A little departure from the usual today! I was recently interviewed for the upcoming PubCon conference in Honolulu mid-February (see the session grid & register here) and at which I am on a panel discussing Hawaii Social Media. Vanessa threw me what she thought was a soft-ball during the interview – “what places should people try when they are on Oahu?” and I stumbled a bit because we have sooo many fantastic places to eat here, we could have done a more than a hundred episodes on that topic alone. I decided to do a blog post on it to welcome PubCon attendees and give them something else to look forward to!  For those of you not joining us for PubCon, well, let this post serve as an opportunity to whet your appetite.

I crowd-sourced this list with a little help from my friends: @melissa808, @phillmoran @parkrat – thanks guys for your help!

In honor of our social media world, this lists features favorite restaurants who are active in social media; a foodie/social media mashup if you will. We do have great restaurants here who aren’t active in social media, but what fun is that?! Feel free to tweet me (@taracoomans) during PubCon if you want more recommendations!

Before I get into restaurants, let’s talk about what really matters: Pau Hana (after work) if your looking for a happy hour – check out the free app at Happy Hour Hawaii @HappyHourHawaii

Waikiki..or Close To It. 

Tiki’s Waikiki @tikisgrill
In addition to being on the best places to watch our famous sunsets, Tiki’s really rocks the poke (a local favorite, and yours too once you try it). Plus, they warm my heart because they bend over backwards to support our social media community here. Who knows, we might even have to do a Tweetup there! Our last Tweetup there was with Brian Solis and I didn’t hear him complain about the venue, so if its good enough for Brian, maybe its good enough for the rest of us.

Hanks Haute Dogs @hankshautedogs
With two locations, you can choose just off the beaten path or the International Marketplace location. You just HAVE to try the Hawaiian with pineapple relish, passion fruit mustard and grilled sweet Maui onions at the International Marketplace where its an exclusive. Check out the daily specials too which range from Rabbit and Veal to Lobster. Of course, you can get a more traditional hot dog at Hanks, but its these great combinations that have made THEM famous.

Pietro Hawaii @pietrohawaii : I haven’t actually been here yet, but it was recommended to me by @parkrat who is a known foodophile. They are near the Ala Moana area (just minutes from Waikiki). The food is descrived at a fusion of Italian and Japanese. Where else but here would you find that kind of experience?

Good to Grill @goodtogrill: Again, another I haven’t been to. But their breakfast looks amazing and their claim to fame is grilling on Kiawe Wood. Its on Kapahulu which is an easy jaunt from Waikiki.

Outside Waikiki – But worth the trip

Food Trucks..we like’em so much! 
Like much of the country – we have a food truck revolution happening here. And there is no better way to find out which food trucks are nearby that using the StreetGrindz app. It takes all the guess work out of the finding and all you have to do is dig in and enjoy. Follow @streetgrindz on Twitter for food truck updates too!

Soul  @pacificsoul
Soul food in Hawaii? Oh, yes. You’ll be glad you did. This ain’t your Mama’s cook’n..its waaaaay better. I can’t get enough of Shrimp and Cheesy grits..but you can take your pick of whatever warms your soul.

Freshest Fish Around: Nico’s  @nicosatpier38
Sitting LITERALLY right next to Honolulu’s fish market , you just can’t go wrong here. They’ve just opened a new location so everything old is new again…the fish has always been fresh here, so no worries. Just go. And enjoy.

Mavro’s @chefmavro
I hesitate to add this to the list since PubCon is the week of Valentine’s Day and this is a fantastic place to take a date. But maybe if you act fast, you can get that 9PM reservation.  Its a farm-to-table experience that you won’t forget at Mavro’s.

A few of the street trucks are rock’n Twitter too, coincidently, they are all beloved by our local foodies: 

Camille’s on Wheels: “Global Tacos” including Thai Pork, Quinoa, Chimichurri. And they don’t use plastic or styro which we love to see here in Hawaii. https://twitter.com/Camillesonwheel 
Shogunai Tacos: More world-wide tacos including Japanese, Greek and Korean.
Eat Gogi: “Asian-Mexican” comfort food (read: more yummy tacos), they have some excellent salsas too! 
OnoToGo: They serve Misoyaki Butterfish, a white flaky fish broiled with a miso-sake marinade. Totally hawaii!  
Yajima-ya : Japanese Udon, Soba and Donburi. Perfect hangover cures. Anyone?

Kailua

Prima @prima_kailua
I’ve only had the chance to eat here once, but I truly enjoyed it. Its a home-style place to eat, bustling and full of energy. And guess what? We made our reservation via Twitter. LOVE THAT.  The food was great and the service fantastic. Don’t let the distance from Waikiki scare you – its a short trip over the Pali (which is a beautiful drive) and Kailua-town is a great place to spend the day with its beautiful beaches and boutique shopping, Kailua is truly a beach community.

Cinnamon’s @cinnamonskailua
When my Uncle came to visit Hawaii after more than 10 years away, the only place he really want to go back to was Cinnamon’s for breakfast. Not sure what that says about him, but I know what it says about Cinnamon’s: they make breakfast memorable.

North Shore

Cholos Haleiwa @choloshaleiwa
The tweet stream of Cholos alone is enough to make you want to go there. Its wry and witty and slightly dangerous, just like their margaritas. After you hit the North Shore to watch some of those famous winter waves roll in, grab a margarita at Cholos and while fish tacos are a North Shore favorite, I highly recommend the Chile Verde. After 20 years in Arizona, I was prepared to be less than impressed, but they absolutely killed it. Its a great treat..and its actually spicy which I truly crave.

More local Honolulu foodie social media resources:

Ono Kine Grindz Food Blog  @okgrindz
NonStop Honolulu : Follow @melissa808, @nonstopmari

@808melissa recommends this post of her’s for out of town guests 

We hear all this discussion about corporations being more “human”. Social media users are urging companies of all sizes to create a relatable voice for themselves. But what happens when the relatable voice doesn’t match the company culture?

The recent example of the McDonalds campaign gone bad is…well, its just “Ouch.” A hashtag (#McDStories)  is highjacked and the result is a spiraling PR nightmare. I would argue that this isn’t a “truly” social campaign since the impetus was actual paid tweets with a designated hashtag, but we’ll leave that for another discussion. I’d also like to think that someone, somewhere at McDonalds could have seen this happening (check the official response), but let’s pretend for a moment that person who expressed concern was overridden by the developers of this particular campaign. Lots going on here and its impossible to know how this actually happened.

But what’s the real lesson here?

The real lesson is (drum roll please) transparency.

If you’re going to put it out there, you gotta back it up. Gone are the days of manufacturing stories that can’t be supported by the product or the company’s actual culture.

This McDonalds campaign was created because McDonalds KNOWS what people think of their processed food. They wanted to focus on the warm and fuzzy stories of McDonalds…and also their farmers (you may have seen those commercials). But the problem with McDonalds isn’t the farmers, its what happens to the food once it leaves the farm. And in fact, the idea that our best moments happen at McDonalds is even further fetched. Let’s face it. You don’t eat at McDonalds to create a memory, you eat at McDonalds because its there. Instead of owning the reality of why McDonalds is embraced by people, the people at McDonalds either A) told themselves that McDonalds is a major part of most people’s lives because they have such an affinity to McDonalds or B) tried to change the conversation in such a drastic way without considering the reality of how they actually do business.

I’d argue that McDonalds would have been better off embracing the reality of why people eat there. They know what to expect. Its fast. Its there. The kids can and will eat it in the car. That’s the kind of reality that McDonalds can back up. That’s the story that’s consistent with the McDonalds brand.

Be honest with yourself. What’s the REAL story of your customers? If you don’t know it, then spend some time with a listening campaign. Find out what people are really saying about you, your competitors, your product. You’ll gain real and valuable insight. Who knows, it might even change the way you do business.

Because ultimately, the social media sphere will only listen to YOUR company stories, if you’re already listening to theirs. Before you take to the social networks with your company stories, be sure your company can back up the story. You can’t say your #1 in customer service when the average hold time at your company is 15 minutes.

But, and this is really important, this is why its important to do a deep dive about your company culture and LISTEN in social media before you dive head first into social media. If the conversation about your company isn’t where you want it to be, then you can join the conversation and participate in the conversation, strategically. But be wary of just jamming messaging down the throats of social media users. If people are saying negative things about your company, you might consider how you’ll internalize that feedback, because once you put yourself out there, that feedback will come flooding in even stronger.  No matter what size company you are – there is a story behind your brand, your company. The better you know and understand that story, the better your social media experience will be.

That’s not to say that companies can’t use social media to set or start a conversation. But it is to say that if there is a conversation already happening, you’ll have a hard time if you try to bull doze your way through it by constantly trying to change the conversation. You might consider JOINING the conversation first, creating some relationships, then moving the conversation in the direction you’d like. This is why the middle of a crisis isn’t the time to start a social media campaign.

It all goes back to “Everything I learned in social media I learned in Kindergarten”

Do a gut check:  If you can’t look your customers in the eye when you’re saying something, should you really be saying it? Just say’n.

Photo credit: Creative Commons Yum9Me

This is the 2nd year that I’ve published my social media resolutions. Reading over last year’s resolutions I’m proud to say that I stay committed to each of them fairly well, though I some I outright failed at doing one of them. That said, I am glad I wrote my resolutions for 2011 as it gave me focus. Here’s my 2011 scorecard:

√ Fine Tune Karma for Business: I kept at this social media mantra this year and it worked for me and it worked for my clients. I’ll keep doing it.

∞ Beyond The Numbers: I definitely worked with people to think beyond follower counts, but I’m not completely satisfied with my own goal to build more scaleable social media programs. I think there is definitely more room for growth here.

√ Tell the Story Better: Yes! I’m pleased with the social media story telling this year. However, I’d like to do more, better.

∞ Write more: I said I would write 2X/week in my blog. I failed. But I’m getting back on the horse…watch me ride! Yahooo!!

√ Social media is the Farm, not the Silo: This message is being heard and I’m thrilled to have been a part of it. My personal clients and others are starting to see the light and I couldn’t be happier. Check.

√ Show more personality in Social Media: I did this, and I’m glad I did, but it could have been even better. I’ll call this one “ongoing”

Since several of those resolutions are ongoing and I’ll continue to keep these on my radar, I’ve developed a (shorter) list of resolutions for 2012 that I intend to focus on as well.

Think outside the blog:

Don’t get me wrong, this blog remains my number one love in terms of content creation, however, there are so many opportunities to create content, its a shame to limit it to the blog only. I’ve dipped my feet into Vimeo and Slideshare this year and I’d like to continue to utilize those two platforms more regularly. From a business perspective, both of those two platforms work for me. But more importantly, they make me push up against my normal communication style (of writing). Because I am not a fantastic movie editor or graphic designer, using these mediums will require me to be creative. Creative is good. It also means that I’ll be living by the mantra that it doesn’t always have to be perfect. That’s OK too..although a little harder to swallow.

What platforms will you use in 2012 that are you aren’t making the most of right now?

Distinguish my social media profiles:

I’ve been using Facebook and Twitter for years and with the introduction of Google+ (which I am enjoying) I’ll be defining what information you’ll see where. What I share on the three social networks will be different and I’ll be spending sometime experimenting and defining that better for myself and my audiences.  Along those lines, I’ll be making better use of my businesses Facebook page and Google+Page. I’m seriously considering limiting the posting of my blog on my personal profiles (with the exception of Twitter) and leaving the blog promotion strictly to the pages, allowing my personal presence to be more..well, personal, on my profiles.

Have you given thought to what you share and where you share it? How are your audiences different on each platform?

Participate. Support. More.

This is a totally loaded gun, but I’m going to say it: I want more conversation. I’ll be making a better effort to converse with people and do more outreach. I’ve gotten a little lazy, especially on Twitter, about STARTING the conversation. I participate in a lot of convos, but I don’t necessarily start them. That’s a crummy way to create relationships. I don’t like that I’ve gotten lazy and its going to stop. I’ll also be dropping by more blogs and writing more comments where I have something to share. Truth is, I read a lot of blogs, but sometimes I am too lazy to comment. I’m also going to be seeking out the blogs of people who aren’t “famous.” Seems we all read a lot of the same stuff, I’d like to find people who others aren’t necessarily reading and support them. I also want to find more blogs with viewpoints different from my own. As I said earlier this year “I need to spend less time with people who think like me and more time with people who don’t.” To that end, if you see something you hear you don’t like or agree with, feel free to challenge me. I’m up for it and you won’t get crucified by me.

How do you use your social media currency to support others?

What Social Media Resolutions do YOU have for 2012?  Can’t wait to hear! You can also let me know here, on G+ Look forward to hearing from you…and HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE! 

 Photo: Creative Commons

2011 was a game changing year in social media. In some ways, social media is growing up, but in other ways we’re just getting started. But this is a dynamic field and we’re sure to see changes in 2012 too? What should businesses plan for in 2012 and what should they be looking for? I’m putting my Carnack hat on and writing down the trends I see in social media for 2012.

Social CRM:

I predict in 2012, I think we’re going to see an increasing attempt to translate digital profiles back to a customer. Businesses are looking for ways to see the lifespan of their “social circle”, they want to know what platforms I follow them on, if I follow them on all three and which of my email addresses tie back to the profile. Consumers aren’t likely to just give that information away, businesses will have to get creative to get consumers to connect the dots for them and even then, they are likely to only initially be able to connect the dots with their most active and passionate customers. But 2012 will see some changes in this area and as a marketer, its none too soon.

Cross-Department Social Media:

As businesses continue to face the reality that community management (social media) requires time and committment, they are likely to empower more and more employees to work on the “social media team” the social media team won’t be a coming exclusively from the marketing and communication teams. Rather, the social media team will be comprised of the best communicators within each department.  This will lead to:

More integrated social media campaigns:

Social media will be an integral part of business communication. Businesses won’t launch an initiative without considering how they’ll support it within social media. Whether the initiative is a new business product or simply a campaign, we’ll see businesses working those ideas and campaigns more throughly into their social media platforms.

Further segmentation of social platforms.

With the launch of G+, we’re seeing that people are picking their favorite platforms and spending their social media time there. Much like radio and TV have certain demographic segmentation, social platforms will too. But the segmentation won’t be based entirely on the demographics we think of for TV or radio, rather it will be as much about how they consume information, how frequently they share it and time spent on the platform.

Social ROI:

The social media sphere will have more pressure on it to create programs that suit business objectives and then show the ROI. By the end of 2012, we’ll start to see some beginnings of what makes up social ROI. We won’t quite be universally using the same ROI model, but as an industry, we’ll be closer to agreeing to some best practices.

Content, Content, Video:

Creating content will continue to be a considerable aspect of a social media program. We’ll see more and more video as the content type of choice. Its faster, easier to consume and more entertaining. The challenge for most businesses will be creating video content that creates conversation and isn’t just a commercial. I think we’ll see more video content that also incorporates calls to action on social platforms also.

Game-ification:

We’re likely to see an increase in web-based and social platform-based games that consumers want to play, they’ll gladly give away their email address in conjunction with a social profile for access. These games are the domain of enterprise and large businesses today, but by the end of 2012, you’ll start to see more games and with that a higher likelihood of affordability for medium-sized businesses. I don’t think it will be affordable for most small businesses yet, but I’d love it if I were wrong!  The curve ball here might be Facebook. Facebook may make it easier for small businesses to create interactive experiences within Facebook.

Social and mobile integration:

Businesses will have to begin to think about how and when people are consuming content and engaging on social platforms. 49% of people use their smart phones to do social networking. We’ll have to think more about how what we post appears and engages mobile users. That’s another reason why gaming will continue to grow, because 52% of smart phone users also play games on their phones.

Social online will merge into social online:

We’ll start to see more and more relationship solidification happen in real and social channels. By that I mean, business (and people) will be looking for ways to take the social engagement into the real life scenario. Social media for events is already hot, but we’ll start to see businesses of all types work their content and social efforts towards real-life experiences. Businesses will also be looking to location apps more often for this reason as well.

Its amazing, there are literally thousands of self proclaimed experts, but actually finding one in the wild is about as exciting as spotting a unicorn.  While unicorns are fairly easy to identify when you see one, this isn’t really the case with experts. In a world of so-called experts, how do you define an expert? How do you know if the person your thinking of working with is a hack or really able to be an expert for you?

Its not an easy question to answer, but I thought it would be worthy to discuss what makes an expert so special and how they differ from other professionals in their field. While I typically discuss social media, and these expert requirements certainly apply to finding a social media expert, they aren’t limited to social media experts. If you’re looking to talk to an expert, think about these things before moving forward.

An expert never stops learning:

To be an expert is to be an outstanding student, a natural curiosity. They actively spend time reading and thinking. That means that an expert invests time to improve his/her own skill set to benefit his/her projects, programs and clients. Its worth asking an expert how they keep up with changes, how much time they spend learning. But its even more than that, an expert shares. Why is this important? Because when a person learns information, the single best way to incorporate that knowledge is to share it. That’s why so many people who are considered experts are also speakers and bloggers, writers.  They know the secret to continued thought leadership is to share. They also know that by sharing, they engender conversations, comments and ideas which help them flesh out their ideas and opinions, which takes us back to the fact that most experts are outstanding students.

An expert has had learning experiences and even (gasp!) failures.

If you aren’t taking chances, then you’ve never had a failure. Experts take a risk now and then and they learn from the experience. Finding an expert means finding someone who will discuss what they’ve learned and what they would do differently next time. While experts may not use the language of “failure”, they certainly use the language of “learning lessons”. Show me someone who has never failed and I’ll show you either a noob or a boob.  No expert is perfect and if they can’t find learning lessons in past programs or clients, then they really aren’t asking the right questions.

Experts will ask probing questions.

Asking questions is the very basis to success. Some of those questions will require the client to dig deep to find the most honest answer. Asking questions about your business, your clients, your goals, these are all the kinds of questions that an expert should ask. But if your expert isn’t asking you deep questions, then you’re probably not dealing with an expert. Its the job of the expert to ask these questions so he/she knows how they can help you.  If you aren’t comfortable sharing the answers with your expert, ask them to sign an NDA, an expert won’t mind. An expert will want to get to the deepest part of the challenge and will want to do so quickly.

Experts value your time. And theirs.

An expert isn’t likely to ask you to go to coffee just to chat, and you shouldn’t ask an expert to do that either. Experts are busy people because the business of learning and sharing never stops. While that doesn’t mean an expert doesn’t have a life outside of work, its unlikely that an expert will spend his working hours lounging around at a Starbucks. An expert has typically spent hours honing their craft and you can’t learn everything they know simply by having a cup of coffee with them anyway. An expert won’t waste your time talking about him/herself on an intro meeting instead an expert will spend the time getting to know you, your business challenges and goals.  But more than that, an expert will be able to ask you the right questions and propose a solution efficiently. They also won’t be the cheapest person you speak with and that’s because they invest in you, your project and outcomes. You can hire less expensive people, but you can also go to a horse ranch if you want to see a horse. The unicorn is a rare breed and so is the expert. Working with them will save you frustration and time.

Photo: Creative Commons

Psst: while we’re at it, here’s an article I wrote earlier this year about outsourcing that still holds true: What you should and shouldn’t outsource.

What’s it all about? All this social media marketing? All this chatter about humanizing and engagement? Why bother using social media for customer service?

I wanted to share an experience I had last week with you.  I’ll let you draw your own conclusions, but as a premise for discussion: How would you feel about this company if you were me? And taking it to the next level, how hard would it be to do this for your own company?

11/9/2011 – Sprout Social excitedly announces it newest platform upgrades, a major overhaul, to its users with this email outlining the latest changes. They are clearly excited and hope I will be too! And they thank me for being a customer, right away before launching into details about the upgrades.

11/9/2011 (12 hours later): Oops. Sprout Social’s new release isn’t going so well, there are some unanticipated glitches. A not so glossy email comes out from the CEO, with his personal email address. Its short, its sweet, its apologetic and earnest and its not the slick promotional email I got the other day. It even includes his actual email (which I’ve removed) and it appears to have been actually written by a human if not actually the CEO. But the email is so likable, I’m inclined to want to believe the CEO wrote it.

Another similarly unformatted email follows 4 days later. It includes updates on the specific challenges they’ve been having and reassurance that they are working diligently to make the fixes.  The second email is significantly longer, but Justyn makes a joke about it and says he would apologize a bunch more if the email weren’t already so long.

So for most companies, the crisis is mostly over, situation averted. They had some road bumps, they apologized. It isn’t a federal case, everyone can move on.

But they aren’t done. They’re monitoring. On G+ none the less, the least populated social network out there (but with the highest geeks/post ratio). A couple of days earlier, I noticed this person from Sprout Social started following me. I don’tknow if she found me through keyword search or was simply finding the names of their customers. Either way – I thought it was very cool that one of the companies I purchase from wants to follow ME. Instead of asking me to follow THEM.

And after I comment on a post by Gwen, their rep pops in for a really human conversation…(even though the marketer in her comes out when she can’t tell me the answer to my question):

So, if this was your company:  How would you have reacted? Who would be doing this outreach, if at all? What about using a real email address from the CEO? Would you do it? Interesting question, right? Is your social media person this human? Do you think customer service via social media is a waste of time?

As a customer, how does it make  you feel when you think the business is listening?

Can’t wait to hear from you!

PS: Don’t you think its appropriate we’re talking about customer service on Black Friday?! Since I stay out of that particular fray, let me know if you see any cool examples of customer service on Black Friday…I have some ideas, but I’d love to hear what you guys experience!!

When I last wrote about Sprout Social in May 2011, I’d been using it for a couple of months. And while I found a use for it, I only used it sporadically because it really wasn’t offering anything truly unique. But for $92/year it wasn’t breaking the bank either.  There was a long list of “Meh.” Well, either my blog has some pull, or the survey they sent over the summer was put to good use because Sprout Social is growing up. I think its headed into the social CRM space, which we desperately need in the smaller-than-enterprise world. But when I asked that question, I got an indirect response at best (see Friday’s blog post).

Sprout Social did have some implementation challenges when they released their new features, so I wanted to wait until the dust cleared to write about it. It appears as though the dust has settled and its a new day in social media management. There are some very handy and cool features in the new Sprout Social, here are my faves:

Contact History

This is one reason why I think Sprout Social is trying to move into the social CRM space (I’m hoping and praying they do). This feature allows you to see Twitter conversations with a particular contact, from this dashboard you can add them to lists, add additional contact info, see @mentions. Its a great resource for putting a particular contact into context.

In the picture at right, I’m looking at the conversations I’ve had with Gwen Woltz, SMCHI (Social Media Club Hawaii) Professional and Communications Committee member. She and I do 90% of our communication with one another via Twitter. And it shows. But what’s even cooler, is that ALL of our conversations back to the beginning (9 mos ago). That’s right, way, way after I can’t find the conversation anywhere else, I have it here for reference. This is super ideal for companies who are trying to keep track of their Twitter conversations and has serious CRM implications. Now, if we could only match those darn Facebook conversations, we’d be golden.

Discovery:

Here you can sort your followers in different ways. You can see who you’ve had conversations with recently (or more specifically people who you’ve mentioned or who have mentioned you). I’m not really sure how accurate this is as I THINK it still incorporates Twitter DMs and since DMs have devolved into a “spam” inbox, I wouldn’t call it a place where a lot of conversations take place. I’m not ENTIRELY sure that sums up the “Conversation” potential, but I understand what they are trying to do here and I appreciate it. I also like that I can filter to “influential only”  I bet the filtering options are going to increase… and I hope they add location filtering soon.

Also under “Discovery” are some ways to clean out your Twitter followers (inactives, don’t follow back, etc.). You do have to “unfollow” one at a time, but its still a handy tool if you’ve reached that mysterious Twitter ratio of followers vs. followed.

Twitter Comparison:

Ever wonder how you compare to your biggest competitor? Twitter comparison gives you a place to start.  I really recommend treading lightly here. While this is an addictive tool, its also hard to bring it back to an actual business objective. Do you really CARE how many followers you have compared to someone else? If you do, I hope it relates specifically back to your brand valuation. That said, I’m excited to welcome 262 new followers on Twitter last week…but that looks pretty lame next to Mari Smith’s 3400+. I actually think the more interesting comparisons here are engagements over mentions, that has the beginnings of an interesting KPI.

General Reports:

One of the things I originally liked about Sprout Social is the easy at a glance interface. The Reports segment remains easy to review and glance, but its got some new added features. Including Top tweets and Facebook Page posts. I love seeing that information as it helps me better understand what captures the imagination of my audience.

Here too you can see from a single dashboard the Google Analytics info, Twitter info and Facebook pages info. I also appreciate the ability to set custom dates and export information.  New to the reports is the ability to connect locations through Gowalla or Foursquare. If you’re a retailer or restaurant, this is a very, very handy add-on, and its available at the $39/month level.

Google Reader Feeds:

Many months ago when I filled out that survey Sprout Social sent me, I specifically remember a question about what it would take to be the only tool I use to post. While I’m still not using Sprout Social to post, the addition of my Google Reader feeds to its interface is mighty helpful, and again, its the interface that makes it manageable here.

Sprout Social InBox and Scheduling:

This is really where they’ve put forth some serious effort. Its easy to sort and share messages from different platforms, this interface is actually much easier than Hootsuite’s, and like Hootsuite, there are team member tasks and assignment options. This doesn’t replace Hootsuite for me yet, because I like to be able to see my streams, I like to know what my contacts are talking about. But with SocialSprout’s key word.

All in all, the Sprout Social team has made some big improvements to the platform…and without surprise, those big improvements come with some heftier price tags. I’d love to see some demos to determine if the Small Biz and Deluxe plans offer enough value to justify the expense for the average small business owner. And I’m not sure that agency package is all that compelling for the price tag. Regardless, I like the updates to Sprout Social and I can see myself using it more at the price point I’m paying, but I also noticed that the level at which I currently pay is going up by about 15%. That’s a big increase, so when it comes time to renew, I’ll reevaluate how often I’m using the tool and decide for myself then how much I need it for myself and my clients.

TELL ME: If you use Sprout Social, what’s you’re favorite new feature? And what feature are these types of tools most missing?

PS: HAPPY (American)  THANKSGIVING! See you on the flip side of the official start of the holidays here in the USA!

While using social media for business purposes has been around for the better part of 5 years now, we’re reaching a place where businesses are starting to ask “what should I be doing with social media?” Its a fair question. After dabbling in Facebook or opening a Twitter account, the next question is often, “what now?” And much of this questioning is driving the conversation for ROI. But before we dig into ROI, its worth asking some of the tough questions about why we’re even talking about social media.

Why Social Media?

Now, you know that I am an advocate for measuring social media, I also think its also time that we ask ourselves what we are really trying to accomplish with social media. What makes social media so special and how can we really achieve business objectives with it? Every single time I meet a new client I ask “Why Social Media?” I purposely ask the question very broadly, but I also usually get the broad answer of “we want to increase sales.” Its an honest answer. But its also the easiest. Without meeting a single client, without a single email, I already know this answer. But its time to dig deeper, I’m suggesting you dig deeper and I’m asking my clients to also. What are some of the questions we should ask ourselves about the social media opportunities before we get started?

What is our impediment to increased sales?

Do we need to create awareness? Do we need to distinguish ourselves from our competition? Do we want to create community? Do we need to drive traffic to a digital or real-life location? Do we have a PR issue to overcome? These are different goals and social media can be used in each case, but its best if we focus on one, at least initially. Depending on the ability for the company to support the objective, we may initially start with one channel. Its best to really narrow this down, because by answering this question as specifically as possible, we also set ourselves on the right track for ROI measurement.

How are we communicating with our audience now?

A strong mailing list is a great start to social media, as is a website  that supports social sharing and perhaps even a blog. If you are a new business, then its all the more important that your website have sharing capabilities and be integrated with social media. And building that email list will probably be one of your social priorities. If you are an existing business, your customers and clients are probably already using social platforms to talk about their experiences with you. Look into those platforms and start building relationships with people who are talking about you-its back to listen first, and then engage.

Who is our online and social audience?

Do we know who influences our audience in social media? There are certain audience segments where people have carved out niches for themselves, particularly in travel, Moms and B2B spaces. Its good to know and follow these people. Social media can help you create a relationship with these people who influence your potential customers. We tread lightly here because we are creating a relationship, not a promotional partnership. We may be choose to partner with influencial people in social media, but let’s start with identifying who they and why our audience is so passionate about them. Listen first. Talk later.

How can we use social media to support existing mediums and marketing channels?

How can we integrate social media into our existing marketing programs: I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, social media is the farm not the silo. Don’t let your social media program live in the dark and don’t let your other marketing initiatives live without social media. Integrate! Let it work with the rest of your initiatives. If your using print, let’s find ways to integrate or even measure your print impact. Events and social media go together like two peas in a pod, there are lots of great opportunities for those two to work together. Look for ways to tie in a particular campaign across the board!

Are we ready for social media?

Are we open to a culture shift? Social media is more than a marketing channel, it really is a culture, a different way of looking at communication.

Its more transparent, more human than traditional marketing, its more individualized and very, very much about supporting customers so they can support you. Social media’s transparency requires that you consider how all your departments and staff can benefit from and participate in social media. Incorporating social media throughout the company is a great way to spread the work, and as we move forward, we truly are going to have to embrace the fact that each employee can and should take a role in marketing as so beautifully articulated by this McKinsey Quarterly article. Really ask yourself if there is any reason why your company’s employees shouldn’t be engaging current and potential customers. You hired them because they understand your business, shouldn’t they understand your customers too?

About a year ago I started advising my clients to “Stop Thinking Like a Marketer and Start Thinking Like a Human.” In other words, think about what makes YOU interested in companies and brands. Think about how you would like to be communicated with if you were YOUR customer.  Its hard to get out of our own heads sometimes, but start thinking about what would make you read more. That’s the essence of social media communication.

Are we committed or is this an experiment?

I strongly discourage dropping in and out of social media. Its sort of like not answering your phone…in both cases, it does nothing to create customer trust. If you just aren’t sure that you’re totally ready for social media, grab your handles and domain names on as many social media outlets as you can and leave a post or similar that directs people to the channels that you do monitor (your website for example). Also spend some time monitoring the social web for mentions of your company and products, this may help you understand the places you SHOULD go when you’re ready. BUT-and this is a BOB, big ‘ol but- remember that if you are going to start responding and engaging on social media that you should keep it up and also remember that the time to build community is NOT when you have a crisis, or a new product. You want community in place BEFORE you need them, which means you’ve already created the relationship.

Its really important that we get to the bottom of these hard questions before we leap into social media. You may find that answering these questions is a process of listening, learning and testing. Yes, these questions may unearth other questions, but if we’re to reap the full benefits of social media then we’ve got to plant the right seeds to get there.

QUESTION: What questions would you add to this list? Did you do this when your company started in social media? Please, let me know!

We’ve been talk A LOT about social media analytics, metrics and measurement here on this blog. In part that’s because I really believe that social media is an important tool and for the tool to be appreciated by “higher ups” aka your boss, there has to be measurement associated with it, particularly since we’re still fighting the battle of whether social media is a viable business tool at all. As evidenced by this video created by the Unmarketing Team of Scott Stratton, which tickled the funny bone of lots of social media peeps last week:

Social Media ROI by UnMarketing

Social Media Metrics and ROI for You

As funny as it is, this video doesn’t really address the measurement issue, it sort of goes round and round in a comical way. While that’s the way so many conversations are taking place, its mostly because there is no single way to measure social media. Its still a moving target – in fact, I believe it will STAY a moving target. Right now and in the future, measuring social media will come down to determining your definition of success and measuring against that definition. In otherwords, who gives a hoot what works for someone else – you want to create a program that works for YOU and your needs!

I thought it would be helpful to discuss some of the elements that can and should be measured in social media. Because social media ROI is really a combination of many different types of valuations. I use these elements in my ROI tool and find its extremely valuable in helping people see the big picture of social media value.

What we can measure for social media ROI

CPC: Cost per Click advertising is still a highly effective way to drive traffic to a website, but how does social media compare? While its still a relative bargin, social media can also drive traffic to a website without the same costs associated. When I consider the value of social media, I consider how much it would cost for my client to have purchased that equivalent traffic. If we are running a CPC campaign at the same time, then its even better because we can compare the differences in visitors in terms of conversion, length of time on the website, etc. But even without running a CPC campaign, we know that there is a value to website traffic, and we compare the measurement to the going-rate cost.

AVE: Advertising Value Equivalent is something that PR professionals have been using for years. While there is some dispute in the PR community about AVE, it is still the most widely used. Essentially, AVE looks at earned media and assigns a value to it based on equivalent advertising rates. I personally consider this a conservative valuation since independent coverage of your product, company or services holds more weight than an advertisement. But the AVE model does allow you to take that into account by assigning a weight to the coverage. Social media often generates attention in traditional media, so when that is the case, I include AVE in the ROI model.

Word of Mouth: Word of Mouth is essentially the value of conversation others are having around your company, product or brand. This is perhaps one of the hardest things to measure in social media. I measure it most frequently when there is an influencer program, but that isn’t the only time its valuable.  In my model I based the use of Word of Mouth off of McKinsey Research valuation of Word of Mouth (WOM) value which looks at Relevance, Trust and Quantity.  I also assign a weight to those factors, depending on importance to client and value.  Within WOM valuation, we include  things like Facebook comments and shares on Twitter from an  influencer or from the company itself. The new Google Ripples, which is used for Google+ postings,  is going to be able to give some exciting graphical evidence to WOM valuation. I anticipate that Google will also begin to add a value to those shares much the way they do in Google Analytics for clicks or other pre-set goals.

Sales and Brand Value: Taking a baseline before, after and during a campaign will often provide some enlightening information. We definitely want to review not only number of sales, but average sale and return customers before, during and after a campaign. For this to be efficiently measured, we’ll need to make sure that we’re collecting the information consistently. Its easiest to do this with digital sales, but its possible to do it with person-to-person sales as well.

Customer Service (savings): If we measure how social media customer service compares to phone or email customer service, we can find out if there are efficiencies of using social media as a customer service tool. When there is a cost savings, then that should be included in the ROI model as well.  For example, if a staff person spends an average of 4 minutes per inquiry responding via email, but only 2 minutes responding via Facebook or Twitter, that’s a 50% decrease in time which adds up to a cost savings.

You may decide that you want to include other elements into your own ROI model and to be fair, mine is modified a little bit for each campaign. Not everything element will be included, however, make sure you aren’t missing anything that SHOULD be included.  For more info, you can see my presentation on SlideShare.net.

What other things do you think you should measure that aren’t include here?

Even though I am a creative at heart, so it strikes a lot of people as strange that I’m caught so often discussing measurement and analytics. Here’s the thing: I’m also strategic and an activator. And because of my strategic side, I’ve been doing a lot of work over the last year on social media analytics and ROI models. Social media is unlike any other medium we’ve seen before, and so we’ve got to measure it differently.

But I DO believe we can borrow established methodology (why reinvent ALL the wheels?)  from Word of Mouth, PR and advertising models and most importantly, we can approach measuring social media in the same exact way we measure other marketing programs – by tying them to business goals and using Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s). Identifiying business objectives, how we establish KPI’s and what information we pull, that’s where the details are. There is no generally accepted “right or wrong” way to measure social media, but I do believe that measuring and tracking is important. No matter what type of measurement you establish, the key is to stick with it and let the metric tell the story.

I’m really proud of the ROI model I’ve developed for use with my clients. I feel it takes into account the different areas in which social media can impact (PR, Digital Marketing, Product Development, Customer Service) and even more importantly, it gives the client some flexibility to weight certain elements so they reflect the business goals of their company. In a presentation last week at Social Media Club of Hawaii (SMCHI) I presented the audience with my “Road Map” for developing KPI’s and an ROI model. I’ve added the slide show here for your review.

I also had the pleasure of joining Rob Bertolf and Hal Wilkerson on a panel to discuss social media measurement at the Social Media Summit of Hawaii (#SMSHI). If you watch the video, you’ll get to see me having a “Klout Conniption” which is my reaction to using Klout as a business tool.  I’ve also added my slides for measurement and ROI. This presentation gives you an overview (a roadmap) of how to develop you’re own Metrics and ROI.

If you are interested in discussing social media analytics further or would like to have an ROI analysis on your program, please feel free to contact me.

Aaaand..now for our show:

SMSHI 2011 What, Why and How of Social Media from Hal Wilkerson on Vimeo.