The Tribune had an article recently highlighting how brands are wrapping Twitter into customer service activities.

AT&T chimed in here

“AT&T not only maintains a presence on Facebook and Twitter, but employs a full “blogger relations” team and utilizes YouTube.
“These are not PR people, they are real customer care managers who spend their days helping people via social media,” Roskopf said. “Posting on Facebook or tweeting will get you a fast response..”

And here’s one of the ways the ‘no frills’ bunch frames it.

“Twitter and Facebook are a great way to have your voices heard and a great way to voice a concern,” said Christi Day, an emerging media strategy specialist at Southwest Airlines. “I would say it is a large part of our customer communication strategy.”
The Dallas-based airline has two employees devoted to its Twitter page, and a team of three who monitor its Facebook fan page.

Every time I see these types of pieces, I think  of the handful of first-hand experiences I’ve had.

Not surprisingly, Comcast was the first real experience, followed by State Farm insurance and most recently Esurance. Most notably was the set of scenarios with State Farm.

My parents were flat out turned down for a new roof after it was destroyed by the hurricane a few years back. Of course I started venting a tad on Twitter for starters, and subsequently moved the conversation to their Facebook page.

Within a few weeks my parents were contacted by a ’special agent’ and magically the roof was replaced soon thereafter. Not trying to be big-man-on-campus by flexing my Twitter muscle, just pointing out how things have changed..whether you have 7, 7000, or 7 million followers is beside the point.  Companies now are listening. They have to. And it’s about time.

Lastly, as a sidebar that the techie in me couldn’t help but notice. Why is the Tribune still running their site on TypePad? It’s a wonder its newsroom can turn a profit after figuring in what it takes to maintain it.

The quote below from Harris Diamond reflects a few things.

While most brands are implementing social communications programs using one or two social platforms, only a handful are thinking holistically about managing communications across all media and touch points.

1. PR is increasingly taking the reins of interactive media strategies. Their DNA is founded in communications..social media is online media and the latter requires the same best practices as the offline world.

2. The touch points Diamond refers to stress how organizations are hard-pressed to scale engagement. Right now, brands are bulking up customer service teams just to respond..and they’re learning as they go along.

3. There’s a tug of war going on between the best way for brands to harness and reach customers. Do you build a hub. Do you fish where the fish are? Because the answer is of course a resounding yes to both, it becomes a question of who can lead the charge long-term. You have to wear customers down (with substance) with the value you provide and that takes time.

Too many see the “social” elements of media as a quick fix.

Shiv Singh, a VP at Razorfish, had a post this morning entitled “Owning the brand. Employees & Customers,” where he discussed ways certain brands typify the notion of being “social.”

It made me recall a recent post from Tom Davenport that cited Starbucks’ crowdsourcing site and its apparent lack of responsiveness to actual requests.

It also made me think of Starbucks’ sponsorship of BetaCup, an effort whose goal is to reduce the amount of coffee cups in landfills. If Starbucks is such a “social brand” how come they rejected a recent recycling effort brought up by 11% of their shareholders?

Here’s Tom Davenport’s quote on Starbucks’ My Idea site.

“When I checked the My Starbucks Idea site, I found out that I was not alone — there were 70 or so comments about the lack of lemons for tea. I was reminded that the tea selections at Starbucks are generally pretty lousy (only one mediocre black tea, for example) and that several times I (and apparently my fellow tea lovers as well) have been told that tea of the kind I like was unavailable. (Does that happen for coffee?) And I remembered some of my previous research on idea and suggestion sites, which found that you shouldn’t ask for ideas unless you are prepared to implement them.”

The other thoughts that came to mind were some from Umair Haque and his assessment that corporations don’t need social media strategies, they need social strategies — that is — real agendas outlining how they intend to business in our communities. The point is, brands can put every employee they want on the global stage and give them a voice, but you if you don’t provide a level of substance beyond “buy my shit” then it’s just noise. I don’t need more noise.  If these brands are leading the way, as Singh suggests below, I’d be licking my chops as a competitor.

As we move through 2010 and figure out how to leverage this hidden asset, the question is when how do you manage your brand in a world where employees can (and I believe should) be your brand advocates. Is this even possible? Does it run the risk of doing more damage to your brand than you can handle? I don’t think it does and nor does retail brands like Best Buy and Starbucks. Both are brands that I discuss in my book as ones that are leading the way with the creation of social voices – real people that speak authentically on behalf of the brand. Developing social voices has had another wonderful unintended consequence – the brands themselves have become social at the core or as I refer to them, they’ve become social brands.

Umair Haque had a rallying post today, challenging organizations to move away from pushy messaging and corporate-speak and do some good.

And what great timing. It’s becoming clear to me that most organizations have put to rest the “newness” notion of social media. It involves people, it involves tools, and it’s a two-way street. Got it.

What’s more important as I explained to a business partner recently, is seeking out projects and work that make a difference. I don’t want to help companies that are just consumed with moving more widgets.

Let’s talk about what you’re doing to change things or for my community and for my family. Haque described that a while back as scaling ambition rather than things.  And I’m not trying to be a moral highbrow, it’s just time social strategy started to impact things besides making big companies bigger. I’ll let Umair cap it off below.

It fits most organizations to a T — from Wall Street to Detroit to Big Pharma to Big Food to Big Energy. Our research suggests that 95% of organizations are unable to offer socially useful stuff that creates meaningful value for people, communities, and tomorrow’s generations.

Yet, most "social media" strategies have one or more of three goals: to "push product," "build buzz," or "engage consumers." None of these lives up to the Internet’s promise of meaning. They’re just slightly cleverer ways to sell more of the same old junk. But the great challenge of the 21st century is making stuff radically better in the first place — stuff that creates what I’ve been calling thicker value.

Organizations don’t need "social media" strategies. They need social strategies: strategies that turn antisocial behavior on its head to maximize meaning. The right end of social tools is to help organizations stop being antisocial. In fact, it’s the key to advantage in the 2010s and beyond.

Related articles

Image via Wikipedia

How can anyone really think using community and curation tools won’t be a boon to media companies and publishers? The ones that get it are already committed to establishing better ways of sharing and collaborating, baking that mindset into every part of the business.

Not so long ago every pundit preached “community” this and “community” that (me included).  Sure that’s a part of it, but in less than a few years, things like Twitter, Google Buzz and a newsier Facebook have forced private and public institutions alike to look outside of their comfy websites and community hubs.  Brands and online publishers realize the conversations happening in other online environments and niches can often overshadow much of the activity taking place on their own web properties.

The BBC’s recent statements underscore much of the shift taking place not only in media outfits but in corporations, where internal and external teams are scrambling for the right mix of engagement and listening.

"For BBC news editors, Twitter and RSS readers are to become essential tools, says Horrocks. Aggregating and curating content with attribution should become part of a BBC journalist’s assignment; and BBC’s journalists have to integrate and listen to feedback for a better understanding of how the audience is relating to the BBC brand."

Image via CrunchBase

More than 95% of Zappos’ transactions take place over the Web, so each actual phone call is a special opportunity. "They may only call once in their life, but that is our chance to wow them.."

Image by cambodia4kidsorg via Flickr

One of the other quotes that stood out was John Batelle’s prediction that the microblogging interface would change and “look nothing like a microblog.” I’d guess that has  a lot to do with the interface disappearing in some respects. By that I mean interfaces will be accessed through all sorts of services, applications and embedded widgets. And in a sense I think it’s already changed pretty drastically.

The other thing that almost everyone seems to allude to is how social media will become more entrenched in the inner-workings of companies – from their external communication practices to the way business systems are built, designed and deployed. 

That last part is why you hear so much about “social business,” which is a really tough thing to distill into something folks can understand.

If you stray too far to the technical, toolset, or process side, you sound like a business process re-engineering (BPR) evangelist. Jump over too much to the “social media” side and you quickly run the risk of being categorized as too fluffy or someone trying to socialize things that really don’t need to be social.

2010 Social Media Influencers – Trend Predictions in 140 Characters, by TrendsSpotting

As much as I’ve ripped them for their football field-sized receipts, this shows some life within their sustainability efforts. But $1 for every fourth visit? Sigh.

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Yes, it’s a T-Shirt. We don’t own a wind farm yet.

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If MySpace and Apple’s acquisition habits are any indication, tunesBag probably has a decent chance of getting acquired if they play their cards right.

The thing that has to jump out at you is the implications for social commerce. TechCrunch’s Robin Wauters also alludes to the upside.

There’s also a social layer wrapped around the music streaming and backup service, which makes it easy for users to share individual songs and playlists with others by e-mail or via social networks, as well as rate and recommend them publicly."

As Wauters showed with his upload, even though the song he tried to share wasn’t loaded to the cloud, there was another digital asset waiting to be monetized – a Depeche Mode video. I think there’s enough momentum in the video space alone to garner some attention for tunesBag. Hell, cutting a deal with YouTube might fund them alone. Either way, I like the innovation happening with music.

Image by DavidErickson via Flickr

• 7 Reasons why your readers hate your blog [10,000 Words]
  (tags: blogs blogging content+strategies journalism)

• Measuring What Matters Most [Pat LaPointe | MarketingNPV Journal]
  (tags: measurement metrics strategy marketing marketing+strategy)

I received this message from Richard Aschcroft’s agency yesterday. Apparently he’s donating the proceeds from the soundtrack he created for Richard Jobson’s "The Journey" (a short film to raise awareness for ignored womem) to help the Helen Bamber foundation. You can read about the project at the Guardian. 
via

richardashcroft.co.uk

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1. It’s never been more important to have brand consistency by bridging offline and digital. If your online persona is built on trust, you better bring that same trust to  the conference room.

2. Big marketing is still big marketing. The thing that’s different is companies are chipping away person by person instead of campaign by campaign.

3. Not enough  resources are being committed to developing a holistic approach to marketing and word-of-mouth. When you get just a fragment of someone’s work week, the result is a fragmented strategy. Go figure.

4. Practitioners are getting better at building the business case for their initiatives, and ROI isn’t always the anchor. Texas Instruments knew that peer-to-peer collaboration would help its business. Could they tie specific numbers to that interaction before they built their community? Of course not.

5. There will be huge dollars spent in 2010 on understanding influence. We’ll only scratch the surface.

6. I should have put my Twitter handle on my business card.

[Note: For a recap of the Texas Instruments case study presentation at the Word of Mouth SuperGenius conference, click here.]

Image by George Dearing via Flickr

• Oracle’s Decade of Acquisition: Innovative or Just Well-Financed? [CIO.com]
  (tags: Oracle acquisitions enterprise+software technology software business+strategy)

• Seven Predictions for 2010 from eMarketer’s CEO – eMarketer
  (tags: trends digital online emarketer 2010 marketing internet socialmedia social-media)
• Content farms v. curating farmers [BuzzMachine]
  "The next generation of content creation is here; deal with it. If you don’t like what Demand et al are doing, see the opportunity in it to surface quality content and to create competitive quality stars whose creations rise not just through algorithmic search cynicism but through human recommendation."
  (tags: curation media content news jeffjarvis algorithms demandmedia)

• Live Statistics in Social Media Right Now [Brandon Prebynski]

Image via Wikipedia

• Vertical Response Data: "Small Businesses Look to E-Mail and Social Media"
  "Three-quarters of small businesses will increase their spending on e-mail marketing in 2010, while nearly seven in 10 will put more dollars toward social media, according to VerticalResponse data."
  (tags: emarketer email+marketing socialmedia email stats)

I ran across one of Denuo’s recent projects this morning after the agency followed me on Twitter. It’s launched a program called Betacup, with the goal of eliminating the waste of disposable coffee cups. The way they’ve launched it is a living case study of online community and social activism.

They’ve made it really easy to get involved, stay involved and spread the word about something they’re passionate about. I noticed they’re also using a fund-raising platform called Kickstarter, (below) which is nicely integrated into the Betacup site.

It’s great to see a socially responsible effort that’s not just a campaign, but a narrative of what one agency is really doing to spur change. Bravo.

Betacup from the betacup on Vimeo.

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