In February, we talked about social media monitoring newcomer Viralheat and how they were lowering the barrier to entry for social media monitoring by offering quality results at lower-than-typical prices. Now the rising start-up is doing even more to shake up the monitoring landscape by offering a top layer of monitoring results through its Charts feature to anyone … for free.

The offering is an expansion of their Social Trends feature, available since the product’s launch, which allows paid users to make part of their keyword searches public for all to see. If a client has set up a monitoring profile for the iPad, for instance, and make that search public, anyone can go to Social Trends and see the results. (Seventy percent of Viralheat’s users made their results public.) Social Trends was also free for anyone to use, so long as a paid subscriber (or Viralheat folks) had set up a search for the term  you were trying to find. If not, you could pay for an account and set it up yourself.

The new Charts feature allows anyone to build a comparison search. Now you can search, compare and contrast multiple brands (e.g. – iPad vs. Kindle vs. Smart Pad or others) and not only see the results, but grab the embed code and offer up a real time chart on your blog or website. (Awesome idea for a transparent company wanting to show people online chatter and sentiment for their brand vs. their competitors.) The company’s open API for paid users also allows  to tap into the usefulness and build out dashboards for the data. (Social Trends has a free API which allows you to pull out the publicly available data and use as you like.)

CEO Raj Kadam told me the information they’re making available to everyone for free has previously only been available to big brands with big market research dollars. I would add that some of it has also been available to bloggers and journalists in product demos, but typically only the iPhone or iPad data. (Someone please do a different default demo search. Heh.)

Kadam said Viralheat gets a lot of requests from journalists who are interested in the real-time, online buzz about a certain person or topic. Now the reporters can do the search themselves and embed the results right on the story page on their website. And if you’re about to say, “Yeah, right. Like journalists would even know how!” Hold your fire. ESPN is using Viralheat’s open API to create real-time buzz tracking dashboards of NFL teams this fall.

Oh, and sentiment scoring on all those results? Included. Free. (Kick ass.)

Viralheat also told me they’re making their library of infographics open and downloadable for anyone to use. They’ve got a pretty interesting collection worth checking out, for certain.

As for the paid version of the software, you can still get the Cadillac version for just $90 per month. Plans start at $10. At those prices, I don’t have a lot of problem with Viralheat execs calling themselves a “disruptive” social media monitoring company. They kinda are.

Preparing for an upcoming presentation, I was considering the documentation vs. experience trend and its impact on consumer consumption habits.

As Ricky Van Veen notes, people are more into recording the trip to Disney World than the trip itself. A socially-inclined, smartphone-toting park guest could check in on Foursquare, record their mouse-inspired lunch on Foodspotting and brag about their Phineas and Ferb t-shirt on Barcode Hero.

This is a nice change of pace because normally they're just logging in their Phineas and Ferb TV time on Tunerfish. And it doesn't have to stop there, with apps like Stickybits and Layar the park guest has even more opps to record actions deemed private by most of us.

Even one of the most private actions of all can now be recorded thanks to Sit or Squat (an inductee into the brand utility hall of fame, imho).

Overshare Begets Groupthink?
This is not to say Facebook is Skynet or the classic book 1984 has come true. Orwell's tome was written during a much different time and is not a comment on consumer use of technology.

But it amazes me that:

We've gone from a society that fears the documentation of our actions by an organization to one that willingly records and shares them with social media sites.

I'm obviously comfortable doing so. But even I have limits as to what I share online. Surprised?

I'm not suggesting we rethink this, jump off the grid and start lining our hats with aluminum foil. But as consumers we need to think about our information sharing in the big picture. Consumers get a sense of entitlement with free sites like Facebook and Twitter. But your privacy is a participation sport. And this is bigger than game mechanics. Spend some time with the terms of service around the sites with which you share information.

Thankfully there are people much smarter than me dedicated to following the topic of privacy. They can help. Belly up to this site and spend some quality time.

The final stop on Day One of the #140conf found @jeffpulver and team in Cincinnati for a Sunday evening RoadTrip TweetUp.

The attendees, the stories and the entire experience remind me that no social media platform can replicate the original social network – meeting live and in person.

Putting faces to names and Twitter handles is part of it. But you obviously learn so much more than you can from even the most well-crafted 140 character missive.  We should all do it more often.

With more than 20 people in attendance, there were plenty of stories to tell and document about Cincinnati’s social media community. From something as simple as trading tips about the iPhone and iPad with @elliotcampbell and @JoeyWessels to learning about the latest social media efforts at Union Terminal with @Doug4Cincy. Catching up with folks like @danieljohnsonjr @kristaneher and meeting folks for like @AmelahG and @jamieboyle for the first time reminds me of how essential these events really are.

Perhaps it was the dose of inspiration from Jeff as he explained his mission for #140conf. All of the scheduled events look like they have enormous potential. In a format that forces value from the speaker and optimizes every attendee’s investment of time and money, October’s event in Detroit is definitely worth attending.

Thanks to all who attended. Here are some links to Cincinnati Tweet Up Video and Pics. Below are the Twitter handles I recorded. I know I missed a few so let me know who’s not on the list. 

#conf140 Team
@jeffpulver @AlanWeinkrantz @Krochmal @geogeller

Attendees:
@prblog @milanmike @gozapit @ncyp23 @jamieboyle @AmelahG @knrose @checkin_cincy @mbdunnusa @daveknox @Girlfriendology @elliotcampbell @JoeyWessels @Doug4Cincy. @danieljohnsonjr @kristaneher

Sponsors:
@kodak @smartwater @buick @doubletreehtls

Cross-Posted to my work blog Social Study
A Call to #140conf posted by @prblog

My friend Edward Boches had a crappy experience at a Marriott Hotel last week. Like any good content producer, he blogged about it. Social media more than any other communications mechanism before has done more for placing market control back in the hands of the consumer. The barrier to entry to the web is a pulse and scant brain waves. If you are moderately functional, you can publish.

Boches, who has far more brain waves than most of us, offered a fantastic suggestion to any business in his post. He saw through his frustration to offer up a customer bill of rights of sorts for Marriott. He suggested it look something like this:

1. We guarantee your satisfaction.

2. We guarantee your room will be clean and that everything works: the clock, TV, lamps, bathroom.

3. If for any reason your stay with us was unsatisfactory we will make it up with comparable accommodations on us.

4. We will take any complaint and suggestion seriously and respond as quickly as humanly possible.

5. We encourage you to Tweet, blog, and post images and video of anything you find below standards or unresolved.

Certainly, the customer bill of rights idea is noble. Many of us in the power-to-the-consumer world of social media immediately nodded and virtually high-fived Boches for the concept, even if it was less original and more a reminder of what companies should be doing.

When Boches got his response from Marriott and they offered apologies and explanations and engaged commentors on his original post, he followed up with a lessons learned kind of story. In it, he offered these thoughts for customers to keep in mind as a sort of quid pro quo for brands who grovel accordingly:

We should make our issues public.

It’s smarter to offer suggestions than criticism.

We should welcome any brand or individual who tries to learn and engage.

If we want brands to deliver better service, it’s partly our responsibility to guide them there and hold them to it.

And the congregation said, “Amen.” Right?

Maybe not.

While I’m certainly supportive of the idea that brand should treat their customers with the utmost care and respect, least they flee to hungry competitors or even to the interwebs to vent their frustrations with them, I think enumerating these ideas as requisites for the general consuming public is idyllic and naive. For every consummate professional out there (like Boches), there exists about 15 dipshits who will only bitch to bitch. Or bitch to get free stuff.

The customer is not always right. In fact, sometimes the customer is quite an asshole.

Should consumers hold brands to a higher standard? Yes. Should we unleash the huddled masses, trailer trash and mouth-breathers on Twitter and Facebook and blogs to whine about every misstep or oversight they encountered while buying Natty Light and Marlboro Light 100s at the Circle K? I’m thinking no. Half their problem is that they wouldn’t have hurt themselves stepping on the pop-top if they were wearing shoes, or were paying attention to where they stepped rather than yelling at their baby-daddy on the prepaid cell.

Yes, the portrait is exaggerated, but to illustrate a point. Not everyone is a civilized consumer. Not everyone plays fair. And this country is as mired in moany, bitchy negativity as it frankly needs to be, in my opinion.

Maybe I’m just having a bad week, but there’s a big difference is a polite blog post pointing out a bad consumer experience and a web full of Springer plots.

Thanks to Boches for opening the dialog. Thanks to Marriott for learning from the experience and participating in the conversation. But don’t we owe it to our sanity to establish some limits? Or is sufficient brain waves to figure out how to publish online enough?

A penny for your thoughts … unless you’re barefoot in public. The money would be better spend on footware. Heh.

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Seriously, what is in it for me?  That is what I care about.  Whether it is your social media advertising, display ads or even traditional marketing.  What is in it for me?  Why should I click/buy/engage/friend/fan/like/follow/sign-up/give you my email/watch/listen/buy?

Not enough brands put their marketing through this litmus test when creating marketing materials.  I ran a internet marketing training program for an advertising agency today and this was one of the key points that I stressed.

Attention is scarce – you have to earn it. And not by buying the ad space.

In a world where brands are fighting for attention this should be the first question that they ask.  Why should I read your content? Why should I look at your ad and give you my attention?  What is in it for me?  Media is cluttered.  Every day thousands of brands try to grab our attention.  There are over 30 million blogs in the US and only 67 million blog readers.  An average Facebooker is connected to 60 pages/groups/events.  Banner blindness studies show that consumers can identify and ignore ads from the corner of their eyes – they don’t even look at most ads.  You have to earn attention.

Many marketers and brand builders create content focused on what is in it for them.  They get to promote their products, try to get me to buy or tell me about their wonderful benefits and features.  That is what is in it for them.  Telling me about your product and the awesome stuff you are doing might be interesting, but really, what do I get out of it?  It is not inherently valuable for me to know about all of your charitable giving, or the great work that you produce.  MAYBE if I already like you I occasionally want to learn about these things, but it normally isn’t great marketing content.

Traditional marketing messaging tells us to focus on the product benefits not the features.  So instead of “my product does cleans teeth” say “My product gives you a beautiful smile and people will like you more”.  In today’s marketing that isn’t good enough.  Now you have to say “5 foods that ruin your teeth” or “what type of tooth brushes really clean best??”  Marketing messaging in a digital world should focus on real and valuable content.

Brands focus on what is in it for them. Not the consumer.  Brand-centric marketing doesn’t work well.

Here are how brands get it wrong.

A social media consultant told me that he worked with an auto body shop client and they were tweeting about all of the cars they fixed.  Unless every now and again they do something really remarkable why would I care?  What is in it for me?  It is obvious what is in it for them – they get to showcase their work, but what is in it for me?  Give me tips on car care or maintenance, tell me about deals and discounts or show me how to do something cool with my car.

Here is another example.  Many companies (big companies) have started blogs about what they are doing in the community.  They post a few times a week about their charitable efforts.  Don’t get me wrong, it is great that they are doing charitable work, but the entire blog premise is about them promoting their nice charity work.  What does a reader get out of it?  Probably nothing, which is why the 5 of these types of blogs that I looked at had 0 comments.  They are really just PR machines.

When creating marketing ask yourself what someone you are trying to reach gets out of it.  Do they really get any value?  Or is it really you getting the value.

The fix is usually small.

I recently switched my office supply company.  Some sales people stopped into my office while they were visiting other customers in the building.  I actually needed a new printer and they were able to give me a great deal, so I signed up with them.  A few days later I got a phone call from the sales training manager.  She asked me how the sales person was (apparently they are evaluating him) and I answered a few questions about him.  I got off the phone and was kind of annoyed.  They didn’t really care if I was satisfied with their product or service or if I was having problems, they interrupted my busy day to get information for themselves.  Hmmm.

Here is how the experience could have been better.  She could have opened by asking me if my order arrived on time and if I was happy with it.  Then, she could ask about how my experience was with the sales staff.  Did they answer all of my questions?  Did I have any additional ones?  By repositioning the questions to focus on my experience she could have got what she needed while making me feel like they really cared about me.

Anybody else have examples?

Someone asked me a question about blog commenting recently that I thought peculiar. It’s a question that many brands, marketers and public relations folks have asked, for sure. But for whatever reason, the question just seemed odd to me. The person asked:

“What is the best way for a corporation to comment on a blog without seeming to promote their products?”

The root of the question is the company’s desire to not be spammy with their blog comment activities online. I’m thrilled marketers are asking that question. But it still seems peculiar to me. Maybe my perspective is a bit different, but here’s how I answered:

“The best way for a corporation to comment on blogs without seeming to promote their product is to comment without promoting their product. I know that sounds flippant, but take it literally. If the comment is to correct a misstatement about the price of a phone, for instance, you’d say:

‘Hey, It’s Jason from Verizon. Just wanted to clarify a mistaken number in the post. Our Droid X retails at $199.99 with a two-year contract if ordered online, not $249. If you saw it listed for that price, let us know so we can let the retailer know that’s not kosher. Thanks!’

You don’t say,

‘Hey, I work for Verizon, the greatest phone company on the planet, and our Droid X is now just $199.99 with a two-year contract and if you order online, but only until Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. So hurry down to your local Verizon store an save, save, save on the best smart phone known to man. This thing will mow your lawn. We’ve got apps! We’ve got savings! We’ve got the lowest prices in the tri-state area! Verizon rocks. Verizon rolls. Gotta love your Verizon Smart Phones! (Void where prohibited, fees do not include titles, tax, license or ferrets.)”

Is that so hard for people to understand? I don’t see why.”

So is it so hard to understand? Why?

NOTE: I used Verizon Wireless as an example for analogy only. They sponsor Social Media Club Louisville, of which I serve as president, but are not presently a client or sponsor of this blog.

Should the press release die? Or should it just become a social media press release? Hey, a press release and social media are like peanut butter and chocolate folks. Are you going to pass on a Reese's?! 

Um, who cares?!

OK, I understand there's a sh!t ton of money tied up in the distribution of press releases --from the agencies writing them and the blogs, conferences, workshops, e-books and teleseminars offering tips on how to write better press releases to the wire services and media databases helping to push them out (more than 2,000 each day on average I'm told).

The press release represents its own ecosystem of content and some of that content might even be newsworthy. Even the Bad Pitch blog recommends the topic as part of a balanced diet. But when the topic eclipses the industry discussion, is that balanced? 

There are plenty of times the press release is a worthy topic of discussion. I'm not overlooking the obvious need to teach, practice and hone our craft. But the current and steady level of discussion around the press release I'm seeing in the industry is comparable to a group of world famous artists constantly talking about which type of frame is best for their paintings. It's well-intended, but it misses the point. 

Rant, Party of One?
At the end of the day, if it's newsworthy, it doesn't matter what format it's in. Serve it up on toast...there are more than enough creative options. But the more the public relations industry talks about the press release, the more we have an answer as to why PR doesn't have a seat at the table.

The public relations industry needs to spend as much time on critical thinking, where we provide more value, as it does on the nitty gritty of the tactics. Maybe this rant is telling me the industry needs to spend more time on critical thinking. Perhaps it's the challenge of a discipline that must scale between thoughtful strategy and detail-oriented execution. But that's more of an opportunity than anything else.

The Impossible Dream uploaded by Sagesnow
Cross-Posted to the Bad Pitch blog

There’s lots of buzz around “social CRM” software, strategies and programs these days. It’s getting the kind of play “social business” did about this time last year when the analysts at Forrester jumped ship for Altimeter and Dachis. They had to invent new phrases to sell their services to the C-Suite. If you don’t have an innovative-sounding name for what you do, then I guess you don’t attract as much attention.

Social CRM is being hawked by monitoring services, market research firms, traditional sales software and — if you can believe it — Twitter applications. Brand managers, marketing managers and agencies everywhere are anxious to get them some of that social CRM, by golly. Sadly, most of them don’t even know what CRM stands for.

Before you go and plop down money for software that does nothing if you don’t understand the purpose for it, let’s look at what social CRM really is. (It’s customer relationship management, in case you were wondering.)

Fanscape has a nice report out called The Value of a Social Relationship in which they put some mathematics around the value of a customer. It’s worth the download, even if the math is more complicated than ObamaCare. In it, they say:

“The aim of CRM is not only to maximize the revenue from a single transaction, but to build a lasting relationship with the customer, thus increasing the customer lifetime value.”

I would generally agree that is the goal of a CRM program: to increase the lifetime value of a given customer to a company. By building stronger relationships with your customers, you can foster and encourage more purchases over time that the one-and-done method of straight sales. The part that makes it work, though, is the relationship building. Good CRM has to be customer focused, not company focused.

CRM software was (ironically) created to try and automate some of that relationship building. Instead of the labor- and time-intensive act of one-to-one communications, technology allowed marketers to build in automatic direct mail pieces, emails and even telemarketing calls to prospects, customers and advocates around campaigns, calendar dates or issues to keep those audiences invested in the brand at opportune times.

But a lot of CRM software is really just sales management software that tracks how many times you ask someone to buy stuff. That’s not really CRM. CRM is about tracking all communications, gathering information and informing your decisions around a particular customer. It’s not always about the sale.

When most companies say they sell “social CRM” software, what they’re really selling is a contact database that includes fields for a customer’s Twitter handle, Facebook account and other social media profiles. They don’t actually do much to allow you to build relationships in manual or automatic fashion. They just have the links.

True “Social CRM” systems not only help you know where your contacts are, but allow you or, even more importantly, those contacts, to manage how you communicate with them, how often and for what messages. Think of a good Social CRM system as email opt-in on crack.

Then the system allows you to leverage your contact’s public social data and even private communications with you to better inform your timing and decisions to communicate with them. Many thinkers in this space also think of Social CRM as allowing you to pull collective intelligence from your customers to improve products, etc. I don’t discount that possibility, but a forum will do that, too. Besides, that thinking is company-centric, not customer relationship-centric, so I tend to not focus on it as a primary function.

There are a lot of companies out there who claim they have a good Social CRM tool. I’m sure several of them will jump in the comments and lay it on thick. But one that I’ve been experimenting with I really like is JitterJam.

JitterJam allows your company to import your email lists, Facebook Fans, Twitter Followers and more into a database. You can tag each individual or groups of individuals anyway you like, making filtering and custom outreach by group easy. As you have contact with each person, those conversations are captured into each person’s profile. The system allows you to track and gauge when someone moves closer to your funnel, going from contact to prospect to customer to advocate.

The above graph shows the progression of contacts, prospects, customers and advocates for World’s Best Cat Litter, which is using JitterJam with and through its agency partner, MicroArts. (The big jump midway through represents awareness brought about by a DirecTV campaign … yes, traditional advertising! Oh my!) Anytime someone interacts with WBCL on Twitter or Facebook, joins its email list or otherwise has a connection to the brand online, they’re brought into the JitterJam platform. From there, the brand can reach out to the person in the medium in which they connected and give them what JitterJam calls a “Make Me Happy” ask where people can opt in to company communications and specify which mediums are acceptable. (See JitterJam’s Make Me Happy page here.)

Seeing the rise of the customers thanks to their efforts, you can visualize how effective your outreach has been.

“We needed something that was going to be more than a reporting solution,” explained Drew Schulthess of MicroArts. “We needed a better context to the relationships we’re building with our customers. We need to know who our customers were, who our evangelists were and how we were connecting to them.”

But JitterJam has much more to it than managing contacts. You can create and post social messages, emails, text messages and more, distribute those to everyone or filtered lists of your contacts, monitor the social web for conversations around your brand or your chosen keywords then funnel the individuals in those conversations into your system as new contacts, too.

When I think of a good Social CRM platform, I see one that has a little bit of everything … social media monitoring, influencer identification, email marketing, SMS capabilities, social outpost management, list management, segmentation ability, contact assessment and measurement and so on. JitterJam has almost everything in one package.

The challenge for using a platform like JitterJam is similar to the challenge of using any robust platform: You have to really master the software to get the most out of it. Yes, it’s one of the most powerful platforms out there, but you’re going to need to learn the ins and outs before you can really milk this thing for all it’s worth.

Still, all its worth could be golden for your company. Imagine communicating with 50,000 people at once. Now imagine communicating with all 50,000 in the medium or mechanism they choose to receive messages from you in and powered by intelligence that allows you to cater the message to customer groups in more relevant ways. JitterJam accomplishes this.

Yes, there are competitors out there that have nice platforms (I’m diving into Shoutlet next, which has some cool DIY tool creation with it) and do a lot of the same work. No, this review is not meant to say that JitterJam is the end-all and be-all to Social CRM. But it’s awfully powerful and worth a look-see.

And with tiered pricing starting at $290 per month, small businesses can afford the tool, too. Sure, the more sizable your lists or volume of your keyword searches, the more you’ll pay, but the pricing seems awfully fair for the functionality to me.

What does Social CRM mean to you? What software have you used to accomplish that and how did it fit your needs? If you use JitterJam, tell us about your experiences. The comments are yours.

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Cincinnati, Ohio–Ohio Governor Ted Strickland today announced the designation of the Cincinnati Consumer Marketing Hub as an Ohio Hub of Innovation and Opportunity. The hub will bring together the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber, Procter & Gamble, Kroger Company, the University of Cincinnati and Macy’s to strengthen and create job opportunities in Ohio’s consumer marketing industry.

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