Search

Social Media Talent Scouts

0

crowd

In Jaron Lanier’s new book You Are Not a Gadget,” he discusses how the Web has spawned an almost mob-like behavior favoring Pasters (those who copy, paste and mash other people’s content) over Posters (original content creators).  The “wisdom of crowds” (James Surowiecki) mentality, he writes, supersedes individual wisdom…and that’s a shame.  

Readers of “What’s The Idea?” know I write about the proper care and feeding of Posters and Pasters in social media marketing.  Understanding the theory is easy, making it happen, not so much. The key to successful, extensible social media marketing initiatives is in finding the right Posters to pollinate the Web.  That’s the heavy lifting.  One needs to be a good talent scout. Finding Posters (in your product category) before they become too big is also key. Find them on the way up, in other words.

How will you know a good Poster when you find him/her? Here are a few hints.  They are doers — they get out of the house or building. They’re creative — experimenting and solving problems in new ways. They are not shy, though their posts and content are not “me, me, me ,me” focused. They blog and have a following. They inspire respectful comments on their blogs or conent channel.

Find a good Poster in your category and learn from her/him. Don’t seek out wisdom in the crowd or hive.   Peace!

Staples on Twitter.

0

 staples logo

A “social” friend of mine, Julie, turned me on to a Twitter site today that kinda follows one of my best practices for commercial tweeting. It’s Staples.  I preach to clients and friends that corporate users shouldn’t just broadcast promotional info and/or respond to help questions on Twitter. Rather, they should create a persona for their Twitter presence that embodies the brand and inspires positive thought and action. Think of it as a role in a movie with a motivation. The motivation should track to the brand plan and push the brand planks.

In the case of Staples, the “tweet team” consists of five people, each with their own tag. Michelle is MO, Kevin AB, etc. This allows them to be identified and personalized, plus it shares the workload. At this point, I’m not yet sure if these people are SMEs (subject matter experts) or generalists.  It would be a smart if they had discrete areas of expertise and personalities to fit. 

Buy and Multiply.

More and more companies are hiring people to handle social media.  Some are outsourcing (stopgap), others using interns (big gap), the smart ones employ senior management who get the brand strategy.  The big promise of Twitter is not to make customers happy – one at a time – but to inspire customers to buy, share and multiply.  The key word here is inspire. Tweeters have to be engaging individuals…with personalities.  And just like in a retail setting they can’t be shills. They must be sensitive, funny and friend-like.  If you are on the receiving end of a commercial tweet you need to “feel” the company tweeter – and like her/him. The persona is key.

Staples has made a good start here, let’s see hat they do with it. Peace on Haiti.

Listening Starts at Home

0

listening

So (today everyone starts their pontifications with the word “so”) the talk on the marketing street these days is all about “starting the conversation” and “being a good listener.” These are axiomatic teachings of the social media movement.  I appreciate this view and love listening to consumers, but I’d like to throw a trump card on the pile: Listening to employees. What is often forgotten in the social media world today is the role and input of employees.  Employees touch customers.  Lots of them. Employees know the product inside and out (if the company is well led). Employees have a stake in the performance of the product. Companies need to mine their own people for product and selling insights, because employees are the aggregators of smart marketing intelligence.

New Product Ideas

If you look back through time, I’d bet that 75% of all new product improvements, line extensions and new product ideas have come from within the company. Add to that all the new ideas and suggestions made off-the-cuff by employees that never saw the light of day and you begin to see a bigger opportunity.

Smart social media software companies, building enterprise 2.0 applications through which employees share, commune and contribute business building ideas, are what’s up in 2010. Listening to employees through social media will be a marketing breakthrough to Tweet about. Peace!

Mobile. Search. Ads.

0

I grew up watching advertising on television. Part of life.  Direct mail pisses me off due to all the wasted paper and atmospheric warming.  Dinnertime telemarketing annoys me but it’s hard to be mean to humans. Spam in the email box irritates. Telemarketing to my mobile though, oh that one drives me insane.

Google is about to launch a mobile phone handset business, using a Taiwanese manufacturer (“Do no evil” apparently doesn’t extend to domestic job creation) and the exciting, free Android operating system. The phone will not be free and sold “unlocked” — meaning buyers can choose their own compatible (GSM) carriers.  With most cell phones subsidized by carriers in the U.S. it will be hard for Google to make money on the hardware so what’s their play?  The answer is search ads.

 If you think search is big from your chair at work or your couch at home, wait until you see the power of search for those on the go.  People en route are way more likely to want to search for something than people in a chair – and Google knows this, hence the mobile computing effort. Google’s OS is a critical component to mobile search and by owning the phone they keep control. But toes will be stepped on. What sets my hair on fire is the thought that all mobile searches in couple of years will be wrapped in a big fat advertising wrapper. I smell an opportunity.  Peace!