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7 Tips For Getting Legal Approval on Social Media Programs

11.09.27

I don’t think it matters which form of communications you work in; “legal” often seems to be a pain point. It’s not surprising — their job is to manage risk for the organization, and public-facing communications activities (especially two-way ones) naturally offer an element of uncertainty. There’s a natural tension between the two.

Last night I spoke on a panel for the American Marketing Association on the topic of “How to launch and implement a social media initiative.” One of the questions revolved around whether panelists had encountered problems with legal departments when introducing social media initiatives. I thought I’d share some tips I offered the audience there for working with your (or clients’) legal departments, to make the process smoother.

Here are seven tips for working with your legal team:

Tie back to organizational objectives: Show how the program you’re trying to implement ties-in to business objectives, and help to educate the legal team on the strategy behind your proposal.
Educate your legal team: Don’t just throw something new and uncertain like social media at them “cold”; walk them through what you’re doing, why you’re doing it and show them best practices that have been established.
Show them how you’re reducing risk: Walk the legal team through the ways you’re working to reduce risk on the project. If you’re looking to leverage user-generated content, show how you’re going to moderate it; if you’re empowering employees to engage online, show them the policy and guidelines you’ve created to frame it; etc.
Loop them in early: No-one likes to be blind-sided last minute. Loop your legal team in early, to ensure you’re aware of potential concerns and are able to manage around them (the same goes for IT, HR and any other stakeholders).
Give them case studies: The legal system revolves around precedents. Your lawyers are likely to respond well to examples of how other organizations have done similar things successfully (and trouble-free) in the past. If other people have blazed the trail ahead of you, show them.
Draw lines around roles: Clearly frame the role that stakeholders have in your program, ahead of time. Your legal team doesn’t need to be editing your text for style; they need to be working to minimize risk for the organization. Make sure everyone is aware of that role, and reinforce it if necessary.
Be their friend: This pointer came from Eliot Johnson – one of the other panelists: become friends with your legal team. Many people wrongly treat “legal” as the opposition, when they’re just trying to do their jobs. Work with them, not against them, and you’ll find that things go much more smoothly.

What do you think?

Posted in: social media

Tags: legal, social media

9Comments

Video: Thoughts on Social CRM for Small Businesses

11.09.14

Social CRM is a hot topic right now. As companies’ use of social media tools begins to mature from a pure marketing focus to more of a social business focus, the various use cases of social CRM are gaining more attention from practitioners. In fact, I’m in the middle of reading a book on social CRM right now (The Social Customer, by Adam Metz).

So, when Lauren Carlson drew my attention to a video interview she conducted with Marshall Lager from Third Idea Consulting - a well-known name in the field – at the CRM Evolution conference, it caught my attention.

A few interesting notes from the interview:

Unlike most other business tools, social CRM is largely derived from consumer-related tools – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs etc., which weren’t originally designed for business uses. People are using these tools to share experiences they have. Businesses have finally caught on to the potential benefits of being involved, and are starting to monetize their relationships.
You can get started with social CRM by simply signing up for a free or trial account on a service, and starting to listen. Trick number one is to find out where your customers are and what they’re saying. Once you have that, you can begin to craft a strategy (I would add that before you do that, you need to figure out what business objectives you want to accomplish).
Lager says small businesses especially can benefit from social media – the closer to start-up, the better – because the people there are extremely passionate, focused on where the next sale will come from and are likely to have a direct relationship with their customers. He argues that the benefits of social media to small business can outstrip those for large businesses, who already have an established brand and established expectations, very quickly. Small businesses can touch every one of their customers, and have a significant effect in doing so.
Strategy is important. You can build it as you go to a certain extent (I would argue that while this may be the case for some companies, for most it would be far better to figure out your strategy first), but at a certain point you need to figure out what you’re trying to do with social media. You need to figure out your company’s voice; your rules of engagement (and several companies have published their verisons; here are 57 sets of social media guidelines and resources to get you started).
One of the most important things that companies can do online is tell the truth. If people trust you, they will do business with you. If they don’t trust you, they want nothing to do with you.

I found the interview interesting; while there are a few comments I would respectfully disagree with, there’s some interesting stuff here – especially for small business owners who might be curious on how & why to get started.

Let me know what you think in the comments below.

Posted in: social media

Tags: social crm

6Comments

4 Ways To Improve Your Social Media Content Strategy

11.09.07

Lots of people spend lots of time nowadays thinking about how to build up channels/audiences/communities (choose your buzzword as appropriate) through social channels. Relatively few, however, seem to apply similar rigor to the process of communicating with those people after the fact.

With a few degrees of variation, most people will suggest you look at around a 90/10 ratio of engagement to static content on social channels. That means, if you post 20 tweets (for example) per day, you have roughly two opportunities to insert your own POV into the stream.

Are you making the most of the static content you post on your channels? Are you using each piece as an opportunity to move towards achieving an objective, or are you just throwing words out there for the sake of posting something?

Here are four ways to begin to improve your social media content strategy.

Set Goals

Launching a new social channel, or campaign on a channel, isn’t the end of the planning process. You should know, clearly, what you’re trying to achieve through your social media activity, and bear that in mind at all times. Sometimes high-level business goals may be a bit abstract, so distill down from those:

Business objectives –> communication objectives –> social media objectives

Tweak these depending on where social “sits” in your organization, but make sure these ladder up, and make sure the content you’re posting does the same.

Optimize

Are you optimizing your content based on previous results? If not, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity.

Content creation doesn’t just mean throwing out posts randomly. Just as media buyers analyze which versions of ads convert better than others, you should take the opportunity to look at the types of content that:

Generate more engagement
Lead to more click-throughs
Lead to more conversions

What type of content works best? Is it UGC-focused content? Links to third-party sites? Opinion pieces? What time of day works best? (Visibli and RowFeeder are two great tools for helping with this)

Think “Search”

What are you doing to ensure you “own” the first page of search results when you make an announcement? Think beyond your marketing terms, and towards what people are searching for. Create useful, interesting content that targets those terms, and publish it at the right time.

Why does timing matter for search? Because in today’s fast-moving environment, if other influential online sites get out of the gate with their content ahead of you, they’ll become the go-to source and they’ll claim your spot in the search results.

If you’re currently losing this battle, take a look at what the other sites are doing better than you.

Remember – you have the advantage – you know what’s coming down the pipe, and you know when it’s coming. That means you should *always* be able to beat them to the punch.

Use Multimedia

Multimedia is such a 90′s term… everywhere except search. Universal search is meaning that different forms of content are being displayed next to each other in search results. That means you’re not just competing for the top-ranked text; you’re competing for the top-ranked image too, and the top-ranked video. Not everyone has cottoned-on to that yet – take advantage of it and think beyond text when you’re planning-out your content.

There you have it – four tips for optimizing content. What other tips would you add?

Posted in: social media, uncategorized

Tags: content, social media

10Comments

Eight Tips for Scaling Social Customer Support

11.07.18

David Armano noted in a recent Harvard Business Review post on social business that listening to conversations is a valuable step but only the beginning:

“The true opportunity lies in scaling and operationalizing “social”.”

Online customer support is one of the key trends confronting companies as they embrace social business and look to interact with their consumers online. The growth of social customer support is being driven by three key factors: increased uptake of social media broadly; highly visible success stories from other companies and an expectation of two-way interaction in social channels.

As social support grows in reach and popularity, companies are facing the conundrum of how to successfully scale. How do you deal with an environment where an unlimited number of people may look to you for swift, helpful service?

Here are eight pointers for scaling your customer support:

1. Shift from reactive to proactive + reactive

Listening and reacting isn’t enough. Edelman’s Trust Barometer shows that search engines are the #1 source of information about companies for informed consumers. So, win the search battle. Mine your support records for the most common support requests (through both online and traditional channels) and create searchable resources to address those queries.

These resources could be blog posts, knowledge base articles, videos, graphics, whatever (more on that later in this post) — just make sure they’re in the language of your customers, not in business jargon, and that people can link directly to them.

2. Triage

My apologies to the purists out there who think everyone should be treated equally, but if one person could cause a major issue for your company while another is lower-profile, I’m going to prioritize accordingly. Is that ideal? No. Is that completely egalitarian? No. Is it practical and realistic? You bet.

This means setting out your criteria for triage ahead of time. If you have tiered support in other channels you may already have some of this. Consider:

Relative influence
Severity of issue
Spread of issue
…etc.

3. Respond publicly when possible

The natural inclination for many companies is to take negative chatter offline ASAP. There are a couple of pitfalls to this approach:

The Internet doesn’t forget — others will be able to see the complaint, but no resolution
Other people with the same problem won’t benefit from the solution

There are many cases where you will have to take a conversation offline due to privacy needs around personal information, or due to legal regulations. Where those things aren’t the case, though, responding to concerns publicly accomplishes two things:

Allows anyone watching to see your company being responsive to an issue (improves your reputation)
The one:many nature of the Internet means that other people with that same issue can see the solution (scales your response)

4. Help customers to help customers

Companies like AT&T (rated highly for social support by Forrester) and BlackBerry (disclosure: client) have been successful at developing highly active support forums where customers interact with and help each other. While the company can step in and address unanswered questions, this solution means that many queries are addressed without any involvement from the company.

5. Build an army of advocates

Your social media activities will naturally let you identify your most active users and your biggest fans. Don’t ignore this potential; create programs to cultivate and build relationships with these people, empower them to become your ambassadors and reward them for doing so.

6. Know your customer

Different people have different preferences for how to receive service; this leads both to tailored interactions with people and to the development of different support mechanisms to suit their needs. People who are pressed for time and just want to get the answer with no frills may prefer quick step-by-step how-tos, for example, while others look for more social interaction and conversation. If you can, take the time (and/or money) to do the research to identify those needs.

Social CRM is a buzz term right now, but even if you’re not ready to go to that extent, there are plenty of tools that let you view your past interactions with people online and begin to move in that direction.

7. Structure for scale

While you may have a core group of support agents conducting support online, look to train and prepare a broader group of employees to step in during critical situations. Few companies are going to be able to take the Zappos approach to empowering employees, but by training outside your team you can be prepared for spikes in activity.

8. Plan strategically

Businesses don’t usually experience flat demand throughout the year. You’ll have seasonality; you’ll have spikes driven by announcements and launches; you’ll have marketing promotions. By knowing when those are, you can plan your resources accordingly – both in terms of staffing and in terms of proactive asset creation (see #1 above).

Scaling support remains a pressing problem for organizations. These approaches can help you to help more people, and in doing so raise satisfaction rates, reduce customer churn and improve your organization’s reputation.

What tips would you add to the list?

Posted in: customer service, social media

Tags: customer service, social media

10Comments

Don’t Be Fooled By Last-Click Analysis Of Social Media

11.05.16

Forrester recently published a report entitled “The Purchase Path of Online Buyers.” Normally I’m a fan of Forrester’s reports, but this one left me scratching my head.

The report looks at transaction data from 15 clients of a marketing agency (let’s ignore that built-in bias, and convenient product placement in the recommendations, for the sake of this post) to draw conclusions about buyer behaviour including:

Most buyers do not arrive at a site directly — they come from search or other marketing activities (fair)
Last-click measurement is insufficient – it works for email and search but other tactics receive insufficient credit “as they are typically early in the research funnel and are followed by visits to search engines or email” (fair)
Email was effective during key promotional dates — not surprising, as retailers engage in heavy email drives during those times (think of Thanksgiving or Boxing Day)

However, one conclusion stood out to me:

“Hope for the best, but expect the worst with social.”

(Not surprising that it caught my eye, huh?)

The more I thought about, it the more I was left confused at Forrester’s characterization of the data, especially given the earlier warning about last-click measurement.

Where to begin?

No detail in the methodology

The report doesn’t actually give any detail as to the form the data that was used took. How did they track referrers, especially those two levels deep? Could they identify traffic that came from mobile social apps or from popular desktop apps such as TweetDeck, etc? From the methodology it sounds like they used the agency’s own models to estimate the data, but really we have no idea.

Zero detail on actual social media activities

At no point in the report does it say that (a) the companies were engaged in any sort of social media activities, (b) the form that those activities took (c) the scale and reach that those activities had, or (d) the quality of those activities.

How are we supposed to just agree with the conclusion that social media drove minimal sales if we don’t know what form that social media took, if any? It’s like saying “media relations drove minimal sales” without saying whether the organization actually did any media relations.

Hell, the numbers could actually be a good thing - if I wasn’t engaged in any form of social media but it still drove 2% of my sales, that might actually be a sign that I should begin to invest in it.

Social media objectives vary

In my opinion, brands make a mistake when they consider social media as purely conversion-driven tools. Social media provides numerous potential benefits besides end-of-funnel conversion, including:

Long-term brand-building
Top-of-mind awareness
Improved customer service and retention
Market intelligence and insights

Social media isn’t just bottom-of-the-funnel

Related to the last point, companies should consider the average person’s mindset when they’re using social media.

When you’re using Facebook or Twitter, for example, are you often looking for a link to take me to the best place to purchase something? Probably not. If you’re in a purchase-focused mindset, you’re more likely to be looking for reviews or recommendations from other people.

Once you receive them, maybe you’ll dig around for product information on the recommendation, then look for somewhere to buy it.

For example, today I asked Twitter whether I should buy a LiveScribe pen so I could capture my notes in Evernote:

Sure enough, I got a bunch of points of view in return:

Note: None of those responses offer a way to click through to purchase. Still, even though these results affected my likelihood to purchase, if I were to purchase the pen (which I may), a search engine would likely get the credit — even though search has done nothing to influence my actions up to this point — as I would use Google to find the company’s website.

Forrester seems to be ignoring its own warning that tactics other than email and search may be under-attributed, and passing judgement without fully considering the context.

Social media isn’t one-dimensional

This Forrester report focused on online buying behaviour, so it might seem harsh to criticize it for its single-minded focus. That’s the problem, though — when you’re dealing with a complex, multi-functional set of tools like social media, considering a single dimension in isolation from the others risks writing-off broad benefits across the organization.

This only reinforces the need for a broader focus than an eight-page report can produce – one looking at the effects of integrated, multi-disciplinary approaches to social media. Analyzing an inherently integrated, multi-dimensional set of tools in any other way leads to an incomplete picture.

(Image: talltomz)

Posted in: measurement, social media

Tags: measurement, social media

9Comments

Yeah, Well Your Agency Is Killing Unicorns

11.04.26

Daniel Stein recently wrote an attention-grabbing post over at Digiday entitled “HypeBusters: PR Agencies Are Ruining Facebook.” His basic argument: PR agencies are boring and uncreative, and their attempts at engagement are doomed to fail. The right people to manage Facebook pages are, apparently ad agencies. Guess which he works for.

I’m not going to lie — I’m dismayed at the juvenile back-and-forth that’s going on between different marketing disciplines over social media, with posts like this one or like this from Search Engine Journal previously. Didn’t people ever learn how to play nicely with others?

A tale of false arguments

Let’s start with the particular post in question. The primary issue here is the false dichotomies that are put forward. Why does everything have to be black and white?

Why does content have to be purely either “news, offers and the occasional contest” or “developing a brand’s purpose”? Can’t it be a blend, with some variety?

Where is the evidence that PR agencies can’t “do” creative? Isn’t it possible that agencies of all stripes could be creative?

The reality is that multiple partners are often involved in a successful Facebook effort. We frequently work closely with agencies of multiple stripes, and often help clients to develop governance frameworks so that each can bring their respective strengths to the table across multiple activities within a single channel.

Rather than throw up false assumptions about other agencies, look around. These over-generalizations just don’t hold true.

Shades of grey

I could point to Facebook pages we manage with hundreds of thousands or even millions of fans; or to multiple highly-engaged Twitter accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers, and use that as evidence you that only PR agencies can do this well.

I could point to examples of advertising agency-driven properties that completely fail because there’s nothing but superficial style over substance, and use that as evidence that ad agencies are ruining social media.

This would fit with the approach of the posts I mentioned above.

I won’t, because neither of these claims are true. This isn’t black and white.

Integrate for success

People who argue that only their discipline can “do” social media and that XYZ discipline is ruining it either have no idea what they’re talking about or are lying to you to get attention.

I’ve argued for a long time that effective social media, conducted over the long term and with actual business value, is derived from the integration and cooperation of agency partners. It doesn’t come from petty bickering and competition — from “my agency type is better than yours” behaviour — between so-called partners who don’t play nicely in the sandbox.

Enough with the attention-grabbing BS headlines and false arguments of superiority, already. Acknowledge that different disciplines can learn from each other, that there’s no “one ring to rule them all” and work nicely with your agency partners to do the best job you can for the client.

You know, cooperate. Like adults do.

Posted in: marketing, pr, public relations, social media

Tags: advertising, marketing, pr, public relations, social media

17Comments

Why And How To Scale Social Business Programs

11.04.14

As time goes on we’re seeing a rising trend toward social customer support, largely driven by three forces:

Companies are observing high-profile brands successfully executing social support programs and want to realize those benefits
As more and more companies engage in marketing programs through social media, customers are using those two-way channels to demand support from companies
We’re seeing more and more examples of crises driven by online activity; social support offers a way to prevent issues from becoming crises

The challenge companies are facing is how to scale that support in the face of massive demand from a customer base that comes to expect quick, direct engagement.

Jeremiah Owyang recently posted the slides from his presentation on scalable social business programs. Some of his key points:

Get into Hub and Spoke and develop a Center of Excellence
- Get away from organic and centralized structures, and develop a hub that can support activities throughout the organization
Leverage community for first tier marketing and support
- Don’t try to just scale 1:1 support – provide the means for customers to support each other then provide second-tier support for those who need it
Integrate both in the customer lifecycle as well as your corporate website
- Think of how you will engage with people at all stages, from awareness through to advocacy, and think about how you can build social functionality into your corporate website (one of the key trends we’ve identified for 2011)
Launch a formalized advocacy program
- Cultivate a group of independent advocates who can transparently engage where they see fit
Invest in Social Media Management Systems before you lose control
- The recent Kenneth Cole and Chrysler mishaps shone a spotlight on the need for controls and education around social media activities. Appropriate systems are a key part of that.

Point #2 is a key one – help your customers and advocates (point #4) to handle a lot of the low-level support for you. That doesn’t mean leaving them unattended; it means providing them with the means to do so – a place to do it and the resources to do so.

Keynote: Invest in Scalable Social Business Programs

These points on scale nicely complement Steve Rubel’s recent thoughts – that, operating in a world limited by time and space, when you can’t expand time you need to focus on expanding your organization’s surface area to scale your activities.

What do you think of all of this?

Posted in: customer service, social media, strategy

Tags: customer service, social media, strategy

8Comments

Three Forces Driving Social Customer Support

11.04.13

We’ve discussed, many times, the importance of the ongoing trend towards the integration of various communications forms in social media – the fact that you can’t just put “social” in a bubble and expect it to perform without support from other media. Awareness of this is slowly growing as social media activities mature within organizations

In the same vein, this maturity will soon manifest in increased integration between business functions. Chief among them will be a growing realization that customer support is a key communications function online.

Marketing and public relations departments have taken the spotlight for many people (setting aside the Dells, Comcasts and Zapposes (fine, whatever, you try pluralizing Zappos) of the world).

Over the next couple of years, as we continue to see companies invest more and more into social media activities, we’re going to see three forces driving the adoption of social customer support – case studies; customer demand and crises.

Force #1: Watching other companies succeed at social support

The Dells and Comcasts have set the bar high, but we’re seeing a proliferation of companies supporting customers effectively through social media.

Rogers (a client of mine in my last job) engaged over 20,000 times with customers through a variety of social channels last year, and is able to measure the results of this engagement. Freshbooks has built an army of advocates through its personable and responsive support team.

There are many other examples, and companies will increasingly look to replicate that success.

Force #2: Consumers demanding social support

While public relations drove an initial wave of social media adoption, and while ad agencies are getting into the game too, their activities will continue to inadvertently shine a spotlight on the need for online support.

Why?

Because they’re using two-way channels. And when you’re using two-way channels, people talk back… not just about what you want to talk about, but about what they want to talk about.

Nestle found this out the hard way, as did Etsy late last year (BTW, Etsy, removing posts “for negativity” is not a good issues management strategy).

So, the more companies engage in two-way channels (even if they want them to be one-way), the more people will demand responsiveness and interaction from those companies.

Force #3: Increased frequency of online issues

The Etsy case is just one example of an issue that blew up online and escalated into traditional media. I continue to see more and more, which leads to the third force driving social support – the desire to avoid becoming a crisis communications case study.

By listening and responding to issues online, companies can nip those issues in the bud. It’s important to remember, though, that if you want your online support to help you avoid issues then (a) you can’t pick and choose which issues you respond to (although there are a variety of ways to avoid having to respond to each and every person 1:1 – more on this tomorrow) and (b) if you don’t fix issues that people identify then listening isn’t enough.

So, there you have it – three forces that are driving the adoption of social customer support. Do you agree? Do you see other forces also at play? Let me know what you think in the comments.

Posted in: customer service, social media, trends

Tags: customer service, social media, trends

2Comments