I Said, OK

UPDATE: We’ve found a great person for this job. Thanks for your help, everyone.

We’re hiring a marketing manager at SocialFlow. Please send me an email if this is you or if you know anyone who fits the bill: me (at) michaelchin (dot) me.

SocialFlow is seeking a marketing manager who will be an important part of a fast growing company. This person’s role will be to help grow and establish awareness of the company’s unique approach to social media optimization and translate that into business growth (supporting lead generation, customer acquisition and customer success).

What does SocialFlow do?

SocialFlow’s unique social media engagement optimization technology helps publishers, retailers and brands grow larger and more engaged audiences. Its core application publishes your content when it will resonate most with your customers and audiences on Twitter and Facebook.

We offer competitive salary, great benefits, equity for employees, an incredible team and work environment, and tremendous opportunity with a well-funded start-up that is growing and growing!

Responsibilities:
– Lead the execution of the marketing plan, including developing collateral, presentations, web design & copy, blog and social media updates that clearly explain SocialFlow’s value proposition and details about its products to publishers, retailers, brands and agencies
– Collaborate with Account Management team to produce customer communications, including support and training material and email newsletters
– Assist in the development and ongoing refinement of marketing plan to support lead generation, customer acquisition and customer success
–  Work with VP, Marketing, to create and refine messaging

Requirements:
– 5 to 7 years in a brand marketing and/or communications role
– Demonstrable results and experience in enterprise software marketing to the media, social media, brand marketing and retail industries
– Enthusiasm for real-time data and the ability to translate that to actionable business and marketing goals
– Data-focused and analytical, which means being excited with positive quantitative results and changes in numbers
– Extremely driven and self-motivated. Ability and desire to identify what needs to be done next and then do it with little direction from others
– Comfortable multi-tasking and working on a variety of projects in a fast-paced environment
– Constant learner who is willing and able to teach his or herself how to do a variety of marketing tasks and not afraid to ask for help
– Excellent written and verbal communication skills

Bonus Skills:
– Network of talented contractors, agencies, and consultants
– Experience with SEO
– Rich experience with paid search engine marketing
– Web design / graphic design skills
– Familiarity with major CMSs

I was on a panel earlier this week about Social Media at an offsite for senior executive at one of the world’s largest media companies. It was an extremely interesting session and particularly interesting to be on the panel with Dennis Crowley of Foursquare and Jordan Glazier of Eventful.

The last question that was asked was: Tell us what we don’t know. What’s coming around the corner? What’s the future?

I was initially stumped by the question. How do you tell the future to a room of media bigwigs, some of who were in the industry when TVs were hitting living rooms for the first time? There’s so much that could’ve been said and yet, so much of that would also have been pointless. I mean, who knows, right?

Here’s what I get excited about. We’re going to figure out how to make sense of all the data that’s being created out of interactions with content, activities and people via the Social Web. We haven’t even scratched the surface of this yet. At best, we’re starting to get decent at creating experiences which people want to interact with.

Making sense of the data will allow marketers to communicate more effectively with consumers. It will enables us to program and deliver more relevant content, activities and connections to people. It will make advertising more effective and thus, more efficient and more valuable. It will take the guess work out of product development and messaging. It will make PR less of a bullshit discipline.

The list goes on.

When I talk about this to people the first thing I always hear is: it’s really hard.

This is true. Technology and the people that use it have a long way to go. Sentiment analysis is what people keep pointing to now. It’s a start but is very limited.

The key to all this comes down to a few things:

1. Language analysis. Yes, very hard to do. I mean, how the hell do you extract meaningful insight from Tweets, status updates, comments, etc.? You’ve got to look at aggregates and trends as well as meanings and use of words. My friend Frank Speiser is doing some very interesting work at his company Social Flow on this. I can’t claim to understand much of it right now (Frank has a much bigger brain than I do), but he’s onto something.

2. Profiling. This isn’t about the profile information you enter into a social network. This is about creating a profile of people based on all the data that they’ve willingly put out there about themselves. Every field in a public social network’s profile, photo or video upload, blog, comment, like, fan, prop, vote, etc.

3. Predictive placements and conversations. Again, from some of the conversations I’ve had with Frank, there will be a way to remove the guess work around when and how to reach people so that they’ll respond favorably.

4. Scale. Technology and tools aren’t there yet but neither are the people that use them. It’s still very labor intensive but this will change. We will blend human creativity with tools that enable us to get out there efficiently. It’s the only way this will work, otherwise we’ll be stuck dealing with pebbles and ripples as opposed to Tsunamis.

What’s the goal?

For consumers, better products and services that are more relevant and valuable.

For brands, finally seizing the promise of the Social Web.

I got a kick out of Sandy’s headline. I’m as far from Social Star as possible, so it was extremely humbling to be interviewed by Sandy for her blog.

I met Sandy a few years ago when I was working at KickApps. We were both invited by Jeremiah Owyang, who at the time was working at Forrester, to attend a day long roundtable about the Social Web. Sandy’s one of those people that you can’t help but listen when she talks. More importantly, she makes you think. She’s also been a terrific pioneer of social marketing at IBM and has written several books about her experiences.

It’s been awhile since I’ve updated the blog. Mainly because the last few months have been pretty busy. I left KickApps in January and joined Deep Focus, an interactive agency in New York City. I’m still gathering my thoughts about the move and also about the future. Needless to say, I’m pretty excited about it all.

In an earlier post I talked about how there’s a huge opportunity for agencies and social media marketers with Tier 2 brands. I cited United and the Guitar-gate incident as an example and talked about why I don’t think it’s enough to move United into real action but there is instead with United’s smaller competitors.

Illustrating my point, here’s a great example that I came across today of a Tier 2 brand, Southwest, that’s taking full advantage of the Social Web and coming at United competitively: SOUTHWEST LUVS GUITARS (AND CONTESTS)!

Today, I bring you two things I love: musicians and a friendly competition.  I’d like to challenge all of you to send us your BEST Southwest Airlines “Grab Your Bag—It’s On” music video!

Upload your video to any video-hosting web site you please, and then post the link in the blog comments below.  A panel of sophisticated Southwest judges will award one lucky winner (and guest) two tickets to the San Jose Mariachi Festival: Concert Tribute to Cesar Chavez featuring Carlos Santana and Los Lobos.  You’ll also receive two roundtrip tickets to get you to San Jose, and a two night stay at the Wyndham Hotel and Resort in San Jose!

Sounds like a good time, huh?  Well our Chairman, President, and CEO Gary Kelly LUVs guitars, and if you will click here, you will see Gary with his guitar in an excerpt of a documentary in production called TONE.

Well played, Southwest.

So, it appears that Seth, AT&T’s blogger guy, works for its PR agency Fleishman Hillard. A question was posed on Twitter by Todd Defren about whether AT&T should have disclosed that Seth works for FH.

From a consumer’s point of view, that’s not really what’s important. For all intents and purposes Seth works for AT&T. By putting him out there as the mouth piece of AT&T, he is AT&T, so to speak. Sure, he’s a ‘blogger’ but do we expect anything impartial from he if he works for AT&T or its PR agency? I think Todd’s question in some ways has more to do with the flaws (and insecurities) of the PR industry more than what matters to customers.

The more important point to me is that AT&T is still missing the real opportunity. All they’ve done is more of the same, just a different wrapper. A different channel for the same old message and business practices.

Everyone of us knows when we’ve come across the real thing and we know when we’ve encountered bullshit. We know when the people in our social circles aren’t real. We know when advertising is bullshit. We know when PR people are doing their thing. We know. This ain’t real.

In leveraging the power of the social web the only thing matters is that AT&T is REAL about their business.

Simply put: do the right thing by your customers.

Create a great product. Sell it for what it is. Back it up and have customer service policies that put the customer first.

I’m writing this on a JetBlue flight where the TVs aren’t working. We’re all getting $15 coupons after the flight. JetBlue doesn’t have to do this. They could simply have an asterix in their advertising that says, “no guarantee of TV service.,” or nothing at all. AT&T, how about something back for all those dropped calls? Acknowledgement? A sorry? A cookie?

Using the social web successfully has to start with the business and the sooner people realize that it’s not just a marketing thing [no, boys, "it's marketing, you can say whatever you want," does not work!], the more successful they’ll be.

My problem with Seth (not him the individual but what he stands for) is two fold:

1. He’s nothing more than the same old wrapper of bullshit marketing. You see that ahead of you AT&T? It’s a giant wall of competitors and alternatives fueled by a new world competition backed by the social web.

2. The message is way off–see my earlier post. As an aside, it just hit me that maybe AT&T is being real with the message. Maybe they’re just whiny assholes, in which case, good luck my blue and orange friend. Who can benefit from this? Check this post out.

All is not lost though. Can they turn things around? Not if they stay on this path.

Look in the mirror, AT&T. Do you like what you see? Would you want to be treated that way? AT&T employees, are you proud of your work? Your company? Are you doing everything you can to build long and lasting relationships with your customers that can withstand the fiercest of competition? Say, when Verizon starts offering the iPhone?

Think about that and I’m pretty sure your next Seth video will be very different. Your next customer service call will be very different. Your next retail experience will be very different. Your next TV commercial will be very different. Your Facebook wall will start to feel very different.

I just saw this video from AT&T that was posted on YouTube and is apparently making the rounds. The message from AT&T is:

Listen, we know you think we suck but I we just want you to know that we’re spending all this money on our network and it’s really, really hard, OK? And we’re working really, really hard, OK? So maybe you should give us a break because we’re trying and you just don’t understand so let me try to explain it to you using social media so that you understand how much we’re really, really trying.

Here, watch for yourself:

I dunno about you, but I just have a really hard time accepting that bullshit from ANY brand. Where does that sense of entitlement and ‘Woe be Me’ bullshit come from? Come on, man! Sending MMS’ is hard? Have you seen what’s going on in Japan and Korea? 8 years ago?!

I don’t understand what AT&T thinks they’re achieving with this? Are they trying to be more real or at least their understanding of real by getting on Twitter and Facebook?

Unfortunately they’ve missed the point with the message. A real message would be:

Ya, we fucked up. We sold you a product, “more bars,” that just ain’t true. Sorry about that. Here’s what we’re doing to fix it and here’s your money back because you didn’t get what you paid for.

This, my friends at AT&T, is what the Social Web is about. It’s about doing the right thing. It’s about business practices that are based on transparency and authenticity. It’s about ownership and being honest with your customers. It’s about winning them over.

Just because you get on Twitter, hire a personable fella who says things like, “we heard you,” it doesn’t mean shit if you don’t mean it. Show us that you mean it, AT&T.

Some brands suck and seem to get away with it.

These days, almost every marketer (particularly agencies and consultants) is trying to come up with Social Media strategies for you name it brand out there. It’s sometimes a game of who can scream the loudest when a big brand fucks up about how social media could save it and it should turn to social media right away.

I think it can be a waste of time from an agency’s perspective to try to win that type of business.

Here’s the thing, most brands that suck and get away with it are Tier 1 brands (e.g. United, AT&T, American, Delta, Time Warner Cable, GM, etc.), the No. 1 – 2 in a sector. Their ability, and need from their perspective, to change is far less immediate regardless of what happens on the Social Web.

I think the real opportunity for agencies is with the Tier 2 brands, the No. 3 – 5 or 6 brands. These are the brands that can benefit the most from Engagement Marketing, the Social Web and all the necessary changes that it brings to their business operations to differentiate themselves in big way and win.

Tier One Brands Don’t Need To Care (For Now).

Take United Airlines’ Guitar-gate as an example. You might have heard about Dave Carroll’s misadventures on United Airlines, the music videos he posted on YouTube and the subsequent roar of the blogosphere.

Here are a couple of posts about the guitar incident that I found particularly interesting and helped me think this through:

1. My friend Alan Wolk, a creative strategist in New York City, wrote a blog post in the aftermath of United’s Guitar-gate where he makes the following point:

“The video does, however, play up one of the biggest fears most clients have about social media: what if someone says something bad about us? How can I make sure that doesn’t happen?

And the answer I always give them is: Don’t Suck.”

I couldn’t agree more. Here’s the thing, make sure you have a good product and do the right thing by your customers and you’ll have a lot less to worry about.

2. Another is Jake McKee’s response to a post on the Vanno blog. Vanno’s contention is that United’s higher ups probably gave very little thought to al this Social Media hoopla, for a number of reasons. But ultimately, it did little to impact United’s stock price. I encourage you to read Jake’s post because he makes some very interesting points.

The point for me is, the expectation of United’s customer service is so low, I don’t think all of this really made much of an impact to United’s business in the long run.

Sure, the media wrote a lot about it and we’re all outraged, but, seriously, did you expect any better? Were people shocked? United’s been losing baggage for years. We all know it. Most of us have experienced it. We’ve probably told a bunch of people about it.

Why should they care now? People still fly United (for the time being, anyway).

Call me a cynic, but as long as we keep buying, most large corporations could care less what their customers said about them, and for some stupid reason we keep buying.

Post a video on YouTube in today’s ADD world? Big deal. The noise level will rise like it did for a few weeks around Carroll’s video then it’ll die down and the Twits and others will move onto something else.

So, no, that pressure alone isn’t going to fuel change in the near term.

“I Made My Numbers.”

United, Delta and American can offer low fares. Despite a shitty product, they are large enough (i.e. own the routes) that when they run into trouble, they simply cut prices and people will buy. People may hate every minute of the product they’ve bought but the airlines don’t really give a shit, they got you to buy and they make their quarter.

AT&T has the iPhone. We love the iPhone. We love it so much we’ll tolerate the most ridiculous level of service known to civilized people. They don’t care. They have you for at least 2 years or a termination fee. Either way: “made my numbers.”

Time Warner Cable, Comcast, RCN…you name it.

Sure, it’s not sustainable. They know it. But they also know that they’ve done a pretty good job so far of playing this game for awhile and it’s worked well. At best, something will change and maybe the sucky brand will find them some Jesus. At worst, the people making the decisions now won’t be around when they run out of juice at which point it’ll be someone else’s problem.

Again, no incentive to have a proper relationship with customers. Transparency and authenticity? Riiiiight.

The Real Opportunity.

Now, what about the Tier 2 brands? The ones without the monopolies or the ability to start price wars? The ones without massive ad budgets? The ones that actually need to treat their customers well to win them over?

The opportunity to differentiate these companies by not sucking and creating real and authentic relationships with customers is GREAT and very meaningful.

I’m talking about the Zappos’, Amazon.com, JetBlue’s and Virgin America’s of the world. By doing right by their customers, these companies have created brands that people are drawn to. A common characteristic amongst these brands is that they’ve won over customers and turned them into fans. In Spike Jones’ words, they’ve created Movements.

These brands do it without large marketing budgets–and they realize that it’s much more than just marketing. They know that in order to succeed, they have to be real, and they realize that being real is THE way that they can stand out and win.

The Social Web comes naturally to these companies because of their business culture. But this isn’t about Twitter or Facebook or some other new web service. It’s about what the Social Web means from a business perspective and that means you have to run your business accordingly–with transparency and authenticity.

It makes these businesses create a great product, because if it sucks, nothing else will matter.

It makes these businesses treat customers the right way, because if they don’t the Social Web will kill ‘em, and nothing else will matter.

When done right though, you have the most loyal customers that will keep buying, tell everyone about you and stand by you when things go wrong.

In today’s world, there’s no more powerful opportunity for a Tier 2 brand than to embrace this and radically increases their chance of success vs. the big boys.

Obama Was The Tier 2 Brand.

I think this is a big reason why Obama got elected. The product was great–that’s not negotiable. But he embraced this “Don’t Suck” philosophy–it came naturally to him–and used the Social Web as a channel to help create and grow his relationships with his constituents.

Obama was the Tier 2 candidate.

While United might not be too concerned about David Carroll’s videos and a bunch of bloggers yapping away, I can guarantee you that the growing power of the Virgin America and JetBlue brands are keeping them up at night.

I wrote this for the KickApps blog.

Many of our clients use KickApps to power their online communities for fans, customers or employees. While the purpose may differ, these communities often share common traits and challenges:

Q. How do I get people to participate?
Q. It looks and works great, but why aren’t people active in it?
Q. What do I do with trolls?

Creating and cultivating an online community of passionate fans and customers can deliver tremendous benefits for any brand–greater affinity and loyalty, direct marketing channel to your most passionate customers and deep insight into your customers’ likes and dislikes, to name a few. However, growing an online community is no easy task and it takes time, and more often than not, dedicated resources to make it successful.

Here are some useful resources and tips as you think about your community strategy:

1. “9 Steps to creating a successful online community,” a white paper by KickApps. You can request a copy by sending an email to info@kickapps.com.

2. Jeremiah Owyang, an analyst at Forrester, compiled a list on his blog about “How to Kick Start a Community.” Here’s his list of things to consider:

a. Create compelling content on a recurring basis. (Content is a key to engagement, together with activities and having a way for people to interact with each other. Whether that’s content you create or your members, make it relevant, interesting and compelling.)
b. Reward users who fill out their profile. (This is about human nature. People are motivated by a handful of different things and we all like a pat on the back or to get something out of a relationship–material or otherwise.)
c. Invite community influencers and advocates to the community first. (Leaders will emerge, by bringing some into your community you’ll get people to follow.)
d. Encourage interaction through conversations. (If conversations don’t start on their own, it’s on you to get it started.)
e. Reward top contributors. (Again, rewarding people for their participation is a great way to tap into that very human need for reward. People will look to this and you’ll tap into another very human need–aspiration.)
f. Centralize your community around your real world events. (This is a great way of extending that experience between the offline and online world. The Phoenix Suns and U2–currently on tour–are great examples of taking advantage of this opportunity.)
g. Virtual events integrate community. (This is the activity piece of the Engagement equation I outlined earlier. Ovation TV held their 3rd Happy Hour online chat last night and got a great showing with members talking about art, photography and music.)
h. Integrate with your website and other customer touchpoints. (Ask yourself how you extend this experience through places like Facebook or Twitter. How do you extend those conversations?)
i. Encourage employees to get active. (Your employees can be your most important community members and advocates to kick start the participation. Let them be open and authentic. If that frightens you, give them guidelines to follow–here’s a great example from the CEO of Zappos about how their employees should use Twitter, note that he doesn’t talk about rules, rather he puts it into the context of their brand values, thus great authenticity from employees.)

As with most blog posts worth reading there’s as much value in the comments. My contribution was around the role of the community manager or as I prefer to call it, the Community Leader. As the host of the ‘party’ the Leader’s role in getting things started is very important. He or she needs to make people feel welcome, introduce new members to each other, lead conversations, encourage people, be a guide.

3. The Community Roundtable is another great resource. It’s an organization created by Rachel Happe and Jim Storer for community managers and social media practitioners. Roundtable members have access to a ton of great information and resources about best practices and new ideas. I think what’s most helpful about this is that everyone learns and teaches in this group. You might work for a B2B technology company like SAP but also find really interesting tips from someone at TripAdvisor, for example.

Also, the Community Maturity Model that they’ve developed is very useful when thinking about your community strategy (http://community-roundtable.com/2009/06/the-community-maturity-model/).

4. Rachel Happe’s blog, www.thesocialorganization.com, has too many excellent posts to talk about here. I really recommend that you take some time to read some of her thoughts (and of course the conversations in the comments that people leave). Here’s a good one to start with: Growing a Community is Like Making Risotto (http://www.thesocialorganization.com/2009/08/growing-a-community-is-like-making-risotto.html).

Also, check out Rachel’s webinar (hosted by KickApps) on 8 Competencies for Socializing Your Organization.

5. Bill Johnston, chief community officer at Forum One Networks, runs the Online Community Unconference and blogs here. Unconferences are a great place to spend a day with peers to discuss any thing you want about online communities. Literally. Attendees to the event develop the agenda in the morning and volunteer to lead or participate in sessions that interest them the most. Highly recommended.

6. eModeration, a KickApps partner, is the most well known provider of community management services. They work with some of the largest brands in the world and help them manage their online community efforts. If you need to outsource your community management, they’re a good place to start.

I hope this information is helpful. Feel free to share any other tips in the comments section.

I met Jennifer Jones last year when she invited me to be a guest on her Marketing Voices podcast to talk about KickApps and social media in marketing. She was kind enough to have me on again and she published the podcast today. We talked about Engagement Marketing and went over some interesting examples of how our clients are using social media and KickApps to engage with their customers. You can listen to the podcast below.

For awhile now, marketers have gotten a bit distracted by social media, the technology and all the hype. To me, social media and the social web do a few things really well, most notably, they enables an entirely new way of connecting and engaging with customers and audiences.

It’s important to remember though that they’re not a panacea to all business ills and certainly aren’t solutions for everything. They are however extremely powerful and effective at enabling engagement, and for that reason, should be considered as part of most marketing and communications strategies.

Much thanks to Jennifer for a great conversation. Oh, BTW, check out my favorite podcast by Jennifer with a Navy fighter pilot flying on the USS Nimitz.

TechCrunch’s Mobile Crunch blog reported yesterday that Verizon Wireless is now accepting user reviews and ratings of products in their catalog. The author of the post and many of the readers that left comments seem to think this is a bad move on Verizon’s part.

I concede that it may seem strange for Verizon to be opening themselves up for potential abuse, but I see this as not just a brave move but more importantly, an extremely smart one. By doing this, Verizon goes from being just a transactional vendor to providing something that’s potentially really valuable to customers during the buying process. This translates to trust.

Most people have a love-hate relationship with mobile phone service providers (don’t we all feel like we’re constantly being screwed over by them), and this is a great way of saying to potential customers:

“We want to provide you with really helpful information about which one of our products best meet your needs and what better way of doing this than hearing it from people like yourselves rather than us.”

Just as powerful though is that Verizon gets immediate feedback and insight into what customers and prospective customers think of their products. They hear first hand what features they like and want, and dislike and don’t want. Point is, if you listen to what your customers want, you’ll always have a hit. This is exactly what the guys from Threadless have built a thriving business on. Fact is, in today’s world of the social web, any company that doesn’t care to listen to customers will find themselves looking like this in short order:

I know what you brand and media people are saying right now, “I can’t have an unruly mob take over my website and brand!” Fair point. But, there’s nothing wrong with curation, in fact, I’d argue that it’s crucial to the customer experience.

As a consumer, I want reviews that truly help me make a purchasing decision, that inform me about the pros & cons of whether a product will meet my needs. That’s true value. Having to read abuse for the sake of it is not.

Establishing the guidelines for delivering that value is crucial for any brand or web publisher, call it community rules if you’d like (CafeMom and Flickr do great jobs of this). Consumers won’t begrudge you for wanting to make sure that they get real value out of this feature. Someone saying that this particular model’s “battery life is horrible and won’t be good for travelers” is valuable, whereas, “Motorola phones suck!” isn’t. But, you have to be honest and transparent about this. Again, think real value not just fluffy reviews that blow a lot of sunshine.

Here are some things to keep in mind:

1. User-generated product reviews help establish better relationships with customers that emanate from trust and value
2. How are you providing more value to customers and prospective customers?
3. Set the rules of engagement, but be honest and transparent about it. Establish what the feature is for and what is acceptable and what isn’t. Use clear and straight forward language that’s easy to understand
4. Listen! Listen! Listen! To what your customers are prospects are saying and you’ll always have a hit product

I originally wrote this post for the KickApps blog.