The Personal ROI of Social Media

My job is to care about the business case for social media. That’s what I do for a living. Put social media in the perspective of a brand or company and do my best to illustrate how it can build a business.

But if I never manage to definitively prove some fancy formula for “social media ROI” in a business context, I’ll still be here. Why? Because there are personal rewards to participation here that go above and beyond awareness, or sales, or anything of the sort.

I have met friends through whom I’ve rediscovered the meanings of trust, faith, and loyalty.

I’ve found a home for some of the personal battles I’ve fought, and solidarity through hearing the stories of others.

I have seen people raise money and awareness for causes that deserve more than we can ever collectively give them, but that might not otherwise stood a chance of getting seen.

I’ve seen the weak find strength in the voices and actions of others.

I’ve laughed more richly and more genuinely than I have in a long, long time.

I’ve walked into rooms and hugged people as if I’ve known them for decades, thanks to the late night chats on Twitter or a string of discussion on a blog. And I’ve shared drinks or dinner with many of those people and forged bonds of forever friendship that started on these “silly” social networks. We may have found one another on the web, but that’s just the spark that lit the fire.

I’ve reconnected with friends who I’ve always regretted losing track of, and I’ve been able to apologize for that in person. I’ve seen people closest to me rediscover the love of their lives many years later and forge a future together because of a serendipitous click.

We used to be bound by geography and circumstance in order to encounter people. Now, our potential for connection – and our ability to do so regardless of where we are or where we go – is amplified many times over, and more fluid and unencumbered than it’s ever been.

There are skeptics and naysayers all over. There are the “yeah, but”s of the world masquerading as pragmatists or realists when they’ve really got a perspective or attitude problem of their own. There is always the other side of the coin. But I choose to focus my energy elsewhere, because I’ve personally experienced how these relationships have enriched my life, my work, and my perspective on the world around me.

I will and do support the idea that quantifying social media’s impact is important to justify continued investment as a business. But I can’t believe nor understand how many companies can’t also accept the fact that deeper and broader personal connections can net stronger business ties, too, whether or not you can capture the data proof points that bear that out. It’s been that way since the dawn of time. We prosper in business through better connections, stronger relationships, deeper trust. We’ve always known that. We’ve rarely demanded to see the evidence until we got all up in arms about the fact that we were talking on this internet thing instead of over the golf course or a drink.

But I’ve found all of these things in spades through Twitter, my blog, the blogs of others, Facebook. I’ve found them in you, friends and readers and those that have provided so much information and insight for me to learn from. I’ve made business deals, yes. Numbers of them. But I’ve also exponentially enriched my life through the people I’ve met, the ideas I’ve discovered, the learning I’ve done.

I’ve found personal gold here on these crazy places on the web, simply because they give me potential. They give me personal inertia. They’ve brought me the gifts of people and friendships that will last long beyond the wires that first connected us.

That’s my personal social media ROI. What’s yours?

Amber Naslund

Social Media ROI : Sink or Swim

Altimeter Group recently revealed that, for an overwhelming proportion, corporate social media strategists report to Marketing and Corporate communications departments. In the same report, it was confirmed that the main concern of the corporate social strategist for 2011 is to create ROI measurements.

It was already Marketers’ main preoccupation last year , as it was detailed in the eMarketer Online Brand Measurement Report, 2009

Read more

Why Chris Brogan is Invincible

I am fascinated with uber-blogger Chris Brogan as a cultural icon of the social media revolution. Whether it’s trying new business models or pioneering sponsored posts, he is our canary in the coal mine, exploring the leading edges of our field.

But a post this week established a new milestone even for Chris. For your edification and entertainment, I am re-printing the entire post. Under a hand-drawn picture of a stick figure at a podium, he wrote:

“Okay, don’t do this. If you’re going to speak to people, speak TO (or even better WITH) them. Don’t look at your slides, read your slides, and tell me what’s on your slides. I know how to read. Stop it. Okay?”

… That’s it — 41 words.

Read more

How to do Twitter in 15 minutes a day

“Twitter users are the most influential consumers online,” concludes Exact Target in the research report Subscribers, Fans, and Followers. When I was with Twitter’s COO, Dick Costolo, recently in Indianapolis, he told me there were over 160 million registered Twitter accounts. It’s safe to say, Twitter is growing in importance as a part of one’s marketing mix. The challenge is, how to find the time to “do” Twitter. Here’s how you can do Twitter in 15 minutes a day or less.

Growing your network

  • Use search.twitter.com or Google to find 5 leaders in your industry and follow them on Twitter
  • Follow back every real person who follows you
  • Follow 5 people who participated in a tweet chat discussing your topic. Here’s a mega list of Twitter tweet chats.

Growing your relationships

  • Scan your @mentions and reply to every human who addresses a tweet to you
  • Scan your direct messages and reply to any that don’t look like auto-generated messages. Nearly 99% of all my incoming direct messages are auto-generated. Many people call them “junk mail,” and nearly everyone calls them spam. No doubt you’ll come up with your own vocabulary to describe them.

Growing your influence

  • Scan your “home” stream of tweets posted by people you follow to find relevant content for your followers and retweet it.
  • Share 4-5 links to other relevant content around the web (blog posts, news articles, research, polls, surveys, etc.). You can use your RSS aggregator (I’m using Google Reader at the moment) to “harvest” relevant content to share via Twitter.
  • If you write a blog, share a link to a recent post. Twitter readers may give you grief if all you do is share your own content, but if they know you’re also sharing other valuable, relevant content with them, they’ll be glad to see your content, too.

While’s there’s much, much more to leveraging the power of Twitter, if you’ll follow the outline above, you can get started in Twitter right away without it consuming too much time. Over the next few days, I’ll share more ideas to help you use Twitter to expand your online presence, and yes, to add Twitter as a meaningful part of your sales system.

Trey Pennington

Of letter bombs and skull tweets

Sticks and stones can break our bones, but words will never hurt us? Bah. Every playground-dwelling kid in the world has shown that phrase the lie. In fact, it amazes me that we aren’t more wary of the idiomatic anthrax that wages alchemical warfare inside us every day.

As any self-help guru worth his weight in jacuzzis will tell you, the words we think and speak determine our moods, our perceptions and ultimately our lives. Tony Robbins – he of the iconic nineties whoop-yeah Bible ‘Awaken the Giant Within’ – may be relentlessly American, embarrassingly self-promoting and an outrageous coiner of Copyrighted Jargonese™, but he’s pretty damn good on what he calls Transformational Vocabulary (™, natch).

The idea is that we’re all infested with thousands of tiny linguistic burrs which lodge in our psychological schemas and profoundly colour our view of the world – often in shades of sludgy, depressive grey. The habitual words and metaphors we use to describe our selves, experiences and emotions inevitably limit and ultimately shape those selves, experiences and emotions. If you’re feeling ‘over-burdened’ as you ‘plough away’ at work before you ‘get slaughtered’ at weekends, no wonder that your day has a submissively miserable farmyard pall.

It was Rory Kinnear who reminded me of transformational language this week. No, sadly not over a chummy brandy and ginger backstage at the National; I simply saw his Hamlet, which is a masterclass in performative vocabulary. Every word is obsessively, precisely coined: immaculately chosen, bitterly revelled in, each speech visibly poisoning his skittish, scatting body syllable by syllable.

Will according to Wordle: Hamlet demonstrates the art of the mindfuck soliloquy

For Hamlet is the master of self-torture through articulacy, the prince of destructive NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming). He talks himself into tragedy. The sheer inventiveness and sensual impact of his rhetoric makes his nightmare state of Denmark so real that it transubstantiates from word to matter. His metaphors of death, decay and danger are so relentless that they actually materialise.

Read more

Unlocking the secrets of UnGeeked, bringing the online world to the real world

Last Friday I had the distinct opportunity to attend, present and mingle with some of the “who’s who” of social media at UnGeeked Toronto, a three day social media retreat. The speaker list was extensive and reflective of the professionally social atmosphere. Guest speakers included:

Mark Bowden @truthplane

Marsha Collier @MarshaCollier

Amanda Hite @sexythinker

Jason Falls @jasonfalls

Jason Weaver @mixdown04

Jeffrey Willinger @jwillie

Erin Bury @erin_bury

Bruce Powell @IQPartners

Tom Tentoglou @tentoglou

Katie Felten @KatieFelten

Karima-Catherine @karimacatherine

Heather Taylor @heatherAtaylor

Stéphane Poirier @exopoirier

Alan Lepofsky @alanlepo

Michele Price @prosperitygal

And me! @DebWeinstein

Read more

Do CMOs Really Understand the Value of Twitter?

In a recent blog post on Forbes.com, CMO Club CEO Pete Krainik noted, “Most Chief Marketing Officers see the value of engaging with customers—and the value of engaging them where they hang out, talk, and spend their time.” Pete is surely right about that. But then why are only a very small percentage of CMOs active in the social media world themselves, particularly on Twitter?

I attended the CMO Club’s semiannual CMO Summit in San Francisco last week. Again this year, it was an excellent event and was well attended by a nice cross-section of B2C and B2B Chief Marketing Officers from around the country, representing all different types and sizes of companies and organizations. On the last day of the Summit, I was part of a panel who discussed the business impact of social media and community building, including the most effective social media marketing tools. But surprisingly, I discovered that out of the 80-plus heads of marketing in attendance at the Summit, only 16 who carry the official title of CMO for their organizations are currently active on Twitter:

B2C Chief Marketing Officers:

B2B Chief Marketing Officers:

B2C/B2B Chief Marketing Officers:

This is obviously not a scientific study, but two things struck me when reviewing this list: 1) even though there were more B2C CMOs at the Summit than B2B, more B2B CMOs are active on Twitter than their B2C counterparts, and 2) very few “big brands” in either the B2C or B2B world are represented by their CMOs on Twitter. It’s also interesting to note that you can make the same basic observations when reviewing the list of the top CMOs on Twitter that I curate as Co-Publisher for Social Media Marketing Magazine.

So why is that the case? Do most CMOs not understand the value of Twitter and other social media tools? Or do they just not consider them a priority for their careers or their companies?

“Most CMOs barely understand the value of building relationships with customers and giving them a voice, let alone how to navigate and make use of the world of Twitter. Social media marketing to most in the C-suite is still something campaign based, but social media marketing needs to be woven into fabric of all marketing channels, strategically managed from a 360-degree perspective,” said Ted Rubin, Chief Social Marketing Officer at OpenSky and the most-followed CMO on Twitter. “The key here is to convince CMOs to get personally involved in social media by having someone with hands-on knowledge mentor them, so they get first-hand knowledge, build their own personal following, and learn from the ground up. That way, they can properly guide and manage the integration process,” Ted added.

John Dragoon, the Chief Marketing Officer at Novell, noted, “All markets are conversations, and good marketers are embracing new tools to have these conversations. The beauty of social media tools is they allow you to experiment quickly and learn even faster. Active participation is the key to success. And make no mistake—your customers are listening.”

Kent Huffman

Who Wants to be an Athena?

The Athena Award is a prestigious, national honor given to a someone in the community who exemplifies eight attributes of female leadership: authentic self, relationships, giving back, collaboration, courageous acts, learning, fierce advocacy, celebration and joy.

As a previous recipient of this award bestowed by the local Chamber of Commerce, I had the privilege of participating in selecting the next awardee. As is our custom, the nominees are interviewed by a panel of previous recipients and a few others. All of this year’s applicants had been nominated in prior years. (I have the distinct honor of holding the county record for being nominated seven different years before I was selected; I jokingly tease my peers that they selected me simply because they didn’t want to see my nomination form again.)

I was fortunate in being well-acquainted with all of this year’s nominees. While it was a difficult choice for the committee to make, we selected the person we felt best exemplified the eight attributes of leadership at this time.

Read more

Getting Pumped for #MMchat with Eric Qualman @equalman Monday November 8th!

We are extremely pleased to relate to all #MMchat tweeps out there that Eric Qualman @equalman will be our SPECIAL guest on #MMchat on Monday November 8th at 8:00pm eastern!!

Here is a refreshed version of Eric’s viral video Social Media Revolution 2 based on his book Socialnomics to get you all in the mood for Monday’s tweetchat!



The topic for our chat with Eric is very timely with the growing proliferation of tablets and e-readers as we talk: The future: Social Search, Social Commerce & eReaders oh my! We look forward to Eric’s unique insights and viewpoint in this regard based on his position as a visionary at the forefront of the social media computing revolution!

As you can imagine Eric is now an in demand speaker all around the globe and this video shares with you clips and insights from a number of these presentations.

Hope you’re all as excited as I am to have Eric Qualman @equalman join us and mark your calendars to be with us on November 8th, at 8:00pm for it truly is all of you who make #MarketerMonday Chat matter!

Remember #MMchat makes Mondays MARVELOUS!!

Cheers

Jeff Ashcroft

@TheSocialCMO

Social media fueled political drama in the U.S.

Election Day is over here in the United States and we appear to be on the brink of a significant social change. Fueled by outrage over the financial meltdown, economic stimulus attempts, government bailouts, and the election of Barack Obama, The Tea Party Movement is upending incumbents in the name of fiscal conservatism.

Many are pointing to the role of social media channels in spreading this movement. Did social media create the Tea Party Movement, and if so, does this prove that the social web can enable dramatic social change?

Just two years after a sweeping Democratic victory, the tea-party movement re-drew the landscape again. Nurtured by online networking, it helped disparate activists across the nation link up and already push aside high-profile incumbent leaders in multiple states this year.

A thorough history of the Tea Party Movement in The Wall Street Journal is peppered with references to the use of social media in building a national movement. Let’s start with a brief summary of how social media played a role in these sweeping changes:

Blogs

The genesis of the Tea Party Movement may have been a blog by Stacy Mott, a stay-at-home mother fed up with the government’s economic policies. Enraged by the government bail-outs, she started a blog for conservative women called “Smart Girl Politics” and launched a social networking site at the same time. This and other conservative blogs were catalysts for live rallies. The content caught the attention of influential blogger and political commentator Michelle Malkin who started to write about the rallies. After a dramatic online television rant calling for a modern-day Tea Party movement by CNBC Commentator Rick Santelli, the Smart Girl blog went viral. Hundreds of other blogs popped up, creating a grassroots cry for change.

Social networking

Facebook pages started springing up locally and then nationally, uniting disparate activities. The movement initially had no budget, so Facebook served as the central directory for the party’s activities. Within a year there 2,000 Tea Party-related Facebook pages. Eventually one of the founders created a website and social networking site called The Tea Party Patriots.

Twitter

Many believe the first seeds of the movement were planted on a list of top conservatives on Twitter, dubbed #tcot” for short. This list spawned other lists and within weeks #tcot grew from 25 names to 1,500. Twitter was used to unite disparate voices and organize conference calls, town hall meetings and rallies.

Wikis

As the movement grew, organizers established wikis to provide protest advice and organizing techniques.

Fueled by these social platforms, general disenchantment coalesced into a cause, and in just a few months the movement enjoyed a stunning victory when Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts won Senator Ted Kennedy’s long-time Democratic Senate seat.

The social media revolution?

Undoubtedly social networking unified an idea among disparate interest groups with no organization and no budget. Does this amazing success discredit the much-discussed Malcom Gladwell article claiming that the weak links and lack of hierarchy could not promote such dramatic social change?

Yes and no. If you look carefully at the brief history of the Tea Party Movement, it may actually SUPPORT Gladwell’s contention.

The WSJ article shows the initial loose organizations created on social networks were eventually dismantled by in-fighting, controversy and hurt feelings. Once the euphoria of the initial change began to wear off, the social networks could not sustain the change and even the early pioneers united by blogs and Facebook became bitter and divided. Relationships among the loosely-based coalition deteriorated so quickly members began suing each other.

The real catalyst came from coverage by the traditional media. News programs on the Fox Network and articles in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal fueled interest in rallies. Live conference calls to organize the initiative seemed to be the linchpin between chaos and unity. Town Hall meetings and live rallies kept the momentum alive. Embarrassing content, like a racist photo-shopped images of the president, quickly went viral on the social web and actually created more divisiveness among the members.

The other important point that Gladwell was addressing was that revolutionary change requires risk to personal safety. Voting for the Tea Party Movement in the privacy of a voting booth carries the same risk as clicking a “like” button on Facebook so this is not exactly a test case for his theory.

In any event, there is no doubt that the Tea Party Movement could not have coalesced with this speed and forcefulness without social media. What are your thoughts on this Social Media Political Revolution?

Mark Schaefer