The Power of Following

Having just wrapped up an EMG KnowledgeBuilder on the topic of Twitter with my colleagues @sbiernacki and @tbrock111, my brain is still aflutter with all things Twitter. In particular, the power of being a good follower.

As Twitter newbies, most of us focus on ourselves and what we have to say. Even more seasoned users can make this mistake. Here’s the rub, if we want others to listen to us, we ourselves have to be good listeners. There might be some exceptions…if you’re a celebrity, for example, or a news magazine, more people would likely be interested in following those entities than those entities would be in following those same masses.

Nevertheless, a number of celebrity uber-users like @THE_REAL_SHAQ with 2.2+ million followers, are still following hundreds of people. And our local news station @DenverChannel follows almost all those who follow it; because it understands that its followers are a great source of potential news.

For most of us as individuals or institutions (or units thereof), being listened to (gaining followers) means doing some listening (following) ourselves. Why is it important? Growing your follower base is at the heart of any Twitter strategy you might lay out…whether that is growing readership for your University’s news, increasing alumni participation, engaging prospective students, alerting your campus to emergencies, increasing the number of donors or applications. The goals for a Twitter site can be many; at the heart of each is the need to build a following.

There are three keys to the art of strategic following to grow followers on Twitter:

1. Follow highly ranked voices related to your subject matter – these are Twitter users with lots of followers. Twinfluentials. In general, many will follow you back.  For example, in the marketing business, one of the big power users is @joelcomm, author of Twitter Power. I follow him. He followed me back. He interests me in buying his book. I get the ears and eyes of some of his 76,000+ followers who in turn follow me.  As an aside, how do you know how “twinfluential” individuals are? Number of followers will give you an idea. Apps like Twitterrank and Twitterholic, among others, have developed a bit more of a sophisticated formula to determine ranking based on followers and ability to drive the conversation. You can also find were you rank by the way. Finally, Twitter directories like WeFollow have listings Tweeters in a variety of major categories. Check out who’s there, and make sure to add your Twitter page to the site. A bit of wefollow trivia > at the top of the list under the tag “#highered” is @northcentralcol in Naperville, IL with over 10,000 followers…and following over 10,000.
2. Use Twitter’s search function to identify potential followers and voices to follow. By searching key topics pertinent to your Twitter site, you will find others who share a similar interest or point of view. For example, if you have an alumni site, search on people who use your institution’s name in their posts, follow them and invite them to follow you. If you you’re responsible for your institution’s Twitter news page, invite people to follow you through the institution’s email service or via your newsletters or website. When they follow you, follow them back. You’ll mutually benefit.
3. Don’t just post updates. Engage in conversation. @reply people when you can. RT (retweet) posts that are interesting. Follow Twitter trending topics and commentaries and, either post an @reply to a specific Twitterer, or post to the trending hashtag(#). Talk to those who follow you as those conversations show up in their Twitter streams and are seen by their followers, and also talk to those who show up in searches and are commenting on trending topics. An important caveat here, make your comment relevant to the individual you’re addressing, the subject matter in the post…and relevant to your unit’s or your institution’s point of view. The more interesting and interested you come across, the more following and “twinfluence” you gain.

How Tweet It Was

EMG’s KnowledgeBuilder on (almost) all things Twitter is over. I’ve got to say that I’m somewhat sad because I really enjoy talking about Twitter and especially hearing success stories about colleges and universities seeing tangible, even in-person results from their usage. It’s worth mentioning up front that yesterday’s participation among attendees was particularly great. Among the topics of questions my colleague Ineke Caycedo and I fielded were about measurement and analysis, integration with Facebook and other services, and, a key one for many, how do you find followers.

We started the KnowledgeBuilder by covering a little bit of recent news and research, principally the growing 12-17 and 18-24 age groups. Though we realize this announcement makes for a great headline, we do take this research with a grain of salt. The ‘teens don’t tweet’ mantra has dominated social media discourse for a while, but recent research leads me to believe that it’s safe to say the age groups institutions are typically most interested in reaching, are in fact tweeting (and so are an awful lot of people).

Beginning with the most basic of functions to be sure we didn’t leave anyone behind, we looked at everything from setting up a correctly branded avatar (profile picture) to tried and tested tactics to finding relevant followers, who are likely to follow you back and find value in your tweets. We spent a lot of time discussing search, as it’s clearly the most powerful part of Twitter. More used than Google? Of course not… at least not yet. Better for real-time information? Yes, though Google has something up its sleeve, as always, to answer the popularity of Twitter’s real-time engine.

I’d say the most important keys to Twitter for us are the following:

1. Be focused in your tweets. Have a specific voice and purpose for your posts. That means thatfor most institutions, you’ll need to think about multiple accounts that focus on different audiences with different needs and expectations. Use the profile section of your Twitter account to outline what followers can expect from your posts.
2. Set a goal with specific outcomes for your Twitter presence. The goals can be numerous. And with each you should define metrics for success:
   • Are you trying to build more inquiries and apps for your admissions process?
   • Engaging more alumni with the intent of greater participation in events and giving?
   • Using Twitter to drive followers to your news feeds?
   • Creating a place for discussion and sharing of specific academic areas of interest?
3. Don’t be self-centered. Focus on finding other posters to follow who share an interest in your subject matter. The advantage to this is that those who follow you see that you’re paying attention to others out there – that you’re an active Twitter participant, not a Twitter narcissist – additionally; through following others you can draw those individuals to following you. An added warning, (a big no no in the Twittersphere) don’t over-tweet. A continuous stream of posts from you, in particular if they are not seen as relevant, will annoy followers and you are likely to be dumped from their follow list.
4. Build followers in Twitter by using Twitter search. By looking for people who are talking about your institution or subject matter you can identify those posters who might be interested in what you have to say. Talk to them by commenting on their posts. Follow them. In turn, they are likely to follow you.
5. Put faces to your tweeter or tweeters. Give your followers a sense of who the voice or voices are behind those Twitter posts. Tools like CoTweet or Hootsuite allow the owner of a Twitter account to allow others to post to that account. You can choose whether they are identified by a marker, i.e. mine for the emgonline Twitter account is ^SB, or stay anonymous. We’d recommend that you give them an identity. Customize your Twitter page background to show those people’s images, like this example on Bing’s Twitter page.
6. Use Twitter to lead followers to your other digital spaces like Facebook or your website. Likewise, use your other digital spaces to drive people to your Twitter site.
7. Finally, as the central communication unit, create an inventory of all the organizational Twitter sites on your campus. Monitor them, help them to interconnect with each other, create guidelines for Twitter and other social media usage, help the campus develop a nomenclature for its Twitter presences, and set up a resource site for individuals. This is a pretty good example from Washington State University.

Our favorite Twitter tools:

1. Create a custom background using one of these tools.
   • Twitbacks
   • Free Twitter Designer
   • TweetStyle
   • MyTweetSpace
   • Twitterbacks
2. URL shorteners (this space is overpopulated; there are many!)
   • Bit.ly
   • Tinyurl
   • Is.gd
   • Tr-im (now open source)
   • Ow.ly
   • Create your own URL shortener (i.e. Awe.sm, Yourls)
3. Twitter directories
   • WeFollow – Add yourself to the directory by location and 5 interests. We might suggest ‘highered’ and ‘university’ (or college), ‘research’ (if applicable), etc.
   • TwitterCounter
   • Twitterholic
4. Photo sharing:
   • Twitpic
5. Facebook/Twitter Integration
   • Selective Twitter Status – update your Facebook status from Twitter, only the posts you want.
   • TwitterUpdater – post your Facebook status to Twitter
6. Advanced tools
   • CoTweet – Can handle multiple profiles and users. The profile aspect means an individual can have one login to CoTweet, and be able to update multiple accounts. The user aspect enables multiple users to update one account, and it is common to use CoTags to distinguish different updaters. Other advanced features include scheduling tweets and assigning @messages to different users of the account.
   • Hootsuite – Not as efficient in regards to workflow as CoTweet, but provides detailed analysis of posted links. A better measurement tool than CoTweet.
   • Seesmic Desktop – Adobe AIR application that has the ability to combine Twitter and Facebook. Notable features include multiple accounts, creating groups, and column customization. Very effective way to follow searches in real time. Also available is a Web-based, in-browser version, but this iteration contains less features.
   • TweetDeck – Similar to Seesmic Desktop with minor differences. Try both applications and using whatever you prefer.
7. Other tools worth exploring
   • Twitter Grader – It looks at a variety of factors including the number of followers, power of those followers and the level to which you are engaging the community.
   • Twitalyzer – tool to evaluate the activity of any Twitter user and report on relative influence, signal-to-noise ratio, generosity, velocity, clout, and other useful measures of success in social media.
   • Twazzup – search Twitter topics and stay current on Twitter trends
   • Twitterly InView (in Beta) – solution for monitoring, receiving instant notifications, and responding to anything that matters to you on Twitter.
   • Mr. Tweet – look through your relationships and tweets to: 1) show the influencers and followers you should follow and 2) suggest you to users relevant to you
   • Who Should I Follow? – Offers recommendations based on username.
   • Twitoaster – Allows for conversation threading, great for tracking the long conversations.
   • Retweetist – Site that tracks who has been retweeted and other popular Twitter trends.
   • Retweetradar – Another site that tracks retweets.

There are also a boatload of mobile apps that allow you to manage and post on the go depending on your mobile platform and a growing number of Twitter applications.  Bookmark Twitter’s “Goodies” link to stay on top of all the cool stuff that developers are putting out there.

Interactive Email – eMarketing Workhorse

Throughout the social networking fluff and flurry, a number of marketers I know have relegated interactive email tactics to the “old-and-worn-out” bin. “Nobody emails anymore…it’s sooo yesterday!”

If you’re in that category, it’s time you take a second pass at this tried and true tactic, which has re-emerged as the real workhorse of eMarketing. Don’t get me wrong, social networking in some form is here to stay. No argument that it needs to be a staple in the marketer’s toolbox to help create and support audience engagement.

But email is the real ROI generator, and new interactive and integration capabilities make it more versatile than ever. It is the engine that makes your social networking efforts work harder and pay bigger dividends.

Upside

1. Unlike social networking, which can be a black hole for staff, you can directly link bottom-line results to the effort needed to produce them
2. Like its old-school cousin – direct mail – interactive email directly reaches bona fide prospects
3. Integrating email with your website and social network presence enhances the productivity of all of these channels
4. Interactive email is cost-efficient
5. It is eminently trackable and refinable

Downside

1. Email – even interactive versions – is limited by relatively low open rates
2. It is easy – and probably always will be – for prospects to unsubscribe or identify your email as spam

Six Solutions

1. New, innovative design formats for interactive emails improve open rates – wide-screen format and bold branding ideas, for example
2. Solid database analytics and firm opt-in policies allow you to minimize spam problems, track individual audience behaviors, distinguish between hard and soft bounces, (a discussion here) and hone in on motivational design/copy choices
3. Strategic scheduling and database segmentation give you an incredible ability to manage touch points with critical audiences – by segment
4. Interactivity: Well-designed email campaigns offer stepping-stone interactivity that engages audiences (good discussion here)
5. Multimedia: While video still can’t be reliably embedded in email (Here is a good synopsis of why), the alternative – video GIFS (good example here) and links to your website videos – are effective options
6. Integration with web presence: integrating opt-in email campaign is a great way link your social networking platforms and website promotions

As always, one of the keys is to keep “run-and-gun” unit-driven tactics from taking over. By developing a clear, coordinated approach (here’s an award-winning example) to eMarketing, you’ll find a significant uptick in ROI.

Un-sites and Other Lessons from the Frontiers of Marketing

If there’s one thing that has defined marketing for almost the last 100 years and perhaps even more so today, it’s the constant drive to find new ways, new words, new mediums to spark consumers’ imaginations. For daring groundbreakers, that implies huge risks, huge failures, and huge rewards. For everyone else, it means new ideas, new inspiration, and new opportunities.

A few years ago, Advertising Age published its list of the top advertising campaigns of the century. The publication had three criteria for judging a campaign:

• If it was a watershed, discernibly changing the culture of advertising or the popular culture as a whole.
• If it itself was credited with creating a category, or if by its efforts a brand became entrenched in its category as No. 1.
• If it was simply unforgettable.

At the top of the list was Doyle Dane Bernbach’s 1959 “Think Small” Campaign for Volkswagen.

Ad Age wrote this about it:

“First of all, our thanks to Kurt Kroner, the man behind the defining example of the greatest advertising campaign of the century. He wasn’t the copywriter. That was Julian Koenig. Nor was he the art director. That was Helmut Krone. Nor was he elsewhere employed by Doyle Dane Bernbach, the agency that stormed the confining Bastille of advertising orthodoxy to ignite the “creative revolution.”

Actually, our hero wasn’t in advertising at all. Kurt Kroner was the one, among 3,389 Wolfsburg, Germany, assembly plant workers, to flag a blemished chrome strip on the glove compartment of a 1961 Volkswagen Beetle and reject the vehicle for delivery. Yes, if we are to believe Koenig’s copy, Herr Kroner gave us the famously failed and fabulously forlorn. . . “Lemon.”

God bless him, because in so doing he also gave advertising permission to surprise, to defy and to engage the consumer without bludgeoning him about the face and body. Kroner offered up a lemon with approximately the same result of Eve offering the apple. Not only did everything change, but suddenly things were a lot more interesting.”

Suddenly Things are a Lot More Interesting
In following the developing trends in marketing today, it strikes me that we’re at a moment in time, like 1959, when things are about to get a lot more interesting. And that’s exciting.

The explosion of digital mediums. The interactivity of those mediums (touch screens; voice activated commands; hands-free, full-body video control). The cross pollination of technology (using your cell phone to connect to your online presence; your TV to get additional information on material you’re watching in a broadcast…). The social networking rage. The expectation of user engagement. All of these are forming a perfect storm of possibility. Most in the marketing business are still struggling to understand how to use these mediums effectively. What I see most often are still campaigns designed from a very last-century world view – they talk at the consumer rather than with the consumer. There are a few, however, that are paving new ground, and perhaps one will become that groundbreaking campaign that will change everything. Like a great multi-stage bike racer – say Lance Armstrong – (a little plug for my favorite sporting event, the Tour de France as it is the month of July), a savvy brand manager will stay at the front of the marketing peleton (cycling term for big bunch of riders) watching carefully those marketers who break away from the pack, and jumping on the wheel of those mavericks of the race who show the most ability to help you achieve your goal. Or, better yet, know when to leap out in front yourself.

3 New Trends to Stay on Top of

1. Let Others Do the Talking About You

A new genre of websites, or rather, un-sites as blogger David Griner calls them in his blog “Web 3.0 is About Taming the Deluge of Data” are tapping into social network and Web content streams to promote their brands.

The upside: it’s fresh, updated frequently, honest, and less of a workload for you.

The downside: it’s unpredictable, uncontrollable…and honest. If you’re willing to risk the downsides, the upsides could reap rewards. How much, hard to tell yet.

Some examples of these types of sites:

• Skittles, which uses people’s references to its brand on their Twitter feeds; comments on their facebook page; and flickr and YouTube posts as the company’s website.

• The ad agency Modernista! which literally uses the Web as its website. When you type Modernista! into Google or you type in modernista.com you get a Google search page and several small red bars along the top of the page. One is the site navigation (you can drag and place it anywhere on the page you like) and the other is a notice that says the following:

“Do not be alarmed. You are viewing Modernista! through the eyes of the Web.

The menu on the left is our homepage. The blog is ours. Everything else is beyond our control.”

2. Brand Minimalism

Another type of un-site is the kind that takes the brand to where Web users hang out rather than making them come to it. For example, the agency BooneOakley’s site exists only on YouTube.

When you go to BooneOakley.com, it directs you to the company’s YouTube page where you can watch this video

The upside: it’s unexpected, invites user engagement, has a built in feedback mechanism, uses a video interface, is concise, should be simple.

The downside: it’s concise, perhaps too simple, feedback is open for all to see.

3. The Challenge

Probably nothing gets people more intrigued than if you challenge them to figure something out. In a perfect marriage of product, medium, and message, Samsung’s latest campaign for its new phones with high definition cameras is a poster child for how to do this right. The campaign, created by the Viral Factory in London, challenges viewers to figure out how the phone appears and disappears in the ad when the entire spot was shot in real time, on the camera phone, with no editing. The genius here is the chatter that it created simply by people trying to guess the trick. Samsung then came back and posted a “How we did it” piece, which had people coming back to their site/product to see the reveal.

The upside: it’s intriguing, highly engaging, it fits the medium beautifully, is a great example of something that feels self-made but was professionally crafted, promotes chatter, brings people back for more, gets multiple views as people are trying to figure out how the trick is done, and the metrics are easy to track. Not only are the views tracked by YouTube (over a million so far), but marketers were able to track how many times individual visitors viewed the piece, how long they watched it for, and whether they spent time replaying pieces of it.

The downside: hard to see a downside to this one, other that some of the random lude comments some people made. In general, I’d say this is an idea to jump on when you can.

Initial Spot

Camera Trick Revealed

Get More Face Time on Facebook

On the heels of Travis’ recent post Get Engaged!, I started looking more closely at Facebook’s (FB) rapidly evolving advertising strategy. The two major spaces the company is focusing on are a beefed up ad presence on its coveted FB Home Page and on email pages.

For me, the jury is still out as to whether an increasing ad presence will hurt or help FB in the long run.

As a user, I’m not that thrilled – except when the advertising is fun and creative, then, I personally don’t mind it. And it’s presence on the sidebar means I can tune it out pretty easily.

However, as a marketer, I can’t (and I’ll tell you that you can’t) pass up the opportunity to use FB’s new offerings to advertisers to help build connections with your target audiences. I’d tell you, you shouldn’t rely solely on this space, but it definitely should be one of your mediums in a well integrated campaign to gen Y and gen X audiences. See the blog Facebook Experimenting with Video Poll Home Page Engagement Ad Unit.

The numbers make a pretty compelling argument to be in this space. According to FB’s Manager of Brand Market Solutions, Trista Handisides, the Facebook home page is the “most engaging page on the Internet” – with nearly 6 billion monthly minutes spent, compared to 3 billion minutes for Yahoo, 1.86 billion for MSN, and 700 million for MySpace. (check out her comments at the Facebook Marketing Breakfast).

Particularly intriguing to me, are the possibilities to incorporate video into ads. In a move that’s very on FB brand, the videos are combined with polls that ask something of users, as an engagement mechanism. These aren’t hugely widespread yet, but I suspect we’ll see a growing number. I know they certainly catch my eye more. To get an idea, look for the current Lexus campaign. It’s a nice combination of a TV driven campaign that is intriguing enough to give it a viral quality on the Web, i.e. by using the polls on FB to ask audiences what they believe is happening in the commercial. Answering the poll takes you to Lexus’ FB page, where you can learn more about the product, see the other ads, and, of course, read what others are saying about the campaign.

What a great opportunity for higher ed marketers to get creative. Taking the big picture view, you could go the Lexus route by using TV combined with other tools, including FB. However, you’d have to have a good question to pay it off. For example, our client, the University of Southern Maine is currently running a TV campaign with the theme “That’s Education My Way, this would marry nicely with a FB video/engagement spot that invites the user to choose what “Education Their Way” would look like and lead them to a University prospective student page that would further the conversation. You heard it here first USM!

Other opportunities on FB include using banner ads like the flash ad for Best Buy on the left. These appear mostly on your email home page.

You’ll also see polls included with intriguing still images.

The ads I’ve been discussing are all negotiated through FB’s advertising unit. If you’re doing these kinds of ads, it’s a good idea, to work with an agency as it will know the ins and outs of negotiating in this space and can give you some pointers on how to get the most out of this investment.

The ads you see most often, consisting of a headline, image, and a brief sell line below, are the kind you can create yourself right on FB. They come at a set price for view and performance. These are a great way to get started and, for the price, a good medium to incorporate into your ad buys aimed at younger audiences. But, if you can, step it up. It will pay off in terms of building engagement equity for you brand. The added bonus is that FB’s great metrics allow you to measure results in real time. But that’s a blog for another time…

On a side note… three finalist for the International Brand Master have been chosen: Andrew Careaga, Catherine Scruggs, and Jenny Beckman-Wong (in no particular order).  Now the voting is in your hands! Read about the top three nominees and their accomplishments in higher education below and vote for which person you think exemplifies their profession. Don’t take the voting lightly as the 2009 International Brand Master will be asked to speak of their challenges and successes at the Brand Manager’s Summit in October of 2009. Vote by Wednesday July 8 (click here).

Who ever said Advertising is Dead?

A quick note to our many fans who are reading this from various higher education LinkedIn groups. Be sure to connect with EMG’s LinkedIn group as we will eventually post new Brand Manager’s Notebook blogs on only EMG’s LinkedIn group. You will be able to read and discuss higher ed branding news as well as win free seats to higher ed branding professional development.

Another KnowledgeBuilder has come and gone yesterday morning with some great discussion and participation. Advertising will always be around, but the mediums are constantly changing. Now more than ever many digital ad venues are popping up left and right. What are some of the best options out there? How to pick the ad medium for you? How can you track and measure? All important topics that were covered in yesterday’s KnowledgeBuilder.

After going through some basic overview material, we get to the meat. While there are many traditional players in advertising like outdoor, theatre, print ads, TV, and radio; several new players like digital/internet and mobile advertising have shown up over the last several years. We took a long look into the newcomers and focused on

• Google AdWords: are for awareness building, able to track effectiveness, it can target audiences based on demographics, ad placement, and search terms. It is flexible, relatively low cost, and a targeted solution to battle against competition.
• Banner and Pop-up/-under ads: are good at for grabbing attention on web pages, able to track effectiveness, and target audiences based on demographics, ad placement, and network placement. It is great at tracking audience’s action after the click and its ability to be creative and utilize animation and format variations.
• Social network ads: are good at getting your audience where they live (on social networks) and are trackable. It can be targeted by demographic, by ad format, and creative accepted. Ability to create various reports for measuring effectiveness. Has the ability to animate creative and utilize different format variations.
• Mobile ads: are interactive and convenient. Ad viewers have to opt-in for direct reach of target audience. Great to use in the context of the overall media mix.

Examples for each the above ad types include:

• Google Adwords:  See the sponsored links at the top of the Google search for “communications degree”
• Banner and pop-up ads: CNN.com has many different sizes of ads on its website. Most of them are on the right side of the page.
• Social networks ads: See the advertising on the right side of the Facebook page below

• Mobile ads: Clarkson University’s Clarkson gene ad. In an advertisement through the iPhone they asked an interactive question and were given downloadable games for their participation.

With so many advertising venues, with so many varying pros and cons we took the next logical step in the discussion. We explored the strategy for how to use the various ad mediums:

• Layered: use mix of traditional advertising like tv, radio, and out-of-home combined with digital web and mobile
• Unique source codes and landing pages: to track and adjust your online search words, banners, pop-ups, and mobile ads.
• Cross pollinate: combine paid exposure with unpaid options like Facebook, YouTube, and other Web pages.
• Creative: think out of the box and leverage your ad investment by thinking of broader uses.

What works and what doesn’t? With digital advertising it is often easier to test, measure, reevaluate, and redesign your advertising. We then went through the use of online advertising measurement, (all the tracking sites are all fairly similar when you get down to it) which usually include:

• Standard measurement tools: clicks, impressions, engagement etc
• Creative tracking: which sizes/executions with better results
• Action tracking: who did what when. It’s only when applicable
• Social action: Track whether ad viewers like or dislike the ad on FB
• Demographic targeting: for some digital ads you can track ad viewers by their geography, age and other content found in their profiles
• Time-tracking: what time is your ad clicked on the most
• Distinct URLs/landing pages: Which URL on your website do ad viewers click to most often

Special thanks to all our KnowledgeBuilder attendees: great questions and thoughtful discussion about your own advertising efforts and challenges!

If you missed this one, and would like a reprise or a custom presentation for your organization, just let us know.

And sign up now – before all the seats are taken – for the ever important July 16 Online KnowlegeBuilder, Integrating the Impossible: Managing Multiple Brands on Campus. We go through the details of brand architecture as well as the tips and tricks for protecting the core brand, sub-brand, endorsed brand, and more.

Get engaged!

Not the married type of engaged, but the engaged type that makes you interact with your social network followers.

That was last weeks poll question “How does your college/university primarily start interaction on their primary social networking page?” A majority said they talk or ask questions to their followers. The second largest group said they do absolutely nothing to interact with their followers while the smallest group of respondents did giveaways in exchange for their input.

Surprisingly, the people that took the poll did not chose any of the following options that were available as a response.

• Ask followers trivia questions
• Ask followers to provide pictures of them doing certain actions, wearing certain things, etc
• Ask followers to provide videos of them performing certain tasks or assignments
• Ask followers to do a treasure hunt of sorts around campus/community hangouts
• Put a “planted” student, staff, or faculty as a follower on the social network to constantly provide input to coax input from others

The chart below provides the full story.

With any social network, the idea is to create a community with involvement. I have seen many a network with absolutely no interaction and occasionally someone would write a comment “we need to put some content on here” or “this site is boring”. Little interaction on your social network site can possibly lead followers to perceive that your organization

• doesn’t know how to communicate with its stakeholders
• is boring
• can’t be that personable if they can’t even talk to me over the internet
• doesn’t know how to use technology or scared of technology
• doesn’t have anything new going on
• isn’t creative enough to do something fun

A negative perception due to a lack of interaction can do a lot of harm to your school’s brand, especially if your brand is known for using technology or being cutting edge or being hands-on.

Make sure to get people talking and have fun on your site by using some of the ideas mentioned in the poll above. It really is an exercise in how creative you can be. Games, trivia questions, flash mobs, contests, giveaways, video/picture participation, or treasure hunts with clues given via social network.

Some things to keep in mind that all us marketers probably already know:

• make it simple – No one will respond to something that makes their brains hurt
• keep in mind your audience – For example, creating a flash mob (see blog post on flash mobs) may be hard for those who don’t know how to use mobile technology.  Also, providing news clippings or providing little blurbs on your site may be all your social network audience really wants.
• be dynamic – Don’t do the same idea over and over and over and over again. If you do, people will be come bored.
• Don’t overstep boundaries – Don’t ask people to do things that are too personal. Many may find it uncomfortable and won’t participate
• For the masses – Don’t single out or alienate any group of people. For example, doing a particular event for engineering students only will alienate other students
• I won! – People like the occasional reward, especially cash strapped students. This can also be creative. Also make the reward worth the trouble of the task and give rewards as you feel comfortable doing and have the money for. For small tasks provide the small prizes. But for large tasks or contests think about using more exciting prizes.
• Lulls are okay – it is okay to have the occasional lull in the network. It sometimes can give the soft spoken members of your group a chance to speak up. It is also ok that members don’t login to your social network everyday. Pushing followers to participate constantly may be overkill.

Have fun and be creative to get your social network really cooking.

Be sure to take this weeks poll on the types of online advertising your organization uses. The poll is on the right side of this page.

Read all about it. Our school rocks!

This week’s poll was “What does your college/university do a majority of the time on its primary social network site? It was also touched on during the last Online KnowledgeBuilder.

Exactly half of our readers felt their school posted mostly news stories about your school, while posting images and chatting with community members/followers followed in at distant second and third priorities. Posting random images, posting random news or blogs that didn’t relate to your school, or other priorities tied at an even more distant fourth. A couple of responses didn’t even get a nod and they include: finding/connecting with new follower and posting “sell messages” about your institution. The breakdown is below.

The nature of social networking is just that, it is people coming together over a single purpose to discuss, chat, and post images about things they relate to.

It is often hard to find a common balance of things to post for such a diverse audience especially when you can’t relate to some followers. And when you can’t find something in common, followers ultimately end up blocking you or ignoring your posts.

Every institution has something good going on and as marketers, it is our job to spread the word about it. Posting news stories about your school can often be just considered the same as posting “sell messages” about your school. It is ok to post the greatest of the great news stories, but don’t overdo it. Remember that these people chose to follow your social site for a reason and most likely already think your institution is great, so they don’t need it spoon fed to them every hour.

There is no magic number as to how many posts of a specific nature should be posted, but if you find you are losing your social site audience, back off the news posts and sell messages.

Next and as mentioned in the Online KnowledgeBuilder last week, the biggest thing that can engage your audience is to be real. One of my favorite points from the KnowledgeBuilder was “Be brand conscious, not a brand evangelist”. Be a real person and talk to the people, don’t sell them, talk down to them, or belittle them. Talk to them as you would a friend or someone you just met.

We were also asked a great question: How do we keep the audience engaged?  Engage them with silly yet relevant questions, contests, mysteries, and challenges. For example, I listened in on local radio contest called Photo Scavenger.  They asked people to take pictures next to a building or an item or wearing something specific or doing something and send it into the radio station’s social networking site.

The social network should be thought of as an extension of the brand experience, not strictly as another publication or advertising.

Be sure to take this weeks poll on icon navigation on the right of this page.

Making Facebook a Real Marketing Tool

Today’s Online KnowledgeBuilder, presented by EMG Senior Brand Strategist Ineke Caycedo, ran through the five steps for turning Facebook into a real marketing tool. Marketing pros across the country took part in the 90 minute interactive seminar.

Ineke’s online tutorial used Facebook as the model for social networking (SN) because, in terms of networks that build connections, it sits at the top of the leader board:

• 68.5m users / 57% are 18-24 (U.S.)
• 1.91m monthly visits
• “cleaner” image compared to others
• X-er’s are fastest growing segment
• Size = best return on investment

Although the tips were demonstrated on FB, the nuts-and-bolts secrets she shared are applicable to most SN sites.

Social networking is a new tactic, so even the big boys with loads of resources are feeling their way through, but there are some who are striking the right notes, including:

1. Coca-Cola
2. Social Media for Small Business – Powered by Dell
3. Victoria’s Secret PINK
4. Sears
5. Mini USA
6. Gary Vaynerchuk
7. Fernthai Volunteer Foundation
8. Target

Most higher ed sites are not fully developed, either, but a few have implemented some unique features and interesting approaches that are worth mentioning:

1. The Ohio State University – O-H-I-O photos from the military
2. Dalhousie University – Extended information tab
3. UCLA – Where in the world is your Bruin; General use of all quadrants of the page; Comments Policy
4. University of Michigan – cross connecting to other UM pages using favorites
5. University of Southern Maine – use of photos and videos

So what are Ineke’s five secrets?

1. Brand Mapping: Create a map of all officially sponsored SN pages, develop nomenclature/outline for how they are named and presented, and link them to the primary site in your Favorites section – using ‘Pages’ rather than “Groups”; make sure that individuals in charge of each page are updating on a regular schedule (weekly or biweekly, at least)
2. Micro-Targeting: Identify the primary audience segments you want to engage in SN, and match existing sites and new pages to serve those micro-segments, making certain that you limit pages to only those that can be regularly updated/maintained, and eliminating those you can’t support. Content should target groups with narrowly defined interests.
3. Use all page quadrants: Customize your FB presence with consistent institutional signatures; tailor the tabs to reflect your priorities, ensure that you use the left hand column to draw attention to important features like your news and events feed; a favorites box that cross connects to other pages within the university, etc.
4. Features to motivate audience engagement: Here’s where marketing creativity shines! Motivate audiences to submit their photos to the page from different locations around the world, or create a contest, or establish a mystery with prizes for those who figure out the solution. Pre-packaged applications motivate involvement, too. Brainstorm out-of-the-box possibilities!
5. Manage your SN presence: Your SN brand presence will need regular guidance, supervision, and resources. It’s critical not to over-extend your capacity. While the individuals in sponsoring units should be responsible for providing updates and content, all of the sponsored sites should be centrally supervised and coordinated. If possible, ensure that departments put someone in your office as an administrator on their site. This allows you to give them content valuable to their constituents and also remove/correct incorrect content from their pages.

Make sure to look at the upcoming KnowledgeBuilder topics. These interactive, skills-based online seminars are a great way to keep you and your staff members at the top of your game:

• June 4: Positioning Your Brand in a Competitive Marketplace
• June 25: Advertising is Dead! Long Live Advertising!
• Look for future KnowledgeBuilders focusing on Twitter & YouTube
• Missed the Facebook session? Let us know if you’re interested, and we’ll put a reprise in the schedule or schedule a Custom KnowledgeBuilder for your team!

We look forward to seeing you!

Top Secrets to Turn Social Networks Into Amazing Marketing Tools

Marketers everywhere have grappled with how to actually make social networks worth the time and trouble.  Until now, it’s been unclear how to map out a step-by-step action plan that will turn social networking into a bona fide marketing tool.  But we’ve developed a 5-step action plan to do exactly that, and this post outlines the first essential step in that process.

In keeping with our “truth-in-blogging” principal, I have room in this post to outline the first step only briefly.  To learn the full 5-step action plan, I’m going to make a pitch that you join us for a 90-minute interactive KnoweldgeBuilder online seminar.  There is a fee for the seminar…don’t want you to be surprised.

So here we go:  The first step in turning social networks into amazing marketing tools is to inventory and organize your institution’s overall social networking presence.

Let’s make an important distinction right away.  We’re not talking about organizing all of the social network pages that reference your institution.  That would likely involve many hundreds if not thousands of pages.  You should not include independent groups that have, for whatever reason, created their own groups that are not officially connected to your institution.  Nor should you include personal pages of alumni or friends who list your institution as their alma mater or in passing.

We’re talking about inventorying and organizing the channels and pages that are sponsored and maintained by your organization.  The list should include all unit-sponsored pages:  Admissions, marketing, alumni, new student, athletics, development, college, department, club, and support unit pages, for example.

What’s the Benefit?
Organizing all of your institution’s pages on Facebook is a win-win.  It will become a huge benefit to your audiences by allowing them to find the different channels through which they might tie into groups of interest and access others connected to your institution.  The nature of social networking is to offer linkages with old friends, new acquaintances, and groups that share the same interests and pursuits.  Your job is to facilitate those useful tools for audiences.  At the same time, you’ll be laying the groundwork to advance your brand among thousands and thousands of interested audience members.

What Do I Do?
So first you’ll want to inventory your organization’s presence on the major networks, and place each group, fan page, and channel on a “Social Network Brand Map.”

It’s easy.  On Facebook, for example, search for all listings that reference your institutional name, then filter for just the group and fan pages.  List any group and fan pages that are sponsored by the institution itself, including all departments, units, and officially sanctioned athletics and alumni fan pages.

Be prepared.  Even though you’re honing in on just your institutional pages, there will likely be dozens of them on your list.  Now you’ll want to “map” these sponsored pages in a matrix chart, like this (partial list of Indiana State University’s pages):

Institutional Pages	School/ College	Department../ Program	Student/ Alumni	Athletics	Other
Indiana State U.
Experience ISU
	School of Business
		Theatre Dept
		MBA Program
		Tech Mgmt. Prog.
		Honors Program
			ISU Alumni
			Student Govt.
			Class of 2012
				Football Alumni
				Sycamore Club
					Sigma Kappa

Once you have completed the brand map of social network pages – for most organizations, this only takes an hour or two – you’ll have the strategic foundation and you’re ready to begin organizing and populating them for maximum impact.

OK, here’s the sales pitch I told you about:  We’ll be discussing this foundational step in full detail and the four remaining social networking secrets in our upcoming KnowledgeBuilder 90-minute interactive webinar on May 14.

The action steps we’ll cover that will make your social network strategy start to sing include:
1. Micro-targeting audience segments
2. Using all quadrants of the Facebook page
3. Motivators that generate participation
4. How to manage the milieu

Our interactive online seminar (you’ll be involved and can ask questions so that you can apply action steps directly to your organization) will give participants step-by-step plans that they can implement right away.  You’ll find this social networking training session indispensable!  Sign up today.