Social Marketing - Does it matter?

It seems as if a lot of companies are, whether internally or externally, starting to embrace this new paradigm of "social" communications and networks within their communications and PR networks.  You may have seen a few signs of these, such as:

• Companies are becoming more and more engaged on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter
• Internal social networking platforms like Yammer and Chatter are being experimented with, and being adopted with a good deal of success
• Corporate executives (especially at forward-thinking technology companies) are tweeting their thoughts, visions, and expectations
• Your marketing team has used the term "fan," "like," "follower," or "engagement" in any context regularly in the last year

I believe "social" is here to stay.  The fact that Facebook's ad impressions are set to (if they haven't already) exceed Google's is a decent sign of this new reality.  Now, the question is as brand-stewards, "what do we do with this?" and "Does our engagement in social media networks really matter?"  In the B2B marketing world, in particular, this can be a quandary because much of the emphasis here is on demand generation and "leads," which social sites may be able to create in the B2C world but if we are strictly measuring the value of social in this way in B2B, can the ROI be justified?  

Perhaps leads can be uncovered through social sites, but the danger is that if your behavior is dictated by this mandate that you could either or both a.) sabotage your potential success in social, and b.) underestimate the value of engaging in this world and thus never invest the time or resource required to be successful.  

However, I believe the the key is moving the perception of social from being a thermostat to being a thermometer.  

Social is a very poor thermostat, because with the instantaneous feedback of the social world (especially with external messenging) any messaging that you present to change perceptions can potentially be, if it is contradictory with the experiences of your customers, challenged immediately by those with different experiences.  In a world where over 40% of people trust "someone they know" versus corporate advertising, who do you think they will listen to:  The brand message or their "friend" that discounts the brand message?  This interaction puts you potentially in a difficult circumstance when you are at "odds" with your audience.  The thermostat "broke" if you will, because you intended to change the environment but the environment did not change.  

It is however a very good thermometer.  Do you want to know what your customers are truly interested in learning from you?  Do you want to know what the real perception of your brand and your products are?  Are you humble enough to listen, incorporate the feedback, and change if the feedback you are receiving and your brand are not in alignment?  If they are not, it is a powerful thing to tell your customers (who are committed to you with their dollars), that we are in this together and we are going to change for your benefit.  And if they are, how can you leverage the crowd that is surrounding and loves your brand?  When the love for your brand within and without is high, this is when great marketing goes viral.  This is when friends will recommend you.  

At the end of the day, social media is not just a "marketing" tool, it is really a community-building tool that can revolutionize how you learn about, communicate with, and create value for your customers and fans.  When we see it in this multi-dimensional way, we can truly leverage its power and see the results.   

"So much cooler online"

The other day, I saw a tweet come across my feed that made me laugh out loud.  It stated:

"I still hate Comcast, but @ComcastMarc_NE makes me hate them less. Good customer service guy." (from @617patrick)

This tweet illustrates that importance of authenticity and ensuring that the interactions that you have online and in social networking as a company align with the reality of your brand.  Comcast has been very successful with using social networking, and specifically Twitter, to improve their customer service.

A banner at Dreamforce evangelized their success story with social media, claiming a 46% increase in their net promoter score as a result of using SalesForce for Twitter to engage with their consumers.  They have a team of customer service reps (like @ComcastMarc_NE) that strictly look for complaints on Twitter (which I can imagine based on the staffing in this organization and my own personal experience that there are many) and start conversations in the attempt to resolve their cable, internet, or phone issues.

However, as we can see (and a lot of us that use Comcast can attest), the offline interactions many of us have with Comcast haven't changed much.  They are giving us one image online with their "Twitter Ninja" team and another one with the contracted technician that visits our home and does very little to meet our expectations.  Are they like the guy in the Brad Paisley song "Online" who works at the Pizza Pit, drives an old jalopy, and lives with his parents yet portrays himself as a hot model from Malibu with extraordinary tastes?



At the end of the day, being successful with marketing in social media requires authenticity, and is not a highly-effective image management mechanism.  Customers today are very savvy and can tell, and in many cases will call us out if we are "so much cooler online."  News does travel fast in the social networking world.  The good news is, if we are authentic online and offline,  serve our followers, customers, and fans well, and deliver on our brand promise in every channel it will do wonders for our brand.  Good news also travels fast.

Salesforce Chatter

Attending Dreamforce 2009, as with every one of Salesforce.com's conferences you know that an exciting game-changing announcement is in the works.  This year provided one that I believe could be monumental.

Chatter.

"Chatter" is Salesforce's new "Facebook for the enterprise."  It essentially takes the "feed, follow, and profile" features and best practices of Facebook and Twitter, and applies them to the CRM cloud model that is currently in place.  What it creates is an tool where anything that is worked within Salesforce.com or communicates with Salesforce.com can "talk" to you through a live feed that is similar to the one that you see when you log into Facebook and view the news feed.

In Mark Benioff's keynote, he made this statement that I believe is the core reason why this may really take off (especially in younger companies but is not limited to).  He asked "Why is it that I know when one of my 5,000 Facebook 'friends' have gone to a certain movie but I don't know when my VP of Sales has visited a key client?"  The point is this:  social networking has greatly enhanced our abilities to organize our social lives and disseminate information in our personal lives, so why can't we have these same abilities in our businesses?   Why can't the same automatic notification I get when a picture of me from a party has been tagged come when a creative brief that I'm collaborating on has just had a key revision?

In business today, I have to either be proactive, I have to get alerted through my dedicated communications system (Outlook or IM... all disparate) or someone has to take the initiative to push the information I need out to me.  In social networking, I get all of my information socially from the feed.  Essentially, "Chatter" is their attempt to bring this metaphor and this "integration of people, applications, and data" into a single collaboration engine that is familiar to those of us that use tools like Facebook, which statistically is most, if not all of us.

Time will tell whether this bet will pay off... and if business will indeed transform based on this new metaphor.  However, considering that SalesForce.com's initial inspiration for SaaS was Amazon.com (another highly successful consumer web application), they may be on to something.

According to the folks I talked to at Dreamforce, expect Chatter to hit your Cloud in Summer '10.  However, their Safe Harbor statements indicate that we shouldn't put all our chips on this quite yet, but it will be exciting to see what it brings to the table when it is generally available.