Preparing for a Social Media Marketing Workshoop

I am working with Mike Lewis and Chris Brogan on a workshop to explore and prioritize social media strategies and I was working on defining a framework to think about all of the ways a company might use new media / social media to innovate around their brand. I saw some examples on line and also am drawing from the “wheel” that we often talk about at CrossTech Partners. The wheel illustrates how a brand (at the center) touches a range of audiences - customers, prospects, colleagues, partners - through different channels. These channels are now further complicated by the advent of social media. Companies are now interacting directly and indirectly through a range of new media channels.

Here is a categorization of some of these channels.

Social Networks and Sharing
Opensocial Applications
Facebook / MySpace presence
LinkedIn

Brand Web Sites and Micro Sites
New compelling experiences at your destination site
Micro-sites and landing pages for products and services
Interactive tools online for product and service engagement (e.g. configurators)

Communities
Social Network Communities - Ning/ Xing

Live events
Webinar/ Twebinar
Conferences and Meetings

Outreach Programs
Blogger network engagement
Influencer

Mobile Engagement
Communications/ SMS
Mobile applications

Digital Video and Media Sharing
YouTube
Flikr
Podcasting

Social Gaming
Sponsored Games
In-game branding

Social Media Infrastructure
Listening Systems
Audience Intelligence

Virtual Worlds
Second Life

Content Syndication/ Publishing
RSS
eNewsletters

Communicating and Discussion
Blogs
Micro Blogs

eMail Marketing
direct email engagement with your clean database

Collaborative Tools
Google Docs
Zoho

I am sure there are others - or better ways to categorize the different ways a brand can engage audience. What do you think?

I enjoyed a trip to Philadelphia last week to attend the ITEC Conference . I spoke at two sessions on Thursday, here is a summary.

Session 1 Second Circle Web 2.0 and New Marketing

Metcalf’s Law - The value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users
We are in a new digital ecosystem and the search box is the new window to our intentions:

112M million blogs
Bloggers are mainstream
2,700 Social networks
1.5 million photos added to Flickr daily
4 million daily Twitter messages
Average age of evening news viewer: 60

As Chris Brogan has shared many times, there is a new information model:
Information must be: Dynamic, Localized, Atomized, Relevant, Mashable, Mobile, Shareable

Web 2.0 is a jargon term and overused, but it still is understood as representing a wide range of new technologies that share some common principles:
Participation
Social Software
Mobility
Folksonomy
The Long Tail

We talked about the following technologies that can transform new marketing and PR:
Blogs
Microblogging
RSS, Content Aggregation and Syndication
Wikis

Session 2 - Web 2.0 for KM & Collaboration

The second talk focused more within the enterprise and discussed how similar technologies are having an impact with team collaboration and innovation.

Companies are realizing the benefits in using Second Circle tools for KM and Collaboration. However, there are some key differences inside and outside the firewall.

Need for security
Firewalls restricting access to social networks
Regulations/ Sox prevents transparent communications
Mix of public and private networks for content
Rich new media impacting network performance
Documents buried across servers and desktops
Culture doesn’t support blogging and sharing views
Can’t establish my personal presence and profile online
Not using RSS to keep track of my information resources
Access expertise across all my networks - work / personal

KM & collaboration drives innovation, participative decision making, and information access, and colleagues access across an organization:

Driving efficiency and lower costs
Enabling distributed, networked businesses
Delivering innovation and speed to market
Supporting flexible working
Knowledge as a distinct factor in market value
Low cost open networks and services
Generations of tech-savvy digital natives.

A case study in life sciences pointed out four key strategies:
Building customer relationships
Enhancing the work environment
Achieving competitive advantage
Ensuring compliance and security

We talked about the following technologies and how they are being used “inside the firewall” to drive value.

Profiles & Expertise Location
Corporate Blogs
Wikis
Document Management
Search
RSS, Alerts & Messaging
Team Collaboration

Some advice:
Support your “Digital Natives”
Foster Grass Roots Adoption - Participation
Use Tagging Strategies and Folksonomy over overly burdensome taxonomy models
Adopt light weight but clear procedures and policies for Information Management Governance, Security

Contact me at CrossTech Partners if you want to learn more from the presentations:

jstone@crosstechpartners.com

I am putting together an agenda for a 1-day executive briefing session on Social Media and New Marketing with an Insurance Company. They are brand new to social media. Here is what I outlined .. anything missing?

Review and share insights on the landscape of new media technologies and online experiences. These include:

Social networks, technologies and trends
Online Communities
Social Bookmarking and the Architecture of Participation
Mash-ups and composite applications
Virtual Worlds
Blogs and Blogger Influence
Microblogging (e.g. Twitter)
Forums and Discussions
Open Social Applications
Webinars and Twebisodes
Audience Intelligence and Listening and Response Technologies
eMail marketing
Website visibility and user experience
Content syndication and RSS technology

Anything missing? What would you want to learn about at a session like this?

Recently, Mark Boisvert - an account executive that works with me at CrossTech - and I were in a working session with the online marketing team from a big brand in the network and telephony space. Currently, they operate a major web site with a rich aray of content and are undergoing a site redesign that is about to launch. They are asking how they use new media strategies to accelerate the velocity and visibility of the site and move their page views from 6.6 million to 8.8 million in a year.  We are targeting a number of “visibility” metrics - gone are the days where SEO or SEM will address the challenge:

Technorati rank
Technorati fans
Google Indexed pages
Alexa ranking
Inbound links
Del.icio.us bookmarks
Computerworld, InformationWeek citations
Newsletter subscribers 

How should they go about it?

Four interrelated strategies:
Intelligence: Understanding audience influence and impact – both on their site and across the web

Content: Delivering and communicating compelling and credible content that their audience wants

Relationship: Building relationships and engaging in conversations with their audience

Network: Optimizing visibility and connecting and linking across the broader web  

A new media marketing maturity model that helps assess where they are today so we can put together a new marketing blueprint:

1. Online Focus Group:

Goal: Understand audience and develop innovative ideas
Approach: Platform and Listening Campaign and Continuous Model

2. Influence Network Analysis

Goal: Understand the optimal networks that you need to be engaged and participating
Approach: Identify passionate and authentic brand influencers and activists

3. Intelligence Platform and Service

Goal:  Understand today’s network impact and measure over time
Approach: Listening Platform and Monitoring Services, Dashboard of Metrics

4. Site Enhancement Program

Goal: Enhance content and relationship capabilities to drive value
Approach:  Site maturity analysis, feature set envisioning and prioritization

5. Outreach Program

Goal: Influence the influencers to drive visibility and velocity
Approach: Blogger relations management, including outreach, relationship development, educational programs including webisodes/ twebisodes, FAQ