Why Digital Media Outreach Shouldn’t Be Ignored

Filed under Discussion by Kate Brodock on 28 April 2010 at 18:18 {one comment}

I recently found myself in a conversation with a woman who was in charge of redoing the website for her company, an electrical distributor. At one point she explained how they were not offering email contact information on the new site, no change from their current site. The company’s decision was based on their desire to suggest (force?) people to pick up the phone and call them.

As I had just met her and we are in casual conversation, I refrained from commenting, but I couldn’t help thinking about how darn limiting this mindset was.

The truth is though, it’s a pretty common justification and not only concerning just providing email, but also not using any form of social media outreach whatsoever.

To some extent, I can see the line of thought behind this decision.  When you’re in more traditional industries – ones that rely primarily on contact via phone and have not yet shifted to other forms of communication – there’s a tendency to fear change in terms of how relationships can be developed and managed (we won’t even get into the general stigmas around using email and social networks in this context, as that’s certainly a big barrier for many).

Additionally, if you’re part of a long supply chain, there’s a reliance on long-term relationships, and there’s an understanding that they’re built with the blood, sweat and tears from in-person and phone contact. Connecting digitally or using social media platforms is usually considered to be impersonal and definitely can’t foster long-term strong relationships.  Right?

Wrong. This mindset needs to change and it needs to change quickly.  Here’s why.

It doesn’t consider the long-term process of building relationships.
Just as people value the above mentioned long-term relationships, they’re forgetting that they’re just that, long-term.  Each of those usually involved several points of contact, a mix of different methods of outreach (is a fax more personal than an email?), and an ongoing strengthening of the relationship.  They didn’t occur just because someone called.  They occurred because an opportunity presented itself and it was nurtured over time.  So to have someone’s first point of contact be a phone call or an email is rather inconsequential, wouldn’t you say?  It’s the effort you put into the whole process that will make or break the relationship.

It’s a missed opportunity to offer an easy way for customers to reach you, and an easier way for you to address smaller issues.
Essentially, you’re shutting off entire channels of communication for both current and potential customer to reach you.  Did you hear that?  ENTIRE CHANNELS.  That translates into straight numbers.  You’re losing potential leads.  Period. Some people just plain want to email at first.  Would you rather they request a quote from four other competitors that allow them to do so quickly on their website and not request one from you because you made it difficult?

Additionally, some current customers, the ones you already have a relationship with, and the ones whose lives you want to make as easy as possible, might find it so much easier to just contact you via email, or bop you a message on Twitter or something.  Why would you want to force anyone to call you every time they need something?

This choice ignores strategic thinking.
To take these points a little further, by dismissing the opportunity without considering how you might handle a digital point of contact is really taking the easy way out.  But easy isn’t always best.  Using the above example, let’s say you were deciding whether to start using Twitter as a way to get quote requests.  This doesn’t end up being a a one-step process.  It isn’t as easy as “but that means they won’t call.”  What are your plans after you get a request?  You could just as easily nurture direct phone contact by having your salesforce follow-up with a phone call (step-by-step option: direct message the person, thanking them for the quote and requesting a phone number to reach them at… then pick up the phone and call).  There’s absolutely truth in the power of human voice in customer relationships, but thinking that it’s one or the other just isn’t logical.  Since the whole process is several steps, you can still have your cake and eat it too.

It’s doing nothing to enhance your website.
Your SEO or your inbound traffic will not benefit from people just having to pick up the phone.  You want people to interact with your site, use your forms, get there from your Facebook page.  You want inbound links out there, directing people to your website.  If you’re in the “phone only” mentality, it likely also means you’ve limitations on your site as a whole, discouraging people from using it as a tool.

It’s backwards thinking.
Sorry to be blunt, but you just wouldn’t be thinking progressively at all.  And competitors that choose to introduce digital tools into their communication and sales mix will get ahead.  They’ll be accessing people you’re not.  They’ll be getting their message in places you’re not.  Most importantly to this discussion, they’ll be nurturing points of contact and developing relationships that you’re not. Why would you allow them to do this?

So, whether it’s offering your email as a point of contact, getting on Twitter, or allowing people to interact with your company through some other new fangled digital way, don’t fight it…..

Channeling Your Inner CIO

Filed under Application, Discussion, Resources by Allan Schoenberg on 27 April 2010 at 10:27 {no comments}

Ever since I was introduced to CIO magazine several years ago I was immediately drawn to the similarities faced by both CIOs and chief communicators. Perhaps it’s just me, but I read CIO magazine not necessarily for the IT information (which I also enjoy), but with every article I substitute CIO with CCO or CMO. Go ahead and try it. Here’s one that recently caught my eye:  From the CEO: 5 Questions CIOs Need to Answer.

cio-logo_180x109

I’ve taken those five items and listed them here, but with viewpoint of someone in communications:

1. Do we understand what we broke, and what is our plan to fix it?

If you have the perfect communications team than you can skip this point. If not, keep reading. Most discussions with CEOs revolve around helping the business and with communications that’s no different. CEOs always challenge us to improve, to be better than the competition and to find solutions to win customers. This also can apply to your company’s reputation. How do your customers view you positively and where can you improve? These are issues CEOs look to us to fix.

2. How do we get full potential from discretionary spending?

How often do you review your budget and make changes? Are you maximizing that discretionary spending? And where can you improve your budget in order to help the organization achieve its business goals. In today’s economy in particular, CEOs want to ensure every department across the enterprise is getting the best return on investment. Are you?

3. How will we drive unnecessary complexity out of IT?

This point obviously speaks to complexities of software and hardware, but this still applies to communicators. Where is complexity in your department? Are  you sharing metrics? Are you maximizing events? Is social media a cross-department effort? We all have complexities that we can tear out of our marketing and communication systems, but finding them and fixing them takes time and effort.

4. How will we take better advantage of “good enough” solutions?

Yes, your news release is good enough — you saw the stories. Your web site too since people are visiting. And I’m sure your advertising is good enough as well. But you’re competitive, right? What will you do to take the risks to really make your brand stand out? We all have a lot of “standard” communication tools available to us, and no where is this more evident than with social media. We all have these “free” tools but where are you excelling?

5. How do we make outsourcing more strategic?

That new agency you hired — are you tapping into their best resources? Do you go with size and depth of the big agency or lean and nimble from the small agency? These are key decisions we all need to make as the playing field becomes more competitive for us. If your agency isn’t constantly challenging you to do the right/best thing, actively reviewing your activities and asking you tough questions than maybe it’s time you need a more strategic partner.

I am a huge supporter of working as close as possible with your IT team (my earlier post on working with InfoSec) and I encourage you to work more closely with them as well. I think you will be surprised at the number of similarities.  There’s an entire list of email newsletters available at CIO and I would encourage you to sign up and read CIO Leader and CIO Insider, but read them from a communicators perspective. I think you’ll find yourself thinking differently and developing some new ideas for implementing your strategy.

Let us know your thoughts. And if you happen to pass your CIO in the hall offer to take him/her to lunch. They can probably learn a lot from you as well.



Be Original

Filed under Uncategorized by Allan Schoenberg on 19 April 2010 at 13:23 {2 comments}

One of the things I like most about doing B2B communications over B2C is the challenge to be original and unique. Unlike the thousands of coffee shops that operate on the millions of corners around the globe, most B2B companies offer very specialized products/services for very targeted audiences. This is probably one of the reasons why I enjoy the challenge of doing social media for the exchange — we need to be even more creative to capture the attention of our audiences.

One thing we’ve done that has worked for us is live Twitter interviews. Cindy King has a great post about how to conduct these. We’ve been doing our live interviews – Exchange Talk – for more than year and you can view the archive of these interviews on the StockTwits’ web site.

I like several things about doing these interviews, including:

  1. They are unique to CME Group among our competitors on Twitter.
  2. They provide a further sense of community since they are conducted in the public stream and anyone can interact with us or the person being interviewed.
  3. We can expand our list of followers and forge new relationships with people in our industry.
  4. I can archive them at StockTwits.com.
  5. Twitter has allowed me to create a specific for Exchange Talk so anyone can follow all of the individuals we’ve interviewed.

Creativity is one of the drivers of our social media activity, which helped us win this BtoB Magazine award last week. And as I read through the list of other recipients it is obvious that creativity helped their efforts as well (Hopefully, though, you’ll vote for our entry for the People’s Choice Award).

What ideas drive your B2B creativity? How do you help your company/clients stand out? And any thoughts on whom we should consider interviewing on Twitter?

Looking for the Method Behind Your Competitors’ Madness

Filed under Soap Box by Aaron Pearson on 5 April 2010 at 12:16 {no comments}

I recently finished an extensive social media analysis of a client’s competitors recently to help inform the client’s go-forward digital strategy. It was undeniably a valuable effort, an interesting look at who’s using Facebook, who’s using Twitter, who’s getting audiences to engage, who’s not.  Not only do I recommend it but the research gets even more interesting when you revisit it every six months or so.

In this case, I paid particular attention to the client’s largest competitor, a company’s that’s diving into social media aggressively – YouTube, bloggers, live tweeting, Facebook, everything. It’s clearly a well-orchestrated effort guided by a team of dedicated individuals that are also connecting the social media effort to a broader traditional media campaign. It was very effective in getting the client’s attention.

The other companies were tapping one or two social media channels, some with some apparent success – or at least they were generating a fair amount of activity.

But what do you do with this information?

I would offer that compared to competitive research around other components of the competition’s communications strategy (advertising, media relations, trade shows), you ought not to read too much into some of this competitive social media activity.

The fact is, there is a distinct chance that your competitors might be flying without a flight plan, hoping that by getting some social media initiatives off the ground, they’ll arrive somewhere of consequence. It may be tough to know the difference between a well-planned social media strategy and program with  no real strategy at all. So you may be looking for lessons that aren’t there. In fact, odds are your competitors are leaving gaps in their strategy that you can exploit – that may be the most valuable part of the effort.

The biggest issue I’m seeing right now with larger B2B companies is they are able to generate a lot of activity – blog posts, tweets, retweets of the tweets by the personal accounts of everyone on the communications team, Facebook wall posts, even videos. After all, it only takes enough time and/or money to generate activity. But a lot of them – I’d say most – are getting precious little audience engagement in return.  I’d learn from those mistakes, look for where there are glimmers of engagement, and then do better. Be creative on the backs of the failures of those that went before.

In fact, in that study I recently completed, it was one of the smaller brands that had the most intriguing success. Whether purposefully or by luck (but what difference does it make?), this was the one and only brand that managed to accumulate piles of fan posts on their Facebook pages – heartfelt posts of their memories of this nostalgia brand that reinforced that company’s brand positioning beautifully. Facebook was the perfect channel for sharing recollections of their experiences with this brand. They were capturing a sentiment and helping advocates share their stories in a way other competitors could not because their brands stood for something else.  I liked that kind of sustainable differentiation.

Until social media grow up, creativity counts for a lot. That said, competitive research is imperative – if nothing else to tell you what NOT to do.

Weber Shandwick’s SocialPulse capabilities can handle almost any competitive research challenge. As an example, here’s a study we published on the Twitter habits of Fortune 100 companies.

Bad Behavior has blocked 776 access attempts in the last 7 days.