Social networks trump traditional marketing efforts

March 16, 2011

socialnomics

Book Review

Socialnomics: how social media transforms the way we live and do business.
By Erik Qualman
Wiley Books, 2009, 2011. Revised edition. 296 p.

What’s the best Italian restaurant in Manhattan?  Fewer people care what Google thinks. They are going to social networks to see what their friends and peers think.

More than half the world’s population is under 30 years old. 96 percent of this group have joined a social network. Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic in the U.S.

Erik Qualman argues that social media has become the world’s largest focus group on steroids. Qualman is a consultant, global vice president of Online Marketing for EF Education, and an MBA professor at the Hult International Business School. He blogs at Socialnomics.net

He says that a small business owner who is only now just starting to practice social media can still succeed. First, define what success will look like. Then take these steps: (1) listen (2) interact (3) react (4) soft sell. If you only do step one, you will at least have a much better understanding about your business and also your customer. That is invaluable.

In this revised and updated edition of the 2009 edition Qualman shows how social media are changing consumer behavior and how businesses will benefit from understanding the phenomenon.

Did you know that more than half of the 50 million people who viewed Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin skits on SNL didn’t see them on television? They watched the skits on YouTube or within their social media network. Where is your advertising budget?

Through social networks consumers are getting more information, faster, and at no expense to them. As one example Qualman points to Zillow.com. Zillow allows users and realtors to investigate the estimated values of various real estate properties. It aggregates various public data (most recent sales price, up-to-date selling prices of the surrounding houses, asking prices, quality of schools, etc.) into an algorithm to obtain the estimated property value. To augment this third-party data, Zillow allows its user base to update various aspects.

Consumers pay less attention to traditional advertising while they use social media to decide purchases. A parent in the market for a lightweight, safe, child car seat is likely to enter the query “buying a baby seat” into his social network. There he may discover that 23 of his 181 friends have purchased a baby seat in the last 2 years. Fourteen purchased the same make and model; the average price for the most popular model was $124.99; and 3 friends want to sell their used baby seats. Could traditional advertising match that depth of information?

The travel company TripAdvisor was an early company to embrace social commerce. Then in June 2010 it added the ability for a visitor to their site to view hotel ratings and to also see who in their Facebook network had stayed at that hotel. That is a game changer, Qualman says. This is what Socialnomics is all about:  The ability for me to see what my friends and peers think about anything and everything. Social networks provide insight into a user’s demographic (age, geography, occupation, etc.) and psychographic information (hobbies, clubs, networks, desires). In the past, advertisers often had to guess at this type of data. With social media, the user tells marketers what they have been trying to determine for years.

Qualman says brand budgets that historically went to television, magazine ads, and outdoor boards are moving to digital channels for three reasons: (1) the audience has moved there, (2) it’s more cost effective, and (3) it’s easier to track.  Qualman predicts that broadcast television will eventually be pushed through the Internet and a majority of content will be viewed on tablets and iPads.

But many executives ask: How do I measure the ROI of social media?  Qualman says some companies and marketers paralyze themselves by attempting to determine the ROI of social media. They use inappropriate tools and measurements. Qualman offers 34 quick statistics that point to ways social media can be measured:

Lenovo reduced expenses with a  20 percent reduction in call center activity as customers go to community websites for answers.

Dell sold $3 million dollars worth of computers on Twitter.

Software company Genius.com reports that 24 percent of its social media leads convert to sales opportunities.

Qualman then offers 42 statistics that social media isn’t a fad: it’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate, and provides answers to some of the more common that he has received from reporters and readers over the years.

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Reaching learners with disabilities

February 24, 2011

I’ve posted videos of 3 presentations from yesterday’s conference for staff of Wisconsin’s Cooperative Educational Service Agencies. This year’s theme was Serving students with special needs and low-incidence disabilities.

Inclusion and social justice approaches to educating youth with disabilities from diverse backgrounds.
Audrey Trainor is associate professor of Rehabilitation Psychology and Special Education. Her interest areas include multicultural and bilingual special education, second language acquisition and disability, adolescent transition to adulthood, and qualitative research methods. She recently analyzed data from the National Longitudinal Transition Study-2 (NLTS2), focusing on the transition of students with high incidence disabilities.

Using technology to improve literacy for struggling adolescent readers.
Kimber Wilkerson is professor of Rehabilitation Psychology and Special Education. Her research aims to improve long-term outcomes for children and adolescents with social, behavioral, and mental health needs. Recent projects have focused on academic instruction in juvenile corrections; academic interventions that affect children’s social outcomes; and accountability policies and practices in special education. An ongoing project is the Day Treatment, Residential, & Juvenile Correctional Schools Program. Carly Roberts is a doctoral student with experience in reading interventions for adolescents with low incidence disabilities.

Video teleconferencing to support families of children with autism spectrum disorders.
Wendy Machalicek is assistant professor of Rehabilitation Psychology and Special Education. Her interests include individualized interventions and system wide supports for students with severe disabilities, including autism, intellectual disabilities, and multiple disabilities; effectiveness of teacher and parent education; applied behavior analysis; and using technology in professional development and family support.

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Crowdsourcing and other powerful tools

February 17, 2011

enterprise social technology

Book Review
Enterprise social technology.
Helping organizations harness the power of social media, social networking, social relevance.
Scott Klososky.
Greenleaf Books, 2011. 279 p.

In Enterprise Social Technology Scott Klososky shows how to build  a holistic plan for incorporating social technology into corporate communications.

Klososky is also author of The Velocity Manifesto. He is former CEO of three startup companies, including Alkami Technology, an online banking platform.

He wants “to move the discussion past whether the CEO should be tweeting, or the organization developing a Facebook fan page.” Enterprise Social Technology clearly delineates how to integrate the full range of social tech tools to make a meaningful difference in an organization.

Social technology is not an assortment of software applications, he says, but a collection of new capabilities including user-generated content, microblogging, and e-communities.  Social technology involves
SOCIAL RELEVANCE, encompassing the online reputation of an individual or organization;

SOCIAL MEDIA, the use of Internet and mobile media (videos, documents, photos, slide presentations) for sharing ideas, messages, or entertainment; and

SOCIAL NETWORKING, reaching people through a variety of communication methods and online communities.

Each of the book’s 12 chapters describes one of the 12 steps in the process of implementing social technology into an organization. Some of his recommendations:

Establish teams to create social technology goals. Members should be aligned with wider organizational goals and should reflect the company’s values, mission, and vision.

When setting its social tech goals the organization should ask “Why do we do what we do?” Only when this purpose is clear are social tech goals assigned and aligned with the company’s broader mission.

Design an internal governance policy so that all employees know their positions when social technology is introduced. The policy statement should focus attention and resources on high-priority issues—aligning and merging efforts to achieve the institutional vision.

Develop a listening process, establish an engagement policy, that defines how you will respond to the positive and negative things said about you and your brand; and implement a measurement system that gauges how often people are talking about you online and whether the sentiments they express are positive or negative.

One of the book’s strengths is the many examples of social tech use. Klososky summarizes success stories from British Airways, BBGeeks.com, Dell, JetBlue, and even a small, family-run insurance agency in little Henderson, Ky.

Klososky emphasizes the power of crowdsourcing, which harnesses the power of talented people all across the Internet, without a need for the management structure and the overhead found in traditional outsourcing. Examples of crowdsourcing include MyStarbucksIdea.com, 99designs.com, Procter & Gamble’s PGConnectDevelop.com, FashionStake.com, Threadless, and vintner Gary Vaynerchuk’s Crush It!.

Although it’s difficult to measure the return on investment for social technology, Klososky says it can be done:
Measure the current effects of your social technologies.
Set objectives for ROI.
Determine social tech results needed to meet objectives.
Source and implement social tech measurement systems.
Measure results, compare to objectives, and adapt continuously.

Developing a pilot projects may be the most important step in your social tech strategy. Klososky cites examples of pilot programs that have helped companies and brands to achieve larger goals.

As a side note, when Klososky decided to write a book about social tech he was determined to practice what he preached. He used social technology, specifically crowdsourcing, to augment the book.  He created a detailed outline and wrote the first section and the last two chapters. Then he used crowdSPRING.com to crowdsource the content for the other chapters. The whole book was then edited at least twice by both the publisher and Klososky.

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A Thorough Look at Social Media Marketing

February 7, 2011

social media strategies

Book Review
Social media strategies for professionals and their firms:
The guide to establishing credibility and accelerating relationships.
By Michelle Golden
Wiley, 2011.  348 pp.

In Social Media Strategies for Professionals and Their Firms Michelle Golden helps the reader think through today’s social media tools: which best suits your purpose and style, and what it takes to succeed with each medium, whether in corporate use or individual use.

Golden is a certified professional facilitator who blogs at Golden Practices Inc.  Accounting Today has named her one of the most powerful women in accounting.

In this very well written book she argues that marketers must persuade their firms to abandon most traditional (and ineffective) forms of marketing, including formal corporate ‘messaging.’ She promotes relationship marketing, using LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and blogs instead.

She takes on the ‘bottom line’ crowd and those managers who demand, “What’s the ROI of social media?” She responds, that’s a lot like asking, “What is the ROI of your phone?” In either case, she says, that depends entirely on what it’s used for.

Anticipating the entirely predictable (and reasonable) concerns of IT staff and of  corporate “brand” hawks, she says that disallowing employees’ use of social media is cutting off the firm’s nose to spite its face. Rather than worrying about the way people spend their time, she says, it’s better to hold people accountable for the end result: Ether they are performing or they aren’t.

When firms and their marketers say they feel rushed to implement a “Facebook strategy” or “LinkedIn strategy,” she advises taking a slower, thoughtful approach. She cautions against considering the mere adoption of any social media channel as the goal. Success requires first specifying what you ultimately seek to accomplish.

Some firms mistakenly implemented social media tools as vehicles for one-way content delivery. This practice severely under-uses these tools, she says, and using social media for “broadcasting” suggests the firm and its people are uninterested in relationships, inaccessible, unaware of social media behaviors, or all three.

Golden provides many corporate success stories. More than 20 case studies offer detailed strategies. These include Freed Maxick Battaglia: A CPA firm’s 10-week campaign to attract new business; Mark Bailey & Co., Ltd.: An ongoing campaign for audits of small, public companies; McKonly & Asbury: An approach to earning the trust of, and business from, local family-owned businesses; and Tracy Coenen’s Fraud Files blog, which established her niche in a fraud and forensic practice.

Like Dan Schwabel, Chris Brogan, and Erik Deckers and Kyle Lacy, Golden discusses what to do, and what to avoid, when branding oneself individually. Presenting oneself online in a corporate-like, sanitized, inauthentic way is doomed to fail.  Authenticity is a core value, and the online community generally rewards usefulness and altruism. Trust, transparency, and giving freely to the community are core to social capital.

In the book’s second half Golden details how to set up and use social media tools. She discusses the importance of using LinkedIn, in part because it’s highly searchable and well ranked in Google. She advises using Twitter not so much to talk about yourself, but to share information that can help others and to go out of your way to name others outside of your organization.

She explains how to use social bookmarking sites like Delicious, Digg.com, Alltop.com,  Friendfeed, and Stumbleupon to collect and tag content relevant to your industry. Search for content already tagged in useful ways, then filter and share that information through bookmarks of your own.

I found Social Media Strategies to be thorough, well organized, and satisfying.  I believe it has helped me create a more effective online presence.

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You Are a Brand

February 7, 2011

branding yourself deckers lacy

Book Review
Branding yourself: how to use social media to invent or reinvent yourself.
Erik Deckers and Kyle Lacy
QUE BizTech/ Pearson, 2011. 283 p.

You may or may not be comfortable thinking of yourself as a ‘brand’ a la Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, or Facebook.

But considering your career as a brand will generate ideas that may help you reach your goals.

In Branding Yourself Erik Deckers and Kyle Lacy explain why you should promote yourself, how to build your online network, and how to succeed in ‘real world’ networking (public speaking, getting published, using your network to land a dream job).

Erik Deckers owns a social media agency and has been blogging since 1997. Kyle Lacy runs a digital marketing firm and blogs at KyleLacy.com, where he is ranked in the AdAge 150.

They emphasize the importance of establishing oneself as trustworthy and credible, carefully distinguishing this kind of branding from false advertising. Here they raise and develop themes developed by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith in Trust Agents and by Dan Schwabel in Me 2.0: Build a powerful brand to achieve career success.

If you ask 10 people to define personal branding you’ll get 10 different answers. Deckers and Lacy offer this: A brand is one’s emotional response to an image or to the name of a particular company, product, or person. Given that, branding yourself means creating the desired emotional response in people when they hear your name, see you online, or meet you in person.

OK, but how? They say that a personal branding campaign involves preparation and planning. One should sit down and craft a positioning statement (what I can offer uniquely) and a transaction statement (what success will look like). The statement will include defining one’s competition and specifying one’s end goal.

Kyle Lacy uses his positioning and transaction statements to keep himself focused. His location, age, being a published author, and running a business distinguish him different from some of the competition.

In a nice touch, Deckers and Lacy created three fictional personas to illustrate the points in each chapter: ‘Allen’ is an influencer with many contacts in the marketing and advertising world; ‘Beth’ changes jobs within the same industry to climb the career ladder; ‘Carla’ wants to change jobs and move into a different industry; and the IT specialist ‘Darrin’ leaves his job every 2 or 3 years to pursue a bigger paycheck. Throughout the book, each persona applies the main points to his or her own circumstances.

The authors discuss building one’s network via blogging, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. For example, forwarding articles and links helps build relationships with customers and colleagues. Facebook’s professional pages help business owners promote and develop their brands, establish community-based relationships, purchase advertising, and track analytics.

The authors wisely realized that this can all get kind of heavy at times. To lighten the tone, they include a selection of humorous Twitter tweets they sent back and forth while writing the chapters. It’s like looking over their shoulders as they worked through this project.

In the Yin and Yang of brand building, it’s important to balance self-promotion with modesty. The authors emphasize remembering to talk about other people more than about yourself. As you promote other people’s ideas and victories you become seen as helpful and resourceful.

Although I generally like the book’s design and layout, I would register one complaint about the information-rich figures, illustrations, and graphs. They are tiny and difficult to read. Often less than half a page, each deserves a full page.

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How and Why Social Media Changes Companies

February 4, 2011

Social Media Management Handbook

Book Review
The Social Media Management Handbook:
Everything you need to know to get social media working in your business.
Nick Smith and Robert Wollan with Catherine Zhou.
Wiley, 2011. 328 p.

There are many books about business uses of social media. This one offers more than most: Beyond showing how companies can use social media, it also explains why.

In 18 chapters, the book places the rise of social media in several contexts: generational, technological, and economic. Chapters address how adopting social media affects a company’s marketing and sales, customer service and support, platforms and IT infrastructure, employee responsibilities, recruiting practices, and the duties of the chief information officer and chief marketing officer.

The three primary authors work with Accenture, a global management consulting, technology services, and outsourcing company. Robert Wollan directs Accenture’s customer relationship management service, Nick Smith directs marketing transformation, and Catherine Zhou directs customer analytics.

The 21 contributing authors explain why social media policies must cross departmental boundaries and isolated practices. They discuss how marketers and business analysts need to adopt new measurement methods to account for the streams of brand-related information consumers constantly post to the web. Marketing and PR managers who face a relentless demand for “Return on Investment” will appreciate the book’s observation that the return on investment in social media does not necessarily mean sales: The metrics a company creates to gauge its effectiveness and return should be shaped  accordingly. A company can define its ROI in social media from many angles, including an consumer attitudinal perspective, a behavioral perspective, and an organizational standpoint, as well as from a transactional or conversion standpoint.

The book recommends that companies adopt an emerging online communication discipline called Social Community Marketing. From this perspective, brand-building efforts evolve from a mass-marketing model (which aims to acquire as many customers as possible) to a more targeted, tailored approach that initiates and maintains genuine conversations with customers.

Because so many consumers use smart phones and social media apps, companies need to ramp up their communication efforts in the mobile field. Customers tell their friends about good and bad experiences at the very moment they’re having them.

Accenture’s resource-rich social media portal provides access to updated content and project templates.

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A passionate user evangelizes for LinkedIn

February 4, 2011

linked in success wayne breitbarth

Book Review
The Power Formula for LinkedIn Success.
Kick-start your business, brand, and job search.
Wayne Breitbarth.
Greenleaf Book Press, 2011.  175 p.

A couple of years ago three books about using LinkedIn were published at about the same time. Then, about 30 million professionals use used the networking service; now the figure is more than 90 million.

In the book LinkedIn for Recruiting nearly 50 professional recruiters contributed comments, short case studies, and testimonials about using LinkedIn to locate job candidates. Even if you’re not a recruiter, this book is interesting as it provides insight into how recruiters think.  42 Rules for 24-hour Success on LinkedIn is a good starter book for general readers as well as recruiters. In 7 sections, the authors discuss what LinkedIn offers, how to create a strong profile, how to build your network, how to manage recommendations, how to raise awareness of yourself by posting and answering questions, how to search the LinkedIn database, and how to create or join an affinity group. Jason Alba’s I’m on LinkedIn, Now What? aims at the individual user. He discusses LinkedIn contacts as a source of knowledge about business and political issues, career management, job leads, and consulting opportunities. He recommends using LinkedIn for “your personal branding strategy,” a theme that informs the book.

Now I can I can recommend Wayne Breitbarth’s new book, Power Formula for LinkedIn Success. It has the advantage of being more up to date, obviously, but beyond that, Brietbarth is a passionate Super User. He has taught more than 120 classes on using LinkedIn and he’s now out on a book promo tour. He uses the tool to its max, uploading videos and documents and how to’s and polls. And he shares his secrets here.

His central message is that your power as a LinkedIn user comes from your unique set of experiences and your unique set of relationships.

Generally speaking, the more LinkedIn connections you have, the more you’ll benefit. But Breitbarth emphasizes, as do others, that you should limit your network to people you really know and trust. If you have 500 connections and don’t really know most of them, are you really in a position to make many honest referrals? How many of those 500 can you really ask for help? And consider that when you add a connection on LinkedIn, you are essentially handing over your Outlook database to that person. You hope he or she will treat it professionally.

Among his many recommendations for LinkedIn users are to check the keywords in your profile and add to, or focus, the keywords, to make you more searchable. He recommends listing every job you have ever held and to detail what you accomplished, what experience you gained, and any awards received. List all your volunteer positions. Get more recommendations from colleagues present and past, and realize that even the words in recommendations are keyword searchable.

Use more applications. Post books to the reading list, point to your SlideShare presentations, post documents to Box.net and list your upcoming Events, whether presenting or attending.

Did you know that LinkedIn allows you to save your searches? And if you wish, LinkedIn will notify you whenever a new person who meets your search criteria has been found in your network.  Breitbarth also recommends joining LinkedIn Groups, and lots of them—up to 50. Your membership will increase your visibility and will help you find others with similar interests.

Breitbarth conducts a semiannual poll about how people use LinkedIn, and here he shares the results in Top 10 list.

With more people using mobile apps, I would have enjoyed reading a discussion of using the LinkedIn app. But that will appear in the next edition, I’ll bet.

Wayne Breitbarth’s website: www.powerformula.net

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Communicating research more effectively

January 21, 2011

Students and faculty who plan to attend the AERA Annual Meeting this year may be interested in a communications professional development course.

A half-day workshop, Communicating research through effective presentations, social media, and writing, will focus on these sometimes neglected skills.

Instructors will be Ron Dietel, assistant director for research use and communications at UCLA’s National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST);  Barbara McKenna, Communications Director for the School Redesign Network at Stanford University and for the Leadership for Equity and Accountability in Districts and Schools (LEADS); and Paul Baker, senior communicator at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER).

The syllabus is here

The course blog is here

The course Ning is here

Registration information is here

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In company, loneliness

January 19, 2011

alone together

Book Review
Alone together: why we expect more from technology and less from each other.
Sherry Turkle.
Basic Books, 2011. 360 p.

“Unless that’s the president, get off your phone!” headlines today’s newspaper column written by UW-Madison student Kathleen Brosnan.

“I pretty much secretly despise people who are clicking away at their phone when I’m having a conversation with them.”

Her column in today’s Daily Cardinal illustrates Sherry Turkle’s concern in Alone Together.

Turkle is the Abby Rockefeller Mauze Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT. She’s the founder and director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self, and a licensed clinical psychologist. She is the author of The Second Self and Life on the Screen.

In Alone Together Turkle shows how today’s always-on social network, with its promise to give us more control over human relationships, actually isolates us.

She also illustrates our vulnerability to sociable robots, which promise relationships where we will be in control, even if that means not being in relationships at all.

Through dozens of case studies, Alone Together shows how we keep expecting more from technology and less from each other. While we defend all this connectivity as a way to be close, we also use it to distance each other.

Alone Together also raises philosophical and ethical questions about using intelligent robots as playthings for children and caretakers for the elderly. This may seem a far stretch, but consider:

In the late 1990s children began playing with objects that presented themselves as having feelings and needs. Tamagotchis and Furbies sold in the tens of millions. They would tell you if they were hungry or unhappy. Children interacted with them as they would a pet or a human.  They identified with the doll before them, all the while knowing that it is “only a machine.”

The elderly, meanwhile, find comfort and “companionship” in Paro, a small, seal-like sociable robot developed at MIT’s AgeLab. In 2002 the Guinness Records pronounced it “the most therapeutic robot in the world,” in part because it was part of Japan’s initiative to use robots to support senior citizens. In 2009, Denmark placed an order for one thousand Paros for elder-care facilities, even though the price tag as $6,000 per unit.

For Turkle, Paro and other companion robots raise the question, “Don’t we have people for these jobs?” Have we come to think of the elderly as nonpersons who do not require the care of persons”? Perhaps those who suffer from dementia need the most human attention, not the least. And if we assign machine companionship to Alzheimer’s patients, who is next on the list?

Turkle challenges us to take a very critical look at our intelligent companions, whether dolls or smart phones, and to consider the consequences of using them as substitutes for genuine human communication.

I close with one of Turkle’s many powerful anecdotes: Hannah, a high school junior, says that for years she has tried to get her mother’s attention when her mother comes to fetch her after school or after dance lessons. Hannah says, “The car will start; she’ll be driving still looking down, looking at her messages, but still no hello.”  Parents say they are ashamed of such behavior but quickly get around to explaining, if not justifying it, They say they are more stressed than ever as they try to keep up with email messages.

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Communicating education research

December 28, 2010

Over the years I’ve fielded calls from Frank Schultz, an education reporter for the Janesville (Wis.) Gazette. “Paul, I’m working on a story about (_____). What does education research say about it?”  Frank is good at providing feedback on articles I publish in a quarterly newsletter too. He recently reacted to a story about assessment practices in Wisconsin schools, and ended with this observation:

“. . . In any case, the article makes some sense to me because I have heard similar talk from some edu-doctors around here. Maybe someone should research how to communicate education concepts with the public.”

Frank makes a very good point. There is a lot of room for improvement.  Researchers often seem to live on a different planet from classroom teachers, not to mention the man in the street.

Speaking as a communicator, I can report on a few efforts to bridge the gap, both continuing and sporadic.

Members of the American Educational Research Assn. have two interest groups to address communication issues:  Communication of Research and Research Use.

AERA’s Communication and Outreach Committee presents panels at each year’s annual meeting on communicating education research to the public. I have helped organize this panel for the past 2 or 3 years. We gather newspaper reporters, bloggers, and researchers to speak about communication from their perspective.

In my own work I take cues from my friends in science, including the Natl. Assn. of Science Writers and the AAAS and the NSF.  Last year I attended their joint conference on science research communication and can recommend it.

The Education Writers Association, which serves reporters, editors, and higher ed communicators, holds workshops throughout the year and an annual conference. I’ve benefited from getting to know reporters and other higher ed people and look forward to the next conference in April.

In our own state, WCER hosts leaders of Wisconsin’s Cooperative Educational Service Agencies (CESAs) annually for a one-day conference. Researchers share their recent work with CESA staff and productive conversation ensues; sometimes new partnerships form.

So what I describe is a mix of research and practice. Frank’s original point remains, though:  The field of education communication is ripe for more research on what’s effective.

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