This is a look at Vanessa Fox’s informative webcast called Search Marketing 101 – Does My CEO Really Need A Facebook Profile hosted by Search Marketing Now.

When people think of social networking, Vanessa feels they tend to think of the high profile stuff like MySpace and Facebook and these are great examples, but she stressed that there are all kinds of social networking. Social Networking is anywhere people are talking online. From a corporate perspective, what you are interested in – is where people are talking about you and are talking about the topics you care about (competitor brands, issues that involve your brand).

Examples:

• Digg
• Faves.com
• Amazon (is social networking because of customer ratings and reviews)
• Blogs (big place where people talk about things – voicing opinions, posting comments)

Social networking is an evolution about what has been around – people have always talked about these kinds of things offline, it has just been moving online – the web is an extension of that. It’s just now easier for people to eavesdrop about what others are thinking and marketers can listen in and hear what they are saying.

There are several compelling reasons for getting into social networking…

• Deeper engagement with customers. (An easier way than other methods like comment cards, focus groups). With the new online way, you have an opportunity to be responsive.
• Build brand awareness – help improve how people view your brand.
• Get insights not available any other way.
• Can provide more scalable ways of supporting your customers.
• Your customers are online already.

• When you pay attention to what people are saying online, you can make product improvements.

Example – Dell has a site called Ideastorm where people send their ideas and people vote on them. It is a useful way for Dell to find out what their customers like – and they get market research for free and from their customers!

Example – Vocalpoint is a Proctor and Gamble site for moms gives them a chance to see what their target market is interested in, learn more about them, and provide information to their audience that will help their customers evangelize for them.

People are always asking Vanessa if they should get involved with Facebook. It is really big right now so you don’t want to ignore it. One thing Vanessa pointed out is that she doesn’t see many discussions happening on Facebook right now. You can go on there and do a search and see if people are talking about you – but don’t be discouraged if people aren’t talking about your company or brand. What she’s noticed is that if a company has a page, people can subscribe to that page as a fan because it shows on their profile page all the groups they are subscribed to because they think it helps their profile give a more complete picture of them.

So, from a marketing perspective – this is great for brand awareness because it is basically free advertising. You have a page, people say I’m a fan of you and then on every profile page of those who are a fan, it is a free ad right there. Since it isn’t done from an advertising perspective, it is more of a compelling ad for people when they see it. ‘If this person likes that – maybe I should go take a look at it too’.

There are discussions happening on all topics. 75% of Americans go online, 88% of Americans 29 and under go online, so everyone is out there. One thing Vanessa said she has learned is that as broadband is available it causes people to go online. Broadband spurs adoption of new behaviors online. When the Internet is slow – people don’t do much on it, but when access is speedier, they are willing to try more things. The U .S. has had double the growth of broadband this year over last year. 88% of Americans use the Internet to pursue hobbies (example knitting blog). The Internet now spans just about anything you can think of.

Types of Sites

Remember, not all types of sites are right for all brands. Vanessa stressed that you really need to take a look at the sites and determine ‘where is my audience’. Here are the main types of sites out there…

• Broad Based Discussion Sites – Many have been around for a long time. Ex. discussion forums. Do a Google Search and see if you can find forums on your topic or go to Yahoo Groups and Google groups to see who is discussing you.

• Niche Forums – Pretty much any kind of company that you are involved with or any topic you care about, it is highly likely that there is a discussion site out there. These are great sites because these people are passionate about your topic. They specifically go and sign up and really want to talk about whatever topic. However, it is important to know that they will likely be very vocal about negative feedback. But, negative feedback can be helpful because it helps you address any issues that need dealing with.

• Verticals – If you sell a consumer product Vanessa suggests checking out the consumer shopping sites that are out there to see what people are saying.

• Community Answer Sites – Yahoo is most well known.

• Traditional Social Networking – My Space, Facebook – Good for traditional marketing. You can engage to a degree, but these types of sites really depend on particular topics that do well with engagement. Ex. bands do really well with sites on MySpace.

• Social Media Submission – Digg is most popular, but there are social media sites for almost anything out there. At the very least, listen to what people are saying, you can start replying and try to become a valuable resource on a topic.

• Social Bookmarking – Delicious, Stumbleupon – it is a lot about the discussion. Don’t want to create a profile on these sites and start submitting your own stuff. Don’t just bookmark all your own pages, it looks spammy and it isn’t going to cause people to be interested in you. With social bookmarking sites, 28% of all Americans have used them to create a tag or bookmark.

• Micro Blogging – Email has become really noisy. Younger people think email is for old people and what they use instead are things like micro blogging. If you do email marketing, think about what parts of my email campaign can I use for micro blogging. Examples of organizations using micro blogging…
  • Technorati – find out when their power was out and why
  • New York Times – find out when new stories are out
  • Dell Outlet.com – for sales info and exclusive sales that is available only to those subscribing to the RSS feed
  • Southwest Airlines – using it to let customers know they are changing gates.
  • Need to subscribe to the feeds and it is a way to engage in a dialogue with your customers.

• Photo & Video Sharing – Becoming very popular ex. Over 2 billion pictures on Flickr. Everything has comments – you can get a ripple effect.

• Reviews and Ratings – Been around for a while, TripAdvisor, Epinions, Amazon – all give opportunities for people to review things. These are examples of places where people are talking about you.

• Blogs – Almost ½ of Americans read blogs. One thing that is interesting in blogs is that it is creating a new behaviour in people that they never did before. Examples of types of blogs.
  • Blogs that are written about general topics – ex. boing boing.
  • Have your fan / hobbyist sites – MustangBlog.com
  • Then you have corporate blogs – CEO of Sun
  • All of these are ways about learning about your customer, providing information to your customer and then letting them have conversations about you.

Important Tips

• You don’t want to go out and start spamming. What you instead want to do is put yourself out there as a valuable resource / show that you are an expert in the area and that you want to add value and that you care about your customers. Then, you can go in and talk about your brand.

Getting Started

• Evolve What you Do Already
  • Assess your customer
  • Who are they?
  • What do you want to know?

Have a Plan

• What are your goals? – Define this at the beginning… What will you do if you don’t reach your objectives? Set up milestones that say ‘o.k. I’m hoping to get here at this point – if you aren’t there then make adjustments. Need to continually measure to see if you are meeting your goals.

• What are the guidelines? – Help by setting up some real clear guidelines. Can anyone post or are there certain people who can post? Is there an approval process – i.e. Do things need to be approved before they get posted? Take a hard look at what you are comfortable with. Set up guidelines as to how you will respond to negative feedback. Don’t get defensive – if you come across this way, that’s bad for the customer and for anyone else who is reading it. Remember you are talking to everyone, not just a particular customer.

• What will you measure? – Based on your goals, you should be able to come up with a set of measurements. Keep in mind with social media that it is difficult to come up with a specific ROI. There are hard metrics you can put in place, but keep in mind the softer measures that are just as important. I.e. What value are you adding by simply being involved?

Where Are Your Customers

• You can do searches or look at third party recommendations.
• Look at Google Groups
• You can subscribe to RSS Feeds.
• Can hire a firm to research and tell you.

Being Effective

• Be authentic and add value – be a part of the community and not there for the advertisement
• Join the conversation and add value (start as a lurker first, watching and learning what goes on).
• Be responsive
• Know you can’t control the community
• Watch for pitfalls.
• If you get involved, recognize that this is a commitment. If you get involved – stay involved.

Examples

• Wal-Mart fake blog is an example of how a good idea can go bad. Jim and Laura went across the country in their RV blogging about their trip and it was then the public discovered that they were being paid by Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart ended up having a lot of bad publicity from an unauthentic social media idea.
• Another example of an idea gone badly was when Target paid college students to spam Facebook with notes about how cool Target is.
• Dell Hell is an example of how one company turned it around by their response to people voicing their opinions about problems associated with Dell. Dell openly stated, “Our goal is to join the conversation and speak directly and candidly with our customers. The more we engaged, the more we learn and the better we can do for our customers.”

Conclusions

• Your customers are out there talking about you. Understand who and where they are.
• Create a plan with goals, guidelines and metrics.
• Listen and be responsive.

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