Where Does Social Media Fit?

I joined the Pro Marketer group on Linked In several weeks ago at the suggestion of a colleague. I’ve enjoyed following it and answering some questions. One has recurred several times, and I thought I’d give it a more detailed response. The generic question is “where does social media fit into my marketing/communications plan?”

Long ago I wrote a brief document about corporate planning being a hierarchy and posted it for my students. It’s woefully out of date, so this updates it for the social media age.

Somewhat parenthetically, I find that a surprising (disturbing?) number of young marketers don’t know how to put together a formal marketing plan. On the same page you’ll find a generic outline. On the direct marketing page you’ll find a (free) chapter on planning direct marketing programs. It too massively predates the Internet, but the process hasn’t changed, and if you want an extended example, please take a look.

View a full-sized copy here.

The concept of a hierarchy has made sense to colleagues who are experts in strategic planning. They are working at the top two levels and haven’t thought much about what goes on when you get to the “annual” level. Program planning has rarely been addressed in a comprehensive manner. There are sites and books on marketing planning and some of them are good. Others are just trying to sell their software, so beware. I believe in the kind of outline shown on my site for overall guidance. I don’t really believe in templates. A template tends to give you a cookie-cutter result. Just follow a basic outline and do the hard work of thinking strategically, whether you are at the annual or the program level(s).

While the concept of the hierarchy seems to make sense, it’s not unreasonable to look at this graphic and shout “planning paralysis!!!” I disagree. I’d suggest that the strategic marketing plan (a multiyear document) and the annual marketing plan need to be written documents. The strategic marketing plan is a written document that needs to be reviewed/updated annually because it provides guidance across a broad group of people and activities. The annual marketing plan needs to be put in writing because it is generally going to be your budget request.

Below that, get creative. Renay Picard, who gave a great guest lecture in my social media class last night, crystallized my thinking on that subject. We agreed that each social media channel in the mix (bottom level of the hierarchy) needs its own plan. She uses a spreadsheet; I use a table. Whichever way you choose to do it, some sort of timeline with responsibilities assigned gets the program across to the multiple parties involved.

Go back up to the program level. A program plan doesn’t have to be a massive document--probably shouldn’t be, given how little your colleagues would prefer to read. I often use a creative brief. There are examples on the web. This one gets most of the elements well, but I’d have to add a section for a media plan. That’s the point. Take a good basic approach, think about what you need to do, and develop a way to communicate objectives and tasks (that should remind you of advertising planning/budgeting) to the people who are going to be working with you.

Don’t forget to update it as you go along. Things will change, evolve, new opportunities will emerge. That’s the beauty of the social media space!

What are Older Women Doing on Facebook?

The initial headline in February about the increasing activity of older women on Facebook caught my attention. At first glance, it surprised me, as it apparently did many of the other “social media experts.” In fact, looking at some of the blog entries in February, some commenters actually seemed to doubt the accuracy of the data.

Monday there was new data from Hitwise via Marketing Charts that confirmed the trend, which is at least continuing if not accelerating. Younger users are visiting Facebook less frequently; older are visiting it more. The growth is in the 35 and over age groups, with the 55 and over growing fastest. The press release also points out that while the traffic to MySpace is slowing, it still had the highest average time spent in February—an important metric—with 29 minutes and 38 seconds. That is a slight decline for MySpace over 1 year ago.

Since I’m a member of the older demographic, I feel uniquely qualified to comment on the reasons for the trend on Facebook. I’ve been looking around since the February data came out, and I have a couple of solid hypothesis.

First, I should say that I’m not typical. I’m on the social networks because it’s what I do for a living. You learn by participating in this environment. Period. While my reason for being there is not typical, the results are. I’m in touch with former students all over the world; I’d have lost track of them without the social nets. I’m also in touch with younger friends and family members with whom I would rarely communicate in any other channel, including email. Point is, my reasons for being there aren’t typical, but the results I get from being there are.

I should also say that I believe the trend continues to be powered by women, although older men are clearly venturing onto social networks also.

So here are my two hypothesis:

1. Some women join Facebook and other social networks to keep up with young relatives and friends. I wouldn’t even be surprised if this was an “early adopter” reason.
2. The “early majority” adopters are hearing about sites like Facebook and deciding to try it for themselves. I’d love to know how many actually are invited by existing members; my guess is that a lot just invite themselves in order to try it out. When they do, they find that people they know are there. This must be ok!

In my early days on Facebook, the “People You May Know” were generally my former students, their friends, and my daughter’s friends—mostly 30-somethings. Now that has changed. Often it’s now people in my “older demographic.” And they tend to be women; women have historically been the communicators for their households.

This is another “the world is changing and marketers need to pay attention” moment. I saw a study by a site called Vibrant Nation, which is interesting itself. They coach their “older demographic” on why and how to participate. When I left I found a pop-under inviting me to sign up for their email newsletter. It’s a well-done site and does indeed look vibrant! What I went for was the results of a recent study. While it’s worth downloading, here are the essential findings:

KEY FINDINGS - The Vibrant Nation Woman: Networked and Wired
The VibrantNation.com study of 1,000 Boomer women with household income greater than $75,000 showed:
• The personal networks of women 50+ are large and growing.
• They are in personal contact with at least 46 people each month.
• 65% share information online with others in their network.
• They are comfortable relying on referrals from strangers online if the source is knowledgeable/experienced. They rely on references on websites like
Amazon.com (70%), Ebay.com (54%) and Tripadvisor (27%).

Need I point out that this is a very desirable target audience for many marketers?

Here’s a quote from CNN that pretty much sums it up:

"All of a sudden it seems the world is waking up to what we already know," says Carol Orsborn, a senior strategist for VibrantNation. "Women at midlife and beyond are early adopters [of technology], competitive with their kids, and in many cases, they are beating out their kids."

Don’t stereotype us older chicks! Personally, I’m off to charge up my portable electronics and hit the road!

Another CPC Launches New Product Online

One point of yesterday’s post was corporations doing well by doing good. A recent article in Ad Age (subscription required) highlights another example that takes a more controlled, corporate-focused tack, but still engages in cause marketing.

Johnson’s® adult body care line is not new, but apparently they have reformulated the line with aromatherapy and maybe other elements. So perhaps it’s a relaunch, but it’s definitely starting in social media. After the social media program is established they’ll support it with print and digital advertising (no TV mentioned); that may be more for the baby products contest (more below) than for the adult skin care line. The hub of the program is a MySpace page, chosen for its entertainment and beauty issues value.

Ashanti is the spokesperson for the campaign. She launched the “cause parties" with a party to benefit the Boys and Girls Club of Harlem, with which Ashanti has a personal relationship. The idea of the cause parties is to allow women to host parties in support of a cause of their choice with Johnson’s® providing body care products. Johnson’s® made a $10,000 donation to Ashanti’s chosen cause to get the campaign started, and there was a lot of buzz in the online beauty and music world so that part worked.


In fact, the nature and content of the buzz supports their choice of spokesperson and strategy. Ashanti seems to be a permanent resident of MySpace, and the comments on beauty blog postings I read were all about the party, the dresses, the celebs. I didn’t see a thing about Johnson’s® body products, but I suspect they were pleased with the attention given to the initial party.

They have reached out to bloggers associated with Mom Central to promote the program. A second party is already scheduled. Latoicha Givens, the author of Luxe Tips, will give a party in Atlanta on April 19 to raise money for CARE’s Women Empowerment Initiative. There’s obviously cross-promotion between the beauty blog and the body care product line. Johnson’s®, Ms. Givens’ blog, and CARE will all benefit. A win-win-win!

In fact, the campaign seems to be quite woman-friendly. According to Ad Age the “program looks to let women who may be out of work remain active by volunteering for causes important to them and enable working women to help out charities whose coffers have been depleted by the recession.”

The campaign is not without detractors. One of the commenters on the Ad Age article said, “Great brands like Johnson & Johnson shouldn't be climbing on borrowed-interest bandwagons so obviously insincerely. It makes products women have always trusted to most--J&J Baby Stuff [a separate program on YouTube happening simultaneously]--seem shallow and suspect.” I’d peg that as another “just doesn’t get it,” whether we’re talking about moms entering videos of their babies in a contest or women hosting parties to benefit causes they care about. What’s not to like?

It seems to me that Johnson’s® has it right. According to Rich Hildebrandt, group product director-new ventures for Johnson’s® , ”the goal of both programs is to deepen engagement rather than reach a maximum number of people.” He wouldn’t say how much they are spending, but it has to be less (probably a lot less!) than a traditional television launch. And the body care program has the halo effect of women they have identified as influential bloggers and of the meaningful causes they support.

Their alternative was intrusive, expensive mass media advertising. I like their choice. What do you think?

Boone's Army is on the March!

I’ve written about the Pickens Plan before. Although having $58 million to spend on creating and energizing a community doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t guarantee being smart. I watch on a daily basis, and what I see is consistent effort, good community management, and considerable activity taking place within the community. All is indicative of a well-conceived, well-managed effort. Seems to me Boone Pickens is getting his money’s worth, although I’m sure he would say that the real proof will be getting elements of his plan put into action.

To continue the push, Wednesday through Friday of last week there was a Virtual March on Washington—the first thing just like it that I’ve seen. Once again, it was well organized and flawlessly executed. He explains much of what’s going on in this video. According to the website today 4,558,010 people took part. That sort of participation doesn’t take place by accident!

People who are members of the plan--”Boone’s Army” he calls them—were informed multiple times about the coming event. Members can set preferences for frequency of content, and if I investigated the timing carefully I’m sure I’d find that they were timed so every member with email contact got at least one message. Most of us got several.

Each day, Wednesday through Friday, members of the Army got a message—from Boone himself, of course—urging participation. Each day had a different theme to encourage repeat participation. When you clicked through to the site, you found it well organized to support the march.


What impressed me most was the message page. It had the usual prepared message, but this one was easy to edit, unlike others I’ve used. Most impressive of all was the list of recipients. Along with the usual suspects, it included “Your U.S. Senators” and “Your U.S. House Representative.” The contact info in step 2 is optional, but my guess is that they have congressional district in their database for virtually all members (they’ve worked hard on that also). They could personalize correctly whether the sender choose to include contact information or not (and apparently some of our elected representatives do require it in order to receive email messages). This application was powered by Capitol Advantage. Turns out that’s the publisher of print Congressional directories, and they now have an email personalization product. Cool! Especially since it works!! The acknowledgment message contained the names of my senators and representatives to prove that it did.

Once again, Boone Pickens and the generals of his Army (whoever those generals may be; I still can’t find out) seem to have done it all right. They built up interest, motivated people to participate, and gave the appropriate autonotification. I expect the website to be updated in a day or two with a follow-up on the march, doubtlessly accompanied by another video from Boone.

I keep recommending the Pickens Plan as a best practices site for non-profits. None of the ones I know have $58 million to spend, but the truth is that a lot of that went for television to jump start the Plan in the initial stages. The online portion can be copied by all but the very smallest non-profits; they’ll just have to be satisfied with building participants more slowly.

What can corporate marketers take away from this? Good management of social media programs for one thing. My sense is that Boone Pickens has no interest in seeing any of his money wasted. Beyond that, in a new media age, corporations should think about being a participant themselves. You can see several corporate partners on the site. Owens Corning was one of the early supporters—an obvious tie-in with their energy-saving product lines.

This is the age of the soft sell—not the hard sell or the intrusive ad. Non-profits do good. Corporations can do well by supporting carefully-chosen non-profits.

Three stakeholders win—the non-profits, the corporations, and society as a whole!

Reputation Monitoring or Brand Management?

In another effort to tie some issues together for my social media students, I’ve just prepared a presentation on Reputation Monitoring and Management. I’m not a PR specialist, but it seems to be an important topic to include in a social media course. In the process of putting this presentation together and focusing primarily on Web 2.0, I learned some things and formed some opinions.

When I began, I had a vague idea that the lines between PR and marketing were blurring. That perspective strengthened as I worked through the story line of this presentation. It seems clear that both disciplines use the same tools, especially for monitoring (listening). They both have responsibilities for managing. Does it make sense to say that the responsibilities of marketing lie in the area of brand management and the responsibilities of PR lie in the area of reputation management? It seems so to me.

Another clear theme that emerged is the large—and growing—effort required to monitor the diverse and ever-growing channels of communication. Just one example is that a year ago, not many of us paid much attention to Twitter. It has grown rapidly as a significant channel with business uses and implications. Even I have TweetBeeps set up for myself and for the organization I work with.

In my recent posts on metrics I recommended using behavioral metrics from the platforms themselves in the absence of integrated metrics solutions. I started on reputation management from the same perspective. I quickly realized, however, that the issue is different. As much as we look forward to metrics that integrate social platforms, metrics are by definition aggregations. Monitoring requires assessing individual communications; aggregations are relevant in the same way.

The more I thought about it and the more I looked, the more I began to see a process. The basic idea was confirmed by students who are engaged in monitoring. It’s possible to monitor one or two channels that have relatively low volume in what’s essentially a manual fashion. That could include RSS feeds and filters, but what it implies is a labor-intensive effort to deal with (respond, etc.) to relevant communications and to understand the strategic implications of the stream of communications. As the number of channels and the volume of communications grow, it becomes an impossible task.

The graphic represents a series of steps that make sense for learning and growth in social media channels. The presentation has details on tools available at each step, some examples and an interesting case history of NPR’s transformation to digital PR. The tools are just a representative sample of the many tools available. The issue is a strategic approach to reputation monitoring, not emphasis on the tools themselves.

I liked the metaphor of the ostrich with its head in the sand as the ending. What is being said in the communications ecosystem is being said. We can’t change it. We can, however, listen, deal with issues that arise, and establish relationships with our customers and affinity groups.

Two questions:
1.Can we afford not to do RMM?
2.How can we do it in the most cost- and strategically-effective way?

Your thoughts?