Today, if you’d like to, you can hop on a plane and fly from New York to San Francisco and back. The process of crisscrossing the country has become so automatic that it’s easy to take it all for granted.
But if you’ve read up on Lewis & Clark (or played the Oregon Trail), you know how daunting America’s westward expansion really was. In the 1800s, our maps were still being drawn by hand, and our railroads, highways and airports were but a distant dream.
Yet, every time another covered wagon arrived at the Pacific coastline, word was sent home: “It can be done!” And the more the pioneers succeeded, the more others wanted to follow in their footsteps — especially because doing so became both easier with experience and more cost-effective with demand.
Getting companies to buy into social media was an uphill battle. Concepts like transparency, connectivity and conversations with the public were seen as potential threats to financial stability, rather than assets that could actually improve business.
Today, as the social marketing field grows and matures, getting started is becoming ever easier. The maps have been drawn. The studies have been conducted. The pioneers’ wagons have crossed the rough terrain and now the towns they’ve built at the edge of the water are booming with great expectations.
If your company hasn’t explored the world of social media yet, now you can learn from the successes (and failures) of thousands of brands who’ve gone first. These pioneers have figured out what works and what hasn’t (yet), and many of them are selflessly sharing their own experiences to help others find their way.
Why?
Because those boom towns need new arrivals in order to keep growing.
If your competition is succeeding in social media, they need you to succeed alongside them. When an entire field or industry embraces new technologies, it increases general customer awareness while simultaneously driving down entry costs. And when everyone is on the same page, disruption becomes innovation and everybody wins.
Simply put, the better you do at social media, the better we all do at social media.
So here’s to you, and to your co-opetition. May you all keep redrawing your maps until you find the best, fastest, most scenic and most effective routes from where you are now to where you’d all like to be.
Back in February, we at Creative Concepts were scheduled to film a video for our client, Ouidad, better known to curly-haired fashionistas around the world as “the queen of curl.”
The video was supposed to be simple: a before-and-after interview with the winner of Ouidad’s “If These Curls Could Talk” contest, including a glimpse of her fabulous post-makeover ‘do, live from Ouidad’s New York City salon.
But we had one problem: the East Coast had just been buried by a blizzard.
In fact, the winner herself lived in Baltimore, which had just set a snowfall record. Amtrak wasn’t running, the highways were shut down, and there was a very good chance the shoot would have to be canceled.
And then, miraculously, everything came together.
Trains and buses began running mere hours before the shoot was scheduled, and the winner arrived just in time…
… and with straight hair.
For those of you who don’t spend your lives in a hair salon, this is the equivalent of winning free tickets to a hockey camp and then showing up with a broken leg. Whatever the camp intended to teach you, they suddenly realize they’ll have to heal you first.*
So Ouidad and her stylists set to work, not only to give their contest winner the curls of her dreams, but to help her understand why straightening her hair wasn’t the best idea in the first place. We’re pretty sure their advice worked, because the contest winner was awestruck by her new look and her newfound understanding of how to best care for her curls.
So remember: in social media, there’s no such thing as a true negative. Every stumbling block is really an opportunity for improvement, and another positive just waiting to happen — and when it does, you end up with an even better story to tell!
(Speaking of improvement, for more helpful haircare Q&As, visit Ouidad’s info-packed website. If you’re not curly by nature, you’ll wish you were!)
* And speaking of hockey, enter this Facebook contest from Bigelow Tea — who is also our client — and you could win tickets to Wayne Gretzky’s hockey camp in 2011! (But be careful about that broken leg. Seriously.)
Want to turn your troubles into treasures? Join us on Twitter or Facebook!
You may know actor Ed Norton from films like Rounders, Red Dragon and American History X. What you may not know is that Ed Norton is also one of many celebrities who’ve embraced the power of social media to create real, tangible change among real people, from America to Africa.
And it just so happens that one of Norton’s ventures is directly benefiting one of our clients, the Children’s Aid Society, all because one person decided to make a difference.
For example, one Crowdrise member is currently raising money for the Children’s Aid Society. Her goal is to raise $1000 and, at the time of this writing, she’s more than halfway there. And while the Children’s Aid Society certainly stands to benefit from any funds raised on their behalf, the knowledge and experience that the donors and organizers glean from taking part in the effort can’t be overstated, either.
In other words, if your supporters are using their own crowdfunding initiatives to raise awareness of all the wonderful things your organization does, aren’t those the kinds of supporters you want to empower?
And if helping your favorite charity raise money becomes an experience that helps you understand the true value of a cause, doesn’t everybody win?
This excellent summary of 24 different fundraising tools to help non-profits (and artists alike) raise support for their initiatives highlights a different use for social media than we usually discuss: giving.
Charities, community organizations and other non-profits usually rely on the generosity of their supporters to stay operational. And, traditionally, those supporters have been directly connected to an organization by geography, history or community.
This meant the web of potential donors to a cause was limited to those who knew about it, had worked with it before, or knew someone who was involved with it. Growing beyond that initial scope meant increasing awareness of the initiative, and few organizations reliant on donations have had the budget for non-operational expenses like advertising and public relations.
But social media changes that paradigm.
Today, complete strangers can find your charity on Facebook.
Today, people half a world away can be informed about your community endeavors on YouTube.
Today, people you’ll never meet face-to-face can choose to invest $5 or $5,000 in your idea, if they believe you can accomplish your stated goals.
Suddenly, charity is a story that travels beyond borders. It finds commonality among people with shared interests, mutual concerns, or similar experiences. A project that’s intended to benefit a single community, or even a single family, can be brought to the attention of millions, if the story travels well.
Are you using social media to find supporters who believe in your cause?
Are you transmitting your passion to the people who can help you succeed?
Is the problem you’re solving in your community setting an example that would help people on the other side of the globe?
Congratulations: it’s never been easier to share your story — and to find the people who can help you achieve your dreams.
Need help sharing your story? That’s what we do. Connect with us on Twitter or Facebook!
Here at Creative Concepts, we work with social media every day on behalf of both our clients and ourselves. But sometimes it helps to step back from our daily proximity to these tools and remember that they’re always brand new to someone who’s never been exposed to them before.
This past weekend, I spent time at PodCamp Pittsburgh 5, which is an annual “un-conference” for social media creators and the people who’d like to learn more about it. This year’s attendance included over 50% new attendees, which is fascinating for a few reasons:
It means people are still discovering social media
It means people want to get better at what they’re creating
It means some people have learned lessons they feel are worth sharing
But, more than anything it means that interest in social media is still growing. For those of us who do this every day, that’s both rewarding and surprising. After all, we’ve been doing it for years, so our interest in the field has held steady. Hasn’t everyone’s?
But every time we walk into a board room or a classroom and explain what we do to someone else, we see little light bulbs go off in their eyes. And we realize that the lessons we’ve learned are more than just solutions to other people’s problems; they’re gateways to a whole new world for people who aren’t exposed to social media on a daily basis.
Based on the discussions I’ve had this past weekend, here are some questions that might help you think (or re-think) about social media:
What’s your purpose for engaging in social media? (Sales? Marketing? Self-promotion? Community?)
What are your immediate concerns about the ways social media works?
How much time do you have to invest in social media?
How will you decide if your social media efforts are succeeding or not?
If you could only invest time & effort in one tool — Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs, etc. — which would it be, and why?
Whether you’ve been working in social media for years or you’ve just discovered what blogging is, refocusing on what matters is a great way to help you start creating your own path — or discovering a new direction.
The last month of US box office has been dominated by Inception, the latest thriller from director Christopher Nolan. Despite Nolan’s pedigree (Memento, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight), Inception is still a huge box office surprise for one big reason: late summer is normally a cinematic dead zone.
With heat waves, family vacations and a general pre-autumn malaise ruling the day, this is the notorious timeframe when Hollywood dumps the films it doesn’t expect to be winners. And yet, here we have a complicated movie without blockbuster stars, and it’s earned over $200 million.
As Amazon’s Jeff Bezos famously said, “Advertising is the price you pay for having an unremarkable product or service.” And while that’s an oversimplified (and somewhat cynical) statement, it’s not entirely untrue.
The more people are willing to talk about you on their own, the less you have to convince them that you’re conversation-worthy. When people are voluntarily talking about your product, it allows you to invest more time and resources on creating those products that delight your customers, rather than creating noteworthy (but temporary) illusions of interest.
Ultimately, a great ad campaign can make a good product sound interesting, but a great product starts conversations all by itself.
You should start a conversation with us on Twitter or Facebook!
Even if you’re not a non-profit, there’s still at least one core value in Ad Age’s article that applies to your business:
Make sure your program has a way to prove to this group that their involvement made a difference. Sixty-four percent of young adults say they would get involved with a marketer’s program if they believed the involvement was large enough to make a difference.
That’s great news for non-profits, but how does this need for actionable results translate to a for-profit business?
Actually, for the consumer, the payoff is the same. But one message feels better than the other.
Help Me Help You
For a charity to succeed in social media, its messaging must convince recipients that their actions will have a demonstrable positive effect on the cause at hand — which, by association, improves the recipient’s own life.
For a business to succeed in social media, its messaging must convince recipients that their actions will have a demonstrable positive effect directly on their own lives.
So, in both cases, the message’s recipient ultimately has to make a choice, which can directly (or indirectly) improve her own life.
The difference?
Charities seek to motivate individuals to help others. That’s a positive feeling we can all appreciate.
Meanwhile, businesses encourage individuals to help themselves. That feeling is sometimes harder to justify.
Doing Business Without the Guilt?
Whom do your products help?
How is someone’s life improved by purchasing your services?
Are you saving someone time? Are you helping someone get better at what they love?
Is your company investing in the future through education, ecology or other social good?
These are the kinds of proactive messages that can help people feel better about business — yours, in particular — and may help mitigate the guilt reflex associated with purchases.
Remember: social media is people. And when you help people feel better about themselves, you’ve erased one more barrier between you and them.
Business means sales. Without sales, you have no business. We get that.
As its root, social media is just another spoke on the sales wheel, driving revenue alongside everything else your business does. It’s not sexy, but it’s true. In business, everything is supplemental to sales.
But here’s a question.
Let’s say you never had to worry about sales again.
Let’s say your company was guaranteed to grow profitably for a century.
In that hypothetical universe, what else would you use social media for?
Maybe you’d focus on customer service.
Maybe you’d focus on shared knowledge.
Maybe you’d focus on efficiency.
No matter what you decide, your options would all have one thing in common: they’d be customer-centric.
Once you no longer need to obsess over sales, you’re free to make your customer’s (and your employees’) lives easier. Because the more your customers and your employees appreciate you, the more loyal they’ll become, and the more they’ll share your brand with the people they value.
Tony Hsieh believed so strongly in the proactive culture he’d built at Zappos that he realized the only way to save his company from the quick trigger finger of his recession-strapped investors was to sell it to Amazon — a move that enabled him to keep his customer-centric culture intact.
He was concerned that his employees would jump ship after the announcement. Instead, they rejoiced, because they knew their livelihoods and their values would be preserved. And, in the aftermath of the sale, Zappos remains just as profitable as it’s always been.
You don’t delight customers by obsessing over sales. But sometimes you do get sales by obsessing over your customers.
So… how is your company making your customers’ lives better?
Posting blog entries, updating Facebook, tagging photos, streaming videos, digging, stumbling, tweeting… and we haven’t even mentioned tracking feedback, gauging sentiment, following fans and solving problems.
Who has time for all this?
Well, we do, but that’s what we do every day. And even we wouldn’t have time for everything we do if we didn’t have a few tools at hand that made everything a bit easier and kept us all a bit more sane.
If you’re trying to wrap your head around scaling your own social media solutions, here are 4 tips that might make everything more manageable.
1. Social Media Platform Management — The moment you’re managing more than one social media channel at a time, your room for error — or for old-fashioned information overload — multiplies exponentially. Jamie Beckland compiled a great comparison chart of social media management tools like HootSuite, CoTweet and SocialOomph, so you can find a solution that suits your needs without breaking your budget.
2. Converge Your Channels — Does your Flickr account link to your blog? Do you tweet links to your YouTube videos? Do your employees’ LinkedIn profiles all point back to your company’s website and its Facebook page? If boosting traffic is part of your social media strategy, make sure your channels are working together, not in isolation.
3. Get Ahead and Stay Ahead — Not everything in social media happens in real time. Yes, you need to engage your audience and answer their questions as they happen, but those promotional tweets you need to send about next week’s big sale can be scheduled a week in advance. And any evergreen content on your website or blog can be referred to regularly, which means you don’t need to lay awake every night worrying about having something new to say tomorrow.
4. Streamline Your Efforts — As important as it is to be everywhere online, it’s even more important to be where your audience is most active. They may find you on Flickr, but they might interact with you most beneficially on Twitter or Facebook. If time is of the essence — and it always is — figure out which of your channels yields the highest return on your investment. Then, limit your efforts on the ancillary channels strictly to maintenance (unless circumstances change), and pour the bulk of your resources into what’s working.
And if it all still sounds like too much work, start with one simple question:
It may be time to re-evaluate your brand’s attitude.
See, now that businesses and consumers can use social media to interact publicly, it’s changed the way people judge the brands they’ve spoken with. Customers notice how often they’re being listened to, and what kind of value is being created for them by the interactions they have with brands.
In other words, now that you can talk to your customers in the same channels where they’re already chatting with their friends, they’re judging your company as a friend.
And, depending on how your brand conducts itself, this may or may not be a good thing.
Are You a Good Friend?
Are you polite?
Are you reliable?
Are you a good listener?
Do you help others learn to help themselves?
Can you tell the difference between “someone who needs advice” and “someone who’s just venting?”
When the chips are down, are you the one your friends can rely on for coming through in the clutch?
Congratulations: you’re someone that the people around you are probably very happy to know.
On the Other Hand…
Are you perpetually late?
Do you always know best?
Are you always talking about yourself?
Do you have an excuse for every mistake you’ve made?
Do you resent the flaws you see in others, and wonder why they can’t be more like you?
When in doubt, do the people who know you realize that they’ll need to look elsewhere for help?
If so, you’re not a very good friend. In fact, you’re probably the kind of acquaintance most people avoid, and tolerate only when they have to.
That’s not a recipe for endearing yourself to the people you live with. And when you’re a brand, the people you live with are your employees and your customers.
If you’re a brand that people want to know, they’ll be happy to introduce you to their friends. They’ll want you to succeed, because they want what’s best for the people (and brands) they respect.
But if you’re a brand that people avoid and ignore, then convincing others of your merit will forever be an uphill climb. And since you’ll probably complain about that climb, and hold grudges against the people who don’t help you along the way, it’s bound to be lonely at the top… if you ever get there.
Given that disparity, why not be the kind of person — or brand — that people want to help succeed?
And if you need some statistics to help us prove that point, check out what Dan Zarrella discovered about the power of negative tweeting. (Hint: it’s not good.)
