@BasilPuglisi

Content & Strategy, Powered by Factics & AI, Since 2009

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Lessons in Social Marketing and PR Disasters

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While it is true that smart social marketing can increase your business, it is just as easy to make mistakes that can cost your business in customers and reputation. It is important to learn from mistakes done by others and try not to repeat them.

Mistakes by small business owners frequently go unnoticed by the media. But when a big company does a faux-pas, the media is all over them like a wet suit.

A few examples:

  • BP: Trying to do damage control in the aftermath of the oil spill, BP started pouring money into advertising and public relations. During that time, they drastically increased the amount of the PPC (Pay Per Click). Their logo stared at you from many search result pages, increasing the resentment many people felt towards the company. On another level, they had a hacker. Someone started a fake BP Twitter account and posted satirical tweets about the situation. Things like “Look, cut us some slack. We’ve kinda just been winging the whole ‘deepwater drilling’ thing.” Social Media sites level the playing field and the company could do nothing about it. The fake account had over 200,000 followers and the real BP account had about 15,000. Today the fake Twitter account went dormant, and the real BP is up and updating regularly.
  • Nestle and Greenpeace: Nestle is a big company with many interests, thus is makes it easier to target. When Nestle announced a new product that includes Palm Oil, Greenpeace launched a campaign protesting against the palm oil because the production causes detrimental environmental effects, and cut on the habitat of orangutans. Nestle tried, unsuccessfully, to take their video down from YouTube and that caused the rage of many. People started commenting disparaging remarks on the company’s Facebook page. The company became defensive and posted “We welcome your comments, but please don’t post using a altered version of any of our logos as your profile picture – they will be deleted.” Becoming defensive and arrogant on social media will almost always turn out badly. Nestle eventually apologized, but the damage was done.
  • AT&T: A disgruntled customer wrote an e mail to the CEO of the company, complaining about the way he was treated. After sending two e mails, he heard nothing back from the CEO, but did hear back from the legal department threatening him with legal action if he will not cease and desist sending e mails to the CEO. The customer took it to the blogosphere and to Twitter and even posted the recording of the legal department. The story went viral and was picked up by news organizations. AT & T apologized, but the damage was done.
  • Honda: When Honda launched its hybrid “Crosstour” it gave a sneak peak of the design on its Facebook page. Fans were not impressed and wrote about it. One follower posted an extremely positive remark, and proclaimed how much he loved the design. It didn’t take long for fans to discover that the poster is no other than Honda’s Product Manager. Resorting to deception, Honda attracted the anger of fans. It apologized for using that tactic.
  • Domino’s Pizza: You probably remember the video which was uploaded to YouTube by Domino’s employee, showing what one employee does with the cheese (he stuffed it in his nose before putting it on the pizza). The video went viral and was picked up by the news media. Even though Domino’s swore that pizza was never delivered, it suffered a big financial loss. This is a good example of the destructive power of social media. It took Domino’s weeks to straighten things out, and this one video cost them a lot of money in customer loyalty.

 

What Does this mean?

Businesses and Organizations better get a handle on Social Media in a proactive way, policies need to be developed that invest time into employee education about social media. This provides two opportunities, first it helps prevent events and issues like this from taking place in the first place. Second, and more importantly, it provides companies with the opportunity to use the new media sources as tools for communication, outreach and sales.

Taking a proactive approach allows a company to develop a history of interaction and creates a more complete picture of its practices and personnel. This is useful in two big ways: It helps challenge bad media as it ends up one touch point or instance in a mist of values of positive history. It also educates a staff on how to handle an issue based on which form of new media the issue developed.

“Look at the New Media as a opportunity not a threat, in most cases it provides a chance to have a business, organization or individual shine, displaying who they are and what they can do. Now that’s credibility and value!” Basil C. Puglisi

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What is the SxSW? Why Would I attend?

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What is SXSW?

The SXSW, or the South by Southwest festival and conferences, regularly offers a widely diverse group of entertainment seekers the opportunity to find independent films, original music, and even up-to-date, and up-and-coming technologies.  

SXSW for Entertaining Marketing

Marketing is, of course, always targeted to those who can use a business’s products or services the most. The SXSW harbors the atmosphere for creating growth for creative and professional discovery for any and all ages and a large array of niches.

This huge pool of ideas in creative content, media presentations and musical and audio content can provide many opportunities for businesses and even for social media promotion.

How Can Business and Social Media Persons Benefit from SXSW?

The great thing is that the complex diversity of presentations during SXSW also provides a complex and diverse, almost limitless, list of marketing options.

First of all, this set of events is highly anticipated by many, giving any business person loads of time, indeed a year if needed, to plan their business and marketing strategies, and execute them intermittently.

Second, the opportunity for networking your business, its products and services, as well as its capabilities relevant to as many niches as your business caters to, is immense. This is definately the place to bring your impressive business cards, flyers, newsletters and all related material to show off and shine.

Third, you can freely sit in on some informative and highly motivational discussions and group sessions that will feature some of the leaders in the industries’ who have much wisdom to impart on any listeners.

With over 36,000 industry representatives at SXSW, you are sure to find some great new ideas to carry home to promote your own ventures, or even to delve into new ones.

Trade Show Exhibition Opportunities

Does your business directly correlate with one of the industries covered at the SXSW conferences? If you have products or services to offer the interactive, music, and film industries, than you may very well have a place as a Trade Show Representative. This could mean big business, big promotion and plain old enormous marketing capabilities, four days worth.

What Type of Business Does SXSW Need?

They need anyone from the newest start-up business with innovative ideas, to established companies and brands. Anyone who has an industry targeting studios, film, music and technology education, marketing agencies, associations, commissions and all related non-profits. Additionally there is also room at SXSW for:

  • SEO or other Marketing Services
  • Software and Hardware Manufacturers and Creators
  • Hosting and Infrastructure Providers
  • Social Media Services
  • Media Outlets

It may help to draw a more detailed conclusion on who and what types of businesses are the current exhibitors. As once you have full understanding of the types of industries allotted space at SXSW, you may actually discovery a new aspect of your own business or services’ possibilities.

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Social Media Analytics

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Social Media Analytics – Can They Be Measured and Tracked Accurately?

Since social media is one of the toughest things to justify in terms of ROI, current analytics simply are not well suited to measure this data accurately. There are many tools available that all propose to offer the most accurate results, better than any other tool available. This can create the notion that all you may need is the one wonderful tool. However, it is likely this sort of approach that has created inaccurate statistical results and other anomalies that prevents power users from building a proper foundation for analytics.

Some of the best ways to track you social media are:

  • Try Mashable Digg Analysts Tools.
  • Want to find out what people are talking about on Facebook? Soon to return should be Facebook Lexicon.
  • Build a Reputation Monitoring Dashboard can be a helpful tool and the first line of defense in brand management.
  • For those interested in mining social medias for hot and trending keywords should try buzz pocket mining tools.
  • Keotag is great for tracking tag usage.

However, remember that at best even these tools are limited to minimal measurement of brand mentions and tracking.

Additionally, it is important to remember not only the number of friends or followers on your lists when making statistical calculations, you must also take into account how strong those relationships are, which is once again an immeasurable aspect.

One of the strongest reasons for why analytics aren’t always suited to measuring social media effects properly is that the logs or even JavaScript tags are recorded from each visitor, which is where the fancy analytical information comes from. The problem is, what it needs to be able to read is all of your friends and followers minds. Back to square one again when you consider it that way, and you will continue to end up back there over and again until mind or mood reading technology becomes available.

I suppose that may be a slight exaggeration, but truly it is not as far off or as far out as it sounds. The point is, is that what you want to measure, record and analyze is the actual network of friends and followers. So although there are tons of helpful tools available, many of which provide incredible analytics for many aspects of your social media projections, the main thing you really need seems to continually go back to basics, and those basics still require a human behind the wheel. So what are some of the ways you can encourage social media networking on your own sites?

  • Send some business there way
  • Link to them
  • Answer questions they may ask
  • Send them helpful messages, not spam
  • Add them to your list or lists you support
  • Link to or shared their profile with your own users
  • Acknowledged accomplishments posted by them

I once posted about the blog statistics referring to 1000 visitors, in return I got questions like how many unique, how long did they stay, where did they come from, etc, etc  but none of these provided value for why I used the blog, after all if I have visits that I know are not mine, those visits consistently grow then the detail numbers are not as important as one would think. I found value in that if my blog had 100 page views today, that even if that was only 30 unique visitors, that those 30 unique visitors are stronger and more valuable than the 100 unique visitors with 110 page views that the next guy got. In this case my visitors where not brought to my blog on false pretences, my visitors found value in what was there. This is why they stayed and visited more than the page they landed on… this is success because I have caught their attention beyond the initial media that brought them here… now engaging them in comments, tweets and so on is another story.

So although once again, many of the social media tools have their purposes, the absolute best way to make sure your social media is effective for you and your business, is to build and measure relationships, their growth and their strengths. That is the best place you can focus on analyzing.

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Foursquare – Location Marketing and Check-in Technology

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Although the knowledge of location marketing may be old news to some, to those who are just tuning into the usage of Smartphones and as well as other advanced mobile digital equipment, it may be an entirely new concept to others.

I did an article about FourSquare a few months ago, but in review I thought it be useful to take a bigger step back and reevalute this so new visitors could see a better picture, or blog! (Original Blog Entry – Promotional Social Interactive – FourSquare)

Simple Concept?

It is indeed as simple as it sounds. Location marketing is marketing that is targeted to people based solely on their geographic location. With GPS available on Smartphones, this type of marketing is not only much more realistic, but much more lucrative. With the huge influx of Smartphones and other similar mobile devices, location sharing services seem to be drawing a large crowd.

Foursquare was quite possibly the first location marketing and sharing service to succeed. With Foursquare, Smartphone users can check in with nearby friends and family as well as take advantage of possible discounts from other Foursquare members in the area. With a unique rewards system that encourages users to take advantage of its features, it seems to have no trouble keeping many users rapt.

Who is Taking Advantage of Foursquare?

Although there are certainly specific demographics, usage can also vary depending on aspects of each locale. The statistical answer is that only around 4% of web users were utilizing the location-sharing services available to them, however, this still amounts to around 38.9 million people, certainly no small market. It is predicted that location-sharing services are expected to double between the years of 2010 and 2015.

Currently primary users are mostly younger men who use it to check in all around town to some of their favorite places, or with their favorite people. Over 70% of reporting male internet users between 18 and 34 say they have previously or currently use their location-sharing services capabilities. Females around the same ages report about a 64% usage of the same services.

Foursquare Highlights

The lady hunter. Wheretheladies.at uses Foursquare to do one simple thing, locate the ladies in the locale. Foursquare will actually retrieve public data from locations nearby and direct you towards the one with the highest density of ladies. Talking about tracking down the ladies! However, I think this is just technologically advanced enough to be considered unique and cool, and not stalky and worrisome.

  • National Foursquared?

The National Archives and Records Administration has been Foresquared. You can now check in at the George W. Bush library with Foursquare. You can now say you have step foot into the place where all former presidents have deposited some of the most important papers and archives associated with their terms. The claim is that by joining Foursquare with the National Archives, social medias can help to invite users to learn more about their nations history.

  • Check into Dinner

While McDonalds and Dominos have reported relatively good check in responses, there has been no real measure taken of just how good, and why it mattered. Even these corporate giants have no idea how many additional people, or extra sales the check in offer even generates.

  • The Best Check in Ever, The Big Game

The Superbowl has Foursquared itself too. On the recent Superbowl they created a special Foursquare badge that has fans checking in and being given a code that can be redeemed at NFL shops for up to 20% off of their merchandise.

  • Foursquare My School

Syracuse University became the third school to gain its own badge that users were able to unlock by checking in. Harvard and Stanford Universities also have their own badges as well.

There is no doubt that this kind of marketing capability could mean endless possibilities, and an endless flow of people in your area looking for your own products or services. It seems like it is just a matter of technology in mobile devices becoming more common in worldwide users, that may be preventing Foursquare from turning into a widespread GPS type of service that only directs us to where we actually want to go.

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Facebook Success Stories

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We have heard and read a lot about Facebook, about its 500 million users, about it overtaking Google as the most visited site per day. But what does it have to do with your small business? Those businesses who don’t have a department for social media? Can Facebook help small businesses expend above and beyond what they could have done with traditional advertisement?

Facebook enables business owners reach their targeted audience. With users profile information posted and open for all to see, with details about their hometown, relationship and employment status, interests, religious affiliation, education and favorite books , TV shows and movies – small businesses  can target their potential customers.

Here are some success stories from different walks of life:

Sprinkles Cupcakes – Los Angeles. A small cupcake store opened in Los Angeles. To get the word around, the owners, both former investment bankers, turned to Facebook. Every day they post a ‘code word’ on their page and give a free cupcake to the first 50 customers who whisper that word. Their fan base grew and they now have 254,785 followers and branches in other cities across the US. “Be patient with it.” Mr. Nelson, one of the owners, advises. ”People are not going to flock to your social media site overnight. Technology is about the network effect. It takes time for those connections to build.”

Wedding Photography – Mr. Meyer is a wedding photographer from Woodbury, Minnesota. He had very little luck with traditional advertising. A full page ad in a bridal magazine didn’t bring any new clients, and a trade show yielded only 4 bookings, not even covering the cost of the booth. So he turned to Facebook. Aiming at women ages 22-28 who listed their status as “engaged” in the Minneapolis – St Paul area, he connected with them and offered to join his page. Mr. Meyer estimates he spent about $300 on Facebook ads in the past 2 years and has generated about $60,000 in business. The majority of his clients now come from Facebook, either from ads or from recommendations.

Equine Dentist – Mr. Geoff Tucker from Palm City, Florida, has a very specific business. He’s a dentist for horses. His business is driven by word of mouth and personal recommendations. People like to do business in his profession with people they know and Facebook allowed him to express himself and let people know him. That led to appearances in a magazine, radio and TV. Over the past year, he estimates, Facebook has generated about 100 leads and 10-15 new customers he would not have had without a page on Facebook.

SteelMaster – of Norfolk Va. deals with steel structures.  About a year and half ago they decided to go on Facebook. What does a steel company do on a social media? They found that posting pictures of their constructions is very helpful. Not only do the pictures engage existing customers, they demonstrate to potential customers what the company can do in other areas. In this case, chicken farmers and woodworkers that usually don’t think about using steel structures, suddenly showed interest. It opened a new market for SteelMaster which they didn’t have before.

Neenah Paper – the manufacturer of high quality paper products found it extremely hard to reach new customers. Their traditional ways of making business, phone conversations and personal meetings, were not working very well. Since most of their customers; designers, graphic artists and printers spend a lot of time on their computers, they thought that social media can provide a better way to engage them. Today they have 10 sales representatives across the country and their business is on the upswing. “Social media is an invitation to have a conversation. You’re getting permission to have a conversation – a conversation that used to happen in person.” says Jamie Saunders, Neenah’s marketing manager.

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Happening Right Now in NYC: Social Media Camp

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As this blog publishes the rooms in the “Social Media Hotel”, the Roger Smith (@RSHotel) in NYC are coming alive and broadcasting socially, both in traditional and digital form. The rooms are filled with the very enthusiastic, the curious and the talented Social Media Enthusiasts of New York.

The reason? Social Media Camp: New York (@SMCNYC). As part of Social Media Week 2011 (#SMWNY) the Social Media Camp intends to bring people together with the intent to engage and inspire the Social Media community.

The internet has changed the very essence of how we market, advertise and fulfill the promotional obligations of our products or services, no matter how large or small. While many aspects of our economy continues to suffer, social media is one outlet in which advertising, awareness and education is continually shared.

Marketing is no longer limited to trained and college educated individuals but has spread to those with tried-and-true experience regardless of their educational achievements. With so many social medias available, and free to use, this method of marketing is one that any business owner, organization or individual would be extremely unfortunate to miss out on. So what is all the hype? Do you need to understand every aspect of social media to be a player in this market? Do you have the time and capacity to learn what it takes? Or do you simply need to know ‘what’s what’ before you hire someone else to manage this aspect of your business for you.

Regardless of the reasons, Social Media Camp is a great answer for many. When you attend Social Media Camp you will learn:

  • What social media is
  • Whether or not social media is right for your career or business
  • If you determine that learning about Social media marketing would be of benefit to you, you will then be able to cultivate some invaluable skills that will help make a world of difference for you, your business and career

What Social Media Camp Offers

Social media camp will entail many aspects. Experienced guest speakers will cover such topics as:

  • Why social media week should be every week of the year
  • How to use social media as a free marketing tool
  • Learning to connect your social medias
  • Reaching parents and other large markets via online social media formats
  • Social media for small business owners
  • Social Media strategies
  • Finding the users, followers and friends that you need

And so much more. With plenty of food, camaraderie and common ground to stand on with so many others, you are sure to begin your social media networking experience the moment you walk through the door.

On Demand Happenings:

  • I will have more blogs coming to you during the day, stay tuned and stay “Social”!
  • Mention for the founder @SMCNYC  
  • Stay in the loop for social media week with #SMWNY
  • I will be checking in all day from @BasilPuglisi

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Social Brand Visibility: Faves

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Faves, formerly known as Blue Dot, is a social bookmarking and networking site that installs a browser button so that users can “fave” a page they are watching.

It is a site where information is aggregated by the users themselves. They post links to interesting stories they have found and add their comments. It is rated and organized by people, not machines.

You can choose topics that interest you, create a list of those topics, or choose individual pages from the web. Then you’ll get a personalized home page which is updated with the most popular websites on your favorite list. It has tags and ratings that will help you organize and prioritize the information.

As for the social aspect of this bookmarking service, you can interact with the whole community or build your own private network of friends.

They advertise it as the best way to find high quality websites on the topics you care about, you can save websites and find then again from any computer, you can share websites with friends and you can see what your friends are finding on the web, and stay in touch  with them using comments and messages.

To advertisers they offer a number of packages to meet every advertising needs.

Similar site to Delicious and StumbleUpon, they seem to be a bit behind. Even their name “faves” doesn’t appear on most of their pages, which are still called Blue Dot. The name change happened in 2007!

Faves.com has over a million unique visitors worldwide, and 2 million page views per month. They have over 100,000 unique visitors in the United States. Almost 50% of their traffic comes from India, with the US being second with 12%. Pakistan, Philippines and China come next with 3-9% of the visitors.

Users are mostly male, between 25-34, no children, with some college education.

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Social Brand Visibility: Quora

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One of the newest ‘kid on the block’, and a different kind of social networking, is a site called Quora.

Founded by Adam D’Angelo, a former Facebook CTO , and Charlie Cheever, with initial funding of $11 million against a valuation of $86 million, it is the new arrival to the online knowledge base market.

Started in June 2009 and first launched in beta in January 2010, it went public in June 2010, Quora is a continually improving and changing collection of questions and answers, created and edited by anyone.

Users can pose questions, give answers and make the site grow. They can also comment on the answers given and vote them up or down which affects their placement on the page. It is an evolving community not dissimilar to Wikipedia. A collective knowledge base that is dependent on the collective good will of people to alert and change damaging information.

The founders want each question to have an answer page which will become the best possible resource for someone who is looking for an answer. A collection of summaries which reflects the consensus of the community. A blogging feature has been added called Quora Posts.

Quora is attracting attention since the day it has been launched because of its sleek interface and the very high quality of the answers. It is not unusual for someone to post a question and be answered by the top expert in the field, within hours. The big question is if Quora will be able to maintain that high quality of answers over time. They promised that if the quality of the answers will go down they will clamp down on new users.

Here is what Adam D’Angelo said about his site in March 2010: “Previously, there were two ways to register for Quora. You could either get an invitation from an existing user, or you could enter your email address in the box on our home page, and we’d invite you as soon as we scaled our capacity up.

We’ve gotten to the point where we are confident that we can integrate new users as they sign up and maintain the quality of the site, and so we are opening up registration today. However, we put quality ahead of growth as a priority, and so we will change plans and limit registration as necessary to achieve that goal. We are not opening up to search engines at this point.”

Competitors are Yahoo Answers and Facebook Questions. It is ranked 588 in the US and is also popular in the UK where it is ranked 462. Most of the users are Caucasians, disproportionately higher income men, childless and browsing from home.

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Brand Reputation Management: Digital & Social

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Unfortunately, very few businesses can cruise along without taking some fire from consumers, or even other companies who may be skeptical of their products or services. And just as often, it is quite possible for your company’s website and negative information about it can land on the same search page.

For this reason brand reputation management can be a vital part of keeping your company name associated with the positive aspects and reviews of your products or services. This helps to provide your potential customers with the positive results of your business.

Whether you use a company who provides the service, or create your own team to handle the job, certain services will need to be performed to create a brand management plan. Those services can include:

  • Writing articles, optimized for search engine crawlers for multiple sites being sure to incorporate high-ranking keywords
  • Crowding negative information and reviews off of the first page of search results for your niche keywords
  • Optimization of site code and content
  • Link building strategies
  • Press releases to powerful networking websites
  • Ongoing support in all of the above areas

So although blogs have their definite perks, the fact is, one disgruntled customer may have a lot of power if they too have a high page ranking and can get the views it takes to reach or surpass your own site.

So what if you do not have the funds to pay a service, or manage your own team to do so? There are a few helpful hints to lead you in the right direction, but overall, the reputation your brand carries is entirely up to you as a product or service provider. As a provider, it is also your duty to combat any negative feedback on your company.

You need to have well-written and newsworthy press releases to help stimulate traffic and manage SERP manipulation.

Build Hubpages and Squidoo lenses being sure to mention the title name and URL. These high ranking static links will help loads to push other content on your keyword down on the list.

Blogger too. The Blogger site may not need to be filled with incredible content, but be sure you use your name and title in the URL you choose.

Use social medias targeted to a more professional audience. LinkedIn and your Facebook account will help much more than a Myspace or Friendsters will.

Be sure to index all of them by using sidebar options on the Blogger account.

Build your own custom RSS feed for the phrases you want to protect.

Although this may be ideal for those who have the time, if you have an extreme amount of negative feedback on your site, it is highly suggested to retain the services of a reputable brand management company who can monitor regularly for incoming negative reviews.

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Social Brand Visibility: Brightkite

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Brightkite is a location based social network that allows its users to “check in” at places by using text messages on mobile phone that have downloaded the free app.

 

Users can see who is frequenting a certain establishments, and where their friends are at the moment. Sending a text connects the user to his group of friends and they can all join in the conversation.

Brightkite has been around since 2007. It has been founded by 3 guys Brady Becker, Martin May and Alan Seideman who founded the SMS service Loopnote. In 2009 Brightkite was bought by the mobile social network Limbo.

Once a user comments on a place or posts pictures to show where he is, other can start a conversation with him. Privacy control allows user to decide who will see their post. The service has the possibility to connect with Facebook and Twitter, and share photos on Flickr. All is unlimited and free

The Wall is a presentation of real time updates from a place, user or keyword.

One of the more recent advertising plans was with JCPenny where they offered a $10 Off coupon for checking in and sharing the location with friends (Dec 2010).

Other services similar to Brightkite are Facebook Places, Foursquare, Google Latitude, and Gowalla.

In 2009 the company employed 35 people and had 2 million active users.

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