Mainstream Dinosaur’s Media Survival Kit ~ Ways Newspapers Can Embrace Social Media and Avoid Extinction

Posted in Wendy Troupe's Perspectives by Wendy Troupe on December 19th, 2008

 

You’re hearing it all over the news ? the Internet is choking traditional news sources. In particular, the print world (newspapers and magazines) are being severely affected by the economic downturn and shrinking ad revenue and it is putting the proverbial nail in the coffin. But the writing was on the wall for some time. News organizations are starting to change and embrace social media but are they looking at is as another marketing channel like SEM or are they willing to listen to what their readers want and allow them input in the conversation of generating news? This conversation has to start and evolve and within it, there are several opportunities that news outlets can take advantage of. Before we recognize what opportunities there are in this medium, we’ve got to look at what is currently going wrong. Here’s a brief synopsis of the problems facing the news media today and where the opportunities lie.

Problem: The daily printing of news is too expensive and there’s shrinking readership. As a result, newspapers are cutting the amount of news that is being generated instead of reducing their dependence on print to publish their news.
Opportunity: The inherent value here is their intellectual capital…their ability to investigate and incredibly well informed, well-written, and objective news and editorial. People don’t have time to read newspapers during the week and they’re using online aggregators (like Goodle Reader) to narrow the focus of news that pertains to their area of interest. Cuts for daily publication should be made and rely on a weekend publication when people make time to sit down to read the newspaper.

Problem: Traditional ad revenue sources are decreasing and can’t sustain large publications.
Opportunity: If less $$$ is spent on print, more should be spend looking for new opportunities to generate small amounts of ad revenue online using crowdsourcing. It’s the Obama fundraising principle here and it works. Google adwords already has this capability and the beauty is, it only subjects a reader to ads that are relevant and related to the content that is being consumed.

Problem: People rely on their network of friends and colleagues to hear about news that they might have happened upon in the newspaper.
Opportunity: In the short term, and for the weekend publications, it is still fun to take the time and sit down and come across articles that you would not have searched upon online. In the longer term, social media connections will replace even that model because articles will be shared and spread virally.

Problem: The one-size fits all model to disseminating news doesn’t work anymore nor does printing just the lenghty article format.
Opportunity: Readers want to scan news items first with “snipits” where they can get the “just” of the news and then drill down for more detail if/when they choose. It is somewhat reminiscent of the Wall Street Journal’s homepage where multiple columns are devoted to short paragraphs of larger news artcles within the paper. Readers also want to source certain topics that are relevant to them and organize it so that it is easily digestible. This should be how new is delivered, in print and online.

Problem: Packaged print that is delivered without any other opinion weighing in is not trustworthy and therefore people are looking online for commentary and engagement to further their awareness of an issue.
Opportunity: News and the people who deliver it have to be more accessible and tranparent. They have to be more willing to engage in conversation with its readers for it to be become a “trusted source” of news. Blogging is a great way to allow conversations to proliferate and encouraging guest blogging further expands the amount of news and commentary.

Problem: Handheld devices are getting more user friendly for print and video and more green. The iPhone and Blackberry Storm are some of the new devices that make it easier to digest online content.
Opportunity: Mobile marketing and dissemination of content just got a whole lot easier. This might sound radical, but you’ve just replaced print with mobile technology so that people can get the news they want, when they want it, 24/7. It also tremendously reduces our dependency paper which is oh so green!

Problem: News cycles have shrunk and it is a 24/7 model that is expected because of twitter, blogs and even CNN; print can’t keep up making it hard for print newspapers to be the first to break stories.
Opportunity: If sources of news and learning about news is spread using social networking, it becomes a whole lot easier to break the news first and write intelligently about it so that it is spread virally.

Problem: The traditional idea of a journalist and who they represent is eroding. Because there are so few of them, they are not truly representative of the diversities of the general population and therefore can’t represent it appropriately.
Opportunity: Citizen reporters are becoming more popular that can easily expand the reach of regular news teams and help journalists and reporters get a better perspective on the topic at hand. Blogs are also more informal and therefore don’t require the level of sophistication that news media requires. The Web is more about leveling the playing field and allowing everyman to have a voice to share ideas, raise awareness, and to protect the little guy. The successful journalist or columnist will be able to engage with its community to gain greater insights through conversations and input from citizens and therefore produce better stories.

Problem: The idea that print limits the amount of news that can exist due to its physical limitations is another strike against good representation of a community. Given the last 8 years of the Bush administration, there was a lot that we didn’t hear about and should have.
Opportunity: Those boundaries are limitless online. Let the readers decide what is relevant and interesting and let that help drive your news selections and strategy. There’s a wealth of information within your community. Harness it and the opportunities can be rewarding and can be expanded to sourcing news from around the world. The one thing missing from our news sources is outside perspective and understanding how we’re viewed in the rest of the world. If we are to be competitive, we have to understand the world and relate to it in constructive ways.

Problem: The corporate media conglomorates that own newspapers may have some influence over the content of their newspapers which ultimately make readers suspect and represents a conflict of interest- which ultimately erodes trustworthiness.
Opportunity: The Internet proves every day that content is king and good content will proliferate. If there is any need for transparency, the news source must adhere to it to gain the confidence of its readers when they point it out. This is where loyalty and strong relationships can develop – if you can develop advocates for your product, this is the most powerful word-of-mouth marketing takes place.

It might look grim if we look at what is happening to the business model of news media but there are some real opportunities to embrace which will redefine how news is created and consumed. To sum it up, social media, blogging, news aggregators, being green and tapping into new online revenue sources should enable the media organizations to survive and flourish in new ways. It is essential that they exist in our society to support cultural diversity, enlightenment, and to shape the larger global community.

Arthur Miller once said that a good newspaper is “a nation talking to itself.” Social media can generate conversation and also spread it so that we can talk and hear from other great news contributors from around the world.

Please weigh in on my observations. I welcome your input!

Tags: General, Social Media Capital, Social Media Strategy
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How to Integrate Social Media into the Structure of an Organization

Posted in Wendy Troupe's Perspectives by Wendy Troupe on December 9th, 2008

 

To talk further about my previous post about why social media is critical to your short term survival and long term prosperity, I thought it might warrant a further discussion about how social media infiltrates your organization. Which departments should it live and why, what types of expertise can be tapped to participate and when should it be outsourced to jumpstart the process?

Since this is a new medium that affects marketing, PR, product, customer service, advertising and sales, it all comes down to having a strategy which will determine the length and the scope of the organizational support that will be required. It can be as little as having a very small group that is dedicated to building community to having the entire organization using social networking tools that are integrated with all online initiatives.

Implementing a social media strategy, depending upon the size of the organization, can be either spread out into individual job functions in small to mid-sized organizations or compartmentalized in mid to large organizations. In either case, there a centralized strategy has to be driven throughout and the substantial learning curve and change in corporate culture has to be overcome. To jumpstart the process, training and mentoring should be part of the equation no matter what the size or scope of the initiative.

Here’s the argument for a social media department. Think of it in terms of the Web at its infancy. It was something that organizations didn’t feel they had to centrally manage and it was handled as an offshoot or a side show that the larger organization barely noticed. As the Web’s influence grew, smaller groups set up shop and proliferated which required a centralized group to maintain a single strategy and message. Today, it is one of the most important mediums for businesses and it’s about to become even more critical for survival.

Smarter organizations are going to tackle this from the top and make sure that it becomes an integral part of the organization and one that drives all activities. So let’s talk about what types of expertise is needed in a social media department, what type of budget and what type of oversight is required.

• Executive Team Member: reporting directly to the head of the organization, he/she and attends all other high level staff meetings ensure that social networking principles are being implemented and can manage budgets, dispense reporting and ROI.
• Virtual Assistants: are the social media evangelists who are responsible for implementing the social media strategy internally and externally throughout the organization and building relationships. They are responsible for monitoring and facilitating discussions, product reviews, and social networking sites around the clock.
• SEO/PPC: much like today, this position tracks and reports on all Web activity by business goals including both Web site, social networking site and
• CRM / Sales Networking: CRM will actually work because it has lost the systems complexity that it once had. In addition, it can easily integrate with other SAAS offerings like Salesforce.com and SugarCRM. This team can use community building to enable loyal patrons to spread the word and generate leads.
• PR Networking: responsible for using online social networking sites to spread the good word and the good word of others that have relationships with the organization to others. Social media is about helping others and public relations becomes a central part in building community with the larger industry and influencing it for the better.
• Inbound Marketing Mavens: responsible for generating buzz about products and services as well as gaining insights into community behaviors; this position uses community to learn how to better market and serve their clientele as well as developing new methods of allowing customers to become evangelists and spread the word to others.
• HR / Career Building: responsible for creating a community around career building activities from within the organization as well as supporting social networking sites from the perspective of attracting talent for the organization.
• Mentoring/Training: a group dedicated to supporting community building activities that includes editorial, moderating discussions, customer support, etc. This group is there as a resource for all members of the organization that are learning about how to interact amongst themselves and their customers and constiuents using social media.
• Web 2.0 Technology: this is one of the most important parts of the group because if done properly using open source technology, will allow the technology to work for the user, giving them control over their environment. It will not require the investment that it used to and its job is to continually integrate upgrades to APIs and possibly tweak them for specific business solutions.

Overall, a dedicated social media department will be able to singularly focus on the overall strategy and work with other departments to make the appropriate changes as well as providing support and training to do so.

Please tell me what you think! How have you approached using social media in your organization? Is it a disjointed attempt or is it a centralized and organized initiative?

Tags: Social Media Capital, Social Media Case Studies, Social Media Strategy
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Social Capital: What is the investment and why it is critical for short term survival and long term prosperity

Posted in Wendy Troupe's Perspectives by Wendy Troupe on December 8th, 2008

 

Michael Gilbert, from Nonprofit Online News, has an article entitled, “Turning To Each Other in Hard Times: Four Steps To Save Money and Building Social Capital.” Gilbert defines social capital as “the productive value inherent in human relationships” which is a new term for most organizations as they learn to add another essential level of capital to build their structure.

Social capital requires new investment in open technology and a change in marketing practices so that it can put the customer first and center. Instead of trying to mold the minds of its customer to behave a certain way, it looks to customer and provides them with an online toolkit to find his/her own relationship with the product — one that is personal and can be shared with others. It becomes less about the technology but how it is used to enable a user to successfully interact with both the organization and their customers.

Gilbert goes on to suggests organizations enact four principles to build social capital:

1. Ruthlessly drop any technology that erodes social capital. It comes down to control. Evaluate all online communications and remove any obstacles that might prevent people from openly communicating with your organization (good or bad).
2. Reduce investment in any technology that fails to build social capital. Specifically, stop investing in outbound methods of marketing communications and begin to open the door to conversations between customers and every level of your organization.
3. Immediately invest in technology that allows you to identify and nurture existing social capital. Consolidate all current methods of communications and try to track it user behaviors using analytics to gain some insight as to what relationships you currently have and how you’re perceived in the marketplace.
4. Strategically invest in technology that helps you build social capital. SAAS, APIs, Open Source Web platforms…there are many choices out there to leverage. A central strategy and an integrated approach to building the platform that meets your needs is required.

To further Gilbert’s wisdom, he stresses the urgency that organization need to respond to for their survival during tough economic times. What is missing is a discussion around how these changes can be implemented and how to overcome the obstacles that will be present.

Change has to come from within every area of the organization and change, by definition, does not come easily when it requires a shift in corporate culture. Corporate culture has its origins in outbound marketing styles and proprietary methods of systems development which reside in the need to control end user behaviors while protecting their knowledge base.

Companies might realize that they need to begin to have more of an online presence and have invested in PPC and SEO but again, this is not a difficult exercise because there is a method of measurement and control. At the core of this resistance, an organization has to retool its workforce and train them to embrace this new medium.

The good news and bottom line is that the financial investment is one that is made in the relationships you have both from within your organization and outside in the greater community. Instead of building huge systems infrastructures and expensive advertising campaigns, your expenditures are made integrating APIs using open source Web 2.0 platforms and mentoring and training your workforce to learn how to facilitate conversations learn from them.

Simply put, where’s a good place to start? Begin by asking some basic questions.

• Who is your audience? Audiences are determined by their level of participation and classification according to how they use social technologies. Once classified, you can use that information to start building your community.
• What is your goal? Be clear about your business goals whether it be to solve a specific business problem, target new opportunities, or develop brand loyalty.
• What is the action plan? Listen to find out what people are saying about you by using various online monitoring tools (Google blog search and Twitter searching on your brand). Once you determine what is being said about you online, you can take it to the next level and do something about it.
• How do you utilize social networking tools, tactics, & techniques? Companies must move toward embracing open source technology so that they can get up and running quickly. Social networking tools are free to use so the effort goes into how it is used ? thinking out-of-the-box.

Once you’ve gone through this basic exercise, you can begin to have discussions at every level of the organization to develop a comprehensive strategy around embracing social media inside and out. You’ll also begin the activity of performing a staffing inventory to determine where to invest in training to support these new activities as well as evaluating the IT structure so that open source can infiltrate your systems platform and link information together and drive revenue.

Building social capital is a matter of short term financial survival and long term prosperity.

Tags: Social Capital, Social Media Strategy
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Blogging tips from Arianna Huffington and her cohorts on the Huffington Post, courtesy of Jon Stewart

Posted in Wendy Troupe's Perspectives by Wendy Troupe on December 5th, 2008

 

Other than a great news bit on Charlie Gibson’s interview with outgoing President George W. Bush that made me laugh and cry, the sigficance of watching the Daily Show on December 4th was Jon’s interview with Arianna Huffington about her new book, The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging (see it at Amazon.com). I will definately read the book and find inspiration to blog about it but in the meantime, she gave some tips during the interview (between sarcastic comments from Jon) that are worth discussing.

Her #1 tip was to “blog your passions” both secret and obvious. Moreover, as hard as it seems to write in a blog, she asserts that you should shed the formality and think of it as a long email and be comfortable with just putting your thoughts out there. This is unnerving on many levels. I’ve been blogging about my love of French textiles for some time and have been quite successful at it. I would categorize it as a “secret passion” and it comes quite easily to me. I feel comfortable with putting my ideas out there for people to freely comment on them and engage in conversation. My obvious passion, social media its effect on the democratization of the Web, is a little harder because there are so many other very qualified people already blogging about it. It is a relatively new and unchartered phenomenon, too. But this is where the democratization and engagement comes in.

Right or wrong, blogs put forth opinions which are subject to a level of awareness (or lack thereof) that the author has about a topic that is near and dear to them. Therefore, when people comment and offer their opinions, it becomes a meaningful engagement and exchange of information. Furthermore, no one person’s thoughts are more valuable than another’s. They are all treated equally and with 50,000 blogs a day started, average people have a powerful voice. For those who tap into this power, they have a lot to gain – both in increased awareness and sharing in passions.

The big takeaway? Let go of your inhibitions and blog about what comes from both your heart and mind and don’t be afraid of differing opinions. It’s all about the exchange of ideas and information, not about what is right or wrong. What a great opportunity for everyday people to have a voice!

To hear Arianna’s interview, you’ll have to listen to the whole monologue of Jon, which is one of his best recently. I hope Jon takes Arianna’s advice and starts his own blog. I think it would be hilarious and instantly a hit. It’s all good…

Tags: General, Social Media Strategy
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The new rules of engagement. Why the US automakers resist seeing the big elephant in the room.

Posted in Wendy Troupe's Perspectives by Wendy Troupe on December 3rd, 2008

 

General Motors president Fritz Henderson was interviewed today by Matt Lauer on the Today Show. I see this as the best and most recent example of why our biggest and historically most powerful companies are on the verge of failure. Fundamentally, the market is changing so rapidly that they can’t keep up with it due to their large size and most importantly, the consumer has become more powerful and these giants can’t hide the fact that their business models don’t work anymore. This is the big elephant in the room and listening to Mr. Henderson today made me realize that he still thinks he knows more than the “average consumer” and that he is still in a position of power. He isn’t. Here’s why.

1. They still think that old methods of one-way direct marketing efforts drive consumers to buy their products. I’ve never heard of anyone enjoying the process of buying a car, one that employs methods of intimidation, underhanded sales tactics, and witholding as much information as possible.
2. They have no way to tap directly into their customer base and when they hear them (like on the interview this morning), they ignore them and cite past marketing data that disputes what they’re saying. Bottom line, there’s no engagement. They are not ready to listen.
3. The global marketplace is forcing companies to be more efficient on every level and be responsive to the marketplace. The writing was on the wall for so long and the US car companies resisted and even squelched new innovation when it posed competition for them.
4. They are secretive with their technology which inhibits them from learning from others. Like open source technology and what is happening on the Web, they should share technology because it makes them all better and more competitive.
5. They should look where innovation and new technology is taking hold and either buy or partner with these companies. This is where our tax dollars should be spent. Electric car companies in California are so successful and popular that it has given birth to new businesses who have set up road-side electric charging stations.

The bottom line — all businesses will have to make this shift and it will be the largest ones who will have to first because they have the most to lose. Where is there a social media stategy in their bailout plan that taps individual Americans for ideas and innovations and possibly a stake in the outcome (crowdsourcing) of these carmakers?!!

Tags: General, Social Media Strate
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How do Non-Profits Determine ROI for Social Media?

Posted in Wendy Troupe's Perspectives by Wendy Troupe on December 1st, 2008

 

Quantifying your social media campaign is slightly different for non-profits. It all comes down to a different way of thinking about how you reach your constituents. It goes well beyond the initial message and encompasses the response, too.

Determine Your Reach

To quantify the reach, you must consider three important measurable actions:

1. Engagements: Where are people talking about you? You can measure the amount of places and how many times you are mentioned.
2. Sharing: Which social networking sites are allowing others to proliferate information about you and how popular are they? How many are coming back to your Web site as a result.
3. Referrals: How many people came to your Web site from one of these sites/tools?

A good start is to measure the results of these three activities to determine the number of people you’ve reached. Remember that these are not unique instances so it is best to divide each of these numbers in half and then add them up.

Track Your Campaign Costs

Once you’ve established your reach, you’ll need to measure its value against the costs incurred to run your social media campaign. This is an activity that will become more profitable as time goes on since the effects of social media are cumulative. So take everything into consideration including internal manpower, agency fees, creative costs and media costs, if applicable.

Cost per Reach: Total cost divided by your Reach number (which was total Reach divided by two). For non-profit organizations, cost per Reach is something tangible you use to determine how social media compares to other tactics you use in your marketing efforts.

Estalbish a Donor Life Cycle

Using Google Analytics, track your donation referrals and map it back to your social media activity. This will help you to track your donor life cycle and measure the quality and quantity behind the donations and the relationships that you’re forming as a result of the online community building.

Tags: Social Media Capital, Social Media ROI
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