Marketing Roadmaps

Blogging

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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Change of Address

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Marketing Roadmaps has moved!

We’re still dusting off a few things so I probably won’t have any major posts up until next week. I also will cross-post for about a week to give everyone time to update their bookmarks and subscriptions, but around October 20th, all Marketing Roadmaps posts will be here, https://getgood.com/roadmaps

I will keep the Typepad account (getgood.typepad.com) through 2009 (perhaps longer, not sure) so inbound links to the old blog will not break, however, all the posts have been migrated. Thanks Karen!

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NOTE: A reader reported problems subscribing to the WordPress blog on a Mac. We’re trying to track it down, but both the original and Feedburner feeds validate, and it appears to be working in Windows with both FF and IE so I am a bit confused as to what the problem could be. Stay tuned, and if you have any thoughts, please do share.

NOTE 2: I think everything is fixed now. Cross fingers.

Honey, I’m not home: Sci Fi’s 08 digital press tour

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cross posted to Snapshot Chronicles

Readers of Marketing Roadmaps may recall a series of posts I wrote about a year ago on the Sci Fi Channel’s digital press tour. Sci Fi invited members of the digital press up to Vancouver for a weekend at which the network’s current shows were featured – Battlestar Galactica, Eureka, Stargate Atlantis and the then new, now cancelled and extremely horrible Flash Gordon.

The representatives of the online sites were treated to tours of the sets of the shows, Q&As with the some of the stars and a chance to break bread with  Sci Fi executives Mark Stern and Bonnie Hammer. By all accounts it was a success for both the digital media and the network.

After I completed the case study, I half jokingly told Courtney White the PR rep from New Media Strategies that she should be sure to invite me next time.

And she did. In part perhaps because I have a feature on my personal blog Snapshot Chronicles that covers science fiction television, but mostly I suspect because  I recently pinged her to follow up on the case study for the blogger relations book I’m working on.

So here I sit on a Southwest Airlines flight to Denver. This year, the focus is on SciFi’s unreality show GhostHunters and the premiere of the new Amanda Tapping series Sanctuary on October 3rd.  Apparently there was a big GhostHunters event already planned and Sci Fi decided to combine this year’s digital press event with it. The  event is being held at the Hotel Stanley in Estes Park Colorado which horror fans may recognize from Stephen King’s The Shining.

Red rum anyone?

I’ll be covering the event in three places, with three slightly different perspectives.

On Marketing Roadmaps, I will be focusing on the outreach program itself. How successful is it for the network and the writers? Is everybody getting their full value. I noticed some repeat attendees from the first one, but the sites I spoke with for the case study will not be there. Is it a content issue – they aren’t interested in GhostHunters and Sanctuary as much as they were in the content of the previous event?

Or a cost issue?  Sci Fi is reaching out to a population it refers to as digital press. Some of these are blogs, but many are online portals. The writers may even be paid and, paid or not, many consider themselves journalists. This is a very important distinction when discussing blogger relations. Not so much from the content or hospitality perspective but definitely from the expense one. Attendees pay their own travel expenses.

As a result a purist might argue that this isn’t really blogger relations. Well, I’ve never been a purist. Online engagement can take many forms. The term “blogger” in fact is already a misnomer, as we may be reaching out to customers on Twitter or through Facebook or even a branded community. As long as the blog/site in question has an element of community, where readers can comment or converse with each other in some fashion, it is social media. 

On Snapshot Chronicles, I’ll be writing about the hotel and the general experience of the event, with an emphasis on photos. I saw two elk on the way into town and grabbed a quick snap from the car, and the scenery is just gorgeous. I’ll also have a review of Sanctuary after it premieres. I’ve seen the screener but those don’t always have all the effects. I’m not really a GhostHunters viewer so not entirely sure what I’ll do with that content, but I’m keeping an open mind.

I’ll also be doing a guest post over on BlogHer about the trip. Among other things, the post will cover a breakfast scheduled with actress Amanda Tapping, formerly of the Stargate franchise and now the star and an executive producer of Sanctuary.

Most importantly though I plan to have fun, and wash last weekend’s Las Vegas dust right outta my hair.

Dunbar’s, blogs, fans and community

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Over the past few weeks, a few of my blogging colleagues have raised the issue of Dunbar’s number in the context of establishing relationships with bloggers and communities. Among them Kami Huyse, Jen Zingsheim  and David Wescott.

Dunbar’s number? You may not know it by name, but you certainly do by reputation. The general gist is that the upper limit of a social circle is 150. It is often cited in discussions about community building; if 150 is an upper limit for relationships, how can social media scale? Of course, Dunbar’s number has its origins in the study of primates and grooming circles, which is not completely extensible to human relationships and certainly not to online relationships, which are not subject to the limitations of the physical world.

Even online, though, one to one relationships don’t scale. On either side, company or blogger. In this respect Dunbar’s number is correct. We cannot be “best friends” with everyone.

Kami recently suggested that we think about social media outreach as building relationships with communities.

But we don’t build relationships with entities; we build them with people.

A relationship with a person may be extended into the community if the reputation of the one merits it, but I’m hard pressed to call that a relationship in the strictest sense. The strength of the one person’s relationship with the rest of the community dictates whether this works. It all depends on how much the others in the group rely on her opinion, model themselves on her behavior etc.

The question isn’t, are they her friends? It is, are they her fans?

That’s why I think Kami is onto something, but I would cast it in a slightly different light. When we aim for scale, the answer isn’t to focus on the community as an entity. It’s to understand that what we want are fans.

When we aim for scale, it is a one to many relationship. We will probably use some one to one relationships as the building blocks for the larger effort, but net net, it will be an entity – a company – trying to build or influence a community.

And really, what we are trying to do is turn our customers into our fans.

In order to do that, we have to tap into what makes people care. What makes them love.

Because community isn’t just about group dynamics, although they are part of it. Or the need to assemble in a collective, what Francois Gossieaux calls tribalism.

What brings, and keeps, a community together is love.

This is why when I think about building communities, no matter how dry the product may seem, I focus on what makes people care. What inspires them.

And why I think we can learn a lot about building communities from studying fandom.

What’s fandom? In the simplest sense, it is the informal and formal groups that spring up around entertainment — an artist or a team or a television show or a movie franchise. It’s the passion that makes people paint their bodies red white and blue before a Patriot’s or Red Sox game.  Dress up as Mr. Spock, Princess Leia or John Crichton for a “con.” Read and write fan fiction and spoiler sites.  Buy boxes of pencils to send to media moguls during the writers strike.

Even though people have been collecting due to shared interests for as long as we’ve had society, fandom as we are discussing it here is mostly a 20th century phenomenon driven by mass entertainment like the movies and organized sports. 

The shared interest and relationship to a franchise – show, artist, athlete or actor — brings people together. Over time, the members develop relationships with each other. Sometimes those relationships last longer than the fan relationship, leading to a community that interacts on multiple dimensions – the initial thing that brought the folks together, and then all the other shared interests that the members find they have.  As Shrek might say, like an onion, with layers.

While fandom existed well before the Internet, the Net and particularly social media have most definitely accelerated and expanded the fan effect.

If companies want to achieve a similar impact, by either building a new community or influencing an existing one, we need to understand more about what makes a fan.

Why are the fans so passionate?

It starts with the product – the quality TV series or the top sports team or the great band. But it’s more than just the entertainment value that builds the passion of fans.

It’s the relationship that the fan has with the franchise, which doesn’t have to be “real” to have tremendous power. The fan doesn’t “know” the artist, character or athlete, but she feels she does. The perceived relationship, the one way relationship is enough.

Not because she’s delusional. Because the artist reaches out to fans in numerous ways that create a sufficient relationship for the fan. Starting with the performance and moving from there. Fan clubs. Conventions. Sports teams thanking the fans for their support.

Celebrities make personal appearances, attend conventions, authorize fan clubs, set up their own websites for communicating with fans. They share what they can to encourage the fan to feel like they know them, to stay invested in them, to appreciate their work. Joss Whedon is a great example of an artist who does this exceedingly well. Among other things, he participates regularly on fansite Whedonesque; his fans feel connected to him and every  project he does has a built-in audience of  viewers before it even hits a screen.

Even though we don’t really know the artists, athletes or actors, we know they value and care about the fans. That they strive to deliver a good product that we will enjoy.

So the first two elements a company needs to deliver if it wants fans are:

  • have a good product that meets their needs – Value;
  • show you care about the fan and walk the talk – Engage.

Now, once you have fans you have to keep them. This is where Respect comes in.

Some artists and athletes forget that their power, their franchise, is fan supported. They may have the raw talent, but if people stop watching the show because the star is phoning it in or the producers replaced a fan favorite with another performer, it’s hero to zero in a flash.

You must respect your fans. Don’t stop listening and never think you don’t need them. Because the last thing you want is fans gone mad.

Where does the love come in? It runs throughout.

Love your product and make sure it has what it needs to make your customers love it. LOVE IT.

Love and respect your fans as much as they love and respect you. You need them collectively far more than they need you. They can always find somebody to love. Doesn’t need to be you.

So, if we believe that fandom will help us build community, how do we make that happen for our products? Most products aren’t sexy or entertaining or funny, although advertising certainly tries to make us think they are, or that we will be if we buy them.

But that doesn’t fly in social media, right?  We cut through the bullshit or at least we like to think we do.

How do we find and feed our fans? That’s the key to community.

And the topic for another day.

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We will probably touch on some of these themes in the Social Media and the Writers Strike panels at BlogWorld Expo on Saturday. If you are in Vegas, hope to see you at one of them.