Spur Interactive

While preparing for an interview I was reviewing questions I received from the journalist. One question was “how does your firm leverage social media?” It seems that social media is the latest shiny object that is on the wish list of most brand marketers.  Yet if you ask them why they need it, you’re likely to get a pithy, high level response such as “because we want to engage and interact with our customers.”  Ask how they plan to do that and you’ll often get blank stares.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m a huge fan of social media and I believe it is a killer app for many companies. This is especially true for professional services firms like mine.  At the same time, I frequently see a lack of planning, coordination and understanding of how to best use social media to achieve marketing objectives.  So now let’s go back to the opening question…

How do we use social media? We work in an industry where the cobblers kids (sans shoes) run rampant.  And for the most part this is fine; we can be great media planners and campaign managers, even if we don’t do a lot of advertising ourselves. However, when it comes to social media, I believe we have to lead by example.

If you are reading this, you may know that I blog, twitter, slideshare, facebook, link in, stumble, digg and tag things that are delicious.  Yes, it takes time, but I enjoy it. But above all, I do it because it creates value for my personal and agency brands. Through my investment in social media, I’ve expanded our network of partners, booked speaking opportunities, built awareness for our brand and generated several new client opportunities.

Social media can be a great platform for most businesses.  But as a professional services firm, social media offers some additional benefits that one could argue make it a killer app for marketing purposes.  In my world, the #1 benefit of social media is that it provides a platform for demonstrating thought leadership.

It’s important to remember that social media is a platform, not a message.  While awareness and visibility are great benefits of social media, they don’t build your brand.  You can get great visibility with a flurry of self-promoting posts and annoying solicitations for your services, but you aren’t building credibility.  You can use social media to connect with business acquaintances, recruit employees and show the world that you are a forward-thinking firm, but it probably won’t matter to clients. In my opinion, the true value of social media for professional service firms is the ability to demonstrate thought leadership on a large scale that gets even bigger if you have something unique and valuable to say.

Here’s another way to look at it: any firm can hire a web site copy writer to create a compelling message that says who you are, what you do, how you differentiate and why clients choose you.  While this used to be a key factor in engaging visitors, clients do not make decisions based on your home page. Case studies are great but we all know they present an air-brushed image of the results you produced for a client. On the other hand, a blog or tweet stream provides a relatively unfiltered view into how you think and how you act.  If you routinely produce strategic insights, unique perspectives and practical knowledge that are perceived to be of value to your clients, you can establish credibility and thought leadership in their eyes.  Clients hire consultants, agencies, bankers and lawyers because of their people.  Social media enables you to build your brand by showing off your greatest assets in a way that is much more transparent and authentic than it used to be.

In the past we relied on the static html, flash intros, polished copy and powerpoints to educate clients on who we are and how we can help them.  Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Slideshare, LinkedIn and others now offer us a much more effective and efficient means for demonstrating thought leadership, regardless of your size, budget or location.  It’s not often that those of us in client services can point to a competitive advantage that we enjoy over other types of businesses.  But in a world where clients are seeking knowledge, insight and trusted advice, the social web gives us a unique opportunity to show them what we have to offer.

I’d love to hear from other service providers on this topic.  Comments are welcome!

Steve Latham
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I recently learned about WORDLE which is a very cool tool that allows you to create word clouds for any body of text.  What’s a word cloud? Similar to a tag cloud, the word cloud is a graphical representation of a body of text.  Here is the Wordle word cloud for our Social Media Blog:

It’s a great way to describe a blog, whitepaper, report or email, and it rates very high on the eye-candy chart.  For the time being Wordle is free so go get your WORDLE on!

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Steve Latham
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I saw a very good question today on LinkedIn Answers (great place to ask, answer and learn about things in your industry!) and thought it was worth writing about in my blog.  The question was “Why aren’t more companies testing social media marketing?“  I thought about it for a few minutes and crafted what I thought was an insightful answer.  Hopefully you will agree!

What are the barriers to Social Media Marketing?  In addition to legal  (liability? truth in advertising)? and brand management issues (what if our tweets violate our brand guidelines!), I believe there are three primary issues that impede companies from leveraging Social Media:

1. The Business Case for Social Media
While most intuitively believe social media is a low-cost way to extend your reach, build your brand and drive new business, most need hard data to justify the investment of time, energy and resources (people). And in this climate, few are going to stick their neck out to try something that isn’t embraced by CXOs.  BTW – I heard there’s a very insightful presentation available for viewing on the Business Case for Social Media.

2. Limited Understanding and Resources
In my experience, most brand marketers are overwhelmed and confused by social media. They usually don’t know what to do, where to start or how to plan and budget for it. Ask 5 members of your team what you should do, and you’ll probably get 5 different answers.  In better times, brands would hire an agency to help them figure this out (psst – I heard this agency rocks), but when dollars are tight and the risk threshold is low, it’s easy to push this off until the business climate improves.

3. Lack of Capabilities
There is a lot of noise in the social media space, and no shortage of self-proclaimed SM experts. But don’t forget great players are not necessarily great coaches. While there are thousands of individuals who have used social media to build their own brands, I believe most are very tactical in their approach. They can create a Twitter account and show you how to Tweet, but few have the knowledge and skills to develop a strategic plan that defines the audiences, objectives, resources, tactics, tools and metrics for measuring and optimizing results.  When your goal is to build your brand and grow your business, you need a strategy.  As reported last week in one of many articles I read, “Twitter is a tool, not a strategy”.  I couldn’t agree more.

As the market matures and the economy improves, more marketers will dip their toe into the Social Media stream (excuse the pun!). This creates opportunities for those who can secure C-level support, develop a solid plan and execute against defined objectives. IMHO these cases are quite rare these days.  But there is always hope!

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Steve Latham
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Welcome to Interactive Musings 1.3, the latest summary of stories that I thought would be of interest to those who online marketing. This edition is dedicated to Audiences – where all marketing plans begin.   I hope you find it to be informative. Feel free to share and comment!

Kids Flock to the Web (AdWeek)
To no one’s surprised, Nielsen Online confirmed that kids are going online at a much faster rate than the rest of us.  While the online universe has grown by only 10% in the past 5 years, the kids’ Web universe has grown 18%. As of late, the kids 2-11 audience reached 16 million, or 9.5% of active online users.  Kids are practically living online, spending nearly 11 hours a month in 2009.
What Men Do Online (eMarketer)
If you are wondering how man use the Internet, check out the eMarketer report. Don’t worry
it’s rated G, but if you market to dudes (or just wonder what we are really doing when we say
we are working late) take a look.

Marketers Target the Over 50 Set (NY Times)
“For decades, older consumers were largely shunned by marketers because they were deemed less wealthy, less likely to try new products and less willing to change brands. Not any longer…

A Fresh Look at 50 (Mediapost)
It seems that 50 is different than it used to be. Interesting article on the 44-54 age group (aka cuspers, young boomers), the transition they are going through and how to market to them. A must read for anyone seeking to engage this group.

Seniors On The Web!
Latest studies show that 45% of 70-75 age group is online (as well as 56% of 65-70 year olds). The web is becoming a bonanza for marketers targeting seniors. If this is your audience, you need to get with the program. For more info see the research brief.

That’s all for this edition. Since this is an interactive blog, you are invited to share your thoughts, questions or comments. Just keep it clean and constructive. You can also share this, digg it, or whatever floats your social networking boat!

Steve Latham
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