Last week, I attended a webinar from WOMMA where WOMMA General Counsel Tony DiResta discussed the importance of disclosure across social media. This conversation normally focuses on brand-blogger relationships but the same best practices and government guidelines may also affect your Facebook Page.

Here are five things to keep in mind about your brand and disclosure on Facebook.

1. Employment is “Consideration”: The FTC requires that any consideration from an endorser be disclosed; “consideration” includes anything that might sway endorsers’ words and this includes employment. Make it clear to employees that posting an endorsement or review on your Facebook Page without disclosing that they are employees is unacceptable, this also includes commenting on other Facebook Pages or Facebook content just as it does commenting on blogs.
2. Video Contests: If you are soliciting Facebook videos about how much fans love your product to be in the running for a million dollar prize treat this the same as you would if you were requiring a blog post about your product as a contest entry. Help fans by requiring that they include a link to your contest rules or a including the contest name in the video description- this disclosure will protect your fans and will raise awareness of the contest.
3. Disclosure in Celebrity Status Updates: Status for Sale is forbidden by the Facebook User Guidelines but do make sure that any celebrity spokes people disclose their relationship with you should they be posting about your products a lot. There is no standard format for this disclosure, the status update might include (sponsor) in the text or the celebrity might list the sponsorship or spokesperson relationship prominently on their Page information.
4. Disclosure of Celebrity Photos: If celebrities and influencers are seen using your products in paid advertisements or at your events it’s understood that these are paid endorsements and no disclosure is needed but a photo of a celebrity using your product lacking any description or context is more ambiguous. To be safe, if you are posting photos of paid celebrities or event attendees using your products make sure to add a note to the album description or under each photo as to where the photo came from.
5. Disclosure in Foursquare: One great question from the webinar was around Foursquare and whether free products or gifts given to a Mayor needed to be disclosed- Tony confirmed that they do. Since many people are now using Facebook and Foursquare together I thought this was worth including.

Remember to use common sense with social media campaigns just as you do traditional advertising campaigns and keep your customers’ best interest in mind. And no matter how much you study this stuff don’t forget the gut check: if you think you might need to be disclosing something you probably do.

A special thanks to Tony DiResta for his input on this- for continued discussion and updates about best practices and guidelines check out Tony DiResta’s blog on the WOMMA website see the full disclosure webinar here.

When SXSW, one of the largest gatherings of minds and enthusiasts in the digital world, didn’t feature more than a handful of panels on the intersection between health and social media - an “unconference” event called SXSH sprung up to fill the void. Yesterday that event came together in Austin and included speakers and pioneers in using social media to communicate for health issues in regional hospitals, government agencies, health insurers, nonprofits, epatients and pharma companies. Just about every part of the healthcare world had some sort of voice in the discussion as everyone gathered to share ideas on how the industry as a whole might use social media more effectively by building greater trust.

The day long discussion featured many highlights, starting with a talk from Doug Ulman, CEO of Livestrong about the power of health based communities online and how important real time information is to improving healthcare and the patient experience. Greg Matthews from Humana shared how a health insurer can innovate internally and use that to improve patient relationships and Jenn Texada from MD Anderson shared how she and her communications team use social media tools to interact directly with patients for customer service. David Hale from the National Library of Medicine presented an innovative new database to help identify unknown pills called Pillbox and Fabio Gratton shared how to build a movement through a case study of the success of the #FDASM movement in November of last year around the FDA hearings. In the “unconference” part of the day, companies such as ReachMD and WEGO Health talked about their communities and content and how they help bridge the gaps between patients, doctors and healthcare providers.

In the final session of the day, I tackled the question of trust. A central issue in healthcare communications, the session posed the question: why don’t people trust us? Or more specifically, what creates the culture of distrust online that so often causes negativity towards some companies in healthcare and what could we as an industry do to combat this? Our aim in the session was to brainstorm ways that healthcare organizations could overcome these barriers and build more trust and credibility. The entire room then selected what they felt the strongest ideas were and I promised to compile the results into a single blog post - which you’ll find below. In the spirit of the unconference, all of us who managed to be part of the great discussion would love to hear your thoughts on any other ideas that we could add to this list too …

1. Listen to and implement ideas from the community. Being part of a community or interacting with individuals is a great first step, but the real trust that can be built from this comes when people see some sort of action come as a result of the participation in a community. It is not the act of listening, but the impact of that listening which makes it real.
2. Have shared values on good health. Often the distrust in healthcare organizations stems from a belief that priorities are mismatched. Our priority as a patient is to get healthy, and their priority seems to be offering more medication or delivering care in a more “efficient” way. In order to build trust, it is crucial that people feel our ultimate goals are aligned toward making them healthier. We need to focus on prevention instead of promotion.
3. Answer your patient’s or customer’s concerns directly. With social media tools, people have the ability to broadcast their thoughts and desires. Often they are doing so because they are seeking a response. Having a smart listening program that can help you find these queries and a strategy for responding goes a long way towards demonstrating that you care and truly want to help.
4. Aggregate or curate useful information. Sometimes the problem isn’t a lack of information online, but a dearth of it. When information is scattered all over, it can become very confusing about what is credibile and which things to trust. One of the simplest roles for any healthcare organization to take is that of a curator of great content. By doing this, you can create resources for people that will be useful and demonstrate your commitment to their needs.
5. Serve as a resource or guide for the community. One of the things that many organizations neglect is actively using the experts that you may have internally. When it comes to marketing and communications, part of the role should be to unlock the best voices from within an organization (many of whom may not necessarily be in the marketing or PR departments). By bringing these voices out and encouraging them to share information, you can connect patients and customers to the individuals who can truly bring insight and deliver thoughtful and useful information.
6. Set expectations on what you do and why. Lack of trust can be based on a misunderstanding of motivations. There are times when people may assume that a policy or practice is done simply for financial reasons or because of legal motives when actually there are other concerns they don’t know. Being as transparent as possible about your decision process and thinking can go a long way to remove this misunderstanding.
7. Focus on setting a clear mission for employees. The most trustworthy organizations often are the ones that have a very specific and defined vision that everyone is working to implement. When the message coming from employees is consistent, it goes a long way towards establishing a belief in the organization from outsiders because they know what the group stands for.
8. Communicate results and outcomes. Large organizations in particular are often good about communicating outcomes or results in financial terms on a quarterly basis or some kind of cost related metric, but not as good about communicating impact of their efforts in human terms. To inspire belief, it is often the results in human terms that people respond to far more than the financial ones - so refocusing on how that story is told becomes vital.
9. Recognize both sides of the issue or data. Many people inherently believe that data and reports presented by many healthcare groups (and pharma in particular) is delivered with a strong bias towards whatever is most self serving for the group. When information is not presented in a more balanced way, the likelihood that people will not believe it is entirely credible goes up.
10. Build trusted long term relationships. Beyond all the other suggestions, the one thing that establishes a foundation for everything you do are the trusted relationships with influencers and individuals that you build online. You need a group of people who know enough about what you do and the real philosophy and thinking behind your actions that they can serve as vocal advocates for your brand if needed.

I caught up with our own Thomas Crampton last week in Istanbul. Thomas runs our teams across Asia and one of the big events coming up this year is the Shanghai World Expo.  To help inform our work and our clients who will participate in some way or another, Thomas developed some great research on the current buzz throughout Chinese social media on the Expo. I had a chance to ask him about what he found:

Q: Can you tell us briefly what the Shanghai World Expo is and what it may mean to China, its government, business leaders and even the people there?
A: Shanghai Expo has been billed as one of the largest events of its kind in China. While people outside of China may not have heard of the event, the organizers expect a extremely large domestic audience.

Q: You did a unique survey of what the Chinese people were saying online via social media about the Expo, what surprised you most?
A: One of the biggest surprises about the discussions online was the intensity of discussion taking place more than three months before the event began. While you might expect sponsor and the government to speak about the event, it was interesting to see the level of discussion going on among China’s netizens.

Q: Can you tell two of the insights in the survey?
A: The report gives insights into how individual citizens and companies are already gearing up for the Expo. In terms of Chinese citizens, the report shows that they are concerned about ticket prices and taking action. Among the initiatives are group purchasing of tickets and rural citizens asking for advice on how to buy tickets.

Q: How could brands engaging in the Expo use this survey to their advantage?
A: By understanding the concerns of consumers looking at the Expo, companies can find ways of offering value to those who may visit the Expo. One interesting example in relation to the ticket prices is one company, , that is offering tickets to Expo at the original price. The promotion costs them very little - the difference in ticket price is very small - but the publicity and discussion about it has been fairly extensive. As we follow the Expo with these publicly available reports, companies will be able to see possible hooks for their own Social Media strategy.

Shanghai Expo Chinese-language Social Media Buzz

View more documents from 360 Digital Influence, Ogilvy PR Worldwide.

Here's some fun news about our company, Ant's Eye View: We are opening a Silicon Valley office. The new office will support our client base there, including Cisco, Yahoo!, SAP, Symantec, and Apple. Silicon Valley is our third office, after Seattle and Austin.

Kira Wampler of Intuit community engagement fame will lead the Silicon Valley office. She was the first word of mouth marketing manager at Inuit and is widely regarded for her expertise in developing social media marketing strategies for Intuit's Small Business market, and winning awards for it too. She's freakin' awesome.

Kira will be here in Austin this weekend at SXSWi, so say hello if you see her. You can also follow Kira on Twitter at @kirasw.

More info:

* Ant's Eye View Blog

* Kira's blo

The most agonizing and frustrating blog post I ever wrote, was my first one.

It took me FOUR days to write that post. Actually it only took about an hour to write, but it took me four days to have the courage to hit 'Publish Post'.

And it wasn't because I was insecure about the post itself, it was because according to what I had read on other blogs, it was a 'bad' post. In preparing for the start of my blog-writing, I read a LOT of blogs in an effort to discover the 'tips' for writing a great blog. And one of the 'rules' for blogging I read over and over again was 'Make sure the post is only a couple of paragraphs long, otherwise it will be too long and readers will lose interest.'

My post was at least two pages long. So I stared intently at the screen trying to figure out a way to shorten the post to 2 paragraphs, and still tell the story I wanted to tell. After 4 days I realized that it couldn't be done, and hit 'Publish Post'.

Just like that, my blogging 'career' began by breaking the blogging rules. And I have to admit, it felt damn good!

I've been thinking about this recently because I'm really struggling to find 'new' blogs that get and maintain my interest. And I wonder if part of the reason why is because so many new bloggers are following the 'rules' of blogging. In 2005 and 2006, we didn't have Copy Blogger and ProBlogger to tell us the what the 'best' way to blog was. We all had to make our own rules, to a great extent.

But now, there's a zillion blogs giving you 'Ten Steps to Creating the Perfect Blog". Hell I've written those posts myself. And on the one hand these do definitely improve your blogging, but at the same time if everyone is following the same format, then it becomes MUCH harder for a blog to stand out.

Another example of purposely not following the blogging rules was the Z-List. This was the thing that first got me on a lot of people's radars. The premise was absurd to some; Take a list of blogs you think are under-appreciated, then invite everyone else to add their own favorite blogs and share the list. With one BIG caveat; You can't add your OWN blog to the list. Even though my blog wasn't on the original Z-List, I ended up gaining a few hundred links from the Z-list, and a few other blogs got several hundred.

So while you are following the 'rules' for better blogging, don't forget that you can always make and ADD your own rules. That might be the most important blogging rule of all.

Pic via Flickr user atibens

I don't think you can call a new solution "Social CRM" until you are connecting new social data sources to the sales data of your customers. CRM is about operationalization and efficiency. And ultimately that can only be judged against real sales data. We are now engaging customers in more and more sophisticated relationship programs meant to promote advocacy and action.I know that the state-of-the-art to monitor sales impact from social programs  on a daily basis just isn't there yet.

One of our advantages (Ogilvy) in the marketplace is our complete eco-system of disciplines working side-by-side. That means on any given day, I am working with direct marketers, online advertising creatives, retail activation experts, and CRM leaders. We are methodically applying "social" to all traditional disciplines to define and practice next gen solutions to traditional business problems.

Managing Relationships

We have developed a robust Social IRM (Influencer Relationship Management) expertise. We have also developed many of the tools and services necessary to manage long term relationships with customers promoting them to both share some form of Word of Mouth with peers and to actually take an action all the way down to purchasing something. But until we connect all that great data to the actual sales data for said customers, I don't think its wise to label it 'Social CRM.'

Altimeter released their framework for Social CRMvia a useful pdf of 18 use cases. It's great stuff and a useful checklist of technology companies who may support one of those use cases.Still, is it really Social CRM? Each of those use cases represents business solutions that we and others have been supporting for years under the titles 'social media marketing and communications' and 'social business.'

Brent Leary at Inc.compares traditional CRM and Social CRM:

"And with multiple people “touching” the customer for various reasons, it quickly became important to be able to track activities, appointments, potential deals, notes, and other information.  Consequently, traditional CRM grew out of this need to store, track, and report on critical information about customers and prospects.

Social CRM is growing out of a completely different need -- the need to attract the attention of those using the Internet to find answers to business challenges they are trying to overcome."

His POV, like many others, is that there is great value in adding social media strategies to your existing CRM program. He qualifies the contribution of the 'social' side to qualities we all take for granted yet remain hard to measure -

"social CRM is all about people and community.  It’s about how your company intends to participate in the ongoing conversations taking place in the industry.  How you embrace non-traditional influential people like popular industry bloggers, and social sites on the Web frequented by your audience.  And fully understanding the importance of contributing to discussions, in a transparent manner, will help you build the kind of reputation needed to become a valued member of the online communities important to your business."

This is all important social media for business. But does it qualify as Social CRM?  

How can brands leverage social media to drive sales and lead generation?

While social media spending is on the rise for both B2B and B2C companies, many brands are still realizing the full potential of online engagement for business development and lead generation.  Next week, I’ll be presenting ideas to the Silicon Valley Capital Club on how brands can best leverage the social web to drive word of mouth buzz and, ultimately, sales opportunities.

Below, I’ve provided a sneak peek into the insights I plan to cover, however, I’d welcome your feedback and stories as to where your organization experiences the greatest online business development success:

1.      Listen first – What does this really mean in terms of lead generation?  Essentially, it’s absolutely critical to know where your customers and competitors live on the social web what issues are most prevalent in your space.  Read blogs that are relevant to your space, look for webinars about key issues and use Google blog search to understand what trends are most discussed among your customer base.

2.      Set clear goals as to what you want to achieve – Start with one or two measureable objectives that are attainable within a specified timeframe and build from there.  It’s okay to begin with a pilot project, allowing you to easily retool your plan if your objectives are not tracking toward success.

3.      Add value to the online conversation – After listening to what is being discussed in your space, be ready to offer something more than a “quick hit” opportunity to buy your organization’s products or services.  Share insightful content, develop webinars, offer product demonstrations or training, create live events and answer questions.  Be viewed as an industry resource and seek to establish rapport and validation within your targeted audience.

4.     Empower employees to tell your story – Intel (disclosure - they are a client) published their social media guidelines as a best practice and several organizations have done the same. Intel’s policy clearly states that employees should “stick to your area of expertise and provide unique, individual perspectives on what’s going on at Intel and in the world.”  Who better to tell your organization’s story to the world and add a human element to your brand than your own employees?

5.      Paid and Organic Search – Ensuring your content can be easily found is absolutely critical when there is so much competition for eyeballs on the social web.  Investing in paid search and ensuring your web properties use consistent keywords/metatags to assist with organic search results are both instrumental.  Google Trends and Google’s keyword tool are free resources that help identify the search strings that will work the hardest for your digital content.

6.      Make your corporate website relevant to the sales process – Too many brands miss opportunities to capture attention and add immediate relevance to the customer once the customer finds them online.  I’ve listed some ideas on how an organization’s website could immediately strike greater engagement possibilities:

• Develop a blog and use it as a sales tool/testing ground. Posts should be brief, incorporate photos and/or videos that help in telling a story and speak in a conversational tone.  Be ready to respond to comments and questions in a timely fashion, noting which topics have the most traction for your prospects.
• Analyze where people are clicking, use trackable URLs (bit.ly offers metrics) and regularly review the metrics
• Offer Q&As with happy customers and how the product offering is being implemented, using both video and text
• Socialize the press area and more visible areas of your site, ensuring content is shareable and interactive
• Incorporate product and service reviews via third-party applications that live within your web platform

7.      Broaden your digital footprint and develop a content calendar – While it’s critical that your organization’s website offers relevant content, it’s also a good best practice to allow your content to live beyond the confines of your organization’s web platform.  Posting engaging content on LinkedIn, Facebook brand pages, YouTube and Fast Pitches can only help extend your reach and produce better search results for your brand.  Additionally, ensuring that content is produced on a regular basis and is timely (i.e. teases a tradeshow presence, product demonstrations are scheduled with product announcements, etc.) can offer a much richer experience for your potential customer.

8.      Don’t neglect Twitter as a business tool – It’s fairly easy to integrate Twitter into your sales strategy without much effort.  By using a management tool like TweetDeck or Seesmic to track specific keywords/lists, organizations can hyper-target those who are most interested their space.  Twitter can also be very powerful as a customer service mechanism, for introducing special offers and for answering questions about products and services.

While there are a number of ideas I haven’t covered here, I’m hopeful this list will generate some additional thinking on how organizations can best leverage social media for sales and lead generation.  What are your thoughts?  What’s worked well for you?

MENG has just released the results of its third annual Marketing Trends study (which you can view here), and the results showed that senior-level marketers and execs are getting very serious about social media.

First, some background on MENG and the respondents to this study. All MENG members must have attained a level of VP or higher prior to joining, and must have a salary of at least $160K. So these findings are coming from people that are in a position to shape the marketing initiatives in their companies.

BTW complete disclosure, I was recently selected to MENG's Social Media Council of Advisors, along with friends and smarties Drew McClellan, Beth Harte, Amber Naslund, Paul Dunay and Joe Pulizzi.

Now, for the key social media findings, which come from roughly 1,800 MENG members.

• Over 70% of respondents said their company is planning NEW social media initiatives in 2010

• 43% of respondents said their company had a Facebook presence, 43% said their company had a LinkedIn presence, and 34% said their company was on Twitter. 28% of respondents said their company had a blog, and this was noted as being significantly higher than last year's findings.

• As for which social sites MENG members are using themselves, LinkedIn was the big winner here, with 92% of respondents saying they use LI, Facebook was second with 56%.

• Companies are more likely to maintain a blog than individual executives, and executives are less likely to have a personal blog UNLESS they are at a smaller company (less than 2,000 employees).

• As for implementing new social media initiatives in 2010, most execs surveyed will do so internally (71%). 28% said they would rely on interactive agencies, 25% on social media consultants, 20% on PR agencies, and 16% on ad agencies.

• As far as creating social media strategies, both large companies (46%) and small companies (41%) will be going with social media consultants as their top choice if they outsource. Next will be interactive, PR and Ad agencies.

• Larger companies that outsource social media initiatives will turn to Interactive agencies (33%), Ad agencies (31%), PR agencies (26%) and Social Media Consultants (24%)

• What criteria do companies have to who they outsource their social media initiatives to? The top 4 answers were Examples of Previous Work (94%), Recommendations (91%), Quality of Response to RFP (82%), and Cost (80%). Interestingly, the 11th most popular determinant was Social Media Certification (32%) and 12th was Number of Twitter Followers (21%).

I think this study also shows that marketers are becoming a bit tired of the buzz around social media. Mark left a comment in the previous post about how we 'pundits' told companies that they had to start using social media. He's right, and they did, and now they realize they aren't sure how to evaluate their efforts. So I think that's where a lot of the frustration is coming from, but as they become more adept at social media and how the tools function, that frustration should decrease.

If you want to see the results (PowerPoint) for yourself, you can view them here.

Last week I had the opportunity to travel to Bangalore for a Brand Summit event that featured many marketers, communicators and even a Bollywood star talking about the future of marketing in India as country goes through what the conference termed as the “era of discontinuity.” With a ballooning population, growing Internet penetration, arguably the largest mobile phone market on earth and an entrepreneurial culture - India is at once a bewildering and maturing market for all things social. On the streets of India, word of mouth marketing and old school lessons are actively driving commerce. In businesses, the hot topics are similar to what they are in the US or elsewhere … how can your brand reach consumers who are increasingly placing their attention elsewhere and getting progressively better at ignoring you.

On answer that has risen to some level of prominence in India is the use of celebrities in marketing. You could argue that celebrities are popular everywhere in the world, but in a country that release more films in an average week than most countries do in an entire year, the rules are slightly different. In India it is not uncommon to see a Bollywood star’s face on everything from facial tissues to pens. Celebrity is used to connote trust, and in a culture with many different socio-economic classes (they even have names), the only way that marketers can often reach across these levels is with celebrities that many people recognize.

In an illuminating panel filled with journalists, filmmakers, marketers, creative directors and one celebrity (Bollywood Actor Vivek Oberoi) the conversation turned to a in-depth discussion of the role of celebrity in marketing in India and whether it was indeed a necessity, or whether it has become a “crutch” for the lazy marketer who doesn’t want to do any real work so they just hire a celebrity and consider their marketing efforts complete. Here were some of the biggest takeaways that the conversation raised for me:

1. Understand the difference between talent and celebrity. When you hire an actor to play a part in an ad, you are hiring them as “talent.” When you get a celebrity, you are hiring them to bring their personal brand to your product or service and serve as a spokesperson of sorts. The first key is to know the difference and not confuse the two.

2. Start with an idea, not a celebrity. Often a marketing strategy starts by selecting the celebrity the team will work with and then an idea is built around that choice. This method is backwards and results in marketing that lacks strategic vision and often fails to resonate. To do better, you need to have a strong creative idea … then find the celebrity that best fits that idea.

3. Build on the personal brand of a celebrity. Vivek Oberoi raised many intelligent points about the celebrity point of view when it comes to marketing (something we don’t often hear). He understands his personal brand and what resonates positively or negatively with it. As a result, he chooses personally not to do tobacco or alcohol related advertising. Many other celebrities lack those same principles and simply go where the biggest dollars tempt them. The best marketing will be something builds on the personal brand that a celebrity has built, instead of ignoring or countering it.

4. Use real people too. Thankfully, the point did emerge from the panel that there may be times where you don’t NEED a celebrity. There is a power of real people to connect with one another that can be missing with celebrity focused campaigns and for a growing number of brands in India taking this real approach is working well and shouldn’t be discounted.

According to a new University of Maryland study (via eMarketer), social media adoption among small businesses has doubled, and these companies are satisfied with their results. Here's a graph from eMarketer showing the primary way in which these businesses are using social media:


What struck me about this was notice that the most popular ways for using social media all involve self-promotion. Posting status updates, blogging and tweeting about expertise. But notice what the LAST tactic listed is:

"Use Twitter as a customer service channel."

In many ways this suggests that these businesses are still very new to social media. Because when adopting social media use for the first time, most companies will use it as a marketing tool in the way that they are most familiar with. That means they use social media to broadcast and self-promote.

And notice that when it comes to measuring the effectiveness of its social media usage, 73% of respondents placed "Identify and attract new customers" as the top priority. But only 61% said their efforts met their expectations. This suggests to me that the expectations these companies have for their social media usage is being stifled by HOW they are using the tools. They want engagement, but aren't doing a good job of BEING engaging, it seems.

But my guess/hope is that as companies become more familiar with social media tools and their capabilities, that we'll see 'Posting status updates' moving further down that list, and see actual customer engagement becoming a priority for social media usage. THAT is where the true potential of social media for businesses lies.

Thanks to The Pirates Dilemma, I saw this great video of Jesse Schell (Schell Games, Carnegie Mellon prof) using numbers to impress us on the impact of Facebook games and more in the gaming industry. It will  make you think of the scale and impact of recent gaming innovations. He unlocks a lot of the clever psychological drivers in the games and how they are connecting with...reality. Oh, and he's pretty entertaining.

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This weekend saw the New York Knicks host what they billed as the first ever fan #tweetup, at their home court, the legendary Madison Square Garden here in New York City. They put together a very impressive panel to chat social media and catch a game, and really pulled out all the stops: three big screens broadcasting tweets, official #tweetup t-shirts and those cute little tweetup nametag stickers.  The event was sponsored by Discount Tire: definitely a little different than your run of the mill ‘few folks in a bar’ #tweetup.

The panel featured Amy Jo Martin, head honcho of @digitalroyalty (the folks who did, among other things Random Acts of Shaqness),  Peter Robert Casey ( the first ever media accredited micro-blogger, he covers St John’s basketball here: @Peter_R_Casey), Jim DeLorenzo (a VP at Octagon, the guys who have developed Twackle, a sports tweet aggregator), and Jack Dorsey* (founder of Twitter and Square).  Three sports/marketing folks, and one guy who hand in inventing (or popularizing, depending on how you look at it) micro-blogging. A serious panel indeed.

After some opening words from Howard Jacobs, Sr VP Marketing & Ticket Sales for MSG Sports**, things kicked off with intros and powerpoints from the panelists.  Somewhat of an unusual start, and one that I didn’t personally care much for in truth (I would have preferred that they get straight to the discussion), but the assembled peeps were certainly left in no doubt as to the credentials of those on the panel.  With that out of the way we got into the meat of the event: a spirited and lively discussion on the state of social media in sports and beyond, and the Knicks’ plans for the future.  Although I was a little critical of the first half (it felt like a missed opportunity to me to have that expertise without maximizing the audience’s interaction with them), it was pretty cool to see how engaged everyone was once the panelists got chatting.

Jordan (he of @thenyknicks) did a really good job moderating the event, and there were some great and varied questions from the audience.  It’s very clear that the sports industry is starting to embrace social media, and the Knicks are without a doubt one of the teams leading the charge. Kudos to the organization for having the guts both put on such an event, and to embrace change with such gusto. Nobody has all the answers just yet, but the Knicks and the folks on their panel at #NYKTweetup are certainly helping get us there. It’s going to be interesting to see how it continues to develop in this most unique of areas: sports fans are like no other audience. We know everything, are rarely happy, and are never short of opinions.

My 2 cents on where things are going in this space: social is in no small part about empowering individuals and any brand that chooses to engage needs to be prepared to relinquish a certain amount of control, so it will be particularly fascinating to see how an industry that is perceived to so much about control (ticket prices, contracts, restricted free agency, broadcast rights and so on) adapts to this new world. Fans are going to require more than behind the scenes access, we’re going to want to be heard, and to be given a meaningful stake in the team we support.

Congrats to the NYKnicks for having the guts to dive headlong into it, and on hosting a great event. Looking forward to the next one

@PhilCatelinet’s pics from the event here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/catelinp/sets/72157623523695882/

@amandarykoff‘s pics from the event here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/amandarykoff/sets/72157623399427947/

Panel discussion ustream here: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/5061506

*As a sidenote: I also got to see Jack’s new venture, @square in action, and it’s absolutely mind-blowing. Effortless & elegant, it’s a real game changer imo.  More on that here.

** ‘lil edit/correction thanks to @digitalroyalty.  Thanks Amy

Lately I've been so busy that I've had to become a lot pickier about the events I speak at. But there's one coming up in Dallas later this month that was too good for me to pass up. On March the 23rd and 24th I'll be in Dallas at the Social Media Optimization Summit.

I'll be speaking on Wednesday the 24th, and my 2-hour workshop will be entitled "Think Like a Rockstar; How to Build Fans and Community Around Your Social Media Efforts". Here's the official workshop description:

"It wasn’t supposed to be like this. You launched a new blog or maybe you created a Facebook Fan Page, thinking that you’d tap into these amazing social media tools as a way to connect with your customers and create raving fans and passionate evangelists for your business. Now it’s 4 months later and you have 12 fans on your Facebook page, and virtual tumbleweeds taunt you as your blog struggles to reach 10 visitors a day.

What happened?

Many companies find themselves in this exact situation, and this workshop will show you how to think like a rockstar. Rockstars don’t have customers, they have fans. And this doesn’t happen by accident, rockstars have a very special connection with their customers that makes them become raving fans for them and their products. Some companies are finding that they can use social media in many of these same ways to build vibrant online communities that are passionate about them.

In the “Think Like a Rockstar; How to Build Fans and Community Around Your Social Media Efforts” workshop, you will learn:

· The four key things that Rockstars do to create fans for their work and how you can do the same with your social media efforts
· The keys to building a vibrant community around your social media efforts
· The importance of ‘fishing where the fish are’ when you’re trying to build awareness
· How to create content that taps into the ‘Bigger Idea’ that’s more relevant and exciting to your customers

Pretty cool, eh? And the event itself has some of the biggest names in social media and online marketing, guys like John Jantsch, Jason Falls, Geno Church, Eric Brown, Erica Campbell, Jay Ehret, and many more!

As for the price, it's currently $429, BUT if you use code MC when you register, you can save $125 off that price! Not bad, huh? If you'll be attending, please let me know so we can meet up!

I had a great opportunity to keynote at Drew and Scott's Like Minds Conference in Exeter UK last week. While I had made the decision to attend quite a while back, a certain part of me didn't know exactly what to expect.

Here are the 5 highlights of my experience (in no significant order):

1. Molly Flatt, 1000 Heads and President WOMUK: I knew Molly from WOMMA and it was great to see her. Her comments on the final panel of the day were one of the many bright spots. Talking about the #uksnow meme that sprang up around the unusual snowfall in London (should of been in DC 2 weeks ago!), she made a really pressing point about how brands could be more reactive and responsive to what was happening vs. trying to conjure up their own "brand experience." Her example - with people tweeting up a storm and even writing #uksnow in the actual snow, why didn't a brand like Gap make snowmen outside their stores, dress them up in Gap and post photos via Twitter/flickr? The insight for me is less about the tactical suggestion - a good one - but rather that brands could be ready and responsive to what is already going on. Remember that great (and ironic) video that EA created with Tiger Woods published on YouTube that showed him walking on water after a user found a bug in the Tiger Woods XBox game that did the same. EA jumped into an existing meme and in some way rewarded those who were sharing about the game glitch with an extraordinary video featuring the man, himself. 

2. @joannejacobs had a great style which the crowd responded well to. Her message was clear - there are good uses of new technology (like augmented reality) and there is gratuitous or bad implementations. She used an Ikea implementation as a good use - they allow you to overlay items in your space to test drive them, so-to-speak. She challenged the delightful (perhaps) but somewhat silly uses of augmented where you place a 'code" in front of a camera and you can watch an animation come to life (so long as you are in front of the camera etc...). At the heart of what she was saying - embrace a discipline of being useful and actually think through what problem you might solve with the innovation.

3. @jonakwue did a great bit equating social media with the life and death of hip hop. being a DJ, he found analogies in the remix culture of music with that of social media. he referenced and advocated for the book - The Pirate's Dilemma.  He had a process slide that I snapped.

4. Exeter UK is a hidden gem. Okay, hidden form me perhaps. Two and a half hours outside of London, who would have guessed that such a cool little town existed. It is a place that you could actually imagine living in (if you have kids) and you can actually buy stuff there as well. @scottgould and @drewellis did a great job of luring us all there and John Harvey aka @exeterccm  - the City Centre Manager was a terrific host.

5. The dueling views of media from the Guardian and the Telegraph. @kate_day from the Telegraph didn't exactly rave about that companies embrace of "digital" but I sensed that she felt encouraged about how they were making commitments. I mean she is the communities manager there - a job you wouldn't expect at a new company. 

There were a lot of other great moments. Chris Brogan was funny during his personal story/presentation. The crowd seemed to really appreciate that he was there. There was a great mix of public and private organizations, small and big businesses there (like Orange). Scott and Drew did a great job. 

According to the most recent numbers from Inside Network’s Appdata, there are currently over 82 million people - or about twice the entire population of California - playing Zynga’s social game Farmville.

Aside from the growing magnitude of the player base for social games like Farmville, a recently released Information Solutions Group / Popcap study also suggests that these games are reaching a broader and more diverse segment of the population than one might expect.

Here are some of the US-specific findings about social game players from the study*:

- average age is 48

- 90% reported the same or increased game play over the past 3 months

- 27% and 25% reported less time spent reading (mag, book, newspaper) and home TV/movie viewing respectively

- 43% of the time, game players log into social networks specifically to play games

- friends’ recommendations are the #1 factor influencing social game selection

- 35% have purchased a virtual gift while playing a social game

- among the specific games studied, Bejeweled Blitz and Farmville were more popular with women; Mafia Wars and Texas Holdem Poker were more popular with men

Here’s a recent Appdata list of the 15 most popular social games.

*the study also surveyed UK players

This Facebook Friday is dedicated to the Little Guy: the one-man communications team, the small business owner, or the intern for a non-profit who just got assigned Facebook (I’ve been there). So here’s to you, Little Guy, and because you make Facebook awesome, here are six easy and (almost) free tips for your “little” Facebook page. And you Big Guys can learn a thing or two as well.

1. Promote In-Venue- For most local businesses, your customers only know you offline so it’s the perfect place to start your efforts. Post a flyer, print some stickers, make a poster… just let your customers know that you’ve got a Facebook page and let them know where to find it. Local businesses like Primal Surf Shop in New Jersey can keep update local and also keep in touch with tourists and summer visitors who might only be in once or twice a year but who are spreading the word about the shop to their networks through interactions with the page.
2. Put Facebook Forward Online- Whether or not you’re planning to promote in-venue make sure you grab the low-hanging fruit of promoting Facebook through your online presences. Add the URL into your e-mail signature, place a link on your personal Facebook page or local chamber of commerce site, and add a Fan Box to your own website so visitors can become a fan right there. The Fan Box is also an easy way to update a static website and bring a little social into it, like this site from West Des Moines Leadership Academy.
3. Network- Small businesses are great at networking and you can do this on Facebook too. Local DC restaurant Marvin does this well; they often host local artists and musicians and not only create Facebook events on their own page but also post and link to the artists’ page and Facebook content such as photos or poetry posts. Non-profits can do this too; on National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) Know Stroke page they list other stroke-awareness pages and partners in their Favorite Pages and Links section.
4. Buy Targeted Advertising- You can purchase Facebook ads from amounts of $5-$500 with any credit card or Pay Pal. Facebook ads can target by age, gender, hometown, current city, relationship status or interests. One ad that caught my eye recently was from Bird Rock Coffee Roasters, a coffee shop in my hometown of La Jolla, California. I’m now a fan and even though I’m miles away I check the page frequently and comment on photos from the owner, Chuck, and his trips to coffee farms all over the world.
5. Go Mobile- Not having a desktop at work is no longer an excuse to slack on Facebook. Curbside Cupcakes is a mobile cupcake shop that uses Facebook and Twitter to let fans know when they’ll be in the neighborhood so mobile updating is perfect, it’s also a great solution for those on the sales floor during business hours who want to keep customers coming in from 9-5. Facebook offers four options for updating on the go: e-mail, text message, mobile browser, or iPhone application. Get more information here http://tinyurl.com/FacebookPagesMobile
6. Be Patient- This final and critical tip come from Charles Nelson, owner of Sprinkles Cupcakes in Los Angeles. He told the New York Times last year that part of his tip was, “Be patient. Technology is about the network effect. It takes time for those connections to build.”

Do you have other tips and tricks that you’ve seen or have a local business you love to follow online? Share below and good luck, Little Guy.

Update: Facebook also posted about local businesses and tips for using Facebook (#kismet)

I had thechance to speak with Lucas Watson from P&G last week. He spearheads digital innovation on the marcom side and leads a small team of digital and social experts who work across the brands (Global Team Leader for Digital Business Strategy). Clearly P&G has an earnest commitment to applying social media and other digital marketing innovations to their way of marketing. I have been reading Design of Business from Roger Martin and believe their efforts in terms of applying 'design thinking' to their business has created a culture that makes social easier to embrace.

3 Ways to Get to the Hard Cases

I asked Lucas how he has seen the most entrenched traditional marketers become more "willing" to use social. What does he do to help them? He gave me the following three things;

1. Get them out of the office. Take them somewhere provocative like to a startup's office or to the Googleplex or somewhere where they can feel and see the excitement of doing things differently. Don't try and convince them in a conference room at P&G behind a Powerpoint slide

2. Get a digital champion on the brand. Every team needs an enthusiast who will push and keep challenging the usual way. We constantly shift between making digital everyone's job and embedding it via true experts. Truth is both are necessary and the balance will change over time as more people make digital a part fo their jobs.

3. Show them the ROI to inform marketing modeling. P&G is know for their marketing modeling. This simply confirms what each of us not inside the company would guess and that is that you have to have a 'pretty good' story of both the performance and ROI to convince hard core marketers like those at an FMCG (fast moving consumer goods).

Many brands and many, many social media consultants underestimate the power fo this last point. No doubt that ROI is far harder than performance measurement (knowing if a social strategy is working better this time around). And the full benefits of a social media-based marketing approach has positive impact beyond the short term sales impact. Still it can be done and and it is one of the key ways to get break down barriers to adopting social media-based word of mouth programs. Check out WOMMA's Measurement and Metrics Guidebook for more.

There's a lot marketers can learn from artist and musician Lady Gaga.

At age 23, Lady Gaga has rocketed to global fame in less than two years. Playing piano at age 4 and New York nightclubs at 14, she recently broke Billboard's record as the first artist to have her first five singles reach number one. She's won two Grammys, and has sold 8 million albums and 15 million singles digitally worldwide. While her performance art-style stage shows and bizarre outfits have garnered much buzz, it's her loyalty marketing that may sustain her for years. Gaga is dedicated to her fans and clearly knows the elements of cultivating a community of evangelistic fans.

With that, here are my 5 lessons about building brand loyalty, Lady Gaga-style:

1. Give fans a name. Gaga doesn't like the word "fan" so she calls them her "Little Monsters," named after her album "The Fame Monster." She even tattooed "Little Monsters" on her arm and tweeted the pic to fans professing love for them. Now fans are getting their own Little Monster tattoos. By giving the group a formal name, it gives fans a way to refer to each other. Fans feel like they are joining a special club. (Related business examples: Maker's Mark Ambassadors and Fiskar's Fiskateers.)

2. Make it about something bigger than you. During her concert tour, Gaga recites a "Manifesto of Little Monsters" (text) (video). Although a bit cryptic, most Little Monsters see it as a dedication to them, that her fans have the power to make or break her. (Related business examples: Smoque BBQ (pdf).)

3. Develop shared symbols. The official Little Monster greeting is the outstretched "monster claw" hand. As all Little Monsters know, the clawed hand is part of the choreography in the video of her song "Bad Romance." Gaga tells the story of watching a fan in Boston greet another fan with the claw hand and that's when she knew this was the Little Monster symbol. Even Oprah knows the Little Monster greeting. Shared symbols allow fans to identify each other and connect. (Related business example: LIVESTRONG yellow wristbands.)

4. Make your customers feel like rock stars. One staple of Gaga's "Monster Ball" tour is to call a fan in the audience during the show. She dials the number onstage, the fan screams out, is located and they are put up on a big screen. While the rest of audience goes bananas, she invites the fan to have a drink with her after the show. (Related business example: eBay Live Conference where attendees walk through a gauntlet of applauding eBay staff as they enter the closing gala)

5. Leverage social media. Gaga has the requisite Facebook fan page (over 5 million fans) and Twitter ID (almost 3 million followers) but it's how she uses them that drives loyalty. On Twitter, she tells fans what she is doing, such as tweeting them before she opened the Grammy Awards. She also tweeted to fans that she was buying them pizza for waiting overnight at an album signing.

Some artists are very protective of their image and prohibit recording devices during performances. Gaga doesn't allow professional photographers into her concerts but is ok with fans recording and putting videos on YouTube.

Whether Gaga will have staying power remains to be seen. But she is making waves in the music business and teaching plenty of people the power of fandom.

Wouldn't you like to have fans like these?

UPDATE: Thanks for reading and tweeting this article everyone! BTW, I'm on Twitter at @jackiehuba

When I started blogging in 2005, one of the first things I did was study how the so-called 'successful' bloggers blogged. One of the bloggers I began reading was Hugh MacLeod at Gaping Void.

I noticed as soon as I started reading Gaping Void that Hugh wasn't blogging the 'right' way. Specifically, he was constantly linking out to other sites and bloggers. This was obviously 'wrong', because all he was doing was sending traffic AWAY from his blog. And if a blogger with several days experience could see this, I'm sure everyone else could as well. Obviously.

But as I kept reading Hugh (even though I knew how he blogged was 'wrong'), I began to notice that people were commenting saying that they appreciated the link to Seth's recent post, or Tara's post on Pinko Marketing. Then I saw someone comment that they loved reading his blog because of 'all the great links you share'.

Hmmmmm.....could it be that by sharing links to other sites that Hugh wasn't actually driving people AWAY from his blog, but instead giving people a reason to become regular readers?

Then soon after, another blogging epiphany happened for me. As I was doing a crash-course of reading blogs in an effort to uncover the secrets of being a great blogger, I began to find a post here and there that caught my attention enough to leave a comment. Then a day or two later I noticed that traffic to my own blog started suddenly going up. And for the first time, COMMENTS were coming in! Awesome! But the problem was, I still had no idea what had caused the floodgates to open. Why all the traffic and comments suddenly? Then my friend Jordan Behan left a comment and when he did, he THANKED me for commenting on his blog. I went back and checked, and sure enough, almost all of the comments I had suddenly gotten, were coming from bloggers whose blog I had commented on first.

What these two examples did for helping me understand how and WHY people use social media, is immeasurable. Share something of value with others (such as a link to a great blog post), and they will be thankful. Create something of value for them (such as a comment on their blog), and they will not only be thankful, but they will want to return the favor.

But when I started blogging, my thought was that you become a good blogger by creating great content, and giving people a reason to come to your blog, and stay there. I had to LEARN how to be social with social media. I had to figure out how the tools work, and why people are using them. Not to silo content and information, but to SHARE it.

I was thinking about this learning process as I read Robbin's post today. I agree, I think companies have to train their employees on how to use social media as well. And in reality, the only way to do that is by making mistakes. Even if a company hires me to help them learn how to use social media effectively, there's still a time when the training wheels have to come off and the company takes ownership of their own efforts. No one learns how to ride a bicycle without earning a few scraped knees first. Social media is no different.

BTW as an introvert, I really think this applies. When I first started using social media, I didn't want to interact with strangers, because I am hesitant to do so offline. I had to learn how to become more social online, and now I think I'm an online extrovert, and an offline introvert. Have any other introverts noticed the same thing?

Live events play a critical role to engage consumers with a brand or product thru out the life of a campaign. The challenge with events is they are usually bound by geography, size of venue and of course cost. Many brands use social media to extend the reach of events with roving reporters who are live tweeting, creating hashtags for people to follow and posting twitpics.

All of these are great ways to extend the event but why not take coverage to the next level with a live broadcast? Creating a live show from an event is a great way to engage consumers and maximize your reach.

Solutions from Livestream and Ustream allow mobile broadcast stations to be set up from virtually anywhere with an Internet connection. No Internet access? No problem. The Livepack from Livestream is a turnkey hardware solution for wireless live streaming at HD quality. This makes man on street coverage much easier as you can literally point the camera and go.

Recently we live broadcasted from an event. The concept was a behind the scenes sneak peak of a show with exclusive interviews from campaign spokes people and attendees. Our goal was to create new ways to extend reach of the event, engage with consumers not able to attend and drive action by getting people to tune in.

The results were excellent by comparison. The brand micro-site saw its single largest traffic day since it launched in November of 2009. Visitors tuned in for an average of 10 minutes, which is five times longer than an average day.

Not only did people tune into the broadcast from over 20 countries, 70% of them explored at least three additional pages within the site. The live coverage of the event coupled with active monitoring and engagement on twitter proved to be a great recipe for extending the event experience.

Before plugging your camera in and going live here are some tips for a successful live broadcast.

• Create a “Show” not a stream: Fully develop the story you want to tell with a mixture of live coverage and pre-recorded video. This requires more up front planning, pre recording of videos and more tightly incorporating segways to pre-recorded video.
• Promote across channels to build awareness of the show: Using email, social channels and engaging with online influencers played a huge role in the success of this online event.
• Encourage viewer participation by bringing them into the “show”: Another way to engage viewers in the live broadcast is to in create points of interaction with event goers and online viewers via twitter, Facebook or chat. A simple example of this would be a Q&A with attendees.
• No wifi – No show: In situations where you rely on a wifi connection it is essential to test each physical location the broadcast will air from. This will ensure there are no dead spots. For venues that do no provide wifi/wired capabilities you can also have lines dropped or secure a rental of the LiveStream Livepack.
• Poor lighting and sound can ruin a great effort: Having the right equipment can make or break the experience for your viewers. Plan ahead and be prepared to bring additional lighting especially if you are broadcasting indoors. The use of microphones will also significantly increase the audio quality for those tuning in.

Live broadcast are certainly not for every situation but can be a great way to maximize the investment in offline events.