My friends over at Wiley Publishing alerted me to some good news today. If you own an iPad or iPhone, Engage! is now available in the Apple iBookstore.
About Engage
Now is the time for businesses to shift from experimenting with social media to strategically designing and measuring campaigns that contribute to brand resonance, positive sentiment, advocacy, and most importantly, the bottom line. While many books, talk about social media as something that businesses need to embrace, most leave marketers wondering what they need to do and how this information applies to them
Engage was written to not only learn how to apply social media strategies within your company, it also helps you rally support and implement programs to excel personally and professionally. With the foreword contributed by Mr. Ashton Kutcher, Engage is indeed the complete guide to help you effectively…engage.
This book promises to provide the answers and insights necessary to effectively build communities, activate the social web, end the battle of who owns social media, guide you through branding yourself and your company online, and also determine the ROI of everything you do.
This is your time… PR2.0
Showing posts with label Engage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Engage. Show all posts
Friday, July 2, 2010
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
PR2.0: 21 Rules of Engagement in Social Media
What follows is a modified excerpt from Engage!, the complete guide for businesses to build, cultivate, and measure success in the new Web.
Chapter 17
Social Media is reinventing marketing, communications, and the dissemination of information. For many businesses and organizations, social networks represent hallowed grounds, bringing together customers, prospects and the people who influence their decisions in a shared, balanced, and interactive medium. While businesses now have access to these rich channels, the true promise of social media however, lies in the direct connections that are forged between people who represent companies and the people who define markets of interest.
Conversations will transpire with or without us and it’s through meaningful engagement and the introduction of useful content that help us earn ongoing relevance. As such, there are rules of engagement combined with a strict code of conduct that businesses must employ when taking a participatory role in the definition and perception of the brand and reputation online.
Many businesses approach this today with the establishment of social media guidelines and policies. This is indeed an important step and not one worth economizing. But, it’s also not enough.
I highly recommend the introduction of protocol and direction that instruct and remind representatives of the importance and privilege of engagement.
If time is money, then attention is gold.
The openness of popular networks is trivial. Anyone can join and surely any business or organization can create profiles, groups or brand-related pages. It is the devices we employ, the intentions that motivate engagement, the value we offer in each exchange, the caliber of the content we create and distribute, and the rewards we introduce as part of the experience that dictate the significance of the brand-specific social graphs we weave. It’s a simple investment in either visibility or presence. In social media, just like in the real world, presence is felt.
Rules of Engagement
As social media continues to evolve, establishing not only policies and guidelines but also defining the “rules of engagement” will encourage thoughtful interaction as it benefits the business, brand, customer, peers, and prospects at every touchpoint. In the end, we earn the attention, relationships and business we deserve.
Following is an outline of best practices to help you craft a practical set of rules that guide representatives as they engage:
1: Discover all relevant communities of interest and observe the choices, challenges, impressions, and wants of the people within each network
2: Participate where your presence is advantageous and mandatory, don’t just participate anywhere and everywhere or solely in your own domains (Facebook Brand Page, Twitter conversations related to your brand, etc.)
3: Determine the identity, character, and personality of the brand and match it to the persona of the individuals representing it online
4: Establish a point of contact who is ultimately responsible for identifying, trafficking, or responding to all things that can affect brand perception
5: As in customer service, representatives require training to learn how to proactively and reactively respond across multiple scenarios – don’t just put the person familiar with social networking in front of the brand
6: Embody the attributes you wish to portray and instill – operate by a code of conduct
7: Observe the behavioral cultures within each network and adjust your outreach accordingly
8: Assess pain points, frustrations and also those of contentment in order to establish meaningful connections
9: Become a true participant in each community you wish to activate, move beyond marketing and sales
10: Don’t speak at audiences through canned messages, introduce value, insight and direction through each engagement
11: Empower your representatives to offer rewards and resolution in times of need
12: Act, don’t just listen and placate — do something
13: Ensure that any external activities are supported by a comprehensive infrastructure to address situations and adapt to market conditions and demands
14: Learn from each engagement and provide a path within the company to adapt and improve products and services
15: Consistently create, contribute, and reinforce service and value
16: Earn connections through collaboration and empower advocacy
17: Don’t get lost in translation, ensure your communication and intent is clear and that your involvement maps to objectives created for the social web
18: Establish and nurture beneficial relationships online and in the real world as long as doing so is important to your business
19: “un” campaign and create ongoing programs that keep you part of day-to-day engagement
20: “un” market by becoming a resource to your communities
21: Give back, reciprocate and recognize notable contributions from participants in your communities
Please consider reading, Engage!: It might just change the way you think about Social Media...PR2.0
Chapter 17
Social Media is reinventing marketing, communications, and the dissemination of information. For many businesses and organizations, social networks represent hallowed grounds, bringing together customers, prospects and the people who influence their decisions in a shared, balanced, and interactive medium. While businesses now have access to these rich channels, the true promise of social media however, lies in the direct connections that are forged between people who represent companies and the people who define markets of interest.
Conversations will transpire with or without us and it’s through meaningful engagement and the introduction of useful content that help us earn ongoing relevance. As such, there are rules of engagement combined with a strict code of conduct that businesses must employ when taking a participatory role in the definition and perception of the brand and reputation online.
Many businesses approach this today with the establishment of social media guidelines and policies. This is indeed an important step and not one worth economizing. But, it’s also not enough.
I highly recommend the introduction of protocol and direction that instruct and remind representatives of the importance and privilege of engagement.
If time is money, then attention is gold.
The openness of popular networks is trivial. Anyone can join and surely any business or organization can create profiles, groups or brand-related pages. It is the devices we employ, the intentions that motivate engagement, the value we offer in each exchange, the caliber of the content we create and distribute, and the rewards we introduce as part of the experience that dictate the significance of the brand-specific social graphs we weave. It’s a simple investment in either visibility or presence. In social media, just like in the real world, presence is felt.
Rules of Engagement
As social media continues to evolve, establishing not only policies and guidelines but also defining the “rules of engagement” will encourage thoughtful interaction as it benefits the business, brand, customer, peers, and prospects at every touchpoint. In the end, we earn the attention, relationships and business we deserve.
Following is an outline of best practices to help you craft a practical set of rules that guide representatives as they engage:
1: Discover all relevant communities of interest and observe the choices, challenges, impressions, and wants of the people within each network
2: Participate where your presence is advantageous and mandatory, don’t just participate anywhere and everywhere or solely in your own domains (Facebook Brand Page, Twitter conversations related to your brand, etc.)
3: Determine the identity, character, and personality of the brand and match it to the persona of the individuals representing it online
4: Establish a point of contact who is ultimately responsible for identifying, trafficking, or responding to all things that can affect brand perception
5: As in customer service, representatives require training to learn how to proactively and reactively respond across multiple scenarios – don’t just put the person familiar with social networking in front of the brand
6: Embody the attributes you wish to portray and instill – operate by a code of conduct
7: Observe the behavioral cultures within each network and adjust your outreach accordingly
8: Assess pain points, frustrations and also those of contentment in order to establish meaningful connections
9: Become a true participant in each community you wish to activate, move beyond marketing and sales
10: Don’t speak at audiences through canned messages, introduce value, insight and direction through each engagement
11: Empower your representatives to offer rewards and resolution in times of need
12: Act, don’t just listen and placate — do something
13: Ensure that any external activities are supported by a comprehensive infrastructure to address situations and adapt to market conditions and demands
14: Learn from each engagement and provide a path within the company to adapt and improve products and services
15: Consistently create, contribute, and reinforce service and value
16: Earn connections through collaboration and empower advocacy
17: Don’t get lost in translation, ensure your communication and intent is clear and that your involvement maps to objectives created for the social web
18: Establish and nurture beneficial relationships online and in the real world as long as doing so is important to your business
19: “un” campaign and create ongoing programs that keep you part of day-to-day engagement
20: “un” market by becoming a resource to your communities
21: Give back, reciprocate and recognize notable contributions from participants in your communities
Please consider reading, Engage!: It might just change the way you think about Social Media...PR2.0
Friday, April 16, 2010
PR2.0: Q&A: Social Media Continues to Rewrite the New Rules of Advertising and Marketing
To celebrate the release of Engage!, I was recently asked to share my thoughts on how social media impacts the advertising landscape for the current issue of Winning the Web, a popular magazine related to Web marketing. While the discussion opens with a review of the state and future of online advertising, the discussion also looks at the overall tectonic shift in new media and the profound opportunities that are unfolding.
With Ad:Tech San Francisco on the horizon, the timing couldn’t be better to share the entire interview with you here.
#Engage
Do you feel that there is a place for online advertisers and brands within the social media landscape, or do you think most “just don’t belong” there?
Online advertisers and brands indeed have a role in the social media landscape, it’s just different now. Brands, as well as the online advertisers and marketers that support them, are presented with a new opportunity to make direct connections that still yield traditional results but also set the stage for webwide advocacy and evangelism. To lure attention, the commitment changes from simply paying for visibility and investing in the story, visuals, and also offering a return for engagement, shifting from visibility to presence, which is felt. Essentially, paid media is becoming instrumental in triggering earned media in order to activate visitor experiences and activity.
Do you feel social media is being well-utilized by most companies or corporate entities today?
I believe that in order for companies to realize success in social media, they must become media. Many brands review case studies and plow through customer success stories as a form of inspiration for the experiments and endeavors. We assume, erroneously, that these examples apply to our business and more importantly, we presume that these examples represent success that was predefined methodically implemented.
This is much more than collecting followers, fans or clickthroughs. It’s now the responsibility of the brand to program meaningful content that creates branded, yet personalized experiences to steer activity, offer guidance, provide resolution, and also spark word of mouth.
Look into your crystal ball – in three years, what do you think social media will mean and/or encompass?
Social Media will essentially become “Media” as we return to the ongoing evolution of new media. Social Media provided everyday users with powerful publishing platforms and the ability to establish influence, introducing production into the consumer consumption equation. It did not, however, change the need to rise above the noise by connecting people and content in order to raise awareness and cause measurable action.
The road to the future begins with understanding that attention is finite and is increasingly thinning, therefore we must connect with individuals where, when, and how their attention is focused. Technology is going to help, but we must help ourselves by introducing relevance, findability, and shareability into the mix. Intelligent filtering will become part of the consumption process, empowering consumers to view the most material information based on their behavior and connections. Priority will focus on aligning, qualifying, and presenting content sourced from the social graph and varying degrees of friends of friends networks.
There have been numerous stories written about companies and brands trying to monetize social media. Do you think these efforts are fruitless or do you feel social media can or should be money-making areas for advertisers?
Social Media is not owned by any one department and as such, the tools and services that populate the new media landscape should be viewed as just that, tools and services. It’s not unlike email for example. Every division affected by outside activity will require an external presence to influence respective activity that positively impacts online societies. As such, monetizing social media becomes an extension of various sales strategies that present those populating a social brand graph (connections forged in social networks related to brands) with offers, specials, rewards, incentives, discounts, etc. Many consumers have shouted in recent surveys that they hope and even expect to receive exclusive opportunities to purchase products or services via social channels such as Twitter and Facebook.
PR2.0
With Ad:Tech San Francisco on the horizon, the timing couldn’t be better to share the entire interview with you here.
#Engage
Do you feel that there is a place for online advertisers and brands within the social media landscape, or do you think most “just don’t belong” there?
Online advertisers and brands indeed have a role in the social media landscape, it’s just different now. Brands, as well as the online advertisers and marketers that support them, are presented with a new opportunity to make direct connections that still yield traditional results but also set the stage for webwide advocacy and evangelism. To lure attention, the commitment changes from simply paying for visibility and investing in the story, visuals, and also offering a return for engagement, shifting from visibility to presence, which is felt. Essentially, paid media is becoming instrumental in triggering earned media in order to activate visitor experiences and activity.
Do you feel social media is being well-utilized by most companies or corporate entities today?
I believe that in order for companies to realize success in social media, they must become media. Many brands review case studies and plow through customer success stories as a form of inspiration for the experiments and endeavors. We assume, erroneously, that these examples apply to our business and more importantly, we presume that these examples represent success that was predefined methodically implemented.
This is much more than collecting followers, fans or clickthroughs. It’s now the responsibility of the brand to program meaningful content that creates branded, yet personalized experiences to steer activity, offer guidance, provide resolution, and also spark word of mouth.
Look into your crystal ball – in three years, what do you think social media will mean and/or encompass?
Social Media will essentially become “Media” as we return to the ongoing evolution of new media. Social Media provided everyday users with powerful publishing platforms and the ability to establish influence, introducing production into the consumer consumption equation. It did not, however, change the need to rise above the noise by connecting people and content in order to raise awareness and cause measurable action.
The road to the future begins with understanding that attention is finite and is increasingly thinning, therefore we must connect with individuals where, when, and how their attention is focused. Technology is going to help, but we must help ourselves by introducing relevance, findability, and shareability into the mix. Intelligent filtering will become part of the consumption process, empowering consumers to view the most material information based on their behavior and connections. Priority will focus on aligning, qualifying, and presenting content sourced from the social graph and varying degrees of friends of friends networks.
There have been numerous stories written about companies and brands trying to monetize social media. Do you think these efforts are fruitless or do you feel social media can or should be money-making areas for advertisers?
Social Media is not owned by any one department and as such, the tools and services that populate the new media landscape should be viewed as just that, tools and services. It’s not unlike email for example. Every division affected by outside activity will require an external presence to influence respective activity that positively impacts online societies. As such, monetizing social media becomes an extension of various sales strategies that present those populating a social brand graph (connections forged in social networks related to brands) with offers, specials, rewards, incentives, discounts, etc. Many consumers have shouted in recent surveys that they hope and even expect to receive exclusive opportunities to purchase products or services via social channels such as Twitter and Facebook.
PR2.0
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