Marketing Roadmaps

Archives for October 2008

SNCR Symposium November 14 in Boston

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If you are in the Boston-area and either involved with or interested in social media, you should attend the Society for New Communications Research’s Annual Research Symposium & Awards Gala.

WHEN: Friday November 14, 2008

WHERE: The Hotel Marlowe in Cambridge

The Research Symposium runs all day, from 8:30 am to 5pm. The Awards Dinner starts at 7:00.

For more information or to register, www.sncr.org/symposium08

Now, if you run a public relations or social media firm in the Boston area, and this year has been good for you, consider sharing the love with the clients that have made it possible. Purchase a table (or two) at the Awards Gala and invite some clients to join you for the evening’s festivities. They’ll hear from and about the companies and individuals being honored at the event. Perhaps they’ll decide they’d like to be on the podium next year and greenlight that social media project you’ve been pitching or increase their social media budget.

If you do it, let me know, and I’ll give you a little love here on the blog for your support of the Society.

On the blog, people. On the blog.

About bloggers: our bark is worse than our bite

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Earlier this week, a friend tweeted from the Marketing2Moms conference in Chicago that one of the panelists had commented that marketers needed to be careful with bloggers because they might bite.

I thought about this. Thought about it some more.

And the more I did, the more the concept irked me. Because it’s not true. Bloggers don’t bite. Not really. We  bark. Sometimes very loudly.

But — for the most part —  it’s not about hurting you. It’s about being heard.

Now, before I take this analogy any further — and I am going to — let me be clear. I am not saying bloggers are bitches or dogs. They might be… but not generically or collectively. That’s something you have to decide on a case by case basis 🙂

I do however find some interesting parallels in canine behavior and figured, let’s have a little fun on a Friday night.

I realize however that not everyone finds such comparisons apt. I remember a former co-worker who took umbrage when I described  her hair color, which I thought was lovely, as brindle. Like a Scottish Terrier coat. To me, it was a compliment. To her, not so much.

So, if this sort of parallel bothers you, read no further. Perhaps pop over to Snapshot Chronicles and see the election videos I posted earlier today.

Still with me? Okay, let’s go.

Why did this comment about bloggers biting irritate me so much? In part because it sounds like scare tactics designed to make the assembled marketers so worried about engaging with bloggers that they will hire the consultant who made the comment. Now, perhaps they should hire a consultant with experience reaching out to bloggers but fear creates the wrong atmosphere for authentic engagement.

But what irritated me the most was that it is not true. Most bloggers bark, not bite. Just like most dogs.

Sure, there’s the occasional ranter who goes off on anything and everything with no warning. Just like the dog years and years ago that jumped up and bit me on the upper arm for absolutely no reason and with no warning while I was speaking quietly to the owner during a canvassing effort for NARAL.

But if you pay attention, bloggers tell you what’s important to them. What they care about. How to engage with them. Just like dogs bark to go out, bark when they want dinner, and bark like crazy when the UPS driver pulls up or they sense stranger danger. They warn you off and they defend their territory.

Just like bloggers.

Now, if you don’t listen, maybe you will get bit. But it is rarely without warning. Rarely unavoidable. And quite simply rare. Dogs don’t bite as a matter of course, and neither do bloggers.

There’s no reason to be scared. Approach slowly. Look for the clues. Pay attention. Get to know the other party. Reach out carefully.

And you might just make a friend for life.

BlogHer Boston Sessions

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I was honored to be on two panels at BlogHer Boston on October 11th. I taped them both, with the good intentions of using the tapes to write my posts about the panels, both of which were a blast to do.

But time presses on, and when I gave a quick listen yesterday, I realized the quality was pretty good. So I did a little post-production on the files and here they are!

The first panel, Blogging Basics: I blog therefore I am, was moderated by BlogHer co-founder Jory Des Jardins. My fellow panelists were Candelaria Silva Collins and Christine Koh.

Read the live blog coverage here. Download the mp3 here.

I was the moderator of the second panel, Social Media can save your business, and was joined by Laura Fitton, aka Pistachio on Twitter and Laura Tomasetti from 360 PR.

Read the live blog coverage here. Download the mp3 here.

One week outside the echo chamber

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I’ve been on the road since Tuesday morning, travelling first to a Chicago suburb to give my social media 101 presentation to the consumer relations group of an international consumer products company and then to Cincinnati to give a similar talk to the Ohio Conference of AAA Clubs Annual Meeting.

Presenting to mostly newbie audiences stands in stark contrast to my recent panels at Blogworld Expo and BlogHer, where the folks in the audience were active social media users looking to expand their knowledge about specific things, whether it be monetization of the blog, how to balance personal privacy with public blogging or the best way to integrate Twitter and blogger relations into a social media strategy.

The events this week were also convened for entirely different purposes than to talk social media. The first was an offsite for the consumer relations team and the second an annual meeting of AAA affiliate clubs in Ohio. My social media presentations were one very small part of a packed agenda focused on business issues, not blogging.

It was an incredibly refreshing week outside of the social media echo chamber. While both organizations were very interested in learning about blogs and social networks, social media wasn’t the only topic of discussion. As a result, I had an opportunity to hear about the pressing issues driving their businesses.

This perspective is invaluable. We get so caught up in the echo chamber, we sometimes forget that for social media to be relevant, it has to be solving real world business problems.

Which it does. Don’t get me wrong. I absolutely believe that social media participation is a critical component for 21st century customer engagement. It just needs to be grounded in the needs of the business. And its customers.

Not the needs of the companies flogging the latest widget or tool set.

Some thoughts that were validated this week in my time outside the echo chamber.

Large multinationals face a crossroads that smaller companies may never see. Who “owns” the relationship with the customer? Both marketing and customer service/consumer relations have a legitimate “claim” to this relationship, and due to organizational size, they tend to operate in silos of responsibility.

Marketing and consumer relations also have very different reasons for listening to and engaging with customers. Marketing listens to understand what messages motivate purchase. Customer service and consumer relations are charged with resolving customer problems or complaints, and sending the customer feedback up the chain to product marketing.

But the consumer doesn’t see or care about these silos. She does NOT divide the experience with a product into before sale and after sale. She just buys a product. It is going to require executive commitment at the highest levels, cross-functional teams and deep, deep cooperation to get this right in these large multi-nationals.

AAA faces a similar challenge. While the brand is national, the clubs are locally owned, independently operated businesses. It’s a mega-franchise.

It also has more than 50 million users nationwide, which is a helluva base for an online community. The trick will be for the national organization and its clubs to figure out how to divide the responsibility for online customer engagement. Some of it needs to be done nationally. Other elements will be much more successful at the local level. Again, deep cooperation will be required.

The good news is that the organization understands that its members, current and future, are online and has started to ask the right questions.

A brief aside about AAA, since I told my flat tire horror story during the session and I expect that some of my listeners will be reading this post. I forgot to tell this story during the speech and it is one of the times I have been most glad to be an AAA member.

I’ve been a member all my driving life. When I got my license at 19, my mom gave me her used car (so she wouldn’t have to schlep me to college) and an AAA membership.

In the mid-80s, my apartment in Lawrence Mass was robbed. Stereo, tv, jewelry but most sadly, my porcelain doll collection. The responding police officers told me it was a long shot I would ever see my stolen goods again, but if I did happen to see them in a pawn shop, to call the police first and wait for them to go in and claim the goods.

I didn’t have much hope.

A few weeks later, imagine my surprise when, driving back to my office in Methuen after picking up some airline tickets for my brother at AAA in Lawrence, I happened to glance over at a pawn shop window, and saw some of my very unique porcelain dolls in the window. This was before cell phones so I pulled into a parking space, and used a pay phone to call the detectives. They came and we got my stolen property back. All my dolls.

Nothing else was recovered, but we did learn who pawned the goods (and probably stole them in the first place) and they were prosecuted for receiving stolen goods.

All because I was driving back from AAA in Lawrence on my lunch hour.

Back to my week outside the echo chamber.

I’ve decided that I definitely need a better way of introducing Twitter. It needs a demo. A screen shot and description don’t cut it with a truly neophyte audience. They don’t always ask for more explanation. Luckily, in one session where I did have some pretty confused folks, I got an opportunity at the break to show it to them on my BlackBerry and explain things a little better. Enough that I’m expecting some new followers in the near future.

It was a great week, but I am glad to be home. My deepest thanks to both organizations for inviting me into their programs. I hope they got something out of the experience. I certainly did.

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Next on Marketing Roadmaps: I taped both of my panels at BlogHer Boston, and hope to post some decent sound files over the weekend. Stay tuned! Fair warning, though: this post will only go up on the new site, so change your bookmarks and RSS subscriptions now 🙂

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The new Roadmaps site and feed

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Since I am still cross-posting to both the old Typepad site and this new WordPress one, and the blog name hasn’t changed, it isn’t so simple to tell if you’ve successfully subscribed to the new feed.

Hence this post. Which is only being posted on the new site. If you are reading this in your RSS reader, you’ve successfully subscribed to the new feed.

As I mentioned in the earlier post, we are still dusting off the furniture, so if you find something broken, please drop me a note, sgetgood@getgood.com or @sgetgood on Twitter.