If 1,000,000 people friended your brand on Facebook, how much money would you make? Is social media really worth it? On January 21 at the January Austin AMA Power Luncheon, our special guest speaker Brian Carter discussed strategy, ROI, and how to get more bang for your social media marketing buck. Brian is Director of Search Engine Marketing (PPC), SEO, and Social Media at Fuel Interactive, an interactive marketing agency in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

Social media promises to be the new frontier for marketers (we’re pretty sure, anyway—as Brian demonstrated, there aren’t hard numbers for social media’s ROI yet), and we’re all eager to get online and just tweet/post/blog/tag ourselves blue in the face. But without a plan we can’t know if our efforts are worthwhile. In fact, without a plan, we can’t even pinpoint what we consider to be a worthwhile outcome. So in lieu of hard data, Brian recommended starting out with quantifiable goals and educated guesses. We can continually refine and optimize our plan by measuring and evaluating the results we get.

5 Steps to Ensure Social Media ROI

1. Identify your goal.
2. Establish a metric (quantify your goal).
3. Get real about your current situation: what’s working, what’s not, what are your capabilities, do you need help, what is your risk tolerance? Make educated guesses at this point.
4. Plan your strategy and resources before jumping in with both feet.
5. Let results guide progress: Do more of what works and less of what doesn’t.

4 Phases of Social Media Campaign Development

Most companies skip phase one of the four-phase campaign development process Brian outlined. By jumping into a social media presence without planning what you’re going to do once you’ve begun engaging your audience, you may wind up unable to keep their interest for long or turn that interest into action (and profit).

1. Strategy and brand planning. Project your brand into social media. Plan your viral campaigns—games, contests, hooks, attention grabbers, excitement builders.
2. Establishing a presence on social media sites/increasing brand awareness. Set up your social networking profiles.
3. Engaging customers/developing brand affinity. Monitor the conversation, including mentions of your brand, your competitors’ brands, and relevant topics. Reply with information, offers, friendliness, and humor.
4. Engaging customers/pushing offers for ROI. This is where not skipping phase one really comes in handy. You need a steady stream of attention-grabbing, compelling incentives to lead your audience down the path to purchase.

The Golden Ticket to Social Media Success: Keeping Customers Motivated

Every step of the way, you have to give your audience sufficient incentive to keep paying attention and moving to the next step of your marketing plan. The Golden Ticket campaign shows how to create irresistible motivations that turn into purchasing momentum.

To qualify, customers will book a vacation and fan the Visit Myrtle Beach Facebook page.

Then customers will post a message to their wall (”I booked a vacation at X hotel in Myrtle Beach because I want to win a Golden Ticket”) referencing their golden ticket number.

Five lucky winners will find a Golden Ticket in their hotel room upon arrival entitling them to free show passes, VISA gift cards, and other prizes.

Specific benefits are defined for each step in the contest. By requiring a purchase just to qualify, this campaign ensures cash revenue from the outset. The Facebook posts generate positive word of mouth advertising for the hotels. The campaign will also build contacts for future email campaigns.

What’s the Verdict?

Social media campaign planning is more labor-intensive and expensive than search or email marketing, and its benefits have not been established. Your best bet? To move forward with a plan, learning from your data as you continually get closer to your social media marketing sweet spot.

Other Tips and Takeaways

1. Don’t be a victim of brand theft. Use knowem.com to check for and secure your personal, brand, or product name on over 350 social media sites.
2. In addition to your “2.0″ social profiles on Facebook, Twitter, etc, establish a presence on “3.0″ aggregator sites such as Friendfeed and Tumblr to add assets automatically via RSS, thus building links for SEO.
3. Use tools like CoTweet and Whos Talkin? to monitor and reply to social media chatter.
4. Make sure that your marketing is not only getting attention but inciting action—what are you doing to motivate your audience to do something?

With the growing popularity of smartphones, mobile marketing has transformed into a billion dollar industry. Smartphones allow companies to target consumers through websites, texts, applications, and direct voicemail messages. Mobile marketing is an effective way to reach a target audience, but must be done properly. Many times companies are too aggressive and their messages are ignored by receivers.

Kleenex is one company basing their new marketing campaign around this popular trend. Getmommed.com is the site established by Kleenex to cater to consumers’ psychological needs for extra motherly care during the cold and flu season. Consumers are encouraged to visit the promotional site via Kimberly-Clark’s main Web page, print advertisements, and television commercials. Site visitors can complete a quiz matching them to one of eight cyber moms. Pick Magnolia and this Mom can cure your cold with home-style cooking, while Lisa offers craft and home decor ideas. Kleenex reports the most popular Mom is Jessica, the “Best Friend” Mom. After signing up on the site, consumers are able to request wake-up calls, text reminders, Facebook messages, and words of encouragement from their new Mom.

The GetMommed.com Web site makes sure you have adequate access to motherly TLC this cold and flu season.

Kleenex combines internet and mobile marketing, resulting in a highly interactive campaign. They avoid sending text blasts and e-mail advertisements to consumers, instead offering helpful services that consumers can voluntarily register for. Companies who want to effectively utilize mobile marketing to target their consumers can follow these simple rules.

Integration is key

Smartphones have given users the capability to scan all types of advertising mediums, so integration of all platforms is now extremely important in a company’s campaign. Kleenex effectively merged their platforms and prompted consumers to visit their site through print and television ads.

Give and you shall receive

Offer helpful services or incentives that smartphone owners will use on a daily basis. Kleenex offers weather updates, wake-up calls, or text reminders. These tools provide emotional consumer appeal and help build brand loyalty and awareness.

Get Social with Social Media

Leverage your marketing plan and business with social media sites. Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are all platforms that can take your campaign to the next level. Remember that connection of all social media outlets is key. Display links for Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube accounts on your campaign’s homepage. Kleenex integrates Facebook links on their main page, allowing visitors to view each cyber mom’s Facebook and befriend them.

Get to know Magnolia, Lisa, and the rest of the Moms through Kleenex’s Webisodes on YouTube.

Kleenex has successfully entered the cyberspace of consumers with these simple rules and the help of eight fictional Moms. They continue to establish strong emotional ties with consumers and create long-term brand loyalty. Follow Kleenex’ lead and your company could be seeing similar results.

On October 29, 2009, at the at the Texas e-Marketing Summit, Bryan Rhoads outlined Intel’s social media marketing roadmap and provided advice for companies that want to integrate emerging media into their own marketing programs. Rhoads, a Digital Strategist who pioneered Intel’s new media marketing strategy, is the curriculum architect for Intel’s Digital IQ digital education program and a founding member of the Intel Social Media Center of Excellence.

Rhoads identified four distinct phases of adoption: Grassroots adoption, Results testing, Operationalize, and Widespread adoption. Careful planning at every phase, as the acronym suggests, will help you GROW your social media marketing program in a smart, profitable direction.

Phase 1: Grassroots Adoption

Before Intel began using any kind of social media, its employees were already blogging independently. In launching its pilot IT blog in 2006, Intel leveraged the enthusiasm and knowledge of these trail-blazers. Rhoads characterizes the grassroots phase as the foundation of a formalized marketing plan:

• Led by the passionate few
• Fed by hype
• Feared by Legal and IT
• Efforts are not tied to a formal strategy or ROI
• Limited barrier to entry
• Personal brands often trump company brands

By observing and analyzing the efforts of the independent bloggers, Intel collected enough data about technique and the potential for audience engagement to make an informed decision about moving forward with a pilot program.

Phase 2: Results Testing

Grassroots activity gets the ball rolling. The pilot program is a testing and organization phase. It’s the ideal time to make mistakes and then use what you learn to build a compelling case for adoption and to allay the “what-if” fears of reluctant stakeholders.

• Pilot your ideas with a focus on business results
• Prime your business case
• Do it all wrong quickly
• Mitigate risks to placate Legal and IT fears
• Get ROI and measurement standards in place
• POST exercise
  • People: Assess your customers’ social activities
  • Objectives: Decide what you want to accomplish
  • Strategy: Plan for how relationships with customers will change
  • Technology: Decide which social platforms to use

Phase 3: Operationalize

The pilot program lays the groundwork for further formalization of a social media program. This is the time to get all stakeholders on board and build infrastructure for scalable, repeatable business processes.

• Be absolute on the business case—proof testing is over
• Establish governance and guidance
• Provide infrastructure
• Invest in tools and training
• Define metrics and tracking
• Establish clear roles and responsibilities within the organization
• Scale participation (what level of knowledge and active participation is required of which employees?)

Intel developed numerous programs to communicate its objectives, educate and align employees, and set goals and guidelines for its new media marketing program.

• The Social Media Center of Excellence is a team headed by Rhoads to create guidelines, processes, strategies, and skill-building programs.
• Intel’s Social Media Guidelines provide a framework for increased participation—easing management concerns, getting everyone on the same page about expectations, and ensuring transparency.
• The Digital IQ training program is an online university aimed at creating a vast digital marketing force. Employees take 100 through 400 level classes based on their roles and responsibilities. Digital IQ also helps the Social Media Center of Excellence identify and place new voices in Intel’s social spaces.
• Digital IQ 500 is a further level of training that licenses anyone to practice social media on behalf of Intel. These 30-minute online courses were developed by key SMEs and the Social Media Center of Excellence. They include company strategy, legal and security cautions, moderation policy, and recommended best practices.

Phase 4: Widespread Adoption

Widespread adoption occurs only after the entire company has been primed and a scalable, sustainable plan for implementation has been established.

• Social media is integrated into campaigns
• Social media is included in the strategy phase
• Practicing social media becomes second nature
• Easily replicated processes are in place
• Dedicated roles have been established
• Executive support is cemented

Key Take-aways

Most companies do not have the vast resources of a global company like Intel, but we can all benefit from lessons Intel learned as it adopted social media marketing:

• Learn which way the wind is blowing from your resident enthusiasts.
• Don’t feel pressured to act immediately. Take the time to figure out where your audience is before jumping into a new venue.
• Define success and find a way to measure it.
• Use the proof-testing phase to demonstrate the potential value of social media and to examine and head off potential pitfalls—all of which will help get reluctant stakeholders on board.
• Further reduce anxieties and ambiguity for everyone by establishing comprehensive training and guidelines.
• Find your social media marketing “sweet spot:” where along your business’s marketing funnel can you use social media tools for the most impact?

Established companies are turning to online social sites to build brand communities and boost sales. This past year, companies have transformed these networking sites into a means for marketing and advertising to potential consumers. Recently Starbucks and Pizza Hut have proven to be top competitors in the social media marketing world.

Starbucks is now the top brand on Facebook. They have surpassed Coca-Cola in popularity, acquiring over 3.6 million followers on their fan page. They contribute their success to an aggressive social media marketing strategy and the construction of an online coffee community where Starbucks’ coworkers and customers can exchange stories and company ideas, connecting Starbucks fans worldwide. In addition they are using the social site to promote new products including the Via instant coffee. Last month Starbucks offered their Facebook followers a free cup of coffee for taking the Via instant coffee taste test at local stores.

Pizza Hut is also expanding their company with the help of iPhones. After downloading the Pizza Hut application, users are able to create and customize their pizza using the iPhone’s touch screen features. Similar to Starbucks’ strategy, Pizza Hut hopes customers will enjoy the interactive ordering experience, connect with the brand, and become loyal customers.

This demo video on the new iPhone application demonstrates how Pizza Hut is revamping the pizza industry.

The future for these social sites and devices is uncertain. Will they sustain popularity with users as more businesses utilize them for marketing purposes or will this just be another technology trend that will be replaced by something bigger and better?

In the war to win your customers’ attention, you are not competing against other marketers; you are competing with your customers’ friends’ Facebook walls. On September 17, 2009, Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, co-authors of Trust Agents, talked to us about how to win attention in a world of information overload.

It’s all about building trust with people so that they will listen when you have something to say. Brogan and Smith provided helpful tips from their own experience for breaking through the white noise of everyday life and getting attention.

1. Make a Habit out of Breaking Habits.

When you interrupt the patterns that govern people’s lives by saying and doing the unexpected in a manner that is helpful or insightful to others, you wake them up, you jolt them out of their mental auto-pilot mode, and you become visible.

With social media, you have the opportunity to become visible through many channels and to be seen as a whole person rather than a flat corporate entity. Brogan and Smith encourage companies to put a face to their marketing. Also, when you have a habit of breaking habits, you become more creative and more open to new ideas, which in turn fuels your ability to develop new angles and opportunities for yourself.

2. Stand Out, Start Something.

If you’re competing against others, you’ve already lost, say Brogan and Smith. Citing Cirque du Soleil and the iPhone as examples of game changers in their respective industries, they noted the importance of carving out more profitable spaces in which your company can operate.

For instance, PodCamp, a Barcamp-style “unconference” for new media enthusiasts and professionals co-founded by Brogan and Christopher Penn in 2006, was a way of standing out and starting something. By creating a community around a shared passion, they created the Next Big Thing without quite realizing it. That flood of attention and enthusiasm benefited them even as it created momentum for everyone involved.

“The only difference between a community and an audience is which way you point the chairs.”
—Chris Brogan

Chris Brogan on the evolution of PodCamp (interview with Adele McAlear)

(Toward the end of the presentation, an audience member amended this advice as “listen and then start something.” Don’t forget to check out what’s already going on and start participating before starting something new. Perhaps your Next Big Thing has already begun and is waiting for you to join.)

3. Build Your Network Ahead of Need.

Just as the worst time to find a job is right after you’ve lost one, the worst time to find a customer is right when you need one. If you have built relationships with people before you need the sale, it’s that much easier to get them to be receptive to your offer.

4. Create a Culture of Giving.

Chris Brogan describes his call-to-action as “Come back—I’ll give you more.” He says that by creating a culture in which he makes a habit of doing things to help people, he’s “training people to be nice” to him. Indeed, by setting the example of giving value to people without asking for something in return, you train others to pay it forward in a similar fashion. It’s no wonder that eventually you would become the beneficiary of that goodwill. As with collaborative efforts like PodCamp, generosity and inclusion build conversation and engagement, which is a recipe for trust and attention.

And speaking of recipes…

5. Give your customers recipes in which you are the ingredient.

You won’t find a can of cream of mushroom soup that doesn’t have a recipe on the label that requires cream of mushroom soup. Likewise, you should frame yourself as a necessary ingredient in your customers’ success. I found this piece of advice to be one of the most concrete of the presentation, and one that many of us could run with, when we decide how it applies to us.

What would a recipe for your business look like? If you sell widgets, could you suggest projects on your Web site that use that widget? If you sell expertise, could you create an event around that area of knowledge? AMA members, write in with your ideas and get some collaboration going!

On August 27, 2009, Hilton Graham, Director of Digital Strategy with Hanes Brands, Inc, and Adam Keats, Senior Vice President at Weber Shandwick, discussed how Hanes is using social media to build better relationships with its customers.

What Is Social Media?

Social media is an umbrella term for the tools and technology people use to interact with content. It is the mechanism by which brand marketing has evolved from a monologue (one-to-one communication from advertiser to consumer) to a seriously super-charged dialogue in which many people can publish their message about a brand to many others.

Social media content is characterized as:

• Easy to interact with
• Easy to share
• Capable of generating realtime feedback
• Not being constrained by time and space

Social media has democratized brand messaging. Hanes was ready to join the conversation. Here is how they did it.

Hanes and Social Media: Tiptoeing into the Fray

Hanes’ overall strategy is to using social media tools to start a dialogue with their customers. They plan to accomplish this by:

• Developing a blogger network (the Hanes Comfort Crew)
• Tapping into their customers’ passion points (Passionately Pink for the Cure, Disney Celebrate in Comfort campaigns)
• Going where their customers are (Twitter, Facebook, real-world events such as the BlogHer conference)

I found it notable that several times during the presentation Graham described Hanes’ strategy as “tiptoeing.” To me this indicated a level of seriousness and humility that companies need if they are to survive and thrive in social spaces on the Web. Hanes is entering the social networking realm with a plan that prioritizes its customers’ needs and does not attempt to define or dominate the conversations that it starts with them.

The Hanes Comfort Crew

The Hanes Comfort Crew is a group of bloggers who broadly represent Hanes’ customer base: moms and dads, fashion and lifestyle mavens. These bloggers are not paid to write about Hanes. They were selected because they already had an affinity for the brand and had followings who were likely to share or be receptive to that affinity. Hanes gives these bloggers opportunities and ideas to talk about the Hanes brand in an authentic way. For instance, Hanes held its Comfort Crew kickoff by inviting the bloggers and their families to Disney World, where they discussed the products, tested out how the Hanes “wedgie-free panties” held up against a day of roller coaster rides, and created a lot of fun memories worth blogging home about.

Hanes also attended the BlogHer conference for women bloggers, where they built up even more buzz with their conversation-sparking T-shirt swag bags, footrubs at their Hanes Comfort Social, and expansion of the Comfort Crew (the original crew members each were invited to find 3–4 recruits from the conference attendees).

Hanes Got Crafty at the BlogHer Conference With These Cool T-shirt Totes

How Hanes Measures Success

Hanes takes a methodical approach to social media marketing, carefully crafting its message, setting goals, and measuring successes, just as it has always done with its traditional marketing tactics.

• They determined benchmarks for success in both traditional and social media.
• They looked at current brand conversations in both traditional and social media (e.g., number of blog posts about Hanes, number of tweets, print and TV ad circulation, etc.).
• They set goals to increase levels of conversation by 10% in both traditional and social media.
• They continued tracking and reporting monthly performance in each category.

2 Must-Do’s for Your Company

Graham and Keats left us with two cardinal rules for interacting with our customers in the social media realm:

1. When someone praises your brand, say Thank You.
2. If you make a mistake, apologize (quickly).

Other Takeaways

• Create real conversations by having interesting things to talk about and giving people things and experiences that they value. Hanes has a lot going on! They’re partnering with companies and celebrities we love to offer experiences worth talking about and participating in. I Googled Hanes and came up a T-shirt design competition to benefit Susan G. Komen for the Cure®, a Disney World vacation giveaway, a Michael Jordan celebrity invitational golf trip giveaway, an invitation to share your most embarrassing wedgie story (for a prize, of course!), dozens of news stories and videos, and reams of blog discussions.
• Don’t restrict your “social media marketing” to virtual venues. Go where your customers are in the real world, too.
• Create goals and success criteria for your social media marketing campaigns. Be methodical. Measure your results.
• Don’t say you’re great. Just be great. Social media gives people a way to spread their approval further and faster than ever before. Many thanks to Graham and Keats for showing how well Hanes has learned this lesson.

The economy has slowed and for many companies shrinking revenue means much smaller marketing budgets.  Shrinking marketing budgets can shrink results as well so what is the savvy marketer to do when looking for more results with drastically smaller budgets?  They recycle.

Five ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle:

1. Don’t throw out advertising too early - Redefine “worn out”.  Extend the schedules on which you would normally rotate your creative.  This turbulent economic climate leaves your customers and prospects seeking familiarity and stability.  When you find the effectiveness of your current creative waning, evolve what you have by introducing a new element rather than going completely back to the drawing board. For example, a sticker can take care of a change of address on a brochure. And when you do new things, plan with longer life and “refreshability” in mind.
2. Do something with that old bridesmaid’s dress you’re keeping - Reuse favorite advertising campaigns and direct mail pieces that worked well in the past.  Sure, a few things will have changed over the three years or so since you last ran an ad but editing is always less expensive than creating a new piece.  A few updated touches will create something new from something that might be old to you but thanks to audience turnover and poor long-term viewer retention, plenty of people will be enjoying for the first time.   For those that remember it, showing an old campaign can be a way to demonstrate that you are stable and give them a feeling of security.  Many large traditional brands have begun getting back to their roots and re-airing old campaigns for that reason alone.
3. Look in the trash pile - If you hired an ad agency for a project, chances are that they provided you with multiple concepts for earlier projects. Perhaps you can make use of one of the alternatives. There may be a charge to finish the piece, but it’s usually less expensive than starting over.
4. Car pool - See if anyone in your organization has unused seats.  Many organizations are siloed, especially around the area of technology.  Your IT department may have implemented a tool for Operations that might have marketing capabilities which are going unused.  A good example of a tool like this is Microsoft’s SharePoint. While your organization might be using it for internal collaboration, it is also an excellent tool to make external websites, secure micro-sites, promotional pages, and even to manage an electronic prospect dialogue strategy.
5. Switch to electric power - Marketers are still struggling to find ROI from broad use of the newest social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter but one thing is clear already.  The cost of reaching an audience using these tools is extremely low.  While they are not yet (and may never be) ready to carry the weight of a large portion of your marketing strategy this is a perfect time to replace some of the poorest performing media channels you pay for and add some inexpensive social media to your mix.

All of these ideas will be much more effective when used by a company with a well developed brand identity, and if yours doesn’t, there is no better time to focus on building your brand and taking bold brand actions.

Bill Cutshall

Kirsten Cutshall

On July 16, 2009, the AMA hosted speaker Shawna Coronado, who shared the story of her dramatic recovery from chronic illness and discussed the value of promoting health, green living, and community through our business practices and marketing.

As the author of Gardening Nude, Shawna Coronado’s approach to marketing is, as you might expect, down to earth and distinctly organic. Her recipe for personal and professional success is all about building and nurturing connections—between yourself and Nature, among your organization’s employees, and between your organization and the local community.

Coronado overcame chronic illness through greening her environment and nurturing personal connections in her life. In the process she also cultivated a highly successful landscaping business, and these days her enterprise has gone global thanks to social media.

She advised us to focus on bringing people together through community action and promoting a greener, healthier lifestyle within and outside of our organizations. Advertising a good message, practicing what you preach, and helping others, she asserted, is the kind of non-traditional marketing that builds your business while making a real difference.

Shawna’s 3 Key Ingredients to Energize Your Business and Your Life

1. Health. In the workplace, a wellness program can be a catalyst for profound change, not only teaching skills for improving health but also by demonstrating to employees that they are valued as individuals. When the organization sets the example of sharing information and empowering people to make positive changes, those people turn around and share the skills and knowledge they learned with others in their community.

2. Conservation. Greening your business makes financial sense, obviously. Send emails instead of snail mail and save on office supplies and postage. Xeriscape office property and lower your water bill. Other benefits are less tangible. Coronado noted that people exposed to an enhanced natural environment—even the sight of a single tree outside a window—are less prone to violence. Making positive changes, such as implementing a greening initiative, brings people together with a common sense of purpose, pride, and ownership.

3. Community. Coronado suggested that responding to the universal human need for community is a key component of business success. When people shop, for instance, they’re not just looking for a product.

• They crave a solution to a problem.
• They crave the meaning of life.
• They crave emotional gratification.
• They crave less isolation.

In short, customers are looking for personal satisfaction. All things being equal, you can stand out from the competition by recognizing and fulfilling that need (not just pushing a product at people). Use your company’s resources to educate and inspire others. Coronado, for instance, has shared her passion for gardening by partnering with a caterer to teach people how to prepare healthy and affordable meals.

The more people you touch in your community in a positive way, the more people you’ll be exposed to; hence, you’ll have more people to sell to. Doing good things for the community at large draws in people from outside your traditional customer base. You’ll also be contributing to the health of the local economy.

Coronado began her presentation by asking, “What if your business could make a difference?” So now I am asking you, Austin AMA members: How can your business make a difference in the community? What talents, passions, and resources can you share with others to get the word out while enriching our local community?

If you missed the presentation, I highly recommend you watch the video. Shawna Coronado is a fantastic presenter, and by the end of her talk the room was buzzing with energy, inspiration, and many questions about gardening!

Hungry for more green wisdom? Check out Coronado’s blogs, http://www.gardeningnude.com and http://thecasualgardener.blogspot.com.

Amy Gelfand (Gelfand Design) is a Web developer and writer. She is also an avid cyclist, SCUBA diver, and Web standards advocate. Amy specializes in designing accessible Web sites and spoiling her clients rotten. Contact her at info@gelfanddesign.com.

On May 21, 2009, marketers from all over Austin converged on the Hilton for the Online Marketing Summit (OMS) where the Austin AMA and the OMS jointly hosted the luncheon as a part of the Power Lunch Series. The speaker was Paula Berg, who shared her successes and failures in Social Media for Southwest Airlines.

Through my recent adventures into Social Media I have found chests full of theory and only a few hidden nuggets of practical usable knowledge. At least that was the case until Paula Berg took the stage last week at the Austin AMA - OMS luncheon. As our barbecue lunch began to settle, Paula walked us through her ups and downs in Social Media for Southwest Airlines. Like most companies, Southwest started their foray into Social Media with a blog, but Paul and her team have since utilized everything from Twitter to YouTube.

Southwest Airlines Emerging Media Presentation

I’m sure that Paula didn’t have a top ten list in mind while she was presenting, but in the spirit of Social Media here are the 10 things Paul taught us about Social Media:

1. It can help you reach a new demographic. The Nuts About Southwest blog started as a replacement for A&E’s Airline. The show allowed Southwest to reach a different demographic by giving customers an inside look at their culture. All you need to know is who you want to target and where they hang out.
2. It’s OK to not have a strategy as long as you have a strategy?!? Paula mentioned she didn’t have a strategy when they started the blog, but I think she was just being modest. The strategy, or maybe we should call it a goal, was to give customers an inside look at Southwest. What they didn’t anticipate was all the things the blog would become. Social Media is so new, don’t try and put too narrow a scope on your strategy. It’s very much like a box of chocolates…
3. It’s good to have a presence in Social Media before you have a crisis. Blogs in response to bad press are not seen as authentic. You need to create conversations using Social Media before it’s too late.
4. Immediate, passionate feedback exists at no cost. Southwest was able to avoid using too much ink when customers print boarding passes, and discovered the real reason people don’t like their open seating policy. Paula has been able to create an open relationship with customers where they offer feedback because they know they will be heard.
5. You need thick skin. Criticism, warranted or not, hurts. The lesson is to be prepared to take the good with the bad.
6. When the media won’t listen, take your message directly to the people. Paula and her team “fought fire with fire” when responding to a couple of young ladies claiming they were treated unfairly because of their good looks. Since the media was only interested in one side of the story, Southwest created a video response that went viral. The only videos viewed more that week were of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
7. Listen. Some of the most valuable information Paula received was from listening to what people where saying- especially on Twitter. Southwest first discovered their “rapping flight attendant” through a twitter post. It’s amazing to think you might learn something about your own company reading your Twitter feed!
8. Never stop the conversation. When people comment on your blog posts, respond. This goes right along with listening. Social Media is a two way street. Don’t ignore people when they talk to you.
9. Social Media causes sleeplessness. Someone asked Paula what the ROI is for Southwest’s Social Media efforts. From Southwest’s point of view, it is huge. The only cost for them was paying Paula, and, over the past three years, she has worked many hours of free overtime. Social Media never sleeps, and neither does Paula. If you decide to immerse yourself this world, be ready with a case of red bull and a trusty mobile device.
10. Southwest will be flying to Hawaii and Mexico in the near future. Paula was kind enough to slip us this insider information after her presentation. This doesn’t really have any Social Media implications, but twitter probably works better on the beach.

- Josh

From Paula Berg, Manager of Emerging Media for Southwest Airlines.  Paula will speak at the Austin AMA’s Keynote Luncheon, part of the Power Lunch Series, on Thursday, May 21.  This month’s luncheon will be held in association with the Online Marketing Summit, a national educational event for marketing professionals.

April marked our third full year in the blogosphere, and I think the following photo sums up our experience.

Whether on a plane, in a plane, or in a plane costume, we’ve been completely consumed with social media.  I often joke that we haven’t slept in three years - which would be funny if it weren’t true - but I think we’ve finally turned a corner.

First, we’ve grown.  What began with two passionate Employees pursuing social media in addition to their day jobs has become an “Emerging Media Team,” with six of the most talented, creative, and passionate people I know.  We can now take vacations without taking our blackberries (gasp!).  Not that we would, but theoretically, we could!

Second, after all of the blood, sweat and tears, the sleepless nights, the blunders and the triumphs, I think our social media efforts may have finally “come of age.”

If one blog year is equal to 10 human years, that would make us about 30.  And, if you look at our evolution, that seems about right.

Our first year, we were learning to crawl, figuring out how it all worked, and finding our voice.  Our second year, we found our stride, we discovered our rhythm, and we gained some confidence.   By year three, we were fearless, we took risks, and pushed the envelope.

And, now, as we enter our fourth year in the blogosphere, we’ve matured a bit, we know who we are and what we need to do.  Today, we’re focused on doing it all better.

While we’ve learned from our past mistakes, we know there will be more to come.  We named our team Emerging Media rather than social media, because we want to continue to grow and evolve.  And, if we want to stay ahead of the curve, we’ll have to continue to forge through unchartered territory.  But that’s what makes it exciting.

We’re ready to mount that corporate blogging horse, and as we say in the airline industry.getting there is half the fun!

At next week’s meeting, I’ll share where we’ve been, where we’re going, our biggest successes, our biggest failures, and every lesson we’ve learned along the way.  I hope you will join me.

In the meantime, feel free to share your successes or failures, lessons you’ve learned along the way, your fears moving forward, or anything you’d like to discuss when we meet next week.

I look forward to seeing you there!

Paula’s presentation at the April Keynote Luncheon will be held in association with the Online Marketing Summit on Thursday, May 21, 2009.  This national educational event for marketing professionals offers the opportunity to learn and share with hundreds of peers and experts in Social Media, Search, Email, Analytics, Behavioral Targeting, and Website Strategy.  You can register for the full event or for the luncheon only.  Join us!

Paula Berg is the Manager of Emerging Media for Southwest Airlines, the nation’s leading low-fare air carrier and the largest domestic airline in terms of Customers carried. Over the last three years, Paula has managed and developed the Company’s corporate blog, “Nuts About Southwest.” In 2007 and 2008, “Nuts” was named Best Blog by PR News and has been recognized in major publications ranging from Wired Magazine to The Wall Street Journal. In addition to managing the Company blog, Paula leads Southwest’s online communication and social media efforts.