Community Development, Marketing, Social Media Strategy, Innovation Culture and Thought Communities

Social masterminds challenging social media for social change

20 Jun 2009

Net Change Week: Social Mastermind from SiG @ MaRS on Vimeo.

Last week Toronto was alive with innovation and new ideas with the events of Netchange Week taking place at the innovation hub of Toronto – the MaRS Discovery District.

Net Change is Canada’s first week long, city wide event designed to dissolve the divide between digital professionals and social change-makers. With a full five day schedule of sessions helping learn more about leveraging technology to aid awareness of their causes and as a catalyst for social change.

I had the pleasure of participating in the Social Masterminds session as one of the social media experts donating our time to working with a Charity in developing a social media strategy to help them take a different approach to their goals using social technology.

I worked in collaboration with Trilby Bittle from Humber and Richard Carmichael from Frank Speaks and a representative from the Hospice of Toronto. As an active Hospice volunteer myself I really relished the opportunity to combine two of the passions from both my personal and professional worlds.

Looking at the issues faced by the charity we noticed they shared similar problems that many for-profits and small businesses faced. They had limited marketing resources, need to reach out the people that need their services and increase awareness of the good work they were doing.

For those that are not familiar with Hospice, they are volunteer run organisations that care for people that are in the last stages of their lives and give both the families and person some relief and hope. It is a free service for the families that is not treatment but rather care and support to help the person and their families deal with the end of life experience. The problem faced by many hospices is that few people know what a hospice is and far too many people suffer in pain without taking advantage of the care available.

The challenge we faced was how do we increase awareness so that doctors might recommend more patients, more families might reach out for support, people are more engaged to volunteer and at the end of the day increase donations.

After spending several minutes analysing target audiences, strategic approaches and tools we came the conclusion that the greatest resources we had at our disposal was the passion of all the people touched by hospice care, both their motivations for getting involved and their personal stories.

Instead of targeting ‘everyone’ they looked at how they incite and drive awareness by going to the people that firstly wanted to tell their stories, were most passionate about the Hospice and were the best advocates of the charity.

We looked at how with a simple web cam or flip camera we could share the strongest messages that people needed to hear.

The people that were helped by the volunteers, the families and caretakers, the donors that give all that they can because they believe in the cause and the volunteers that are out there giving their time and experiencing the gratitude of the people touched by the service.

Now I will be the first to admit that this sounds all well and great from a brand strategist point of view. With a World Vision-esque budget you could make a feature length film telling those stories but with a tight budget and many people in need you need to find practical ways of rolling out a ’social media storytelling strategy’ – I put that in quotations because I can’t help but ridicule myself as a result of the synergistic deployment of that lethal combo of buzz words.

For a small local charity or even a small business, the most important social media tools can be email and a blog. Not nearly as cool as hiring a 16 year old to sit on the internet twittering all day but these tools are important for four reasons.

They leverage existing investments of time and resources
They allow orgs to add multimedia to existing communication channels eg. newsletters
They enable easier sharing than existing tools
They are sustainable

In terms of strategy, social media can be an effective way to increase the reach of existing business strategy. Social media strategy needs to be adopted by the whole organisation not just by someone who is technically savvy.

Click here for more information on Hospice of Toronto.

This summer I am hoping to help out the Hospice I volunteer for – the Hospice of Peel with some web strategy. If there is anyone that would like to get involved please drop me an email or leave a comment.

227Comments2009-06-20+18%3A26%3A03Daniel+Patricio

Bringing together Toronto’s innovative minds

In: Toronto Events

10 Jun 2009

geny1

It is that time of the month again when we bring together some of the smartest and most innovative minds from the Toronto startup, tech and marketing community to kick back, enjoy ourselves a bit and connect with other young people doing big things.

This month we have aligned our next event to coincide with the awesomeness of the lineup of events that Netchange Week is bringing into Toronto and I look forward to opening the doors to more of Toronto’s ambitious and intelligent elite.

The GenYTO meetup will follow the Refresh Event at MaRS which features several remarkable members of the GenY community including Craig Heintzman of the World Wide Web Foundation and Darius Bashar of DailyChallenge.

Our venue for the June meetup, Pogue Mahone, is just around the corner from MaRS so it will serve as suitable afterparty to the day’s Netchange events

If you know any remarkable young people that gel with the ethos and ambition of our community – don’t hesitate to pass on the invite. If you happen to follow me on Twitter or read the blog and we haven’t yet met in person please come out and I will make sure I introduce you to some really interesting people.

To RSVP for the event visit http://genyto.com

217Comments2009-06-11+02%3A32%3A03admin
Tags: genyto

Social media, consumer behaviour and the social buying decison

In: Digital Marketing Strategy

9 Jun 2009

Photo credit, Steve Wampler

This weekend my father and I were discussing purchasing a digital SLR camera to step up our photography hobby from point and shoot to something with more substance. A step which is significant both in price, features and the variety in models. Given my modest knowledge it was important to do my homework before recommending a purchase.

The way I research most of my purchases is online first, checking the major retailers and specialty stores looking at the all the options, specs and prices. For this purchase I visited several online retailers including Best Buy, Black’s Photography and Henry’s and quickly learned that as an uninitiated customer the 500 word feature outline can be overwhelming, intimidating (you can check it out over here) and if anything confused me, making me less confident in coming to a decision.

Then I went off to the blogs and found some great articles from Ken Rockwell who gave a great technical outline of how to buy a camera (hint: half of those specs on the website were BS) but still I wasn’t sure how the advice he was giving related to me personally and my unique needs.

So I went to twitter:

Within minutes of sending of the message to my network of about 1,000, I got great responses from some good friends and trusted online connections I have developed over the last few months. Their responses gave me a great ‘real’ idea of how the camera is used and shared their own experiences from using both products themselves.

Their input was great and edged me closer to the buying decision more than any other of the marketing channels.

All the while through my information search I wondered, shouldn’t the brands be here? Is there value in them assisting me im the purchase of a $500+ piece of equipment?

Black’s has great offline programs to educate consumers on how to use and buy cameras but they are virtually silent online. Currently I am not brand loyal to either Henry’s or Black’s and I will most likely buy the camera from the store closest to me barring terrible service or a ridiculous price difference.

However if someone from the companies were to reach out and engage my questions, they would have themselves a sure sale.

Personally I would welcome either brands into the conversation of my buying decision, how about you?

Would you find the attention from the brand overbearing, intrusive or helpful?

What if they offered you a 10% coupon on the purchase if you bought it from them instead of the competitor?

Intrusive or an extension of great customer service?

The Facebook Identity Goldrush

In: Digital Marketing Strategy

9 Jun 2009

Today Facebook announced several new developments to aid both brands and people increase the punch of Facebook as a marketing tool. Aligned with their recent moves to make Pages more business friendly, the development of public personal profiles and the elimination of regional networks Facebook is taking strides to increase the scope of who we interact with on Facebook outside of our circle of family and friends.

This means that brands can add more branding to their existing pages eg. http://facebook.com/coke instead of http://www.facebook.com/pages/sumol/17755744821?sid=b1873b411cfc9230ab5dd301af42fc59&ref=search

This important because from the perspective of search engine optimization as Facebook Pages or Profiles will show up more prominently in Google search results and will result in more ‘organic’ visitors to your Facebook Presence.

As marketers this is important because it increases the reach of Facebook marketing campaigns and it also increases the accessibility of promoting campaigns. Instead of having people remember a 50 character link, you can direct people to a far more memorable url such as http://facebook.com/danielpatricio or http://facebook.com/coke.

I have already created easier to remember urls for several of the clients I work with eg. http://bizlaunch.ca/facebook but this is a great step and should make it more easy for those who are less intuitive to share their profiles with more people.

Personally a big focus of my work with clients revolves around leveraging the offline interactions back online to a social media presence such as Facebook, so this is going to be a great way of redirecting those offline experiences back online with an easy to remember message.

Oh yeah and if your name is John Smith and you would like to own http://facebook.com/johnsmith, you will probably have to stay up until 12:01 a.m. EDT on Saturday, June 13 to even stand a chance.

I think this is a great step and really adds value to any corporate or personal Facebook marketing campaign.

Will you be adding your new custom Facebook Profile url on your business cards?

Photo credits, Facebook and Dubes

Marketing strategy in the age of social media

In: Changing the World| Marketing

8 Jun 2009

Social media has become a hot word in the world of marketing and is both exciting and presents interesting opportunities however it does not mean we have to throw out measures of accountability and success.

I have been working with social media as a marketing tool for several years but I didn’t get involved because it was cool buzzword but because I had a business need to connect more intimately with customers across the country.

In my current work at Orange Rhino Media I have seen great enthusiasm for social media campaigns stemming from pressure from upper executives, media buzz or a seminar they heard. Enthusiasm is great but unless you have a plan, established goals and measures or benchmarks for success and buy in from the stakeholders, that enthusiasm can quickly dissipate when they don’t know how to measure the success.

Before making the entry to social media there are several questions marketing managers need to ask, especially in a space where they don’t know what to ask for, how to pay for it and are unsure what results they can expect.

The most important question to ask is why you are getting involved in social media?

Are your goals to..

Learn more and understand what your customers are saying about your brand and your competitors?

Engage the conversation about your brand and products?
Connect with your customers and build a community?

Increase and drive online traffic or sales?

Social media should not be adopted by corporations large or small for its own sake and that is why it is so important to lay out the strategic objectives from the onset.

Sound strategy can only be implemented if the desired results are established from the beginning.

Why are you getting your brand involved in social media?

Photo credit, Jeephead

Embrace Your Pirates

In: community development

28 May 2009

Techdirt is a fantastic blog that I have really come to enjoy over the last few months for their insight and great perspectives on the future of the digital world we live in. Yesterday I came across the article from their ‘treating-fans-right’ department which sparked a dialogue on the issues we are facing in the inevitable landslide of change and how a independent band is actually actively promoting fans who are burning copies of their CD and helping those that don’t know how, to do it more actively.

Over the last few years we have seen the crisis control of many of the proverbial gatekeepers of content and intellectual property shift their stance from absolute shutdown (Napster) to frantically aggressive (suing a 12 year old) to archaic (the iTunes takeover) to the desperate state that they find themselves in now.

For decades, radio stations and djs were seen as the distributors and influencers of music and were largely nutured by the record labels. However Napster, Pirate Bay and the bevy of online filesharers, coupled with the iPod led a pirate lead coup de etat of the record industry. By making it easier to share music with your friends and listen to a playlist customised to your tastes consumers were no longer interested in the plastic discs the record industry was trying to sell.

Instead of bringing out the lawyers to solve a marketing problem they should have taken an objective look at the role piracy was playing and what it was telling them about their customers.

To quote Techdirt:

Chester French isn’t just encouraging people to share their music, they’re actively promoting fans who are burning copies of their CD and handing them out to friends and strangers. In fact, they just put up a silly video of the guy showing others how to burn copies of the CD to hand out as well.

Chester French realise that the pirates are pivotal influencers in their communnity. They are motivated to tell more people about the product but are limited so they go above the mean to spread the word and they turn to piracy for a solution. Instead of ’solving’ the situation with lawyers they embraced and empowered their fans.

The role of marketers in this digital age where social aggregation and word of mouth is to enable those influencers and passionate fans that are your most valuable assets.

The issue isn’t that people don’t want music anymore, personally I routinely pay upwards of $50 to see a concert but I haven’t bought a CD in years, the issue lies in the gap between what customers want and what the record labels want to sell.

Are there pirates in your market environment that might unsatiated brand advocates?

What are you doing to enable them?

Photo credit, Juhan Sonin

Your Customers Don’t Care About Your Branded Community

In: Brand communities

26 May 2009

It seems every single brand or marketing campaign seems to have the goal of ‘reaching out’ to their community.

I think the community approach to brand management and brand experience in principle, shows that more corporations are prioritising the customer relationship or at least seeing the opportunity in doing so. However in reality- far too many approach it as a marketing gimmick rather than an integral part of business strategy.

What I have found as a consumer and in my observations of several brands is that far too many companies approach many of these campaigns with a fundamental misunderstanding of the motivations of the members of the community and the role of the brand as a part of that community.

The sad truth is that many companies spend millions on developing online communities that fail dismally. The motivation seems to be: “lets create a community so our customers can all talk amongst each other and discuss how great we are”. Is it really any surprise that they fail?

The problem is that in an age of information overload where attention is one of the scarcest resources, your customers don’t want to split their time on yet another destination online if there is no benefit to them.

Brand communities fail because they don’t understand the fundamental motivations and needs of their customers.

Brand communities are not about what you want them to do, rather marketers need to understand why the members of the community are motivated to 1) connect with other members of the community 2) connect with the brand 3) what role the brand needs to take to provide value and facilitate those interactions.

For brands managers that have ‘controlled’ rather than facilitated conversations for decades and where open or uncontrolled conversation has been equated with fear and failure, this can be quite a significant shift in perceptions.

Freshbooks connects freelancers to work together or find jobs, Harley Davidson creates an community for motorcycle owners and Vertical Response has a community for email marketers which helps them share tips and best practices.

The common thread is that these brands have influence on their community because they own the conversations. They own the conversations because they create an environment that facilitates the fundamental needs and motivations of their community. The community members took ownership because it directly assists them and provides value.

Who are you customers and who is your community? Are you providing value and engaging in the conversation or just trying to farm email addresses?

Photo credit, CBGB Hoser

CEOs that own their brand

In: Branding

11 May 2009

Brand identity and the gatekeepers to those brands are changing, but that doesn’t have to be a fear mongering statement. What has me particularly excited about social media is the open and accessible nature of communications and interactions between people, and as a consumer and a marketer – brands and customers.

We are seeing the breaking down of the barriers between internal and external customers, the decision makers and people behind the products and their customers. In my personal experience, having the CEO of a company I am considering purchasing from personally contacting me, really has a big influence on my confidence in the product and my loyalty towards the brand.

The most interesting example came to me today when I found an bug on Guy Kawasaki’s site Alltop. I thought it was rather weird so tweeted it and in less than 5 minutes I got a response from Guy.

Now for those that don’t know, Guy is a famous author and a marketing superstar that was an integral part of the Macintosh marketing team at Apple in 1980s and written many best sellers on marketing and entrepreneurship. He is one of the more prominent (and infamous) users on twitter and follows and is followed by over 119,000 people.

Quite recently he was criticised by many for disclosing that he did not manage the twitter account himself and bloggers across the world criticised him for losing the ‘personal touch’.

With this in mind, without directing it towards him I sent out a message and I was surprised with his response

There is something special about company and a brand that prioritises listening to his customers to the extent of addressing the concerns of a single customer.

I have had great experiences from several senior execs that are clearly passionate and proactive in representing their brand. Marcel LeBrun from Radian6, Mike McDerment from Freshbooks and Mark Ruddock from Viigo, have gone out of their way to cater to the customers behind the product and as a result have earned both a loyal customer and a brand advocate (I frequently have people asking if I work for Radian6 or Freshbooks).

The key thing to learn here is that the value in social media is often not in the ability to push but rather to listen.

Yes we can push information to thousands but the greatest value is found in the ability to identify individual voices. Not only to find them but to engage, converse and build a relationships on a one-to-one basis no matter how large or tall the organisational tree is.

People that win at at social media leverage one-to-one relationship building on a larger scale. Technology enables the CEO to speak to his customers as if he is the guy at the counter of your local hardware store and find that irate customer and turn them around.

In a world where technology can make your organisation as nimble as the family owned corner store, how human is your brand?

Facebook finding it’s way to mobile with text message subscriptions

In: social media

27 Apr 2009

It seems everyday Facebook takes another page from Twitter’s strategy. Today they opened up the API to allow 3rd party apps to interact with the stream and enabled text message subscriptions in an effort to make sharing of content more ubiquitous.

Both are lessons learned from the great success we have seen with other platforms in opening up the format and allowing users to create applications that best suit their needs. Allowing them to interact with Facebook through a desktop application or through a mobile phone opens up the engagement time that people spend on the platform and extends it to multiple platforms.

The new mobile subscription option is available to both Fan Pages and personal profiles. An interesting move however I am not sure how many users would use the feature immediately. What it does showcase is Facebook’s determination to extend the user experience beyond the web based platform.

There is still currently a significant number of users who do not have access to smart phones with extensive dataplans and text messaging is still the most direct method of reaching customers. From the perspective of extending reach especially in developing online markets such as Africa and Europe where desktop based online activity is still dwarfed by mobile, it is a very sound strategic decision.

From the perspective of the clients I work with, I think it is a great opportunity to leverage another medium to extend reach, however, it also requires observation of volume and frequency of messages we are putting out. As you take a more direct approach to communicating with customers you need to be more attentive and conscious of the messages you are putting out. The mobile phone is considered a private channel of communication within a closer circle of trust than online and brands should tread carefully.

As great as this all looks to marketers it all comes down to the users.

How many of your friends on Facebook would you subscribe to?
Personally what benefit would you see from subscribing to a brand’s Fan Page?