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Big Brands and Social Media

Interesting post from Mashable on why big brand struggle with social media. I won't restate what he covered in his article but rather give my two cents as a 'big brand' marketer. I think brands are beginning to want to understand it. I think the two main challenges I've seen coming from the big brand perspective are;

1. who owns it?

I've talked about this before and still believe it depends on your brands goals. It should also be stated that multiple groups can participate. We have lots of people across PR, customer support and marketing that Twitter, blog, etc. We have a very large, vibrant MVP community that loves to help talk about our brand. We make it part of our DNA to embrace the conversations from multiple channels.

2. how the heck does it play with our campaigns.

Marketing teams and budgets are inherently driven by campaign timelines. Marketing has not historically run on a 24/7 timeline, which is what it takes to make social media work for a brand. Our anytime, anywhere approach works for our team because we are not on the campaigns team. Windows has a campaigns team that we partner with to leverage the creative assets, messaging, themes, etc but we are not driven by their calendar for outreach. It took awhile for our executives to quite know where to put our efforts but we've landed in a great place. We are on the digital marketing team, the same team that runs Windows.com. This digital team is focused on customer experiences and partners with campaigns to promote them when available but the goal is customer experience.

Technorati Tags: windows marketing,social media marketing,Twitter,blogging,big brands,Microsoft

Windows Social Media team is hiring

We are looking to add a new member to our team. If you know someone or are that person yourself please continue reading. The full Job Description is posted below. Please send resumes and inquires to MartyCollins@Live.com

UPDATE: the job is located at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, WA.

_____________________________________________________________

Windows7 Social Media Lead

The Windows Social Media team has an exciting opportunity for a passionate Online Marketing Manager to research, coordinate, project manage and implement social media marketing initiatives as part of the Windows7 launch team. The ideal person will be immersed in what it means to "live life online" through channels such as; Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. This team member will stay up to date on latest social media developments, consumer behaviors and trends, identify current and future opportunities and develop business case, marketing plans and proposals for implementing social media solutions within Windows consumer marketing. This person is a strong collaborator and team player that can function in a cross group, ambiguous environment.

We are looking for a senior social media guru to provide leadership among cross functional teams and build out scaleable marketing programs which will significantly impact both consumer preference and business results for the Windows business. This team member will use social media technologies to listen, engage with, and intersect consumers in the online and offline space. As part of this role on the Windows 7 consumer marketing team this person will participate a cross discipline v-team and develop and execute programs in alignment with the marketing strategy. Key components will include:
Capture the consumer's imagination and spark desire for Windows 7
Drive engagement with Windows consumers through social media channels
Drive preference for the Windows brand
Spark positive recommendations for Windows 7
Strong collaborator with the ability to persuade
Responsible for identifying and managing highest ROI efforts

The Windows team is looking for someone who is experienced and confident enough to take risks and deal with uncertainty while exhibiting caution when warranted. This person will use excellent presentation skills to regularly report to the executive team and evangelize Windows7 social media programs to other Microsoft marketing teams, becoming a Subject Matter Expert (SME) in this digital domain.

Position Requirements:
5-7 years online marketing experience with a strong focus on Web 2.0 technologies
Must be an enthusiastic and avid social media junky
Ability to generate ideas and work within minimal guidance
A track record of excellent results supported by data driven metrics
Strong communication and interpersonal skills
Solid project management skills
BA/BS required. MBA preferred

Technorati Tags: social media marketing,windows marketing,social media,community marketing

Social media guidance for team members

I drafted a mail at the request of my SVP a few weeks ago outlining some suggestions I had for how team members could get involved in our customer conversations (aka. social media). Since then I've been asked by some other teams the same question so I'm going to share that email below. Hope it's helpful and feel free to share it with your teams if you think it will help.

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A few thoughts to keep in mind. Forrester classifies consumers into several different internet participation levels. The ones we are focusing on are; creators (21%), critics (37%), spectators (69%), and joiners (35%). As you see only a small portion of the population is a creator (blogger). We don't want to force folks into this type of activity because it's something that is best done by people who are passionate about it. Our community will very quickly and easily pickup on any forced or insincere comments. We want to be careful to maintain our real and personal relationship. I do however think all of these kinds of customer engagements are invaluable to folks that can't get to CES or don't spend time on the floor of a Best Buy.

I would recommend people self select which of the following criteria they are and focus on that form of participation rather than encouraging someone to try an activity that isn't comfortable to them. This type of interaction would likely come off as forced, possibly inaccurate and often cause more harm than good.

Spectator- The majority of the internet population does not actively participate in conversations online but are still interested in reading and learning. A great way to get real time customer feedback is by monitoring what is being said online about our brand/products.

1. Alerts are the fastest way to get a comprehensive, timely view of the conversation online. Alerts can be set up through search engines. You can set up alerts and chose comprehensive. You can then either have it come to your email box and set up a rule in Outlook to filter to a folder, or create a feed that you would check once a day (called a feed). If you are less interested in timely response a daily feed would be the way to go.

2. Check Facebook, specifically the wall which is where fans post comments. YouTube also has a wall where people talk directly to us.

3. Twitter is another great place to watch conversation. Monitter will allow you to watch multiple conversations at one time.

Critics- These people are comfortable participating in online conversations in places such as forums (MSDN), product review sites (Amazon) and blog comments. In most cases you simply register with the website and then are free to post comments. This is a great way to help customers with your product knowledge. If you have questions or concerns on how often or how to do this the social media team will gladly discuss options with you.

Things to keep in mind;

· it generally doesn't turn out well to take an adversarial tone. The social media team engages in conversations where customers are asking a question, looking for guidance, or may have stated inaccurate information. It is not advised to become confrontational or take an opinionated tone.

· to say you 'hate' something or think a product feature is 'stupid' is an opinion of the person, not Microsoft. If someone is engaging on behalf of Microsoft it's important to remember it is the company's position you are representing, not your own. If you really want to tell people you 'hate' something it should be done under your own identity and not part of a Microsoft outreach effort.

· Transparency is very important. Say who you are, use your real name, even if it's just a first name. We do not support using fictitious identities. The social community is very big on knowing the person behind a company. It has much more impact if you are willing to show a personal side to Microsoft.

· Alerts will tell you where to focus.

Joiners- There are lots of online communities that discuss our products and being a member of the community is helpful to monitor the conversation. A few communities to join would be;

· Fan the Facebook page

· Subscribe to the YouTube Channel

· Become a follower of the Twitter account and retweet posts through your own account.

· Join syndication channels like Digg, and Delicious . Digg syndicates content across the web by members voting up and down content interesting to them. Delicious allows you to keep track of your favorite sites through bookmarks and then share those bookmarks with others. StumbleUpon allows you to see websites that interest you and share sites you find relevant back with the community.

Creators- This group is the smallest but definitely the loudest and has the most impact on the community as a whole. This group blogs, vlogs, Tweets, creates podcasts and generally creates much of the content on the web. This is type of activity is the most time consuming and definitely requires someone to have a deep interest in the subject matter or medium. The most famous creators are here. If you are not yet a creator and think you may be interested in this I would recommend spending 30 days following others to get a feel for the type of conversations and content that works best. Each community has their own protocols and it's important to understand the ground rules, especially on active communities like Twitter. You can easily start a blog on Spaces, WordPress, or Blogger. Blog about what you are passionate about, what interested you and always be transparent and real.

Technorati Tags: social media marketing,marketing,windows marketing,blogging,twitter

Apple = Talking and no listening

It was brought to my attention today by deejayspikes that while AppleInc has a very strong following on Twitter with over 24,000 followers AppleInc actually follows no one.

If you look at Apples Twitter page there are no @replies, no RT (re-tweets). In fact they use Twitter 100% as a channel to push out content. They do not use it to engage customers, answer questions, take feedback – they listen to no one. And yet 24,000 people are still following. I would imagine they are interested in the news Apple will give out. Is this the best way to use Twitter?

I checked the Twitter grade for both AppleInc and MSWindows and you may or may not be surprised to hear even though Apple has 24,047 followers as of today they're overall ranking is 5,684 out of 1.258M accounts. MSWindows on the other hand currently has 2,438 follower (1/10 the size) but is ranked 2,466 out of 1.258M. If you agree with Twitter Grader than you would agree Twitter is about following and listening as much as it is about pushing your message. To me there is just something fundamentally wrong with any Twitter account that literally has 0 following. This is the equivalent of a blog that doesn't take comments. This is pushing traditional marketing efforts through non-traditional channels. While I would love for MSWindows to have 24,000 followers I am even more excited about the conversation we are having with people everyday now.

Technorati Tags: apple,windows marketing,social media marketing,twitter,social media

Marketing Today's new home

Welcome to the v2.0 version of Marketing Today. Today I'm revealing the next phase of my blog to what you see here. The URL has changed to www.Marty-Collins.com. I've pulled over some of the more significant posts from my old blog www.MartyCollinsBlog.Spaces.Live.com as you'll see below. If you are a regular reader please update your RSS feeds. If you are new to the blog take a look through there to get a feel for the content you will see in future posts.

What type of topics will be covered?

This blog will cover the same topics Marketing Today has been talking about for 2 years, but hopefully with a few different twists. We are introducing a new format we are calling Mission Possible. This will be a video blog (vlog) that will have conversation with different Windows team members as well as other social media marketers I'm lucky enough to meet and interview. The perspective for Marketing Today will continue to be from the experience of someone living and working in consumer marketing every day. I'm not a consultant but rather a marketer that works for Microsoft on the Windows consumer marketing team. I lead a small team of fellow social media enthusiasts (meet Marcus and Ali). We have the same challenges as other marketers and I hope to share my experience and be a resource for others to learn from. I spend a lot of time reading blogs and learning from other industry marketers as well and will pass on their wisdom when appropriate.

What's new & enhanced on the blog?

The biggest differences in the blog are the URL and the look. I've simplified the look a bit which will allow me to focus more on talking about my experiences building community and marketing programs using social media channels. I've also added the new vlog feature called Mission Possible.

What's "Mission Possible"

The #1 question I get asked from folks I meet is "how do I get started?" This first series of vlogs will give other marketers a glimpse into how I got started, lessons I learned along the way and things I discover everyday as a fellow marketer and social media enthusiast. I'll cover the challenges that come with working for a global, well known brand as well as how we deal with internal upsell and the ever challenging funding questions.

Happy to share my Window on the world with you (no pun intended…well maybe a little). So let's get started.

Technorati Tags: blogging,windows marketing,marketing,social media

Social Media Predictions for 2009

Peter Kim published a great paper that is well worth your time to read. He amassed a group of thought leaders in the social media space to give their predictions for 2009. While he didn't invite me to add my 2 cents this year I'm going to do that here and maybe he'll invite me next year.

Agencies: Social media agencies will continue to grow and add clients at the expense of the larger media/creative agencies. I talk a lot to marketers working in social media and all agree large agencies have not yet developed this muscle thought they do pitch it as a core competency in some cases. In this economic downturn my money is on the small, nimble agencies. They are hungry for this work and are regular contributors to the social media community which means they have their fingers on the pulse of what's next. I recently hired a small agency to work with Windows' on a 12 month roadmap for our social media team and one of my core requirements was the people at the agency HAD to be participating in the space; blogging, chatting, etc. They have to be using the technology and participating which shows skin in the game.

Apps/Widgets: The current business model for apps is broken. Apps are very difficult to discover whether it's on Facebook or the iPhone which makes scale virtually impossible to reach. App networks are beginning to emerge where a brand can basically 'rent' an app for a period of time garnering them the exposure of the apps fan base without the investments of time and resources to build the app then find the followers. This makes sense to me if the brand can find the right fit. If you are Random House and you have a new book being published an app or widget that is devoted to literary reviews or discussing books like Goodreads would be very appropriate. For a fraction of the cost Random House would get the exposure to their target audience without having to build an app that would likely never be discovered by more than a handful of people.

Strategy: While a few of the experts in Peter's paper predicted this would be the year for brands to build an actual strategy before chasing the shiny new object I am less inclined to agree. I'm happy to say this is in fact exactly what my social media team is doing right now and we are very excited to be working with Ignite and Jim Tobins' group on this.

Windows Live Writer: I am writing this blog post right now on the airplane ride from San Jose home to Seattle. I love Windows Live Writer and so does just about everyone that uses it. Check out what our community has to say about it. Writer will change the way you blog. I think Writer will get more attention in 2009, it's a sleeper product waiting to explode.

Plus a few predictions that are a going out on a limb;

1. Second Life will finally call it quits
2. Mobile will still not make a dent in the opportunity awaiting that industry
3. Brands will continue to stumble with splashy campaigns that are less than authentic – hiring bloggers, planting UGC

Technorati Tags: social media,community marketing,windows marketing,consumer marketing,marketing,windows live writer,Windws Live

Anytime, Anywhere Approach to Social Media

I presented at the Social Networking Conference a few weeks ago and had hoped to share a video of that presentation but due to technical difficulties by the videographer there is no video to share. I have shared the slides below. I'll be the first to admit the slides by themselves do not tell the whole story. For that you'll just have to come see me speak at some point. But I did want to share the perspective I presented.

The Windows Social Media team is focused on maintaining an ongoing conversation with our customers regardless of whether we have a campaign in market. Our Anytime, anywhere approach is about building channels and putting tools in place to be able to constantly know what consumers are saying and have a built in mechanism to talk to them. We don't want to wait for a campaign to talk to our customers and we certainly don't want to wait for a special occasion to get feedback. I think of Social Media as the new CRM – and that's how I'm explaining it to my executives.

Here's a picture of me and a bunch of somewhat interesting data points about myself. This data could be interesting to marketers if they are targeting moms, travelers, skiers or maybe entertainment lovers. Traditional marketing says this data has to be collected, stored, scrubbed, etc if a marketing team wanting to maintain a database to reach out to their customers with coupons, offers or product information. Think monthly newsletter or DM flyers. But what if you as a brand don't have to host, manage and maintain that database…

Here is where you can find all the data points I identified above… on my Facebook profile. Get it? People are putting the data out there in droves. And it doesn't rely on the brand anymore to solicit, manage and store it.

So you have to ask yourself as a brand marketer, are you inviting your customer on a first date? Wining and dining them and then not calling in the morning. How do you think that makes them feel? They've raised their hand, right. Said they are interested in you shoe, car, bag, whatever. They maybe even did something to try and get your attention like creating a commercial or designing a new logo. Did you say thank you? Figuratively and maybe even literally. If you are a non-profit it's even more important. Did they give you money? They are a part of your extended community now. You should absolutely have programs in place to continue the conversation with them, especially if you want to ask for money again next year.

Here's the deck:

Anytime, Anywhere Approach To Social Media

View more presentations from guest8143e. (tags: social media)

Technorati Tags: social media,windows marketing,community marketing,social networking conference,marketing

Win7 on Twitter

We had a BIG launch this weekend. Okay, it was supposed to be Friday but after some technical bumps the Win7 beta became available for customers Saturday morning Seattle time. You can download it here. My social media team was monitoring and engaging all weekend. They were using TweetDeck, I use Monitter. Most of the conversation was focused on people trying to download the beta. Twitter helped us escalate a few issues very early. We found out within about 15 minutes of the launch that there was a bug with Firefox. Customers could only download if they were using Internet Explorer. We were able to escalate this issue much quicker because it was brought to our attention right away through Twitter.

Saturday and Sunday the conversation on Twitter was coming through at an average of 1 post per 5 seconds. This morning we are seeing rates of posts 1 every 2 seconds. The volume is amazing. But what's proving to be most valuable to us right now is the real time feedback this is providing. We are able to escalate issues almost instantly has they get posted on Twitter. For example, a few customer have had problems with the feedback channel. They have posted screenshots of errors they are receiving. I'm escalating those error messages to our product team to investigate. We are definitely staying on top of customer issues and taking feedback real time. There is no other mechanism besides Twitter that allows us to get such instant customer feedback.

Thanks Twitter!

Technorati Tags: twitter,windows marketing,social media marketing