BlogHer Update! Best practice! AllState's Lizzie Schreier
I am here in Chicago using to Blogging Best practices in 5 Case studies!
Here is case study #1! AllState!
My key take aways
1) Issues in regulated industries. Discussion of liability if someone takes advice from a Allstate message board. Seek advice from legal in these industries.
2) Have a strategy - don't just "do social media"
3) Advise with others need to "approve" social media stategy. Her example was with legal:
a) First educate them on what social media is
b) Do your homework -- know your facts. For instance, Lizzie from AllState went in with guidelines she wanted based on Farmer's Insurance etc.
c) Show it don't just tell it. Lizzie showed legal other message boards.
d) Prove, communicate, enhance, and repeat. Update the team!
3) Communications to the entire company -- not just marketing is critcial!
4) Take baby steps, and then move forward to next strategy when success in one!
5) Track the results.
6) Lizzie leveraged resource from Blogging Council.
Some cool questions:
a) What's your resource? One person.
b) What's your next step beyond the message blog? Texting Tessa! Twitter and Gaming!
c) What are your results? Lizzie gave conversion rates of 50% plus to buy insurance! Online closure is moving higher.
d) How did you start ? They did no internal work first, they went to message board first.
e) How is the overall outlook in the company now? Yes, almost too much so. We do not want to go overboard. We are still an insurance company and we need to do many critical things in traditional ways.
f) What has this progressed? We have an internal board now to share best practices.
g) How do you quantify success? We measure acquisition of new customers and conversion in all tactics. Other groups in AllState are looking at it based on their stategy in terms of brand and loyalty.
h) Do you allow other companies to come in and share best practices? Not yet but I have used Walmart internally to move faster inside Allstate.
Bottom line to me is that regulated industries can use social media like Lizzie did and use her collaborative techniques to gain buyin throughout her company!
From BlogHer's New Social Media study!
I am in Chicago at the Blogher conference, speaking and meeting with customers and partners!
They shared their latest social media study. Some interesting facts!
* 43M women read/write blogs (from from 35M last year)
* Time shift to social media continues. Women using social media use between 20-40% less TV, papers, etc.
* 75% of women online and using social media use blogging as a tool.
* Bloggers are the most prolific social media users.
* Bloggers perceive themselves as tech savvy, tippers, influencers, and experts. They crave that cross influence.
* Bloggers consider online relationships equal to those offline! Wow!
* Bloggers are twice as likely to turn to their social media source for information.
* 78% are considering their purchases more carefully.
* 25% buy more from companies they "know"
The bottom line is that blogging is growing in importance in influence, size, and fun!
Kaui features Jagged Coast
There is a 15 mile coast in Kaui known as the Na Pali coast!
Much of it is inaccessible due to its sheer cliffs that drop straight down, 1000s of feet into the ocean. But it is beautiful! I went to view it in a helicopter and in a boat to get both views. You can also hike there but they say it is hard but it is well worth the trip!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hj8cKlXcKWE]
So, how does this relate to Social Media? The reason people come here is the breathtaking view and the jagged coast. It is not because of smooth lines, and no issues. No, it is because of the balance in edginess and somewhat in the exclusivity in viewing.
This is why I believe that communities that are private or invitation only are going to be the big hit. As Jimmy Wales said "Communities can build amazing things, but you have to be part of that community and you can't abuse them. You have to be very respectful of what their needs are."
Think about how many open communities are out there and how much time you have. It is tough to join the many that exist out there today. But communities that are restrictive -- like Harley Davidson who has a huge online and offline community but you have to have a VIN number to get in! Or Adobe's biomedical community that is invitation only. Or even our IBM Software Partner community in LinkedIn that is by acceptance only.
It changes the game. I believe that creating great communities involves a few key points: (taken from "The New Language of Marketing 2.0):
Key elements of the Community
In order to build a B2B Community you need to meet these three key goals:
1. Build an understanding of the needs of the Community and an in-depth understanding of which of those needs are provided by existing organisations and how this Community could provide additional facilities, information and interaction to make it a viable entity
2. Develop a trusted environment; this can be built by engaging with a senior level group of individuals to form the core of the Community
3. Work with the core group to begin to deliver the essential content that will draw members into the Community.
Best practices:
1. It Has to Be Their Community - Not Yours
a. It needs to be independent – there is a massive difference between a company x user group and a Community sponsored by company x.
b. It should have an independent chair recruited from the ranks of the Community who is enabled to run the Community
c. Topics, discussions, etc within the Community must be driven by the members
2. You Need to Answer Their Needs - Not Yours
a. It has to provide the information they want – not the information you want to give them
b. It’s not about your products or services, it’s about building true business intelligence about your Community
3. It Must Be a ‘Trusted’ Environment
a. It must be a trusted environment a place where they feel comfortable they can share their issues with their peers in a closed environment – most high level B2B communities are very restrictive on press and vendor access.
4. B2B Communities Are about People not Technology
a. One of the key differences between B2B and B2C communities are that B2B communities need to be driven, they don’t tend to grow by osmosis so they need dedicated people interacting with the community creating content making sure new things are happening answering members needs etc.
b. Don’t get hung up on technology – yes the platform is important but a Community with poorer technology driven by the right people with drive and empathy for the Community will always be more successful than a community that is dependent on technology alone.
B2B Communities Succeed Because They Do a Number of Things:
1. The Community Empowers the Members
The Community must be run by the members to deliver the services they want.
2. They Give the Members What They Want
Above all, the compelling content will draw members into the Community.
3. They Have Passion
The Community manager needs to develop with the Community a content schedule, conferences, events, panels, webinars, surveys, polls etc. both online and offline that cover the most important issues and generate the passion for the subject matter, the debate and as a result the Community.
4. They Are For People Like Me
Our experience runs counter to the web myth that you should make it as easy as possible to join. In our experience members respect having to qualify and the fact that not everyone can join. In most of the communities in which we are involved over 30 per cent of applications to join are turned down.
This is essential. It says to the Community: ‘This is your group, it is for people like you, and when you join a significant part of the value is that only senior executives like you can take part’. Community members want to be assured they are with people like them.
5. The Community Allows Members to Collaborate
One of the key benefits to members of the Community is the ability to collaborate in two key ways:
1. To resolve common issues. Typically the core group will decide on a monthly basis what the key issues are affecting the Community and ask small groups of people from within the group to collaborate to produce white papers addressing these issues.
In this way all the group members benefit. Not only do members receive help from like-minded executives in other organisations to address the issue most pressing for them but they also receive the benefits of all the other whitepapers addressing key issues that are or probably will affect them. Because of this their productivity is massively enhanced and their perceived ability in their own organisation increases dramatically.
2. To build business together, certain communities benefit enormously from the fact that the community gives them the opportunity and technology to enable them to discover and work in collaboration with other members of the community.
3. Social networking (though in a very restricted way) is another very important element in the success of a B2B community.
Communities Must Offer Multiple Ways to Interact
There is no such thing as an online Community. Very quickly as the group forms they will want to interact in multiple ways both online and offline and it is essential to the success of the Community that this interaction is both enabled and encouraged. The Community must therefore offer multiple ways to interact. So while the on-line element is the ‘glue’ that sticks it all together, B2B communities are based on trust and trust only comes following face to face engagement – so regular meetings and events are vital to the success of a B2B community.
What do you think it takes to drive a great community?
IDC ITpartner.net on Social Media!!!
Well– you can’t go too far these days without reading or hearing about Twitter, or LinkedIn, or Facebook, or blogs, and the list goes on.
And it’s fun it seems. But is it for business use? Or is this all a big waste of time?
I’d argue that it’s worth looking at – but there has to be a business case on the use of each.
Let’s have a look at some very recent survey results about how solution providers (VARs, RSIs, ISVs) are using Web 2.0 sites and technologies for business use – both today, and what their plans are in the future. Current Use is in Yellow. Planned Use is in Red. IDC split up the responses so that they were either in Currently using, future using, or neither.
LinkedIn , for networking use has the most users at over 50% of all those surveyed. This makes sense. LinkedIn has become very pervasive in the last few years.
Not for business use in this case – but a good benchmark – is the use of Facebook for personal reasons. Almost 40% of solution providers were using Facebook for personal reasons.
Something that IDC finds is very useful is LinkedIn Groups. A new piece of functionality within LinkedIn that allows people to participate in communities of interest.
From the Social Media for IBM Partners talk -- Part 2
@: At reply. A public tweet directed at a fellow Twitterer, such as @Barack Obama, that shows up in their Twitter stream.
DM: Direct Message. A private message that appears in a Twitter inbox. You can only direct message people who follow you.
RT: Retweet. A tweet that you like so much that you are resending to your followers. Usually includes credit to original tweeter, such as RT @BarackObama, followed by the tweet.
Whale Icon: The iconic blue whale that pops up when Twitter is down. It appeared frequently in Twitter's first year and a half.
#: Hashtag. Used to designate a topic such as #SanDiegoFire so that people can easily search for tweets on a topic. (It is totally unnecessary, though, because a search on a keyword without the # returns the same results).
Nudge: A feature that lets you send a note to a Twitterer encouraging them to tweet more frequently. You can only nudge people who are tweeting from a mobile phone.
Definitions from my Social Media Presentation to IBM Channel Partners! Part 1
Virtual World: Immersive social experience
Facebook / Myspace: Social Networking
LinkedIn: Career-focused networking
Viral: Leveraging pre-existing social networks in self-replicating process
Serious Game: New way of education and enablement
Widget: Mini-web app
Wiki: Users freely create and edit web site content
Blog: Web-based discussion tool
Twitter: Micro-blogging web and mobile-based
Yammer: Corporate micro-blogging, segmented by enterprise domain name
RSS: Web-feed format used to publish frequently updated content
Podcast: Series of digital media files distributed over the internet for playback on portable devices
Videocast: Online delivery of video clips
Survey Monkey: Online Survey & Polling platform
SEO: Search engine optimization – maximizing exposure on search engines
Sunrise at a Crator in Hawaii! Consistency yet branded!
While on Maui, we also went to see the sunrise at the Mt. Haleakala ! You get up super early -- yes, 2AM -- and drive up a very curvy road to see a breathtaking sunrise over a crator. But a sunrise? Haven't you seen a sunrise? (Take a peek!!)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoD1UxXDvac]
The beauty of this sunrise was amazing to me. As I talked to my tour guide, he was busy snapping pictures. I asked him why? Doesn't he see this same view everyday? He said something impactful .. while he does see it everyday, it was that consistency of beauty (Haleakala's brand!) that attracted him and made this tour what it was today! One of the most popular in Hawaii!
So while we tend to think that consistency is boring, his view was it was that consistency that made him intrigued. As I watched this glorious event, I thought again about my passion of Social Media. All of us have a multitude of tools, but the consistency of our brand in each is appreciated and celebrated. In a way, the consistency makes us unique.
For example, is your picture -- part of your brand -- consistent in Twitter, your Blog, your Blogher profile, your LinkedIn account. What's the value of that consistency? Well, your brand is repeated. That consistent repetition makes your brand known -- in this case, for your first impression! As I walk into a room to keynote, people know me from that repeated pciture!
What elements should be consistent?
As you look at your social media strategy, note your common "branding" elements. Things like taglines, pictures, resumes, should be consistent so that you are instantly branded.
What do you think? Anyone disagree?
Kilauea - The Most Active Volcano! Active matters!
Kīlauea is the youngest and southeastern most volcano on the Big Island of Hawai`i. Since 1952 there have been 34 eruptions, and since January 1983 eruptive activity has been continuous along the east rift zone. Many believe that Kīlauea ranks among the world's most active volcanoes.
Because of its activity, it happens to be the most visited, and most photographed volcano in the world! I went to the park to see the volcano and was hit by the hot steam, and smelled the sulfur (in fact it got shut down for a while I was there due to the dangerous levels that day). Since we were on a cruise, we saw at night the flowing lave into the sea! Pretty cool!
How does this relate to social media? Well, Kilauea is so super cool because it is active. The same is true with blogging, twittering etc. As I was on vacation and offline, my readership declined, my interest waned and fewer people read what I had written because it was old.
Activity breeds interest and sharing -- like I did with the volcano picture. You feel compelled to share that which is cool, interesting and relevant. To be cool, interesting and relevant you really need to be contributing on an active basis.
The more activity, the better. But be aware. It is not just meaningless contribution, but contribution that is cool and matters!
I will also be taking more of my advice and ensuring that I contribute here more!!! Many thanks!
The Seven Sacred Pools in Hawaii! A Story Lives in your Heart Forever!
I was just in Hawaii and will feature a series on the relationship of those sidetrips to Social Media! Too much vacation? Tell me what you think!
While in Paradise, I went to visit the 7 Sacred Pools in Hawaii's Maui Island! These "7" pools are beautiful -- and there are more than 7 for sure! They are freshwater but touch the sea! The Seven Sacred Pools are near the burial site of Charles Lindbergh, as well as over Jim Nabors's macadamia nut farm!!
The assorted pools vary in elevation and size and are most pronounced when rainfalls are heavy. In 1967, He Chas agreed to donate a 58-acre tract to the Valley of the Seven Sacred Pools 'Park. Then in 1987, in a bid to attract tourists, a few local businessmen apparently concocted a "legend' that there were seven pools leading to the ocean, and that they were considered sacred. While there are debates, my tour guide said that there is no evidence of any religious affiliation. To get to the end of the road and the hotel the business men built, you have to go through 617 twists and turns on the 53-mile road to the village!
While I am not going to debate whether these pools are sacred or not, the 7 Sacred Pool story is an interesting one. And yes I did go!!!!
A story can make a huge difference. My favorite quote is
"Tell me the facts and I'll learn. Tell me the truth and I'll believe. But tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever." It changed a little town that was too hard to get to, into a major Maui tourist attraction.
In Social media marketing, we tend to think it is the tool -- Twitter, Blogs, Facebook -- is the key. Not the story when in reality it is the story you are telling, that will make all the difference in the world. Is it compelling? It is relevant and enduring? Those are questions all need to ask before they JUST jump into the tool!
What do you think?