Social Media for CIOs
I had the pleasure of speaking to a group of CIOs from The Circuit CIO circle about social media. It was a very interesting discussion, as CIOs have some specific concerns about social media for their organizations.
Some of the key take-aways that I got from the presentation were:
- Blocking Social Media Sites – is a big decision, but is often made quickly and without a lot of thought. While it can become a time drain for employees, so can the phone or water cooler. Depending on your organization and your employees, it may or may not be appropriate to block social sites in the work place. Everyone needs down time and to periodically dis-engage from their work – if it doesn’t show up in performance, it is truly an issue?
- Social Media Policy – Organizations need to develop strong social media policies for their organizations. The policy should cover three areas:
- 1 – What is and isn’t appropriate use in the work place – What is the expectation for social media usage while at work? What will and will not be tolerated?
- 2 -How should employees reference the company on their personal social sites – this requires both training and policy. What can your employees say or not say? Can you empower them to be your biggest advocates? Who should they refer questions/comments about the company to? How should they reference their employment? What disclosures do they need?
- 3) – Who internally “owns” social media for your organization – The reality is that people will probably reference your company in the social space. Who is going to represent your organization in the social space? They should have responsibility to monitor and respond on behalf of the organization.
Social Media can be your biggest asset or your biggest nightmare. The reality is that social media is big and growing right now and you can’t afford to ignore it. If you empower your employees to advocate on your behalf within their social circles you can see great returns. At the same time, you need to provide employees with the guidelines and tools they need to be successful.
Fish where the Fish are.
Is social media a fad? Will it be here forever?
I don’t have a crystal ball, but social media is just a new medium for an old marketing principle – word of mouth. The reality is that people have always and will always talk to people about companies. Social Media is just the new way that they do it.
While specific sites may not be around forever (a few years ago we would have talked about MySpace), the basic human need to discuss, share and communicate will. The fish are in social media sites today (like Facebook and Twitter).
If you build a fishing rod and throw it in the water today, you may need to move upstream when the fish move, and you may even have to change your bait, but at least you already know how to fish and you have the pole. Would you rather change bait and locations, or not fish at all?
Growing Your Business with Social Media – Over The Rhine (OTR) Chamber of Commerce
This morning I had the honor and privilege of presenting social media presented by the Emmanuel Center to members of the Over the Rhine Chamber of Commerce . As a resident and advocate for OTR, I was thrilled to see that the Chamber & the Emmanuel Center are providing such innovative programs to help local businesses grow. My presentation was the first of a “Creative Marketing” series that the chamber is presenting – you don’t have to be a member to participate in the events.
Thank-you to all of the businesses who participated this morning. As I mentioned in the presentation, you can find a detailed presentation on Facebook Marketing here. We had a very lively discussion and addressed some interesting topics.
Also, we didn’t discuss this at the training, but an OTR business, Taste of Belgium, is running a groupon promotion today – check it out – a great opportunity to promote your business (or get a deal on waffles).
Ad Club Career Day – Building Your Personal Brand and Reputation Online
I had the privilege of presenting at the AdClub career day last week. There were about 70 job hunters in attendance – mostly new grads.
I shared the presentation below on how to build your brand and reputation online. One of the main discussion areas was around Facebook – how do you manage Facebook when you leave college and enter the job-seeking world?
According to a Global Microsoft Survey:
70% of recruiters have rejected a candidate based on their online reputation?
Yet less than half consider their reputation when posting content online.
Only 15% of consumers thought that their online reputation impacted their job search.
Clearly, your online reputation is more important than you think.
The analogy I used is that Facebook is like your living room… if your boss is coming over you would probably clean up a bit. You wouldn’t borrow another house, or totally change everything, but you would definitely clean up, and maybe even put a few things out of site. That is how you should treat Facebook and your job search – clean up a little!
We were fortunate enough to have some recruiters in the room who told students that they will do a facebook search, and it does factor in to their hiring decision. While they won’t specifically friend request or try to work around privacy settings, the information that you make publicly accessible on Facebook does factor into the decision.
What are your thoughts?
You can see the full presentation below.
Interview with Krista Neher: Successful Approaches to Using Twitter
While at PubCon in Las Vegas, I had the pleasure of moderating a number of panels on twitter. In the video below Vanessa Zamora of PubCon interviews me about how companies can use twitter.
One of the things that I like the most about pubcon is the diversity of panelists. In our conversations about twitter, some of the panelists like Dan Zarella focus on the science of what works – how to drive retweets. Other panelists like Warren Whitlock focus on the brand building side – how to be nice and behave socially on twitter.
There is definitely a time and place for both strategies, depending on your marketing objectives and strategies.
I’ll be speaking again at PubCon south in Dallas, which promises to be another great conference.
Using SlideShare to Increase Exposure and Grow Your Brand
I got an email from Slideshare recapping my stats from 2009. I speak and present at a variety of industry events on social media, branding and digital marketing, and slideshare has been a valuable tool for me to share my presentations with participants and those who were not able to make it.
First, for those of you who don’t know, Slideshare.com is a free service where you can post and share slideshow presentations. I speak at a variety of events and this gives me a way to share my presentations with attendees. In addition Slideshare allows you to show a video from your blog or linkedin account.
According to Slideshare, in 2009, I uploaded 11 presentations and got:
- 9443 views
- 858 average views per presentation
- 42 favorites
- 22 followers
My presentations were also featured by SlideShare on their homepage twice (YAY!)
I was pretty shocked with these results – almost 10,000 people have seen my slideshare presentations.
What is that exposure worth?
10,000 people were exposed to my brand and ideas AND I was only sharing content that I had already created! These were also high touch impressions – they didn’t casually see an ad for my business – they took time to look through a presentation that I created about an idea related to my area of business.
If you aren’t using SlideShare as a part of your social media brand building strategy, you may want to reconsider.
When I get speaker requests, I often send people to my SlideShare account to give them an idea of my presentations. I also get requests from colleagues to borrow slides for their presentations (which I am happy to do and they usually give me credit).
Below is my most popular speaking presentation – given to the Cincinnati AMA on Online Brand and Reputation Management.
Presentation – Social Media for Real Estate Agents
Yesterday I had the honor and privilege of presenting social media to a group of Real Estate agents in Cincinnati.
I asked the Real Estate Agents how they currently market themselves and drive sales. The answers?
- Business referral groups
- Networking
- Word-of-mouth
- Community events
Social Media is a powerful way for agents to engage in the same marketing activities online. The basic tools and strategies are the same – the medium and the platform are the only difference.
This is powerful for agents because they already have the skills to be successful! Good real life networkers understand how to build relationships, how to communicate and how to network. These are the same skills required for success in social media networking.
The presentation below shares some specific tips and examples for real estate agents to use LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook to grow their businesses.
Please let me know if you have any additional thoughts or ideas.
Social Media Tips from PRSA Media Day
Thanks to Mike Boehmer for the Photo.
I had the pleasure to be a part of a Social Media Panel as a part of Cincinnati PRSA Media Day. The panel included Jory Des Jardins, Co-Founder, President of Strategic Alliances, BlogHer; Jon Cronin, Director of Digital Marketing Strategy, DeVries and Michelle Lentz, Blogger, Write Technology.
First, I want to that the PRSA for inviting me to speak – it was a fabulous event with great speakers, engaged participants, and a great location. The team did a fantastic job with this event.
I wanted to share a few of the key insights that we discussed on the panel.
How to work with bloggers
- Build relationships vs. trying mass outreach. Bloggers respond best to personal outreach and plans that are really customized to meet their needs.
- Work with a small select group. Rather than trying to reach every blogger in your space, choose a small select group of bloggers to work with. This will allow you to create a powerful, customized plan with a small and passionate group.
- Soft-sells work better. Most people won’t care about your product or brand and trying to directly engage them probably won’t work. Instead play off of something that bloggers are passionate about that is related to your product. GM works with the BlogHer network and provides cars for attendees to test-drive. No questions asked, no sales pitch – just take the car for a spin. This has resulted in a clear brand equity increase for GM as well as numerous mentions.
- Know the audience. You really have to know your audience. For example, Campbells Soup wanted to work with food bloggers who are notoriously picky about the quality level of the products they use. Rather than specifically talk about soup, Campbell’s included their products in food that was sampled. The response was terrific as bloggers were shocked that Campbell’s products were a key ingredient in dishes they sampled.
- Bloggers will love you if you facilitate their activities. Rather than trying to push your product at bloggers, try to facilitate their activities. Host parties or help them connect. Verizon did this after PRSA Media Day where they hosted a blogger party that showcased their new phones and they let bloggers borrow them for a few days (for free!!!).
What is “The Next Big Thing”?
While admittedly, none of us are psychic or have a crystal ball, we all shared some perspective on trends to watch in the next few years.
- Location – Knowledge of location will make a huge impact on the digital space. Whether it is facilitating social interactions, marketing, search or anything, location will play a big role and is a powerful concept.
- Social Connections – Building social connections online will continue to be a big trend and importantly, helping sort through the issues (management, privacy, etc) will be important.
- Mobile – Mobile is a key facilitator of both of the trends mentioned above. While the iphone may be over-hyped the emergence of always-on internet and the power of location will clearly have a large impact going forward.
Please share your thoughts and comments.
Where We’ll be This Month
Bootcamp Digital attends and participates in a wide variety of industry events. We wanted to share with you where we’ll be in the coming month.
Come out, meet us and say hello!
PRSA Media Day October 19, Cincinnati- This looks like a great event with lots of interesting speakers. Krista will be speaking on a panel about Social Media with Jory Des Jardins, Co-Founder of BlogHer, Jon Cronin, Director of Digital Marketing Strategy at DeVries and Michelle Lentz, Blogger.
Ad:techNY November 4 – 6, NY- Ad:tech is one of the premier conferences (and a client) in the advertising and marketing industries. We’ll be at ad:tech tweeting, learning, networking, photographing, video interviewing…… Come out and say hello!
PubCon November 10 – 13, Las Vegas - Pubcon is one of my favorite conferences and has a wide variety of programming for internet marketing people. Great panels on Social Media, SEO, Site Optimization and much much more. Krista will be at pubcon speaking and moderating a number of panels. Join us in Vegas for a fun time and great learning and networking.
The Circuit November 20, Cincinnati- Krista will be presenting to the “IT Association of the Cincinnati Region” about how to use Facebook for marketing. This morning meeting will help marketers understand how to better leverage Facebook as a marketing tool.
November promises to be a busy month for Bootcamp Digital. Drop us a line and let us know if you’ll be at any of these upcoming events.
Boot Camp Digital CEO Krista Neher Interviewed at Search Engine Strategies Toronto
Boot Camp Digital CEO, Krista Neher, presented on a panel at Search Engine Strategies Toronto on a panel called “Social Media, Do Big Companies Get It?”.
You can view the social media presentation and notes on her blog.
In this interview Byron Gordon of SEO-PR interviews Krista Neher about some of the challenges that companies face when engaging in social media.
At bootcampdigital we work with large companies like Procter & Gamble as well as small businesses and start-ups. Large companies face a number of unique challenges due to their organizational structure and risk factors.
Enjoy!
Presentation: Introduction to Social Media for Executives at the European American Chamber of Commerce
This is a presentation that Krista Neher, CEO of Boot Camp Digital gave to executives at the Cincinnati European America Chamber of Commerce.
Here are some of the key ideas of the presentation.
Social Media is about:
- Conversations – It is about people talking to people. Be respectful of that.
- Amplification – Voices are amplified online. People have the ability to spread messages to lots of other people.
- Control – Brands are losing control over their marketing messages. Consumers are gaining control.
- It Matters – Social media is big and growing. It isn’t a trend that is passing. People trust people. Eyeballs and time spent online are growing. You can connect with more people faster with social media.
The Basics on Social Media Channels
Blogs
Are big and growing. 77% of internet users read blogs. Over 26 million americans have started a blog.
You have two options to participate (they aren’t exclusive):
1. Start a blog as a way to connect with consumers.
2. Reach out to bloggers and build relationships with them.
Twitter is big and growing. It is predicted to have 18 million users by the end of 2009. By 2010 over 15% of US adults will have a twitter page.
There are lots of different opportunities to build your brand on twitter – and real results. Dell has transacted over $2.5 million in sales. JetBlue answers customer support.
People are probably already talking about you on twitter. Find them. Talk to them. Participate in shaping your brand online.
Has over 300 million active users. It isn’t just for young kids – the fastest growing demographic is 35+.
Your customers are on Facebook and may want to connect with you there.
One company in the room was surprised to discover that they had a facebook page. They were even more surprised to see that customers had been using the wall post section to post questions.
Some of your customers may want to use facebook to connect with you. Be there and participate. Give them service where and when they want it.
LinkedIn presents a great opportunity to connect with prospects and find specific people or companies. It is search friendly – so you can use it to look up specific people and see how you are connected to them.
The key to success on LinkedIn is to do more than just create a profile. Be active, use groups and questions to build your network.
The Job Boards can also be very effective – you can post jobs and get fantastic applicants.
Soooooo……….
The key to success with social media is to be strategic – start with clear goals and objectives. Be disciplined – don’t let Facebook and Twitter become time drains – use them strategically and clearly set and define the amount of time you are willing to spend on them.
