Janet was good at representing Exxon Mobil Corp on Twitter. She responded to people's inquiries, provided interesting facts about the company, and even talked about the infamous Exxon Valdez oil spill. The problem, though, was that Janet was not an Exxon employee. Nor was she affiliated with Exxon in any way, shape or form!
As you can imagine, this scared the pants off of corporate giant Exxon, who takes great care in controlling the messages they send out to the public. They've designated only a handful of employees to deliver such messages. When the story broke in 2008, "Janet" was using http://twitter.com/exxonmobilcorp to falsely portray Exxon, even using a background picture of Exxon gas stations. Exxon reps commented at the time that they were not using Twitter or any other social networking tool, and clearly weren't monitoring the buzz about their company online, avoiding the groundswell completely.
Brand jacking is not something new to the web - because it's so easy to set up a profile, anyone can be pretend to be an employee from a company in just minutes. (See a list of official Twitter brands here.) Rather than following the steps outlined in Groundswell to listen, talk, energize, support, and embrace their online constituents, Exxon chose to deal with the situation behind closed doors - contacting Twitter to have the false feed removed because of copyright infringement of the photos and immediately talking to and responding to questions from the press.
What they should have done is participate in the groundswell from the beginning. Large corporations should invest the resources and budget to hire someone to maintain their online presences and snatch up corporate names like "exxon mobil corp" on Twitter and Facebook before brand-jackers do. They should think of a strategy for their online presence, engage their audiences, and participate in discussion. This incident cost Exxon its brand identity, called attention to their non-engagement online, and fooled the Twittersphere, costing them the precious trust of the online community.
As of today, it appears that Exxon has set up an official Twitter feed. Like Groundswell says, you cannot ignore this trend.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Saturday, February 13, 2010
It Really is a Small World
"Trusted and loyal ASW members who meet certain criteria have the privilege of inviting a limited number of their friends to the network. If you know someone with this privilege, you can ask them to invite you. If not, please be patient and continue to ask around in your own personal and professional circles.” Ouch? That’s the message on one of the opening pages of A Small World (ASW), a self-described “private international community of culturally influential people who are connected by three degrees.” This exclusive social network seems to contradict much of what we think when we hear “social networking sites,” which are generally described as huge, open networks that generate a lot of "noise" like Facebook or Twitter. It also contradicts Emmanuel Rosen’s faith in the six degrees of separation theory, which ASW has now tightened to only three degrees. But, this site has generated a lot of attention and highlights an interesting genre of social networking: niche networking sites. While other niche sites like Linked In, which caters to professionals, or Classmates.com which connects classmates together, or even Tripadvisor.com which brings together people based on travel experiences, this type of exclusivity is new to the online social networking model and has proven to be a contributor, generator, and facilitator of buzz.
So perhaps we’re on to something here – can a closed, tight-knit community catering to a specific demographic be a marketer's dream? ASW's strategy has proven to be wildly successful. A huge benefit of these types of networks is that they generate appeal to advertisers who want to target a specific group of people in one place (in ASW’s case, advertisers include high-end luxury brands such as Mercedes and Cartier). It also can serve as a breeding ground for word of mouth marketing among like-minded individuals who are interested in the same products.
Niche social networking sites eliminate the daunting complexity of social networks that Rosen describes. On this site, particularly, marketers can be sure that a person’s “friends” are actually a direct friend of the person, or a friend of a friend – only separated by a maximum of three degrees. Unlike larger social networks that cater to the general population, such as Facebook, ASW actually shows “tie strength,” a concept Rosen says social networks lacks. On ASW, you can click on someone’s friend and a map showing how they know each other and through who appears. It's always a close connection.
Perhaps such niche social networking sites are the wave of the future?
Saturday, February 6, 2010
I'm taking two classes this semester at Johns Hopkins - International Public Diplomacy and Public Relations in the Age of Digital Influence. This weekend, I've been immersed in Emanuel Rosen's book, "The Anatomy of Buzz Revisited," in what seems like the first moment of quiet I've had to just read and think in ages (thanks, blizzard!). I realized that a concept was beginning to emerge that was important, if not vital, to success in both public diplomacy and social media strategies: listening. Yep, listening.
A concept that seems so native to us is so difficult to put into practice. Listening is the silver lining of the successful case-studies that Rosen presents; the companies that listened to what their audiences wanted, whether it was to solve their grievances, answer questions, or even just to provide a way to easily contact the organization, were successful in their attempts to control the message they wanted to deliver to their audiences. Listening is the elusive task that any corporation wanting to make the most of word of mouth marketing or take advantage of the social media groundswell needs to master in order to craft a successful marketing strategy. But no one really does it.
My organization is a prime example of this. We set up both Facebook and Twitter pages just to be "involved" in the social media groundswell, without really listening to what our users wanted from us on these networks. How were these networks different from our website? Would they offer new, original content, or would they simply serve to expand the reach of the content on our website? Did our users expect us to talk to them, to engage them, to interact act with them, or to just pump out information? What did they want to know about us? Was social media important enough for us to allocate staff time and resources to it? Not having the answers to these questions is costing us to miss a prime opportunity to generate buzz around our organization using these incredibly powerful tools, especially in light of our new headquarters project that is beginning to become a visible part of the national mall's landscape.
Because of this, we can't quite call our presence on these sites a success yet, because we haven't even begun to do the initial listening and research. Stephen Colbert, the host of this year's Grammy's, asked his daughter several times during the show, "am I cool now?" She kept shaking her head. And I keep shaking mine because just having a presence on these sites, just like being present at the Grammy's, does in no way make us "cool." We have to actually do something - interact, become part of the the community, and give our users what they're looking for, just like how an artist at the Grammy's who performs something or wins something engages audiences and gives them something to talk about, to have a successful presence.
Similarly, listening is a vital, yet underused tool in public diplomacy. So many campaigns fail because they don't address what people want, or don't answer the questions people are looking for. Take the State Department's failed Shared Values campaign, for example. The undersecretary of public diplomacy commissioned a series of videos showing Muslims happily living in America. The videos were shown to Muslim audiences abroad in an effort to help combat growing anti-American sentiment. In the end, the campaign was deemed a failure. Anti-American sentiment was growing out of a dislike of U.S. foreign policies, and not out of a dislike of American culture or Muslims living in America. State department officials had failed to listen, and therefore, failed to address the root of a growing international problem.
Listening is essential to any marketing strategy. And because the Internet is identified as an important facilitator of buzz, companies and organizations should use the myriad of tools available to them online - RSS readers, search engines, newsletters, forums, etc - to listen to what their audiences are discussing and how they are doing it before attempting a strategy. Listening will help organizations identify what triggers conversation, what people are reacting to positively and negatively, and what the best ways are to engage audiences online and will help ensure an organization's success. We also shouldn't forget what Rosen points out in his book: listening is just the first part of a process. It must be in tandem with some type of action for it to be successful.
A concept that seems so native to us is so difficult to put into practice. Listening is the silver lining of the successful case-studies that Rosen presents; the companies that listened to what their audiences wanted, whether it was to solve their grievances, answer questions, or even just to provide a way to easily contact the organization, were successful in their attempts to control the message they wanted to deliver to their audiences. Listening is the elusive task that any corporation wanting to make the most of word of mouth marketing or take advantage of the social media groundswell needs to master in order to craft a successful marketing strategy. But no one really does it.
My organization is a prime example of this. We set up both Facebook and Twitter pages just to be "involved" in the social media groundswell, without really listening to what our users wanted from us on these networks. How were these networks different from our website? Would they offer new, original content, or would they simply serve to expand the reach of the content on our website? Did our users expect us to talk to them, to engage them, to interact act with them, or to just pump out information? What did they want to know about us? Was social media important enough for us to allocate staff time and resources to it? Not having the answers to these questions is costing us to miss a prime opportunity to generate buzz around our organization using these incredibly powerful tools, especially in light of our new headquarters project that is beginning to become a visible part of the national mall's landscape.
Because of this, we can't quite call our presence on these sites a success yet, because we haven't even begun to do the initial listening and research. Stephen Colbert, the host of this year's Grammy's, asked his daughter several times during the show, "am I cool now?" She kept shaking her head. And I keep shaking mine because just having a presence on these sites, just like being present at the Grammy's, does in no way make us "cool." We have to actually do something - interact, become part of the the community, and give our users what they're looking for, just like how an artist at the Grammy's who performs something or wins something engages audiences and gives them something to talk about, to have a successful presence.
Similarly, listening is a vital, yet underused tool in public diplomacy. So many campaigns fail because they don't address what people want, or don't answer the questions people are looking for. Take the State Department's failed Shared Values campaign, for example. The undersecretary of public diplomacy commissioned a series of videos showing Muslims happily living in America. The videos were shown to Muslim audiences abroad in an effort to help combat growing anti-American sentiment. In the end, the campaign was deemed a failure. Anti-American sentiment was growing out of a dislike of U.S. foreign policies, and not out of a dislike of American culture or Muslims living in America. State department officials had failed to listen, and therefore, failed to address the root of a growing international problem.
Listening is essential to any marketing strategy. And because the Internet is identified as an important facilitator of buzz, companies and organizations should use the myriad of tools available to them online - RSS readers, search engines, newsletters, forums, etc - to listen to what their audiences are discussing and how they are doing it before attempting a strategy. Listening will help organizations identify what triggers conversation, what people are reacting to positively and negatively, and what the best ways are to engage audiences online and will help ensure an organization's success. We also shouldn't forget what Rosen points out in his book: listening is just the first part of a process. It must be in tandem with some type of action for it to be successful.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
New Semester, New Books!
I'm excited to take social media to another level this semester with my Public Relations in the Age of Digital Influence class at Hopkins.
Especially excited about the reading list, which includes books that I've wanted to read for a while now:
Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies
Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff (Hardcover – April 21, 2008)
Influence: Science and Practice (5th edition)
Robert B. Cialdini (Paperback – Aug 11, 2008)
The Anatomy of Buzz Revisited: Real-life Lessons in Word of Mouth Marketing
Emanuel Rosen (Paperback – Feb 24, 2009)
The Facebook Era: Tapping Online Social Networks to Build Better Products, Reach New Audiences, and Sell More Stuff
Clara Shih (Paperback – Mar 22, 2009)
Unleashing the Power of PR: A Contrarian’s Guide to Marketing and Communications
Mark Weiner (Hardcover – June 23, 2006)
Designing for the Social Web: Voices that Matter
Joshua Porter (Paperback – May 4, 2008)
Especially excited about the reading list, which includes books that I've wanted to read for a while now:
Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies
Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff (Hardcover – April 21, 2008)
Influence: Science and Practice (5th edition)
Robert B. Cialdini (Paperback – Aug 11, 2008)
The Anatomy of Buzz Revisited: Real-life Lessons in Word of Mouth Marketing
Emanuel Rosen (Paperback – Feb 24, 2009)
The Facebook Era: Tapping Online Social Networks to Build Better Products, Reach New Audiences, and Sell More Stuff
Clara Shih (Paperback – Mar 22, 2009)
Unleashing the Power of PR: A Contrarian’s Guide to Marketing and Communications
Mark Weiner (Hardcover – June 23, 2006)
Designing for the Social Web: Voices that Matter
Joshua Porter (Paperback – May 4, 2008)
Sunday, November 29, 2009
The Cluetrain Manifesto is quite the classic. I got several comments on it from people who saw me holding it as I was reading. Although a little outdated, its copyright is 2000, its an interesting package of 95 "theses" organized into a coherent manifesto for any businessman, business owner struggling to make sense of the Internet boom and the digital arena.I wish everyone in my organization could read this book. Although it starts off with some pretty obvious observations - the Internet has changed the way we communicate, markets need to adapt, blah blah blah - it does present some interesting solutions on how to adapt. If only people were willing to adapt. I work in an organization comprised of ex-government employees -- former Foreign Service Officers, ex-CIA employees, etc etc and for some reason, this particular breed of Washingtonian is incredibly stuck in their ways. They refuse to recognize the power that the Internet holds to radically change the way they conduct their work. They even fail to recognize the power the Internet holds in changing the political landscape - facilitating peace and negotiation and garnering support for political issues.
The 95 theses, I would say, center around a few major themes: The Internet as a virtual marketplace, the role of organizations in this transformative communications environment, the impact of this technology internally on organziations and employee communications, and how organizations can connect with this virtual marketplace. Rather than attempting to predict the future, the authors of the Cluetrain Manifesto actually set the path for the future, making this book remarkable and important for any digital strategist to read.
In other readings I came across on the Web about this book, it seems as though many unanimously agree that this book just "won't die" and the principles it proposed ten years ago are still highly debated and considered today. What's shockingly weird though is how BAD the cluetrain's website is! For a book that imparts so much information about Internet strategy, etc, the website is an absurdly bad display of design principles and strategy. Go figure.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Millenial Makeover
No wonder "Millenial Makeover" is one of the NYT Favorite Books of 2008 - it discusses some of the most pressing issues of our time: how social media affects elections and politics. The book discusses how the winning party will successfully use and keep up with technology. This technology, according to the book, is rapidly changing the political environment.It does a fairly decent job of describing the current political environment, and predicting the future - tracing how technology changed everything from pop culture, such as music and movies, to national politics. I'd like to think of myself as a "millenial," the way the book describes them - the early adopters of society, the optimistic politically and economically, the ultimate group that every marketer wants to reach because they are the movers and shakers. It's the ultimate book for anyone wanting to learn more about and understand this millenial generation - how to reach them, identify what they want, and give it to them. It provides surprising insight into the 2008 elections -- which set a precedent for using technology to gain support quickly and efficiently. The book also discusses how campaign techniques - fundraising, advertising, etc - have been revolutionized by millenial thinkers and technology.
The insights offered in this book are valuable to anyone wanting to understand domestic politics and their correlation with the technological world.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Online Political Advertising
Yet another reading in the series edited by Julie Barko Germany from the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet at George Washington University, "Best Practices for Political Advertising Online" again brings together the best in the field to contribute chapters on how the Internet is changing the political landscape. Focusing on one of the tools with the most potential for generating profit, paid advertising through search engines and other marketing tactics online, this publication shows that developing an Internet marketing strategy is both beneficial and necessary in today's media environment.
Because online advertising eliminates the physical costs of print and production, political advocacy groups can save time and money through online advertising. Search engine optimization has become more of a profession these days, and hiring someone to optimize your website to drive traffic to it and managae and maintain your online ad campaigns such as Google AdWords could be a valuable investment. Although online advertising is a relatively new field, this publication points out "best practices" in the field and advises groups to plan ahead and budget accordingly. The report also makes a good case for using online advertising and shows how a group can target a particular demographic, and reach voters online.
I compared the search engine marketing, online display advertising, and online lead generation best practices from this report to what we're doing at my organization, the U.S. Institute of Peace. Search engine marketing is perhaps the most important strategy, as it drives users back to your Web site and points them to the content you'd like them to see based on keywords. SEO (search engine optimization) uses meta-tags that are embedded in the code of the website and tell search engines what type of content appears on the page. While at USIP we concentrate heavily on this, we have failed to develop a good set of metrics in order to judge our success. SEO will become more interesting with Web 3.0 - where taxonomy, a standard set of key words to describe a page, will be replaced by folksonomy, a set of words that users develop to describe a page. Tagging and tag clouds will also be an important part of SEO.
USIP has not yet developed a strategy for using online display advertising, although this paper makes a good case for using banners and flash ads across the web to target particular demographics. Creating an online advertising network can help expand the reach of an organization or political candidate's website.
And lastly, the paper talks about using lead generation, or recruitment to gain donors and supporters. Using a CRM like Salesforce can help with this strategy because it will help organizations track people's interests and keep a record of their interactions with the organization, such as by phone, or email, or physical mailings. Although this paper describes lead generation as cost-effective -- in reality, purchasing a CRM database like Salesforce is very expensive and requires an administrator - it is a crucial aspect of reaching and retaining constituents in any political advertising campaign.
Online advertising should also be important to traditional media outlets today -- as more and more are migrating to the web, they will have to look to the Internet for ways to generate profits.
Because online advertising eliminates the physical costs of print and production, political advocacy groups can save time and money through online advertising. Search engine optimization has become more of a profession these days, and hiring someone to optimize your website to drive traffic to it and managae and maintain your online ad campaigns such as Google AdWords could be a valuable investment. Although online advertising is a relatively new field, this publication points out "best practices" in the field and advises groups to plan ahead and budget accordingly. The report also makes a good case for using online advertising and shows how a group can target a particular demographic, and reach voters online.
I compared the search engine marketing, online display advertising, and online lead generation best practices from this report to what we're doing at my organization, the U.S. Institute of Peace. Search engine marketing is perhaps the most important strategy, as it drives users back to your Web site and points them to the content you'd like them to see based on keywords. SEO (search engine optimization) uses meta-tags that are embedded in the code of the website and tell search engines what type of content appears on the page. While at USIP we concentrate heavily on this, we have failed to develop a good set of metrics in order to judge our success. SEO will become more interesting with Web 3.0 - where taxonomy, a standard set of key words to describe a page, will be replaced by folksonomy, a set of words that users develop to describe a page. Tagging and tag clouds will also be an important part of SEO.
USIP has not yet developed a strategy for using online display advertising, although this paper makes a good case for using banners and flash ads across the web to target particular demographics. Creating an online advertising network can help expand the reach of an organization or political candidate's website.
And lastly, the paper talks about using lead generation, or recruitment to gain donors and supporters. Using a CRM like Salesforce can help with this strategy because it will help organizations track people's interests and keep a record of their interactions with the organization, such as by phone, or email, or physical mailings. Although this paper describes lead generation as cost-effective -- in reality, purchasing a CRM database like Salesforce is very expensive and requires an administrator - it is a crucial aspect of reaching and retaining constituents in any political advertising campaign.
Online advertising should also be important to traditional media outlets today -- as more and more are migrating to the web, they will have to look to the Internet for ways to generate profits.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
