Arié Moyal

Thank you, Wow and Done - The only 3 metrics you need

Fri, 02 Sep 2011 04:44:00 -0700

There's a lot of talk about metrics, measurement and ROI in social media.

While I agree that numbers are important, it is easy for numbers to be misleading. They're nice to have and they can be reassuring but what are they actually saying?

Some sites claim to understand what makes you "influential" but there's no talk of being effective. What they're trying to measure is a lot more qualitative than quantitative.

Having more people see your content or even like it or share it doesn't mean anything is happening for your business.

The numbers of followers, fans, likes, RTs, views etc are great indicators of activity and watching their trends will help you understand which communications are effective but how do you really measure social media success?

I've narrowed it down down to 3 important "metrics" which really are goals: "Thank You", "Wow" & "Done"

What do I mean by that? Let's have a look:

1) Thank you

As I've said before, the first rule of engagement is "be helpful". Grateful people are usually going to be more likely to remember you and talk about you. This is a way to generate brand "love". As Tara Hunt explains in her book, The Whuffie Factor, the way you are perceived highly influences what people will do for you. Make it good!

The assistance you provide doesn't have to be purely within your service offering either. Who or what do you know that can help someone out of a jam? Another rule of engagement: Be human.

This leads us to the second metric:

2) Wow

Seth Godin talks about being remarkable in Purple Cow and there is no question that this also gets you talked about. Hopefully you're being remarkable in a good way even if it's in how you respond or deal with mistakes. "Wow" is the effect you're going for - it's the underlying trigger of the "viral" effect. Think "Wow! Check this out!" This isn't a guarantee that you will "go viral". There's no guarantee of that but if you get "Wow"s you can be sure people will be talking and sharing the content that made them say it. Just stay away from gimmicks and Wal-Mart style stunts.

Ok so "Thank You" and "Wow" get people talking and sharing and sending your referrals but how do you measure ROI? That's where the third goal comes in.

3) Done

I'm hoping that you have clear calls to action in your communications - That's what "Done" is all about - did what you come to social media to do get accomplished? Have people done what you wanted them to do? Be it spread the word, donate or buy do you know what you want them to do? Do they?

The way I see it Thank You & Wow will help ensure they do but you need to be clear on what it is you want them to do and in the end you don't need a huge number of people, sometimes all you need is one person to do enough. Sure we want more people to interact with us as possible we really must focus on the reasons why we're in business and why we're using social media.

That being said, you don't want to keep banging away about your sales goals - social media is NOT a hammer! - but do let your communities know how they can help.

Make sense?

So what's next?

Each communication or conversation you have should aim to fulfil one or more and sometimes even all three of these goals. Think "How can I be helpful? How can I be more human & less business-only? How can I tweak that a bit more and blow them away? How can I let them know what I need?"

It is clear to me that you'll be going for the Thank You and the Wow more often than the Done but remember that those two will help you build up a community that will help you go for the Done! It might take time but building relationships is what SM is about, first and foremost.

You need to be helpful and remarkable for people to remember you and tell others about you.

That being said, one easy way to go for the Done is to make your call to action clear on your social media profiles, e-mail templates & website.

So, do you agree? Are there other metrics you use? Let me know! And if you're going to SxSW we'd appreciate a vote for our panel on this topic by clicking here: http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/11751

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Want to succeed in social media? Don't forget your existing customers!

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 04:11:32 -0700

When people ask me to help their business or organisation make the most of social media I always ask them "Why?" because I want to know what their expectations are.

A very common answer is that they want to find more customers and they think social media will open them up to a whole new group of people who will see their message.

I understand that to a degree marketing is a numbers game but focusing entirely on broadcasting to a larger audience misses the point entirely and it doesn't really serve business goals in the most effective way possible.

Yes, social media makes sharing information with others quick and easy but, in the end, you want to see results that make a difference to your business.

One of the best ways to make the most of social media is to connect with your existing customers, who are hopefully brand advocates. Find them online, listen to what they're sharing, share their stories and give them content to share with their networks. This helps you get two things: referrals and return business.

After your employees, existing customers are your most important asset. Not only are they people with whom you don't need to make awkward overtures online, they already know how good you are at what you do. This is where the "quick and easy" comes in. Social media makes it quick and easy for them to share that knowledge and your content with others. Keep track of their activity and reward them for their referrals. Sometimes even a simple thank you is reward enough but considering helping them with their needs where you can.

I'm not saying that you won't ALSO find new non-referral business by engaging online, but not only does nurturing your relationships with your current customers make good sense, it inspires confidence in your prospective customers and increases the likelihood of people talking about you.

Referrals are a very important part of a successful business. So much so that a common practice in several companies such as Philips,GE, Allianz, P&G, Intuit, and American Express

(according to Wikipedia) is to ask customers"The Ultimate Question": How likely is it that you would recommend this company to a friend or colleague?

If you measure the responses on a scale of 1 (very unlikely) to 10 (very likely), you can get an understanding of who your advocates are (They'll score you 9-10) and if you have work to do, which is indicated by the proportion of those who are easily swayed (scores of 6-8) and those who wouldn't refer you (scored of 5 and below).

Do you know what your customers would say? What steps will you take to engage with them online?

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HOW TO: Find your social media sweet spot

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 03:13:31 -0700

We all know that social media is a big deal in terms of how brands interact with their communities, generate revenue, and gain insight.

So how does a brand make that social media magic happen?

The first thing to understand is how to reach the right people with useful, relevant content in the correct context(s). Let's call this your social media “sweet spot.”

There are four elements involved in reaching that sweet spot: brand identity, goals for social media and business, the expertise and passions that exist within your organisation, and the needs and interests of the people you are trying to reach.

Let's look at each element in turn.

Brand Identity

Your brand is a representation of your organisation as a whole, with which people create a relationship in their minds.

Your brand is the lens through which all communication should be filtered, and it’s crucial that your brand be represented accurately.

Imagine your brand is a person. Understanding who this person is makes it easier to define the “tone of voice” and boundaries of the brand. This ensures that communications sound authentic and deliver on your brand promise.

Goals

Understanding what your organisation's goals are will help you understand why you're in business and what you've come to social media to achieve.

Using these two elements to frame your social media activity, you can define what your interactions look like. Examine the people involved: your employees and your customers.

Employee Expertise and Passions

When you understand what your employees (from the C-level on down) know and are passionate about, not only do you know who to go to when you need information for your customers (as well as content and stories to share), but it also helps you understand your employees' motivations and work to make them happier. After all, they're your most important assets, right?

Needs and Interests of Your Target Communities

The most important part of using social media business (and engagement overall) is understanding the people you are trying to reach. Knowing which needs you are fulfilling and what is of interest to them informs which parts of your employees' passions and expertise to share with them and which partnerships you should form in order to fill the gaps in your content and expertise because, in the end, the first rule of social media is be helpful.

So that's how you find your social media sweet spot. Does this make sense? I'd love to hear what you think.

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Why a hashtag is the first thing you need for your event

Mon, 06 Jun 2011 07:00:00 -0700

I was speaking to Bill Boorman at #trulondon this year and just a few days later my friend Ane Howard asked me about social media best practice for event planners. Bill had said that social media is a great place to get events off the ground (and he should know) and as I was talking Ane through my thoughts, I realised that the most important thing an event planner needs where social media is concerned is a good hashtag for their event.

What is a hashtag?

A practice that is common on twitter but that has spread to other social media sites is the hashtag. Yo may have seen people include them in their posts. They are used to categorise status updates and follow this format #.

Here's an example from Wikipedia:

#RealAle is my favourite type of #beer.

I use them to add sentiment to my tweets (#fail, #facepalm, #happydance), to discuss certain topics (#csr, #green, #socent), to participate in tweetchats (#blogchat, #IMCchat, #tweetdiner) to comment on TV shows I'm watching, and last but not least to discuss or share content related to events I'm attending or wish I was attending!

On twitter, you can actually click on a hashtag and see the latest tweets containing that hashtag.

So why is this the most important thing event planners need? Well for one thing, once you've chosen a hashtag you can start sharing content and tracking conversations around your event on twitter and it can also be used to tag videos, photos and blog posts on other sites.

But there's more to it than that: You can find out where and with whom your event is resonating, you can display tweets using the hashtag during the event, monitor feedback on speakers and venue issues in real-time and see which relationships have been formed through your event be it online or in-person.

All in all, hashtags are a great way to maximise the returns of your event through social media. The earlier you assign one the better, because if you don't someone else will. In fact, don't just choose one and broadcast it - register it at whatthetrend.com and let me know how your hashtag is working for you!

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3 Worrying Trends in Social Media - Part 1: Competitions and giveaways

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 07:30:12 -0800

Whilst it's great that more brands are getting involved online, I worry that their goals are not properly defined. This is underlined by three trends I'm observing in social media right now.

The first one: 'Like/Follow/RT/Comment to Enter' contests.

Anyone else feel "dirty" when they enter a contest on twitter, Facebook or a blog that requires you to like, follow, RT or comment?

It's great that brands have bought into giveaways/competitions as a way to connect with people who have an interest in the product (here's hoping) OR as a way to increase their numbers (a more likely motivator).

The issue with the latter is that it devalues the very numbers they're trying to increase. Call it social currency inflation.

If I comment on a brand's blog or like/follow/RT them it should be because I genuinely am interested in what they have to say. I admit that it's mostly for selfish reasons but aren't we all mostly on twitter/Facebook etc for ourselves?

Likes and follows, in particular, are part of my online identity. They tell you what I'm interested in. I can skew that if I have to like/follow a brand just to win a prize I want, especially if the prize is "cool" but not relevant to the brand and the community they're trying to reach.

I'm not advocating that prizes only be product. In fact it's preferable that the main prize not be product. A universally needed prize, like a gift card or the hottest new gadget, will attract anyone who wants to win those prizes. In addition to that, the cost of entry is minimal and does nothing to prevent people from using multiple accounts to increase their chances of winning.

RTing to enter is not only useless towards building long-term relationships but usually provides no value to the RTer's followers. Also, keeping track of RTs can be tricky and, with twitter's RT function, takes away the opportunity to discover the people in your community who are key connectors.

Asking people to put a simple comment on one of your blog posts to be entered into a draw can be helpful for SEO and the comment might be useful to understanding them but what does it do for you in the long-term?

So we want more followers, more Facebook fans, more pageviews, more activity that looks like engagement but why aren't we trying to actually make them mean something and get some value out of competitions by rewarding creativity?

Yes, we all like numbers and we want to believe that bigger numbers mean better numbers but the goal with social is not to reach MORE people, it's to reach more of the RIGHT people.

Let's stop devaluing the numbers, complicating measurement and let's do what we came here to do: Connect & communicate.

The next part of this series is coming soon. Subscribe so you don't miss it!

And as usual, I look forward to your comments.

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Why the New Twitter sucks!

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 18:58:55 -0800

This morning I woke up to something unpleasant.
When I logged into twitter.com, instead of the message across the top of the page that I'd started ignoring about how the New Twitter is so great I saw this:

"You’re using an older version of Twitter that won’t be around for much longer."

My first thought was "Noooooooooooooooooooooo! I hate the new twitter" In fact I tweeted exactly that! Turns out I'm not alone either! There are 23,400 hits for the search "new twitter sucks" on Google.

Now don't get me wrong. I love trying new things and New Twitter sounded really cool. When it was announced and I couldn't wait to use it.

Unfortunately, what I found was underwhelming. The design is overcomplicated and finding the information you want is not easy.

For starters, the bio no longer has clearly defined fields for name, location, address and bio. While I get that it might reduce load times, it's really annoying to get the information you need.

The same holds true for twitter lists. While twitter can be praised for giving us back bios instead of tweets in the following/follower listings, the person's location is no longer immediately visible. You have to click through to each profile to view it and even then, as outlined above, it's not easily readable.

Twitter has also relocated the Direct Messages tab to the top of the page and has renamed it Messages.
It seems like the links to the things you need are all over the place and the interface suffers from toolbar and button overload.

It's also not clear where the mutual following/follower information is going to go if they keep it at all. I don't know about you but I liked it.

Overall, there are too many extra clicks and extra time required to use the new twitter and I don't like it!

What do you think? Is new twitter better than old twitter? Will twitter ignore us and force this annoying change on us like they took away the ability to see conversations your friends are having with others, something even facebook understands?

Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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Social Media + Engaged Employees = Big brand wins

Thu, 09 Dec 2010 03:06:55 -0800

A happy employee is a great online and offline brand ambassador and enthusiast. Unhappy employees are also brand ambassadors but not necessarily the kind you want representing your brand. Especially with today's wide access to twitter, facebook, blogs and other social media platforms, be it on smartphones or other environments, you want him or her engaged positively with you.

So how does employee engagement affect your social media presence and how does social media affect employee engagement?

The first part is fairly straightforward: If your employees aren’t happy at work, they won’t be likely to have good things to say which will reflect badly on your brand. This doesn’t have to come from official channels as anyone can use search functions to see what is being said. Another major issue is that employees who aren’t engaged won’t necessarily be quick to respond to issues raised by the brand’s communities whether they interact with them directly or not. And they might not be all that helpful or friendly either.

The solution?

Whilst your first instinct may be to put a restrictive social media policy in place and to sack all employees who don’t conform, this probably isn’t the best way to deal with it. For one thing, it’ll just make things tense around the office. More importantly, this isn’t really addressing the issue.

As a business, you need to be able to respond quickly and effectively to the feedback you get from your communities, be it through social media or otherwise. You also need to provide a positive brand experience for your communities.

The pressure with social media is twofold:

1) The expectation of responsiveness:

According to a recent RedWriteWeb article, 74% of social media users expect cries for help to be answered within an hour!

In order for this to happen, you need employees who care about your success to participate in effective processes, which are best designed or modified in consultation with those who are employed to run them. It’s not enough to have a great communications strategy. If you cannot respond effectively on the whole, all you’ve got is a talking head doing nothing behind the scenes. Eventually, even the biggest brand enthusiast gets discouraged if they can’t get anything done.

2) The word spreads quicker

Because of the emphasis on sharing in social media, the word spreads much quicker, especially when it is bad. Not only that, it is much easier to find what people are saying about your brand. All you need to do is search, be it on Google or inside the individual platforms to see what people are saying about a brand and if your employees aren’t enthusiastic about your brand why would anyone buy it? Nearly half of the respondents to a razorfish survey in 2008 said they made a purchase based on a recommendation through a social media site. Who better to advocate for your product than every single one of your employees?

Having good relationships with your employees and empowering them to use social media to talk about your company is only going to help you! And the prouder they are the more engaged they’ll be and the more likely they will be to talk about you online AND offline.

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Four-what? Go-where? Why be (geo)social?

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 19:23:00 -0700

Four-what? Go-where? Why be (geo)social?

With the furor over yet another privacy violation by Facebook over its new geosocial application Places, one wonders what the point of “checking in”, the practice of sharing your location with everyone, is.

The most common objection I hear with regards to geosocial networking are the same people have to microblogging and “social networking”: “I don’t want people knowing what I’m doing”. What’s funny is sometimes these objections even come from regular twitter users who understand that twitter isn’t about telling people what it smelled like when you left the bathroom.

Although foursquare was only available where I lived in October 2009, by December, I had made the following prediction in an interview with NetSquared: “Geosocial networking will facilitate community building and allow people to connect offline and take on bigger challenges together.”

Maybe we’re not at the point where we’re using it for community building but I really believed that 2010 would be the year of geosocial and with the explosion of apps from foursquare, which was *the* app at SXSW 2010, allowing you to check-in anywhere in the world, to the appearance of gowalla, whrrl, rummble and company and on to sites like yelp, qype and twitter becoming “check-in” enabled. Let’s not forget all the location-enabled flirting apps for smartphones either!

Even 2 of Friday’s 5 Huge Trends in Social Media Right Now post on Mashable are related to geolocation!

Whilst I agree that you don’t want just anyone knowing where you are at any given time and that dark side of geolocation has shades of Orwell’s 1984 (and even Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451), it is still entirely up to you which locations you do and don’t share.

Personally, I only share locations I am comfortable having people meet me in spontaneously. I don’t hey why people check-in to their couches or beds. I understand that there is a gaming element to most of the apps and that, yes, the badges are fun and that they give you something to brag about. I also understand that mayorships and sometimes even single check-ins give you freebies and discounts but if you don’t want people to know where you are then don’t check-in.

For me, using geosocial apps to meet people at events or finally connect face to face has a lot of value. It helps to break the ice and it sometimes even resolves scheduling conflicts. The best is when your friends from out of town are visiting and you get a notification that they’re in town! That’s always a nice surprise! I also use it to share places that I loveand that I want to see thrive. That being said I’m not telling you where the best assam laksa in central London is! At least not via foursquare.

The benefits to business are huge as well. I am most familiar with the foursquare model so I will use it as an example. Businesses who have registered a presence on foursquare can offer specials either for mayors (the person who checks-in the most frequently) and/or just for checking in. This creates a reason for others not only to come in themselves when they see a “special nearby” notification but also to tell their friends. As Brian Solis put it in his “Foursquare Means Business: Have you checked-in yet?“ post: “foursquare and the like are introducing trusted opinions and real-life networking into the mix [of reviews and referrals] that reward exploration and experimentation. Businesses can only benefit by playing along.” ‘Nuff said.

I still have hope that my prediction will come true and that geosocial networking *will* facilitate community building and allow people and businesses to connect offline and take on bigger social challenges together.

So next time you check-in, consider inviting people to come join you. Or conversely, the next time you get a notice that someone you’ve been meaning to meet is around the corner, just hop on over and say hello!

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HOW TO: Evaluate a social/digital/new media candidate’s twitter account for know-how

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 14:51:00 -0700

*It is important to keep in mind that not everyone uses twitter to “talk shop”*

There are quite a few people out there – including myself - looking for work in new/digital/social media.

Many of them are calling themselves “social media experts”. In fact, according to this post by B.L. Ochman, there were over 12,000 self-proclaimed digital or social media gurus/experts on twitter in June 2010. While some of them may indeed be experts, you’ll probably want to check out their credentials. You’ll often find that it is the ones who aren’t calling themselves “experts” who know what they’re doing and have the experience to prove it.

Since recruiters have told me they have difficulty separating the wheat from the chaff and not all of them have gotten their heads around twitter, I thought I’d do a short “how-to” to help them out.

One good way to tell if someone “gets” this medium is to have a look at their twitter profile to see if they know how to use this platform. Surely if they work in digital marketing, they’ve at least got an account right?

Here are a few things to look for when evaluating a twitter profile for know-how:

Bio (and link):

Have a look at what they say about themselves and where they link to. Is it believable? Is the link a blog? A LinkedIn profile? A MySpace page? Unless they’re in music, linking to a MySpace page is probably not a good sign since MySpace has very much fallen out of favour.

Following/Followers:

The numbers here aren’t nearly as important as the quality of the accounts a person is connected to and the quality of the connections themselves.

Personally, I have a wide range of interests so I follow a lot of people and a lot of people follow me. While I get that this probably means I know how to use twitter, there is no guarantee that my numbers aren’t inflated by spammers. It’s probably safe to say that at least a quarter of the average twitter user’s followers are spam and it’s not terribly realistic to expect that one sustains contact with each and every one of the accounts that they are connected to.

A good way to tell is just have a look at the accounts involved by clicking “following” and “followers”

For a more in-depth look at why some numbers mean nothing on twitter have a look at this post by Glenn Lesanto with that exact title.

Lists:

Lists give you an idea of what someone’s interests (and possibly areas of knowledge/authority) are.

You can see the lists a user creates (listed below Favorites) and the lists others put them on (click “listed” to view).

Favorites:

Have a look at the tweets they have marked as favorites. Are they funny, interesting, relevant? All of the above?

Tweets:

Most importantly, look at what they’re tweeting. Are they using @ replies to have conversations? Are they sharing other people’s ideas and content by retweeting (RTing) it? Are they participating in offline events or online chats by using #hashtags? Or are they just tweeting “get more followers”/”make money online” links?

Search:

You can search twitter for the candidiate’s username to see what people are saying to or about them. This is also a useful tool for seeing the kinds of conversations they have on twitter.

Tools:

There are other tools outside of twitter that will help you evaluate a profile. However, their methodologies are not necessarily foolproof and may not give you an accurate picture of how the person in question uses twitter. If you want to use tools oneforty.com, a great resource for twitter-related applications, lists some analytic ones here.

Was this helpful? Please let me know! My personal twitter account is here: http://www.twitter.com/amoyal and my microblog for advice to brands on twitter is here: http://www.twitter.com/DearBrands

________

Thank you to Lindy Asimus, Charlie Southwell and Lynne Gray for their help!

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Don't brand yourself , just BE yourself

Mon, 16 Aug 2010 17:56:52 -0700

I come across a lot of people talking about personal branding and I really feel strongly against it.
I used to think it was an interesting idea and that people should definitely have a brand but then I had some discussions with people who were against it I which made me think.

I now agree that personal branding is not a good thing. Why?

A brand is a constructed identity. It's necessary to unify the people who make up an organisation behind a vision, a purpose, a goal and an approach to that goal. It helps to define the personality and values of the organisation as a whole and provides an interface that people can engage with.

Now most people that I know have ONE personality. They don't need to "create" a personality. Therefore they don't need a brand. They just need to be themselves.

In order to know who you are, you need to get to know yourself. You may only present certain parts of yourself in different situations but you have strengths and limitations and, whether you know it or not, some of them are very obvious to others even if you try to hide them.

So, forget this whole "personal brand" nonsense, find your purpose, understand your vision and values, respect your limitations, make the most of your strengths and GO GET 'EM!

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Does your definition of brand engagement include corporate responsibility? Mine does!

Wed, 04 Aug 2010 04:36:34 -0700

I possibly have a different definition of brand engagement than others, so I thought I might share my views. I'd love to hear your thoughts too!

What is a “brand”?

Unlike a person, organizations are made of many people with different personalities. What an individual and a brand do have in common is a vision, a goal and the approach to that target. The identity that is created to represent these things forms the brand. A brand comprises many aspects: look, feel and values which can be viewed as the brand's “personality”.

Like people, brands represent themselves differently to the various segments of their communities. For example; a brand may be portrayed differently to businesses as opposed to individuals. Despite this, there are always basic elements that are constant.
.
All of these facets of a brand are what people interact with when they connect with that brand.

This counts for:

employees
suppliers
subcontractors and their employees
competitors
collaborators
enthusiasts
detractors
physical community members

All of these are communities that exist around the brand.

What is “brand engagement” then?

Brand engagement is the set of activities a company is involved in to strengthen relationships with these communities.

This includes:

internal culture
advertising,
marketing,
public relations,
sponsorships
and last, but certainly not least, their social and environmental responsibility.

For more on brands and corporate responsibility read my interview with triplepundit here.

Why engage?

By the definition above, brands are already engaging. Ignoring the conversations and communities is also a mode of engagement. So it's not a question of "should" but a question of "how"? Engaging in a constructive, unified and clear way strengthens the organisation by strengthening the relationships to their communities. When people feel good about their relationship to a brand they are a lot more likely to recommend it to others. Word of mouth, which includes social media, is still the most effective mode of marketing there is. So give them something to talk about and make it good!

What about "control"?

While it is important for brands to respect their brand identity guidelines, it’s not realistic to think that others will. The opportunity for “control” here is not in keeping brand communication close to the organisation’s “chest” The opportunity exists in participating in conversations. Being part of the conversation ensure that the information disseminated is accurate and reflects the brand accurately. This usually ensures that the outcome is productive for the organisation and its communities.

Great! Where do we start?

In order for these activities to be successful there must be clarity around the brand identity itself and clear goals for engagement activities. Once these are established, internal processes must be primed for participation, both proactive and reactive, in conversations and activities connected to the brand.

I came across a really cool example recently: An intercity bus passenger who used the brand's SMS feedback service to tell them he thought his bus was too hot. Apparently, within minutes the passenger got a text back advising them that the driver had been contacted and that he was going to adjust the temperature. (Sure he could have gotten up and done that himself, but that's not the point!)

True or not, this is a perfect example of internal processes being properly set up to deal with issues raised by the brand's communities.

You don’t have to have it exactly right to get started, especially if people are already talking about the brand online but this is really important and should be a priority for management. In fact, if you wait for it to be perfect, you'll probably never get started!

Employees – ambassadors or enthusiasts?

Part of this is employee engagement. Keeping them happy and engaged with their work effectively keeps them close to the brand. Ultimately, done properly, it will make them all brand enthusiasts! This is not the same as brand ambassadors because effectively all employees are brand ambassadors, whether they're excited about the brand or not. Their friends and families see how they feel about their work and the way they answer the question "Where do you work?" speaks volumes about the brand to people they meet.

Next steps

The next steps are unifiying communications from the perspective of established brand identity guidelines as well as hiring the right people to speak officially on behalf of the brand in all channels. Personally, I believe these people should be internal as I've expressed in my previous post about the role of agencies in brand community management.

Two second takeaway:

Brand engagement is about connecting with people, both inside and outside organization, by listening, sharing and responding quickly to the brand’s communities This will increase brand affinity which leads to increased brand awareness and eventually to increased revenue!

So what do you think? Is this brand engagement?

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Thank you to Glenn Lesanto, Blaise Grimes-Viort, Lindy Asimus, Lucy Payne and others for their help! Special thanks to Rachelle Houde for a big save!

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The role of agencies in brand community management (and social media)

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 14:34:15 -0800

Picture a party for the most important event of your life. It makes sense to hire an experienced event planner to help you make it the best it can but are you going to let the event planner greet your guests?

A good agency offers very valuable services in advising and training clients on the best ways (philosophy and tools) to use so they can listen to and engage with the community that exists around their brand in order to strengthen the ties the community has to the brand. An agency worth its salt is also attentive to new developments in these respects so that it can keep its clients current and connected.

That being said, I believe that the day to day really must be run by someone (and maybe eventually a team) in-house who can immerse themselves in the culture and get a feeling for what the brand is really like and what the goals of the company are and, based on what the community is saying, has direct access to the people who can effect that change inside the company as quickly as may be necessary. An insider in all senses because who knows what funny, interesting or otherwise share-worthy things happen inside that slip by the person liaising with an agency running the day to day otherwise.

Selecting this person or team is something an agency definitely can and probably should help with but I really do believe that the day to day should be an in-house role.

This doesn't mean agencies are indispensable or, conversely, have a limited timespan in which they are valuable to their clients. Nor does it mean that every brand or even vertical requires an in-house team to run their social media (which is only part of brand community management). But in cases where a company understands the need to listen and enagage based on the personality of their brand, of which social media is an expression, and of their business goals, agencies can provide valuable help getting them started and keeping them on top of the game, or party as it were!

(FULL DISCLOSURE: I am not affiliated with an agency but I have worked both in-house and in an external advisory role and am currently seeking new opportunities! Happy to chat about this article or community management in general :) Leave a comment here or send me a tweet on http://www.twitter.com/amoyal)

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Why I don't think desalination is a smart or sustainable solution to our fresh water issues

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 02:26:15 -0800

Desalination seems the perfect solution right? All we have to do is boil seawater and then presto! drinkable water! Well almost but not quite....

Not only does this require A LOT of energy (which mostly comes from fossil fuels) and create toxic waste products, it also threatens marine life and sets an irresponsible expectation for consumer of limitless water supplies thus reducing the need to improve water efficiency. In addition to this, distilled water has very low nutritional content as it does not have the same mineral content as fresh water: While I understand that in some areas there is only so much that can be done to avoid desalination due to reduced rainfall, I advocate catching rainwater; reusing greywater and limiting your use of bottled drinks. Another thing to consider is that a lot of industries are polluting fresh water and should not be supported. One in particular is the extraction of petroleum from tar sands but that's a whole other post.

I'd like to hear your thoughts.....

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The big bad corporations and corrupt government. What can we do about it?

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 22:51:26 -0800

Part of my work is in corporate responsibility and some corporations are genuinely acting to take the human and environmental factors into account when acting.

That said there is a lot of talk and some who act responsibly do so on the basis of risk management but the truth is that most businesses are stuck on the the "business of business is business" paradigm.

Small businesses and farms tend not to fall into this but not all are immune.

The problem with that reasoning is that no business is an island as it were. A lot of economists and people in the financial world are seeing this post-crisis and I have written about it here and shared it with you.

Now the tricky part. Taking action.

It's easy to say that the corporations are bad and government is corrupt. But it's up to us to act. To take personal responsibility for ourselves. Each and everyone of us without looking over the fence or waiting for everyone else to act.

Buy responsibly, vote responsibly. Ask questions and, wait for it, THINK before you act.

Yes, it's hard and unfair and unclear and everything else. But there's no use waiting for business and government to move. They won't unless they are given a reason to do so. Whinging masses doesn't give them a reason if those whinging masses don't apply actual pressure to their sources of power.

Personally, I'm working to make that an easier task for others. But it all starts with individual responsibility. So try as you might to offload the responsibility and the blame, nohing is going to change unless YOU act.

At least that's the way I understand it and that's the conclusion Margaret Mead came to after years of anthropological study: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

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