The Social Media Marketing Blog: Charlene Li

Sunday, March 09, 2008

Creating Social Strategies

I'm sitting in on Charlene Li's session on Creating Social Strategies at SXSW. Here's a brief overview of her very thoughtful and comprehensive presentation.

Straight off, Charlene defined "groundswell" - the social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations.

According to Charlene (and from my own experiences), most companies are aware of this, but don't truly understand - they just don't get it. So how to go about getting a social strategy planned, created and adopted within an organization?

A word about radicals/revolutionaries
Are you going to be a radical like Thomas Paine? He sparked the American revolution, then continued to foment revolution in France. He became so radical that no one respected him any more.

Or a revolutionary like Thomas Jefferson? A more respected leader, even though he was a staunch defender of Thomas Paine - he worked with others, put plans into place and brought ideas to life.

POST - the process to create a social strategy

People - assess your customers' social activities
Objectives - decide what you want to accomplish
Strategy - plan for how relationships with customers will evolve
Technology - decide which tools/technologies to use

People
The ladder of participation (see below) is made up of creators (18% adults/39% youths), critics (25%/43%), collectors (12%/14%), joiners (25%/58%), spectators (48%/66%), inactives (44%/26%)

Age is a major driver of adoption. For a more detailed breakout of these numbers and fuller descriptions of each category, see Charlene's original post.

Objectives
Traditional roles are changing under the groundswell, from more unidirectional to bidirectional. Some examples:
Research --> listening
Marketing --> Talking
Sales --> Energizing
Support --> Supporting
Development --> Embracing

How are revolutionaries doing it?

BlendTec - used YouTube videos for the now famous Will It Blend series. George Wright, BlendTec's VP of Marketing spent $50 to get this started.
Dan Black, director of recruiting for Ernst & Young used Facebook to connect with students. But he did so in a different way. Lots of questions were asked on E&Y's wall, and he wrote back in a very personal tone. Realized that this was one of the few channels to have a direct conversation with students.
Gary Koelling & Steve Bendt at Best Buy decided to start BlueShirtNation for Best Buy employees. It turned out to be a great support system for employees.
Josh Bancroft at Intel - created an internal wiki for employees: Intelpedia. He got it done quickly and without the usual corporate red tape. Demonstrated that people were already using it/contributing to it by the time management got back to him to discuss the idea.

How to get it done
Lionel Menchaca at Dell.com was a product tech guy, had been there for 17 years - he was knowledgeable and he was a connector. He realized that customer service + product development + blog = getting Dell out of hell. He got direct support from Michael Dell to keep going, personally address concerns & negative comments. Very quickly, the culture within Dell changed:

In the course of 2 months, they took customer suggestions and launched a new product.
DellShares - the Investor Relations team of Dell is now blogging.

Find & support your revolutionaries

Find the people who are most passionate about developing relationships
Educate your executives - teach them about the benefits, and actually get them involved in them
Put someone in charge - someone who has authority
Define the processes & policies - yes, the legal department may need to be involved, but it's best to outline it up front
Make it safe to fail

Final thoughts:

Make it stick with frameworks
Start small, think big
Make social strategy the responsibility of every employee
Be patient - cultural change takes time

Update: If you'd like to see Charlene's slides, they're available on SlideShare.

iPhone, Meet Total Blender

Of the videos I've seen this week, our friends over at BlendTec are the winners, hands down.

This week, the CEO (as usual) takes his position next to the blender and whips out his brand new iPhone. He quickly tosses it in the blender, selects "Smoothie," and...

I've been following the Will It Blend? videos for quite some time and they're always entertaining. But beyond the awareness/entertainment factor, every marketer wants to know: how does this translate into sales? According to BlendTec, they've seen a huge spike in sales.

Charlene Li sums up the success factors rather well in a post on her blog, citing authenticity, humor, originality and a connection to the value of the product. I don't know about you, but if I were to go blender shopping before seeing these videos, I'd normally have no clue as to what I'd buy. I'd probably pick some mid-range model and hope for the best.

But now if you say "blender," I automatically picture one of these videos in my mind and picture how the product performs. While I might not be in the market for a $400 blender, it's top of mind when I'm considering a purchase. And that's what any good marketer wants.

The relative low cost of using a social network like YouTube for a marketing campaign is certainly attractive in these days of tight marketing budgets. But as Charlene pointed out, there are a number of reasons this one works. But there is one that I think she missed: aligning your brand with another well-known (and in this case well-loved) brand.

In just two days, the iPhone edition of "Will It Blend?" has garnered over 650,000 views. The front-runner for all 55 videos submitted over the last year is...drum roll, please...an iPod! Nearly 4 million views of the world's foremost mp3 player versus the world's most powerful blender. But what makes the destruction of Jobsian technology so much more interesting than say, hockey pucks or oysters?

People who know and use Apple products are typically enamored with the beauty of the design and how well the software and hardware are integrated. The popularity of these particular videos is, I think, due to something as basic as morbid curiosity - the same emotion that causes NASCAR fans to secretly wish for a crash and a car fire. Plus, the sheer hype of the iPhone over the last few weeks undoubtedly drove this. Perhaps a little phone envy plays into it as well?

Bottom line: sometimes, instead of the typical features & benefits approach that 90% of marketers use, a little creativity and thought can go a long way. When you connect to your audience's emotions and give them a way to share their enthusiasm through social networks, your brand will benefit.