Archive for June, 2009

Who has time to keep up with the 200,000 social network blogs and trends and tweets? We do!

This past month, the Smashing Socialites hit up three different panel discussions about social networking. Here’s a recap of what we learned.

WTF is Social Media?
Struck Creative, Straub Collaborative and 52 LTD hosted this panel discussion on May 27th in Portland, Oregon.

This panel featured a diverse group of experts: A social anthropologist, an NBA team marketing executive, an interactive agency developer and an ad agency creative director. They shared tricks, traps and future trends of social media. The moderation and set-up of this forum was not ideal, but we still gleaned a few key points:

• Remember that you are communicating a brand personality.
• Be transparent.
• Think of Twitter as “a living business card.”
• Imagine Social Media as a dinner party — say something interesting or shush up.
• Allow the good, the bad, but not the ugly (from Intel’s social media guidelines*).

* http://www.intel.com/sites/sitewide/en_US/social-media.htm

Harnessing the Power of Twitter
Waggener Edstrom sponsored this PRWeek webinar on June 17th.

The goal of the webinar was to offer tangible insights into how corporate communications & marketing departments can harness the power of Twitter to meet business objectives. Speakers were PR managers from Home Depot, Best Buy and Jet Blue.

• “Set your measurables” before you start.
• Don’t creep people out — If you are going to follow people, let them know why you are following them.
• Be where your customers are at the times your customers need you.
• Be authentic, genuine and humble.
• Leverage existing assets and expertise.

Overall, the best example we heard of a company using Twitter effectively was from Home Depot. They tweet early/late store hours and specific locations to people before hurricanes hit. Also, Alaska Air answers tweets in real time to customers who are running late for flights.

Smartly Leveraging Social Media for your Business: Practical Tips, Tweets & Tactics
Washington Technology Industry Association hosted this panel discussion on June 24th in south Seattle.

Social media is rapidly changing the way companies do business. Companies need to be aware of what’s being said about them and need to learn how to be an active participant in social media conversations. This panel included a marketing communications manager from Microsoft Office, an eCommerce and CRM director from Alaska Airlines, a VP of Sales and Marketing at a brand management firm and the founder of an SEO software company.

• You don’t own your brand, your customers own your brand. What can you give them to shape the conversation?
• Beware of “Shiny Object Syndrome.” Set goals before you invest in social media and share learnings.
• Be part of the conversations your customers are having. Don’t just push out your own conversation points.
• Show thought leadership to build awareness of your product or service
• Participate or get left behind.

To get a good overview of how the corporations are using Twitter for their customer service and public relations, we recommend following these tweeters:

http://twitter.com/zappos
http://twitter.com/alaskaair
http://twitter.com/PEMCO_NW
http://twitter.com/bestbuy
http://twitter.com/jetblue

And that, friends, is your Northwest Social Media Recap!

Conan O'Brien is the Future

First, the most important thing to remember about statistics is that 32% of them are wrong, and we’re 67% sure of that. Bearing that in mind, there are some trends in social media that pique our interest.

Overall, time spent on social networking sites in the US is up 83%* this year. While MySpace has declined, Facebook and Twitter have seen substantial growth. In our own anecdotal research, we see teen use of Twitter growing very quickly. Just this past Friday, both Princess Protection and the acronym PPP reached “top 5″ for Twitter trending. Princess Protection Program is a Disney Channel Original Movie.** And Demi Lovato, the star of PPP, is receiving the 2nd-most tweets of anyone on Twitter as of Monday (Ashton Kutcher is in a distant 8th place).***

With 99% of 18-24 year olds maintaining an active profile on at least one social network, it’s clear social networks are here to stay. Here are a few final statistics we found interesting in our research:

• 38% of college kids surveyed said they have an iPhone or iPod Touch
• 29% of teenagers said they “friended” a company or brand
• 53% of marketers said they would increase their investment in social media in 2009

Lastly, Conan O’Brien may have inadvertently struck on the future of social networking when he joked that in the year 3000 we’d all be checking “youtwitface.” As the number of social networks grows, we expect more tools and technologies to aggregate and help keep track of them all. So for now, we’re keeping an eye on Conan O’Brien.

*SOURCE: Nielsen NetView

**SOURCE: TweetStats.com

***If you haven’t heard of Princess Protection, ask any 12-year-old.

From kudos to cringe-worthy and everything in between.

In the last six weeks, Smashing Socialites have attended 3 social media events, tweeted over 280 times and gleaned at least a few insights into the best and worst social media experiments of the past year. We’ve leaned in, laughed out loud and occasionally furrowed our collective brow in confusion. Here are our takes on the Best & Worst marketing forays into social networking.

BEST #1
Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh offers perspective, insight and humor up to the minute on twitter.

Kudos to Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh and his 140 characters of wisdom.

Among Tony’s insights are “If you don’t trust your employees to tweet freely, it’s an employee or leadership issue, not an employee Twitter policy issue.” And this re-tweeted wisdom, “‘An oak tree is a nut that wasn’t afraid to quit.’” You can follow Tony at http://www.twitter.com/zappos.

BEST #2
Burger King’s “Whopper Sacrifice.”

How much are your friends worth?

Crispin Porter farmed out the creation of this Facebook application for Burger King. In the promotion, you could UN-friend 10 friends from Facebook and receive a coupon good for a free Whopper. So each of your friends would be worth 1/10th of a Whopper, and they’d receive a note saying you valued a Whopper more than their friendship. This app took the basic premise of Facebook: friendships, and turned it upside down. Even though Facebook asked that the application be stopped after 11 days, the results were clearly a success. 300 million free impressions, and tons of free press make this sacrifice a success.

BEST #3
Ford Fiesta Creates a Movement

Fiesta Movement

Ford gave away 100 Fiestas and then empowered those 100 car owners to share their experiences with the public. They’re asked to complete monthly missions to show you what experiencing the Ford Fiesta is all about, way in advance of the U.S. launch in 2010. Follow their progress at http://www.fiestamovement.com.

________________________________
WORST #1
Comcast Customer ServiZzzzzzzz

Comcast In-Home Customer Service

Comcast gets a much-needed wake-up call. When a Comcast serviceman showed up to fix high-speed Internet, the serviceman was on hold so long with his own company that he fell asleep in the customer’s home. The customer, already irritated by Comcast’s failure to correct his service, videotaped the sleeping employee. And even today, when you watch this video on youtube, a Comcast ad often appears next to it, touting their Business services. View the worst customer service video of the year at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viw2TVBygBg.

WORST #2
Skittles %!@#$~!!

A little filtering is not a bad thing.

Skittles takes transparency a little too far with their “chatter” page on their site. With absolutely no filtering, they break the fundamental rule of social media marketing: Show the good. Show the bad. But delete the ugly. With completely transparent tweets, sometimes the Skittles website includes racism, swearing and more. View at your own risk at: http://www.skittles.com.

WORST #3
Verizon Careers of my deepest desires? Hmmm.

Thanks for the career tips... Bob?

In this example, VerizonCareers reminds all marketers that outsourcing can be risky. The language and grammar choices of this twitter account suggest that Verizon has an offshore group of employees posting their tweets. The results get pretty comical.

All of these examples, both good and bad, show good companies taking big risks in the world of social media. Sometimes it pays off and sometimes it lives on forever as a youtube video. And it definitely shows that control is clearly in the hands of consumers from here on out. Special thanks to all of those companies that hosted the three social media events in the last month.