Paul Dunay wrote a very compelling post that if followed would lead to me being fired:

Fire your Director of Social Media! | Buzz Marketing for Technology

Ideally, I think you need to treat the role of the Director of Social Media as a way to activate the entire organization socially and then when that’s complete – move on to something else. What’s your view?

My title according to LinkedIn is Social Media Director and I agree with Paul.
My real job title is Director of Digital Strategies.

My title when I joined HP was Web 2.0 Strategic Lead.
My real title was Marketing Manager.

Other job titles I’ve had were Store Enigma and El Presidente. But I’ve had a non-traditional career path.

Why do I change my job title?

  1. I like cool sounding job titles
  2. Your job title should mean something

I want people to know instantly what it is I do when they hear my job title (okay Store Enigma is the exception). And I can change my title whenever I need to. Paul’s right in a year or two I won’t go by Director of Social Media. I actually think I’ll change my title to World Domination Strategist.

Paul’s post hits on another key factor: Social media shouldn’t live in silo’s. I’ve said it before but, no one owns social media. I do not agree with some that social media should have it’s own department. In fact I think we need fewer departments than we have today. I think there should only be one communications department not separate marketing, PR and internal comms groups (internal comms is different from the HR operations role BTW).

The role of social media director, my role, is a temporary solution that will eventually become obsolete. If I do my job right, my role will eventually go away. So what will I do next? I told you Director of World Domination.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Popularity: 6% [?]

How will the Future of Marketing be Organized?

So I’ve made the prediction that Marketing and PR (and potentially all comms) will be rolled up into one group. Making the prediction was easy. There are way to many inefficiencies in the way companies communicate. Now I ask myself the “put your money where your mouth is” question: What will this new org look like?

For the first time in 50 years we have a real opportunity to structurally change the way companies organize their communications groups. Reporting structure, team make up, work flow, all of it. It’s pretty exciting to me. But I’m stuck.

Should Marketing  job functions be defined by some version of stakeholder alignment? Customers, Employees, Shareholders, Partners. This is basically what we have today but if all functions were in one group that alone would improve things.

- OR -

Should Marketing job functions be defined by what they do? Messaging, Content/Distribution, Research, Support. Again just another condensed version of what we have today. And again if all of these groups were in the same org that would improve many things.

- OR -

Should Marketing jobs be aligned along integration points? Customer Integration, Partner Integration, Internal Integration (Shareholders and Employees), Influencer Integration (this is also where competitive lives). These roles would be defined by integrating feedback and two way communications with these groups into every cycle of the marketing process. Research, measurement and content creation would mostly be handled by agencies but do you also need someone who owns that internally.

None of these are perfect and they all leave out some aspects of  Marketing (remember marketing is much more than PR & Advertising). But do we really need those other functions? I think there’s a lot that we can do away with.

What do you think? These are just my raw thoughts from late last night with a few hours to sleep on it. I’d love your feedback. There are no stupid ideas at this point.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Popularity: 2% [?]

Pepsi Drops the Super Bowl for Social Media

The San Francisco 49ers' Super Bowl XXIX troph...

Image via Wikipedia

The fight for social media just got turned up to 11. There’s a lot of money at stake and everyone wants it. Ad agencies and traditional media will be doing their best to make advertising look and act more like social media.

This is sad to me because I don’t think anyone owns social media. Each discipline brings it’s own unique perspectives and strengths to social media.

Overall this reinforces my belief that there should not be separate marketing and PR disciplines inside companies. As social media drives digital convergence, Marketing, PR, and Advertising need to be working together not being territorial. That means everyone needs to be willing to sacrifice their sacred cows and work for what’s best for the customer and the company.

Pepsi to Skip Super Bowl Ads in Favor of $20M Social Media Campaign

That could be changing. For the first time in 23 years, Pepsi will not have any ads in the Super Bowl. Instead, the company will be spending $20 million on a social media campaign it’s calling The Pepsi Refresh Project.

Rather than spending money on a Super Bowl ad, Pepsi will launch the Pepsi Refresh Project on January 13, 2010. At that time, users can submit their ideas to Pepsi for ways to refresh their communities, making the world a better place.

It’s also important to note the social innovation angle. I hope this isn’t just an afterthought but core to the effort. Ultimately the Mashabe article points out that it’s all in the execution. I for one hope Pepsi pulls this off. I think it’s the right move.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Popularity: 9% [?]

Top 5 Predictions for the Next 5 Years in Business Social Media

social_shift_v4
Image by Tac Anderson via Flickr

In this post I take a predictive look at social media and its effects on the future of business and communications? In a future post I’ll look at social media and the future of Journalism/Publishing and Marketing.

Playing futurist is always fun. Nobody can prove you wrong (at least not yet). But history has shown that even when we’re right we tend to get our time lines off. We under predict how quickly we’ll see our one year predictions realized and over predict how long our 5 year predictions will take. So, in the spirit of CYA, I’m making this a 1-5 year prediction.

1) The Recovery Will Accelerate Social Media Investments-

The recession is not over, but it will feel like it’s over for most of us. If you worked in social media through 2009 you may not have even noticed a recession. It was a great industry to be in this last year. Everyone I’ve talked to has been busy all year and only been getting more busier in 2010. (Like insanely busy to the point that you don’t know how you could possibly do any more.)

The recession, however, will flatten out in most industries and begin to recover in several key industries. This will feel like a full recovery to most everyone. Everyone except those who still wont find jobs in 2010. A jobless recovery is not much of a recovery in my opinion.

But this partial recovery will dramatically accelerate social media investments. Those companies that spent a little will spend a lot and many who didn’t spend any will make at least small, if not dramatic, investments beginning in 2010. As the market truly recovers over the next 5 years the investments will grow dramatically. The disruption we’ve felt over the last 5 years will only be matched by the level of adoption we’ll see over the next 5.

2) Marketing Communications Consolidation-

We will begin to see big companies do away with separate marketing and PR groups. In some cases we will even see HR and customer support get rolled up. (You can read my previous post on the great marketing/communications roll up here.) PR and Marketing, especially as it relates to their go to go to market activities, are largely duplicating each others efforts. It doesn’t make sense to have two separate groups *internally*. You will still have separate PR and advertising agencies. There will continue to be real value in discipline expertice.  But some agencies will start (continue) to consolidate (see point #3).

We will see a few big brands do this in 2010 and I predict it will become a best practice over the next 5 years. Look for the McKinsey type consulting groups to make this a practice area and Harvard Business Review to publish an article on the topic in 2010.

3) Agency Acquisitions -

My first two points will drive this point. We will see a lot more activity among social media talent and company acquisitions. I mean A LOT. Enough to make your head spin. Both with high profile individuals and niche firms. We’ve already seen a fair amount of this in the tail end of 2009. As the recession levels out and we start thinking about a recovery we will see the big agencies make huge investments in order to make up for lost ground in 2009.

As mostly publicly traded companies the big agencies suffered through the recession. They cut staff as fast as they could without hurting their cash cows. But the big agencies will do what they’ve always done – follow the money. They did this during the early digital days and they’ll do it again.

Companies that hold Agency of Record (AOR) positions with big brands will aggressively move in this direction to support point #3.

4) Enterprise IT and Social Media become BFF -

The last 5 years have seen incredible IT disruption. In 2009 internal IT departments have been driven by one mandate from the CIO: Cut costs at all costs. Their second market driven mandate: adopt social tools. Fortunately a few smart IT managers realized that you could do both. Resourceful IT managers found a way to cut cost in one area enough to drive small investments in social tools. In 2010 budgets will loosen a little but market demands will continue to crescendo. IT managers will need to bee smarter and more resourceful.

In 2009 we’ll also see API’s continue to standardize and big IT companies like Microsoft and IBM leverage the work they’ve done standardizing open source technologies for enterprise use. This work will drive greater social media adoption in the enterprise. 2010 will see huge investments, internally and externally but the real gains won’t be seen or felt for 2-3 years when the mainstream enterprise companies adopt this technology, largely driven by offerings from the big IT companies.

5) Intranets integrating with external social networking -

This is closely related to point 4 but I felt deserved it’s own point.  This one may not be realized in 2010 but driven by points 2 & 4, IT organizations will come to realize the cost savings in leveraging external social networking applications and Communications groups will realize the efficiencies driven in employee communications as well the power of data mining those networks.

In fact, in 2010, I believe we will see Business Intelligence (BI) and Middleware security companies begin offering products that securely facilitate Intranet integration with multiple social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn. What I don’t know is if we’ll see an existing startup pivot in this direction or if we’ll see one of the big guys develop a specific practice in this area. There’s probably someone already in this space I may just not be familiar with.

Conclusion -

If you work in social media the money will flow again in 2010.
Scale should be your #1 priority. This means process and workflow.
If you have a lot of experience doing (not just talking about) social media, 2010 is your year.
If you’re not well positioned with social media experience, get there now.

What do you think? Am I crazy? Am I wrong?
Even if I’m crazy, that doesn’t mean I’m wrong ;)

Join the New Comm Biz Facebook Page or follow the Twitter account.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Popularity: 13% [?]

Social Media Should Not be Housed. No One Owns it.

Crowded House album cover
Image via Wikipedia
Social Media Should Not be Housed. No One Owns it.
I get this question a lot lately. Who owns social media? Or my personal favorite; Where should social media be housed?
The answer is no one. No one owns it. There should not be a Social Media Department. Social media is hard for people to understand because it defies our normal categorizations.
Is it a technology? Yes and no.
Is it a philosophy a methodology or a strategy? Yes, yes and no.
Is it Marketing, PR or Customer Support? It is no one activity but should be a part of all.
Is it communication or collaboration? Yes.
It’s hard for people to work with somthing they don’t understand. History has even shown us that it’s dangerous to do so. But categorizing something is not the same as understanding. It’s a short cut people use to avoid thinking and learning.
Categorizations are dangerous because  they inhibit us from doing things differently. How we use something is based on the categories we assign it to. If we say social media belongs in the marketing category then we apply the same methodologies to it as we do all other marketing. We start applying broken metrics like impressions and CPM to it. If we say it’s customer support then we instantly add it to an area that’s a cost center (that’s dangerous). If we say it’s a technology we hand the reigns over to IT (again dangerous).
I believe the reason we can’t effectively categorize social media is because it isn’t one thing. We are trying to wrap up a dozen or so technological advances with as many sociatel and business changes and call it one thing.
Even if the technologies behind social media hadn’t come along we would still be experiencing dramatic business changes (not as dramatic but still significant). Our business processes are broken and have been for a while. The culture devide between businesses and their customers has been getting worse for quite a while. Things needed to change. Social media amplified that need and accelerated that change.
Now that it’s hear and the denial is gone and people realize that it isn’t going away we need to next adress the underlying prroblems. Social media is the solution not  the problem. While everyone is figuring out how to categorize, optimize operationalize social media the real problems are still there. The underlying processes are still broken. If you’re using social media as a tactic and not as a way to solve the underlying business problems, you’re doing yourself and your comapany the biggest disservice.

I get this question a lot lately. Who owns social media? Or my personal favorite; Where should social media be housed?

The answer is no one. No one owns it. There should not be a Social Media Department. Social media is hard for people to understand because it defies our normal categorizations.

  • Is it a technology? Yes and no.
  • Is it a philosophy a methodology or a strategy? Yes, yes and no.
  • Is it Marketing, PR or Customer Support? It is no one activity but should be a part of all.
  • Is it communication or collaboration? Yes.

It’s hard for people to work with something they don’t understand. History has even shown us that it’s dangerous to do so. But categorizing something is not the same as understanding. It’s a short cut people use to avoid thinking and learning.

Categorizations are dangerous because  they inhibit us from doing things differently. How we use something is based on the categories we assign it to. If we say social media belongs in the marketing category then we apply the same methodologies to it as we do all other marketing. We start applying broken metrics like impressions and CPM to it. If we say it’s customer support then we instantly add it to an area that’s a cost center (that’s dangerous). If we say it’s a technology we hand the reigns over to IT (again dangerous).

I believe the reason we can’t effectively categorize social media is because it isn’t one thing. We are trying to wrap up a dozen or so technological advances with as many societal and business changes and call it social media.

Even if the technologies behind social media hadn’t come along we would still be experiencing dramatic business changes (not as dramatic but still significant). Our business processes are broken and have been for a while. The culture divide between businesses and their customers has been getting worse for quite a while. Things needed to change. Social media amplified that need and accelerated that change.

Now that it’s here and the denial is gone and people realize that it isn’t going away we need to next adress the underlying prroblems. Social media is the solution not  the problem. While everyone is figuring out how to categorize, optimize operationalize social media the real problems are still there. The underlying processes are still broken. If you’re using social media as a tactic and not as a way to solve the underlying business problems, you’re doing yourself and your comapany the biggest disservice.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Popularity: 1% [?]

On Being an Influencer and Marketing as Media

Influence the Influencers. If you’ve hung around in PR circles you’ve heard this phrase. But what does it mean in today’s digital age?

Many of you may be familiar with TwitterGate the incident where TechCrunch posted internal documents from Twitter after someone hacked into their Google Apps account. Many people called foul. TechCrunch obviously realized the kind of traffic this would create.

What happened a few weeks later many people may not be familiar with. (TechGeist has a full write up on this.)  Twitter has a Suggested User List (SUL) that new users are encouraged to follow (Twitter’s kind of pointless if you’re not following anyone). The top three tech blogs, TechCrunch, Mashable and Read/Write Web have benefited greatly from being on this list. TechCrunch doesn’t get that benefit anymore. A few weeks after the TwiterGate incident TechCrunch was removed from the SUL. What does being off that list mean?

Some may ask whether it really matters to TechCrunch if they don’t have as many Twitter followers as their competitors.

Recently Mathew Ingram (MW) from Canada’s Globe and Mail debated with Mike Arrington (MA) over that very fact on Twitter:
[This conversation has been edited to remove other strings and I did my best to get it in the right order]

MA @mathewi prblm isn’t if we’re on [the SUL] or not, it’s that we’re not on it and competitors are. hobbles us.
MW .@arrington: I can see Twitter wanting to apply pressure – but does it really hobble you in any significant way to not be on it?
MA @mathewi oh, it’s relevant. twitter is shaping the press to be what they want. I’ve had incredible pressure put on me to “play ball”
MW .@arrington: but does the SUL really “shape the press” in any meaningful sense? do you care whether you have 1 million or 1.5m followers?
MA @mathewi of course it does. we all fight for readers and traffic, then twitter reassigns stuff via the SUL to the people they like.
MA @mathewi it’s about 20% of all traffic.
MA @mathewi what i’ve told Twitter privately is that tech press should never be on it, period. but they’re using it as a reward and punishment

20% of traffic is pretty significant for a large tech blog. But what does that really mean?

Their traffic is actually going down. You can imagine their concern if this trend continues.

We’ve been told by online journalists that they find themselves caring if our clients Twitter accounts post links to their stories. Why? Because of the traffic it can send to their site. Some of clients have significant followings and the amount of traffic Twitter can send is not trivial. This is one of the reasons we encourage clients to engage with influencers on Twitter and use the channel as a way to amplify their own messages and 3rd party coverage.

But in my mind the debate is not about using social media as a reward or punishment. The real message here is that our companies are on an equal playing field. We are just as much media as the media. Companies are no longer at the mercy of the gate keeper. We have an equal voice and an equal right to be part of the conversation.

We need to evolve our thinking and our communications structures, from this:

To this:

But to do this you first have to build out your channels with good, consistent content. You need a platform to host your content on and you need to develop the connecting channels from your content to your audience. But you have to do this in an authentic and real way. If you only shout marketing messages at people, they don’t have to, and wont, follow you.

Companies exist to solve market needs. Why should our marketing be any different? Marketing itself is now media. If we want it to survive in this field of noise out there we have to create just as compelling content as the media we used to rely on.

The tables have turned. Which side do you want to be on?

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Popularity: 1% [?]

Tagged with:
 

What Does the Future of Marketing Organizations Look Like?

Here’s some images I pulled from a rough draft proposal I’ve been working on. I’ve really been taking a look at how should communications organizations be structured moving forward and what are the processes that need to be developed?

I’d love your thoughts.

Communication used to be one way and companies relied on the media to get there messages out.

Then the customer learned to talk back. Eventually companies got better at talking about their customers but not *to* them. And we were probably more reliant on the media than ever before.

We are finally to the point where companies are adding on social media efforts like blogs and Twitter. But it’s an afterthought and not integrated. While we are getting better at talking to the customers we are still reliant on the media. And sadly “the media” now includes a few blogs but we treat them all the same.

The next step is to get your company and clients on equal playing field with your customers and the media. Tell your story and invite your customers and the media to participate.

The next step will require a comprehensive overhaul of our communications and marketing groups to align processes and resources with a new approach.

Personally I think we will see an end to separate marketing and PR groups and everything will be rolled up into one group consisting of people who wear multiple hats and excel at the digital version of two or three marketing activities.

But the real challenge IMHO is processes. Platforms are great, people are indispensable but without the appropriate processes it’s all a waste of resources.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Popularity: 1% [?]

The Future of Social Media has Arrived! The War is Over!

The Future has Arrived

The Future has Arrived

We have reached the tipping point.

  • 90% of US adults are online*
  • 80% of US online adults participate in social media**

Unless you are targeting the very poor and/or the elderly, as marketers, you do not have to target those who do not participate in social media.

Everything you create has to be social.

Everything you do had better have social media at the heart of it. I am not saying it is the only thing you do. I am saying that everything you do had better be social. Your goal of all marketing communications should be to get your content into the social media conversation.

Sometimes the main stream media will accomplish that for you, but they are no longer the goal. I’ll give you a tip, the media was never the goal; the customers were, are and always will be.

“But the key decision makers I’m targeting don’t use social media that way.” Maybe not but I promise the people they get their information from – analysts, search engines, coworkers and reporters – do.

What other arguments are there? By targeting social media you will hit almost 3/4 of your users. Then how much of current news media is generated via social networks? You will still hit a significant portion of those remaining 1/4. Quit talking to the media and start talking to your customers. If the conversations are good the media will cover that. But the media, like your customers, are more interested in good conversations than your announcement.

The challenge is identifying the right social media activities to enable based on who you’re actually trying to reach.

Here’s the new process (which *shouldn’t* be that much different):

  1. Create great socially enabled content. (Is it compelling, shareable and embeddable?)
  2. Seed that content to key, social networks, conversation starters and influencers. (This can be anyone from reporters, bloggers or key customers.)
  3. Monitor and participate in the conversation as it grows. (What’s working, what’s not. Share other people’s conversation/content with above influencers.)
  4. Continue the conversation with more great content. (Story telling is non-linear and cyclical not a one time shot.)
  5. Repeat.

Yes, Europe (Forrester link) and Asia are still a little behind. But by next year-ish this should be globally true.

Why are we still having this discussion? I’m over it.

*(85-95% depending on which survey’s you choose to believe)
**(According to Forrester’s latest research)

Photo credit: HI-LITE

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Popularity: 1% [?]

Will There be a Corporate Marketing Roll-up?

Merge. Keep Moving.

Merge. Keep Moving.

In the 1920’s there was a lot of foundational work done in PR and Advertising that set the stage for market acceptance of the two industries. This early disciplinary work enabled both industries to take advantage of the new channels that developed in the late 40’s and 50’s when Radio and Television became household appliances and forever changed…. well everything.

Over the last 15 years we’ve seen the Internet fragment Marketing nearly beyond recognition. Besides PR and Advertising you have Direct Marketing, Digital Marketing, Interactive Marketing just to name a few and then you have variations of each of these plus hundreds of touch points and overlap between all of these disciplines.

But large corporations have typically had two internal Marketing groups; PR and Advertising (I’m excluding product marketing and sales on purpose). Each company has struggled with where all the sub-disciplines should fall and now with social media blurring the lines between all of these even further I have to ask if it still makes sense to have separate departments?

I think over the next 5-10 years we’re going to see a huge roll-up happening inside large corporations with there no longer being PR on one side and Advertising on the other. It will just be Marketing. I personally think this will be a good thing in the end but it’s going to painful for PR and Advertising agencies during the process.

[Update] T-Mobile (a client) has even done away with internal vs external comms. PR and HR (as related to communications) are focused on “vertical” – B2B, Channel, Corporate – and are responsible for communicating news, changes and announcements both ways.

photo credit dno1967

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Popularity: 1% [?]

Twitter is the Internets Water Cooler

An office water cooler with a reusable 5-gallo...
Image via Wikipedia

You can’t monitor the whole Internet. Nobody can, not even Google. So what do you do? It’s obvious that you can’t ignore it? You need to be monitoring something.

“But I don’t have budget for fancy monitoring tools.” You don’t need any budget. There are dozens of free or nearly free tools to use but you could probably just monitor Twitter if you had to.The easiest and cheapest way is set up your team with TweetDeck, let it run in the background at work and run a search for your keywords.

I’m not advocating that you only monitor Twitter (and the above solution only works while TweetDeck is running) but I think if you only did one thing, it would be to monitor Twitter? Why? Why not blogs or set up alerts?

Twitter is the water cooler of the Internet. One could argue that it’s becoming the World’s Water Cooler. But they’d be wrong. The World has many Internet Water Coolers.

Facebook is the World’s Largest Water cooler.

The Facebook Water Cooler started off as a brand of water bottles exclusively sold at college. It quickly became the favorite water cooler brand in the US and is quickly become the favorite at all of the Internet’s international offices as well. After a redesign of the water cooler people complained that it released too much water too quickly but eventually they got used to it. People do get really uncomfortable when they run into both their x-girlfriend and their mom at the Facebook Water Cooler.

Twitter is the World’s Noisiest Water Cooler.

The Twitter Water Cooler is not the largest but is by far the noisiest water cooler in the office. This is the water cooler that people who don’t drink water hate having a desk to close to and put up signs outside their cubicle wall reminding people that there are people working asking conversations be kept to a minimum. The Twitter Water Cooler used to run out of water all the time but it’s been much better latley. They also have really, really small cups.

FriendFeed is the the Geekiest Water Cooler.

The FriendFeed Water Cooler is where IT support hangs out and bitches about everyone else. It has superior filtration. State of the art cooling and is more energy efficient. In fact they recently implemented new water reclamation from the air but only a few people know how to use it.

Internet vs The World

While there are many water coolers for what’s happening in the World Twitter is the one where everything on the Internet passes through. If there’s big news in the office everyone, including PR, and HR go over to the Twitter Water Cooler to find out what’s up an then go back to their water coolers to talk about it.

So some of you are rightfully thinking, “Tac the Internet *is* the World.” Yes it is. But many things in the World don’t raise to any significant level of awareness on the Internet. My wonderful wife spends more time on Facebook than any other Internet site. She get’s news about what’s happening in our neighborhood, community and in our friends and families lives. That stuff doesn’t make it on Twitter and you don’t need to know about it.

US Airways Flight 1549 Plane Crash Hudson in N...
Image by davidwatts1978 via Flickr

But if a plane crashes, a celebrity dies (or one allegedly dies), a nation revolts or your marketing campaign tanks, the Twitter Water Cooler knows about it. If you’re going to monitor only one thing right now, Twitter will get you 90% of what you want faster than anything.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Popularity: 1% [?]

Bad Behavior has blocked 5109 access attempts in the last 7 days.