I'm live blogging the "Social Media Can Save Your Business" session at BlogHer Boston.
Moderator:
Susan Getgood of GetGood Marketing
Panelists:
Laura Fitton, widely known as @Pistachio on Twitter, where she has 6,880 followers.
Laura Tomasetti of 360 Public Relations
Goal is to give you a picture of ways you can engage in social media. You don't have to have a blog, don't have to be on Twitter just because you think everyone's on Twitter. You need to make social media choices that fit your values.
Susan polled audience - sees an edge towards smaller business and consultants in the room.
Laura Fitton says Pistachio has been her business name for 12 years. Pistachio was the color of her first home office. She has been a communications consultant her whole career. Her focus was helping people be more effective when they prevent and speak: "helping PowerPoint suck less."
In course of coming back from double maternity, I needed to get roots in Boston. She started blogging to get her ideas out and indexed. Since I started to read blogs, I heard about this thing called Twitter. She thought it was really dumb. She wrote the blog post about it, "Smart people are using Twitter?"
Saw guy she really respected tweeting business meetings - 19 year old in Silicon Valley. She started following him. Found other smart interesting people. YOu get a really good sense of who they are. First news case was doing that for me. She's a bit of an edge case on Twitter became guiding force for her ability to personally network, every job opportunity she's had since May 2007 has come from Twitter. She says they're amazingly good.
What could other people do? External, marketing, or internal.
Feels like we're in the late 80s/early 90s where no one's heard of e-mail. She calls Twitter microsharing. A lot of people don't liek that either - we have IM, we have e-mail, but I think as far as interoffice and personal communications, a lot of that gets mashed into Twitter. It's short bursts of text. Nothing could be dumber. It really is bad.
Robinson Crusoe, if you search for them on Twitter, they're trying to promote the show, no links, not allowed to follow anyone, prescribed tweets. Tweeting in a vacuum is horrible. using it for marketing/engagment is good.
External: Dell, JetBlue, ComcastCares as case studies. Each is engaging their audience in a certain way.
They have many twitter accounts, one is just direct sales.
If you're giving something genuinely useful. She has combo of intellectual and total screwup losing her wallet all the time and that's just how she is. The key is to make it unselfish and useful. That's what Dell did really effective - small business brand. JetBlue - conversational and attuned to listening.
She got to airport in San Francisco, five hour delay, JetBlue had warned her of delay earlier in the day and she missed it.
ComcastCares doing interesting customer service. People think they're doing it because Michael Arrington complained about Comcast one day. They were listening for two full months for sounds of people talking about Comcast. They said we have to start reacting to our customers on Twitter.
Anything in social media, start with "what do we listen to?"
Oracle has developed internal Twitter. They already have 1500 beta users in just a couple months. 140 active groups.They're integrating it with existing collaboration software and IMs.
It's the dumbest little thing ever and yet I've been gradually realizing since things started happening to her that this is something really substantial. Her bias tells her, she's really transparent, there's something big going on and she's curous to see what it is. A new way for ideas to move quickly.
Susan Getgood: It's all about a conversation and there are all different kinds. What kinds of cultures does it fit in and where does it now?
Laura Tomasetti: Her company launched and has been working with blogs since 2001. She's seen very big companies embrace blogs, others run. There is a skittishness about blogs because it is so immediate and you can't control it. The posts and the comment stream.
There are a number of opportunities for brands to work with bloggers and vice versa. Opportunity is for brands to work with bloggers.
1. Frequency - Most traditional journalists they work with get byline once per month or week. Blogging is every day. Creates a lot of work. How can you creat
Shouldn't send blogger a pitch if you haven't read their blog - sooner than two months ago.
You must be targeted - mommybloggers shouldn't receive pitches for baby stuff if they have older kids.
2. Volume
3. Quality. Focus on quality of the content. Tomasetti has tremendous respect for what bloggers are doing. Quality of content bloggers are bringing back is interesting as book and magazine markets shrink. Bloggers are bringing quality back.
How to be successful working with bloggers:
1. Match content to blogs appropriately.
2. Getting to know bloggers - bloggers should put city and state on business cards.
3. Talk to bloggers offline.
Bloggers are excited to see each other. They're on Twitter, on e-mail. Local grocery chain brought together discussion group of bloggers. You don't have to be just a tech brand, you don't have to have everything right. You have to be prepared to be honest, take tough stories and deal with it. Getting brand to continue to engage, if there are comments, questions and complaints it's important to participate in that conversation.
Possible for every brand to participate in the blogosphere. Working with StonyfieldFarm client, also has own bloggers. SF not doing blogger communication, just doing what they normally do, it just happens to be with bloggers.
Think about:" what do you want to say as a company and how do you distribute that message?
Stonyfield collecting recipes from visitors. YOu can submit a recipe, be featured there as a blogger.
How can bloggers work with brands?
Advertising and sponsorship. It's an education game to explain to a client or a brand, blog that has 2000 uvm, what does that mean.
How often is a blogger posting? What kind of comments are they getting? There are advocates on sides of the fence.
A way to monetize is to think off of your site a little bit and think about how to talk to groups like 360PR. She also thinks bloggers can be valuable counselors to brands.
They do a lot of things like giveaways for readers.
She thinks you should be paid if you're contributing an article, getting paid to review products is walking a line, calls brand and blogger into question.
Susan: Keyword is relevant. If we're relevant you have friends on Twitter/in the blogosphere.
Engaging in social media could be participating on Flickr. As individual or group, we need to decide what's relevant.
1. Last year Hewlett Packard had photo books and a series of interviews about photography. It was a way of naturally engaging with the community. When you're thinking about how to reach out as an organization, think about how to make your products work for them. Beyond just blogs and traditional socil media, urge you not to leave out old stuff. E-mail is a good sway to connect. Forums. It doesn't matter what they like, but if they're gathere together their voices are relevant.
When you think about how you engage in soial media, it's about the community and the social, people first. Think about what fits the people - your audience and what makes sense.
Laura Make Twitter not about your company, but about your readers/clients. SO by making it about whatever topic is the important thing.
Question: New blogger, runs her own company. She's feeling overwhelmed. How do you do it all?
Getgood: You don't do it all. You do what works for you.
Fitton: She could liegitimately spend whole day on Twtitter building relationships on Twitter.
She doesn't do Facebook, she didn't blog very much.
Laura T: I'm a Twitter person, for the speed. Some brands use it really well. WIth blogs, personal blog is not a professional blog. Liz Gumbinner in New York is Cool Mom Picks, MOM101, she keeps them separate.
QUESTION: If you're a business and you don't have enough time, be involved enough to say thank you.
Getgood: In fact the most important thing companies can do is listen to what people are saying, pay attention and respond.
Biggest thing you can do is to say "thank you" when someone says something.You must respond to positives and negatives.
Laura Fitton: She got her brain out there, people could she how she solved problems, what articles she linked to - tells a lot about where you are professionally. After about six months on Twitter she had no work coming in that hadn't come in on Twitter.
You can get incredibly fertile data. Earthquake on Twitter. Tweets peak at two minutes - 11 minutes later news is on AP Wire. It happens so quickly and picks up. Speed, magnitude and candor/authenticity.
With Twitter you're just throwing out there "I just wanna watch this movie."
Three million may not be a big audience but it's a hella big focus groupl. Data coming out of it is so much more natural. If you really want to know what people think about your company, your brand it's there.
Getgood: If you represent your company and you start engaging on any of these tools you have to have upperlevel commitment because what you do has to be actionable. Sympathy only goes so far. Poeople want to see action happen.
If we're not careful microbloggers can seem like walking tragedy of the commons. She gets like ten DM pitches a day. She doens't have time to go to ten sites a day in addition to her work. So make them tell you the value. Make it really clear. When someone tells her they want her to do a free webinar, she wants to know what the mutual value is. Asked to speak for free and pay to fly there, if they're making money on the fact that she puts in hours
QUESTION: Talkiong about brands connecting with bloggers. If bloggers want to , how do they get offers? Is it random?
Tomasello: Disneyfamily.comIdentifying bloggers Disney should consider for an advisory board. Bloggers don't rneed reach: some had small blgos but wrote for local papers. Had to be a good fit for the brand.
Write about the brand. Contact pr companies and brands directly.
Getgood: Write about stuff that you might want to connect about with pr partners. If you want food connections, write recipes.
Have a distinct voice. Don't write like everyone else. Add some value. How she chose people for Photographic Memories for HP went from pros to people who didn't think their photos were good. She wanted everyone so people reading stories had something to identify with.
Laura Tomasetti: A lot of times brands want to do grassroots campaigns, very expensive. Even the big brands can't afford to go door to door anymore.
Know your brand. Christine Koh has BostonMamas.com, she can tell brands what she can do in this market. One of the best things she can do is offer to someone who wants to come into this market. She owns it.
Jory des Jardins: Must find bloggers for review programs. Can know a good blogger but may not be a good blogger for a brand. Who is really active in comments? Story contests - who's active - this is who we'll contact. Engagement with brand and thoughtfulness matter. We don't want "yes women".
Marketer in audience: What is it and why should I care? Turnkey solution. Be really upfront about value and costs so I can see how this relates to my budget, know we're in the right order of magnitude.
PR person in audience: Likes to go to about page and see, "PR people, don't pitch me," or "if you're going to, this is how."
Laura Fitton: Four biggest off-platform benefits of Twitter:
1. SEO - naming Twitter account, think of keywords you'd want to spend all your beer money on and use them. There are thousands of companies selling pistachios and she's the number three.
2. Market research
3. COntent generation. You can twitter and you don't need your readers to come to twitter to see it. Make a widget that has your twitter updates.
4. Passability A neat combo of word of mouth and possibility. People have culture of retweeting and passing things along, tell other people what people are saying on Twitter.
Who cares who's on Twitter, you can still learn a lot from it.
5. A lot of pretty major web properties realizing what reach/traffic generation twitter has.
She has a "gift as a twhisperer." She called Guy Kawasaki out for dissing Twitter, they're friends now.
Even if you're not twittering your readers are probably twittering it.
For your blogger site name, there's seo value. Don't name site combo of initials, have value if you're a food site and you have the word food in it, tire dealer it helps to have "tire" in the site. Make sure domain name has some relevance to what you do becaue it'll help you in the long run.
I own pistachio but so what, it helps people find her again but it's not like she's selling nuts.
Shannon McKarney: Try to find products that are being promoted, a book being released, she writes about environmentaly friendly stuff.
Laura Fitton: Twitter page links to a special blog page. She wants people to feel more community and see how other people answer questions. Using a landing page, using your background. You can actually sell your Twitter background now which I think is a little weird. Her Twitter background is worth $200 a month with 7,000 readers.
Karen aka Sassymonkey: Blog about a prize you win. Won passes to a fiction event in Toronto, blogged about it, their next newsletter they linked to her blog.
Getgood:Not in Twitter all the time, was scanning it one day, found negative comment about a friend's company. Got in touch with her and was able to stop a negative event from happening. YOu can kill a blog storm from the get-go by checking this out. Shouldnt be in Twitter all the time, if it's not your thing find someone else in your community who likes to write in 140 characters.
Jory: For someone who's trying to get a Twitter mojo, @elisac was liveblogging a conference recently, was quoting an anti-feminist. Someone read her feed, thought she made comment. How do you stop this when you only have limited access to people.
Laura Tomasetti: Everything's permanent up there. Once it's out there, first posted to twitter six months ago, can't erase it.
Jory: Read thread, you can see her saying, "I'm quoting this person."
Fitton: People don't read threads. I get taken out of context all the time. Starting to reply to dumb questions with link to google result for it. Don't think deleting fixes it. If there's repercussions you can search and see who else is tweeting it. Put up tweets as soon as possible clarifying it. Her number one rule for dealing with anything remotely trolly - a little more than a year ago the state seized my kids, had to come to understand I just have to live so no one believes my critics. The doctor doesn't know i didn't break her arm. Right now I have to sit here and take this and people will know over itme who I am, so they won't believe my critics.
Tomasetti: Loves Twitter for many reasons, mainly for networking and for staying plugged into her interests. Wouldn't think about Twitter in a vacuum, think of what you can use it for. You're in person at a conference, what's your elevator speech. I would try to integrate when I can.
Getgood: Consider the source. Trolls are easily identifiable. Live under bridges, not very attractive.
Tomasetti: A lot of creepy people on Twitter. Think about what you want to use it for, don't think the goal should be to get as many followers
Fitton: Give me the right five followers and I'll cahnge the world, It's not about quantity. YOu don't need a lot of followers, frankly that can be a pain. If you're twittering the whole world can see your twitter page. ROT: I;m just going to assume that stalkers are seeing this. I don't use my kids' first name, because that combined with my last name will come up in Google. My boundaries are pretty wide open but I do still have them.
Audience: Being responsive is clearly important. When can you sleep?
Fitton: If it's really important you've never lost the opportunity. You can always go back. She doesn't respond to all DMs at this point. Because tweets are anchored in time with their own unique URLS, it's not just you saying what the story is, it's all very documentable. There are ways when a DM comes in, I file it.
Getgood: The key is to have whatever contract you have with your readers, be it on a blog or on Twitter, maintain it. Say you'll respond to comments within 48 hours, respond within 48 hours. There'll be something else. We don't know what it is but it will be.
Audience: If you're tweeting for clients, how do you avoid being schizophrenic?
Fitton: ALmost wouldn't Twitter for a client. No, we are here to teach, give you ideas, you need to do it. You will mistweet at some point. Try to avoid. Budget time, value and energy. Write things in advance. Takes away from naturalness but there are things that allow you to be responsive in the moment.
Fitton: What are you doing is not the question of Twitter. What you see on mine is a result of what's happened to her for 36 years. It's asking us "What do we have in common?" Someone tweets about a ham sandwich at a deli in NYC and someone else says, "Oh my God they have the best ham." That's her favorite idea of Twitter right now, because that's where she sees the long-term strength.
Tomasetti: Take a step back and see what you can get out of it. Do what works for you.
Getgood: Have a business strategy. If there's one thing you heard about today that you're not already doing. Never been to community site for a product, been on Flickr, twittering but not on Facebook. Start on community site like BlogHer. Experiednce with other things to broaden horizons of what social media means. IF we narrow that we'll be closing our minds to opportunities when we have to realize what all the opportunities are.
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