Jeremiah Owyang was kind enough to tap SHIFT Communications among a dozen or so other Social Media thought leaders to investigate Best Practices in Facebook Marketing.  The result is a must-read:

(You can count this as more great content from Altimeter Group — yet again offered FREE!  Think they’re giving the gang at Forrester and Gartner Group agita, yet?)

The hilarious Old Spice campaign from 2 weeks ago rightfully caused a viral stir.  The project was funny and well-executed.  Whether or not the brand’s sales rise remains to be seen, but my guess is that, to most marketers, it won’t matter: they’ll press their agencies to “do something as cool as the Old Spice campaign” whether it passes the ROI test or not. 

Two things occured to me during the campaign.

#1 was that consumers LOVED the fact that the brand’s spokesman interacted with them directly.  This “1:1:many” approach has long been touted as one of the key benefits of Social Media Marketing, and it was writ large via Old Spice.  I say “1:1:many” to denote that the interactions with the spokesman were 1:1, but the dialogue was performed in public, thus the “many” (and thus, the outsized credit attributed to the responses). 

This “customization as performance” model is sure to strike many as the Next Big Thing in Marketing, despite the fact that it’s been done in smallball fashion via the public-facing Customer Service efforts of brands like Comcast, Dell, etc.

#2 was a caution: what happens in public can be derailed in public. 

As I tweeted about during the campaign, actress Alyssa Milano’s public challenge to Old Spice to donate $100K to Gulf Cleanup efforts went unanswered.  The challenge was covered in high-profile outlets like the Huffington Post, and still went unanswered… To date, no one seems very interested in helping Ms. Milano’s challenge go viral, but, one can easily imagine how a fun campaign like Old Spice’s could get caught up in an unforseen imbroglio that destroyed all that newfound goodwill! 

Welcome to the future. It won’t always smell as good as Old Spice.

We’ve been on a bit of a hiring binge at SHIFT lately, and as part of that process we’ll routinely tell all our friends on Facebook and Twitter that we’re looking for “rockstars.”

But every professional services firm touts their rockstars, everyone’s looking for rockstars.  Look at any number of PR pros’ LinkedIn profiles and you’ll soon grow nauseous at the number of “rockstar” descriptions.

So what makes a PR rockstar?  Let’s start with what a rockstar is NOT. 

A rockstar is NOT just someone who gets a lot of ink for their clients.  Getting a lot of ink for clients is part of the job; it’s tablestakes, really.  A rockstar is NOT just someone who does a great job in newbiz pitches.  Again, this is part of the job description.

To be sure, you can’t be a PR rockstar WITHOUT getting a lot of ink and impressing newbiz prospects, but these attributes alone are not enough to excel beyond your peers.

The true “rockstar” does their job, and then goes beyond.  The rockstar is:

ANTICIPATORY: the rockstar sees around the bend; they counteract “issues” before they become “gripes.”  They know from experience and/or common sense how to get ahead of challenges, and they do a good job of sharing that knowledge with their co-workers and peers.

THOUGHTFUL: the rockstar gets to know their clients so well that they can spot trends even before the client does, and can recommend strategies that would allow the client to exploit these industry changes ahead of the pack.

PROACTIVE: the rockstar knows that the Agency has needs above and beyond “account services.”  They research and recommend ways for the firm to be more efficient or successful.

CURIOUS: the rockstar asks “why” a lot — not from cluelessness, but from a desire to grasp or grapple with the difficult concepts of-interest to their clients or of importance to the Agency or industry.  A curious PR pro is a creative PR pro.

CARING: the rockstar cares about the Agency’s reputation; about their team mates’ workloads; about typos in a memo or newbiz deck.  The rockstar cares about “Perfection” enough to strive mightily for it … but also cares enough about their colleagues (and their own mental health!) enough to know that “Perfection” is not always possible.

You don’t need to be a rockstar to thrive in a PR agency.  There are myriad ways to show value.  You can get tons of ink and/or know every influencer and/or score big in newbiz, and you’ll have a job for life. But that makes you a terrific PR pro, not a rockstar.

Do you fit the rockstar profile?  Cuz we are still hiring!

What do you do when a client wants “the truth?”

What do you do when the client wants to know what you really think about how their in-house PR manager is doing, or howcum their story isn’t getting more ink, or whether their strategy is off-kilter?

You wouldn’t think “the Truth” could be such a sticky issue, but it certainly can be, due to the lopsided nature of the relationship.  Truth exists only when there is some level of equality. 

If the PR pro’s mortgage payment depends on the client’s happiness, they won’t tell the client a truth that will make them unhappy.  They’ll try to avoid doing so, or will couch the truth in a wrapper so laden in diplomatic ribbons the client will give up on unwrapping it.

Ultimately this means that the client’s program will go off the rails, and the PR pro will get blamed for it.  And while the PR person’s role in the program’s failure may be more implicit than explicit (i.e., the explicit reason is “the product sucks;” the implicit reason is that the PR person refused to make the client face facts), they’ll deserve to be fired.

When the client asks for the Truth, tell the truth.  Be diplomatic without mewling. 

It’s better to say to the client: “I’m sorry to tell you this, but this press release is not going to generate much enthusiasm in the media, for these 3 reasons…” than it is to say, “We thought this release was truly noteworthy but the press is just not picking up on it for some reason” (unsaid: “so we’re going to waste another week making fruitless phone calls, just in case.”)

It’s better to say to the client, “We have had some difficult moments with your PR manager recently.  I’m sure we can work it out, though, especially if you are able to give us some advice” than to say, “Thank goodness we lost that account, the PR manager was awful!”

The clients pay the PR agency not just for “ink” but for the benefit of that agency’s experience — including the foul-ups we’ve witnessed or caused! 

The PR pro is not supposed to be a head-nodding, name-dropping, release-flogging flack.  The PR pro is supposed to be a valued consultant whose focus on results implies a responsibility to tackle hard truths.

So make your mom proud.  Do not tell a lie.

As part of our move back to the Bay Area, I needed to have our HD-TV installed on a wall of our living room. Anything that requires a screwdriver in our household requires a call to a professional. I googled around for “home theater installers” and used ServiceMagic to identify a local contractor.

Although I’ve had spotty luck (at best) with ServiceMagic, this time they came through with a quality dude. Once I take a shine to someone, I can’t help but quiz them about how they market themselves: how’s their website doing for them, do they do any PR, do they worry about their online reviews, etc.?

After chatting with our new a/v installer, Chris Hinton (and no-doubt slowing down my own installation in the process!), I did some quick research in front of him…

“You’re lucky your number was the first one ServiceMagic gave me,” I said. “There’s no other way I could have found you!”

“Look at my local Google Results:

“Now check out Yelp:

“So let’s review. You’ve got poor SEO — you don’t even show up in Google’s Local Search results, even though you live around the corner from me.”

“And look at that huge coverage gap in the East Bay on the Yelp map: you could be the top dog in the East Bay when it comes to A/V installation, if you got just a handful of 5–star reviews.”

“And if you’re still not convinced, check out how many people in the East Bay are on Twitter (via Twellowhood):

“These folks are affluent, they’re hanging out online, and you could be interacting with them.”

“For example, once 3D TVs become a bigger deal, a lot of these local Twitterati will want that equipment — and if they know about Hinton Home Theater Installation already, cuz maybe you’ve been tweeting about 3D tv’s and video games, who do you think they will call? Don’t you want them to call y-o-u?”

We’ll see whether Chris takes my advice. Will you?

P.S. – Hinton Home Theaters did quality work at a good price, and Chris is a good guy. If you live in the Bay Area and need some home theater installation services, give him a call (408-823-9857). Tell him Todd sent ya.

Last year, I spoke of the need to synchronize Social Media and Customer Service channels.  The topic continues to come up.  Jeremiah Owyang of Altimeter Group took up the issue a few months later.  And Pete Blackshaw wrote a book about it, called, “Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000.”  More recently, Jeremiah reminded me of this issue again with a tweet that nails the challenge:

When brands support customers on Twitter, they’re reinforcing the behavior of “complaining to their friends” to get brand attention.

And of course, as you can tell from the title of this post, what marketers need to fear is “complaints among friends” that occur online will translate into a search engine result that could haunt them for a while, especially as real-time results from Twitter, etc., become an increasingly higher-profile part of the mix of organic search results.

But while Jeremiah is absolutely correct that brands are reinforcing “bad” behavior by supporting their customers in public, as we recently learned from Apple, it’s an even worse idea to try to circumvent what has become natural consumer behavior online.

For my part, I think you need to fish where the fish are: if customers complain in public, the brand should triage that issue in public, so that the millions of potential online bystanders can see a diligent, respectful effort is being made. 

That doesn’t mean “engage the haters.” 

The rule of thumb that SHIFT advocates to clients is, “Engage anyone 1 – 2x in public forums; take it offline when possible to resolve the issues in a more practical way; know that ‘haters’ will reveal themselves, so any reasonable person will see that at least the brand made a solid attempt to appease them.”

Yea, this is wildly hard to scale for a consumer company, but it can be done in stages.  Most folks just want to know they are being heard; they’ll be patient for a solution that they know is coming, but tend to grow heated when they feel ignored.  It’s the I-Feel-Ignored customers that you need to be most wary of; they will make it their mission to shame the brand into a public response.  Thus even the most resource-strapped organization should scrape together the resources to be able to monitor and respond with “placeholder” messages to their customers: “Sorry to hear about your frustrations! Let’s take this offline and see how we can help.”

That’s the Google result you want your prospects to see.  Anytime a Google search result rolls up “(Brand) Sucks” the next thing prospects should see is a polite and friendly response.  “Sorry you feel that way.  Let’s talk offline about how we can do better?”

We’ve talked about Social Media monitoring, policy-making, blogging and engagement in the first four of this five-part series.  In my opinion, the FIFTH thing you should do, if you do nothing else, is: develop a CONTENT CREATION strategy.

Arguably, “blogging” is part of that content creation strategy, but I am talking about “what else” you are going to produce by way of shareable, compelling content. 

“Shareability” is the key here: if you post a video to YouTube or your blog, but nobody sees or shares it, you’ve just wasted your time & money (though at least you didn’t hurt your organic SEO).  In other words, the content has to be good, it has to be relevant.

“Content” can take many forms. 

If you’re a restaurant, maybe you decide that the most relevant content you can offer is a bunch of coupons to local Twitterati and Yelpers. 

If you’re a B2B software company, maybe you decide to demystify your product via a series of 1–minute videos on your 10–best-features. 

If you make sneakers, maybe you decide to send your CEO on a world tour to investigate the product manufacturing process, via a series of blog posts, from “rubber sole” (jungles of Bali?!) to “leather uppers” (moo!) to the negotiation of a new retail partnership (ka-ching). 

Again, let me say it one final time in this series: follow Forrester’s POST method. People, Objectives, Strategies, Tactics.  Once you know WHO you want to reach, you soon realize WHAT makes them tick.  You get a sense, by interacting with them, what type of content they respond to, and because you’ve started ENGAGING with them, you’ve got a ready group of prospects and customers ready to help you spread the word.

Now … I’ll bet you thought #5 would be “Measurement.”  Maybe that’d be #6.  But as important as it is, I cringe a little inside when corporate executives start-off a conversation about Social Media by saying, “First off, measuring the success of this Social Media stuff will be paramount.” 

Why?  Because if you can’t show off a pretty ROI chart to the CEO, you’ll stop engaging with customers and prospects? 

Did you insist on seeing ROI when your parents told you to “Eat your vegetables?”

Create relevant, compelling content and engage in the right places with people who might care about your brand. Add value to the community.  ROI will follow.

Got your blog up and running?  Swell.  Now, who’s gonna read it?  Who’s going to leave a comment?  Who is going to retweet those carefully-crafted posts?

This is where it gets fun.  Harken back — as I often do in this blog — to Forrester’s POST method.  People, Objectives, Strategies, Tactics.

Surely you know WHO you want to reach.  Now it’s simply a matter of finding out where they’re hanging out.  Are they on Twitter?  Facebook?  LinkedIn?  Yelp?  YouTube?  Are they lurking on more industry-specific Message Boards?  What publications do they read?  What blogs do they follow?

These are questions you need the answers to, because if you only do *four things in Social Media, the 4th is: ENGAGE.

I won’t bore you with the umptillion reasons you ought to engage with your prospects (and the people those prospects are influenced by).  If you need a refresher course, try my e-book or “Jedi Academy” posts, or read David Meerman Scott’s stuff, or check out Chris Brogan’s blog, or Brian Solis’s book, or Jason Falls’s blog or absolutely anything written by Tamar Weinberg.

The larger point is emphasize that thou shalt reap what ye sow.  This is a Biblical lesson too often forgotten by marketers in general and CEOs in particular.

Marketing is a tramp through the mud, while attempting to keep your face scrubbed clean; it’s hard work made to look easy.  That hard work entails interacting every single day with the customers, prospects and influencers who converse online, with and around your brand (and, with and around your competitors, too, who are also waking up to this opportunity).

If you are conversing every single day with relevant online audiences, in the right places — and, if every single day you attempt to say or share something relevant to these folks — you are going to drive traffic to your blog and/or other content.  If you further impress these audiences when they view your stuff, they will share it, applaud it, critique it, and generally make Y-O-U the topic of conversation.

Engagement will help your brand’s equity grow, from organic cultivation (cost: sweat equity) vs. advertising campaigns (cost: $$$).

Notice how “engagement” — the essence of Social Media — came FOURTH in this series?  Before you think about “organic cultivation,” you have to do your spadework.

Let’s see if my own spadework has done me any good?  Help me spread the word about this blog, using any of the links below?

This is a guest post by Christiana Briddell, a co-founder and partner of ThoughtLead, the company behind the Influencer Project, which launches next week (I’ll be one of the participants).

Ever since Seth Godin wrote “Purple Cow,” the idea that making your product, or content, remarkable so that it sells itself (versus making a dull product that you have to put a huge amount of effort into marketing) has become common sense—in other words, good content is good marketing.

This is especially relevant in the recommendation-based world of social media.  No one is going to link to or pass around bad content (unless it is so bad it makes you laugh).

Reference blog posts are often the top-linked to resources on a blog, as the plethora of top 10-style posts on Mashable demonstrate. Free ebooks are all the rage, thanks in part to David Meerman Scott’s success with his original “New Rules of PR.” SEOmoz, a top search engine marketing blog, does their entire readership a great service by compiling guidebooks. And Todd’s resource section points to the exact same principle. These are all examples of good content that sells itself (and, of course, brings traffic back to your blog or website).

But what about microcontent? Can small bits of information be truly valuable? Can a tweet be a remarkable resource?

In Search Engine Optimization — which is my background — you learn that you can’t optimize a page for more than one or two keywords. In other words, each web page should be about one thing, no matter how long it is.

Likewise, in speeches and presentations, you generally want to convey one or two main points. So while the rest of the time you are building the context, filling in the picture, and backing up your points, the essence of your talk should boil down into one main argument.

That’s not to say that hour-long lectures don’t play a critical role in developing our understanding of a subject. They absolutely do. What I’m proposing is that in addition, microcontent can be very valuable — it’s just delivered in a different context and format.

And I believe this principle extends beyond the Twittersphere. To test the theory, my company, ThoughtLead, is putting on a conference called the Influencer Project. It features 60 leading thinkers on the web, speaking for 60 minutes, on July 6th at 6pm ET. Todd will be one of the speakers, along with Guy Kawasaki, David Meerman Scott, Gary Vaynerchuk, Brian Solis, Liz Strauss of SOBCon, and others. Each speaker has 60 seconds to convey their boiled-down keynote on how to increase your influence online.

Our goal is that each participant comes away with a list of at least 60 actionable and incredibly relevant pieces of advice from these marketing masters. We’d like to see this “shortest marketing conference ever” break new ground and become an example of how microcontent can benefit all of us—not by providing more depth, but by offering a significant breadth of simple, “bite-sized” nuggets of know-how and savvy that we can each start using in our lives and business instantly.

Let us know what you think!

As noted earlier, “Social Media Monitoring” is the ONE THING every company ought to be doing in Social Media.  “Setting a Social Media Policy” is #2.  What’s the next biggest priority?

Blogging.

This answer is probably more controversial now than it was in the past, when blogging was all the rage (pre-Twitter, pre-Facebook). After all, success stories like @ComcastCares and @Zappos might suggest that an active Twitter presence is a short-form, high-speed, perfectly valid alternative to blogging.  And Facebook certainly has its allure… 

Blogging is, after all, a slow & muddy slog.  It is hard to dream up enough content to keep the blog going; it is hard to gain readers; it is hard to get readers to leave even a paltry number of decent comments; it is hard to filter out the spam; it is embarassing to see numerous posts with “Comments: (0)” at the bottom; it is hard to read other relevant blogs and leave clever comments that might (MIGHT) drive the blogger and/or their readers to check out your stuff.

Yea.  Blogging is effin’ hard.

But here’s why it’s worth doing:

Blogging gives your company a voice.  In good times and especially in bad times, your blog will be a place where you can talk about what’s going on at the company, in reader-friendly language that folks might actually read.   

Starting a blog DURING a crisis is a crappy way to start a blog.  But starting a blog when times are good can marshall a field force of brand ambassadors to rally to your aid when that inevitable crisis hits!

In this same vein, blogs are a better place to direct people than your corporate website.

Whoa! Slow down, hombre, let me explain, no need to get all hot; I KNOW you want to send visitors straight on to the website … but using your tweets (for example) to direct people to the corporate blog gives these interested new visitors a way to engage with the content and/or the people and/or the company in a way that is far more human and interesting and fun. 

No need to convert them right away.  Let ‘em sniff out the environment and talk to your star blogger for a li’l bit.  Let those visitors add some value to you! They often want to!  And when they are allowed to add that value, they are incented to direct their own friends to go check it out, so there’s a substantial tangent benefit.  So, make it easy and you can take it easy.  Before long they’ll click over to the expensive corporate website, I promise.

Blogging enforces respectfulness. To be a successful blogger, you simply must read and respond (in comments and in fresh posts that riff on peers’ work) to your fellow industry bloggers.  The process inspires true admiration for their work, and ultimately helps the corporate blogger craft a style that is attuned to their larger audience. 

Blogging is timeless.  Remember up above when I tipped my hat to Twitter and Facebook?  Yea, well, they’re quite cool but so was Friendster, MySpace, etc. (Hell, AOL was cool once – I am talking SUPER COOL.  You kids might not remember it, but AOL was once so monstro that they acquired TIME-WARNER!) 

Blogging, however, is not, actually, cool.  Blogging is useful, utilitarian, homespun, and not going anywhere, figuratively or literally.  What if you’d bet your entire marcomm strategy on MySpace a few years ago?  Bet you’d be feeling pretty silly.  But your corporate blog?  Ol’ Reliable.  It’s YOURS.

Blogging enforces content creation.  Of all the things that have gnawed at me these past weeks, abandoning PR-Squared was among the worst feelings.  Not because I saw my AdAge ranking plummet (though that sucked); not because the blog is a primary newbiz driver for SHIFT (though that’s important); but because I felt an obligation to my readers.  I know there’s no lack of cool stuff to read while I’m gone, but I’ve worked hard for SIX YEARS to keep ya’ll coming back here.

Any good blogger will feel the same way.  And you want that, cuz CONTENT drives BUZZ drives TRAFFIC drives ENGAGEMENT drives CUSTOMER ACQUISITION. 

Which reminds me: did I mention that blogging is good for SEO? 

Before signing off, I should address this question: “Do we give the blog a standalone URL or do we attach it to the  corporate website?”  I get that one a lot.  The path I chose (a URL completely distinct from www.shiftcomm.com) was not chosen strategically; 6 years ago when I started blogging, nobody knew if it was gonna last.

Nowadays I advise clients to make the blog front-and-center on the HOMEPAGE of the corporate site.  NOT at “companyname.com/blog,” i.e., don’t bury it!  If you make it stand out so prominently, you’ll be that much more motivated to make it shine.  It’s totally fine, though, if you allow the interaction (comments, etc.) to happen at companyname.com/blog; I am simply advocating that the content be highlighted right upfront.  Any SEO experts disagree?  Please educate me if I am misguided.  This approach has worked well for me.

Oh, and if your CEO wants to blog? That’s fine, so long as you make them read this post, first.  You can thank me later.

Next time: “If You Only Do *Four Things in Social Media …” Can you guess what I’ll recommend?  Do you disagree with how I’ve been prioritizing this series?  Let me know in the comments! 

As noted earlier, “Social Media Monitoring” is the ONE THING every company ought to be doing in Social Media.

What’s the next biggest priority?

Setting a Social Media Policy.

When I first set out to write this series, I have to admit, this was definitely NOT the #2 priority.  But I got to thinking about the tremendous sea change that Social Media represents — it’s big, goddammit, it impacts everyone; everyone at every level of a company is often getting involved, PERSONALLY if not always PROFESSIONALLY.

And when you start to think along those lines, you quickly see the need to set up some guard rails early.

I wrote about this topic extensively in the past, and even offered up a template for Social Media Corporate Policies.  I hope you’ll take a minute to review those posts – they are still relevant.

It comes down to this: whether you are a company of 10 employees or 10,000, your employees are Yelping, Facebooking, Tweeting, Blogging, Vlogging, etc.  And what they do online can absolutely impact the company’s reputation and fortunes.

Imagine the owner of a delicatessen in the suburbs.  She employs a cook, a dishwasher and a young cashier. She has NO social media policy.  When an unhappy customer bleats on Yelp about how the deli skimped on the ## of meatballs on their grinder, that’s bad.  But it’s even worse if the deli’s hot-headed cashier notes the bad review and proceeds to lace into the consumer, for all to see.  Imagine how many Yelpers will then avoid that destination?

Maybe it sounded ridiculous at first blush to suggest that a small suburban deli have a Social Media Policy.  But can you read that example above and deny that the actions of her young cashier might impact her business?

Next time: “If You Only Do *Three Things in Social Media …” Can you guess what I’ll recommend?  Do you disagree with how I’ve been prioritizing this series?  Let me know in the comments!

To make up for my overlong absence from the Internets, I’ve hit on a new series of blog posts, 5 in all, that make the case for the top things your company ought to be doing if it’s still babystepping its way into Social Media Marketing.

I’m going to be taking a distinctly tactical approach with this series; partly because I so often discuss strategy on this blog, and partly cuz I’m still pretty fried from getting settled in California…

If you only do one thing in Social Media, it ought to be SOCIAL MEDIA MONITORING.

I want to harken back to our work with H&R Block (HRB) in the 2009 tax season to make my case here. When SHIFT got started with HRB, the company was all over the proverbial Conversation Prism: from MySpace to SecondLife, from Twitter to YouTube, and beyond.  Some of the content was informational and relevant, some of the engagement was sincere and helpful; but there were also a lot of wasted cycles spent on clever interactive campaigns, etc.

Working with HRB’s Paula Drum (still a client, over at Gettington – hi Paula!), SHIFT dug into some hardcore SOCIAL MEDIA MONITORING. Not just about HRB, mind you – because surely we’d see conversations by and about HRB with such obvious approaches – but also with the simple question in mind, “Where do people ask questions about taxes?”

Turned out that there were a ton of tax-wary citizens hanging out in Yahoo! Answers, and, on Amazon.com, within the message boards undergirding TurboTax and HRB’s own TAXCUT software.

I don’t plan to turn this post into a full-on case study, but suffice to say that even after we exited the scene, the good folks at HRB boosted the number of tax pros devoted to Social Media Monitoring and Response by 100x, from the 10 we had to work with in 2009, to 1,000 in 2010.

Point is, the monitoring effort, all by itself, would have been invaluable to HRB marketers.  It told them where TO put their resources, and where to STOP putting their resources.

The same will be true of any company.  If the brand is willing to do only ONE THING in Social Media, then before “blogging,” before “tweeting,” before ANYTHING else, I recommend plain ol’ listening.  Not just because “listening will help the brand better attune its approach to online conversations,” which is the fluff any Social Media Goon will sell you on, but also because it will help the brand figure out where to have those conversations in the first place.

It’s as much about efficiency as it is about engagement.

Top tools I recommend: Sysomos, Radian6

Next time: “If You Only Do *Two Things in Social Media …” Can you guess what I’ll recommend?  Are there other Social Media Monitoring Tools that you like using?  Let me know in the comments!

Joe Chernov is the director of content for marketing automation SaaS company, Eloqua, a new SHIFT client.  He recently released The Content Grid infographic and, among other responsibilities, runs Eloqua’s “It’s All About Revenue” blog.  Being in the final stages of my cross-country move, I was delighted when Joe agreed to help me fill in some dead-air time here at PR-Squared. – Todd

In many ways, we are living in the age of shortcuts.  Athletes turn to performance enhancing drugs to leapfrog competition; political parties engage in gerrymandering to favor their candidates; and Twitter is crawling with bottom-feeders offering scams to get followers fast.  (And this doesn’t even scratch the surface of the techniques to which Hollywood’s b-listers stoop to sustain their celebrity.)

But perhaps in response to this short-circuit culture, a “purist” movement has emerged.  Led by practical thinkers like David Meerman Scott, this reaction is all about creating remarkable content, then setting it free.   It sounds easy, right?  Well it ain’t.  Because if you somehow manage to create something truly remarkable, then expect a major opposition force to emerge in your company and demand you monetize it (or at least put a form in front of it).  The ungated content released by most companies tends to be runner-up material – resources interesting enough to be read, but not worth the “cost” of a form completion (much less actual money).

This isn’t to say there aren’t plenty of examples of companies that pass the two-pronged test, many with flying colors.  Google’s Free WiFi promotion delivered huge value to holiday travelers.  HubSpot’s ever-expanding suite of social media and marketing Graders are among the stickiest widgets on the Web.  Advertising firm BooneOakley’s YouTube-hosted video homepage caused the design world to rethink media.  And who could forget that the host of this blog invented and gave away the templates for the social media news release and newsrooms?

It’s a tough crowd to break into, but with the recent release of the Eloqua Social Media Playbook, I am giving it a shot.  Is our Playbook remarkable?  That’s for you to decide.  But with 10-platforms profiled over 42-pages and the content current through Facebook’s f8 conference, I think it’s got a fair shot of earning Eloqua a seat at the neo-marketers table.  (Incidentally, the Playbook was co-created with design firm JESS3, who has already contributed generously to the remarkable-and-free movement with the omnipresent The Conversation Prism infographic and The State of the Internet video.)  And if it falls short, well, it wouldn’t be the first time I was accused of being a social climber.

So go on and steal it, repurpose it, mash it up, or apply it as-is.  It’s all yours.  I don’t even need your email address.

The cross-country move is – as expected – grueling and stressful.  Selling a house (or rather, trying to!) only compounds the angst factor.  And let’s not forget helping out on some amazing newbiz opportunities; I’m trying not to drop any of those balls along the way.

But each day brings progress. Today is my first day at work in our San Francisco office.  Before you know it, I’ll even be blogging again!

(Special thanks to Andrew Fowler – a.k.a. @guhmshoo – for the cartoon!)

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I received an email today from a senior at a prestigious university, who plans to be a marketer.  Here’s the pertinent excerpt:

I am finding myself rather confused by the tension that exists between my traditional marketing & business education (which has no emphasis whatsoever on Internet campaigns) and all the blog posts, webinars, and articles about the importance of successfully leveraging media.

My gut tells me I should focus more time on educating myself on these new trends and technologies, but I just don’t feel like I’m benefiting from it (i.e. I’m not seeing results).

To make matters even more difficult, I’m entering my last semester as a college student and must find full time work very soon.  I am concerned that spending too much time with social media (I have an internship in it) is making me less credible and attractive to recruiters for big time companies.

My question for you is this, what would you do if you were in my shoes?

As noted in my previous post, my hair’s on fire lately, so I didn’t have time to respond in-depth… But then again, my two-sentence reply summed it up pretty nicely, as far as I’m concerned:

Why would you CHOOSE to focus on decaying models, metrics and techniques when it is clear that the entire world is hurtling towards profound changes in communications?

Are you a marketer or an archeologist?

Do you think I was too cavalier?  What advice would you give to this young, aspiring marketer?

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A quick apology for my light blogging schedule. In case you haven’t heard, my family and I are moving back to San Francisco soon and between living out of boxes, dealing with movers, etc. and helping with clients and newbiz stuff, there has been very little time for Social Media.

“I’ll be back!”

Meanwhile, a quick bit o’ fun for my fellow (sunshine-deprived) bloggers:

On the heels of our Quiznos win a few months ago, I am thrilled to announce that SHIFT’s Consumer Lifestyle practice continues to thrive, with the addition of Sony Online Entertainment to the Agency’s client roster.

This is an extra special win for us, for many reasons.  Obviously, it’s a big-time brand win, which further emphasizes SHIFT’s ability to contend in the major leagues.  Also, we get to work with Scott Gulbransen (that’s @sdgully to you Twitter folks), who we narrowly missed-out on working with at Intuit — but who has become a valued friend in the subsequent months.  The fact that we made a strong enough impression during a losing pitch to emerge as the victor during Scott’s subsequent agency review feels like a validation of our approach.

We are also delighted that SOE decided to tap SHIFT as its first-ever Agency of Record for corporate communications.  The gaming industry is bigger than the Hollywood box office, and game makers like Sony will increasingly be seen as production houses on a par with famous movie studios.  In the grand scheme of things, it’s still early days for this style of reputation management to take hold in gaming, and we’re aiming to help make SOE a trusted, exciting brand in this arena.

Lastly, I am a huge geek.  Our family was the first-and-only house on the block to buy Pong when it came out, and I’ve been a joystick jockey ever since.  SOE is the gaming giant that brought seminal multiplayer titles like Everquest and Star Wars Galaxies to market.  And in upcoming months we’ll be helping out with game titles such as DC Universe Online.  I’m in heaven.  (Think that’s just blowing smoke?  My firstborn son is named “Luke.”  Yes, after a certain Jedi.)

Thanks for putting up with this shameless self promotion!  I admit it, we’re feeling a li’l giddy…

Last month, Altimeter Group’s Jeremiah Owyang and Charlene Li hosted a webinar on “Getting Your Company Ready for a Social Strategy.”

It is a fantastic, high-level overview of the research and approaches that all companies should employ as they tiptoe into these waters.

Before you dive in to the deck below, consider how much time went into the creation of this 45–slide presentation.

The research. The graphics. The consideration of narrative flow. The debates that no doubt occurred within Altimeter about what content to include, and what to hold back, and what to expand on.

That’s a lot of work.

And yet they’ve offered it to us for free.

How many companies whose business models rely on “knowledge” would be willing to give away so much, for so little – for nothing?

How many companies and Social Media Smartypants have already been charging hefty fees to deliver presentations such as this one, to unwitting corporate paymasters?

“Knowledge is Power?”

Maybe “Sharing is Power.”

About a year ago, I posted this graphic about “The Next 50 Years of Public Relations.”

At that point, my focus was primarily on the waning (but never unimportant) emphasis on “Media Relations.”  In the intervening months, as predicted, our role as “PR counselors” has evolved even more quickly than I suspected last June.

Yes, “Media Relations” is still a critical part of the job.  In fact, it may be more important than ever, as many clients now realize that mainstream media results can rev the engine of online chatter in social channels.

But I’ve been floored by the amount of “Customer Service” our team now handles.  This piece of the job accelerated far faster than I’d expected.

For some of our large consumer brands, particularly those who have asked us to be part of their extended brand management team, we are fielding scores of customer issues.

On any given day, the SHIFT team will:

• Monitor for mentions of the brand and/or relevant keywords, across the web, including “owned” brand properties (e.g., Facebook Fanpage)
• Flag and report on important issues and/or major crises related to consumer complaints and conversations
• Respond on behalf of the brand to minor Customer Service issues
• Identify and react to opportunities to insert the brand into a relevant conversation, in appropriate/respectful ways
• Report all issues to the client team as necessary for data capture and/or escalation
• Field and respond or direct Customer Service issues that come via the brand’s own website properties, including complaints and questions that come via email

And that’s just a partial list.  As noted on occassions too numerous to mention, Social Media is not only upending the Marketing Industry Players, it’s essentially crashing its way through any and all consumer-facing departments.

The “PR industry” continues to benefit.

How much longer before the PR team’s at the table with the Product Development team, counseling on “what the people want next?”

Related Posts:

“Of Stars & Schmoes: The Mandate to Synch Social Media & Customer Service”

“This Is The Corp. Comms Dept. How May We Serve You Better?”

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When Social Media became the Shiny Object of the marketing world, it blew up some common conceptions about “who does what.” As I’ve written before, we now see PR agencies backing into digital and digital/advertising agencies creeping into relationship-building practices, etc.

Result: prospective clients are confused.

Thus there have been cases when SHIFT is pitted against everyone from Razorfish (digital) to Arnold (advertising), and even Media Buyers(!), not to mention our erstwhile competitors from the traditional PR world.

We can’t blame the clients for this confusion; the infusion of Social Media principles across disciplines means that the current befuddlement is actually quite appropriate.

But, maybe we can take responsibility for clarifying things a bit?

To that end, I reached out to friend (and client – and sometime competitor!) Aaron Strout at Powered, and to friend (and partner – and sometime competitor!) Adam Cohen of Rosetta, to draft a few words about their companies and their capabilities – including some words on what they DON’T do.  I do the same, below.

The goal is to clarify the subtle differences between the capabilities and focus of pure-play Social Media Marketing (Powered), Interactive Agencies (Rosetta) and PR/Social Media Agencies (SHIFT).

See if you can spot the points of clarity, as well as the points of incongruity!

AARON STROUT, CMO, POWERED

This is my company…
Powered is a dedicated social media agency that helps brands fully capitalize on their social initiatives. With 75 employees in four offices (Austin, New York City, Portland and San Francisco) we brings “best-in-class” expertise across the social spectrum to our clients by offering a combination of strategy, planning, activation and management for social presence and programs.

What we do…
We help big brands with strategy and activation (getting their key stakeholders like customers, prospects, partners or employees) to do things that create value for their brand. Those activities might include evangelizing, contributing, participating or learning.

This is why you should call me (type of challenge or project)…
We’re really at our best when we’re helping big brands (mainly B2C) connect their social efforts to their marketing efforts. We start by fleshing out a cohesive strategy and then move toward the activation. In many cases, this includes focusing on things like influencer outreach, ambassador programs, Facebook Fanpages, applications and customer tabs and the building and managing of branded online communities.

This is when you should call someone else…
We’re still not particularly good at media buying, custom web development (outside of Facebook and community building), SEM and general site SEO. We also don’t do any traditional PR. For those activities, I’d strongly recommend talking to our friends at Rosetta and SHIFT, both of whom we partner/work with.

ADAM COHEN, PARTNER, ROSETTA

This is my company…
Rosetta is the largest independent digital agency in the US. Using a patented approach to segmentation, called Personality® Segmentation (yep, it’s patented and a differentiator), which provides deep insights into the drivers of consumer behavior, Rosetta’s teams translate these insights into relevant marketing solutions to attract, retain and strengthen a brand’s most valuable customer relationships. With 720+ team members, Rosetta is headquartered in Princeton, NJ, with offices in NYC, Cleveland, Boston, Chicago, Denver and most recently Toronto.

What we do…
We help companies develop strategies and implement marketing tactics, combining the best of insight + technology – from eCommerce to Paid Search to Creative to Analytics to Relationship Marketing. With all the tools in a marketer’s toolbox, we strive to be a CMO’s most trusted partner.  Our industry expertise includes Retail & Consumer Products; Healthcare; Financial Services; Communications, Media & Technology, and B2B.

This is why you should call me (type of challenge or project)…
We’re best when we bring to together marketing disciplines and industry acumen to provide measurable integrated solutions.  We shine we get the opportunity to demonstrate business results across tactics – like integrating eCommerce with paid search/SEO, driving the best creative with analytics and measurement, or infusing CRM with Personality Segmentation.

This is when you should call someone else…
Traditional media outlets are outside of our sweet spot (TV, print, radio), along with traditional PR.  Our social media practice is focused on infusing social into all of our marketing disciplines, but we are partnering with world-class agencies like SHIFT on outreach programs and Powered on designing the best approaches to engage and activate communities.

TODD DEFREN, PRINCIPAL, SHIFT Communications

This is my company…
A top-25 PR agency in the U.S., with offices in NYC, San Francisco and Boston, SHIFT Communications is an agency that helps organizations of all sizes better communicate with the people that matter to their business.  Sometimes that’s “the media,” sometimes that’s “some loudmouth on Twitter.”  Companies ranging from Club Med to Quiznos, from tiny start-ups to established tech companies, look to SHIFT for counsel and execution on both branded and earned media.

What we do…
SHIFT emphasizes “on-going engagement” vs. spray-and-pray “campaigns.”  And because relationships change over time, our targets and tactics evolve as-needed.  Thus the portfolio of services a client will tap into may include: Traditional Media Relations (coverage in NYTimes, TODAY Show, eWeek, etc.) + Social Media Relations (dialogue with relevant Facebook Group admins, Twitterati, etc.) + Content and App Development + Community Management (running a YouTube channel or Facebook Fanpage).

This is why you should call me (type of challenge or project)…
We are generally called on by large brands that need to be more nimble and engaging, or by small companies that want to take things to the next level.  If your company needs more overall visibility (“get ink!”); needs to better engage with consumers (“that Social Media stuff!”); or needs to brand or re-brand in the marketplace, it’s worth a conversation.

This is when you should call someone else…
While we bring plenty of creativity to the table, when it comes to execution portion of app development, videography, website development, advertising campaigns, media buying and SEO, SHIFT will turn to quality partners like Powered and Rosetta, among others.  Investor Relations is also not a core offering, though we routinely play a supporting role.

I want to thank my pals Adam and Aaron for helping out with this project.  Where we compete, we do so with respect and good humor.  Where we can cooperate, we do so with gumption and gusto.

What do you see on the horizon for Social Media Marketing consultants? Will the pendulum swing toward “best-of-breed” or “comprehensive” offerings?  What types of vendors are best adapted to survive the new era?