engaging experience

Social Media and Social Media Marketing: Revised Definitions

Recently I posted my working definitions of social media and social media marketing and got good reader feedback both on- and offline. I modified the definitions and used them to kick off a social marketing strategy document for review with my VP. This document was one part disquisition, one part tactical plan, and eleven pages overall, so I decided the definitions could be fairly terse.

Here's where I landed. What do you think? 

Social media
A category of communications that let people create, share, and discuss materials online. Social media includes internet-only services like social networks, video sharing sites, and blogging services, but also simpler tools like commenting and polls that can be embedded on regular sites. Social media users share their photos, videos, stories, comments, and perspectives with each other, leading to multi-way online conversations. This engagement builds shared meaning and relationships among participants.

Social media marketing
A category of Internet marketing that leverages the power of social media to connect companies to customers and customers to each other. Social media marketing seeks to build awareness and shared understanding of a company’s brand through multi-way conversation. It relies on word-of-mouth tactics that let constituents create, distribute, and discuss content about a company’s offerings—stories that become available in real-time and remain findable via search engines later. Social media marketing is an indirect method of acquiring leads and customers. It’s not a direct-response approach, but rather one that helps build brand awareness, affinity, and traffic. As a reward for its engagement with social media, a company can enjoy increased exposure; inexpensive, ad-hoc customer feedback; real-time targeted market research; and enhanced customer affinity and trust.

Social Media and Social Media Marketing: Definitions

I'm currently drafting a social media strategy for my company, laying out the business case and identifying how these tools support our objectives. Since my report audience is executives with limited exposure to social media, I've drafted working definitions to guide discussion. As usual, writing encourages mental discipline, so I've had to think hard about what "social media" and its kin, "social media marketing," really mean: It's not a technology, it's a strategy. It's not two-way conversation, it's multi-way. And it's not purely customer-centric, because the company's in the conversation, too.

Here are my current working definitions. Please tell me what you think:

Social media
A category of communications that let people create, share, and discuss materials online. Social media integrates technology with social interaction to let people construct meaning through shared stories and perspectives. Social media offerings range from internet pure-plays—social networks, photo and video sharing sites, or social bookmarking sites—to simple tools embedded on a traditional site allowing users to engage more deeply with its content. Fundamentally, social media is about multi-way conversation, not one-way broadcast.

Social media marketing
A category of internet marketing that leverages the power of social media to connect companies and customers. Social media marketing seeks to build awareness and shared understanding of a company’s brand and products through multi-way conversation between a company and its core audience. Social media marketing relies on viral, word-of-mouth strategies that let constituents create, distribute, and discuss content about a company’s offerings. In exchange, the company enjoys the benefits of increased exposure, real-time targeted market research, and enhanced customer affinity.

Update, June 24, 2009: See my revised definitions based on your feedback.

whitehouse.gov

At noon on January 20, 2009, as Barack Obama sat on a dais listening to Yo Yo Ma and Itzak Perlman play Air and Simple Gifts, a White House IT staffer flipped a breaker on the web server, and the redesigned whitehouse.gov went live.

The people cheered, and not just for our new president. The new site put Obama's "by the people" communications style front and center. Here's a shot of the old site (hat tip: Rex Sorgatz's flickr photostream):

It's cool, sterile, formal, center-framed, and high power distance (to quote Geert Hofstede).  Here's the new site:

It's warm, direct, engaging, and cool in a different way. It has personality, like our president. It even has a blog. Partly what’s good about it is that it’s so much better than the old site. But more than that, it changes our perceptions of a government website, thereby changing our perceptions of government itself.

I was moved to express my admiration, using the "Contact Us" link in the upper right. I'd forgotten about writing that note. The gesture vaporized into the post-inaugural fizz. Today, though, this arrived in my inbox:

Dear Meg Maker:

    Thank you for your recent note, and for sharing your thoughts
with me. Your kind words echo the messages of millions of
Americans who have welcomed me and my family to the White
House with an outpouring of goodwill.

    On January 20th, Americans spoke with one voice, choosing
hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord. Our
Nation faces serious challenges, but we will overcome them if
our imagination is joined to common purpose. 

    Now is our time to work together, reaffirm our enduring
spirit, and choose our better history. With your help, we will
renew our Nation's promise to carry forth the great gift of
freedom to future generations, as our forebears have delivered it
to us.


Sincerely,

Barack Obama

To be a part of our agenda for change, join us at www.WhiteHouse.gov

Recent note? I had to grope through the haze to figure out what triggered this email. Well, if you consider the last quarter "recent," then it must have been the web comment. I love my new president, but this communication doesn't win awards for timeliness or personalization.

Still, arriving as it did on tax day, I have to believe that someone out there is paying attention, and appreciates my participation on this most participatory of days.

Simple Energy = Good Experience

When was the last time you had a service call that was a good experience?

Last week our oil company, Simple Energy of West Lebanon, New Hampshire, sent two technicians to look at a problem we'd been having with our boiler. One man was quite experienced, and had worked on the system when we'd rebuilt the manifold. The other was, perhaps, a trainee.

The men ran some tests and made an adjustment, and took time to explain the problem they'd found and what they'd done to correct it. They were at the house a total of about fifteen minutes. We were relieved our problem was so simply solved, and gratified the men seemed to take the problem, and their work, seriously.

Today we got the bill. I was expecting something like sixty or seventy dollars, because they'd sent two men fifteen miles, and then delivered the value they'd promised. Plus, the bill doesn't cover just technician time and mileage; it has to pay for the scheduler, dispatcher, and, yes, even the person who mails the invoice. I would have paid it, cheerfully, because we got good service.

Total fee? Zero dollars. That's right, zilch. "Technician adjusted air intake on burner. No charge for the call. Thank you for your business."

Wow. Not only was the service call itself a good experience—the men were on time, friendly, and knowledgeable—but the company delivered yet another good experience by waiving the fee for this short trip. A gesture like this says the relationship itself is important to the balance sheet. They didn't nickel and dime.

Simple Energy bills itself as your "friendly hometown heating oil." This week they lived up to their billing.

Modify Your Posts Based on Search Engine Referrals

Last August I posted to my food journal, Maker's Table, tips for making really good turkey burgers. I provided two recipes, but introduced them with a long article about my personal experiences learning to cook meat. This exposition included information on safe cooking temperatures for both solid and ground meat, tackling red meat before moving to the somewhat trickier subject of poultry.

It was one of my longer posts, but it also become one of the most viewed. In the weeks after publication, I noted significant daily traffic to this page arriving from search engine queries about safe cooking temperatures for turkey burgers. In just the last 24 hours, for example, this page has been viewed by people searching for "turkey burgers still pink," "hot [sic] to cook turkey burgers," and "turkey burger internal temperature." 

The problem? I'd buried the lead. In order to learn the right internal temperature for turkey burgers, a reader would have to wade through 500 words of my personal narrative.

The solution? Put the most critical, most sought-after, information at the top. I edited the post, highlighting the key information in a "quick take-away" header with a link to the FDA guidelines. I made sure to include the words "internal temperature" in this introduction, since that seemed to be the keyword phrase most often used in searches.

The result? A clearer and more definitive summary statement in Google results lists (see above). And, hopefully, a better user experience.

VPR Gets It

I haven't been a member of Vermont Public Radio for years. I live in New Hampshire now, and listen almost exclusively to New Hampshire Public Radio, even though I get both signals. I donate annually to NHPR, and I feel good about that. But I always feel a little guilty switching to VPR at 8:35 a.m. so I can hear the Writer's Almanac.

Two weeks ago, both stations simultaneously started their fall membership drives. I ended up switching back and forth a lot during my morning commute, looking for real news in the interstices between the breathless pitches for support. But yes, I'm enough of a public radio nerd that I also occasionally leave the breathless announcers on air, just to hear how things are going with the drive.

I have to hand it to VPR: they got to me. It took about a week, but during a new-member challenge I pulled over and called them up. I'm a renewing member, I said, but it's been a while, so maybe I'm can count as New toward the challenge? The volunteer agreed, pleasantly took my details, thanked me profusely for my modest gift, and we hung up. I drove on, satisfied that I could now listen to Garrison Keillor's poems with a clear conscience.

That was five days ago, and I'd mostly forgotten about it. But tonight I returned home to a personal voicemail message from none other than Jane Lindholm, the host of VPR's midday program, which I'd heard a few times, in pieces. "Hi, Meg! This is Jane Lindholm, host of Vermont Edition on VPR. I'm just calling to say thank you so much for becoming a new member. Your gift really means a lot, and we're just so happy to have you!"

Typing it out in quotes like that makes it seem scripted, but it wasn't. It was ad lib, it was genuine, it was real. It really was her, not a recording. She took the time.

It was worth it. I felt valued, even for my small gift. Thank you, VPR.

Meaningful Titles and Clear Descriptors Drive Traffic

Last Friday I noticed a spike in traffic on my food journal, Maker's Table. A number of visitors had arrived from search engine results for Flaio, an Italian red wine I'd blogged about in March 2008. I'd assumed the wine had recently gotten some press.

That evening, opening our copy of the Wall Street Journal, I got my answer. Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher had focused their Friday "Tastings" column on Primitivo, the Italian twin of Zinfandel. One of the few wines they really liked was Flaio, and at $10.99, it was also the cheapest. The sidebar showed a photo of the bottle and listed it as "Flaio 2006 (Salento)."

Returning to my site stats, I found at least three search engine referrals for keyword searches of precisely that string. I ran a few of these to recreate the users' search experience—to see what they had seen. My post was on the first page of Google search results for that query, and both the title and search summary gave a good indication the page was a review:

 

I've witnessed similar outcomes when recreating my visitors' searches for turkey burgers, three ingredient meals, and Stella's restaurant in Lyme—three other popular posts whose titles reflect the main point of the story. This underscores that clear titles, good first lines, and detailed particulars in the post body help searchers find your pages.

John Hancock Website: Business Hours Only

A friend logged onto his John Hancock account and requested his transaction history. Unfortunately, the website couldn't comply, because it was Sunday evening:

Search Suggestions Work

Yesterday on the commute home I heard Alan Cheuse's review on NPR of the new book by Paul Auster. When I got to my computer a few hours later, I couldn't recall the book's title, but remembered something about a man in the dark, alone in his room, ruminating. Firing up Amazon, I typed a few likely words into the search box, "man in..." Instantly, down popped a list of suggestions:

I arrowed down to "man in the dark," since that rang a bell, hit return, and got a list that displayed Auster's book at the top:

I hadn't previously noticed this search suggestion feature at Amazon. It might be new to them, but it's not new to mainstream search engines. Ever since Ajax made it possible to send the user a list of possible query completions, search engines have been offering it to help users find their way. Here's Ask.com's search suggestion UI:

And here's Google's, from the browser toolbar:

If search suggestions make the user's work easy, it's only because the taxonomists behind the scenes have done their jobs well. Note that Amazon primarily suggests book or film titles, while Ask.com and Google suggest terms from the broader web. This points to a key element of search suggestion design: it's critical to tune the suggested results to the domain, using real searches done by real people. Avi Rappoport, an expert on enterprise search, offers her set of guidelines for search suggestions.

It worked for me. I was able, knowing only approximately what I was looking for, to find my book in a few short strokes. And I bought it, encouraged and propelled by a good experience.

Crate and Barrel Gets It

I've shopped online at Crate and Barrel a few times, so got added to their email list. My appetite for household stuff is actually pretty small, so when the most recent sale notice arrived, I clicked to unsubscribe. I landed on a web page that let me opt-out in a single click: easy.

A minute or so later, this arrived in my inbox:

It might seem risky for a company to email to a customer after that customer has explicitly removed herself from their list, even if it's just to confirm the opt-out. But I thought Crate and Barrel got a few things really right:

• They confirmed my request. They restated my choices and gave me a link to their privacy policy. This gave me confidence they'd registered my preferences and will act on them.

• They thanked me for my business. In fact, that's the lead, the main story. They acknowledged my business is meaningful to them. My cabinet full of snow white dinnerware was not cheap, thank you very much, so this is gratifying.

• They asked for the next sale. Just because I've opted out of receiving emails doesn't mean I'm no longer their customer. It just means I don't want to receive their emails, at that particular email address. Where other companies might have lead with a "Sorry to see you go," Crate and Barrel assumes I'm not actually gone.

Crate and Barrel understands it's the last experience that sticks in the customer's mind, and is the one they'll judge you by. With this email, they've demonstrated good faith, so my final impression was positive: I'd shop there again. Just not today.