PR Communications

Autos, Social Media & Pitchmen: An Interview With Peter Drakulich

Peter Drakulich has 17 years in the automobile dealership industry, today he runs a company that optimizes sales for companies, Driving Up Sales. We were chatting recently and talked about the lead generation approaches using social media and trade shows:

Exploring Online Community Myths

Amber Naslund writes about the five myths of community management:

Social Networking Is All We Do
It’s Always Online
We’re Just Glorified PR (or Marketing) People
It’s a Job Anyone Can Do
You Can’t Measure the Impact

I had a few short comments on the five myths Amber raises.

Social Networking Is All We Do

Instead Amber suggests that community networking is building relations with a purpose.

It’s Always Online

Nothing beats meeting people face to face.

We’re Just Glorified PR (or Marketing) People

Community management is more than communications, could be customer service, product marketing, or in Amber's article business development.

It’s a Job Anyone Can Do

There are different types of community managers, Amber's point about business perspective could be said to be the brand perspective, focusing on building value for customers through community management.

You Can’t Measure the Impact

I think the whole discussion about not being able to measure the impact, is really a misunderstanding about what needs to be focused upon when it comes to achieving results.

To obtain ranking with organic SEO the best content to gain attention is content that provides value and answers people's questions about solutions, rather than developing content that sells a product. I think the concern commentators have had about measuring ROI is the concern that the sole focus of a company managing their community efforts is to determine if there's a ROI. Yes, you have to do that. But to get that ROI, I think you also have to balance that with some metrics that measure participation levels and enthusiasm for the brand. Both sets of metrics will ensure you are being effective in your online community efforts.

Measurement Strategies For 5 Social Media Goals

Measuring company goals in social media all depends upon what those goals are, be they: Sales, higher SEO rankings, crisis communications, thought leadership etc. In this post I provide five social media goals and some strategies for measuring those goals.

Though one caveat I'd give is that in my experience those social media efforts that include customer service or product marketing research typically have a great return on involvement in social media and online community. Why? In addition to reaching customer support and product innovation goals, those activities are great content strategies that turn ordinary customers into evangelists (for an example, take a look at my case studies at from the Corporate Blogging Survey at my old company Backbone Media).

[A List of Goals and their Measurement Strategies]

(1) Sales - Goal conversions, some identifiable increase in conversions through social media. In the Boston AMA we've seen increased retention rates among members involved in social media.

(2) Higher SEO Rankings - Build a list of keywords and monitor the rankings as you develop content and an outreach program around those keywords.

(3) Crisis Communications - Conduct sentiment analysis to determine the overall opinion of your brand in the community, and how it moves up and down. Dell discovered in 2006 that they had a negative sentiment rating of 49% in the blogosphere, over an 18 month period they managed to get that down to 18%.

(4) Thought Leadership - Here's a combination of metrics, sales, higher seo rankings, and sentiment rankings.

(5) Customer Service - Does social media reduce your expenses in customer support? Typically in a forum community members will support other community members. Outsource your customer support to the community. Intuit has done this with their online products, reduced expenses, and increased product innovation by building a customer advisory board.

[Is Measurement A Realistic Goal?]

I was thinking that aiming for measurement goals in social media may be unrealistic because you are really dealing with relationships.  And that the path to success in social media is not through a focus on obtaining sales, but rather a focus on building and maintaining those relationships. The danger of only measuring sales related goals in social media is that those goals may drive the wrong strategy for success in social media. I think there's some basis in that argument, in that its difficult to measure the enthusiasm for a brand on the part of customers, or the strength of a relationship. 

One way you can measure a customer's commitment to a brand is through the Net Promoter Score, this is a measurement of the likelihood a customer would recommend a company. It is possible to ask customers their opinion on the whether they would recommend a company or product. Often important community members may not be customers, I think it unlikely that such non-customers would answer a net promoter score survey.

Really this goes back to my caveat about measuring social media goals, the path to success comes through engagement on topics that seemingly have little to do with direct sales, but have a lot to do with building the value a customer perceives provided by a brand. How a company provides customer service, the pace of innovation for product marketing, and operational excellence; these are not direct efforts to sell products, but they are factors that have an influence on the opinion by customers of a brand.  Rather than abandoning measurement goals for sales. I think its important to track such data, but also at the same time keep an eye on indicators for community building. 

[Measuring Participation by Community Members]

How do you measure the success of your online community? I think you determine the amount of participation by your employees who engage in social media, and the level of involvement and sentiment toward your brand by community members. Involvement could be if community members comment on your blog, or if they write about your brand on their social media platforms.

Success in increasing community member participation will probably increase if you conduct an outreach strategy or develop a reward system for involvement. Rewards in social media don't have to be monetary (ethics dictate that you don't compensate with hard money, or if you do the person receiving the compensation reveal payment), rewards can take the form of recognition perhaps by ranking participants for their level of involvement or by giving community members a platform for building their brand within the community.

Measuring participation and sentiment levels when combined and balanced with some of the measurement strategies I've outlined above will I believe help a company to achieve success in social media. Part of the reason I think this is from conversations with Richard Binhammer at Dell, Frank Eliason at Comcast, Wendy Harman at the American Red Cross and many other brand social media strategists and online community managers within brands.

What's Your Next Marketing Role, John?

I’ve been asked by quite a few people what I am looking for in my next role. Given my experience in marketing, 20 years, it all started with IBM in Hampshire, United Kingdom in 1988, and involvement in the online marketing industry, BioData in 1995 in San Mateo, I’ve worked at both brands and agencies. Though my focus since starting this blog has often been social media, really what I am looking for is a job with a company that really understands what marketing and brand is all about. Here’s an overview of the types of roles where I think I’d be able to add a lot to the company:

1) Working for an agency providing social media strategy and campaign implementation services. I've worked for a number of agencies since 2005 providing this sort of service.
2) Working for a brand managing a budget for social media marketing, including customer service, marketing and product marketing.
3) A director of marketing for a brand, managing a budget and team of marketers or interns.

Experience includes running four corporate blogs, affiliate marketing, SEO, PPC ($750k in 2005 for 48hourprint.com), email marketing, market research, blogging, social media, trade shows, website development.

Particularly good in b2b, but also have national experience and perspective on running large scale public company social media engagement.

Boston Director Of Marketing Role

Last week I was laid off from ideaLaunch, one of the company's large accounts was in chapter 11 and did not renew a big contract. The company will downsize, and move offices, but still continues to do good work for clients in content marketing, and with the LifeTips.com website.

I really enjoyed working at ideaLaunch and all the work my team and I did for the company. Thanks so much to Brindey W, Brian S, Max G, RJ and John S for all the work they did for me in marketing and ideaLaunch working as interns.

I’m looking for a Director of Marketing role again. If you have recommendations or want to share job hunting tips contact me at jcass @ nwlink DOT com.

FIR Live Blogger Relations Show About Gary Varynerchuk Pitch Email

Today I was on a panel discussion at the For Immediate Release BlogTalkRadio Live program with Shel Holtz, Neville Hobson, Gary Varynerchuk, Connie Reech, Connie Bensen and Kaitlyn Wilkins discussing Gary Varynerchuk's email about his new upcoming book. I'd written a post describing the email as a bad pitch, and Gary had responded.

At the beginning of the discussion, I gave an overview of how I saw the pitch email, here's the overview.

1) Did not know Gary before I received the pitch email, though had seen him in social media. No comments or other connections between us.

2) If you are going to pitch someone it pays to read blogger’s or journalist's stuff before contacting them. You can personalize the email.

3) The email pitch did not even talk about the contents of the book, the email seemed to be pitching traffic rather than the book. I may have been interested in getting a review copy if I'm been asked, but I wasn't.

Crisis Communications - Gary's Good Engagement Strategy

1) Engaged all of the people who commented on the post. That's good.

2) Apologized for the email, I very much appreciated that effort.

Aftermath

1) I heard reports of other bloggers getting the same or very similar emails. So while engagement was good, no change in behavior. I will continue to provide constructive criticism of Gary.

Lastly, I Recommended The Following

a) Use media relations tactics that are much more likely to work.

b) Don't ruin your reputation in the world of blogging and social media.

c) Don't ruin your credibility in providing social media branding advice.

Gary followed up with his thoughts about the pitch. I thought he did a great job of explaining why he thought his pitch could have been better, and he would not have recommended this strategy to companies. He also explained that he wanted to get the word out about his book, and connect with as many people as possible. But that he did not have a lot of time because he is very busy. While I can sympathize with Gary about being busy, any parent will understand the trials of juggling so much in their life I still think companies should attempt to personalize their posts by reading each blogger or journalist's material. Gary suggested that most public relations people only spend a short time doing this. While that's a good point, I think taking that extra step can help to alleviate bad pitches. I brought up the issue of large companies having to do pitches and hiring the staff to conduct outreach.

My impression after talking with Gary directly over the telephone is someone who is very passionate about what they do, so much so that they sometimes take a tumble in the world of social media through a misstep but someone who will be right back at connecting with people again tomorrow.

Connie Bensen gave her perspective on her comment and thoughts about the follow up from Gary. Connie had a few concerns about some aspects of the pitch, but on the whole she thought it was good because the pitch offered to help her.

Kaitlyn Wilkins was appearing for John Bell (John was stuck on an airplane) she discussed the blogger relations approach of Ogilvy with their blogger relations strategy from two years ago. Kaitlyn would not have recommended the approach Gary's colleague used. She recommended that Gary use a video in the future.

Connie Reech also could not recommend Gary's approach, and suggested Gary use some alternative tactics.

While Neville Hobson strongly recommended Gary and people not use this approach.

Several people called in, including Krishna De from Ireland and Paull Young from New York.

Krishna provided some perspective about the pitch. She looked at the intent of the pitch rather than the execution. Krishna also wrote a great follow up post, one that you should review as she provided some good advice about blogger outreach strategies.

Paull Young can in with another perspective, he recommends to clients to reduce their traditional outreach strategies, and rather use dialogue and good content as a blogger relations strategy. Shel Holtz and I discussed the issue of blogger relations three years ago in relations to a Click.TV pitch on my old blogsurvey blog at Backbone Media, where Shel and I discussed the definition of blogger relations, I’d suggested blogger relations was not media relations. However, that discussion got me off my curmudgeon horse to accept the reality that there are two definitions for blogger relations.

This discussion reminded me of my attempts at blogger relations with the Corporate Blogging Survey 2005, where the outreach program to ask people to participate in the survey resulted in a snafu on our part, here’s a post “Connecting With Bloggers To Review Your Product,” about the incident with links to more posts on blogger relations.

The show was a great conversation, my thanks to all the participants and especially Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz for continuing to host a great discussion about public relations.