And you thought all you had to do was create a Twitter and Facebook account?

Posted on October 16, 2009 by marc meyer

Do You Have The Chops To Be A Social Engagement Director?

I was recently contacted by a recruiter who sent me the following job description.

The Social Engagement Director will be accountable for developing and leading community and social networking initiatives for all Business Units. This includes:

Building strategies and programs that are designed to help the BUs build greater customer engagement. The Social Engagement will represent the BUs social commerce needs within the Online Business Unit, structuring programs internally, and externally via the community, Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Youtube and the wider blogosphere.
Along with managing BU initiatives, the Social Engagement Manager will also help ensure that all social programs are coordinated and structured to deliver maximum benefit to the enterprise.

Specific responsibilities that will fall under the Social Engagement Managers’ areas of responsibility.
• Lead initiatives to develop specific social programs that align with BU business objectives
• Evaluate initiatives and provide strategies and support to the BUs
• Work with Marketing and paid media to ensure alignment and to coordinate seasonal and special promotions
• Establish and track measures to ensure business objectives are met and adequate returns can be verified; determine which programs are working and which aren’t.
• Proved day to day support for the BUs to ensure that they are building dialog with customers that drive engagement and loyalty including content development and promotions

BU SPECIFIC INITIATIVES

Build social media programs for BUs.
Work with BU teams to ensure that they are engaged directly with customers
Structure social media programs: BU blogs, forums and ask and answer programs
Ensure that Customer Service and Home Services are engaged in answering customer issues or questions for BUs
Deliver customer insights on behalf of the BUs through surveys, polls and other forms of feedback
Consult on improvements and ensure customer insights are synthesized and operationalized within the BU
Guide constructive conversation and debate
Escalate member/customer problems and gain swift resolution
Respond to all customer service inquiries that Vendor can not resolve externally
Respond to member concerns/ inquiries presented online and within the community and triage issues to drive resolution through the appropriate internal customer service channels
Promotions. Work internally to help develop offers/incentives and viral programs that can be shared within the community or on other social sites like Facebook or Twitter etc..
Team with Marketing and vendors to administer the back-end of promotional programs
Recognition
Oversee the simple thanks program or other rewards/loyalty programs
Team with Vendor to administer the reputation system
Establish acquisition, activation and engagement targets
Complete weekly reporting on acquisition and activation trends
Work to report monthly on social activity and trends
Work to develop viral marketing plan and maintain presence on social networks including: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and others

Qualities:

Customer Service Oriented
Outgoing
Excellent follow-up and organizational skills
Knowledge and use of social networks and platforms
Understanding of customer profile

So… do you think you are up to the task? If so, I’ll send you the link. 🙂

The Top 45 Objections To Using Social Media

Posted on October 8, 2009 by marc meyer

If you’ve been in the business of social media for any length of time, whether you have been selling it, marketing it, or implementing it, you will have heard one of the 45 objections below. What really makes this list though, is that the majority of it came from you and your clients and your experiences. It was crowdsourced from Twitter!

However, There’s a larger and more important issue here though, and it’s one in which you can and should, use this list as your cheat sheet. YOU need to be able to answer all of these objections. Or at least anticipate that your clients and prospects will be voicing these concerns and more.

Feel free to add to this list.

1) Why should I? I don’t need to. Just because everyone else is doing it, doesn’t mean I have to.

2) It’s a fad, I’m going to stick to what works for our business

3) It costs too much

4) I’m in no hurry

5) I have no desire

6) It will require too many resources within our company

7) I’m worried about the legal ramifications

8) We’re better off by doing nothing

9) To risky

10) You can’t measure it

11) We give up too much to the customer

12) We won’t make any money

13) We can’t control the message

14) We don’t know the first thing about social media

15) It will take too long to pay off

16) It will take too long to implement

17) It’s just a blog, twitter and Facebook- What’s that going to do?

18) I can do it/we can do it ourselves

19) It’s not worth it

20) Our customers are not on social networks

21) It’s too complicated

22) We can’t control our employees using it

23) I can’t it’s a legal issue

24) We want to control the message

25) We can’t support with our current management/management doesn’t support

26) We’re B2B so there is no reason for us to engage consumers

27) It’s a regulatory issue. So no guidelines in place.

28) No trust

29) Don’t want to acknowledge negatives

30) Not our customers

31) Don’t have time to adapt to the technology

32) Social Media results are not easily visible to non-users

33) Fear of change and the unknown

34) Not our target market

35) Our customers don’t use social media

36) Our deadlines are more important than your Tweet goofs.

37) Privacy issues

38) No ROI potential

39) Lack of expertise

40) Lack of a market

41) We already do social networking, we have a facebook fan page.

42) Too complicated & therefore, we’ll look for alternative options

43) We’ve been fine without it

44) We’re waiting for it to mature

45) We tried it, it didn’t work.

46) ?

What are we missing?

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Can you go left?

Posted on September 30, 2009 by marc meyer

In basketball, there is a term that really separates the wheat from the chaffe so to speak, and it’s all based on a person’s ability to dribble the ball and to a certain degree, shoot the ball.

Fundamentally, those are 2 very important aspects of basketball. Shooting and dribbling right? So what enhances those 2 skills? Well if you’re right handed, chances are you will dribble with your right hand and you will shoot with your right hand and you will favor the right side of the court.

From a marketing, and social media marketing standpoint. You will play to your strengths. You will go or you always go with your right hand. With what you already know.

Now back to the hoop court. The most dangerous players are those with enhances skills and abilities. These are players who have a “handle” and…can go left. In other words, as they are going down the court, they can dribble with their left hand or right with ease, and shoot with either hand as well.

They can change hands on the fly and not skip a beat. They can adapt to any situation because they have the skills to do so. Were they born with those skills? Chances are they were not. They trained and they practiced. But you don’t see that part. You just see the finished product.

One of the first things a coach looks for in an up and coming player is whether the player has a “handle” with his left hand. Can that player go left? It takes about a minute to assess and if you have 100 kids for example, trying out for 12 spots, it quickly becomes one of the main determinants.

Why is this important? Without the ability to dribble with your left hand, you essentially cut the court in half. It becomes useless, You can never go over to that half of the court because you cannot dribble with your left hand. So you favor the right side-all the time. I repeat all the time.

The same applies to social media and marketing, you will lose unless you can bring more to the table than the next person. Oh, and you better be able to back it up.

Just as it is on the court, shit talkin’ can only take you so far and at some point, you have to start walkin’ it.

So how bad do you want it? What skill sets are you bringing to the table? Can you enhance what you already know? Do you always go to your right?

Social Venom

Posted on September 26, 2009 by marc meyer

What’s the difference between snake oil and snake venom?

Let’s recap the week.

Leigh Durst goes off on people stealing her hard earned, labor intensive work

Peter Kim laments the plague of plagiarism

David Armano discusses how to spot social media snake oil

Olivier Blanchard has called foul on bogus social media experts

Valeria Maltoni interviews Jonathan Bailey, the topic? Plagiarism Today

I wrote about Social Media might be free, but I’m not…

Are you sensing a trend here? I am. That, my friend is what you call venom. Oddly enough, none of the above posts were precipitated by the other. They all came out on their own, out of anger and frustration. And if I had taken more time, I probably would have found more posts. Even more telling, is what you see in the comments. A lot of comments. More anger, more frustration.

I’m not sure I have a sure fire solution for any of these posts but I have a feeling that the days of wine and roses may be slowly coming to an end in some respects. If not an end, it certainly won’t be flowing like the wine at a Roman Bacchanalia. Content will be locked down more. Ideas and thoughts may not be so readily provided or shared as they once were.

Fortunately though, I have a feeling that Snake oil vendors will have a harder time of proving themselves. On the other hand, as I have experienced somewhat, we will have a harder time of climbing out of the hole that the purveyors of snake oil have dug for us with once burned clients.

I do have a feeling though, that this only the beginning, and that a larger backlash may be at hand. What to do about it is the question. A governing body? A policing body? I’m not sure. The floor is yours…

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