July, 2008

Results of the first (statistically significant) longitudinal study on corporate use of social media reveal some interesting statistics:

• 39% of Inc. 500 companies have blogs, compared to 11.6% of Fortune 500 companies
• In the past year, 20% more Inc. 500 companies started blogging, compared to 3.6% more Fortune 500s
• 44% of Inc. 500s think social media is very important to their business/marketing strategy, compared to 25% last year
• Inc. 500s are most familiar with social networking, while wikis have seen the most growth in terms of familiarity
• 77% of Inc. 500 companies report using at least some social media tool

It’s not surprising that the Inc. 500 companies are outpacing the Fortune 500s in social media adoption. It’s also encouraging to see the increased recognition of social media’s role in a company’s business/marketing strategy. However, simply using social media and thinking it is important is very different from effectively using social media and integrating it into a company’s everyday operations.

At Zappos.com (one of the Inc. 500), for example, almost everyone blogs. The CEO and COO have their own blog, and many other employees blog on Running, Fashion Culture, Outdoor and more. Zappos.com also uses Twitter (not included in the above study) as part of its customer service function, fostering a sense of community between the company and its customers, and between customers themselves.

Contrast that with the list of social media fiascos, like Whole Foods’ CEO hiding his identity and posting comments anonymously. Or Wal-Mart’s fake blog that was financed by Edelman.

An important and often neglected factor in effectively employing social media is the choice of people to “reveal” to the public. Unfortunately, not all bloggers are born equal - some people just have more personality than others. Figuring out who should be the “social media face” of the company is not a trivial matter.

Integration should also not be taken lightly. Social media tactics cannot be stand-alone events, but should instead be part of the execution of marketing strategy designed to meet business goals. I believe metrics for measuring the impact of social media (Return On Involvement?) will eventually develop to aid in the integration process.

Mashable does a nice job of highlighting many more examples of effective corporate social media.

With the recent release of iPhone 3G and the launch of Apple’s App Store, location-aware social networking applications will be making their way into the hands of more people than ever before.  The ease of use and simplicity in downloading new apps means that Apple has virtually removed the tech know-how barrier to participation.  Many of the launch day applications are free iPhone versions of popular social networking web sites.  Just about every major player has an app available for download either now or in the near future - Facebook (links open in iTunes if installed), MySpace, Twitter (via a third-party), Pownce, Flickr (via Exposure, by a third-party), and Loopt, who presented their app during Apple’s keynote announcement.  Most of these apps use your location in some way, opening up some exciting possibilities for extremely localized search, directions, and more applications hitherto unimagined.  All of these location-based apps are opt-in due to a restriction in Apple’s iPhone software development kit - the phone will prompt you if the application wants to gain access to your current location.

Of those mentioned above, Loopt has created a bit of a debacle and garnered a great deal of ill-will this week by broadcasting your phone number and current location to everyone in your contact list.

The point of Loopt is to be able to let your friends know where you are so you can get together (without having to actually communicate with anyone via text message, phone, or email).  I for one am a bit reluctant to constantly reveal my current location, even to friends, but by sending SMS text messages to everyone whose phone number you’ve ever added to your contact list, Loopt breaks a social contract by violating their users’ privacy.

Even without installing the Loopt app on my iPhone I’ve been barraged  by text messages from others who have installed it and unwittingly been sending out scores of SMSes without knowing it.  Aside from privacy concerns, sending and receiving text messages costs both the sender and recipient money.  I pay for a 200 text message plan, but after that texts are $.20 to send or receive - imagine the costs involved if you have a lot of contacts in your contact list!  Since contacts are one of the easiest things to sync to my iPhone, I have a lot of contact info for people that I don’t necessarily want to spam with text messages asking them to join a service so they can spam other people with costly SMSes.

Given the backlash on the Internet, it will likely be just a matter of time before Loopt corrects this issue, but in the meantime, be very, very careful which networks you trust with your sensitive information, including your current whereabouts.

UPDATE (16 July): Loopt has announced that they will disable the feature that automatically sends invites to everyone on your contact list in their next update.  No word yet on updates to their SMS service that will respond to the industry standard “STOP” message so non-subscribers can stop receiving spam from them.

Should you put a link to LinkedIn on a biography page of a law firm website? That was the question posed recently on the Legal Marketing Association (LMA) listserv by Gail Lamarche Director of Marketing at Henderson, Franklin, Starnes & Holt.

I opined that, for professional services firms such as this law firm, the attorney biography page is the best thing we have as a “money page” on the website. Therefore, driving visitors away from the money page was, strategically, a bad idea. Moreover, it seemed if there were really content on LinkedIn that was valuable to the site visitor, then that information should be on the bio page. And if it wasn’t there, the bio page was somehow deficient.

Smug I was in the righteousness of my response. But I got an earful of dissent from LMA listserv contributors. The arguments are worthy of consideration:

Jayne Navarre, LawGravity, presented these points persuasively:

• Branding – The LinkeIn link is like a hip badge of Web 2.0 awareness
• Connections – LinkedIn provides a transparent view to an attorney’s connections, arguably a value to any prospective client
• Authoritative - Access to the LinkedIn Questions & Answers provides additional proof of the attorney’s authority

Heather Milligan, Director of Marketing at Barger Wolen emphasized that LinkedIn:

• Human - helps make the attorney “dynamic, human, liked”( in case we have any residual concerns about their humanity) and helps the attorney pass the “known, liked & trusted” test of prospective clients.
• Dimensional - And in rebuttal to my “bio is deficient” comment, Heather notes that to maintain a certain appearance consistent with other bios and the overall website, “the firm bio is controlled for content, style, etc….(while) LinkedIn is the perfect place where an attorney can bring together their outside interests and professional careers, making them more human and likeable.
• Connections - Perhaps the most valuable feature, LinkedIn is fundamentally a connecting tool that might serendipitously reveal a third party connection to the site visitor which presents all kinds of opportunity for real introduction.

It’s not a slam dunk either way. The answer to Gail’s original question seems to be, “It depends.” The circumstances dictate the strategy. I’ll give it a nod of possibility and something worth trying.  Yes, I know, “first I was against it, now I’m for it.” Thanks to the enlightenment of my marketing peers.

But I’ll have this last (never!) word.  Think doubly hard about sending your site visitor from the most valuable conversion page of  your site to an information wasteland. Don’t do it unless the LinkedIn profile to which you are sending visitors:

• provides a rich set of business connections
• demonstrates some effort to contribute authoritatively to the online Q&A discourse
• otherwise expands on the website attorney bio page
• (if possible) provides a path back

And whatever you do, measure the results. Professionals keep score.

Now you can link away to my LinkedIn profile.

Back in 2002, the engineers at IBM were already talking about location-based services on mobile phones. They envisioned scenarios where you could access information on the go, informing you if there was a traffic jam ahead, or helping you find the location of the nearest bakery. But they were working with WAP (wireless application protocol), which did not end up taking off as expected. Mobile web browsing was slow and the user interface was not ideal for displaying lots of information.

Last week, activation issues aside, the launch of the iPhone 3G and App Store breathed new life into location-based services. According to Matt Dickman at Fleishman-Hillard, the “single most important element of the new iPhone 3G” is GPS. “For the first time ever, GPS will be fully integrated on a user-friendly consumer device,” he wrote. Even more important, developers are also able to create applications using the GPS technology. (Note: old iPhone users can still download 2.0 firmware, but location-based services will use the less accurate tower-assisted AGPS - thanks Jough!)

What this means for social media:

• Mobile social networks may increase in popularity

When Twitter was first launched, I remember thinking it was both creepy and unnecessary for people to know what I was doing at that moment and vice versa. But over time, microblogging sites have evolved into useful communication devices. News stories sometimes break on Twitter before hitting the mainstream media, companies are using Twitter for customer service, and Twitter even helped a student when he was arrested in Egypt.

Similarly, while it may seem creepy to be asked “Where are you now?” the potential for location-based social interaction to take place may later have us wondering how we lived without it. Mobile social networks to check out: Loopt, Brightkite, and Whrrl.

What this means for marketing:

• Higher level of customer engagement with the ability to deliver more relevant, location-specific messages

Another dimension of customer segmentation is now available to marketers – exact current location. An obvious use of this information is to offer an opt-in program to receive coupons for a specific store when the mobile device is within close proximity to the store. Some Asian countries already have such programs in place.

The possibilities are endless. Someone at Duo suggested a store-specific Starbucks application that will alert the store when you are two blocks away. By the time you arrive at that Starbucks, your drink will be ready and waiting for you to pick it up and go.

With 1 million iPhone 3Gs sold in the first weekend and 10 million App Store downloads, it will be exciting to see how the implications of location-based services continue to grow.

I got to the Apple Store on Michigan Ave. around 7:30am on Friday, 11 July, which was only about a half an hour before the store opened.  Sure enough, there was a line.  It didn’t look that bad, so I walked to the end of it only to be informed that it continued past the hospital and across the other street.

Around 8am the line started moving briskly, and many many more people (700-800 according to Apple’s spotters) lined up behind me.

By 9:30am I’d halved my distance to the Apple store, and by a little after 10am I was leaning up against the wall on the Huron side of the store, figuring I’d soon be on my way with a new iPhone.

The line stayed there for a half an hour, and just as I was about to give up it started moving again (a little) so I waited.  Apple brought us bottles of vitamin water and California Pizza Kitchen was taking orders and delivering pizza to the line.  By 11am I was in the store (and the air conditioning).  The line snaked around the perimeter of the store and up the stairs to the “genius bar” stations that were temporarily phone activation stations.  My newfound line friends and I counted people leaving with phones like you’d count thunderclaps - about one person leaving the store with a phone every ten minutes or so.  Most of my moving forward in line was due to attrition - people getting out of line and leaving, not people leaving the store with activated iPhones.

When I got to the stairs I figured I was home free, so when the Apple Store manager told us “Great news, folks, activations are speeding up, and there’s only about 300 people in line ahead of you, so it should only be a couple more hours!” I took off, finally getting a cab into work about four hours after first getting in line.

Ugh.

Saturday afternoon I tried again.  There was still a line, but it was much, much shorter.  I decided to wait, and an hour later, I was able to finally get an iPhone 3G (although Apple couldn’t set up my new 3G phone with the same number as my previous iPhone account, so for now I’m carrying two iPhones - the first-generation with my old phone number and the new 3G with a new temporary number.

When Apple launched the first iPhone last year they revolutionized the mobile phone activation experience by allowing people to buy online or in a store and activate at home. Because of Apple’s new subsidy program with AT&T they’re making sure that people activate in-store to prevent people from unlocking their phones and using them with another carrier.  Because of AT&T’s short-sightedness, to prevent the minority from unlocking their phones, they’re making everyone suffer.

Apple used to protect their customers from this sort of thing.  Whatever happened to “it just works”?

When the first iPhone launched Apple bragged about how they were able to coerce AT&T into letting people activate at home.  The process was painless and people were in and out of the store in mere minutes.  By comparison, this year the iPhone purchasing experience was painful and awkward.

Granted, I could have waited a week and avoided most of the unpleasantness, but considering the high-profile of this product launch I would have thought that all involved would be better prepared.

Audience measurement always stirs up a lively debate: Advertisers demand more accurate numbers - they don’t want to pay for eyeballs that aren’t actually watching their ads. TV stations, on the other hand, want numbers that reflect their viewership and justify the amount they charge per CPM (cost per thousand impressions). The audience measurement firms that produce these numbers have their own set of challenges, such as keeping up with our rapidly changing media consumption habits.

According to this NYT article, Nielsen has developed a series of new “three-screen” reports in an attempt to keep up with current video-viewing habits and present a “complete picture of consumers’ media habits.” The report tracks video viewing over the TV, Internet, and mobile devices. Some significant findings include:

• Americans are watching more television than before (4% increase in screen time over last year)
• Two-thirds of Internet users in the US watch online videos
• Mobile video viewing is becoming more significant - the average user watches 3hrs 15mins per month

Questions about the validity of these findings aside, my main issue is with the problem of simultaneous media consumption. These days, it is not unusual for people to multitask, to watch an online video while the TV is playing in the background, or to watch TV and also watch an online video when ads are playing on TV.

Save a complete invasion of privacy, it will be hard to determine which screen gets the consumer’s attention at any one point of time - and that is what advertisers really want to be paying for. That said, the fact that Nielsen recognizes the need to track these “three screens” is a step in the right direction. At the very least, reports like this will begin to provide TV stations with more information about potential cannibalization.

Nielsen’s “three-screen” report also highlighted the disproportionate relationship between Internet use and online video viewing. “Those under 24 use the Internet less than older users but spend a greater percent of time viewing video,” said Nielsen CMO John Burbank. Not surprisingly, companies have recognized the potential to monetize these eyeballs and have come up with various ways to do so, such as viral videos or overlay ads.

However, a recent New York Post article about YouTube is less enthusiastic: “while 3 billion videos are viewed every month, revenues could total an anemic sub-$200 million this year - a reflection that less than a third of the videos generate income from ads.”

Enter Involver, a new start-up with a new solution. Its platform allows users to add an interactive call-to-action in the last frame of an online video. Viewers can then participate in a range of activities from taking a quiz to placing an order without having to navigate anywhere else, because everything takes place within the framework of the video. Whether people actually want to engage with the videos they watch in this manner remains to be seen. It will probably still be a number of years before working business models are established for online videos.

The Internet always has been and is becoming even more of a scary place. With all those unwashed masses contributing content, heck, even CNN has implemented “iReport.com: Your stories, unfiltered” Almost every CNN article invites reader contribution which often exceeds the original story in depth and thoughtfulness. But it also affords the opportunity for shallow, callow observations and attempts to advance personal agendas. Scary. And disruptive.

Remember the good ol’ days when only those with money and access could spin their messages to their hearts’ contentment?  When you could purchase a listing in a business directory and the biggest challenge was which one’s? They’re fading fast. The rules we learned to follow just don’t work as well as they used to. Time to learn the new rules.

Recently I was following an online discussion regarding Wikipedia. The issue was whether businesses, in this case, law firms that often have a broad public presence and handle newsworthy cases, should seek to gain a listing. The challenge or perhaps more accurately, risk, is that once the listing is successfully obtained in Wikipedia anyone might comment, add to or modify the original carefully vetted explanatory copy.

I believe that what it comes down to is not trying to control the top-down message. Rather, the task is to monitor and participate in the egalitarian conversation. It’s all about reputation management, not control.

It’s been 15 years (!!!) since Peter Steiner published his cartoon in the New Yorker, “On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.”  It’s taken some time for all of us to figure out what his prescient remark was about. Welcome to the age of transparency. You’re on display and anybody can sharp shoot you.  And will.  Even if they’re a dog – or a disgruntled client, a competitor or the random crank.

So what does this mean for us little folks marketing our companies?  First, acknowledge that even the best companies with the finest reputations have their dark corners waiting to be revealed. Second, so what? The internet is ubiquitous, so it is time to come out of hiding; we see you anyway.

Wikipedia? Absolutely contribute your objective knowledge. But maybe your approach should be more about participating in existing subjects that are already published rather than treating the medium like it is another directory inviting your carefully-scripted-&-reviewed-3-levels-up position statement. It is no longer about you; it’s about us and what we want to know. Not what you want to tell us. And besides, if I don’t like what you say, I’m going to change it or respond. Like I said, scary.

It’s time we go back to our job descriptions and add “reputation management” to our public relations responsibilities. The great news is that there are lots of tools and tactics for managing reputation online. But it’s going to take some of our precious time to learn some new skills.