Social Media Rodent Infestation a Win for Banff

A viral phenomenon that started when a squirrel crashed a picture of a couple at Lake Minnewanka, Alberta in Banff National Park has been a huge success for Banff Tourism. The “crasher squirrel” sooned turned viral with people photoshopping the offending squirrel into their own photos.

Banff Tourism was ready to take advantage of the sensation because they have been building a social media presence over the past two years including a video report, a blog, a Facebook page and a Twitter profile. So when they heard about the trend they were ready to move and to take advantage of the buzz within hours of its emergence.

They were able to leverage their social media properties creating a YouTube video, a new twitter profile @banff_squirrel, a facebook fanpage as well as a search engine campaign based around the squirrel keyword.

The social media campaign only cost about $5000 but has paid off in the millions as far as value to Banff Tourism goes with over 82 million impressions so far.

Put Up or Shut Up for Social Media ROI

Joe Marchese, the president of socialvibe issued a $1 million challenge today in a MediaPost blog called Online Spin saying that:

“If the ROI from social media is not equal to that from traditional media, my company will deliver free media until the difference is made up.”

Joe, as are most social media marketers, is sick and tired of marketers putting money into television and other traditional media and carping about successful ROI while avoiding social media because of a supposed lack of ROI based around the statement:

“We can’t measure social media ROI. But when we buy television in large amounts, we know it works.”

The challenge is laid out with the following ground rules:

1.   Agreed-upon third-party measurement firm and methodology to measure impact on brand attributes (awareness, purchase intent, offline sales impact).

2.   Agreed-upon attribution of value to customer research and lifetime value of customers self-identifying to receive future messaging (new fans on Facebook).

3.   The cost of creative production and materials is included in the resource allocation against the platform. If any creative is shared, cost can also be shared.

4.   For both traditional and social media executions, creative concepts and resource allocation to be agreed upon upfront.

There probably will not be any takers on Joe’s challenge unfortunately. I don’t know whether this is due to most marketers not knowing about the challenge or if it is just the fear of the unknown when it comes to social media but I feel that just talking about it is a step in the right direction.

I am excited to see what happens. What do you think? Let me know.

SEC Calls Audible on Social Media Ban

After announcing a ban on fans posting any game information on any social media platforms only a day ago, the Southeastern Conference (SEC), has backed away from implementing the ban.

On Tuesday, the social media world including Twitter and Facebook were angrily denouncing the ban and forced the SEC’s hand. The SEC’s new policy now states that: “Personal messages and updates of scores or other brief descriptions of competition throughout the Event are acceptable”

For now everyone on Twitter and Facebook can take a deep breath waiting to thwart another shortsighted social media policy.

SEC Fumbles Social Media Policy

In a stunning example of “not getting it”, today the Southeastern Conference today banned all use of social media during games including twitter updates, facebook updates and loading video to YouTube.

This policy was drawn up after a new television deal was reached with NBC and ESPN that is worth more than $3 billion.

Besides the impossibility of actually enforcing such rules other than taking away mobile phones from fans, they have completely underestimated the amount of noise that angry fans can make through social media platforms. We have not heard the last of this.

Must Have Social Media for any Website

There was a discussion posted by Roger Harris in the LinkedIn group Social Media Today that I found very interesting and wanted to share with you. The topic was “What top 3 social features must be included in any website?”

The answers were for the most part what you would expect and in order of responses were:

1. RSS feed
2. Social Bookmarking links
3. Blog
4. Ratings/Reviews/Comments
5. Twitter Feed
6. Community
7. Social Community
8. Social Media Address Links

The answer that hit the nail on the head however came from Vidar Brekke

There is no quick right answer to this. All the usual suspects above are great tactics, but I’ve seen to sites that treat virality as a technical challenge, while it’s really a content challenge. Ask yourself: why would anybody want to share this content. What’s their incentive (will it make them look good vis-a-vis others, feel good, or serve their self-interest of altruism in some way)?

All of the Social Media applications cannot help a website if the content is not compelling.

Once again we see that the number on rule of internet marketing strategy applies to Social Media marketing…Everything starts with content. If you can provide fresh, important and compelling content then people will want to transmit it to their networks.

Top 5 Twitter Tools

It’s Friday once again and this time the Top 5 list looks at how to get the most out of Twitter. These tools are indispensable if you are using Twitter for personal or professional reasons.

TweetDeck – If you aren’t using tweetdeck then you are not getting all you can out of twitter. This app lets you manage your twitter account from your desktop and includes a host of integral twitter tools. First it has a multiple column interface that allows you to:

• Divide your followers into different groups
• Separate columns for Direct Messages and Replies
• Twitscoop application to track what topics are hot and trending
• Search application
• Columns to follow all tweets based on a keyword
• Url shortener built into the interface
• Facebook status updates directly from Tweetdeck

Twittergrader – This tool does as the name says, grades your performance on Twitter based on authority and reach, the completeness of your profile as well as the frequency of your tweets. For example my score puts me in the 98.3rd percentile of people who have been graded and 45,840 out of 2,336,685

Twitpic – Most pictures on Twitter are shared with Twitpic. This tool is easy to use from your desktop and integrates with cell phone uploads. The site also allows people to browse photos and comment on them and tweets the comments.

Twitt(url)y –This service tracks urls by the popularity of the number of times that people talk about it. This is the Digg or StumbleUpon of the Twitter world. Twitturly also lists who tweeted about the urls and what they said directly from the Twitter time stream.

We Follow – A Twitter directory from Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg. Any Twitter user can list their profile tagged to 3 different categories.

Do you agree with the list? Am I missing your favorite Twitter tool? Let me know.

4 Tips for a Happy Social Company

Companies are rushing to social media platforms to engage in any number of marketing, pr and sales initiatives. However, without a clear corporate social media policy, there can be unintended consequences.

Here are 4 things to consider when developing a social media policy for your company.

1. Develop a corporate social media strategy in order to focus your employee’s efforts in a direction that benefits the company.
2. Create a policy to cover all employees in the use of any social media platform where it is possible that the employee could be seen as a representative of the company.
3. Make sure that all departments in the company such as HR, IT, and Legal are consulted on the development of the policy without allowing them to restrict the policy too much.
4. Ensure that all stakeholders understand the importance of engaging in social media in an ethical manner that is in the best interest of the company.

Finally make sure that your policy allows people to be authentic in their communications. After all, relationships are created between people, not between people and a corporate entity.

Here are some good resources for putting a social media policy in place.

A great resource list with corporate examples from a wide range of companies.

Dave Fleet’s article breaks down a social media policy into pieces

Social media policy samples

Mashable article that is great for a company starting out on the process of developing a social media policy.

The 5 W’s of a social media policy

What Marketers can Learn from the Iranian Election

A supporter of defeated Iranian presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi hurls a stone at an Iranian riot-police officer during riots in Tehran on June 13, 2009. Photo Credit OLIVIER LABAN-MATTEI/AFP/Getty Images

If you have been following the Iranian election on Twitter, FriendFeed or Flickr then you have been getting a lot more of the picture than traditional media have been providing and have been getting it almost in real time. The amount of information being broadcast has been amazing.

(Check out this Flickr feed for pictures from the election in Iran and make sure to refresh to see newly updated photos.)

What can be learned from this and applied to a company’s social media strategy?

The lessons that companies can learn from this are (Not to compare your company to the Iranian Government!)

1. You cannot control the flow of information about your company. Have a social media crisis response plan in place. You cannot be prepared for every eventuality but knowing what to do in a crisis is a start.
2. Make sure you are established on the social media platforms where your customers are so that you can monitor what they are saying about you.
3. Finally, get involved in the conversation. If you don’t see what your customers are saying about you then you can’t respond. As in the case of the Iranian Election people are getting most of their information from social media sites instead of traditional media and the information flow is amazingly fast and is one sided.

How to be More Visible Online

Yesterday, Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion (great blog!) along with his colleagues at Edelman New Media released a position paper entitled Search Engine Visibility which can be downloaded here.

The report talks about the 2 new emerging search disciplines and how they are affecting not only search engine visibility but also are increasingly important with respect to how brands are perceived online.

Rubel describes them as:

• Reputational Search – The premise and promise of Reputational Search is that any company, NGO or brand can apply a search mindset to tried-and-true PR tactics and, in the process, influence the search results around certain keywords.

• Social Search – With Google and competitors increasingly prioritizing social content from Flickr, blogs, Twitter and others in result pages, it is imperative that brands build out “embassies” in all relevant networks – places where employees work to serve the interests of the community, as well as their company.

Although the focus of the paper is on PR professionals, these are search tactics that all internet marketers have to master in order to better serve their clients. There are a number of case studies to highlight how reputational and social search are aiding companies in their marketing efforts.

The paper goes on to outline 5 simple strategies for gaining better online visibility. They include:

1. Research - Know how people search online and how they talk online and work to ensure that programs (both Reputational Search and Social Search) use the right discoverable language.

2. Teamwork - Although Reputational and Social Search programs can be managed by PR professionals on their own, it’s important to do so in the context of the overall search engine visibility mix. Therefore, it’s key to work with others in your organization that are executing other search marketing programs.

3. Planning - Reputational and Social Search programs take time and effort to develop quality content and networked relationships. With ample planning, companies can guide the success of these programs while minimizing risk.

4. Experimentation - While SEM and SEO typically are managed by others, there’s no reason why they couldn’t be used in a public relations context. Paid Search, for example, is the fastest way to build awareness in a crisis situation where there’s no to lose.

5. Benevolence - Finally, Google knows if you’ve been bad or good. The more you create value online and others recognize you for doing so, the more you will be able to build a sustainable and visible online presence for both your “hub” and your “spokes.”

How to Start a Corporate Blog – Resources

An important part of a Social Media strategy for companies is a blogging strategy, but how do you get started? What considerations do you need to make?

Here is a list (far from comprehensive though) that I have put together that should provide answers to these and a host of other questions. These articles and resources are by some of the most authoritative voices on the web on the subject of corporate blogging.

Corporate Blogging Strategy – a very comprehensive post by Douglas Karr, the oldest article on the list but still extremely relevant.

Blogging Strategy 101 – This article is a good place to start

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – Corporate Blogging Tips – this video is a must watch when planning your blog to make sure it fits you’re your overall web strategy.

Web Strategy: How to be a Corporate Blog Evangelist – a good post by Jeremy Owyang on how to sell the idea of blogging to your company.

Corporate Blogging: Killer App or Corporate Killer? – 7 key elements to building an effective corporate blog strategy.

What’s the Future of Blogs? What is Your Organization’s Blog Strategy? – Idris Motee takes a look at corporate blog strategy from a different perspective.

Blogging and the Boardroom: Six Steps to Starting a Corporate Blog – Great article, need to sign up for a free membership to get access. It is worth it!

Practical Guide To Starting A Corporate Blog – Jason Falls provides the 5 questions that need to be answered in order to have a successful corporate blog.

Corporate Blogging 101: 10 Easy Steps to Get a Corporate Blog Up & Running – Mario Sundar’s primer comes from his experience of starting up a corporate blog.

What’s the Process for Starting a Corporate Blog? How Long Does It Take? [Part 1 of 3] – Dana Vanden Heuvel breaks down the timelines and considerations for starting a corporate blog.

Top 5 corporate blogging mistakes and how to avoid them

A Guide to Corporate Blogging – a look at the steps that Fortune 500 companies take when setting up a corporate blog.

How to successfully start a corporate blog – a good look at the overall strategy with some different perspectives.

If you have any other great articles or resources for this topic please let me know. I am planning on updating this post on a regular basis.