How Social Is Your Culture?

I've ranted before against the perils of delegated social strategies. You know: Management decides it's time to get into social media, and appoints some whippersnapper to the task. The potential perils with this approach are many and severe, but even under good circumstances, this approach comes with a steep lost-opportunity cost. And that -- even if we ignore all the ways a lone-gunman social strategy can backfire on a good company -- is a very compelling reason to spend less energy thinking about your business's social strategy and more energy thinking about your company's social culture.

In a delightfully insightful opinion post on Fast Company last week, Bulldog Drummond CEO Shawn Parr advanced the observation that "culture eats strategy for lunch." The point, in brief, is that no matter how much strategic thinking you do, the culture of your company will either bolster your success or unravel your elegantly wrought plans. And while Parr didn't talk about social specifically, it occurred to me that this is a great opportunity for some dialog about the overwhelming impact of company culture on the effectiveness of social campaigns.

Good leaders know how to delegate, so there's no great shock in the observation that most business leaders offload social media projects to underlings, henchmen, and Twitter-savvy interns. But as in so many areas of 21st-century business, the anachronistic nature of the social web has changed the rules and turned the delegation instinct into a liability.

Here's why:

The kinds of interactions that build really valuable relationships -- as opposed to canned or forced marketing messages -- between brands and their followers require a real connection to the people behind the brand. At the very least, that means that the people whose fingertips are typing out tweets and responding to users in forums and other online communities need to have the power and autonomy to respond as directly and effectively as possible to your customers on the web. In a more ideal scenario, it means the CEO should be one of those people, monitoring the socialverse and representing the brand through direct engagement.

Does that mean the top brass should redirect all its energies to surfing Twitter and Facebook feeds? Of course not. But there's no question that when business leadership is in the loop on social activity as a matter of daily business, companies are more effective at responding to crises and opportunities in the social sphere. Conversely, in my observation, if your top executives aren't directly involved in your social efforts, your company's prospects for social success are limited.
Cross Department Lines

Realistically, though, executives can only do so much, and your CEO can't tackle the social web alone any better than that one intern in Marketing can. To ensure social responsiveness, you need to get people involved from all areas of your business and empower your social listening team to enlist help from anyone -- absolutely anyone -- within your organization.

On a recent visit to Round Rock, Texas, I spent some time in Dell's Social Media Command Center and had some enlightening conversations with the team responsible for responding to the company's customers on the web. The most striking thing I noticed -- apart from the NORAD-style wall of monitors awash in Radian6 social maps -- is that, for such a large company, Dell's social media team is anything but siloed.

Dell Social Media Command Center 

Rather than simply leave social response to the social media response team, Dell empowers its social team to call in engineers, sales people, shipping and fulfillment workers, and even executives to respond to issues as they arise on the social web. So if a customer has a strange problem with their laptop and doesn't get satisfaction from the tech support line, Dell can intercept that customer's complaint on Twitter and bring in an engineer who actually worked on that laptop's design to respond and solve the problem. It's a sound strategy that acknowledges how disgruntled customers use social media, and helps the company respond intelligently to inevitable gripes on Twitter and other social forums.

You don't have to be a $40-billion company to execute a strategy like this. Even if your social command center is really just one person listening watching for brand mentions on Twitter and the web during the course of their workday, you can empower that person to call in the big guns from across your organization whenever a customer needs attention. The cost of doing so is almost certain to be small -- usually just the time it takes for a department head to read a tweet and type a reply. The cost of not doing it could be (as dozens of blundering brands have already demonstrated) days of lost productivity for your leadership as you scramble to make up for an otherwise avoidable mistake.

Business is inherently social, and business in the online age demands a strategy for social media. If your business isn't already going social from top to bottom, it's time to get your leadership up to speed.

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Posted at 06:34 |  by Unknown

Do Klout Perks carry any real-world weight?

You may be more than the sum of your parts, but to Klout, you're just a number. The analytics company monitors your interactions on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and beyond. It then sorts through the data to generate a numeric score that purportedly "measures a person’s overall online influence" on a scale from 1 to 100.

A tweak to Klout's algorithm in August was designed to improve accuracy, pulling in more variables and identifying "real world reach" with factors as Wikipedia mentions.

That number's accuracy is critical for more than online bragging rights. Companies pay Klout to offer Klout Perks—"products or experiences" to encourage high-scoring users to spread the word about their brand. For example, American Express gave $25 gift cards to encourage Klout "influencers" to shop during its Small Business Saturday event last November.

But do Klout scores generate enough ROI to warrant your small business's attention? Are Klout Perk campaigns worth the effort?

Murky numbers confuse things

Unfortunately, Klout is notorious for its tight-lipped nature. To celebrate the second anniversary of Klout Perks, though, Klout claimed in a blog post that it had delivered 700,000 perks in 350 separate campaigns over two years, with 300 different brands--including big leaguers like Coke, Disney, Microsoft and American Express.

That sounds impressive. However, 350 campaigns over two years averages out to just one campaign every two to three days. And if those 350 campaigns came from 300 brands, then a lot of companies aren't double-dipping into Klout Perks. Does that mean the ROI is low?

Individual campaigns show varying value  

A sample Klout score

Chevy, however, has used Klout Perks three times. Its second campaign enabled 130 Klout users in five U.S. cities to take a Chevy Sonic for a ride. The results, according to Media Post: 16,000 positive social media comments and a handful of homebrew videos--yet only a single confirmed sale. Chevy's Klout Perks campaigns are highly targeted affairs, however, singling out users from specific niches and cities. Is that the right approach to a Klout Perk campaign? At least one social media director says no.

Morgan Brown ran two Klout Perks campaigns for event ticket-seller ScoreBig.com; one offered 155 users with high scores in L.A. $100 in freebies and a $10 credit to referred friends. A second campaign blasted out free, early access to the site along with $25 off of any purchase to 10,000 people in New York, regardless of their Klout score. The first campaign didn't generate much additional interest; aside from the 79 users who claimed the $100 perk, the company only gained 173 users from referrals. Additionally, the cost per user was astronomical given the size of the perk.

The second campaign and its shotgun-style approach, meanwhile, generated 40 times as many social shares as the first, creating three times as many impressions and reaching nearly five times as many people. Since the perks were modest, the cost to acquire new members was far smaller, and well within company goals.

Are Klout Perks worth the time, money, and effort?

It depends what you're after. Targeted Klout Perk campaigns that single out high-profile influencers may be able to kick up a lot of social return on impressions, but probably offer little real-world return on investment. Klout's new algorithm could help, but I doubt it would make a major difference.


On the other hand, a shotgun-style approach that targets as many people as possible with less stratospheric perks may just pay off—if you plan it well and leave the bar to entry low.

In the end, it all depends on execution and costs, but Klout keeps its Perk campaign fees close to its chest. That's another area where Morgan Brown's post comes in handy; rumors often cite a $25,000 starting cost for a Klout campaign, but Morgan Brown's two only cost $5,000 apiece, plus Perk expenses.

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Posted at 04:16 |  by Unknown

Location-Based Social Media Marketing for Small Businesses

Location, location, location: it's vital in property sales (and late-night comedy monologues). And if you play your cards right, location-based social media services can help you spread awareness of your business and drive customers to your door.

The check-in feature at Facebook exemplifies location-based social media use at its simplest. When you check in on Facebook, you're just telling your Facebook Friends "Here I am!" Google+ and Yelp up the ante by encouraging users to leave reviews.

Other social networks are completely built around location-based services. They turn the process of checking in at various locations into a real-world game, complete with points, achievement badges, leaderboards, and the ability to win rewards and discounts at participating locations. Foursquare's Swarm specials work best when big events are occurring nearby.

Foursquare's Swarm specials work best when big events are occurring nearby.

The biggest practitioner+ of gamified check-ins is Foursquare, but it has plenty of company. Scvngr, for example, puts a twist on the concept by asking users not only to visit specific places, but also to complete specific challenges.

When someone completes a task or checks into a location-based social network, the social network pushes that achievement to the person's friends and to anyone nearby. Gamified networks typically give users the option to post updates to Facebook as well, further extending the reach of the notification.

The Good News

Creating a location-based marketing campaign on a social network can cost next to nothing. You don't have to spend big bucks engaging a high-priced ad agency to develop a sophisticated advertising campaign. Setting up a check-in location or reward criteria on Foursquare or Scvngr is free, aside from the time and effort involved in getting it done. Once you've set up a location-based social offer, you don't need to do much to maintain it; the point is to have your customers spread the word and do the work for you.

The Bad News 

Groups of people can check in on Facebook, but providing an incentive for them to do so is up to you.Unfortunately, if your customers don't do the work for you, your location-based advertising campaign will fall flat on its face. Most businesses entice players into checking in by offering discounts or freebies (typically either buy one, get one free or buy one, get the second at a reduced price). This type of offer obviously takes money out of your pocket, but the increased sales volume might produce enough in profit to justify the expense.

But concrete numbers proving the effectiveness of actual location-based social network activities are hard to come by. For whatever reason, few businesses are willing to reveal how much business Foursquare and Facebook check-ins are driving to their door. The cost-to-benefit metrics aren't cut-and-dried, either.

Paul Ross, a vice president at analytics software provider Alteryx, told ReadWriteWeb that most businesses see only a 1 percent to 2 percent increase in sales for every 1000 Foursquare check-ins—but anecdotal evidence tells a different tale. HubSpot writes about a burger restaurant owner who used Foursquare specials to entice 161 users to his restaurant at once during a recent SXSW conference, and the owner of the Strange Brew Coffee House told the New York Times that his year-over-year business grew by 34 percent after investing in location-based social media marketing, at no additional cost aside from the 10 percent single-drink discount that owner Shane Reed offers to customers who check in.

Location-Based Social Marketing Campaign Ideas

Here are some marketing tactics you might use to attract social-network-connected customers to your business:

Give customers who simply check-in a small discount or a small reward—say, 5 to 10 percent off the regular price of a particular item. Consider offering a slightly larger reward to customers who leave a recommendation for your business on the network. Foursquare, Google+, Scvngr, and Yelp all encourage users to leave reviews after checking in at a location.

Offer bigger discounts when a large group of people checks in together. For example, you could take 15 percent off the restaurant tab when a group of five or more check in on a social network, or 1 percent off the bill for every person in a group of ten or more. You could also give everyone in the group a free nonalcoholic drink.

Offer specials for nearby wanderers. Some location-based social networks, such as Foursquare, let you create specials that appear only when someone checks in at a location nearby. You'll need to give something away—typically a discount or a buy-one/get-one-free deal—to entice foot traffic, but the offer could spark sales that you might have otherwise missed.

Create Scvngr challenges designed to stimulate sales. This works best for entertainment venues and restaurants, but it works for all types of organizations. If you're a restaurant owner with a big burger challenge, for example, you could issue a challenge on a social network and award discounts to diners who eat the entire meal in one sitting. Scvngr also lets you reward people who earn a certain number of points by doing specific things at a location. Get creative!

Not every reward needs to revolve around money. Rather than offering a discount, you could reserve choice parking spaces or prime tables for users who check in. Other possibilities include letting them skip lines, sample new products, or order from a special "check-in only" menu.

Promote your check-in specials through more-mainstream social media channels, such as Twitter and Facebook, to generate more awareness.

Foursquare lets business owners create specials that emphasize group check-ins and customer loyalty.Foursquare has lots of customization options based on specific user criteria. The Friends and Swarm special options are intriguing, because they encourage several customers to check in simultaneously or over a relatively brief period of time. The network also offers a bevy of loyalty specials based on how many times a person has checked in at a particular location.

You can offer specials to first-time buyers, to people who have checked in a certain number of times, or to whoever becomes the "Mayor" of your business. In Foursquare parlance, the Mayor of a location is the person who has checked in there the most often in the previous 60 days. Showering your Mayors with bigger discounts is a great way to encourage other folks to come in more often in an effort to snag the top spot.

Has your business used location-based social networks to its advantage? How did it go? Was it cost effective, or did it wind up being a headache? Please share your experiences in the comments!

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Posted at 02:06 |  by Unknown