Posts Tagged ‘Social Technology’

First, to explain the hashtags in the title, see my comment on last weeks post here – very powerful reason relative to Social Influence.

For those of you that listened to Part 1 of the terrific podcast with Nibby Preist and Chris Jordan (click here for that), you will be pleased with Part 2.  For those that missed it, perhaps download both.  In Part 1, we covered Linkedin and Twitter – how insurance agents are using the tools for business.  This one picks up where we left off and talks about Facebook and Blogging.  Chris & Nibby share great insights about what they are doing to drive ROI with Social Media.  (I like that I’ve waited since April to publish Part 2.  There have been some interesting new developments since then which add a bit of a retrospective to the conversation.)

Click here to listen in.

A couple notes to reinforce:

From Nibby – Lots of Facebook ROI, but you have to stick with it.  Which leads me to give myself a shameless plug – Hire me to do the strategy.  I can save you a lot of time and brain damage, and connect you into some powerful information streams along the way.  Call me.

Nibby and Chris both talk about redeeming wasted time to make room for Social.  I speak to this point often with people who ask, “How do you make time for your Social stuff?  I’m swamped as it is….”  Listen to what they say and come back with a Comment below.  What do YOU think?

The comment about the use of mobile and the blur of work happening outside of traditional 9-5 is spot on.  Those of you that are doing this, what do you think about it?  Those that aren’t, you might say, “You see??? That’s EXACTLY why I DON’T want to get into social stuff.  When I go home, the LAST thing I want to do is get on the computer or check email on my mobile….”  After listening, what are your comments about the blur?

Chris – spot on about learning more about prospects and business partners and pull-marketing.

Nibby referenced these two sites: http://www.rescuetime.com/ http://gist.com/

Fantastic that both commented about the ROI of their blogs, especially about the unified voice, about SEO, and about newspaper and media outlets.  I’ve been sayin’ it for a while now…

Listen in and please Comment below.

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Favorite recent picture…. I shot a nationally televised college soccer game – absolutely thrilling to get that chance.  The Photo Gallery has been simply POUNDED.  This is one of my favorites.  Mattocks from Jamaica scored the third goal and came running right at me – and the “Fear the Roo” image is in view on the building behind him.  Love that shot.

My 2nd favorite you’ll have to click through on – my wife sitting with the girlfriend of Anthony Ampaipitakwong (Ampai), the #1 college player in America! What a cool coincidence!

8am.

Some recent learnings I wanted to share…

Last spring, after church in the college town of Houghton, NY, I found myself in a discussion about blogging and social media with the president of my son’s college, Houghton College.  (Couple side notes: 1. The pastor of the small church in the middle of the poorest county in NY has a blog and uses Twitter.  2. Houghton (pronounced ho’ ton, or in the local area dialect … ho’ in !!! like Martin is mar’ in or Walton is wal’ in – so funny!)

Dr. Mullen asked me to come for a more formal discussion with her the next time I was up for a soccer game….

While I don’t want to shift my focus away from insurance to HigherEd, I learned a couple of the things about Social Technologies as I prepared and spoke with Dr. Mullen and the leader of Marketing Communications for the college.

In a quick search of competitive schools to Houghton, I found that almost all of the schools have at least some Social Tech on their Web properties.  But two of the schools are definitely out in front and seem to have invested some energy towards a more well-defined Social Tech strategy.

MNVU

Mount Vernon Nazarene University has an interesting strategy.  While it’s below the fold, if you scroll down a tad, you will find the Social Tech call-outs in a unified bar.  The interesting thing is that the bar is really one image that is all hyper-linked to the same subpage.  But the Social Tech subpage is really well-organized and clearly directs the visitor to the appropriate Social areas of interest.  Again, it seems clear that the school is pursuing a Social strategy.  It’s also clear that it’s in its infancy.  As an example, SocialTech buttons are not in view on all pages of the site.  ShareThis is not ubiquitous.  And the links to the Social sites, such as the Facebook and Twitter links, do not open in a new page.  As I mentioned last time in the NYLife post, it’s critical that these links open in a new page or tab – You don’t want to lose the traffic, you want to spread the traffic, grab more mind-share as it were.

Also interesting that they are doing special things for prospective students.  See the link under admissions.  It goes to a separate domain.  Notice the heavy use of Social Tech there.  The links go to the same Social sites as with the main site, just with a little different treatment.

SBU

Another Social Tech leader we looked at in the president’s office is St. Bonaventure University – nice site.  Their Social Tech links are above the fold. Clicking on the www.sbu.edu/social signage brings you to a similar page as Mt. Vernon, but a little different organization.  The Facebook strategy isn’t segmented yet, but they have a live Facebook integration in the box below the fold.  They also have a video (that doesn’t work on a Mac – doh!).  Perhaps the coup-de-gras is the Blog Directory, although that call-out is really easy to skip over.  But clicking through to the blogs and you can quickly see that Blogs have been in-play at SBU since 2004.  Some of the staff and prof’s have very mature blogs today.  Very interesting.  Most have their own domains, some have e-commerce, even Google advertising (wonder who gets the revenue?).  But again, all the links open in the same page.  Do you see why that’s such a disruptive linking situation?  Here’s the thing… I don’t want to have to hit the back button.  I want to check out those blogs, perhaps even bookmark or subscribe to the feeds while I’m there.  But that’s NOT the main reason why I came to the sbu site to begin with.  I don’t want to lose my original purpose, my original train of thought.  The site needs to help me, not hurt me, not distract – serve up more useful content and links – yes.  But help me accomplish my original purpose along the way.  Does that make sense?  Comments?

Anyway, some intersting learning.  Cool how a casual conversation can lead to important insights.  Btw, that’s why I never close off discussions just because they are out of my central focus.  You never know when or where that golden nugget of information will come from.

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Some favorite pictures from the trip (out of at least 5000 pictures!)  Understand that shooting a soccer game is 1000 pics in itself.  You have to keep shooting to get the good stuff…

Favorite from Lake Waukewan, sister to Lake Winnipesaukee where my cousin has a lake house.  Incredible sunrise on the right, a storm rolling in on the left, and a still lake at dawn in the middle.

Extremely rare photo

Favorite soccer pic of my son at the Houghton College Men’s Soccer 2010 home opener. #19

Soccer pic from Gordon College where four of my son’s teammates from High School play.

Would LOVE your comments, especially with links to other sites that are doing a good job with social, regardless of the industry.

10am (with a couple distractions along the way)

Btw, it’s been 3 weeks since my last post.  Longer than normal by 2 weeks.  Here’s why: The NYLife post saw a lot of action and dialog so I wanted to leave it up for an extra week.  Then last week I decided to tackle a huge trip from CLE up through Postdam, NY, across Vermont to Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire, down to Boston, MA, back to Houghton, NY, and back to CLE.  It took a week to cover all that ground, but I accomplished my mission… and stayed productive work-wise thanks to my Droid Incredible (a $99 device from Verizon with a new contract – really useful).  Lot to bite off, but I made it.

So many insurance folks are asking, “If I get into Social Media, what do I say?  _____ insurance is so boring.  Plus people don’t really want to have it – it’s like going in for a physical or check-up….”  I don’t know about you, but to me that seems like a cop-out, an attempt to avoid having to learn something new, or just fear of the unknown.  But it’s worse than that, depending on how senior the person is in the organization, because it creates a drag on the SocialTech effectiveness of the organization.  But most of all, it’s untrue.  Here’s a terrific example from this week.

Yesterday, New York Life hit the Social Media nail on the head with a combo Facebook fan page update/blog post.  I’m tracking New York Life on my Facebook profile, not because I’m a customer, but because they got my attention somehow (I think through email), showed me a Facebook button, I clickedin on it, and hit the “Like” button.  I’m more interested in their social strategies than their insurance products right now, but you never know, right?  So now a few times a week I see what they are doing in my Facebook Newsfeed.

The Facebook feed said this, (in case you’re not on Facebook yet I’ll copy/paste)

As sad as I am to say it, summer is almost over and you know what that means… School is about to start and for some, college is vastly approaching, which brings us to the question: Are you ready to pay for it? Starting a college fund has been the solution for some families; however, what do you suggest? What have you done to save?

The link then said this,

Start a College Fund: 8 Strategies

www.newyorklife.com

Hmmm. Nice little segway from a reference to time-of-year to educational info without a sales pitch.  There were a few “Likes”, a few “Comments” – some action.  So I clicked through to see what the landing page looked like.  (By the way, New York Life has 2,700 Facebook Fans – not a whole lot for a company of it’s size, but enough to start a viral marketing process.  By this time next year, if they play their cards right, it could be 27,000… perhaps 270,000 in two years – FOR FREE and reaching fans who prefer Facebook for their news and information – AHA!.)

IMHO, the landing page is terrific.

What works well:

1. Good branding, but not overwhelming.  I clicked through from a branded Facebook link, so I expect to see a brand reinforcement image. The new tab also has the brand thumbnail.  And the URL is newyorklife.  So I’m comfortable in seconds.
2. It’s got a Facebook Like button right away, so I know I’m going to be able to Like it and Share it with my friends – useful.  By the way, I’m coming from Facebook, so if there WASN’T a Facebook Like, it would be counterintuitive.
3. The orange “Get a Quote” buttons are good but not overwhelming.  OK, I know the company is trying to sell insurance.  But they are clearly trying to offer useful and timely advice along the way.  So I don’t mind being given the opportunity to take action if the article underscores a gap I have in my financial situation.  In fact, that’s why I clicked-through, right?  Let me check out these 8 Tips and see how my situation stacks up…
4. They also have a phone icon on the left if you want to speak to someone right now.  Absolutely.  Channel of Choice.
5. Love the Mom kissing the baby on the right.  Links to another page dealing with parents and that particular life event.  Good.  (Boy, what a great chance for a viral video right there about new parents and babies and life insurance.)
6. Most of all, the content is good.  OK, it’s a little long, but that because of the compliance text.  And it’s 8 Tips, so that’s a lot of info.  But you need a lot of info on this particular subject, right?  Surely this content was scrubbed by NYLife compliance – but it’s still good, not too heavy with industry lingo, uses a lot of keywords, good stuff.

What do you like about it?  Thoughts on my Comments?  Please Comment below.

Issues: Mostly minor things.  The list is longer, but the issues don’t outweigh the good.

1. I think they forgot to turn off the italicized font, perhaps right after the ‘compliance’ text in item #1, so right after the “Keep in mind…” paragraph.
2. Not SmartPhone-friendly – same exact Web page…. should use a browser-sniffer and optimize the page for the tech environment.
3. Not Search Engine Optimized – could do a lot more with title tags, alt tags, tag cloud, and page source.
4. Links to resources do not open in a new Tab or Window – critically important and such a common mistake.  So if I click on a link, that doesn’t mean I’m done with the original page, I just want to follow that trail for a sec.  But if I’m done with that trail or get distracted, I might close that tab or window . Then I’ve lost the original page I was reading – and the brand has lost the sales op.  Make sense?
5. Not enough linking to external resources on keywords like Section 529 – great resource on wikipedia for that.
6. “Share this Article” on the right should just be a ShareThis button next to the Facebook Like at the top (similar to what I have below)
7. The Comment box should already be open at the bottom.  You want to encourage Comments.  Remember that someone who engages with your content is far more likely to Share and return to the page – and THAT’S the Holy Grail.
8. The “Consult an Agent” form is too heavy-handed on the page.  Perhaps they could have been satisfied with the repeat of the orange box from the top,  Btw, that’s a nice little widget (which should also open up in a new tab, right?) with a decent viral marketing and data collection Thank You page (could do a LOT more with that page).

That’s is for now – my hour’s up.  GTG.  Hope this was helpful.  Please Comment and Share.  Would be eternally grateful for the viral help.

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Awesome SocialTech Strategy by State Farm.  Also a form of Crowdsourcing – internal.  Brilliant.  I’m going to use the app.

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Picture from my recent family camping trip to the Adirondacks.  See all the pics here.  Olympic stuff, cliff jumping, YT cooking, scenic shots.  Epic trip.

Oh Man – this stuff is where it’s at for B2B Sales.  I finally have the whole thing wired…

Thoughts and Comments?  Please Share below..

(Excerpted from the Crowdsourced book due out soon called Enterprise Social Technologies. Chapter 7: Social Sales, written by YT!)

What’s happening out there???

Selling has changed, whether you’re selling commodities or complex products.  In fact a whole new layer has been added to the sales process, a layer with fantastic power.  This new layer of Social Technologies has forever altered the art and process of selling.  Take a hard look at your most recent sales – or losses.  Whether business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-consumer (B2C), did the buyers “check you out online,” either before or after they contacted you? In this due-diligence process, what did they find out about you?  What is ‘out there’ relative to YOU, your product reputation, and/or your brand reputation?  Have you searched yourself, your product, your brand, your market, and your competition?  Have you thought about how much influence these data-points have had on your recent sales results, or your lead volume?  Perhaps if you really look at the trends, you’d have to admit that selling has changed A LOT in the last few years.  Perhaps it’s time for you to change your processes as well.

In the mid-2000‘s, things started turning a bit chaotic.  The Internet and E-Commerce began to mature.  User-generated content started to proliferate with YouTube and Blogs.  Search engines like Google began to disinter-mediate salespeople.  Some brands like Progressive Insurance even went so far as to pronounce the end of the era of the sales agent.  In spite of many claims of ROI and productivity gains, few understood how to use these mediums for business, let alone how to generate sales.   Meanwhile buyers started getting savvy to all these tools, too – and started using them in their buying process!  In a sense, the tables were turned.

Today, circa 2010, this chaos has stabilized, matured, synthesized, intersected, and emerged into the next major evolution in sales known as Socially Facilitated Selling (B2B) or Socially Directed Buying (B2C).  Social Technology now augments communication and provides new ways to build trust.  As such, Social Tech is reorganizing how buyers buy – and thereby forcing sellers to adapt.  Social Tech is also helping sales people be at the right place at the right time on a scale never before attainable, and at a cost never imagined – essentially FOR FREE!  A powerfully constructed Blog, integrated with Twitter and Linkedin, is replacing a premium Country Club membership and the closely guarded ‘rolodex’.

Why Socially Facilitated Selling?

Whenever I talk to sales people about using Social in their sales process, they always want to know the “How”, but often skip the necessary “Why”?  The ‘How’ is the easy part.  But to really be effective at Social, we need to deeply understand the answers to questions like, Why is it helpful for the sales person to join online professional networks, update their Status daily, and get Recommendations from clients?  Why is updating a professional Blog once a week one of the most important activities a sales person can do each week?  Further, why is getting a customer to Comment on a Blog post a huge event in the life of a customer relationship?  What role do Facebook and Twitter play in the sales process?  Why are ‘listening’ devices such as Tweetdeck, Google Alerts, SocialMention, and Addictomatic helpful in the sales process?  What is the best way to proactively target prospects using Linkedin?  Once in your crosshairs, why is it important to use Social Tech for warm introductions, to gain credibility, build rapport, and/or understand concerns and priorities of a prospect – all BEFORE the first contact, certainly before the first sales event or discovery session?  Once we clearly understand the answers to these and other related questions, with real-life facts and figures, then we are ready to tackle the tactical execution.

The book is due out in a few months.  Can’t wait!

Comments?  Do you resonate with any of this?  Helpful info?

Need help “Getting there”?  I’ve got a process.  Contact me at WebWisedomLLC at GMail dot com.

Terrific new group on Linkedin!  Social Media – Insurance and Reinsurance

I commented on the thread about helping Executives take a more active interest in Social Media.  Thought I’d share the comments here as well… Interested in what you think?  Please Comment at the bottom of this thread.

From Nico Conradie in Johannesburg Area, South Africa… “I find it an interesting challenge: how to persuade others (key decision takers) within a large international company to take a more active interest in social media.  Any experiences in this respect that can be shared? Any tips? Any pitfalls to avoid? I would be interested in learning from others who have had success in this respect.”

My take.

“This is the million dollar question for sure. Like Mairi says, data is critical. There are simply tons of data-driven case studies that establish the value-prop of Enterprise Social Tech. What I’m finding most successful is two 2-hour small-group, executive sessions that drill down into what Social Tech is, why it’s important, and how to leverage it – IN GENERAL. If you can start the session with a flip chart page called “Expectations”, it’s incredibly powerful on several levels.

Here’s the real key from my perspective – Keynote (TM – iWork) slides. For some reason, kind of like seeing Avatar in 3D, these .Key slides are so different than standard .PPT, that they are helping execs ‘see’ the new concepts of ‘Social’ in a new way.

Small group is key as well because it helps the exec’s cough up their preconceived notions in the safety of their board room with the peers. I absolutely LOVE it when an exec says something like “I just don’t get tweeter [sic]. Why would I want to know what someone had for breakfast?!?!?” Usually everyone in the room laughs in agreement. But it’s a PERFECT setup for talking about effective streams of information, Listening, and within 5 minutes I can have the group understanding why that cliche is so destructive. That then leads to more myths being dumped out on the table, etc. etc..

A deep dive into Enterprise Social Tech facilitated by an outsider with incredibly rich visuals and powerful case studies in a small-group, interactive setting. It’s tough to carve out the time, and people usually come kicking and screaming with their arms crossed and skeptical frowns. But if you have the right stuff and can push through the resistance with whimsy yet credibility, you can break through. Of course implementing the resulting strategies, like any other business endeavor, is what will separate the wheat from the chaff in the months and years to come.”

Interested in what you think?  Please Comment below the picture.

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Recent picture from a wedding I attended