Do's and Don'ts in Blogger Relations

Nowadays, much news is generated and disseminated from the blogosphere. According to comScore, there are more than 77 million blog visitors in the U.S., a number greater than the total audience of Facebook or MySpace. While some of these visits are casual or entertainment-oriented, 50% of all readers report that blogs influence their purchase decisions, and the majority report that online reviews are often more helpful than speaking with a sales associate.

With such a captive blog audience, organizations need to be ready to cultivate positive relationship with the relevant bloggers to interact on content, image and influence. I've come up with a very short list of do's and don'ts when organizations approach and communicate with bloggers.

Don'ts --
1. Don't spam bloggers with irrelevant information to influence stories.
It’s easy for bloggers to spot who reads them and who doesn’t, and guess who gets the welcome?

2. Don't try to pay to get your products/service favorably blogged.
90% of bloggers claim that they talk about brands in an unpaid manner. Exchanging content for cash is not widely accepted. Tapping into this existing behavior is really important.

Do's --
1. Know your bloggers, and know them really well.
Dedicating time to read and interact with the target blogs. Think in their shoes; help make their work easier; be the kind of blog participants you wish to have with your own blog.

2. Respect bloggers' decisions.
If your target bloggers decide not to review your products, you'll need to be able to respect the decision and continue cultivating relationship with them. After all, the power of the blogosphere lies in its truth and authenticity - bloggers' decisions are part of it, so embrace it.

What do you think organizations should/can (not) do in terms of blogger relations?

Questions, Variables & Meseaurement of Social Media

Be aware! This post will show how much the comprehensive exam I had weeks ago is still haunting me. :)

So this week, I started to think about how to measure the value of social media, and I couldn't help thinking about operationalization, that is, to specify the measurement on variables in relation to a concept.

The concept is obviously social media. Variables are multiple depending on what questions you've asked. You may ask what is the increase in traffic to the organization's web site with the implementation of social media; or you may ask how is the interaction going between the social media users and you; or you may directly ask what is the sales driven by the social media. Other variables may include and are not limited to attention, retention, perception, engagement, etc.

With different questions, your inquiry will look much different. Some more qualitative, and others more quantitative. Various measurement tools are attached to both approaches.

Qualitative
Perhaps you want to know something about the reputation of your business/product/service, the ongoing conversations, and customer relationship. You may ask-

"Do we have a voice in the conversation about our product/service/overall industry?"
"How is our voice different from our competitors?"
"Are we making monologue or having a dialogue with our key publics?"

In-depth exploration and human analysis are involved to catch interaction and competition, and get answers to this kind of questions. Also, tools such as Sentiment analysis and opinion tracking may be used to get a picture about the conversation.

Quantitative
If your questions mainly address numbers, ROI, sales, profits, traffic, SEO ranking, you may take a more quantitative approach. Tools such as Google Analytics and Feedburner can help analyze blog traffic, subscriber count, keyword optimization, etc. I recommend this article if you want to learn how to use some of the most advanced tools and metrics. Also, for reference, this article introduces more than 50 tools designed to track traffic.

The key takeaway is that organizations need to ask clear questions, specify variables before they get down to choosing tools and metrics to measure social media successes.

Inform CEOs: Social Media ROI is Measurable!

This Wednesday I attended the Triangle Game Conference which featured a panel discussion on the use of social media for gaming companies. While expressing the passion for social media, the panel of investors and CEOs expressed concerns over the use of social media to market and promote products, a reason being lack of measurement on success, with success majorly perceived as return on investment, or ROI.

This tells me several things. First, in order to successfully including social media in the communication strategy, businesses need to be able to determine whether or not a social media program is moving products or making impacts. Second, the management tends to think that social media ROI is not measurable at the monetary level. Third, the burden of education and operationalization is on us communication professionals. We need to help the dominant coalition understand the value of social media by clarifying the fact that social media success, even when it is defined as ROI, is measurable, and below are a few initial thoughts on how to do that-

1. Well communicate goals and objectives.
It is important to touch base with the management what should be realized with the implementation of a social media program. Is the investment expected to be returned by higher sales, more profits, more leads or otherwise better retention? Knowing what needs to be quantified is the first step to proving a social media strategy is beneficial to businesses. Choosing the appropriate tools to quantify successes though, is another topic I'd like to discuss with my next blog.

2. Measure baseline.
To demonstrate ROI, it is essential to let the number speak. That's how statistic-based metrics comes into play. To ensure the dominant coalition see how much difference the social media makes for the business, a before/after picture needs to be depicted. Thus, we need to not only measure the gain after social media is introduced, but also where the business currently stands at- what is the sales now, how much customer attention we are getting now, etc.

3. Well translate the data.
It is better to provide to decision makers data-driven insights than to provide raw data. Explain with your data how social media help accomplish goals and objectives. For instance, if your ultimate goal is to increase sales, it is important to explicate the correlation between social media use and increased sales with your data- how much more traffic is driven to the e-commerce site after a new Facebook message or new Tweet, and how much increase in sales do you see with that extra traffic?

I believe in the value of having open discussion about how to best measure social media impacts. Ultimately, it is important to let key decision makers see such impacts can be measured beyond ROI. But I tend to believe ROI will always be on their mind, so we can figure out ways to start from there.

Facebook vs. Twitter: Which is Better for What?

Facebook and Twitter, both are too important to miss when it comes to social media marketing communication. However, when we need to closely strategize when to use which, an essential question would be: Facebook or Twitter? Which is better for what? That is to say, which social media platform offers the best strategies for the specialized needs of business, market and the key publics?

A recent analysis by Irbtrax may help answer the question. The highly triangulated study compares social media marketing strategy benefits of Facebook verse Twitter. Results are summarized as below.

Facebook wins in these areas-
1. More effective in driving traffic;
2. Better social media intimacy, or interactivity;
3. Direct Internet communication from a client contact and human resources management perspective;
4. A better platform for Business to Consumer marketing.

Twitter wins in these areas-
1. Better for viral marketing;
2. More effective in market research and trend identification;
3. A better platform for Business to Business marketing.

I think the comparison analysis is very interesting and useful, especially when social media choices are made for a marketing communication project with specific objectives, timetables, budgets and evaluation criteria. After all, the desired mutually beneficial relationship needs to be cultivated using the most appropriate tool. It's important that we understand each tool we have.

Job Seeking 2.0: Interactive Self-Branding

Social media is penetrating to all corners of life, including job seeking. Today, a plain CV may not be your only choice when you get down to introducing yourselves to prospective employers. With web sites such as VirtualCV and Ning, job seekers are able to provide richer information such as self-introduction videos, hyperlinks to references, images, charts, and other portfolio documents. (Please go here to take a look at a sample VirtualCV resume.) These web sites also provide networking resources to interact with employers, and users can control who has access to view their online resumes.

One important idea underlying these web sites is self-branding- instead of telling what they can do (in plain text), job seekers now showcase what's been done in order to demonstrate what they can do. The technologies enable job seekers to tell stories, make presentations, and draw pictures of themselves for potential employers, giving them a clearer feel of the "persona". Another big plus about these web sites is that it will help improve your Google ranking, adding more weight to your personal brand.

With almost all technologies being double-edged swords, it can be argued that VirtualCV and Ning have potential down sides for job seekers and their self-branding. In my opinion, disadvantages may include- information overload, challenges of branding with multimedia (for example, people need to know how to speak properly in front of a camera in order to make a good self-introduction video), keeping a balance between being completely open with one's online resume and being highly selectively open (after all, you don't want to be transparent to everyone with your professional information, and at the same time, you do need to direct useful traffic to view it). I'm curious to know your opinions about online job seeking, self-branding and pros and cons of these web sites.

SNS China: What Can You Do When Everyone is Playing?

The major function of SNS, or social networking sites, is pretty self-explanatory: networking, and building and reflecting social relations. In China, where internet is considered as an entertainment highway for some 340 million web users, SNS has two main focuses- networking and entertainment.

According to a 2009 research by iResearch, China's top market research firm specializing in customer behavior in internet media, e-commerce and online games, 48.6% of SNS users in China use SNS to keep in touch with old friends, and 32.2% of them use SNS for entertainment, more specifically, playing casual/webpage/interactive games provided as SNS applications.

To be more specific, many college students and young white collar employees (two most important demographic groups of SNS population in China) kill time by selling SNS friends for virtual money, stealing each others' vegetables in the SNS farms (extreme cases involve people setting up spreadsheet for effective farm stealing!), 0r competing for virtual parking spot. They don't care to add a company/brand as friends; they don't pay attention to organizations on SNS; they just want to have fun with mostly people they know, which brings a question for organizations aiming to build relationships on SNS- do we still have a shot?



The answer is yes. Entertainment elements highlighted on Chinese SNS give a lot of potential to interactive marketing communication. Organizations may think in way: if it is hard to be invited to play a game and get entertained with SNS users who happen to be their key audience, it is easier to be part of the virtual game and help your audience realize the real value of the brands. Citroën China successfully penetrated into the popular SNS game of competing for parking spots. The player who earned the msot virtual money can win a real car. Players interact with the brand in this most played SNS game in osmosis. Though Citroen is not "friended", it has successfully got into many SNS social circles. This case tells us that creative and entertaining measures need to be sought to communicate with key publics on SNS in China... perhaps also elsewhere- what do you think?

Location-Aware Text Messaging

Text-messaging is getting more and more location aware. Mobile phones influence how we interact with space when mobile interfaces “know” their location. By being able to connect to satellites, cell phone towers or wireless routers, mobile devices acquire geospatial coordinates which allow users to access location-based information about that space and to find other users in the surroundings, depending on their relative distance to one another. The trend, which Dr. Silva describes as "network locality" (being connected to a network with local information embedded) can be found in corners of lives. I'd like to bring to you an application in China.

Municipal governments in China often utilizes the database that contains all mobile phone numbers, sets up a public text messaging terminal and sends one-to-all SMS for various administrative purposes. During the Beijing Olympics, the Beijing municipal government frequently sent messages to all mobile users within the network of Beijing, notifying them of temporary transportation issues. Also, mobile phone users who take an intercity trip in China will receive automatic text messages as soon as they cross a city limit (departing one city and entering another). The text messages welcome them to the new city and provide local information such as famous places of interest, weather forecast, and accommodation hotlines. The government-initiated one-to-all text messaging can be seen as a unique appropriation of the Chinese society because on the one hand, it is enabled and complies with the centralized authority, and on the other, it reflects the cultural orientation of collectivism that bases decision-making on what is best for a group.

I believe location aware text messaging is a promising application not only for government initiated public administration. Welcome text message travelers receive as they reach new cities benefit local commerce, tourism and the general city branding. I'd like to hear your thoughts about the possible organizational use of location aware text messaging. Thanks!


P.S. Above is an example of the possibilities of being location smart for organizations. Mobile phone users who pass by the billboard can scan the QR code (something similar as bar code but more advanced) on the billboard with their mobile phone and access a website embedded. Instead of sending text messages to everyone, you can let others go to you.

Good Medicine Tastes Bitter, Like Negative Online Reviews

"Come on, good medicine tastes bitter," whenever my mom made me take the Chinese medicine when I was a kid falling sick, she would say this Chinese saying to me. Until today, I still firmly believe that the good medicine, a.k.a the brown-ish liquid slowly cooked from all kinds of herbs with bizarre names, is, and is going to be the bitterest thing I've ever had!

Actually, there is another part of the saying: "Good medicine tastes bitter; sincere advice jar on ear." Well, I am not sure if all sincere advice has to sound jarring, but I guess it certainly applies to those negative online customer reviews that may sound really unpleasant to business owners and product/service providers.

Of course, nobody enjoys hearing criticism. It hurts feelings. In terms of online reviews, while good reviews are considered to be reputation boosters, bad ones are usually not- they are discouraging, disappointing and uninviting. But let's face it, although everyone wants to have, and only have customers that put the sweetest words about their most satisfactory five-star experience ever, many would use the online review service to let others know they are not happy or not sure about whatever they have received from organizations reviewed. Oops, jarring words. How would they ever help?

First of all, they do help. Instead of thinking about how to fire back, how to erase bad words, or how to bribe happy patrons to write good reviews, businesses need to have the right attitudes toward negative online customer reviews- they can hep, and they do help! Here's how-

1. Helping Customer Communication
According to a 2009 Nielson report, 90% consumers surveyed trust recommendations from people they know, and 70% trust consumer opinions posted online while 70% trust brand websites. Your customers want to listen to what fellow customers have to say about you, exactly as much as they want to hear what you say about yourself. Your customers would appreciate you facilitating authentic and transparent communication among them. That customer review system is just too important not to be provided. Besides, 87% of consumers tend to write reviews when they have positive things to say, which means opening the door to reviews helps you to have probably more good reviews.

2. Increasing Sales & Decreasing Cost
Many cases have taught us that things with customer reviews (positive or negative) sell better than those without. A good way to look at the benefit of bad reviews is through this formula I learned in my marketing class back in collge-

Satisfaction = Experience / Expectation

This means, bad reviews help decrease psychological expectations, and thus increase the chance of satisfaction. When weaknesses of products are exposed through bad reviews, customers are likely to have a more realistic expectation, which can reduce the number of complaints or returns.

3. Free Customer Insight Research
You get to know what customers don't like. Is it the product, or the pricing, or the promotion, or the competition... Those good or bad words about you are your first-hand customer insights, and the best part- this valuable information is completely free!!! With it, you can stop guestimating, and get to improving things. Please don't ignore the jarring words. Listen and learn! Good medicine is bitter, but it heals.

Organizations: Ready for Wiki?

My internship projects at a PR agency handle business development for three gaming technology clients, two of which have their own Wikipedia entries. The third client, a fairly new game artificial intelligence company from Germany does not. Our project team thought it was an issue while many competitors have presence on Wikipedia. "Why wasn't it there though?" I had this question. The computer-science-professor-turned CEO was very technology savvy; the company embraces social media- it's on Linkedin, Twitter, Youtube and Facebook; so, why isn't it on Wikipedia?

Then the project with this company got a major focus away from social media use, so my question hasn't got answered yet, but below are some possibilities when an organization is not Wikipedia ready:

1. Not 'Notable' Enough

Wikipedia has a special rule on notability- For a topic to be considered worthy of its own article, it must be considered “worthy of note”. In the case of organizations and companies:

"An organization is generally considered notable if it has been the subject of significant coverage in reliable, independent secondary sources. Trivial or incidental coverage of a subject by secondary sources is not sufficient to establish notability. All content must be verifiable."

It is obvious that Wikipedia emphasizes the importance of verifiable, non-editorialized content for organization entries. Thus, press releases issued by the organization itself are not considered a credible resource. Organizations need to include several external references and cite as much as possible in the entry, which can be quite a challenge for small start-ups.

2. Not the Best Platform

Some wiki platforms can handle robust file types, while others can only support text or HTML files. If organizations need to use complex file formats, Wikipedia may not be the best choice. Also, since types of wiki are very diverse and specified, Wikipedia as the general one, may not be the best wiki that meets users' objectives. For example, the game artificial intelligence discipline actually has its own professional wiki.

3. No Time Taking Care of it

It takes efforts to manage the use of wiki. Constant monitoring, editing, and maintenance are required, which again can be quite a challenge for smaller-sized start-ups.

In sum, though having presence on Wiki, or specifically Wikipedia is tempting, organizations need to self-check readiness- what are the needs, possibilities, pros and cons, etc.

Listening & Making: Exploring Two-Way Podcasting

Podcasting has been considered more of a one-way communication means as the process of making a podcast usually does not involve opinions from the groundswell. Podcasts are usually created and made available for interested public to download with related technologies.

However, in organizational use of podcasting, it is important to address the needs and wants of the target audience. Making podcast more audience-oriented and interactive would be a great move to engage with viewers/listeners, which would help organizations develope preferred relationships with the target publics by making and using of podcasts. Here, I'd like to introduce a few cases to discuss some possibilities in bringing podcasting, specifically audio podcasting into a two-way communication pattern.

1. Involve audience in the creative process.
Just like magazines have special pages for readers' letters, and blogs have places to leave comments, podcasting programs needs to listen to what the listeners have to say/suggest about the works, and try hard to respond to the criques/suggestions with action. The Royal Airforce Museum in London are giving out lovely Teddy Bears as they are soliciting listeners' suggestions about which celebrity would be most ideal to record the next podcast series. I think this move is very beneficial to the organization-audience relationship established through podcasts. For organizations, it is a great way to understand the preferences of the target audience. It is also a positive message that says organizations care about the feelings and insights of the audience. For audience, this approach transforms the presumption about their duties involving podcasts- they are now not only expected to download and listen to the latest episodes, they are invited to add wit and wisdom to the creation of the episodes they are going to listen to. And, participation is awarded!

2. Get audience to generate their own podcasts.
Another great use of podcasts for organizations is to hold podcast competitions that encourage audience to initiate podcast creation efforts. Basically, organizations set themes and requirements based on which listeners/participants create and submit podcasts. NASA's 21st Century Explorer Program holds an annual podcasting competition. Participants of 2009 were required to record audio podcasts on what they think is NASA's greatest exploration achievement in the past 50 years. Similarly, Little White Earbuds, a website designed for DJs hosts an annual podcasting competion that encourages listeners to submit their mixing works for award consideration. I think organizations that has a mission of informing/educating target publics can do something similar in order to make podcasting experience interactive, though there is a premise- organizations need to have established a fairly good listener base.

Please let me know your thoughts about two-way podcasting. What else do you think would work?