Our WOM Director is Bound for Blog World Expo

While I’m sure he’s excited about the enormous buffets, casinos, shopping and millions of other things to do Vegas, our WOM Director, Andrew Krebs-Smith, may not have any time to do those things while he’s there October 15 – 17.  I’m not sure that he’s too upset about it either. He’ll be completely satisfied because he’ll be engrossed in social media the entire time, and learning from the industry’s biggest names at Blog World Expo.

Blog World Expo is a conference, trade show and media event for all new media. As the Word of Mouth Director, Andrew manages the strategic planning and implementation of our clients’ social media efforts. Seriously, Andrew is a guy who lives and breathes social media, so attending the Blog World Expo is like three days of Christmas morning to him. The best part about going to Blog World Expo? He won Mashable’s Comment Contest and will be going to the conference for free. (The picture on the left is Andrew before winning the tickets, and the picture below is Andrew finding out he won the tickets).

The Expo won’t be all about blogs. It’s covering all things new media from podcasts to online videos to gaming and online communities. With more than 50 seminars, panel discussions and keynotes, it’s the largest new media conference in the world. Andrew will have the opportunity to see presentations from tons of experts in the field. Last year, Steve Rubel, Guy Kawasaki and Tim Ferriss were speakers, so let’s just say everyone back at The Cyphers Agency is just a little jealous of our WOM Director.

Some of the sessions Andrew plans to attend include: Measuring and Building Online Influence, The Blog as a Community Springboard, Get Rich With the Niche: How to Leverage Niche Communities for Maximum Blog Growth, Crossing Boarders: Use Blogs to Reach a Multicultural Audience and How Twits Lay Golden Eggs–The Art of Social Engagement for Business.

Social media is ever-changing and complex, so it’s important that our team stay on the cutting edge of it. We’re excited for Andrew’s opportunity to attend Blog World Expo, and can’t wait to hear about everything that he learns while he’s there!

Mayors and Celebs Use Status and Social Media to Inspire

Many celebrities and public officials use Twitter to communicate with their fans/constituents. While some celebs use it to simply promote themselves (ehhem, Britney Spears), others use it to inspire their millions of followers.

Last week, celebrity Twitter-user, Ashton Kutcher joined New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg and many other celebrities and U.S. mayors in Times Square to talk about power of community service. They were meeting to unveil “I Participate,” an initiative that calls upon Americans to participate in community service.  I Participate was started by the Entertainment Industry Foundation, an organization that leverages the “power of the entertainment industry to advance charitable causes.”

Recruiting people for community service isn’t something new. Recruiting in a kick-a#s way…is.

I Participate is solid because it has celebrity endorsements. And it’s not just another “I do this, so you should too,” kind of endorsement. I Participate is leveraging  social media-using celebrities to get people to contribute to their communities. Ashton Kutcher has 3.5 million followers on Twitter. Through a series of  tweets last week, he invited his followers to meet him in Times Square, directed them to video streaming live from the unveil of I Participate and encouraged them to join-in the Twitter conversation. He also streamed video of a conversation with he and the Mayor of Newark, NJ, Cory Booker, who is also an avid Twitter user.

The I Particpate Twitter profile has accumulated more than 600 followers since the launch, the #iparticipate hastag has picked up some momentum, and the Facebook Fan Page has nearly 2,000 fans. Although it’s not a social media phenomenon, it still has some pretty impressive numbers.  (I did honestly expected more from something Ashton Kutcher and so many celebrities  endorsed). But, they’re trying to get people revved up about COMMUNITY SERVICE. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an awesome effort–but a really tough sell.

Although it may be hard to get people excited about doing community service, I Participate is going about it the right way. They are reaching their audience through a medium that enables them to watch and participate.They give their audience the tools to search for volunteer opportunities, post opportunities and  share the site with others. Kudos to everyone involved in the I Participation initiative.

“Social Sun” Beams of Social Media Perfection

I came across The Baltimore Sun’s “Social Sun” page last week. At first, I assumed that it would be a page with links to the some of the newspaper’s blogs, a Twitter account and maybe a Facebook page…I learned that I need to stop making assumptions. The “Social Sun” page is a manifestation of an absolutely awesome social media hub.

What makes Social Sun so awesome?

1)Twitter links-I’m not talking links to a handful of the Sun’s editors Twitter profiles, but more like a huge representation of the staff, right down to the HR person.  The links are separated  into categories such as “money and spending,” “news,” “entertainment” and more. All the staffers’ updates are compiled into a feed on the top of the page. The Social Sun  even includes “featured locals” and “fun to follow” tweeters.

2) Covering all the bases-The Twitter directory is both interesting and helpful, but it’s not all that is included on the Social Sun page. There are links and updates from The Sun’s Facebook Fan Page and updates streamed from the Sun’s blogs. There are also links to digg articles submitted from baltimoresun.com. By submitting their links to digg, the Sun provides another outlet for users to comment on their articles, and increases the amount of exposure that each article gets.

3) Engaging the audience- The page features “Your photos” streaming from the Baltimore Sun’s Flickr group and it invites users to “Join the group.” The Sun also asks users for feedback through polls. The one that is currently on the page asks users: “What would you like to see us add to The Baltimore Sun site?” This does more than engage the audience. It provides the Sun with valuable feedback that will enable them to continually advance their page in a way that will keep people coming back.

With newspaper readership and ad revenue decreasing, 2009 has been coined “the year the newspaper died,” but the Baltimore Sun isn’t cowering in defeat. With The Baltimore Sun having such an impressive online presence, it’s a promising sign for the future of newspapers.

The Baltimore Sun is embracing new media and proving to all of us that “traditional” media companies don’t have to delivery the news traditionally. The crew at the Sun isn’t just sticking their toes in the water, they are diving right in. And if you ask me, they’re making a huge splash.

Putting Some Numbers to Social Media

In post after post, we’ve explained why social media is an important outlet for reaching key audiences. But if you’re a believer of “truth in numbers,”  you probably need some figures. So we’ve compiled some statistics to help you see how social media has grown and how it’s being used.

The number of Americans who are 18 and older using social media increased to 35 percent in 2008. This was an 8 percent growth from 2005 figures, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

A June Nielsen NetView report revealed that time spent on Twitter grew 3,712 percent from April 2008 to April 2009. In roughly three months, 50 million people joined Facebook, bringing the total number of Facebook users to more than 250 million. According to the same June Nielsen report,  13.9 million minutes were spent on Facebook, a growth of 700% since April 2008. And it’s not  college students logging all those minutes anymore. Facebook’s fastest growing demographic is those 35 and older.

You may be asking what all those people are doing on social networks. Well, they’re uploading photos, chatting, letting their twitter followers know what they ate for lunch, sharing funny videos and reconnecting with friends from the past.

But that’s not all they’re doing.

They’re  opting-in to receive information from the 300,000 businesses that have a presence on Facebook (one-third of those 300,000 are small businesses, according to this USA Today article). They’re getting customer service requests fulfilled. They are reading reviews by prominent bloggers and influential review sites. Recent research from Universal McCann revealed that 77 percent of internet users are reading blogs.

They’re also adding their own two cents about brands and companies. According to a July Neilsen’s report, “Trust Value and Engagement in Advertising,” peer recommendations are the most trusted channel of advertising, trusted “somewhat” or “completely” by nine out of 10 people in a survey of 25,000 online consumers.

If you’re a number person, there are the numbers…and several more reasons why brands can’t afford to not be on social networks.

Why Flash Mobs?

What’s a Flash Mob?

A flash mob, defined by Wikipedia as “a large group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual action for a brief time, then quickly disperse.”

They’ve been used large companies and non-profits alike, as a non-traditional presentation that is used to generate buzz. T-Mobile coordinated the flash mob below to promote its “Life’s For Sharing” campaign, as you’ll see below. This video currently has nearly 14 million YouTube views.

While a flash mob caused a big stir about T-Mobile, they aren’t just something only huge companies can pull off. Flash mobs don’t require a lot of money, making them an ideal tactic for a small business or non-profit. Below you can see video of a flash mob done for a non-profit, Donate Life.

Flash mobs can be as simple as chasing something. Check out the “Official VT Flash Mob Banana Chase” video below. While it looks like something college students did for kicks, if Chiquita or Dole was associated with the coordination of this flash mob, they would have generated a ton of online buzz about their brand.

A coordinated dance, simultaneous freeze or banana-chasing aren’t the only things a company can do to generate some buzz non-traditionally.  Guerrilla marketing, an unconventional and unexpected method of generating buzz, is an umbrella term for pretty much anything non-traditional you can do to get people talking. There’s no rule book for guerrilla marketing; it just takes one objective and a lot of creativity.

The Benefits

1. Break the noise- Flash mobs and guerrilla tactics a fun way to get people talking about your product or service. The average American is exposed to thousands of advertising messages a day.  While traditional advertising is a critical part of most campaigns, if you really want to get your point across, you absolutely have to break through in an unconventional way.
2. Captivate your audience and generate traditional word of mouth. Flash mobs and guerrilla tactics are fun for the audience to watch and interact with. If you give your them something entertaining, they are likely to take their own pictures and video, and tell their friends about it.
3. The beauty of flash mobs and guerrilla tactics is their potential to go viral. They provide entertainment that people want to watch and share. If T-Mobile’s Flash Mob was not recorded and uploaded to YouTube, then 14 million people would have not been exposed to its message.

At The Cyphers Agency, we have an entire WOM team that lives for these kind of projects. And that creativity thing? Yeah, we’ve got that covered.

United Airlines- Too Little, Too Late

Social media empowers companies to connect with customers. It enables companies to listen, respond and promote itself, among a plethora of other things. Social media, however, also empowers customers to get back at brands, as we’ve seen this summer in the United Airline’s “United Breaks Guitars,” debacle.

Last year, when United Airlines’ workers broke musician Dave Carroll’s $3,500 Taylor Guitar, the airline refused to compensate him for the damage. The repairs cost $1,200. In a final offer, Carroll even said he’d accept $1,200 worth of flight vouchers, in compensation for repairs. United Airlines still rejected the offer.

Fed up with nine months of battling with airline representatives, Carroll realized he was not going to win the battle. During his last call to United Airlines, he made a promise to do something that would cost more than the guitar’s worth to company’s reputation.  In fact, some claim that what he did could have cost United Airlines $180 million. His weapon for bringing down United? YouTube.

Not only did the musician use YouTube to trash United’s reputation once, he did it twice. And he plans to do it a third time. His first video now has more than five million views, and the second, released two days ago, has surpassed the 100,o00 mark.

Of course, United contacted him immediately after the first video, offering compensation for the broken guitar. But it was just too late.

There are two important lessons to learn from this.

First, web-savvy customers have the power to use social media just as effectively as big brands do. Two videos can be detrimental to your online reputation. And if the customer causes a big enough stir, the story will get some play time outside of the social media realm.  When Google-searching “United Airlines,” on the first page you’ll see Carroll’s “United Breaks Guitars” videos. On the first page of the “Southwest Airlines” Google search, you’ll find Southwest’s blog “Nuts About Southwest,” which is  highly interactive and an example of outstanding social media execution. Lesson learned? A customer who knows a thing or two about social media can trump your company’s social media efforts.

Second, customer service is still king. With a pretty impressive following of 31,000 on Twitter, and a meager Facebook presence, United Airlines is doing OK on social media. Social media provides a platform for a brand to listen to and interact with customers online. Listening online, though, is not enough. Social media isn’t the end-all be-all. Brands  need to focus on a comprehensive strategy. One that includes social media AND outstanding face-to-face customer service. United Airlines didn’t do that, and now it is the one paying the price.

Little Debbie Rewards Intern Heroes With Muffins!

What do you get when you combine a contest, free food and interns? Little Debbie Muffins. I heard about the Little Debbie Intern Hero contest a few weeks ago (via Twitter, of course). My ears always perk up for the opportunity to get free food, and as a word of mouth intern, it’s only natural that I told everyone I knew about the opportunity (as you can see from the snippets of conversation in the picture below). This photo was featured on the Little Debbie Intern Hero site last Thursday.

The Intern Hero contest makes everyone happy.  The Cyphers Agency got free publicity, the whole office will get Little Debbie muffins, and Little Debbie has social media-savvy interns across America filling social networks up with buzz about Little Debbie muffins. Thanks, Little Debbie. We are all looking forward to our muffins!

Earning Ambassadors of Our Own

Word of Mouth is best spread with slow, methodological strokes using a broad brush. We also reward our evangelists, with things as simple as sending a T-shirt and a nice message. Below, you can see a gift we presented to one of our clients. Sending a personalized message  and a Cyphers Agency T-shirt didn’t take much of our time, and it was an easy way to show someone that we value the relationship we have with them.

That’s what Word of Mouth is all about; creating relationships, fostering them and being genuine. People that think highly of your brand will spread the word. We call it earning some of our own brand ambassadors. And if they end up wearing the T-shirts we sent them, we’ll consider it WOM bonus points.