I am kicking off my second week of growing Spredfast’s professional services offerings to drive customer success and reduce time to value.  It is a perfect fit for me – I’ve spent the last 10 years in roles on both the brand (Dell) and the consulting (Ogilvy) side helping organizations adopt Word of Mouth Marketing and, later, social in a way that makes sense strategically and can be executed well tactically.   Early in the journey, my time was spent was spent convincing organizations that they needed to start listening and get involved.  Later on, the bulk of my work progressed to actually putting together well-organized corporate presences and campaigns while, in many cases, cleaning up some social media driftwood cluttering the ecosystem.  In the last year, however, we have seen complexity explode.  Now instead of simply trying to stem social voice proliferation, we see strategies where the whole company can truly benefit from more and more parts of the organization being heard.  But how can you manage a proliferation of voices – Continents, Countries, Brands, Products, Regions, States, Reps – and NOT confuse the customers who want to find us in their social spaces?

That’s why I’m here.  2012 is the year to tackle this complexity at scale and Social Media Management Systems (great Altimeter review on the space here) will play a critical role for those organizations serious about being able to get a handle on their social footprint – from governance to real time, rolled up analytics – and be able to prove that they are making progress against social business goals.  Getting to that point, however, takes more than great technology configured correctly.  It takes clear articulation of goals, KPIs and strategy.  It takes savvy understanding of organizational dynamics.  And perhaps most challenging – it requires behavior change.   That’s when the fun begins.

As our journey progresses and my knowledge grows about traits of those brands successfully scaling the social business hill, I’ll update this space with some of the broadly applicable lessons.  I hope you’ll join in – “network learning” will get us all further faster.

This week I participated in a Social Media Week New York panel “Putting the Social in CSR” along with Bonin Bough from Pepsico, Deb Berman from Just Means, and Chrysi Philalithes from (RED). Its an extremely timely topic and one we have been thinking a lot about from a number of different angles. The great news? Social media provides the media for corporations to leverage their Corporate Social Responsibility investments to yield greater fruit for both the customer and the beneficiary.

The time-worn model of CSR of “Purchase X and we’ll contribute to Y up to $Z amount” can leave all parties feeling a little empty. Consumers know the company has already earmarked the money for the cause and is now trying to blackmail us into unlocking it by picking their brand over the equivalent. That similarly does little for the cause beyond the actual money donated – there’s little room on a package to tell the charity’s story and there’s no way for the consumer to choose to become more involved. To paraphrase John & Yoko, “EMPTY CSR IS OVER if you want it”.

Social media allows for the type of participation that can provide better return on CSR investments to all. Just a few:

* Connecting Customer and Cause – Activating around a CSR commitment in social spaces allows the customer to choose to go a step beyond just the purchase for token donation to donating themselves, connecting to the cause’s social space or promoting the cause to there social nets.
* Inspiring Meaningful Involvement – Social media allows companies to set up infrastructure for their customers to be the connection that makes the biggest difference. For example, Time Warner Cable (Disclosure: Ogilvy client, but we are not responsible for CSR), has made a 5-year $100MM commitment to Science, Technology, Engineering and Math through their Connect a Million Minds initative. They are measuring success not with number of $$ donated, but number of minds connected – a function not of their donation, but the number of people they have inspired & empowered to take advantage of the infrastructure they have created.
* Platform for Awareness & Promotion The much publicized Pepsi Refresh Project is taking a huge step in CSR – providing $20 million in grants to individuals and small organizations with good ideas to improve their local communities. Pepsi provides a platform to tell your story, promote your idea, and is doling out 32 grants per month to the democratically selected winners. The impact for these causes will go far beyond a microscopic logo on a box.

To reference Ann Charles’ Mashable piece on CSR 2.0, the new way to look at CSR is the “triple bottom line of people, planet and profit”. Maybe social media adds a fourth P – participation – that could be a goal in itself. Participation benefits the brand, beneficiary, and consumer alike and will fuel the type of CSR that will hopefully increase the efforts and investments of corporations in some of society’s most serious challenges.

How do you handle this statement? In the past, I have chosen to fight it with a mountain of demographic data (or the handy Forrester technographics tool), but demographic data can easily be dismissed as too generic or inflated.  This is as much a state of mind issue as state of the reality issue anyway. Here are some other options to address:
• Train and encourage personal social media adoption in the workplace. Once it becomes a part of your life, it is much easier to understand the benefits, relevance to your customers, and how your might marry the two. This is  harder than it seems – it is very easy to help someone set up a Facebook account, but an uphill battle to get them to use it.
• Get specific data on your customers’ social media usage. This could be done through primary methods like polls or through secondary research such as looking for mentions in social media (free tools include Summize Twitter search, searching on Facebook, or Google Blogsearch). While demographic data may not hold water with your peers, demonstrating that  your customers are looking for you is extremely compelling.
• Run a pilot in your “Sweet Spot” to show results. When all else fails, ask forgiveness.  (note: this could be risky, but sometimes very successful).

What have YOU done in your workplace, your agency, or around your dinner table to respond when you hear that social media is just for kids?

Can’t attend? Never fear, there are plenty of ways to not only learn, but participate and make your voice heard and opinion counted from wherever you might be:

• Summit LIVE – Sessions are live Ustreaming from AND the LIVE tab of the very robust LIVESTRONG Facebook fan page or from livestrongblog.org (which also includes aggregation of tweets from the floor).
• Follow @livestrong on Twitter for interesting tidbits of data as they are released live on stage of the summit and opportunities to respond to Twitpolls.
• Visit LIVESTRONGAction to sign the World Cancer Declaration and have your name included on the list of those demanding that cancer be a global priority that will be presented at the close to the summit.

<Disclosure: Ogilvy Client- – cross posted on the Fresh Influence blog>

I am often asked – in and out of work – about how to get fans, customers, ambassadors, bloggers to do something FOR US.  This very approach is why most communities and outreach efforts never get off the ground and the disconnect that Mack Collier discussed in this blog post.  Most community building efforts fail because they are created in order to be monetized, yet communities will not grow and thrive around the concept of monetization.

In order for you to grow a community, you need find a core set of people who will find disproportionate value from what you can provide.  This could be information, a space to gather, entertainment, or a willing ear.  That audience will be the ones to offer you feedback and guidance on how to build a community (or any sort of engagement program) and the ones who will talk about it, help you recruit, etc.  So how do you find ask your core audience?  By asking (with apologies to JFK):

Ask not what your audience can do for you, but what you can do for your audience.

This is similar to the advice that we as a community offered to Recipecomparison.com here, but it is applicable in any number of social media strategies where you are trying to find your talkers.

Try taking this audience-centric approach and find the people for whom you can do the most.  They just might be the ones who can do the most for you regardless of their “influence levels”.

There are some other interesting nuggets in the Ben/Jackie interplay in that video that piqued my interest.

Does a book indicate authority?: When Perez Hilton comes up, they reconsider whether or not he may be an “Authority” when the fact that he has a new book up gets mentioned.  Initially I chuckled at the idea of having a book giving you street cred in the church’s eyes, but then I reconsidered.  Writing a book usually indicates that the author has done a huge amount of research into a particular topic and (often) has some personal experience or connection to the topic that gives them further credibility.

Are authority and influence the same thing?: Jackie asks this as “Are the things that you say retweeted?” Ben by positing that “You are an authority if you have people who take your word and take action”.  I think both of these are less about authority and more about influence.   From the wikipedia entry on this authority: “What distinguishes authority, from coercion, force and power on the one hand and leadership, persuasion and influence on the other hand, is legitimacy.”  I do think that its possible for an authority to not have a large group of people listening to them.  Similarly many people can take action on what Britney Spears telegraphs, but I’m not sure this makes her an authority at anything other than influence.

Have online celebrities convinced themselves they are real celebrities? Ben and Jackie included some fun Twitterati mentions of folks that I really enjoy who really are caught up in their follower count.  Stay tuned for G4′s “Twitterati: Where are they now” series in 2014.

Thanks to Ben & Jackie for the inspiration this morning!

As this discussion is going on, Rome is burning (economically speaking).  This offers corporate blogs an amazing opportunity to use their platforms for good, not evil, and some art stepping up to the plate in a significant way.

I detailed some examples in a post yesterday to the Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence blog.  Meanwhile, my Ogilvy colleague and blogger extraordinaire was also fanning the flames over at the Influential Marketing Blog.

What do you think?  Is the Forrester-reported suckage real?  Or does the transparent social media treatment of recent unfortunate events change your mind about their value the way it has mine?

When we walked in, baby in tow, we saw a row of brightly colored blow-up…somethings – burros? ponies?  It wasn’t clear.  We were staring at them quizzically when one of Toy Joy’s incredible helpful sales staff directly asked us “Would you like to hear the story of Rody?”  Who doesn’t love a great story?  Here is what she told us.

• Rody is made in Italy (subtext: not China).
• The company that makes Rody ONLY makes the Rody – it is their specialty.
• Rody is safe for small children but can be inflated further as the child grows – safe to 400 lbs.
• They keep one of the store models a little more inflated so the adult staff can play.

By the time she got to her last point, 2 things had happened:

1. The saleswoman had mounted a blue Rody and was happily bouncing away.
2. I was whipping out my credit card convinced I would be depriving my child if he did not have one of these to play with on his first birthday.

When was the last time a salesperson told YOU a great story?  Did you buy?

• TV meteorologists and severe weather experts who largely control how the mass media carries messages about weather and preparedness
• local officials who most directly deal with the aftermath when communities are not prepared for a storm
• insurance executives who can encourage preparedness through discounts for those who “harden” their homes
• contractors who can influence their clients electing storm safe materials instead of chosing minimum building code standards
• legislators who want to encourage private markets to solve the preparedness problem so it does not become public debt
• home inspectors who can be trained to identify building weaknesses that would be vilnerable in the case of a storm
• a Disney Imagineer who encouraged us to think differently because, in a world where Al Gore can win an Oscar for a Powerpoint presentation, preparedness could be made cool too.  He has put his money where his mouth is by guiding FLASH’s creation of an Epcot experience illustrating the difference that fortifying a home can make called StormStruck.

If you are anything like me, you are probably thinking that I, with zero storm experience, was not qualified to join the above cast of characters.  Technically, you’re right.  It was, however, a great opportunity to discuss the role that social media can play in promoting preparedness.  If a parrot dancing to the Backstreet Boys can “go viral”, why can’t the concept that your neighbor’s backyard junk can become a missile of airborne debris headed straight for your windows in a storm? Preparedness is not an every-man-for-himself game.  There is power in communities and neighborhoods preparing together- be it a storm, a terrorist attack or a viral epidemic.  But what role could social media play?  Some starter ideas:

• Empower communities with wikis that will indicate what homes have been fortified for storms and visualize the % to goal on a neighborhood basis.  This type of accountability could add some positive social norm pressure to the goal of building strong homes.
• Allow for those in hurricane prone regions to share referrals on contractors who are certified to build new or to bring existing home up to fortified “Code Plus” standards.  Customers should be able to include their personal experiences with hose contractors.
• Before a storm strikes, encourage your local community to get organized via mobile so that you know how to get updates on the status of your immediate neighborhood even while you are evacuated.
• Identify and organize a single day (before hurricane season) around which to discuss Storm Preparedness that could be recognized on an annual basis.  Create widgets that include instructions on assembling an on hand storm kit and the steps to fortifying your home.  These could be distributed through the websites of local TV stations and then added to social networking profiles or blogs of those who care about preparing their community.

Other thoughts on new idea or best practices?  How do you think social media could power storm or any other type of preparedness?

The core question posed in this situation is what do you do if you find yourself with a brand ambassador that in no way matches the brand “persona” imagined in the board room? What if they do not reflect the brand’s core values? What if they aren’t even using the product in the way you imagined or marketed it? As the article repeats, this is a complicated issue, but I think there are a few steps to walk through when any unexpected brand ambassador shows himself – whether or not they match your ideal target.

Stage 1: Acceptance. Per the solid advice of WOMMA board member Dave Balter, the first thing to do is accept that this is going on and it can’t be stopped. The quicker you can pass through this stage, the quicker you can get to the good stuff.

Stage 2: Opprtunity Identification. Maybe this isn’t your dream spokesperson, but is there an opportunity here? While there are sure to be pros and cons, why not explore? Does the appearance of a new ambassador mean that there are additional untapped market segments for the brand? Could you engage these new segments without compromising your values or offending your core audience?

Stage 3: Reimagine Success. Chances are that there is an engagement option somewhere between ignoring and embracing the rogue ambassador where the pros outweigh the cons for the brand. Success may not be what you envisioned at the company retreat, but the rogue brand ambassador could show you the promise of a different reality that might have higher revenues and more word of mouth surrounding it.

How would the pros and cons weigh out for inviting Kendra to design her own chicken parm-based entree? Offering to shut down the place to host her birthday? Or simply inviting her on a tour of the test kitchens to be taped for the show? Maybe some old fashioned “hospitaliano” could go a long way.

But the REAL question is, what am I doing with my life when Kendra Wilkinson has her own WSJ etching on page 1?

*cross posted from the Ogilvy PR 360 DI blog*