NHRA MAC Tools U.S. Nationals in Indy.

It was exhilarating to watch this high-performance team get ready to hit the track.  In addition to the three drivers, we saw a crew of dozens of people busily preparing for the qualifiers.

Each person was an expert in his or her specific area of responsibility, and the level of focus and intensity that everyone displayed was impressive.

Team Kalitta, preparing the dragster for the track.

I found out that it’s a total engine rebuild every time they run the top fuel dragster. I’ve watched my dad rebuild engines.  He and my younger sister have done some amateur local drag racing–so I wasn’t in a completely foreign environment.  I found it amazing that the Kalitta crew could accomplish a total rebuild in an incredibly short amount of time, in almost total silence.

It made me think of two things related to the work we do at Doe-Anderson (which, unfortunately, doesn’t put me within sniffing distance of an Italian Beef vendor nearly as often as the Team Kalitta guys.)

It was a great illustration that to pull off something truly amazing, teamwork is the ultimate “top fuel.” Working in an environment where everyone is the best at what they do, and everyone absolutely trusts their team mates to deliver, is what makes truly extraordinary integrated marketing possible.  A culture of teamwork fuels creativity and productivity.

Todd Spencer, checking out the top fuel dragster.

I know this because Foursquare told me so.

If you’re not already familiar with Foursquare, it’s a location-based mobile service that is this year’s Twitter (a social utility so hot, everyone in business is talking about it, but so new that no one knows if it’s a good idea to spend money on it).

[If you're a restaurant, bar or other local attraction, it's probably a good fit.  If you're not... maybe not so much.]

While I’ve been watching blog posts, news articles and client questions fly through my inbox about Foursquare lately (as well as Gowalla and other similar services), I haven’t seen too many marketing or advertising applications of the service that really caught my attention.  However, the campaign that the Chicago Tourism Board recently launched is the exception.

What the Chicago Foursquare campaign has going for it is that it goes beyond couponing and discounts, or even the gaming mechanism of “badges,” “stickers” or “mayorship” to create a memorable, personally-significant experience of the brand.

I don’t know about you, but Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was one of my favorite movies as a teen.  Invite me to Chicago to recreate some of the scenes from that movie, and you’ve effectively captured my curiosity.

Give me a (digital) memento of the trip, and you’ve created a connection between your brand and one of my fondest youthful memories.

Make outstandingly clever use of a social utility I’m already using, and you’ve inspired my confidence, as a traveler and consumer, that you’re going to make solid recommendations the next time I visit your destination.

Offer a free trip to people who can make the best case for why they should win a trip to recreate a scene from the movie, and see if that doesn’t spur conversation.  (90 likes and 463 comments on a single Facebook status update.)

Eventually, efforts like this will help to build a community of enthusiasts who share the story of their exceptional experience with others in the form of word of mouth advertising.

While Chicago Blackhawk fans are celebrating their big win this week, I think the Explore Chicago should be celebrating this campaign as a big win as well.  When it comes to building brand enthusion through the 5 Cs, this one really hit the goal.

Raise your hand if you think it was an example of how a Super Bowl spot is still a smart investment.

Guess what?

It wasn’t a Super Bowl commercial. As Barbara Lippert noted on AdWeek, the spot actually first aired the day after the Super Bowl, during American Idol, LOST and the Olympic coverage.  Which, granted, is still a sizable media buy, but also considerably less than a Super Bowl spot.

What I found fascinating, though, was this:

And the agency bought some keywords on search sites to attract people who, in the Super Bowl afterglow, were looking online for funny commercials.

So in essence, the agency used paid search to convince people they saw what they didn’t see.

While the visual sleight of hand in the spot itself is impressive, to a web geek like me, this search marketing smoke and mirrors is equally interesting.

It wouldn’t have worked if the content itself–the spot–hadn’t been intrinsically compelling.  But let’s say you had online video specialists like Rhett and Link create a similarly engaging spot (as they did for a local business in my hometown last week.)

Let’s say you had a budget for keyword search to own “funny commercials” keyphrases for your business’ geographic area for a week.

You could, in theory, do your own version of this “piggyback Super Bowl play.”

Maybe I’m crazy.  What do you think?

David and I have both been traveling quite a bit.  First, to BlogWorldExpo to sharpen my saw as a social media strategist, and then to SEMA on behalf of our client, Optima Batteries, to put those skills into action on a very cool social media program.

So I’m just now getting to catch my breath a little, and peruse ye olde Google Reader to see what I’ve been missing in the social media fishbowl for the last month.

As it turned out, this was an excellent day for me to pop my head back into the conversation.

Monday, PR guy and fellow highly-caffeinated person Jeremy Pepper posted a few thoughts on using bloggers as a means, not an end unto themselves.  I’d encourage you to bop on over there and read it if you haven’t already, but the part that was swirling around in my head in particular was the part about “blogger junkets,” the “pay me mentality” and what might be, for lack of a better and less touchy-feely term, a sustainable model for brands and bloggers to work together.

Right now, we have a few different models, none of which seem to really work all that well for either side.

We have the “shell out for some banner ads on my site because my audience is your target, and I will talk up your brand because I love my sponsors” model.

We have the “send me freebies, and I will love you and say nice things about you because I love free stuff” model.

Let’s be honest.  Both of these models are the modern day equivalent of Lucille Ball giving you a :30 commercial, in character, in the middle of I Love Lucy.  Only in 2009, no one is naive enough to think that Lucy is motivated to say those nice things by anything other than a paycheck.  Wasn’t the point of WOMMA that people don’t trust old school advertising anymore?

But public relations-ish approaches aren’t much more evolved than advertising-ish approaches.

We have the “bad blogger outreach” model, where PR people treat bloggers as just another media outlet to spam with press releases and other potential “content sources.”

We have the “better blogger outreach” model.  I think Jeremy’s blogger junket falls somewhere in the neighborhood of this model–where at least bloggers are receiving the same respect and “journalistic cred” as traditional media members.  It’s not entirely awful, but it’s also not really scratching the itch fully for either party.

All of this is made even more convoluted by the fact that bloggers themselves have trouble coming to agreement about what’s ethical, fair and reasonable.

And don’t even get me started about the FTC…

There’s another model, though, that I think bears more thought:  treating bloggers as creative talent. Hiring them to provide high-quality content, and using their social promotion talent, on a brand-owned website.

To a certain extent, this is what Crayon and Panasonic have done with their recent “LIHD Insiders” initiative.  It makes sense from both sides.

What do you think?  Where is the best value for both sides? Paying for eyeballs, or paying for talent?  Other thoughts?

I’d love to hear from you.

img Accordion courtesy SXC

While my background as a web copywriter is certainly useful, and my ability to quickly shift mental gears comes in handy fairly frequently, I would say that what’s been most helpful is my tendency to be slow to panic.

Occasionally, my tendency to ingest WAY too much caffeine results in some pretty frenetic activity and some fairly high-pitched, fast-paced talking on my part.  Which, to the uninitiated, might seem like I’m freaking out.  But most of the time, I’m actually quite calm on the inside.  I’m just being calm at an incredibly high rate of speed. 

Which is fortunate, because trust me, there are a ton of situations in handing corporate social media where it would be tempting to just freak out completely. 

Most of the brands and clients I represent are affinity brands.  The nature of Doe-Anderson’s core competency as an agency means that often for my clients, their biggest concern is figuring out what to do with their large contingent of rabid fans.  

I know.  Tough job, right?

But what I often find is that however hot the fires of passion burn at the "fan" side of a brand, you can expect an equal and opposite blaze of hatred at the other end of the spectrum.  

No matter how much you try to prepare a client, those blazing fires of hatred never fail to catch them off guard.  

Which is usually when we have to have the "therapy, not triage" talk. 

It can be tempting to look at social media as public relations triage.  When your brand has been hit by a metaphorical Mack truck on the highway of online public discourse, it’s tempting to think that social media can swoop in like a first responder and clean up the damage.

In some cases, that’s not a bad analogy.  Absolutely, you should have at least an outline response plan.  If you don’t have a crisis communication plan of some sort in place, you’ve failed on basic old school public relations preparedness.

And social media tools do allow you to respond publicly more quickly than was previously possible.  See: Dominos pizza, Motrin Moms, etc.  And while social media "gurus" will dissect and criticize whatever response you go with endlessly (because it’s in their best interest to keep someone else’s controversy going as long as possible), the general public will probably cut you some slack and give you credit for making the effort.

Social media used in that way reminds me of an old Daffy Duck cartoon.  Frustrated by several failed attempts to upstage Bugs Bunny, he finally succeeds by swallowing several combustible substances and blowing himself to smithereens.  As Bugs tells his ghost the audience loved the act and wants an encore, he can only respond "I know, I know, but I can only do it once."  

Which is really sort of my long-winded and pop-culture intensive way of saying that you have to commit to a two-way dialogue over the long haul.  If your "social media presence" is limited to damage control during emergencies, you’ll quickly lose all credibility.  

You can only do it once.  

The truth is, short-term "social media tempests" like the Motrin Moms debacle and even the Dominos Pizza mess are forgotten as quickly as they come up.  

Let’s say a group of these brand enthusiasts wanted to hold a party to celebrate your brand, or what it stands for. Let’s say they contacted you and said "Hey, we’d like to have a big party with a few thousand people who thing your company is just great. We’ll come up with the entertainment. We’ll promote it. We’ll get as many people as we can to attend." Would your response be "That’s great. Tell us how it goes."?

Or would you tell them they can have their party at your headquarters?

Would you give them some cool party favors and invites?

Would you do what you could to make sure it was easy for them to find as many other brand enthusiasts as possible?

If you’re an affinity brand (or if you want to be) you have brand enthusiasts. These are people who are passionate about what you do or the things you make. They appreciate the effect you’ve had on their lives.

These people make up your community—and trust me, in 2009, they’re online. That’s where they congregate, find each other and share their interests—including your brand.

Are you leaving them homeless? Are you saying, in effect, "We know you love us… but can’t you just love us from afar?"

Many companies hear the term "online community" and automatically think "website build." Sometimes that’s a good idea, and sometimes it’s not. That’s not what this post is about.

The point of this post is that if you don’t declare a place that is "home base" for your online community, you’re being a bad friend to the people who you should understand are your best friends. These are the people who are going to save your bacon as trust in traditional advertising and overall brand loyalty continues to plummet. At a minimum, you owe them acknowledgement, an open channel to communicate with you (within the bounds of respectful conversation). If you’re smart, you’ll go beyond that and provide them with the best possible place and resources to have their party on your behalf.

If you can’t justify the resources to set up and manage a Facebook Fan Page, or a Twitter profile, or a blog, or some kind of human-powered touchpoint, then you’d better be prepared to increase your advertising budget considerably. Because it’s going to take a lot of media-buy shouting to drown out your silence in response to their digital love notes.

I know, I know–I’m a sad, sorry excuse for a social media manager.  

There are a number of reasons that blogger outreach is considered the slogfest of social media work.  One reason is that it’s a fundamentally awkward process.  

Journalists and other traditional media members expect to get calls and emails from media relations reps.  they may not always like it, but it’s a known part of their job.  There’s a built-in context for that relationship.  Do some inexperienced or just plain bad PR reps sometimes mess up that natural relationship? Sure.  But I’m guessing they rarely get a shocked "How the heck did you get my email/number and who the heck are you?" as a response. 

Blogs began as strictly personal communications tools.   Many of the billions of blogs on the web today still are personal journals–even ones with a very wide readership.  So calling or emailing a blogger and pitching a story can be a bit like asking someone "Would you like to write about us in your diary?"  

It can be a little weird and messy.  

That said, many bloggers are consummate professionals.  They’ve worked hard to build up their audience, with the expectation that their visibility on the web will get them access to exclusive information and other opportunities.   Working with a problogger is effectively the same as working with a traditional publisher.  Even the FTC now understands that.  

In a lot of niches and verticals, the most prominent online influencers are often somewhere between the "you found me where?" guy and Darren Rowse.  This is where blogger outreach can get really dicey.  The rules of the road are still not set in stone even for probloggers, much less for the "semi-pro" or "ranking amateur" class blogger. 

Still, here are a few helpful tips I’ve picked up lately in performing blogger outreach for my clients.  

1. Be clear about who you are and what brand you represent.  Typically, you’re reaching out to bloggers whose interests likely make them fans of the brand you’re representing.  Or if not, they’re people who will naturally be very curious about that particular brand’s product or service.  If they’re not–you’re probably pitching the wrong person.  

2. Get very quickly to why you’re contacting the blogger… which is usually something along the lines of "We discovered your blog and think it’s full of awesome."

3. Do your homework before you contact them.  It would be lovely if most bloggers could or would fork over their analytics data to show how many visitors they get, what their average time-on-site is like, etc.  That’s usually not the case.  Poke around on Quantcast or Compete to get a rough idea of their traffic, and do some searches on social media tools to get a gauge of the value of their network.  It’s unfortunately not an exact science, but the more information you have going in, the more you know how important it is or isn’t to get this particular person on board your brand’s love train.  

4. Understand that you may not be able to see the full scope of their network. Sometimes, their online footprint is just the tip of the iceberg.  Or for some really savvy social media guys, the part of their online footprint that’s viewable from outside it is the tip of the iceberg. Their personal social network could be as vast and untrackable as an organized crime syndicate, and just as powerful–but if so, it’s up to them to prove it to you.  

5. Even if things don’t work out as planned, leave ‘em smiling.  Sometimes, as much as you might want to work with a blogger, or he/she wants to work with you, it just doesn’t work out.  Blogger outreach is about establishing relationships with smart, influential communicators.  Don’t get so focused on today’s pitch that you forget there will be other opportunities down the road.  Make it clear that you value the relationship, not just the post, video or link.    

Blogger outreach may be awkward, but it’s the foundation of any solid social media marketing program.  Very few folks are great at it from the beginning, but it’s definitely a skill that is worth mastering.  

Got any funny or embarrassing tales of blogger outreach attempts you’d like to share? Unburden yourself in the comments.   

img courtesy ajmac on sxh

Measurement of social media activity to determine ROI is a hot (and controversial!) topic on the web right now.  You can see some examples of just how controversial it is here, here, here and here.  Hat tip to Chuck Fitzpatric of ImpactWatch blog for those examples and more (and for the sound of dueling banjos that played through my head as I scanned the list of headlines).  

Still, few people will argue that social media doesn’t have clear, distillable value to companies. Social media monitoring, in my opinion, is one of the most easily translatable value-driven elements of corporate social media, especially when viewed as an add-on to existing brand research efforts.

Getting a Clearer Picture of Your Customer

A better understanding of your customer is critical to effective communication with them. Put it in the context of your interpersonal relationships.  How many communications misfires do you have in your personal and professional relationships due to a poor understanding of the other person’s perspective?  

Brand research is an excellent tool for gaining a basic understanding of your customers and prospects from a demographic and psychographic standpoint.  

If you’re using personas in any capacity in developing your marketing communications, social media monitoring can be hugely helpful in creating fully-rounded, three-dimensional personas instead of stereotypes and cardboard-cutouts

By monitoring social media for references to your brand, your products, your industry, and your competitors, you can gain additional insights that can often help flesh out and provide depth and dimension to your understanding of your audience’s attitudes, opinions and vernacular.  

These insights can help your organization speak your customer’s language more like a native, and less like a tacky tourist.  

Particularly for businesses whose customer base is largely made up of passionate enthusiasts in a particular activity or lifestyle group, having greater authenticity in your communications with them is critical to success.

The Plural of Anecdote Isn’t Data, But That Doesn’t Mean We Don’t Like Them!

We’re always anxious to hear stories of ways in which social media monitoring has been applied effectively to improve brand communications.  Got an anecdote you can share?  Drop it in the comments.  Or if you’d like, contact us about doing a case study guest post.  We’d love to have it! 

img "mannequin" courtesy SXC

What do those three things have to do with social media? Let’s see.

Social media is, after all, still social. It’s always going to be important to have a human face and name representing your organization on the social web.

That said, social media has matured past its “wild frontier” days. A few years ago, the biggest concern was having a guide who was knowledgeable about the territory. When there is no map, the guide you pick is all-important.

That was the case in corporate social media for the first few years. Often the most experienced guides were, by necessity of the demands of breaking new ground, somewhat larger than life: heavy on personality and significantly lighter on process. To be fair, at that point, not getting killed was a significant accomplishment. So if they were able to lead innovative, non-risk-averse companies into social media at all, that qualified as success.

Now, enough people have navigated social media as a brand and as individuals that we do at least have some reasonably accurate maps. Those maps should augment a social media marketer’s personal experience. Case studies, research and white papers can provide a rich set of resources for companies to use to set realistic expectations and get a feel for what the space has to offer their organization.

In part, this has contributed to the large number of “social media experts” and gurus with little to no actual experience doing real work on the social web for clients. While maps are good, you’re still traveling in a foreign country. You still need someone who speaks the language and knows the local customs.

You wouldn’t consider getting back to Des Moines from Rome safely and in one piece a “successful” trip to Italy. Just getting clients to engage in social media is no longer an automatic point in the “win” column. Successful social media initiatives get organizations to their desired goals and destinations. It’s the equivalent of the tour guide who makes sure that you see the sites that make a difference to you–whether that’s the Sistine Chapel, or the best gelato place in town. Because there is no “standard tour.”

When it comes to social media marketing, process is about figuring out your budget, your timeframe, and what objectives are “can’t miss” to define a successful trip. It’s even more important when you consider that the social web is where customers are now. Any business initiative into social media is less a vacation than a relocation scouting trip.

You may not be moving away from your current marketing footprint, but you can ill afford to not have a “second home” on the social web. You wouldn’t go into planning a vacation without a process for making sure you got the most value for dollars spent. You wouldn’t dream of opening a new business location without a process for site selection and for determining success.

Ultimately, a tour guide or a real estate agent who has a fantastic personality, but no process for helping you get where you’re going, is not going to be much help at all.

(Featured post image courtesy stock.xchng)

As disappointing as that can be, bear in mind the 90-9-1 rule of social media:

• 90% of people in social media will be consumers-only (meaning they’ll never post or comment)
• 9% will comment on others’ content
• 1% will produce original content (and that would be you, my friend.)

So if your readership is in the hundreds or lower, it’s not unusual to have posts that go un-commented.  Still, there are things you can do to encourage your readers to respond.

First and foremost, ask.  It sounds simple, but often just making a clear request for people to comment in your posts will make it clear that you welcome and appreciate it.

Second, don’t always complete your thoughts.  It’s a hard habit to break for an English major, but sometimes it’s better to not finish the story–leaving things open-ended and asking some leading questions can be a way to motivate readers to comment and fill in the blanks.

Last, give them an incentive to comment.  Run a contest where the entry is a adding a comment to the post that announces the contest.  If you’re on WordPress, add plug-ins that reward comments, like CommentLuv (which posts a link to the commentor’s most recent post) or a do-follow plugin that provides links with greater SEO value to commentors’ blogs.

If you try all these tactics and you still aren’t getting any comment love, you might consider doing a poll through PollDaddy (or a similar service) to find out why.  Sometimes readers who won’t comment on a post will anonymously click an answer in a poll.

As a final note, this wouldn’t be much of a post if I didn’t take my own advice.  Got any other suggestions for increasing blog comments?  Share your wisdom by dropping one.