Social Media as a Political War Room

I participated in a panel discussion at BlogWorldExpo earlier this month on “Integrating New Media into your Marketing Mix” along with Paul Gillin, Maggie Fox, Joe Gerace and Andy Beal.

During our presentation, fellow podcaster and Boston Red Sox fan Albert Maruggi commented on how we were describing social media. His assertion was that our panel was describing to the audience a process for responding to social media not dissimilar to the operations of a political war room.

Political war rooms have teams of communications people who monitor and listen to the media and the public, respond to inquiries, and synthesize opinions to determine the best course of action.

Why don’t more corporate communications departments run like this? Corporate communications is charged with controlling the message of the company. In the past age of unidirectional messages, that was a sound strategy. But in this age of over-communication, the very approach and methodology need to change to be able to sense and respond to inquiries arriving through various channels.

Are we ready for this?

Perhaps not. Have you called your company’s call center lately or sent yourself an email via your corporate website? If so, how long did it take to get to you?

While this may seem like an operational issue, it should now be considered your communications front line. We are all going to need to take a hard look at this before we can truly operate like a political war room.

 

Great Artists Steal! – a podcast with Professor William Duggan

Have you ever had a flash of insight in the shower, when you’re brushing your teeth, or even just before you fall asleep? If you want to know more about this serendipity, then you should learn about “strategic intuition.”

The heart of strategic intuition mostly has to do with your mind combining existing ideas in new ways to solve a problem that you might be facing.

At a recent conference, I caught up with Columbia Business School professor William Duggan to talk about his new book, Strategic Intuition. The book recently received a very favorable review in The Wall Street Journal.

In this podcast, Professor Duggan offers advice to anybody who is trying to improve any process or trying to do anything creative. Check it out …



Link to Original Audio Source

About Professor Duggan

William Duggan is the author of three recent books on strategic intuition as the key to innovation: Napoleon’s Glance: The Secret of Strategy (2002); The Art of What Works: How Success Really Happens (2003); and Strategic Intuition: The Creative Spark in Human Achievement (forthcoming, 2007). He also has authored three previous books.

Duggan has 20 years’ experience as a strategy adviser and consultant. He teaches strategic intuition in three venues at Columbia Business School: MBA courses, Executive MBA courses and Executive Education sessions. He also sometimes teaches the core MBA course Strategy Formulation.

 

Pay Per Click: Boom or Bust?

Is pay per click losing momentum? Is growth in the channel waning? In a recent blog post, Steve Rubel wrote “I am calling a top to this market now. There are five reasons why a pay-per-click advertising recession looms!”

To further explore pay per click's future, we turned to Steve and to Alan Rimm-Kaufman. Alan leads the Rimm-Kaufman Group, a direct marketing services and consulting firm, and he’s a fan of pay per click. Steve, senior vice president in Edelman's me2revolution practice, has his doubts.

We dove into such questions as:

• Are people numbing to pay per click ads as they have to banner ads?
• Is the pay per click channel maturing, and what does that mean?
• Is pay per click more, or less, trustworthy than public relations?
• Can combining channels help drive your pay per click results?

Enjoy …



Link to Original Audio Source

Now, kind listeners, it’s your turn. Please let us know whether you’re thumbs up or thumbs down on pay per click by leaving a comment on this blog! Or, toss out another topic you’d like us to explore. And thank you for listening.

About Alan

Alan Rimm-Kaufman leads the Rimm-Kaufman Group, a direct marketing services and consulting firm founded in 2003. He is a regular speaker at industry events, including Jupiter Media's Search Engine Strategies; the DMA's Annual, Catalog, Net.Marketing, and NCDM shows; NRF's Shop.org; eTail; NEMOA; and DMD NY conferences.

Rimm-Kaufman writes the internet retailing column for Catalog Success. He co-wrote the online marketing chapter of Katie Muldoon's The Catalog Strategist's Toolkit. He has been quoted on internet marketing in DM News, Internet Retailer, Catalog Age, Direct, Business Week, and The New York Times. He serves as a contributing reviewer for online marketing for the academic journal Management Science. He has also taught for Marketing Profs.

Also check out Rimm-Kaufman blogs.


About Steve

Steve Rubel is a senior marketing strategist with over 15 years experience. He currently serves as senior vice president in Edelman's me2revolution practice. Edelman is the largest independent global PR firm.

Steve is charged with helping Edelman identify, test, incubate and champion new forms of communication. He also explores this on his well-read Micro Persuasion weblog and in a bi-weekly column for AdAge Digital.

Steve is often sought out as a speaker and appears frequently in the press. He has been named to several prestigious lists, including: Media Magazine's Media 100, the AlwaysOn/Technorati Open Media 100 and the CNET News.com Blog 100. Prior to joining Edelman in 2006, Rubel spent five years at CooperKatz & Company.

Also don't forget to check out Steve Rubel's Blog.

 

Get a Facebook Strategy

If you’re like me, many of you out there have had your fill of social networks this year. MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, OpenSocial, Gorooze, the list goes on and on. Well I say enough is enough already. In fact, I heard this acronym at BlogWorldExpo – YASN – Yet Another Social Network.

According to data on Alexa:
• 1/3 of all Web visitors in August 07 visited MySpace
• 1/7 of all Web visitors in August 07 visited Facebook
• 5 of the top 10 sites in the world are all Web 2.0 sites
• ½ of the top 30 sites are all social networking sites

Powerful data and powerful growth by these sites point to their diversity, and only you will know which ones would be the best fit for you personally and your brand. But I would like to suggest you adopt a strategy solely for Facebook:

1) Why Facebook?

• With 60 million users year to date in 2007, and 50% of which return daily, this one should be tops on your list!

2) Make your Facebook profile a source for quality content

• Sure, throwing sheep and poking people is fun, but why not add value to the conversation by posting quality content? (Small side note – if you read the fine print, Facebook owns all content you create on the Facebook site)

3) Use Facebook as a clearinghouse for everything you are doing online for your “community” by filtering content you find on the Web. To do that:

• add the Twitter application – so others can see what you are doing

• add the Del.icio.us application – so others can see what you are tagging

• add StumbleUpon – so others can see what you are finding interesting

• add zuPort for YouTube – so others can see what videos you posted

4) Start a group on Facebook – either for an area of interest or for your brand

• The Seinfeld group started with just 10 members, but by the very next day it was up to 2000 members!

In general, you need to think of these social networks as a way of people interacting with your own brand. So leave a trail of digital breadcrumbs back to your brand by using widgets from other applications to dress up your Facebook profile!

 

Conversational Marketing: Irrational Exuberance or Next Big Thing?

In a recent blog post, Jim Nail, chief strategy and marketing officer at Cymfony, wrote about a study that provocatively proclaims “Spending on Conversational Marketing will Outpace Traditional Marketing by 2012”. To find out if that’s even possible, I got together with Jim and Pete Blackshaw, executive vice president at Nielsen Online Strategic Services. Like Jim, Pete is wary of the “conversation” hubbub.

What ensued was a very lively debate about whether marketers are prepared to support conversational marketing, and the answer isn’t very pretty. As Jim and Pete point out, not only are marketers not using Web 2.0 tools to create a conversation. To even listen effectively, they need to overhaul their infrastructures, big time.

We invite you to listen to the debate and then tell us what you think by leaving a comment on this blog. Enjoy …



Link to Original Audio Source

About Jim

Jim Nail has an extensive background in integrated marketing through his 22-year career that spans online marketing, market research, brand advertising and direct marketing. Jim was an analyst at Forrester for eight years, focusing on how marketing strategies and tactics must adapt to technology-driven changes in consumer media consumption habits. Prior to joining Forrester, he helped launch Web advertising network AdSmart, where he served as director of marketing. He spent 15 years planning and managing integrated marketing campaigns at leading advertising agencies including Ogilvy & Mather Direct, Draft Worldwide, Bates USA and Hill Holliday.

About Pete

Pete Blackshaw, whose professional background encompasses politics, interactive marketing, and brand management, is Executive Vice President of Strategic Services for Nielsen Online, a new entity combining Nielsen BuzzMetrics, a firm Pete helped co-found, and Nielsen NetRatings. Pete's primary focus revolves around how to help brands interpret, manage, act upon consumer-generated media (CGM). A former interactive marketing leader at P&G and founder of consumer feedback portal PlanetFeedback.com, Pete co-founded the Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA). He is a frequent speaker at interactive marketing industry events, serves as Ad-Tech advisory board member, authors a regular marketing column with ClickZ, and authors several blogs including ConsumerGeneratedMedia.com (www.consumergeneratedmedia.com). He is author of an upcoming book by Random House entitled "Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3000: Running a Business in Today's Consumer-Driven World."

Also, another good reference point on the ugly side of this debate can be found here.

 

Buzz Marketing picks of the week ...

Are Social Networks Replacing Email?
Great stats from Hitwise on the rise of Social Networks beating email in the UK. The killer ap here is to embed gmail, yahoo, hotmail into Facebook and have no need to go anywhere else
(tags: Facebook, email)

Ad Money flowing to blogs
I was very impressed with the number of ways/vendors at BlogWorldExpo that can help you monetize your blog - perhaps I missed the memo that allowed this to be ok - I thought we were blogging because of our passion for a topic, but i digress
(tags: Advertising, Blogs)

Roll-Your-Own with WidgetBox’s Blidget
Great little widget ap that makes any blog into a widget
(tags: widget)

10 Cool Ways to Use Paypal
It is more about how you can use paypal rather than 10 cool places to spend your paypal cash but it is very interesting how they are expanding the use of cybercash
(tags: banking)

Twitter Hasn't Made a Dime but Twitterrific Is Making Bank
Follow the money trail here - Twitteriffic has the edge for now at least
(tags: Twitter)

AdMob Offers First Facebook Mobile Advertising Solution

Advertising is going to be key in Facebook much like Google's AdSense has been a big revenue driver for them
(tags: Facebook)

 

Somtimes Inspiration can come from Odd Places

Meet Blake Comeau. He’s now playing right wing for the Bridgeport Sound Tigers, a AAA hockey team, but he recently played with the New York Islanders of the NHL. As those of you who know me well are aware, I do have some post-college-graduation hockey experience. But it’s nothing like these guys.

I’m a Sound Tigers season ticket holder, mainly for the enjoyment of my kids. At the team’s season ticket holder welcome party, I had a chance to chat with Blake for a few minutes. My question: So how different was it playing for the NY Islanders than the Bridgeport Sound Tigers?

His answer wasn’t surprising to me. He said: “Everyone on the Islanders plays his role to perfection. They know what to do and where to go when someone gets the puck. It’s all very well coordinated, so naturally the game is much faster.”

That may sound like the big DUH! But I found myself thinking about the teams I work with and how, when you have rock star athletes (or marketers) on your team, you get more done, faster and with less effort.

So I want to give kudos to all of the members of my team and my peers, who enable us all to play faster and get more done with less effort!

 

Buzz Marketing Highlights of the week ...

Google Reputation Management Disaster With Open Social
Google the Reputation Management system of the modern day - had its own trouble this week with reputation management with Open Social - don't worry it didn't effect the stock price!
(tags: reputation)

Ten Ways to Avoid a Google Reputation Management Nightmare
Good bunch of ideas from Andy Beal on Reputation Management which is becoming critical now for everyone to monitor
(tags: reputation)

How to Market Yourself & Your Company on Facebook
Lots of good ideas on how to market yourself and a few on how to market a company, which is the area that many of us are beginning to think about
(tags: Facebook)

We Didn't Start The Fire
Great video!! - very viral apparently this guy got 5 Million hits to it - so make that 5 million and 1
(tags: Videocasts, Viral)

Wikis for Market Research?
I like this idea - and HP is putting it to the test with a printing community wiki with Wetpaint. Steady as she goes captain!
(tags: Wiki, Wikis)

P-Diddy Marketing
the Man after my nickname PDitty and his latest non profit marketing plan
(tags: Marketing)