“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.

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.

Using Social Media to Debunk Myths and Inform

Barack Obama (or as we like to call him, WOMmander in Chief) first used social media to help win an election. Now that he’s in the White House, he is using it to try to win approval for the health insurance reform. This week, Obama’s team launched the Health Insurance Reform: Reality Check Web site, which will give Americans clear answers about the reform, and what it means to them.

The front page of the media-rich site has videos of six individuals who explain different aspects of the reform. In the video below, Kavita Patel, who works in the White House and is a former physician, debunks the myth that reform will lead to “rationing.” In the video, she directly reads e-mails from individuals who are skeptical of health insurance reform, and responds with an explanation and information about what the reform plan could mean.

Each video features one individual talking in a a casual office setting. There’s no backdrop, heavy make-up or bright lights. The simplicity of these videos is a great example of how social media does not need to be scripted and excessively edited to be effective.

The site also has a FAQ section and a “contact us” button, which invites users to ask questions about health insurance reform or make suggestions on what topics should be addressed next. The initiative to educate Americans about health insurance reform is  social-media laden. When it’s combined with face-to-face interaction such as town hall meetings, it’s an exemplary model of properly executed word of mouth. As the President speaks in this afternoon’s town hall meeting, the White House is streaming video live on whitehouse.gov and on Facebook–with a live discussion to accompany it (WOM bonus points!).

The White House is doing a good job getting the message out. With more than 900,000 Twitter followers and 300,000 Facebook fans, it was exposed to more than one million viewers through those two outlets alone. Yesterday afternoon, the site was voted to Digg’s homepage and now has been “dugg” 1,425 times.

There is a lot of confusion and division on the subject of health care reform. Obama’s initiative will inform Americans about what his plan will include.  And informed people can make decisions based on the facts, not myths.

What will become of the health insurance reform is still unknown. One thing is for sure, though, the Obama Administration sure gets WOM.

You’re Hired–Via Social Media

In a year of joblessness and disheartening economic conditions, Julianna Wittig was among many individuals who were laid-off and forced to begin the job search.

In her search for a new job, Julianna, who is now The Cyphers Agency’s newest Account Executive,  headed straight to her computer. In her online search, however, Julianna didn’t rely on typical job search sites such as Monster and Indeed.  Using social media sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, Julianna took a proactive approach to finding a job. She kept her profile updated and her eyes open for any opportunities she found on those sites.

While Julianna was searching, Darren Easton, Vice President and Creative Director for The Cyphers Agency  was using social networks to find a candidate to fill an Account Executive position. For the position, Darren wanted to find a social-media-savvy individual, who could handle several accounts in the agency’s Push-n-Pull division.

Julianna saw the posting on LinkedIn and began researching The Cyphers Agency–checking into the culture, environment, clients and other employees. Darren was researching too. He asked others online if they knew of Julianna and if they thought she would be a good fit for the Account Executive position.

Thanks to word of mouth and social networks, Darren told Julianna in the interview that he “already knew everything he needed to know about her.” It was clear that Julianna knew how to effectively market herself online, therefore, Darren knew she would certainly be capable of marketing clients online.

Social media has impacted so much of our daily lives. It changes the way we do businesses, network, communicate and even find jobs. The days of faxing resumes and mailing resumes on crisp resume paper are done.

Job seekers can use social networks to search for jobs, interact with potential employers and create online profiles that display their skills. Employers can social media to post jobs, find qualified candidates and ask others about these candidates.

We’re glad social media enabled us to connect to Julianna. Welcome, Julianna, we’re happy to have you here at The Cyphers Agency!

There’s No Hiding in Social Media

Whether it’s an embarrassing video of one of the NBA’s leading players getting dunked on, or the trailer for a highly anticipated movie, some leaked videos should remain…leaked.

When brands try and control social media (which goes against the whole idea), they can end up hurting their brand image, and the two most recent social media blunders were no exception. For the record, this does not mean companies should let libel/slander/copyright issues abound on the web.  But recently, there were two instances where videos surfaced that Nike and Disney didn’t want anyone to see, and their curmudgeon-like responses sparked some intense brand dissonance (we’re writing an entire blog entry on it, for goodness sakes!).

When cameras caught  Xavier’s Jordan Crawford dunk on LeBron James a few weeks ago, Nike made sure to confiscate the footage (as rumored, per request of LeBron). As LeBron is a huge endorser for Nike, obviously they didn’t want the Nike image to be damaged by the superstar’s slip-up.  Of course, two phones with the capability to take video caught the dunk, and the video got out anyway.

Sweeping an error under the rug does more harm than good in the age of social media. Instead of a quick laugh about how the LeBron got dunked on by a college player, the talk was all about how Nike (or LeBron) tried to hide the video. Now both reputations are tarnished. Honestly, most people (myself included) don’t even think the dunk is that big of a deal. I only saw the video because of Nike’s response; I wouldn’t have otherwise.

Nike wasn’t the only one to generate negative buzz by trying to hide video content. When video leaked from Alice in Wonderland, Disney forced YouTube to take the videos down. The videos were already creating an immense amount of viral buzz, and could have really pumped up promotions for the movie. As the end-user, I wouldn’t have heard of this debacle if Disney hadn’t chosen to play big brother. It just made it harder for me to find the trailer online (booooo).

In social media, the best thing you can do is roll with the punches, take whatever you’ve had thrown at you and work with it. The worst thing you can do is try to eliminate a problem by pretending it didn’t happen. The word will always get out, because it already did!

Because Disney pulled the trailer, it missed out on days of momentum building for its new movie. Basically, Disney sabotaged it’s own WOM campaign. Nike may not have gotten a lot of promotional use out of the LeBron video, but by the time Ben Roethlisberger was making headlines, every one would have forgot about LeBron’s debacle anyway.

The Benefits of Advertisements, Years Later

Do you ever wish you could get more out of those old advertisements for which you paid so much money? They were so darn expensive, and now they are just sitting in storage, collecting dust! Once again, social media is here to the rescue. Here are some great reasons to put your old ads online:

1. Search Engine Optimization - Adding content to social networks can do wonders for your search engine optimization.  For instance, when we add pictures to Flickr or video to YouTube, we make sure the content is tagged with the right keywords. We also make sure that descriptions and titles include the brand name, keywords and links . All of these things increase the amount of content a company has on the web, and therefore increases the search engine optimization.
2. Another way to reach your audience- Just because there are 240 million Facebook users doesn’t mean you should focus all of your attention on that medium. Yes, uploading multimedia to Facebook is an great way to provide your friends and fans with content, but plenty of people use flickr and YouTube on a daily basis.
3. Increase online footprint- The more content you are putting out on the web about your brand, the more users are going to find you, and the more comfortable they will be with your product or brand.
4. Provides opportunities  for two-way communication – Uploading multimedia is great way to incite commentary and get feedback. Having imput can help brands track the success of their marketing efforts. Knowing that your customers think “This commercial is hilarious,” or “This ad stinks” is valuable knowledge. And unless you are sitting on the couch next to millions of TV viewers, you can’t get that kind of feedback with traditional advertising.  In addition to getting feedback, sites such as YouTube and Flickr also allow opportunities for brands to join the conversation, by talking with viewers or answering their questions.

Robert Andrew Salon & Spa, a client of The Cyphers Agency, has a  Flickr account that we set up for them.  As you see circled in the screen shot below, the brand is mentioned several times for one picture. We have hundreds of pictures uploaded to the Robert Andrew Flickr account. With every single picture tagged and described appropriately, viewers are exposed to the brand name more frequently. The particular set of pictures featured below was viewed more than 40,000 times!

If you’re thinking that 40,000 views is measly compared to the millions of views you can get through advertising on television, you’re right–if you’re just comparing the numbers.

People are opting into the brands message, they are actually interacting with the content (instead of sitting on the couch with glazed eyeballs), and you (the brand) can speak directly to them. Their comments also give you insight into your target audience, and their behavior (clicks, time spent on page, what sites they came from) is highly track-able which also contributes to further understanding of your audience. You don’t get any of that with a TV ad. Unless it’s that old TV ad that you just uploaded to YouTube

Blog Fail

One of the dangers of social media is that it can often move so fast that it can be difficult to keep up. Fortunately, we here at The Cyphers Agency are quick to write blog posts about buzz-worthy issues relating to our clients. Unfortunately, however, we sometimes get so immersed in our clients work that we forget to focus on our own blog (bad WOM department! bad!).

So, in honor of our commitment to our clients, please enjoy this blog post that should have been posted 2 weeks ago

“With the death of three American icons, it’s been a heartbreaking week. How did I find out about the deaths of Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson? Twitter, of course.
Yesterday, I first found out about the death of Michael Jackson via TMZ. I was a little skeptical to believe the source, which is known for its aggressive celebrity following and bashing tactics. I turned on the television to try to some sort of confirmation from a legitimate news source. Unable to find anything but commercials and sitcom reruns, I turned my investigation back to Twitter, and followed until it was confirmed by major news outlets.

And Twitter isn’t just for pop-culture news. Breaking news this year has been breaking way before the morning paper or the 5 o’clock news cast. From live-blogging at the Iran protests to providing messages of support to the people of Iran, Twitter has played a major role in how we communicate about the controversy surrounding the Iran elections.

It’s changed the way we communicate about everything. So, turn on some MJ or Jackson Five, and login to Twitter—there’s a lot to pay attention to.”

What to Expect From Your Social Media Campaign

When it comes to social media, success doesn’t always mean huge impression numbers. The key to effectively executing a social media campaign is to clearly define your goals, and also define the appropriate metrics to drive success.

If a client wants to increase web traffic, it would be silly to use YouTube views as a metric of success. Likewise, if a client wants overall awareness, it would be silly to show them a micro-targeted community that we reached.

Social media is not always a popularity game
Often, people are fooled to believe that the more Facebook friends or Twitter followers you have, the more valuable you are. Really, the focus should be on quality over quantity. While having a large following could mean more people are exposed to your message, that doesn’t necessarily mean they care about what you say. What is important is engagement and interaction. If you invest all your social media energy on counting followers and fans, you don’t have time to connect with the audience that actually wants to receive your message.

Be Authentic and Provide Value
While we all want someone to vent to after bad day, your followers and fans are not the people. Choosing to do this has been detrimental to brands in the past. Rather than using Twitter as a personal-venting medium, it’s better to focus attention on connecting with your followers. And when goals are outlined, it’s easy to focus on reaching out to these people and providing them with information that they want to receive.  Having a personality that is authentic is also an important part of the social media planning and implementation process.

Don’t Get Lost
Social media expectations need goals. If there aren’t goals established, how do you know if you are getting a return on your investment?!? Tip: a “good” goal is not to “be everywhere” – if you try and reach everybody, you will connect with nobody.

Maybe LinkedIn is the most appropriate option, or maybe you find out your audience is active on Facebook. Do some research and find out where they are! It’s better to have a strong presence in one or two locations than a meager presence in several locations.

Keep the “Social” in Social Media
At The Cyphers Agency, we know the value of word of mouth marketing, and we understand the value of online interaction with customers. The key is to not get caught-up in numbers, but instead focus on communication between a brand and it’s customers.

Using Social Media to Make a Difference

Big brands and political candidates have benefited from using social media. This summer,  non-profits will join the league of social media success stories.  Blame Drew’s Cancer and Summer of Social Good, both launched recently,  rely solely on social media to raise funds and make a difference.

Spilled Coffee? Blame Drew’s Cancer!
Drew Olanoff, the founder and former host of the “Best Damn Tech Show, Period” podcast, was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma in late May. “Ever since that day, Drew has blamed everything on his cancer. Losing his keys, misplacing his wallet, Twitter being slow, the Phillies losing, etc,” and he invites everyone else to do the same. Tweeters vent about whatever it is they need to get off their chest, such as this morning’s rainy weather (which I blamed on Drew’s Cancer).

How does this help non-profits? Every tweet with #BlameDrewsCancer hashtag will be tallied, and sponsors will donate one dollar to the American Cancer Society and the Make-A-Wish Foundation. It felt good to blow of steam, especially knowing it helps others!

Social Good Gets Social
Summer of Social Good started June 1 and lasts through Aug. 28. The large-scale campaign will raise funds using only social media. Each week, Mashable, the Social Media Guide, will host week-long activities that engage, encourage interaction and promote the Summer of Social Good. Week one has the goal of raising 100K. The task is to donate $20, and tweet about the campaign to all your followers. All campaign proceeds will go to four major charities.  Mashable wants to make it “social as possible,” and they have high hopes of raising “an unprecedented amount.”

What This Means for Non-Profits
Not all non-profits are strangers to social media. It’s an affordable and interactive  means of communicating, so it’s smart for them to use it. Blame Drew’s Cancer and Summer of Social Good go above and beyond tweeting for donations or simply starting a “cause” page on Facebook–only for it to be idle weeks later. The key to success is engaging the audience, and enable them to participate in the conversation. Go ahead, tweet for something good today!