A letter to CMO's, Brand Managers and in-house Marketers

Hi there:

More and more I hear from brands who've been disappointed by the work (or lack thereof) of a social media specialist. Some of these complaints are about well-known names in social media and practitioners backed by credible organizations like WOMMA, PRSA, and the AMA. With so-called "earned media" there are always going to be successes and failures, there are no guarantees here, but there are ways for brands to better vet who they work with in this field.

A Social Media search checklist:

1. Define your needs. Do you need a high-level strategist, creative, an educator on the tools, or a day-to-day team in the trenches with you? If you don't know what you need, survey your team or discuss your business goals during the RFP/vetting process and ask for input on a recommended scope of work.
2. Ask trusted sources for recommended SM specialists.
3. Find an example of a successful social media campaign that wowed you. Research who executed that and how. Share that example with your candidates so they better understand your idea of success.
   
4. Research the SM agency or individual. Check out their pages/accounts/blogs. Find out who they are. Look into their experience in the field.
5. Ask for case studies. While social media is still young, a lot of great work/campaigns have been done. Ask them what they've done. The proof is in the pudding. Even if they are providing high level strategy, I firmly believe they should have current work under their belt. How can you make a solid recommendation on approach, if you're not actively out there, working and accountable for the success of your ideas?
6. Ask direct questions about their work/role in their case studies. What was this person's contribution to the work? Who else contributed and how?
7. Ask for client references. Connect with their clients and seek feedback on the project or campaign.
   
8. Agree upon quantifiable program goals.
   
9. State clear timing expectations.
   
10. Be nimble. If an agreed upon approach isn't working, challenge your SM partner to develop a new approach. One of the best things about SM is that it IS a changing landscape and you can switch gears and try new things without a huge spend set in stone.
    

Good luck out there.

Just back from Blogher '10. Here are my observations:

1. The team at Blogher does an excellent job pulling off a tricky event. Part professional conference, part reunion, part trade show, part retreat, this event is onion-like in layers. It's not easy to produce something that is so many things to so many people. Kudos to the team for tackling this challenge.
2. I will always love Blogher, if just for the fact this is my Ms. Magazine. I'm young enough to have benefited from the doors opened by the women's movement decades ago, and I'm old enough to have seen the glass ceiling firsthand. Blogher is powerful evidence that Madison Avenue and the C-suite now understand the buying power and purchasing decisions of the WOMAN of the house. That's huge. Blogher is evidence that woman have a seat at the proverbial table, rather than serving it. The awe of having "arrived" always hits me at Blogher.
3. The community checked itself before it wrecked itself. Last year was gross. Egregiously gross. And some of the blame goes to brands for acting like desperate boyfriends and getting into bed with anyone who had a URL and some the blame lays with community members who fell victim to the gold rush and embraced swag like guest stars on "Hoarders." Hey, it happens. But you know what Blogher's? You nipped that in the bud. Post-conference, you policed yourselves by talking about it on your blogs, acknowledging it and being accountable. This year was a completely different show. Well done.
   
4. More than any other year (I attended my first Blogher event in 2005), you felt like a community this year. Last year I felt this, and it was exciting but still new. It was like Freshman coming back to college after Christmas break. This year, it was like college sophomores coming back for Fall semester. You knew each other better - online and IRL, and there was a comfortable and familiar feeling as you ran into each other, hung out and caught up.
5. PR people. Good lord. I haven't seen that many PR people in one place since CES. Maybe b/c it was in NYC and so many agencies are there, or maybe it's because Blogher now has a seat at the proverbial table, but PR people were everywhere. Don't get me wrong, I looooooved seeing so many old friends, it just surprised me.
   

Now, here's where I think Blogher can improve:

1. Session programming needs some work. I attend this show as a blogger, albeit a lazy one, since I rarely dust off this antique (or the 3 other robust blogs I authored under nom de plumes from 1998-2006). I found very few sessions that interested me. Maybe they were poorly titled, I don't know.
2. Sessions need moderation. While I recognize the "community" and "sharing" aspect of Blogher, some rules need apply to panels. For example, this is not an opportunity for the audience to do improv/stand up, nor is it group therapy. I'm sure 5 of you will argue the latter (e.g. -"But we're bloggers, blogging is my therapy!") - go ahead and take it to my comments. This is a panel. The people on the panel have been chosen because a) they have stories to tell b) they have more experience than you c) you can learn from them d) they are accomplished e) people want to hear them speak and f) they are more important than you. Therefore, when you get the mic, please ask a question. I'm not here to hear your backstory and I don't need you to provide me with your backstory for the question...Just. Ask. Your. Question. Really. And Moderators, you should be on this. You should be setting the ground rules prior to Q&A and gently reminding audience members when they start to riff. Blogher organizers may disagree with me, but without good moderation, the audience is cheated from maximum interaction and learning.
   
3. Improve the sponsor experience. Since I knew so many people working booths, I heard lots of feedback. The Blogher team has a ripe opportunity to improve the sponsor experience and like every other company providing a service, they need to listen to their funders/investors/customers/partners and improve service. Blogher charges big money to sponsors for this conference - and rightly so. It's a valuable community to support, and Blogher does a great job integrating sponsors cross channel both virtually and on-site. However, there needs to be some attention to detail in regard to sponsors, after all, they're helping to fund this conference and the community. Why not offer them some good-old fashioned hospitality? Why not provide a few meal tickets to sponsors with booths? How about a small behind-the-scenes sponsor area for them to regroup, get coffee, tea or water? That suite or area could have a flat screen running a live tweet stream of all of the tagged #blogher and #blogher10 tweets so they can see the social interaction and social impact of the event in real time. And how about a bag for the sponsors - even if it isn't the coveted attendee bag (although 1-per booth would be nice) - Blogher could offer their own swag to sponsors (great opportunity for you to market yourselves to your valued partners!).
4. Sponsors: Be cool. This is a consumer event, even though it feels like a trade show. Educating me on your product or service is cool, I get it, that's why you're here. Overwhelming me when I stop in your booth with a camera crew and amped up host with a microphone to capture my reaction, not providing me with a release to sign nor asking to tape me, is bush league. C'mon son.
   

Net net, I'm thankful that Blogher hosts this event each year, it's no small feat and is a great service to the community. This year, it re-energized my interest in blogging, gave me face time with people I enjoy who live far away, and exposed me to some fascinating new people I will keep up with virtually.

Promoted Tweets

Everyone's talking about Twitter's new revenue model called Promoted Tweets. What is it? In plain english, Promoted Tweets are just paid search. A brand buys some keywords from twitter, when the user searches for said keyword in twitter's search function, the paid search Brand tweets will rise to the top of the search queue and populate first, over the community's conversation that may incorporate the same keywords.

Someone like Justin Bieber probably won't need Promoted Tweets. However, this could have been very handy for Motrin, back in the day when the Motrin Moms debacle erupted. Or for Southwest Air when Kevin Smith shook up the tweetstream with his outrage. In instances like that, when thousands of people are chiming in and creating a tweetstorm, Promoted Tweets would help a Brand elevate their POV to high ground rather than drown in the tweet tsunami.

Am I wowed by Promoted Tweets? Not so much. Not yet, anyway. I've got my eye on the next gen of Promoted Tweets, that's gonna be the game changer.

The next gen of this model will change how tweets appear in your personal tweet stream. I have a feeling that's going to rock a lot of boats, which is why that's the next gen feature. Twitter is going to have to do a lot of testing before they roll that out. It sounds pretty invasive and in fact, may be outright disruptive.

According to the NY Times, "In the next phase of Twitter’s revenue plan, it will show promoted posts in a user’s Twitter stream, even if a user did not perform a search and does not follow the advertiser...For example, if someone has been following people who write about travel, they could see a promoted post from Virgin America on holiday fare discounts."

That's going to be tricky for Twitter to implement. Twitter users tend to be finicky curators of their "streams." A lot of people I know approach their tweet stream like a Bonsai project, ever so carefully pruning and cultivating to ensure they don't have spammers in there or people who are "too noisy" or too focused on a specific topic they aren't interested in or if they're like me, cultivating a stream that is the almost-perfect balance of lifestreamers who happen to work in fields related to mine or live in the Philly-area. Tweet streams are serious business for much of this dedicated community, so effecting the individual's curation of it may be a landmine for twitter.

That said, as an advertiser, if I could join a conversation about a topic related to my field or product and share information related to it, that does sound mighty appealing. For me, it's really going to boil down to the integration of the second generation of this product. Am I butting into someone's stream, or am I a blade of grass gently shooting up alongside the stream? Can't wait for the little blue bird to let us know.

ShePosts.com: Part Gawker, Part Mashable and all Mommy Blogosphere.

Today, at noon EST, ShePosts.com will launch. This online news destination will comprehensively cover "what’s happening in the Mommy Blogging world – from paid PR campaigns to drama with the New York Times. We’re embedded in the mom blogosphere and will share the scoop on the latest posts and events shaping the community. "

Founder Esther Crawford says that the site will include:

• Comprehensive coverage of major brand-blogger relationships
• Maintain a list of all current brand ambassador programs
• Create a ‘brand event’ list which shows who has attended private events hosted by major brands
• A complete calendar and map of related conferences, workshops and Twitter parties
• Coverage and follow-up of all popular conferences such as Blissdom, Mom 2.0 and BlogHer
  

Other things to note:

• On average, we’ll have 4-6 posts a day tracking the latest news + gossip covering the Mom Blogger community
• We’ll feature interviews with well-known mommy bloggers and providing their take on current events as well as hot-button issues such as monetization, privacy concerns, brand evangelism, and the future of the mommy blogging space. And we won’t be lobbing softballs in our interviews.

Last night, Esther was kind enough to answer a few light-hearted questions for me about the site.

What do you want ShePosts.com to be when it grows up?
As ShePosts grows up it'll include a lot more people - there are already a few well-known and loved women from the mom blogging community who are going to be joining the ranks as contributors in the coming weeks.

A lot of sites answer the easy questions like "What happened?", but ShePosts is also going to be a place to find out why it happened.

It'll be journalistic, but with a splash of gossip and irreverent snark thrown in because c'mon - this is the internet and we're living in the age of The Gosselins.

You’ve told us a little bit about what ShePosts.com is. Can you tell us what it isn’t?
ShePosts is not another community site singing "kum ba yah". Disagreements and drama are part of business, as is demonstrated on industry sites like TechCrunch and Mashable each day.

And let's be clear - mom blogging has become a business, which happens to be incredibly lucrative for a select few.

Think about this: major brands routinely fly out a dozen or more mom bloggers to get wined & dined in exchange for a few tweets and links.

While we'll be the first to congratulate folks who get it right, we're not afraid to get our hands dirty while reporting the news - which means calling companies or individuals out when they're involved in shady business.

At the end of the day we believe that accountability & recognition raises the bar, which is good for everyone.

If ShePosts were a cookie (no, silly, not the website tracking kind. The eating kind!), what kind of cookie would it be?
We aim to make ShePosts like Girl Scout thin mints, which are so addictive that you can't help going back for more.

If ShePosts were a Pandora station, what would play?
It'd play strong women who are deep yet know how to rock it. In other words, we'd have Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi" on repeat.

The Heckenbergerization of Foursquare

Well, you knew it was coming. I've done my fair share of bitching about how I think some people I know on Foursquare are doing it wrong (*wink*). And before anyone freaks out, this blog post isn't about suggesting "rules" for Foursquare because no one but the platform (or the law) can mandate how you use social media. This post is about the Heckenbergerization of Foursquare: how I use Foursquare and how I'd love to see Foursquare used by more people.

Background
Foursquare is the 1-year old child born from mobile social networking platform Dodgeball, which my friends and I used religiously starting in 2004. Among my friends in NYC, Dodgeball was our way of life.

When you're young and in NYC, you're generally out every night (your apt is too small to spend much time in it), covering multiple neighborhoods and meeting up with multiple groups of people. At first, Dodgeball was just a great way to mass text friends as you traveled from bar to bar. Dodgeball sent an sms (if they choose to receive sms) to your friends when you checked in, telling them the name of venue & the address and phone number. Super convenient. Genius at the time. (Remember, no twitter & no iphones in 2004)

Soon, Dodgeball started featuring users with the most check-in's on its' website, and that became a status symbol among core users. Later, Dodgeball added a "crush" feature. You could check out the other users on the site, mark someone you thought was cute, and if you ended up in the same bar, you'd be notified of your crush. Until then, all you knew was that someone had a crush and let me tell you - it was compelling. You were dying to know who.

Whoa. Holy tangents. Stop.

Long story short, Google bought Dodgeball, Google dicked Dodgeball, creator Dennis Crowley walked from Google and partnered with Naveen, they built Foursquare, a geo-location based mobile social network inspired by Dodgeball.

Today
And here we are. The basic premise of Foursquare remains the same as Dodgeball - it's a simple mobile way to check-in and let your social circle know where they can meet up with you when you're out socially. On the functional side, it prevents cumbersome mass calls/texts to friends as you dine and/or bar hop. It's also a way to see where your friends are without calling around or texting, if you're looking for something to do.

Bells and Whistles
However, there are Mayor, badges and points systems for the obvious reasons: incentives for people to come back/increase frequency of use and create a B2B revenue model. Obviously, venues want more check-ins from users - that provides viral value (user's check-in and their friends see the venue/tips) and it identifies loyal customers (repeat customers can win Mayorships at the venue, which smart venues reward with a freebie or special).

Heckenbergerization
I check-in to Foursquare when I'm out socially. If I check in at a venue, it's cool for my friends to meet up with me. If I see a friend checked-in'd in on Foursquare, I may stop in and hang with them.

I don't check-in at work. Work is work. I'm busy there. I just don't have time to invite friends to stop by - unless we're hosting a social event. If you're checking in at work, consider this: Foursquare is google searchable. If your boss has google alerts set for the business, your Foursquare check-in's are like punching a clock. Just remembering to check-in at lunchtime? Mmmm. Might not look so good.

I don't check in at home. I'm rarely inviting people over to my place. Mi casa es no su casa. My apt is not a public venue. Sorry.

That's it. Not so complicated. Hope you find Foursquare as fun and functional as I do.

Oh look. What do we have here? In exploring Facebook's redesign, I spied a new tab under "Account," called "Credits Balance." When you click on it, it opens this:

So here we can guess that soon you'll be paying for all of that virtual clutter people are sending (That's YOU, farmers) and those endless games of free Bejeweled could be coming to an end. But bigger news, if my theory is true, is that Facebook has finally found themselves a micro-purchasing revenue model (which includes buying social ads and likely more to come) and quietly rolled it out buried in a redesign.

Congratulations, Facebook. You just may be all growz up. Your parents, also known as investors, will be so proud. And rich.

Great little story on rainy Monday morning to share with you. This one is about the real power of social media: connecting with an expanded social graph or social network to make good things happen.

One of our Creative Directors here at Red Tettemer has been collecting clothes to send with his sister and brother-in-law as they go to Haiti with Partners in Health to help in a few weeks. They are partnering with the organization Angel Flights with to transport the donations to Haiti and last week, found out that Angel Flights would only be able to transport the goods to The Dominican - this couple would have to find a way to move the donations from there to Haiti.

Over the weekend, my colleague's wife said, "I'm going to post on Facebook and see if anyone has any ideas of how to get these donations to Haiti." They figured it was a long shot, but why not try?

A short time later they had a Facebook message from a an old classmate in California, A. She has a good friend, D. (also in California), who has family in Port-au-Prince. His brother has a friend named R., who has his own plane in Ft. Lauderdale. R. is commissioned to take people and supplies on a regular basis to and from Haiti. Once hearing their story, he said if they could get the donations down to Ft. Lauderdale, he'd load them on his next flight and fly them to Haiti, gratis.

So Angel Flights is transporting the supplies to Ft. Lauderdale, and then R. will fly all of the supplies ( well over $100,000 worth ) to Haiti. Sometime next week, some of those strangers we watch on the news may be wearing some familiar looking clean clothes.

That's social good.

RUMOR!

AOL just bought social media industry blog Mashable.

Anyone have confirmation on this? What are the terms of the deal? Do tell.