My wife and I have been expecting the birth of our first son any day now and today he was born. William “Will” Cannon Seaver was 7lbs. and 4oz. This was our third child so I’m not a novice at seeing my children born, but every time I come away with a greater appreciation for my wife and what she endures just to bring these kids into the world. In this particular case, she was on bed rest for six weeks and then had to be patient for 11 more hours at the hospital today as we were waiting on all the conditions to be right for the delivery. I’m happy to say that both mother and baby are doing very well.

You know, a good solid safety rope is absolutely essential. Take it from this guy. He would know.

Whether I like it or not, some companies don’t want to make a move in business that hasn’t already been done by some of the biggest companies in the world. I guess it feels safer knowing the big guys have been there already. I’ve encountered that issue a number of times over the years trying to convince companies to move forward with social media. I even recall a small research project last year to try to convince someone that large companies are using social media.

Until now there haven’t been great stats to help me make the case but PR firm Burson-Marsteller just released their findings of social media use by the Fortune Global 100 (the largest 100 companies in the world.) I think my job just got a little easier for future conversations with those needing proof like this.

You can see the full report embedded below, but some of the highlights are:

• 79% use Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or corporate blogs
• 65% have a Twitter account (they average over four Twitter accounts per company)
• 54% have Facebook fan pages
• 50% have YouTube channels
• 33% have corporate blogs
• 20% are using all four technologies (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and blogs)

Lori asked a great question on yesterday’s blog post. I started to respond to her in the comments and realized the answer may be one that other people are asking so I thought it would be more helpful as a post. Here’s Lori’s comment and question:

Bill,

I continue to think of this whenever I’m writing or speaking. A long time ago I learned another reminder catch phrase that is along the same line when I was in sales. It is the WIFM idea. That stands for “What’s In It For Me”. A customer or reader is always going to ask this question. And, it is more important to ask this question these days because we are getting so much information. There is no time for people to read all the content that comes throug. Heck, I don’t even listen to the majority of commercials that bombard me daily. I would rather TiVo everything I want to watch then go back later and fast forward through everything I don’t want to see because there is nothing in it for me.

I guess the next question that needs to be asked when writing to an audience is “how do I know what will EIEIO them”. Where do I need to touch to find the pulse of my audience?

Warmly, Lori

Who Are You Talking To?
When I talk about creating content for your audience I assume (perhaps wrongly) that people know both of the following things:

1. Who they’re trying to reach
2. What will be valuable to those people

If someone doesn’t know who they’re trying to reach, they have some major issues beyond their social media efforts. Knowing who you need to reach is so foundational to every aspect of business you must nail that down very early on. If you don’t know who your customer is you may think you’re selling to everyone but in reality you’re not really selling to anyone.

What Will They Pay Attention To?
Most people know who they’re trying to reach and are asking the question that Lori did, which is “how do I know what they’ll find valuable?” You can do two things here: ask and listen. If the people you want to reach congregate in any form, look for a way to ask them questions to learn more about them. Do a survey. Take a poll. Pose a question in a forum. Attend a conference. Interview some of the influential voices.

In order to listen you obviously need to pay attention to the questions you ask but you also can listen without asking questions by monitoring what people are saying. Here are some places to begin social media monitoring:

• Blog search: Technorati.com
• Twitter search: Search.Twitter.com
• Facebook Search: Facebook.com/search
• Discussion Boards: Boardreader.com
• Online Video: Truveo.com

In all the above cases you can see what people are saying and identify more of the people you want to reach and get a better understanding on the things that interest them. You’ll see what they like and dislike. You’ll get a sense of the culture, the language, the leaders, and the followers.

So, to answer Lori’s question, when you’re not sure what adds value to the people you’re trying to reach, just ask and listen. It’s a simple answer but it can be a complex process to discover what you’re looking for. Just know that when you do, you’ll be better positioned to provide content they’ll choose to pay attention to. That’s the new world of marketing.

I wrote the post below back in July, 2008. I’m reposting it now because someone encouraged me recently to revisit some of the foundational elements to understanding social media. Since it seems there are quite a few new people reading the blog now I thought the person’s point was a good one. I talk about creating valuable content all the time and the Old McDonald approach continues to keep my own blog focused and is helping a lot of people I know too.

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If you know me or have been reading this blog long you know I’m a firm believer in the idea of compelling content being the best way to use social media tools. That’s what the whole “Old McDonald” approach to good content is all about. If, however, it’s still not coming together for you, think about this: content MUST have value to the people you’re trying to reach. If it doesn’t, it’s not good content. It’s probably boring information that lacks something interesting or it’s marketing copy that’s just you talking about you.

So…let’s go back to the old McDonald idea. If good content that has value to someone contains at least one of the EIEIO elements (Entertain, Inspire, Educate, Inform, or Outrage) then you are creating content with value. If you’re still stuck though, add “me” to the end of the words. It would look like this:

• Entertain Me.
• Inspire Me.
• Educate Me.
• Inform Me.
• Outrage Me.

See what’s missing here? You. It’s not about you. It’s about me…the person you’re trying to reach. Now go write a blog post for the “me” you want to read your blog.

I heard recently that at one point in the last few weeks there was snow in 49 of 50 of the United States. This weatherman from Baltimore decided to really make sure his viewers knew what was coming at them as a major storm approached. I think I like this guy. Enjoy the video of the week.

Within the next few weeks this blog (which is also my company website) will move away from Wordpress. For the first time since I launched the business in 2007, I’ve found something that I think is far better. I’m moving to a solution by a company here in Nashville called NetEffect Services. NetEffect is going to provide a new blog platform for me, but more importantly, they are going to provide a blog that runs on the mother of all analytics solutions, Omniture.

Why The Move?
If social media is going to continue to prove itself as a set of viable business and marketing tools, it’s going to require proof of the return on investment. Businesses rightly realize that doing social media well requires time they may not have right now. In order to justify the time they are spending and validate a need to spend more time, they need data to show that it’s worth it.

Data is one of the best ways to make your case no matter what you’re talking about. I’m hoping data will push the adoption of social media further than it is today and really solidify its role in business. I think the social media ROI conversation is only going to increase in the future and the ability to measure the true impact and reach of your organization’s voice is going to make all the difference in whether or not your business is helped from using social media.

Why Omniture?
The guys at NetEffect are doing something I’m not aware of any other company doing. They’re creating a web development and marketing team that focuses on websites built with the world’s best analytics solution. This tool, Omniture, has previously only been available to large, Fortune 500-type companies because they were the only ones who could afford it. What NetEffect is doing is taking something that has always been inaccessible to the little guys like me (and probably you), and making it available to the average business.

What all of this means is that I’m going to know things about the content of my blog that I’ve never known before. Floyd at NetEffect wrote a blog post about it recently so I won’t talk much more about it now, but I’ll just say that I’m really excited to learn more about how data with content can lead to better content. I think my friend Brannan Atkinson said it best recently when he said that when you can put math with content you have something we haven’t really seen before. It’s my hope that I’m going to learn new things about content specifically, and social media in general, that we haven’t really known before.

Bottom Line
So that’s it. I’m leaving Wordpress for a blog platform that has an analytics solution that hasn’t really been used for blogs too much before. I feel like we’re stepping into the next phase of the evolution of social media. As such, I’m the guinea pig for NetEffect and they’re the guinea pig for me, so it woks out nicely that way. It’s my desire that I’ll begin learning more about how to create better content and also apply that knowledge to my clients.

Finally, I want to thank Nathan Moore and the team at Anthology Creative for designing and hosting my blog these last few years. Nathan is a friend as well as a business associate and I really can’t say enough about how great they are to work with. I’ll continue to work with Nathan and his team in the future and we even have a little side venture we’re developing right now that should be fun.

When the new blog is up, I’ll announce it here, especially for the feed readers who won’t necessarily see anything new. Be sure to subscribe to the NetEffect blog because they’ll be posting results about what we’re learning. I’ll talk about some of that here in the future as well.

Back in early 2007, one of the first social media consulting jobs I had was with a publisher. We were promoting a particular author through blogs. Back then pitching bloggers to get exposure for authors was a fairly new idea and there weren’t a lot of people doing it. After we identified the bloggers we wanted to reach we contacted them and offered a free copy of the book in return for their thoughts about the book on their blog. This was a pretty effective approach for a while but then a lot of other publishers started doing it to and by mid-2008 you were lucky to get a blogger to just take a book and review it quickly, much less review it at all.

It wasn’t that reaching out to bloggers for exposure was a bad idea all of a sudden, it was that getting a free book in the mail meant the blogger had to put a lot of time into turning that into a good blog post. It required the blogger to read the book, develop their thoughts on it, and then post their book report online. The more popular bloggers were getting dozens of these requests a week. That’s a lot of books to read and that’s when the whole thing came to a screeching halt.

Why Access?
In order to get the attention for the authors I was working for I needed a new approach and I found one that’s continued to work well since then: access. When bloggers get access to an author, even it’s it’s a 10 minute interview on the phone, that’s worth a lot more than a copy of the book. Access to anything or anyone makes you feel special. That’s why people want backstage passes to concerts and all-access tickets to sporting events.

Access may be missing from your social media efforts and if so, you’re missing one of the true opportunities to connect with people. When people get access they feel like they know something that most people don’t. That has value, and all social media marketing is, is just doing the necessary things to earn attention from the people you’re trying to reach. Being valuable to them is one of the very best ways to earn that attention you’re wanting.

What’s Access?
Access isn’t just for reaching out to bloggers. Granting access may mean you start responding to people in your comments on your own blog. It may mean you connect via Skype with a person who wins a contest you conduct. It may mean you get a lot more active on your Facebook page by responding to the people who talk to you. It may mean you respond to direct messages on Twitter. It may mean you reply to every email personally. It may mean you share information on your blog that shows life at your company that nobody else gets to see. All of that is access.

Types of Access
Over the last few years I’ve used access of some kind in every social media campaign or strategy I’ve worked on. There are a lot of different ways to grant access. Some are highly personal and some aren’t, but they all work when you keep the “earning attention through adding value” idea in mind.

There are six categories your access can fall into:

• Live access
• Recorded access
• Online access
• Offline access
• Individual access
• Group access

So here’s a sample of five ways the categories above work together to give you numerous options and some ways I’ve used them specifically:

1. Live, Online, Group Access: Used this method to give a small group of bloggers 30 minutes to do Q&A with an author using a webinar tool. Tools like ooVoo, Dimdim, and Free Conference Call are great for live, online, group access…and live, online, individual access too.
2. Recorded, Online, Individual Access: Used this method to have an organization’s president record personal messages to key influencers he knew about a new product the company was launching. The people saw their personal message on a personalized web page branded with the new product. The personalized webpage contained product information and free downloads related to the product. All you need here is a webcam or a Flip video camera to record the video.
3. Live, Offline, Group Access: Used this method to connect an author with a group of fans when he was visiting their city. Twitter and Facebook are great for coordinating these kinds of things.
4. Live, Online, Individual Access: Used this method for a series of one-on-one discussions between bloggers and an author. The authors used these discussions as the basis of blog posts about the author’s new book.
5. Recorded, Online, Group Access: Used this method as part of a scavenger hunt used in a marketing campaign that had online and offline components. The videos pushed the game forward and anyone playing along would get the next clue in the game from the videos.

If you’ve read this blog for any amount of time you’ve known that I reference Rhett and Link frequently. I had the chance to interview them last year to learn more about them and their approach to online video. They absolutely get it and once again Rhett and Link have done an outstanding job as you’ll see in this week’s video. They’re closing in on a million views on the T-Shirt War video in just four days online.

Good job guys! You’re in this week’s video of the week again and it likely won’t be the last time either.

I’ve been pretty outspoken in the past about companies that offer outsourced social media solutions. In short, I’ve been less than enthusiastic about the services they provide. If you’re not familiar with outsourced social media, it’s just what it sounds like: your company pays a marketing firm or agency to manage your social media stuff for you. For example, if Phil’s Fillin’ Station (”fillin’ station” is old Southern speak for gas station) doesn’t want to manage their social media efforts, they pay an outsider to update their Facebook page, Twitter account, and possibly even blog for them. I have had (and still do to a large degree) major problems with this approach.

My Biggest Concerns With Outsourced Social Media

1. The first issue with this is that it’s not really doing social media the right way…at least not the way I think social media should be done. When social media for business is done really well people get the chance to connect with the company and the people who work there. They’re connecting with insiders at the company, not outsiders. This is why Frank Eliason at Comcast was able to create an entirely new team of Twitter-based customer service personnel at Comcast. He was an insider. That’s why it worked. An outsourced person doesn’t provide that for you.
2. An outsider inherently will do more talking more than listening. Listening means you have to answer questions and answering questions means you have to know the answer. Outsiders are less likely to know the answer to the questions. With outsourced social media, your customers are engaging a representative from the company but they’re not really talking to someone who knows the company. When you outsource your social media you’re asking someone who doesn’t know your company to be the face of your company and in my experience the quality of representation is almost never as good as what you get with real employees doing the work.
3. Another issue with outsourced social media is that it gives a false sense of accomplishment. The company who hires the firm to do the work feels good because they get to check the social media box off their to-do list, but what they don’t realize is that they’re very likely paying for activity rather than engagement. Activity is available to anyone who can type words. Activity, however, doesn’t mean the social media efforts are even remotely close to working correctly. Engagement requires the right kind of activity by the right people.

Adjusting My Views
Those are my major issues with outsourced social media and why I’ve not supported it in the past. I’ve been pretty set in my ways on this…until recently. What I’ve realized is that I hold a pretty idealistic view of social media in general and almost always default to the more puritanical aspects of it. In some cases, my purist perspectives are too idealistic for where a company is at the time. They may be willing to try to attain the goals I’ve set for them, but they can’t make the jump as directly as I’d like. With that in mind I’ve had to reevaluate my stance on outsourcing social media as an intermediate step toward getting the company to the ideal position.

The Big Dilemma
My dilemma has been this: if I stayed firm on my original position, that would mean some of my clients would not be able to move forward on social media at all. Some organizations just haven’t had the right people in the right place at the right time to take the reins of the social media efforts but simultaneously we were finally getting the momentum necessary to move the organization forward. By holding firm to my position all the other work would stall. The question I’ve had to deal with is that I either allow a client to stall or I help them bridge the in-between period from now (when momentum has started) until later (when we have a person ready to take over and keep it going for the company). I’ve decided that part of my job is to help them bridge the gap to reach the point I’m trying to move them toward even if it’s not the ideal situation.

My New Rules Of Outsourced Social Media (so far)
So, I guess I’m making some exceptions now, or at least clarifying my own rules here. They are:

• Outsourced social networking (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) should be short term. Maybe this is three months. Maybe it’s nine months. If it’s over a year, it’s not looking very short term and we may have a problem.
• Outsourced social media services should only be done for clients who already have a transition plan to a company employee in place. This will help insure the short term-ness of the work.
• Outsourced social media services should only be done for companies who have the right view of social media marketing…meaning they know it’s about earning attention first before using the technology as sales and promotion tools.
• Outsourced blogging should never be delivering posts that are 100% complete. The outsourced posts may be as much as 70% complete, but that remaining part needs to be done by the person from the company who’s name will be on the blog post itself. This is to ensure authenticity, voice consistency, and information accuracy.

The bottom line is this: as more companies have tried to get into social media, I’ve begun to understand even more complexities some organizations have with it and I’ve had to reevaluate my perspective as a result. If my efforts are to serve clients well, I can do that by continuing to push them toward the ideal position and by helping them all along the way, even if it means building a bridge to manage part of that for them for a short period.

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PS: It turns out my example from above isn’t totally fiction. Who knew there really is a Phil’s Filling Station (and Restaurant!) out there? Wonder if this will come up in their Google Alerts. We’ll see.