Buzz Monitoring

John Hope-Johnstone

Comes stai? Ok, I lied in the last post! I promised you that we would talk about YouTube this week. However, I reviewed such an excellent article in the Wall Street Journal  by Sarah Needleman, regarding the growing number of businesses tracking social-media comments on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, that I bumped YouTube.

These major companies are tracking social media to gauge consumer sentiment and avert potential public-relations disasters.

Although I prefer to concentrate on the positive business building side of social networking for HPR clients yet social media does provide a resource that has not been available in the past to monitor the mood of the marketplace and provide an avenue for good PR, if done in a timely fashion.

It is interesting how many of the social media directors are recent additions to their companies.

According to Sarah, Ford Motor Co., PepsiCo Inc. and Southwest Airlines Co., amongst many others, are deploying software and assigning employees to monitor Internet postings and blogs. They’re also assigning senior leaders to craft corporate strategies for social media. Here are some examples she uses in her article:

Ford:

One morning last December, Scott Monty, Ford’s head of social media, saw Twitter messages alerting him to online comments criticizing Ford for allegedly trying to shut a fan Web site, TheRangerStation.com. The dispute prompted about 1,000 email complaints to Ford overnight.

Mr. Monty, who joined Ford the previous July from an advisory firm specializing in social media, didn’t wait to learn the facts. He posted messages on his Twitter page, and Ford’s, saying he was looking into the matter, adding frequent updates.

Within hours, he reported that Ford’s lawyers believed the site was selling counterfeit goods with Ford’s logo. He persuaded Ford’s lawyers to withdraw the shut-down request if the site would halt the sales. By the end of the day, he Tweeted that the dispute had been resolved.

Jim Oaks, who founded TheRangerStation in 1998, credits Mr. Monty with resolving the problem so quickly. “My relationship with Ford has been better because of this,” he says.

Mr. Monty’s response won plaudits from social-media watchers. Ron Ploof, founder of consulting firm OC New Media LLC, posted a case study of the incident on the Web, to show clients how companies can use social media to their benefit.

PepsiCo:

“Social media have magnified the urgency of crisis communication,” says Shel Holtz, a communications consultant in Concord, Calif., and co-author of “Blogging for Business.” He says seemingly small incidents can quickly spread into bigger PR problems via the Web.

PepsiCo intensified its social-media efforts last November after employees saw critical Twitter posts about an ad in a German trade magazine for a diet cola, which depicted a calorie killing itself. A popular commentator, whose sister had committed suicide, asked, “How could Pepsi do this?”

A Pepsi spokesman quickly posted an apology on his personal Twitter page. So did Bonin Bough, who is Pepsi’s global director of digital and social media. Mr. Bough, who was hired for the job in September, says the incident prompted Pepsi to create a corporate Twitter profile; in May it launched The Juice, part of the networking site BlogHer.com.

Monitoring a corporate image in cyberspace is a daunting task, even with technological help. Tracking software can identify hundreds of posts daily, and managers must decide which could prove troublesome. “If you start seeing a lot of people re-tweeting it, then you know” to pay attention, says Marcus Schmidt, a senior marketing manager for Microsoft Corp.

Some companies use the information to shape responses to news. On July 13, a Southwest Airlines flight from Nashville to Baltimore made an emergency landing in Charleston, W.Va. Southwest’s six-person “emerging-media team” scanned Twitter, facebook and other Web sites for passengers’ reactions — and found mostly positive comments. The Southwest employees quickly posted Tweets praising the “great work by crew and customers onboard.”

Linda Rutherford, Southwest’s vice president, communications and strategic outreach, says she might have reacted differently if passengers had been more critical. “We would still be complimentary of our crews, but we might not emphasize that as much,” says Ms. Rutherford, who added responsibility for social-media initiatives last summer.

Some companies are training staffers to broaden their social-media efforts. At Ford, Mr. Monty plans to soon begin teaching employees how to use sites like Twitter to represent the company and interact with consumers.

 Coca-Cola: 

Coca-Cola Co., according to Sarah Needleman, is preparing a similar effort, which initially will be limited to marketing, public affairs and legal staffers. Participants will be authorized to post to social media on Coke’s behalf without checking with the company’s PR staff, says Adam Brown, named Coke’s first head of social media in March.

For now, that job falls to Mr. Brown and three staffers. Last fall, Coke’s software spotted a Twitter post from a frustrated consumer who couldn’t redeem a prize from the MyCoke rewards program. The consumer’s profile boasted more than 10,000 followers.

Mr. Brown quickly posted an apology on the consumer’s Twitter profile and offered to help resolve the situation. The consumer got his prize and later changed his Twitter avatar to a photo of himself holding a Coke bottle.

“We’re getting to a point if you’re not responding, you’re not being seen as an authentic type of brand,” says Mr. Brown. (End of review of Sarah’s article in the WSJ).

As you can see from Sarah’s article it is vital that social media be used not only in a proactive positive manner, but also in a problem solving reactive manner. Not only do micro-blogs such as Twitter and facebook and Linkedin and others need to be monitored but well read blog sites as well.

Monitoring can run the expense gammit from outside companies monitoring the microblog, blogasphere or tweetworld to a simple column on Tweetdeck with a common key word. For instance we use “Corvallis” to pull in all the tweets about our town of Corvallis. (We also use (hash-tag) #Corvallis also works as a dedicated group.)

Being a university town (Oregon State University), during the school year we find many tweets and microblogs asking “why is there nothing to do in Corvallis?”  We respond to these comments by inquiring as to the kind of activities they enjoy. We then offer a list of links, or a link to our Web site with all the types of activities they enjoy. This creates great PR and a great introduction to our Web site and services.

We have also created a virtual “Twisitor Center” named “Corvallis Scene” in Twisitorcenter.com  where future visitors can ask questions about Corvallis and receive a response from either a staff member or another Corvallis citizen. It works remarkably well.

Programs like Twinfluence and Twazzup also give us a feeling about “who” the people are who are in our sphere of social influence.

Once a particular problem has been spotted then follow your PR guidelines. If you haven’t created any… do so quickly. Make sure the following points are included in those guidelines:

1. Acknowledge the problem rapidly and inform the writer that you will look into it (not fix it, unless you can).
2. Don’t be corporate or defensive.
3. Give them a timeline about when you will get back to them (doesn’t mean you have had to fix the problem by then, just that you will update them).
4. Keep to that timeline at all costs or you will make the problem worse.
5. Once the problem is hopefully resolved, follow up with them once or twice to keep in touch.
6. Thank them for helping the organization get better.
7. If you can’t fix the problem be honest and within the realm of legal obligations, be up front as to why the problem can’t be fixed.
8. If the problem has been created by a third party, let the third party know about the problem and get a response about fixing it. However, YOU stay the contact for the person that has the problem and have the third party respond through you. Do NOT obfuscate your responsibility.

 Hope that this has given you some fodder for thought!  Next week post, (unless I find another interesting article), we move to YouTube.

Thanks for reading, I would enjoy your comments. Visit me

Engagement

John Hope-Johnstone

Hallo (Hello in German): In last weeks post we discussed developing a “key influencer” list for social media and social networking. These are people you want as “friends” on facebook, or to follow you on twitter, or eyeball you on YouTube.  This is a list of the key people in your life (work or otherwise). Influential people who will go out and influence a bunch of other people, in other words keep the buzz going. It is basic Public Relations 101, it’s good marketing on steroids!!

Let me give you an example; some wonderful folks from Canada contacted my office last week to see if I could speak at their conference. It happens to fit perfectly into a time slot that I am in Canada (although not exactly that part of Canada, it’s sooo big) and so we said yes we would love to be considered. One of the questions we always ask is “how did you find us?” Well here is the path as far as I can figure it:

1. They contacted the office of one of my Guru’s Bill Geist  and spoke to Terri, Bill’s High Priestess of Client Services who suggested me (thank you Terri!).
2. Then they searched and went to my Web site www.johnhopejohnstone.com.
3. From there they read one of the posts of this Buzz Master blog.
4. Then read my professional profile on Linkedin
5. Then I emailed a flip video (could have put it on You Tube).

Each of these steps is a step down a path to find out more about us. These paths can follow many different routes back and forth between the social platforms but the results are the same, people get to know us a little better each time they visit a social media platform.

In this instance, they used a personal reference (Terri) who knew of my book and then expanded by going to my Web site and then could have deepened it by going to my blog, (I don’t know if she did), then could have followed me on Twitter (@HopeJohnstone) and then got to know me a bit better through a flip video.

Other folks have followed me on Twitter then gone to this blog for a while, then read a bit more about me on my Web site, perhaps read my book, then met someone who knows me or has heard me speak… well, you get the picture.  

This week we are going to suppose that you have created your key influencer list (as we suggested in our last post) and now you are ready to pull them into your sphere of influence. Some of the people on your list you may already know, (these are the low hanging fruit). Others you will have heard of but may not have really met eyeball to eyeball, (high fructose). Ok, so could pick up the phone and call them and say…..what?  Most likely not even get hold of them, just leave some rambling message like an idiot.

You could send them an email (which is still valid). If you do decide to use the email route then make sure you have a mutual friend in common, ” Hi Harry, Gloria suggested that I send you an email as we are mutual friends”. The problem now is that you really have to go into your pitch RIGHT NOW! Such as “Harry, would you go to my Web site and see if you like my product click here”. Hmm, a bit pushy even if you do have Gloria in common but it might work.

In my book “How to Market Tourism in the 21st Century” (shameless plug) I write that; “We are increasingly participating in a “reverse market” where customers seek out potential businesses rather than the other way around.”

So here are my ten rules of Social Networking engagement:

1. Remember your key influencer list is gold and that it is the quality not quantity that counts.
2. For God’s sake have a strategy, why are you doing all this work, where are you going?
3. Always send a note when you ask to become a friend and give a second connection or a secondary reason for wanting to become a friend “I heard you speak at the MPI conference”.
4. Always send a note when you accept someone as a friend. “Sam, glad to be part of your group.”
5. Be authentic, be real, don’t speak corporatese.
6. Listen and look before you jump in and join a new community, it is a smart puppy that doesn’t bound into a new pack of hounds but spends some time sniffing…you know.
7. Let people get to know you before you slip them your blog URL or Web site. (Remember the rules of dating.)
8. Remember on the Web you ARE what you publish. Have something of value to say. Doesn’t mean you have to be heavy everytime, you can be funny (but on topic) but have a thread of knowledge that you are trying to impart.
9. Encourage sharing, re-tweet but give credit. If you find something worthy of a good buzz give it “word of mouse”.
10. Questions beat out statements 60 to 1. People love to respond to questions, but don’t do it everytime, it gets annoying.

Well my friend, that’s it for this week. More on engagement next week, it is a big topic. Thanks for reading the blog. Make a comment, add an idea, pass the blog along, argue with me.

 Talk to you next weekend.

Why?

Buzz Master

Ciao,
This blog is all about marketing in the 21st century. It comes from my book “How to Market Tourism in the 21st Century” on http://www.Amazon.com or download from my Web site http://johnhopejohnstone.com . Don’t be scared by the tourism title, the contents work the same for about everything.

Crazy changes are happening to marketing starting with the Internet and exploding with search technologies in the 90s and screaming to hell and back with social media and social networking.

In many of my latest blogs, (and this WordPress blog is new, there have been others but I like this plaform), we will chat about Social Media because that is the latest article I am slaving over. I really use these blogs, to write a book or article, blog by blog.

More about social media and why you need it in the next post.