Michael Lotter who have built what have become worldwide organizations that exist to help folks connect and improve themselves. Tireless volunteers who give of themselves traveling, presenting, simply to help the larger community. Folks like Susan Lennon, Josh Carlisle, Laura Rogers, Becky Isserman, Dan Usher, Rick Taylor, Dux Raymond, Heather Waterman and so many more I could fill pages. Then to top of off all the folks worldwide who bring the type of events that many of their local community cannot attend. Folks like Jose Antonio Morales, Agnes Molner, and again countless others worldwide. Best of all, just like I saw in those early days when you attend these type of events sure you get the networking, information exchanges that are so beneficial professionally, but more importantly the post presentation conversations once again turn to family, hobbies and such. Friendships are forged and the real sharing of these “Share”Point events takes place.
As a former school teacher and social worker one of the driving factors in me climbing aboard the SharePoint bandwagon ore than 10 years ago was the promise of inclusiveness, of a place where everyone could participate and exchange ideas on even footing. Prior to that technology was in many ways a secret mojo bag held by IT folks and doled out as was thought necessary. The ability to participate through technology in idea interchanges was limited to those with the technical wherewithal. Growing up in a Connecticut community where they held town hall meetings that allowed access and decision making rights with full transparency to everything (you should have seen yearly meetings pouring over every last expenditure down to pencils) that type of exclusivity always rubbed me the wrong way. In many ways SharePoint represented to me the ideal of democratizing information exchange and the bringing together of people in community irrespective of their title or their technical skills. We didn’t have buzz words like social computing and social media yet but we were setting out on a journey of technology helping to facilitate the basic needs of people to socialize and be heard, and have the opportunity to impact their environment.
All that brings me back to this week. Just a few folks and family members getting together for some good food, and good company. In the normal course of life it is doubtful any of us would have met but through the incredible worldwide community built around SharePoint we have. Sure we discussed SharePoint a bit, mostly around… how to better support and develop the community further ;-), but for the most part we talked about our kids and families, shared stories about growing up. One of Joel’s sons shared with me his passion for stop motion video making (the kids has some serious talent!) We all got a kick out of the babies there. All in all it was more like the “social networking” I did as a kid where every Sunday we all gathered at Grandpa Gannotti’s house for spaghetti and meatballs. Wednesday night we met, we broke read, and relaxed. Its that kind of connecting that makes SharePoint so special to me.
If you are not plugged in to a local SharePoint Community/User Group you should be! If you haven’t attended a SharePoint Saturday, you NEED to. Get plugged in and you will find it a ride worth taking. As for me it was suggested at the conclusion of our dinner that we should do this once a month. Just have an informal get together for dinner, families welcome, where we just eat and hang out. I couldn't agree more. I think I am really starting to get the Point of SharePoint (at least the most important one ;-)
Check out:
1/6/2010
Three Part SocialMedia Role and Activities Write Up:
- The Social Media Evangelist
- The Social Media Website: Productivity Adventures – Your Input Welcome
- Webisodes: Packaging Up Information In A Concise, Focused, And Entertaining Package
Today's post on what I envision within a webisodes constitutes the third and final write-up around my envisioning of a social media evangelist role and the actionable items for which they would be responsible. I hope that they have given you some ideas to chew on. We are now standing on the threshold of a radical re-working around how we inform, excite, and engage a potential audience. social media tools allow us to scale in our efforts to reach far more people at a lower cost and higher effectiveness than efforts such as traditional marketing have done in the past.
This final piece, the webisode, really is the final cornerstone of the social media outreach effort. I will be using enterprise and corporate focus in my laying out of it but it could very well be part of promoting a soft drink, a travel destinations, you name it.
More and more people are turning to the we as a primary source of video entertainment. Site like Hulu and YouTube draw millions of attentive eyes. We love to be engaged visually, have a message delivered crisply, and to be entertained. The webisode provides for all of these elements to deliver content in a compelling, entertaining, and easy to remember fashion.
The webisodes is one of the cornerstones of the social media portal and a primary means of delivering a cross section of content to the targeted audience. Webisodes focus around a physical event. They cover a span of content including the event, local community, partner solution, local eats/interests/fun. For the sake of this breakdown I will use the format I have envisioned for Productivity Adventures. Webisodes will be downloadable as well as embeddable to assist with viral marketing efforts and cross promotion. Webisodes consist of the primary webisode video as well as the page which houses it. The webisode video will be comprised of the following:
Brief Intro: Intro clip about the episode. Sort of a table of contents where the evangelist is in a unique, interesting, setting/scenario that is particular to the area that the webisode focuses on. The intro sets the stage, engages and interests the audience.
Standardized Show Lead In: To include name as well as URL of social media portal
Attention Grabbing Teaser: After the lead in this short snippet features a highlight of content at the tail end of the webisode that grabs the viewers attention and serves to keep them watching till end.
Geography Intro: Introduce location of the webisode ,show a map, introduce some facts/figures (population, climate, economy, etc.) Include fun facts, obscure facts with some of these paired to video/picture imagery that visualizes it and is fun.
Adventure Begins: Vary the order of content coverage based on the chronology of the event trip. Standardize format by following chronology while maintaining content type coverage consistency. This helps keep content from becoming stale while maintaining consistency. Also, by following the actual time sequence enables the webisode to be delivered in a more natural narrative style.
- Deliver: Event, a short topic overview, show local community meeting/social, interleave one or more geocasts, a night infrared video shoot, show partner solution, and also show local eatery/tourist spot/point of interest or two.
Wrap Up: Review what was covered, provide any calls to action, cite links/resources
Standardized Exit Clip: Include credits and url for the social media portal
Sub Video Links:
- Listings to full blown videos/pages around topics featured in the webisode as well as a featured partner solution
- Links to related whitepapers, case studies, and links to webisode featured products and people.
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Well there you have it my three part write-up on ideas for a social media evangelist, social media website,a and webisodes. I hope you find some of the ideas and elements engaging and thought provoking. Better yet I would love to see some of you out there be able to implement some of them. Also, as always, I welcome your feedback. Time for me to hit the road. I have a meeting in Charlotte today to meet with a client to social computing and SharePoint (go figure ;-) and then back to Raleigh for a SharePoint BBQ Meet up with Joel Oleson and some other great SharePoint folks at Dannys BBQ in Morrisville, NC at 630pm. Have a great day all!
Ciao
1/5/2010
Three Part SocialMedia Role and Activities Write Up:
- The Social Media Evangelist
- The Social Media Website: Productivity Adventures – Your Input Welcome
- Webisodes: Packaging Up Information In A Concise, Focused, And Entertaining Package
In my post “The Adventure Begins…. Productivity Adventures!” I talked about something that has been bubbling away in my beady little brain for quite some time. It also is a key piece of yesterdays post on The Social Media Evangelist, namely the social media website. The following ideas can be applied to almost any scenario but to breathe a little more life in to it I am going to specifically call out the sites use in the context of a personal passion of mine, productivity. While I describe the site in terms of Microsoft technologies, such a site could easily be envisioned utilizing a number of platforms, and for a variety of topical focus.
I really appreciated all the feedback from yesterdays post and hope to get a lot here as well. So don’t be shy and leave your comments as to what you think I am missing, overemphasizing, etc. To those who offered suggestions they may not see reflected here I already had the three entries done and ready to role but am incorporating them for a more comprehensive piece.
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This past year has been an exciting one in the SharePoint arena as we have seen the explosion of the SharePoint community and all the resources available. In many ways though I feel, from a social media standpoint, that we are still just scratching the surface. We catch glimpses of isolated events, presentations on how to do things, community trends, as well as snippets of the excitement of SharePoint in various geographies.
What if instead of snippets we had regular cohesive views that brought together the story around geography, event, best practices, community, solutions, and more? What if it was served up in a manner that was concise, informative, and entertaining? What if this cohesive piece then linked to in-depth content around each of the core pieces as well as related ancillary content, all in a single, easy to navigate and search, destination point? Finally, what if such a destination point was not restricted to a single product but covered the productivity and collaboration spectrum? The ideas for such an online destination spot have long been simmering in me. Over the past several years I have written up descriptions around such an endeavor and submitted them to various folks at Microsoft without effect. More recently within the context of my present role I worked with my counterpart in Florida around such a proposal scaled down to a district level which he then wrote up but again with no bites taken.
The central premise of my idea has been around the creation of a centralized destination site called Productivity Adventures. The site would be visually appealing invoking a sense of daring and adventure , sort of Indian Jonesish in look feel. With a heavy dose of multimedia centralized around webisodes, the site would also offer an array of content that allows for various slices and views. I have always envisioned this site as a SharePoint one and with the beta of SharePoint 2010 that vision has become even more crystallized. It would be a natural fit and readily draws in related products that contribute to solutions such as Microsoft Office, Windows Phone, Photosynth, Silverlight, and much more. While that has always been my thought the idea of productivity enablement need not be product or even vendor specific/dependent. Cost, site support from an established entity, these all play in to the direction this effort might take. My concern is how it addresses real world end user needs. How do you think it should play out as far as platform? Where do you see support for such an effort coming from?
The following is listing of what I see as the key areas to be addressed in such a site. The primary focal point for content is the concept of the webisode. I will be posting a more in-depth look at what I envision a webisode to be later this week.
- About: If the purpose of the site is to showcase Microsoft/partner productivity tools/solutions then it should itself be a showcase of those tools. Hosted by MSOnline or by partner hosting. The various technologies used should be spelled out explicitly within the About section of the site to include links to content detailing how the site delivers the experience it does.
- Webisodes: Webisodes consist of a webisode video and a webisode page with links. The webisode video will be an entertaining and educational piece that provides coverage of an event, a topic focus, local community, partner solution, local eats/fun. The links will lead to more in-depth coverage of individual areas touched on in the webisode video as well as to related ancillary material. Webisodes will be either monthly or twice a month.
- Tutorials: How to videos and documented posts
- Partner Central: Listings of key partners and their solutions. Additionally, have postings of partner How We Did It posts.
- Podcasts: Weekly interviews with productivity experts
- Webcasts: Site will host weekly or bi-weekly webcasts on productivity as well as provide an archival view of previous webcast recordings.
- Calendar: The calendar will display site specific event content such as webcasts as well as events that site writers will be attending that will become part of site webisodes.
- Wiki: In the wiki feature an evolving body of content taken from site and brought together in a structured, easily navigable, easily searchable wiki. As an example – Feature Product PowerPoint. Underneath the content covering the product description have a dynamic component that draws together a comprehensive listing of content related to PowerPoint based on Metadata
- Blogs: Product/solution focused blogs with various writers.
- Filtered Views: Navigation by product, content type (videos, white papers, etc), geography, and more
- Extensions to Twitter, Facebook and ?: I have already secured ProdAdventures on Twitter where multiple authors could Tweet. Additionally a corresponding area would be set up on Facebook.
- Home Page: The home page would provide – **Top level navigation to all major areas. **Side navigation focused on filtered views. **Most recent webisodes. **Recent Media, not webisodes, such as Interviews, tutorials, etc. ** Roll up views of upcoming events form calendar, recent webcast recordings, latest blog entries.
- RSS subscription links
- Resources: A comprehensive, growing link list of related resources. The list should be viewable alphabetically, by subject classification, and most recent.
- Mobility: The site should have mobile enabled views for which their are corresponding Microsoft Tags created to be employed on all distributable content.
What do you think should be a part of such a site, not a part of it? Who should be involved in the creation maintenance, and support of such a site? In my next post I will elaborate on the key ingredient of this, the webisode. Understanding how it is focused and derived will provide a little more context around the flavor and tone of the site. For now though I would love your suggestions.
Ciao
1/4/2010
Three Part SocialMedia Role and Activities Write Up:
- The Social Media Evangelist
- The Social Media Website: Productivity Adventures – Your Input Welcome
- Webisodes: Packaging Up Information In A Concise, Focused, And Entertaining Package
Over the past year as I have become more active in the social media arena focusing on SharePoint and social computing I have been asked on numerous occasions what it is like to be a technical evangelist for Microsoft. Oftentimes folks are surprised to hear me respond that I am actually not in such a role at Microsoft but rather am simply a technology specialist supporting local local sales teams from a pre-sales technical standpoint. It is the same position that I started in over 9 years ago with Microsoft. I have enjoyed the job immensely over the years and the position and Microsoft have been very generous in providing not only a rewarding role but also in providing for the well being of my family. In today's economic uncertainties the importance of the stability it has provided that cannot be emphasized enough. Inevitably though such conversations turn to what it is I would like to be doing given my involvement in social media. Do I see social media expertise as a valuable asset? What would I envision a role along these lines looking like? In this post I will try and pull together some of my thoughts around this topic. This is not simply my idea of a dream job but rather a role that I see as an essential component of any company that wishes to engage its customers on the Internet and help to drive the conversation and mindshare/awareness as to its efforts in its areas of expertise. I will do my explaining by way of laying out the role at a semi-high level (What? Why? How?) . Following this post I will then dive deeper in to two core pieces of the role, the supporting centralized social media website and its core piece, webisodes.
1. What?
What Is A Social Media Evangelist?
Simply put a social media evangelist is a person who uses social media tools and services to engage a given audience around an idea, service, product, solution, or company. Skilled in the use of these tools this person drives awareness and enthusiasm around their given area of focus. By providing a face to the area of focus they help to build empathetic connections with their audience.
**NOTE - Above all else the social media evangelist is someone with passion about what they are doing. So much of the activity that takes place in social media is dependent on sincerity. Those who engage in the activities spelled out here who do so merely from an execution standpoint will sniffed out readily as insincere and exposed to the broader community doing more harm than good. In forming empathetic connections with an audience the evangelist MUST be doing so out of a genuine desire to connect with, and be helpful to, the audience. This is perhaps from an audience perception standpoint, one of the great differentiators between social media evangelism and traditional marketing. Ultimately the desired outcomes may look similar but the intent and methods to get there are much different.
2. Why?
Social Media Conversations Are Taking Place
Whether we like it or not conversation are taking place about our company, product, solutions. We can either be the subject of these conversations or can be an active participant in those conversations helping to guide the tone and direction of them.
Social Media tools allow evangelists to scale far beyond the typical limitations of traditional sales and marketing efforts hitting a broader audience and holding that audience even as it expands. Utilizing social media tools the evangelist activities should drive:
- Awareness - You don't know what you don't know. Despite marketing budgets, sales tactics, conferences, and more may customers are simply unaware of the products and solutions readily available to their organization to solve real world business issues. Through the use of interactive social media tools the evangelist seeks to raise awareness amongst their targeted audience.
- Innovation - Hand in hand with awareness is innovation. Due to the daily demands of work many organizations are so heads down in dealing with the day to day issues of running a business that they don't have the bandwidth to consider innovative solutions using a set of products and services to meet potential business needs. The evangelist can help provide this service by discussing, demonstrating, and advocating, innovative approaches to an issue.
- Demand - By driving groundswell awareness and capturing innovative mindshare the social media evangelist helps build demand amongst client user bases that will in turn drive deployment.
- Deployment - As the broader audience is reached through social media evangelism and demand for the use of product/solutions increases within a user base deployment increases. Companies who have purchased solutions but not deployed them are not seeing a return on their investment. While deployment may be the best thing for an organization in may shops the natural tendency of operations is to slow things down. The old sarcastic adage that anything new is bad can be seen in countless operation portions of IT organizations. Systems not returning on investment are rightly then in danger of elimination.
- Value Realization - Social media evangelism should ultimately help customers realize value in their investments. Where value is realized and recognized customer satisfaction increases, brand loyalty is increased, and sales are secured and/or increased. It becomes a win - win for everyone.
Traditional Marketing Shortcomings
While closely aligned to corporate marketing efforts Social Media efforts differ significantly. Traditional marketing seeks to control and push a message with the intention of affecting perception. Social media evangelism is interactive vs. push. Not only does it bring awareness to an audience but it provides a feedback loop to internal decision makers helping to refine offerings that better reflect audience needs.
Social efforts may synch up with marketing efforts along messaging themes but unlike marketing campaigns provide an ongoing steady audience interaction and information output.
Putting A Face On
People don't connect to abstracts or products people connect with people. By setting up social media evangelists you put a face on the product or idea. The concept is nothing new. Corporate entities have been hiring spokespeople for years. These individuals become synonymous with the products and services they are promoting. These individuals may be celebrities prior to becoming a spokesperson or may become somewhat of an incidental one as a result of the work. The same is true for a social media evangelist. By personalizing the product or service when someone thinks of the product/service they will think of the person and visa versa. Coupled with the virtual interactive relationship building possible with social media it can facilitate much greater brand loyalty through the establishment of empathetic connections.
Empathetic connections provide a sense of knowing an individual, of feeling a bond with that person, and by extension in this case the product or service. The entertainment and sports industries have understood this for years. They offer glimpses in to the persons life via entertainment channels (magazines, television talk shows, etc) knowing that doing so will help create virtual empathetic bonds with their audience and increase the value of the projects they are attached to.
Building Brand and Loyalty
As the social media evangelist builds empathetic connections and expands their audience base brand the ability to influence conversations and tone is likewise increased. This corresponds directly to the building of a positive brand image and increased brand loyalty.
3. How?
Physical Events
While the predominance of work for the social evangelist consists of online activities speaking and attendance at key targeted events is a must. Doing so helps further relationships, increase validity, can generate excitement, as well as to generate content for a core component of the online presence, webisodes.
Events provide an opportunity for invaluable face time with the virtual audience of the social media evangelist. While online conversations and interchanges are good nothing beats the opportunity to meet face to face and interact in person. Doing so helps to cement and further virtual relations making them more concrete.
By speaking at targeted events the social media evangelist further establishes their validity as a subject matter expert and not simply a marketing spokes person. Authenticity is a key ingredient and speaking engagements provide the vital functions of validating the speakers expertise, as well as position the product/service before a key targeted audience.
By engaging in ancillary activities(taking in local hot spots, etc) around an event the social media evangelist can further connect with the audience while creating a sense of excitement and fun around the product/service. As they engage in activities at the geographies of the event these activities are captured to be used as a part of webisodes. Activities might also be live cast, Tweeted, etc.
Destination Portal
The cornerstone and foundational base for all the social media is the social media portal. The portal provides a destination point that the audience can go to view the latest webisodes, research material, look up events and more. Foundational, it forms the core part of the social media trifecta. If the portal should itself be a showcase of the technologies and solutions it promotes. This should be spelled out explicitly within the About section of the site to include links to content detailing how the site delivers the experience it does. While the site is overseen and managed by the social media evangelist content comes from a number of sources/individuals and not simply the evangelist.
The Portal will deliver :
- About
- Webisodes
- Tutorials
- Podcasts
- Webcasts
- Blogs
- Partner Solutions
- Product Information Wiki
- Event Calendar
- Resources
Webisodes
The webisodes is one of the cornerstones of the social media portal and a primary means of delivering a cross section of content to the targeted audience. Webisodes focus around a physical event. They cover a span of content including the event, local community, partner solution, local eats/interests/fun. For the sake of this breakdown I will use the format I have envisioned for Productivity Adventures. Webisodes will be downloadable as well as embeddable to assist with viral marketing efforts and cross promotion. Webisodes consist of the primary webisode video as well as the page which houses it. ** A more in-depth description will be provided in part 3 of 3 for this write-up on Wednesday.
Twitter
Twitter is an ideal mechanism for driving grass roots awareness, establishing connections, and promoting new content. As valuable information is posted and referenced via Twitter it results in a domino effect of followers re-tweeting information so all their followers in turn also see the information. Effectiveness relies on having large numbers of followers to increase exposure and re-tweeting. The securing of followers requires a combination of valuable tweets in combination with aggressive, targeted, Twitter follower acquisition and requires aprx 1hour a day,3-5days a week. In all things the Twitter account should point back to the foundational portal and drive traffic back to it. The Twitter account might have multiple authors to it including the primary evangelist.
Facebook
While Twitter is great for ad-hoc linkage and domino style promoting Facebook provides a richer interactive social environment. The social media evangelist shall be responsible for the establishment of a Facebook group to support rich dialogue with the product/service audience. Facebook is the largest, most active social networking entity today. Any organization wishing to dive in to harnessing the power of social media has to take part in Facebook.
Book
An official social media evangelist should have as a regular 18-24 month objective the writing of a book that fall within their targeted content area. Released in both hard cover and electronic format the books should always provide references back to the primary social media portal. Books offer the opportunity to establish greater legitimacy for both the content focus and the evangelist serving as the public face. They also serve as a network channel capable of reaching a broader audience that may still look to printed content as more authoritative than net driven content.
The content for each book should first be delivered in a series of blog posts by the evangelist. This allows for early review, feedback, and refinement, by a cross section of the books potential audience. It also ensures that the underlying core content and IP remain with the site and contribute to the sites SEO. Furthermore by writing the books as a part of regular blogging activities it ensures that regular book output is attainable and sustainable and provides a level of rich regular text based content to the site.
Content Cross Promotion
As part of regular efforts to increase content exposure the social media evangelist will engage in daily cross promotion of new content through Facebook ,Twitter, Technorati, Live Favorites, Google Bookmarks and Google blog search, Digg, and Delicious.
Product-Service Write Up Reports
Social media activities by nature provide a great mechanism for audience feedback. The social media evangelist should have as a responsibility a monthly write-up/reporting objective to provide feedback to those who make decisions organizationally around products/services. Included in these reports should be monthly learning's, green/red flags, observed trends, observations and recommendations.
Tag Technology
As a means of providing anytime anywhere access to information the social media evangelist will be tasked with providing tags to all printable/distributable materials that link back to mobile enabled views of pertinent content. Tagging shall be done using a technology such as Microsoft Tag or another similar technology. Taggable items include papers ,brochures, folder, binders, give-away books, CDs/DVDs, packaging for prizes.
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Is your organization harnessing the full power of social media? Are you identifying and leveraging those individuals within your organization that can help drive your efforts in these areas? If not, why?
Well time to sign off for now. Tomorrow I will post a more in-depth look at a key piece of of the How? section, the social media website. I will then conclude on Wednesday with a close look at the cornerstone of the social media website, the webisode.
Ciao!
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