I’ve been on a bit of a podcasts kick lately and wanted to share a series that I found to be very informative: Slate.com’s Negotiation Academy.

This series is made up of 10 very easily digestable podcasts (10-15 minutes each) that focus on a different aspect of negotiating. It is led by Jill Barshay and Seth Stevenson who studied negotiating tactics at Columbia Business School. They do an excellent job of explaining each key topic, provide very relevant and easy to understand examples, and interview some of the leading negotiators and mediators in the world.

If you’re looking for something to listen to on your way to work for the next week or two, I’d definitely suggest you check it out, but, in the meantime here are some of my key takeaways:

• Be Prepared. Before you even think about sitting at the negotiating table, you better know your stuff. Know the other party and where they’re coming from. Know the price that you want to start at and what your walkaway price is. Your preparation is often the one thing that you can control, so you’re going to want to knock it out of the park. This will also help make you much more confident, which will serve you very well in the heat of the moment.
• Build Rapport. Let’s be honest, someone is going to be more receptive to working with someone who they actually like, so whether it’s before you meet for the negotiation or from the second you shake their hand–Work it! It may be tempting to act like the serious dealmaker, but coming off as a jerk isn’t going to get you very far.
• Ask Questions. Your biggest priority at the negotiating table should be to extract as much information from the other party as possible. The more you learn about them, the more leverage you will gain by understanding what their priorities are and the more likely you will be able to come to an agreement that is beneficial to both of you.

Ultimately, what all of these come down to is doing everything you can to have the upper hand in negotiations and gain leverage over the party.

Whether you’re negotiating a multi-million dollar deal or simply trying to negotiate a raise, there’s certainly something for you to learn from this podcast series, so I’d encourage you to check it out!

Have you had a chance to build some negotiating skills? What are some tips that you would suggest? Are there any podcasts that you’d recommend?

Image from Travel Aficionado

Keeping in line with last week’s post on Malcolm Gladwell, we’re going to touch on the ideas of another business icon today, Michael Porter. Porter was the creator of landmark concepts, including the Five Forces Analysis, that are taught in business courses around the world, and he currently serves as a professor at the Harvard Business School. Porter obviously isn’t using his position at Harvard Business School as an opportunity to kick back, because a recent article on Harvard Business Review (co-written with Mark Kramer) has the potential to be another landmark point in his career. Today, we’ll look at his theory of shared value.

I’d encourage you to watch this 15 minute video where Porter explains his ideas very thoroughly.

What Is Wrong With Capitalism Today?

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how customer is a dirty word, and I think that Porter expresses the point I was trying to reach even better than I was able to myself. Porter argues that companies current approach to value is an outdated one in that they are increasingly creating profit at the expense of the surrounding community. As a result, government has come to view businesses as problems, leading them to regulate, tax, and becoming pressured into creating policies that aren’t business friendly. In the past, what was good for businesses (profits) was also good for the consumer. After all, that’s what capitalism is all about (Go America!?). But if you look today at the shady things that went down leading up to the mortgage crisis, how there seem to be fewer jobs than ever, and even at what Taco Bell uses to make their beef, you’ll see that larger profits do not always benefit the community.

Enter: Shared Value

What we need to do is change our mindset. There is no longer a fixed pie of value that forces us to try to maximize the amount of that pie that we can take home (meaning our competitors and our customers receive less value). Now, the pie is no longer a fixed size and we’re not playing in a zero-sum game. It is actually our job to try to make the pie bigger by increasing the amount of value that we offer to the consumer, meaning that both we and the consumer take home more pie. The consumer will realize this and even help us increase our slice of the pie. Analogies aside, we make an effort to create both economic and social value.

What this boils down to is beginning to think with the mindset that creating social benefits for the community is a powerful way to create this economic value for our business. We create products that are actually good for the consumer and fulfill their human needs, which in turn increases our profit. Our old model of trying to create a competitive advantage by cutting costs and improving features is no longer sustainable. A sustainable competitive advantage comes from creating shared value with more and more communities, meeting their underlying needs. If you can accomplish this, the consumer will even be less price sensitive.

Shared value is the ultimate differentiator.

If you’re pressed for time or happy with what you’ve learned so far, feel free to stop right here, but I feel like below is a pretty good mock case study that helps explain the concept and even prove its possible effectiveness.

An Example

Let’s imagine we work for Lowe’s Home Improvement. Lowe’s origins come in the form of a local hardware store deep in the great state of North Carolina. It has grown a tiny bit since then, but at its core, I believe it still likes to think of itself as a local resource to contractors and DIYers. Home Depot on the other hand, started as a huge warehouse retailer and has pretty much been the same ever since…except it has gotten even bigger.

Alright, the scene is set. Let’s look at how a scene played out under the old capitalism mindset.

A few years ago, right down the road from my house a Lowe’s Home Improvement and a Home Depot were built directly across the street from one another. In the first place, the local community wasn’t too thrilled about these retailers coming into our neighborhood because the buildings they were in (mainly the Lowe’s store) were practically in the backyard of families living in the nearby neighborhood. Lowe’s could care less. They were more concerned about being in Home Depot’s backyard and earning more money than them. How did the two compete? The same way they’ve always competed, by trying to say that they offer better and more products and even lower prices.

Now, I have no insider information on how these two locations did, but they’ve done well enough to both stay where they are. What that tells me is they both did about the same and neither ever gained much of a competitive advantage over the other.

Now, let’s look at the same scene, except with the Shared Value, new capitalism mindset (from the perspective of Lowe’s).

We want to open up a store right smack in the same area as Home Depot, build a competitive advantage (differentiate ourselves), and effectively take so many sales away from Home Depot that they shut down the store (is that cutthroat enough for ya?)

What do we know? Well first, our two biggest groups of customers are contractors and DIYers. Secondly, we have the benefit of being able to try to tie in our roots of being a local hardware store. Let’s do it…

What it comes down to is not approaching this store opening with the perspective of “We’re opening another location (#134,000) in order to increase our sales and make profit from an untapped market,” rather “We’re opening a location in this neighborhood because we believe that we can serve an unmet need in that community by helping them complete their home improvement projects more efficiently.” Dare I say if this were an election, you’d win with that position statement. So, how do you execute?

Let’s begin with contractors. As the new location is being built, have someone, whether it be the store owner or someone who may be in charge of contractor business, meet with local contractors (preferably in person) to explain your goal in opening this new store and how they’ll benefit from it. Tell them about the discounts that are available to them as contractors and any other services that may be available to them and leave them a card where they can contact you (realistically, 90% never will call you, but it leaves one heck of an impression). Every now and then, once the store does open, check in with them to see if there are any products you don’t carry that they needed, any suggestions they may have for how you can add more value to them, and just to see how business is going.

Now, the DIYers. These folks are pissed off you’re moving into their backyard, so you’re really going to have to demonstrate how you can share value with them (and not by offering low prices). Again, while the store is being built, send out a mailing that outlines the services that Lowe’s has to offer. I don’t know what services they currently offer, but they could hold seasonal DIY classes like “How to go green this Christmas,” “Prepping your home for winter,” “Keeping heat out in the summer,” etc. Heck, you could even work with some passionate DIYers in the community to start ongoing classes around building projects. Here, you don’t even do the work, you’re just the enabler. There are countless other things you can do to help ignite the passion of the local DIYers.

Something else you can do to prove your commitment to helping the community is use the inherent strengths of Lowe’s to help the community. Maybe a local park is really in need of a new playground, or maybe the school down the road needs some renovations here and there. This is a great opportunity for Lowe’s to partner up with folks in the community (and even those contractors) to take on these projects and really help out the community (and get some great PR out of it, too).

And the store opening will be crucial. The actual opening of the store will be a very important time to communicate your commitment to delivering value to the community (because you know most of those mailings will get tossed and you can’t rely on WOM beforehand). So, having all sorts of informational kiosks set up around the store about relevant services/information offered in different areas is key (and probably have a bulletin board when you walk in listing community events you’re putting on). Maybe you can have a video playing when they walk in of the work you did on the local park (or a sign up sheet to help out in renovating the school).

Something…anything to drive home the point that you’re here not to take their money in exchange for goods. You’re here to make the pie larger for the both of you by creating more value for them, the consumer, which in turn makes both of your slices of the pie bigger.

And, as for Home Depot? Notice that we haven’t had to sabotage their store or do anything shady. We differentiated ourselves based on our shared value offering, which means many of the customers don’t even care if they can buy their PVC at Home Depot for 20 cents less. That has to be frustrating for them, but man it feels good, for us, doesn’t it?

What do you think about Michael Porter’s Shared Value theory? Is it a viable strategy for gaining a competitive advantage and generating profit? Or is it all rainbows, unicorns, and fluff?

Images by Nestlé and aka Kath

I’ve just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point (i know, a little late on checking that one out), and I couldn’t help but to think about how it helps explain the nearly meteoric growth of the question and answer site, Quora, lately.

A lot has been made about how other sites, Yahoo! Answers, Facebook’s Questions, and countless others, had essentially the same exact concept as Quora, yet they had nowhere near the same amount of short-term success. People ask questions, other people provide answers. Seems like a concept that’s pretty hard to fudge up, right?

Well, Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point actually does a very good job of providing us with an explanation.

The Law of the Few

The first premise of Gladwell’s book is that for an idea to reach its “tipping point,” there are typically a handful of key people involved in its success. He refers to this as “The Law of the Few” and it is made up of connectors, mavens, and salesmen.

Connectors. These are people who link us to the world and have a magical skill of bringing people together. In Quora’s case, Adam D’Angelo and Charlie Cheever likely acted as key connectors for the site, especially considering D’Angelo worked at Facebook, the online king of connecting people. These two guys were probably able to get Quora in front of a lot of key folks early on in the process. Also, Quora was able to tap into social media, especially Twitter and blogs, which really helped the product pick up speed. On the other hand, one can also argue that Facebook Questions and the other sites also had this advantage. So, connectors helped Quora get in the game, but not necessarily rise above the rest (although they did come into play big time once it started taking off.

Mavens. This is the group that we look to regularly with the expectation that they will provide us with new information and the latest ideas. In this instance, folks like Robert Scoble, TechCrunch, and Mashable began talking about Quora, which attracted quite a bit of attention to the product. Furthermore, the fact that a number of mavens in the technology world have joined Quora has helped make the service even more valuable, as their answers add a tremendous amount of value to the Quora community. Again, it’s not like mavens didn’t talk about any of the previous services, they definitely did (albeit not as much, at this point). In the end, I’d actually say the mavens were one of the more important members of the “few.”

Salesmen. This one doesn’t need much explanation, it is exactly what it sounds like. For an idea to take off, it needs charismatic and persuasive people who can convince others of its value. Quora has greatly benefited from this in the form of bloggers and social media users. As the user base began growing and really taking off, everyone and their brother began writing blog posts about Quora, many of which expressed how valuable of a tool it was. This definitely isn’t something you can plan on at the outset, but it has ended up being a very valuable resource and piece of Quora’s growth.

The Stickiness Factor

This is essentially, what makes the idea something that will break through the noise and be a memorable one? At its core, Quora is meant to be a useful tool, allowing users to tap into the knowledge of a huge group of people to find the answers to questions they’ve been pondering for quite some time. While this is a critical factor in whether or not an idea can reach a tipping point, I don’t think it is one that necessarily sets Quora apart from similar sites and concepts. Sure, Quora may have some features and characteristics that make it more sticky, but ultimately it is the same concept as many before it.

The Power of Context

Ah, yes. Here we are. Nothing thus far has really made Quora stand out that much from others. Mavens are probably the one characteristic so far that has set Quora apart a little bit, but not even very convincingly. So, what do we mean by context? Well, ideas, and people for that matter, are greatly influenced by their environment. In this case, sure D’Angelo and Cheever have this product that they’ve raised, but that product is still subject to the influences of the environment it is operating in (that are often out of the creators’ control).

Let’s look at Yahoo! Answers for a second. In my experience with the tool, it is full of somewhat relevant and interesting questions that attract answers from random, everyday joes. Look through some of the questions and answers provided here and you’ll first lose confidence in the human race, and secondly understand that you would never rely on Yahoo! Answers for any halfway important question you had. Questions don’t even use proper grammar and answers don’t even use proper logic. Where is the value there?

Quora was able to operate in a much better environment (even if it may have taken a while for that environment to come to fruition). Let’s start with questions. Quora does a great job of helping users understand what sort of questions to ask and how to format their questions. They have tips on how to structure your question and even have a little quiz before you post your very first question. Out with the questions your 2nd grade teacher would frown at and in with intelligent and useful questions.

Then, somewhere along the way, many of the answers even became relevant. Look through questions about Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare and you’ll find answers from employees of the companies and clients who have worked closely with them. You can ask questions you’ve always wondered (How much does a promoted tweet cost?) and actually get a legitimate answer. How did this happen?

Well first of all, it has helped that really the whole tech community has responded very well to Quora, and word gets around quickly in this space. This has brought CEOs, entrepreneurs, and some of the biggest names in the industry to the site to actually participate. Apart from word of mouth, this has happened because Quora almost makes answering questions like a contest and, if you win that contest, your brand (personal and/or corporate) gets a nice little boost. On Yahoo! Answers, many people answer questions with usernames like HawtChick892, so there isn’t much accountability. On Quora, your answer is a direct reflection of your expertise in a certain subject, almost like a test. This automatically increases the likelihood of better answers (and, if the answers aren’t as good, the voting system makes sure those get buried).

Quora’s context is what has made it a winner. Sure, this context didn’t arrive until a few months ago (or maybe the context existed already, but the other factors and this one didn’t synchronize until recently), but for now it’s thriving in the environment it currently exists in.

Moving Forward

So, the real question is can this context persist? That’s an interesting question. Initially, Quora benefitted greatly from the “Fax Effect”–it became more and more valuable as more and more users joined. What it has to be careful about is the Fax Effect Error, or immunity to the tool being used. In other words, as Quora’s user base gets bigger, and there are more and more people fighting to be the most popular answer (and using questionable tactics to become that top answer), the value of Quora will decrease. Just like mail’s value has decreased with junk mail, e-mail with spam, and Twitter with all sorts of noise and self-promoting. Ultimately, I think this is the biggest danger facing Quora and, if not handled properly, could be the beginning of the tool’s demise

Quora has already proved that it is special. It rose above similar concepts and has simply taken off in the past few weeks, which makes it all the more fascinating when looking at what the reasons for this were. And, as everyone and their brother is wondering how they managed to do it, I tend to think that Malcolm Gladwell already did a mighty fine job of explaining it for us.

What do you think is the reason for Quora’s sudden and impressive rise?

Image by whiteafrican

The word “customer” just seems so…dirty. To me, it sounds like the people that are buying your product are being taken advantage of. It indicates a *one-way* relationship. You trick them into buying your widgets and they give you money. Your magical marketing messages put a spell on them, which, makes them buy something they otherwise wouldn’t have. The joke is on them.

In reality, you should be entering a mutually beneficial relationship with the people who are interested in your brand or product. They have a need or a want, and you have the ability to help them fulfill that want or need. Many times, this may not mean merely selling them a product.

For example, let’s say you are Gillette. They have been a part of men’s grooming for over 100 years. They began by producing razors, which helped them become synonymous with men’s grooming and, over time, as men’s grooming evolved they too have evolved in their product offering. Not only that, but it also benefits them to go beyond these product offerings and do their best to do everything from educating men about grooming to teaming up with personalities that their target market looks up to and enjoys. All of this goes above and beyond what is “expected” of Gillette and helps confirm that they are the leaders in men’s grooming.

Let’s get back on track.

The marketing process has evolved. It’s no longer enough to “trick” consumers into buying your product or even just sell them a product with the intention of making money. Jaded consumers have evolved and don’t respond to these sales-ey tactics anymore, so brands have to evolve, as well.

Consumers have evolved and marketing has evolved, and so should our understanding of “customers.” I don’t know if this means necessarily changing the term, but it definitely means we need to change the way we view them. They’re not something to take advantage of or convince them to give us their money. They’re people. And, as they are people just like us, our aim should be to genuinely help them.

So, what do you think? Should we change the word we use for “customer” to reflect this evolution in marketing?

Image by Matthew Burpee

At first, experiential marketing and social media marketing seem like they’re on two opposite ends of the spectrum. Social media takes place online in front of a computer screen. Experiential, in the sense that I’m talking about it (creating branded experiences at events like sporting and entertainment venues) is all about offline and face-to-face interactions.

But really, these two marketing strategies aren’t apples and oranges, rather they’re two sides if the same coin.

You see, in reality, neither of these are the “end-result” that their respective marketers are going for, they’re merely means to get one step closer to the ultimate goal of building a relationship between the brand and the consumer. It’s like in a personal relationship, having one great conversation with someone isn’t going to result in a long-lasting, meaningful relationship. By the way, something else that won’t build this sort of relationship is if someone has any sort of ulterior motives or hope for personal gain at the sake of the other person.

How do you build a relationship? You have a series of conversations and shared experiences with that person, you genuinely help them out when they need it, and you earn their trust over time.

So, what better way to begin earning that trust than by initiating the conversation in place where the consumer already feels comfortable. This is where both social media and experiential marketing come together. With social media, brands are making themselves available on places like Twitter and Facebook, where their consumers are already active. With experiential marketing, brands are doing the same thing at physical locations that consumers already have a connection to (whether it be their favorite sports team, band, or other event).

Whether it’s in person or through a computer screen, both of these marketing strategies are both aimed towards accomplishing a goal that is a smaller step en route to the ultimate goal of building and growing that relationship. Maybe this goal is initiating a product trial by the consumer or maybe it’s just working on establishing recognition of your brand or product.

Ultimately, if anything, this post is meant to just go one step further in helping folks realize that we shouldn’t be having an internal battle between online and offline or even have separate groups of people working on each area, as they have the same exact goal, and are simply two different tools to reach that goal. So, digital or whatever the opposite of digital is, don’t get caught up in the tools you’re using. Instead, focus on creating and building that relationship with your customers and working towards that “happily ever after” marriage (with your customers).

Fascinating, isn’t it? How we celebrate the big ticket, creative ideas in the world of marketing and advertising? Awards are given out to folks who came up with a single ingenious idea for their brand. Blog posts are written to highlight what you would think are Oscar winning ideas. Twitter goes wild sharing the links.

But in reality, it isn’t a single big idea that gets you to success.

The ticket to success comes through a series of solid business decisions. If there happens to be a killer idea mixed in there, then all the better, but you can’t live off of this golden goose forever. It reminds me a lot of sports. Athletes who make the crazy plays are who end up on SportsCenter, but players like Tim Duncan, who simply make good decisions and have all of the fundamentals down to a science, are rarely celebrated in the same manner. Yet, this series of good decisions will, in the end, get them in the Hall of Fame one day, which a big chunk of the guys who make SportsCenter’s Top 10 plays will rarely ever be able to say.

Of course, there are also players like Kobe Bryant and Lebron James, who have both, and they are who will not only get inducted as Hall of Famers, but will be discussed in conversations about the best player of all time.

So what is my point?

The big idea is important, and it can take your business to the next level, but don’t think for a second that you can ride that big idea all the way to bank. It needs to be accompanied by a solid foundation of sound business decisions and practices. Additionally, these opposing ends are often better handled by different types of people. The creatives are the ones who tend to be celebrated, but they would be nothing without the more analytic-minded folks who are making the behind the scenes business decisions that make the most of these big ideas.

So, when you’re praising the golden geese, don’t forget about the importance of everyone else who makes the most of the golden eggs that it’s giving you.

Image by JasonChamberlain

When it comes to some products or businesses, the only reason someone would choose one over the other is convenience. A perfect example is a gas station. Typically, most gas stations have the same exact price (or close to it). As a result, you typically stop at whatever gas station is convenient. One on the way home from work, one right by your house, or the closest one you can find as you’re once again testing how long you can drive with the gas light on.

The thing is, part of this is simply consumer behavior, but part of it is also poor marketing. To borrow a term from Seth, make your product or business the purple cow. Make it something that people will go out of their way to purchase. Create an experience.

Pretty tough to do with a gas station, right? Short of giving away free gas, how can you make someone fall in love with your gas station? Everyone hates buying gas.

The answer: be different.

What if the gas station gave away a free tank of gas every day? One tank. That’ll cost about $40 a day, but once people start finding out about it, the thought of winning free gas would have to get more customers there each day, making up for that $40.

Maybe you make customer loyalty cards giving them a free tank of gas after 15 visits. Maybe you offer a free hot dog to any customers between 12 and 1:00.

Some of this stuff may be regulated from the “Suits” for each gas station, but all that means is they should empower their gas station owners to do whatever they think will lead to more revenue.

So, you own a gas station. How are you going to rise above the competition?

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At Social Fresh last week, Amber Naslund’s keynote was all about the “Now Revolution.” The crux of her presentation (and her and Jay Baer’s upcoming book) is how the consumer has drastically changed from even a few years ago. We now want the companies we buy from to move as quickly as we do. If we ask a question on Twitter, we want a response within the hour, even if it’s 11 pm on the west coast. The real time nature of social media requires us to have someone constantly standing by the digital telephone. This fundamental change in what consumers expect demands a change in how businesses operate.

Here’s the thing I’ve noticed about this change: it scares businesses the crap out of them. I’m okay with them being scared, but this fear needs to lead them to respond. If you see a piano falling from a building (because that happens all the time), you can either react and book it out of there or get caught flat footed like the cartoons always do.

The unfortunate thing is that this fear is paralyzing many businesses. They’re scared they’ll mess up. They think that avoiding it will make them invisible. They don’t have the time or resources. I’ll take “Common Excuses” for $500.

The thing is, it’s our responsibility as marketing and PR professionals to 1) explain it to them in a manner that they understand the importance of adapting to the real time world and 2) help them figure out how to equip their business from the ground up to take on the real time revolution.

Here’s the kicker, folks. Yes real-time is a bit scary because at any moment, a PR nightmare could happen, a fake Twitter account can bet set up that entertains the world at the expense of your business, and an employee can (and probably will) say something they shouldn’t. However, if you equip yourselves to mitigate these risks (with social media guidelines, crisis plans, etc.), then there is a tremendous opportunity for businesses.

The Now Revolution works both ways. These days, consumers are closer than ever to the point of purchase. At any given time, they are seconds away from handing over their money. It only takes a few clicks. It’s all a matter of whether or not you’re there with them to make the sale.

On Monday, I had the great opportunity to attend the Social Fresh conference here in Charlotte. First of all, thanks to Sports Media Challenge, my company, for paying for my ticket and also to Jason Keath for bring SoFresh back to the Queen City for the second time. I tried not to tweet much during it since I can’t stand when people send hundreds of tweets from a conference mentioning who all they met and what everyone was saying. So, instead, I’ll give you a nice little recap with a few of the highlights. Word on the street is videos and slideshare presentations will be uploaded soon, so I’ll be sure to post links as I come across them.

In each time slot, there were two panels/presentations, so a few won’t be covered here (although I wished I could have been in both at times), but on with the goodness.

Bert Dumars, VP of E-Business and Interactive Marketing – Newell Rubbermaid (slides)

This was the first and one of my favorite panels, mainly because he talked a lot about how social media shouldn’t be approached in the sense of “hey, we need a social media strategy, where do we start.” Rather, think first about your overall brand strategy, and consider which aspects of it would lend themselves well to social media. As Mr. Dumars said, “You don’t need a social media strategy, you need a brand strategy that leverages social media.” (Great quote, huh!?) Brands that have failed in the past didn’t do so because they sucked at social media, but because they had a lame brand strategy. So, the progression should be:

• Define the target market
• Establish brand’s positioning
• Determine what needs are unmet for consumers based on their insights
• Determine the critical parts of the purchase decision tree and how they translate into key consumer touch points (these touch points being platforms where your fans/consumers are active)
• Establish the marketing plan based on the prioritized consumer touch points.
• Develop social media tactics that are aligned with the brand positioning and extend from the marketing plan objectives and strategy

Also, you may want to check out Sharpie’s community site called “Sharpie Uncapped,” as it is a great example of using a community to give your customers an avenue to express their passion for a brand.

David B. Thomas, SAS and New Marketing Labs (as of September 1)

First, big props to David for his new position with NML, I’m sure there some exciting things down the road for him and the rest of the NML team. David’s presentation was on “Structuring for Social Media Success: Integrating Social Media Without Adding Headcount.” David talked about 3 key steps to building a social media strategy. These included:

Build Awareness Internally

• Find the right people within your organization to become your champions
• Invite skeptics as well as the evangelists
• Remember how you felt the first time you got into SM. It was scary, you were confused, so be patient in teaching others.
• Figure out what’s important to emphasize to your employees and coworkers

Build a Framework

• Put someone in charge
• Create guidelines (be clear and concise, and encourage others to communicate on behalf of your organization)
• Communicate, communicate, communicate. It’s easy to silo social activities, but everyone loses in this scenario, so make sure there are open lines of communication across departments and within them.

Build a Strategy

• Define success. Discuss what the desired end result will look like? Then, back up and figure out how to achieve this.
• Map social media to your goals
• Give your people the right tools. Whether these be monitoring tools, content publishing tools, or whatever, make it easy on them.

Greg Cangialosi, Blue Sky Factory (slides)

Since Greg and the rest of the Blue Sky Factory team typically talk about email, it was interesting to hear him discuss how they use social media to grow their business. Probably the stat of the day was that they generated 22% of their revenue through social media. 22%! Not too shabby. While his entire case study of Blue Sky Factory was quite interesting, the most important point (which isn’t new, but still valuable) was don’t be about the sale. Blue Sky Factory did this by not approaching social media as a marketing medium, but rather a content producing medium. So, instead of actively trying to sell their product, they focus on writing daily blog posts, creating useful e-books, and creating other social content that simply ensures Blue Sky Factory is top of mind when customers think about email.

Amber Naslund, Radian 6 (slides)

I really enjoyed meeting and having the chance to chat with Amber at SoFresh, as I have a ton of respect for her and the folks at Radian 6. Amber was the keynote for SoFresh and, unfortunately, Jay Baer, her partner in crime, wasn’t able to make it down for the event to present with her (you can look out for a new book written by them in the near future!)

Frankly, there was a ton of great content in Amber’s presentation titled “The Now Revolution,” about how our business world is moving towards real time, yet our businesses are still trying to catch up to this “Now” revolution. I’d recommend you simply checking out the video of her presentation, but here are some of the key takeaways:

• The notion of being real time (participating in open, reciprocal communication online) needs to be built into our corporate cultures. This requires 1) A solidarity of purpose internally 2) Demonstrated trust for those on your team (empower them to feel comfortable responding on behalf of the company) 3) Diverse people and ideas and 4) Establishing effective rewards systems.
• Our hiring practices need to change to reflect these changes. Employees are ambassadors for our brands, yet we don’t account for that in hiring.
• Customers don’t care if the complaint that they send in a tweet isn’t in the respondent’s department, they just want it fixed.
• Some key attributes to consider when hiring employees are: curiosity, enthusiasm, innovation, motivation, collaboration, humility, and awareness. Another big one is translation, being able to both understand and communicate with C-level folks, but also to communicate that to the folks on the front lines and the social media newbies.
• Who owns social media shouldn’t matter. What should matter is how nimble your organization is to respond and act quickly, which comes down to how you’re wired. This means you need good social media guidelines and training/education programs in place for employees.

Random Event Tip: Sometimes, it may be worth it to just skip out on one of the panel sessions to chat up some of the folks at sponsor booths. There are some pretty big name people at them often times and this is a great chance to get their undivided attention. During breaks, there is often lots of noise, people waiting in line, and distractions that can get in the way. So, if you hit them up during a panel (you know there’s usually always one time slot that is a little lacking) you could really get some solid networking and conversations going.

Again, great stuff all around from the panels (much more than what was covered here). Anyone else that went to SoFresh have any thoughts or comments?

Some other great recaps can be found from John McArthur, Wray Ward, and Stacey Alexander.

On a final note, it was great to meet some of the following people who I had both talked to on Twitter quite a bit before, as well as some who I’d never met until this event, and they’re definitely worth a follow on their blog and/or on Twitter: Logan Stewart, Simon Cole, Katie Morse, Lisa Hoffmann, Chris Moody, Mike Mahoney, Jason Yarborough, Gwynne Murphy, John McArthur, Ted Shelton, and Jeff SanGeorge. Also, always great to see folks like Jason Peck, Genevieve Jooste, Eric Fraz, Eric Boggs, Adam Covati, David Horne, and others once again. Until next time…

Just last week I read an article entitled “Why Facebook Adspace is Worth Bupkis” (thanks to Scott Hale for sharing the article in his Google Reader). My first thought when reading the article was what is Bupkis and what exactly is it worth? But, using my context clue skills from back in the day, I figured out that “Bupkis” and Facebook ads are apparently worth very little, a CPM of 56 cents to be exact (compared to an Internet average of $2.43). The article explains that part of this is due to the high number of page views that is inherent in Facebook and other social networks. I’d also suspect that part of this is due to the ads being so easy to set up, there are a number of people using them that really don’t know what they’re doing, meaning their ads are very unsuccessful.

Still, this low number is somewhat concerning. It has dragged down the CPM of ads across the web by 20% for goodness sake!

Are you really that surprised, though? I’m not.

The Problem With Facebook’s Advertisements

Everyone always talks about how targeted Facebook’s ads are. You can segment them by age, university, marital status, religion, interests, etc. But let me tell you something, it doesn’t matter how relevant the ads are to someone’s interests! It has to be relevant to their interests AND presented to them at a time that they are interested in that interest. Not to mention, even if a user was interested in an ad, they won’t even see it half of the time since the right side of the page doesn’t get many eye balls.

For example, I love Mexican food, but if I’m at the movie theater watching Toy Story 3 and someone walks in the theater and yells, “Hey everyone, Qdoba is having a buy 1 get one half off special on burritos. Come and get it!” then I’m going to be pissed. Sure, that’s a good deal and I do love Qdoba burritos, but your telling me about them out of context.

That’s where Facebook is at a tremendous disadvantage compared to Google. Ads on Google are relevant both to your interests and contextually. You search for “mexican restaurants” and the sponsored results are actually mexican restaurants. The ads are unobtrusive and *gasp* actually helpful.

Facebook, on the other hand, isn’t contextually relevant when it comes to its ads and either goes unnoticed completely (because the ones you’ve seen in the past you weren’t interested in) or you notice it but don’t care at the time because you just want to see the scandalous pics that your friends uploaded from their crazy weekend at the beach.

Alternative Advertising Options for Facebook

But it’s not enough to just explain why Facebook’s ad model isn’t really successful. We need to examine alternative options for Zuckerberg and his crew. So, here are a couple ideas I had, be sure to share some of yours in the comments section:

• Make Ads Relevant Contextually - If I’m on a Fan Page for a golf related brand, why are you showing me ads for creating a website? Yes, web/digital type stuff is relevant to me, but not at this moment. I just saw a golf ad somewhere else, but now that I’m on a golf related page, it’s gone. Making the ads relevant both to fan pages that you’re on and searches you’re executing would make them much more relevant contextually.
• Integrate Ads into the Stream of Content – I will admit people probably would be pissed off about this initially, but, like everything else Facebook has done, give it a week or two and it will be water under the bridge. I’m picturing these ads to mainly appear in the news feed, which, unlike the right sidebar/margin, is the most valuable section on Facebook. The main thing I’d recommend here is making a much larger barrier to entry here to avoid some of the random advertisers and small websites out there from getting on here. Charge more and attract bigger brands for these ads so that they look more professional and less annoying.
• Sponsored Status Updates – Much like what Twitter is experimenting with, Facebook could offer certain big brands the ability to “Promote” a status update, which would appear as a sticky update at the top of Facebook users’ news feeds. It would help if these were targeted and would sure as heck get more eye balls than one that got lost in the news feed, therefore, you better believe brands would cough up the money for it.
• Allow More Ad Customization - As they stand right now, the ads are pretty bland and limiting for the advertisers. This does provide a nice uniformity across the site and prevents them from being too big of an eye sore, but may limit their effectiveness in cases. Another option would be to offer greater customization for one of the three ads that appear on most pages. For example, allow a customized background color and headline font. These would probably have to go through a review process before being posted, and as a result of all of this (and to create a higher barrier to entry once again) they would come at a premium price.

So what do you think? Good ideas? Would they piss you off as a Facebook user? What are some more alternatives?

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