Janet Lee Johnson | The Art of Marketing

I hear this question a lot when talking to companies about social media:

“What if someone says something bad about me?”

It’s a practical question that too many Social Media Experts take lightly,

“Well, wouldn’t you rather know they’re saying bad things?”

Um. Sure. That’s helpful. Thanks.

But seriously. If someone says something bad about you in a social media realm, take some advice from a gal who was called ‘pond sum’ by a jealous competitor…

Ignore it if you can.

Assuming the following caveats:

1. If it’s true, apologize immediately and then get to the bottom of it and take care of the source of the complaint. Then let the world (and the complainant) know via social media means - your blog, etc. - when you’ve fixed the problem.
2. If it’s not true - based on thorough research, let it go. But be mindful that (as the Social Media Experts say) you should listen for negative feedback, as you might eventually catch symptoms of internal issues you may not be aware of and need to watch for… A complaint might just be a canary in a coal mine…
3. Do not make public claims that you’ve been wronged by the social media site - like Yelp or Facebook - as they’ve protected themselves well from you and your customers. That will only fan the flames, and there’s nothing like a bully with a bullhorn, once they realize their comments evoke a response.

In my experience, if you’re in the right, it’s best to ignore occasional negative feedback, and let your loyal customers and partners come to your defense when it happens.

Never ask your PR agency to come to your defense, though, unless they do so with full disclosure. Attempts to hide a vested interest will be outed and will certainly fan the flames, and then you’ll have a bigger problem on your hands.

It’s wonderful to encourage your regular customers to write about you on Yelp and review sites like it. Let everyone know:

“We value your feedback. Let us know of your experience with us. And then let the world know, we love our customers to pass the word along.”

A Social Media Fact

The social media realm - especially communities where people vote on others’ reviews - is self-cleansing. A contrarian will likely be known (to anyone who cares to read the accumulation of their reviews) as just that… a contrarian. And sometimes it’s best to have some less than glowing reviews to legitimize a plethora glowing reviews.

A Business Fact

Your best defense against bad reviews is to deliver the products and services you’d be proud to have reviewed. The rest will take care of itself.

As I mentioned in my last post, so called ’social media experts’ are crawling out of the woodwork. I have certainly noticed a proliferation of individuals and agencies who’ve positioned themselves as such, and have met with many ’social media experts’ in the course of doing business.

I have also supported many agencies in developing social media skills internally and delivering social media expertise to their clients.

With thousands swarming to social media, how do you tell who’s really a ’social media expert’ from one who’s not?

In BusinessWeek’s Debunking Six Social Media Myths, author B.L. Ochman reviewed Robert Scoble’s (a real social media pioneer and very very nice guy) Twitter followers using Tweepsearch and found:

• 4,273 Internet marketers
• 1,652 social media marketers
• 513 social media consultants
• 272 social media strategists
• 180 social media experts
• 8 social media gurus
• 58 Internet marketing gurus

Ochman asked: “How many of them have actually created a successful campaign for clients using social media tools? I bet you’d be hard-pressed to find half a dozen with real track records.”

I’ll bet you would fine a few more than half a dozen… but believe me when I tell you:

Comparatively few of us have had real social media experience - the kind that thickens your skin, gives you real-world perspective and toughens your resolve….

As you’re contemplating getting help in the social media realm, ask your ’social media expert’ for proof of their social media expertise.

Here are a few questions I’d throw out there:

1. Tell me about your experience when something went wrong for you or a client in the social media realm
2. What did you do about it?
3. What did you learn from it?
4. How have you seen social media marketing change over the past few years?
5. What is your methodology for social media readiness?

As you look at social media options, look hard at your internal and external resources. And do not trust an expert who can’t back up their claim with real-world experience. We’re too early in this game, and there are too many mistakes yet to be made.

Most brands still need real sherpas to help us all up the social media climb.

As many of you know, I’ve been creating and executing social media marketing strategies for the past couple of years for clients. The crowds are swarming, and interest - in the days when program dollars are being cut to save jobs - is growing from all sorts of organizations. I hear some very common questions from a wide swath of interested parties, and would like to clarify how to approach social media.

We need to start by recognizing that social media marketing is not free.

BusinessWeek, in their excellent February article called Debunking Six Social Media Myths, exposed this brilliantly as Myth #1, and stated that $50,000 is a beginning point for a two- to three-month social media campaign. In my experience, I believe that’s about right. In spite of the free tools out there, every brand needs a strategic approach to social media in order to gain any traction.

In my experience, a strategic approach to social media success takes five phases:

Phase 1 - Discovery…

In this phase, we explore three variables:

1. People: Who are your prospects and customers, and how do they feel about your brand, service and products? Are they talking about you online? If so, what is your online reputation? (Positive, negative, neutral?)
2. Competition: What are your competitors doing online? Where can we leapfrog them? What is their online reputation?
3. Spiders: How easy is it for you to be found by an average searcher who may be searching for your products online? (Keywords, site optimization, Search Engine Optimization [SEO], etc. come into play here.)

Phase 2 - Strategy…

In this phase, we explore the opportunities and establish the objectives of a social media plan - based on the lessons we’ve learned in the Discovery phase. Questions include:

• What do you want your prospects and customers to think of you, and how do you want them to experience you, once you’ve begun your dialogue?
• How is this different from their current perception?
• How might we further pay off your brand promise, and distinguish your customer experience from competitors?
• … and many more

This Phase is usually highly collaborative; and involves key players from around an organization, not just the marketing folks.

Phase 3 - Skills…

Once we have developed a Strategy, we’ll review an organization’s internal resources to identify gaps.  Whose skills need building? How might we best train participants?  And to what extent would it be wise to train the employee base about what to expect?

(Hint: I always recommend getting everyone up to speed on any social media program - when I was at Marqui, that turned out to be one of the most valuable things we did in support of, and preparation for, one of the most controversial, viral programs I’ve ever managed.)

In my experience, getting your employees up to speed on social media marketing usually requires a couple of training sessions held on-site. These are generally in-depth training sessions tailored to select audiences in the company – e.g. your marketing and PR teams, your customer service folks, your executives and the entire organization.

Phase 4 - Execution…

As we prepare to implement our strategy, we determine which tools to use, how they interface with your existing infrastructure, and ensure the processes and platforms are properly tied together. We explore the following:

• Are your systems all operating together as desired?
• Is there a crisis communications plan in place? Do participants know what it is?
• Are your company policies updated for blogging, texting and IM and other social media tools?
• Are your employees aware of your policies? If not, do we need to train them?
• Will your CRM system interface with your social media tools? How will you move people into your sales process? etc.

Phase 5 – Maintenance…

After the launch, Maintenance becomes key.  In this phase, I make myself available for whatever comes up; checking in weekly with the team, make suggestions on content, make reminders for activities, and generally ensure the organization is thriving online.

Any experienced social media expert (and we’re crawling out of the woodwork these days, believe me) will have a stepped approach and methodology to launching an organization safely into the social realm.

I got a note from a friend on Facebook yesterday with a link to a video that he said ‘reminded him of me.’ I have been blown away having watched it… It’s called ‘Did You Know?’

For any of you who wonder how we’re to keep up, have a look at why we should:

With thanks to researchers Karl Fisch, Scott McLeod, and Jeff Bronman…

I was telling a friend this morning that I think it’s one of the best times to be alive on earth. Hope you’ll agree, especially once you see this.

If you’ve got a heartbeat and are looking to improve your business results in “today’s economic climate,” it’s likely you’re looking into social media these days. In the years I’ve been consulting and participating in social media, there’s never ever been more interest in the space, which is delightful to me.

But the reasons you should (or shouldn’t) try Twitter or Facebook or (insert the latest social media darling here) are often unclear - until you begin answering questions about your brand.

Amplifying Conversations Online

Social media are blogs, podcasts, videos, and news that enable people to participate with your brand by commenting, rating products (think Amazon) or statements (”like” is the new Black), by uploading files (think YouTube, Flickr).

As my esteemed colleague Dawn Foster notes:

“Social media is generated by the people and for the people with content created by anyone with a voice (average Joes, village idiots, respected journalists, CxOs, etc.).”

The important thing to note is that each of those groups are out in force online with loud, amplified voices. Putting your brand in their hands is exactly what you’re looking at when you’re looking at social media.

When people ask me for an overview of social media channels they might consider, I always start with the caveat that it will depend on their prospects and customers, and where they hang out. And then I’ll talk about specific types:

• LinkedIN is on the business-centric end of the scale of social media sites. Traditionally it’s been used for recruitment, hiring and general networking; but there’s a growing use of LinkedIN Answers that allows participants to develop thought leadership for their products, services and brands inside of LinkedIN.
• Business blogs are becoming more popular, with even the most regulated companies like banks and healthcare organizations entering the blogosphere - too often, these blogs are treated as extensions of the PR department’s mouthpiece, so fall flat in their potential to drive thought leadership and compel conversations about a market. Consumer trust of corporate blogs is dropping as a result.
• Facebook’s use by brands is growing quickly, as are the aging population demographics. Many large brands are exploring Facebook Pages and Groups where users can post their own content in support of their favorite products, groups, even cities.
• YouTube is arguably the most viewed social network. The #1 activity of people who are active in social networks is to watch videos online, according to Universal-McCann. More than 100M people watched videos on YouTube in October, 2008. The average visitor watched 92 videos in the month. Much of that activity was driven by the election, but the power of the medium to attract viewers is indisputable.
• Twitter, the popular microblogging site, has grown more than 750% in the past year, with 5K - 10K users joining every day. Twitter is oft used by customer service folks to make sure user experiences are good, and is a source of immediate hits of a brand’s online reputations - whether they’re good/bad/ugly. But with everyone jumping on the bandwagon (heck, you’ll even find John McCain Twittering - albeit “slowly”), it’s only a matter of time before the digerati leave it in droves.

When Social Media is Good:

1. Brand awareness - Skittles recently turned over their corporate web site to feeds from their Facebook page (with more than half a million fans) and Twitter (where they quickly found the dark side of social media - some people posted bad/nasty stuff just to be seen on the Skittles.com site. Remember Dawn’s ‘village idiots?’) But they got HUGE press as a result. Regardless of the adeptness of intention, awareness is one result.
2. Brand engagement - letting users interact with your brand is a great opportunity for your company to learn from your users and advocates - in areas like product development (asking questions about what customers would like to see in future products, etc.), research and stimulating awareness among their peers.
3. Thought leadership - when surgeons at Henry Ford hospital in Mass. Tweeted a surgery live, they got great press and were able to position themselves as innovative and forward-thinking.

When Social Media is Not Good:

1. When it doesn’t have the support of the leaders of your organization - you must get buy in and support from the folks at the top
2. When it doesn’t support the strategic goals of your business - that’s why you and I would start any social media conversation with a series of questions about your brand…
3. When your brand values are not embodied in every employee in the organization.

As I’ve told many people, had the social web been as active in 2000/2001 when I was at Enron, the folks in charge would never have been able to hide the things they did - precisely because of my last point. Neither the leaders nor the foot soldiers of any organization can be out of synch with the values their brand holds - and exhibits in the social web. There are too many opportunities for employees to share their observations and ideas in public.

Ping me when you’re ready to answer some questions. I’d love to have a fun discussion about your brand, and your values and objectives around it.

Then we’ll get to the social media stuff.