Robin Maiden – Leveraging New Media and Social Media

This week, I visited with my manager before leaving on a trip.  He passed me Monday Morning Leadership: 8 Mentoring Sessions You Can’t Afford to Miss, by David Cottrell. He said this is what his boss recommended.  Here are the notes I took while reading it:

• Focus on the objectives not on distractions
• Always ask “What will you change to make this week better?”
• What’s the main thing?  That goes for you and for your organization.
• People quit people, not companies.
• Recognize “Super Star” behavior.
• Fix the problem.  Don’t continue to live with it.
• Protect your integrity.
• Develop an action plan before a crisis.
• Your time is your responsibility.  Make better decisions about how to spend your time.
• Use the right tool the right way.
• Set aside “planning time.”
• Touch paper once (this applies to email too).
• Eliminate time wasters.
• Clump activities together.
• Give feedback that is: Sincere, Specific, Timely and aligned with values of receiver.
• Set goals

I also had an original idea that grew from reading the book…  It is good to be a life long learner, but as you learn and grow, it benefits everyone if you share and produce content, as well.  Just being a consumer of content is not enough.  Synthesizing and sharing benefits everyone.

When I began podcasting, I remember Rob Walch always saying “Content is King; Quality is Queen.” He said compelling content was more important than a perfect recording. I took his saying and used it in more places than podcasting. I really felt that it applied to PowerPoint presentations, blog posts, videos, and so many other things. The message was most important.

Well, I’ve broadened it further and added my twist to it. “Context is King; Content is Queen; Quality is Prince.” Here’s my point: A message has more value when the time and place are right. If you have compelling content with good quality, but the time is wrong for the receiver, it doesn’t matter. If you have compelling content with good quality at just the time and place the receiver needs it, you can’t help but have an impact.

Directions to a new restaurant in Boston aren’t very important when you are still in San Francisco. The same directions are much more valuable the night you are driving your friends to the restaurant. Having the right content at the right time in the right place definitely matters.

This fits in with another saying: “You will win the customer if you can resolve their urgent need or point of pain.” Time and place matter. If you can present the solution (the right content) of good quality that resolves a prospects need or pain at just the right time and place, you will gain a customer. This is what built Google. Google puts the right ad in front of a searcher looking for a solution at just the right time.

This is changing.  In a post by the Marketing Profs,  “Mobile Ad Campaigns More Effective Than Online” mobile advertising is already outperforming online advertising five to one across a number of measure according to a study by InsightExpress.  Mobile phones obviously put the right message in the right place at the right time.

Context is King; Content is Queen; Quality is Prince.

The Society for New Communications Research (SNCR) just published their Key Finding from the 2009 Middleberg/SNCR Survey of Media in the Wired World.  The study involved 341 journalists from around the world with more than half from the United States.  Here are the findings I found most notable:

• 70 percent of journalists use social networking sites, up 28% from the previous year
• 2/3 of journalists use blogs
• 48 percent use online video

Clearly, professional journalists are embracing new media, social media, and new communications tools at an increasing rate.  The reports indicates journalists aren’t just using these tools to disseminate news, but to

“…find story ideas and sources, monitor sentiments and discussions, research individuals and organizations, keep up on issues and topics of interest and participate in conversations.”

I’ve mentioned in the past that you can use social media tools to:

• Listen
• Share
• Discuss
• Drive Action

While traditional journalists aren’t always interested in “Driving Action,” they always keep an ear to the ground to know what is going on.  They have always had to “listen” to get the scoop.  Now journalists are embracing social media as a new way to “listen” to what is going on in the world.  They can monitor social media for trends, and use keyword searches to research and monitor specific people, organizations, and topics. They can also use social media to discuss a topic and use the “wisdom of the crowd” to guide the research.  Finally, journalists are increasingly sharing their content through new communications tools.

Action Step:  Use the tools the pros are using.  Do a Twitter Search on your name, right now.  Let me know what you learn.

Brand Image… If you lead, teach, learn, work, manage, or not, you are a brand. How you build and manage that brand is up to you. In a recent article in the WSJ’s India Chief Mentor blog, Mahesh Murthy highlights the fact that

…online media are the most important place for your brand image to be established, defended and grown. This is where your offering comes face-to-face with your audience and where its responses can be measured, shaped and—if need be—countered in real time. This is where perceptions can be built, person by person. This brand building is more effective than the mode we’ve employed until now: TV commercials with 30 seconds of well-produced fiction that try to sell a brand image. It is more credible and much less expensive.

In the newest decade of the new millennium, online is the place where more and more people are spending their time. It is the place where brand and reputations will be built and grown. Mahesh recommends the same tactics I do. Google yourself. Did you find what you expected? Mahesh continues:

Among the results will be your Web site, news items about you, other Web users who mention you, blogs about you, tweets about you, videos starring you and such. Now work to own the presence in each of these elements.

Refine your website, respond to tweets, strengthen your Facebook fan page, add videos to YouTube. Make the top ten Google search results reflect exactly what you want. Own your online brand.

People ask me over and over “What can Twitter do for me?”   They vary from people with no online presence, people running for elected office, to business managers, and more…

Watch this video then I’ll expand on what Twitter can do for you.

Since this video was created, Twitter has evolved into a more mainstream communications tool.  But, what can it do for you?  I believe Twitter can help you do four things:

• Listen
• Share
• Discuss
• Drive Action

Listen

You can use Twitter and its offshoots to monitor what is going on in the Twittershere.   If you have a hot topic, you can search it and see what people are saying about the topic on Twitter.  You may think this is no better than searching on Google, but searching the Twitter stream gives you a near real time picture of people’s thoughts and opinions on a particular topic.   If you work for a brand or are the brand, these near, real-time searches allow you to respond in a timely manner to those tweets.  How surprised will a customer or constituent be when they get a quick response from you?  Here are my favorite Twitter Search tools:

• Search.Twitter.com
• TweetScan.com
• BackTweets.com – shows all the tweets pointing back to a particular URL regardless of the shortening tool.

Share

This is what most people do.  Most people answer these two questions with their tweets:

• What am I doing?
• What do I find interesting?

Answers to the first question may turn some readers off.  “I don’t care that you are having a hot dog for lunch.”  But, there can be a benefit to sharing some of the smaller bits of your life.  Over time, followers will learn more about you.  They will learn things that you wouldn’t put into a blog post, email, or a letter to the editor.  The mosaic of your 140 character tweets will produce a clearer picture of who you are.  Your followers will get to know and hopefully, like you.

The second question is where you can add value for your followers.  When you regularly tweet items of interest, you increasingly become a “trusted agent” for your followers.  They trust your judgment and will use you as a filter providing them with value.  That is usually in the form of links to information valuable to your follower.  It could also be nuggets from a conference or book.

Discuss

As the number of your followers grows, you can ask them a question through Twitter.   This can result in an ongoing discussion in the Twitter stream.  I’ve seen these questions grow into twitter “discussions” that evolve into blog posts which get fleshed out into ebooks and eventually into actual books.

Drive Action

Sadly, many people use twitter only for this.  They continually pitch sales to their followers.  This is not adding value for the follower.  This is asking something of the follower.  I recommend giving value first.  Only after your followers know, like, and trust you, should you ever ask them to take action on your behalf.

So, if you are new to twitter, start by listening.  Then, add value by sharing what is important to you.  Ask your followers for their opinions.  Finally, when your followers know, like, and trust you, you can ask them to act.

This is the recorder that started it all for me.  I started podcasting in 2005 and latched on to the iRiver MP3 player because it also could record with an external or internal mic.  It is a great tool and was very popular among early podcasters.  Since then quite a few solid state recorders have come along like the my Edirol and Marantz PMD-660.

I have kept my collection of iRivers for one reason.  I can use record several people all at the same time at a remote location.  With my four recorders, I can record eight people with excellent fidelity.  That would get expensive with newer recorders.

I did have a panic when the iRiver software would not work with Windows Vista.  After some searching on Google. I found the solution to keep the iRivers in my toolbox.  Here is what I did to upgrade my iRivers:

• Find a Windows XP computer.
• Load the iRiver Music Manager 3.17 software from iRiver USA.
• Download iFP-800 Series Firmware V1.95 UMS and extract it.
• Connect the iRiver and use the Music Manger to upgrade the firmware.
• You now have the equivalent of a USB drive.  You can record and then download the files when the Vista computer recognizes the  iRiver as an external drive.

I was so excited to be able to extend the life of my iRiver recorders.  The Edirol is my primary recorder, but I regularly carry a backup (or two).  Even when recording video, I will record a separate track of just audio – just in case.

My thanks to Jan Karlsbjerg for the details to make the firmware upgrade work. 

It is final.  Scott Brown won the senate race in Massachuttes.  I say social media won, as well.  There were many factors that helped him win, but I think his use of social media will be highlighted as crucial to his success.

I have to point out the caveat again - ”‘a correlation does not necessarily mean there is a cause and effect.”‘  Scott Brown did not win just because he had more Facebook fans and Twitter followers.  But, it is interesting his campaign did leverage the Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube to a greater degree than Martha Coakley.

Whether a cause or just a coincidence, I think social media is the winner in this off season election.  Social and new media tools will be critical in the upcoming election season.  Here are some others who think so too:   Real Clear Politics and ePolitics.

Obama did it in 2008.  Will Scott Brown do it in 2010?

New Media tools and Social Media tools are certainly finding their place in election campaigns.  For the last few election cycles, the campaign website has been a given.  What is new is the integration of  new media and social media tools.  This early special election in Massachusetts between Scott Brown and Martha Coakley will foretell the direction of the social media winds in the upcoming election season.

Since today is election day,   I don’t know the results of the race.  So, I can’t say yet if each campaigner’s online presence affected the outcome.  But, I can say Scott Brown’s use of new media and social media tools has brought him from underdog status to race equal.  That is clear.  As I did my research for this post, there we some subjective points that mirrored the numbers.  As I show the numbers below, I’ll explain my other observations.  Here is a quick look at how the two campaigners stack up in the social media arena.

Scott Brown is clearly the numeric leader in the Facebook race.  On election day, Martha Coakley has 17,540 fans and Scott Brown has 95,946 fans.  That’s a ratio of about 5:1.  What does this say?  Only that Scott Brown put more effort into Facebook.  When I searched for Martha Coakley’s Facebook page, I found three fan pages each with a different picture.  One of the fan pages was a “negative” fan page.  Another of the fan pages was in support of her, but contained negative images from “fans.”

Update:  As I get ready to publish this, the two “negative” fan pages do not appear after a search.  This clearly demonstrates how dynamic this online environment is.

Although Martha’s website had video on it, her real fan page did not.  In contrast, Scott’s fan page did have video.  For the latest post on each page, Scott had 4,394 “Like This…” and 1,225 comments.  Martha 352 “Like this…” and 106 comments.  Clearly, Scott Brown has far more interaction and participation with his fans in Facebook.

The story is similar in the Twitter space.  Scott Brown has 12,280 Followers to Martha Coakley’s 4,073.  This is a ratio of about 3:1.  Both have a similar number of tweets.  On the qualitative side, Martha Coakley seems to be interacting a bit more with her followers while Scott Brown appears to be using Twitter as a “broadcast” tool.  Scott Brown has a very clear call to action on his twitter page.  This “action image” changed to be perfectly appropriate for the day- election day.  This shows me Scott Brown has an online election campaign strategy in place to leverage social media tools.

My statistics teacher would be proud that I remember “A correlation does not necessarily mean cause and effect.”  If Scott Brown wins today, it does not mean he won because he leveraged social media better than Martha Coakley.  It just means there is a correlation.  It is something to watch.  I’ll leave it to the researchers to decide whether leveraging new media and social media is the new winner in election campaign strategy.

Jakob Nielsen, called the guru of web page design by the New York Times, just published his report, 10 Best Intranets of 2010.

Three points from the report stand out for me.

Mobile access Only 30% of winners had mobile enabled intranets. This is low compared to many world wide websites. The report sees this as a growth area.

Social networking tools Social media tools were common on the winning intranets. This included features for both employees as individuals and workgroup connections.

Emergency Preparedness 40% of the winning intranets had integrated some features for use in crisis situations. Some winners had learned from experiences with previous disasters like Hurricane Katrina. The inclusion of emergency preparedness indicates intranets are becoming a key part of the enterprise, communication infrastructure.

What can you do with this info?  Plan to integrate these winning features into your intranet and external website.   I know I’m extrapolating from a report on intranets to external websites, but the reports acknowledges faster adoption of these tools and techniques on external websites.  So,  if your enterprise lags in either arena, start planning.

This report reinforces something I say all the time.  You have to be where the people are. Seems obvious enough.  The report says people are increasingly in two places – on their smartphones and on social networks.

More people are using smartphones in their personal lives and in their business lives.   So whether it is for business or pleasure, the tool is there.  The smartphone is the “forth” screen after Big screen, the TV screen, and the computer screen.  You have to be where the people are.  This is just as true for your external customer as it is for your widely dispersed, mobile workforce.

As the use of the world wide social web grows, the thought of connecting and collaborating through social networks will become less novelty and more reality.  Enterprises can plan now to enable workgroups to be more engaged, involved, and  productive.

On the last point, Dwight D. Eisenhower said, “… plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”  Nobody can have the perfect plan for an emergency, but the process of planning for it will be invaluable.  So start planning how to leverage your website and intranet during an emergency.

Be where the people are – mobile and social media; leverage web technologies during emergencies.  These are what top businesses are doing.  What are you doing?

This brings back the feeling of soaring for me. I hope it stirs something for you, too.