Unified Studies - Portland Social Media, Web Design, and Web development

Umpqua Presentation on Social Media for Small Business

At long last I gave my presentation on social media for small business at the Umpqua Bank on South Waterfront. My deep and sincere thanks to Tom Bennett for his awesome and huge contribution. Turn-out was disappointing in terms of numbers, but not in terms of the enthusiasm of those who did show up. One question that came up that I didn't have a ready answer for was Multiple people using one twitter account.

One of the businesses in attendance wanted to enable multiple members of their team to post to a single twitter account, by texting from their different phones.

When the question of "can this be done"...I said I was sure there was a work-around...(isn't there always?)

Despite having asked the question, the questioner met my response above with "Twitter says very clearly that you can't. So."

But if I say you can and twitter says you can't who you gonna believe? Well...twitter I imagine. Here's what they have to say:

Can I use the same phone number on multiple accounts, or have multiple phone numbers for the same account?

No.  You can only use one phone number for one account.

***

OK....done and done, right?

Not so fast!

What about this?

Set up a TwitterMail account. Then, everyone you want to give access to post to your Twitter account simply adds the email address in their cell phone address book and sends an MMS message to it. It posts to Twitter...I think that different providers have different protocols for sending text to an email address, but it can certainly be done.

that would work wouldn't it?

The above common sense solution, or most of it anyway, was from a discussion happening here:

http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=614455

 

Tom also mentioned using Hootsuite. Sensible solution too, adding multiple editors to your hootsuite account.

 

Also gave a "case study" of gDiaper's use of social media and community building. They do it right.

http://www.gdiapers.com/fair-dinkum/gdiapers-community

 

A big shout-out and thank you to the people from Little Red Press, who made the presentation worthwhile with their enthusiasm and attention, and the fact that they said it was "inspiring".

Thank you!

New survey from Razorfish - 40% of People "Friend" Brands on Facebook

40% of People "Friend" Brands on Facebook...that is one of the findings from a new survey from Razorfish who questioned 1000 "connected consumers". ReadWriteWeb does their usual excellent breakdown and analysis here.

Another crazy stat from the survey....33% of respondents report they get their news from Facebook. That is both amazing and....hard to believe...but there it is!

Simple takeaway...brands/businesses ignore the social web at their own peril...true this survey is "connected consumers" but...it won't be long before that category includes just about everyone.

Hospitals, Health Care and Social Media

The Health Care system is something that virtually every citizen interacts with over and over. As such it seems like a natural for those within the system to try exploring how social media might be of benefit to their customers/clients, as well as how it might impact internal communications and processes.

Ed Bennett, who is, according to his blog, a hospital web manager in the University of Maryland medical system, gave a presentation on Hospitals and Social Media at the  J. Boye conference e-Health track. He cites some interesting examples of social media usage...for instance, the MD Anderson Cancer Center used Twitter, YouTube and Facebook to promote use of referring physician portals...and tracked a 9.5% increase in registrations.

Henry Ford Health used Twitter in it's education program, to do a series of live Twitter-casts of surgeries....with real time Q and A with the surgeons, and garnered national press attention...and had over 500 following in real-time.

Innovis Health used a blog and Twitter during the floods in Fargo, North Dakota...they created the blog and had an update up in the first hour of the emergency...which lead to decreased media demands, and freed up phone lines for emergencies.

I can definitely see how, in the very competitive field of health care, using social media properly can become a real differentiator between service providers, and a potential real competitive advantage.

Social Media - ROI

From Dag Homboe's blog, a spreadsheet to help you in calculating your ROI in regards to your Social Media plan.

Dag says" For this research, we identified 13 parameters that play a role in determining the ROI of Social Media.  It is not necessary to include all parameters in a ROI calculation – pick the parameters that make sense."

Dag also goes to the trouble of explaining thoroughly his reasoning in the build-out of the spreadsheet, and also how to best use it.

Social Media ROI spreadsheet

The Thought Bubble - 25 Must Read Social Media Marketing Tips

Most articles/blog posts on social media marketing are short churns of phrase. The motivation being..."Gotta post something today, keep the page views up, become a thought leader, add some followers, engage my hoped-for audience"....and 90% of the time the post is merely a regurgitation of the acknowledged fundamentals of social media marketing. The dearth of actual original thought in SMM "thought leaders" is...I would say "alarming" but it doesn't warrant the use of a word that should be used in conjunction with something far more serious.

I'd like to start a meme today about how so much of the writing today on SMM is based on nothing. The same people saying the same things to each other in....well, it's either an echo chamber or a vacuum. It's the same, conceptually, as the NASDAQ bubble, the housing bubble, etc., a whole lot of activity, word churn, energy and money swirling around a mountain of expectation and perceived (or imagined, or hoped for) value.

We shall henceforth call this "The Thought Bubble".

Sure, SMM, and social media and the conversation is all good stuff. And I love, and agree with Gary Vee-WineTV, yes, it's a revolution. But an economy cannot be built on a lot of experts singing to a bunch of other experts the same old song in the hopes that a few companies will hear the siren song and pay to hear it as well. There's a lot of back-slapping and McLovin' going around.

Now that I've said that...here's a great article on Social Media Marketing from a bunch of the usual suspects! Seriously though, it's a long, pretty in-depth read. A lot of it, of course, can be boiled down to "Learn to Listen", and many of these thought leaders lapse into agency-speak that is tortuous, and comic. Hey, expert, read your thing out loud. Does it sound smart, or like a load of crap-speak? OK...it sounds smart...still, does it mean anything other than learn to listen? If not, just say learn to listen  and leave the 10 dollar words in your novel.

One of the good points made in the article is from Geoff Livingston - Senior Vice President at CRT/tanaka.  He speaks to the importance of companies having a larger communications strategy that social media is a part of...he says, in part:

I think they should nail down a higher strategy first.  It’s a common error, and one I face often where I have to unify and re-activate littered social media properties that have been abandoned due to little interest. Going back to that core strategy, that core value an organization has to offer is the heart of where social media strategy begins.  Not playing with Twitter because it is hot.

The best stuff in this article is from actual companies talking about their challenges/successes i/r/t SMM, like HP...but it's all worth a read.

25 Must Read Social Media Marketing Tips

Advertising as Failure - Jeff Jarvis

Jarvis writes (and videos) on Buzzmachine of the notion of advertising as failure.

He says in part: "the ideal relationship a company should have with its customer is that it produces a great product the customer loves and talks about and thus sells; there is no need for advertising there."

True enough, and this is naturally where the concept of social media and listening come into play, as everyone knows now. Customer evangelists spreading the word, company listens and responds to concerns and problems, a two way conversation.

I think this begs one small question...isn't advertising sometimes used to get a product in front of some consumers, not always because the product is a failure that needs to be propped up by advertising?

New companies should consider the "too small to fail" approach when launching. Launch as small as you can, so you can be as nimble as possible, so you can change your strategy on the fly if need be...or change your PRODUCT on the fly if need be. It's the companies with giant burn rates that have to advertise their way into the consumer's heart. Combining the too small to fail approach, with the conversational tools available, and a targeted media and advertising spend to "grease the wheels" of beginning the conversation might be a good hybrid approach.

Non-profits, social media, and cause marketing.

Wow...here is a pretty comprehensive breakdown of a social media campaign, run by Scott Henderson of MediaSauce for Share Our Strength. The best part is the post-op he does, identifying where mistakes might have been made...no campaign is perfect.

Cause Marketing or Cause Me to Puke Marketing

Any non-profit looking to jump into the cause marketing pool, should read and learn. From Beth Kanter's excellent blog.

Enterprise Micro Sharing Tools Comparison

Enterprise Micro Sharing Tools Comparison 11032008

Publish at Scribd or explore others: School Work Research twitter status

Government 2.0 video from change.gov

A slick video from change.gov, extolling the virtues of social media in governing...not just campaigning.
New Media: Government 2.0 from America.Gov on Vimeo.

Social Media Marketing and Innovation round-up

Here's a few of the interesting posts on Social Media I've run across over the last week or so...

Fargo uses social networks to fight floodwaters

Social-networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter have become vital tools for volunteers as they wage a desperate, round-the-clock battle to protect Fargo from the river and spread the word about rising floodwaters.

Small businesses find big value in Twitter

PR 2.0: Twitter and Social Networks Usher in a New Era of Social CRM

Buzz alert: I'm definitely going to start saying ""Conversation Index" a lot now. Seriously though, an excellent (as always) post by Brian Solis.

10 MORE Examples of Creative Twitter Uses

And also:
A new tool I've just run across is Monitter

Real time streaming twitter search, by location (zip code) with an embeddable widget too.