OK, this panel I was a little late to, but what I saw was intense. 5 social media professionals who all actually agreed on things. I was shocked. I’ve never seen five professionals agree on anything.
Here’s their five bios:
- Christopher Berger. The Social Media Guy for General Motors! He tweets under @GMBlogs or @CBarger.
- Steve Schwartz, Tweeting under @JangoSteve is the cofounder of Alfa Jango and RateMyStudentRental.com.
- Shauna Nicholson is the Innovation Engine/Marketing Manager for Biznet Internet Solutions. You can find her tweeting under @shaunan.
- Nick Denardis works for Wayne State University, tweets under @NickDenardis.
- Kelly Laveaute works for Quicken Loans, and happens to tweet under the same name!
These five personalities were moderated by Tim Kiernan, Co-Host for the wildly popular Design Critique podcast.
Read on for the last 50 minutes of the conversation!
3:40 Was a little bit late.
3:41 Christopher Barger…
This strengthens us! One of the nocks against us was we couldn’t listen to the public. Twitter allows us to listen to the public and all it takes is an investment of our time. This is a powerful tool for us. It’s not a threat.
3:42 Tim Keran
So you can say, yes, this is pandoras box but there’s also candy inside.
You can say yes or no. You can listen or close your eyes. but it’s still there
You have this opopportunity to actually be in the conversations. It’s not just a buisness letter to the executives.
3:43 @QuickenLoans
How many people want Mike Besly to hand out treats!
3:44 The social web is not about creating adverisements it’s about connecting with the customer and building relationships.
Alot of the peopel who talk to us may never need a mortage! But being there and letting them know we’ll be there even if they have questions when they have questions is really the jey for us. I wanted to comment on the corporate thing. I don’t have that issue. I am allowed to do whatever. I ahve a ton of free reighn. We can do whatever we want. There’s no checks and balances. You’re told if you are doing what is best for the company you can do it. I’m by no means an executive but they trust me. And that’s the key with social media. You trust the person behind your brand and that’s where we’ve been the most successful.
If you read the position paper tell them how many social media outlets quickLoans has.
it has twitter facebook facebook myspace, yahoo answers, Zillo, Linked In, and that’s JSUST for Qicuken Loans. We have other companies. We’re an Online Lender. We’ve been around25 years but we’re an online company. We’ve always worked online. Going into Social Media mae perfect sense of rus. Don’t get me wrong, transparenc in the mortgage industry. We’re not everyones friend right now, but we’re the first who picked up on that stuff. We’re trying to be ast ransparent as possilbe. Maybe not all the banks are doing htis but we definitely will. When you are ready for a mortage we’ll be your guy.
3:46 I like how the user experience will happen before they ever need you.
I like how you talked about that. It may be 10 years down the road. It’s why we have a basketball team in Cleveland. The Quicken Loans Arena is one of our methods. Just being there will hepl. If you have a good time at the queue and at the arena then you’ll be happy to be there.
You get on these social networks and think maybe they won’t need a mortgage now but people will need you more than you realize. They do mortgages but they have other core competinences. Everyone can duse financial advice. Sur eyou’ve got this product but along with that comes a ton of expertise others can benefit from when you’re getting on these social networks. you’re not trying to sell to them you’re trying to get to know them.
I feel like we can be the expert you need we also do silly and casual things. You see what I go through every day at work. You see what cora has going on. She’s on Twitter to. We’re rounding up all our companies and putting htem on there. You’re putting a behind the scenes look on a facelless corporation.
3:48 define silly
We have the quickenLoans Diff Blog. It is about exposing the gap between average and excellent. Maybe 3 times a year it’s about Quicken loans. We talked about the Southwest guy who rrapped his intro on his plane. We put companies that usck on there but we also put the stuff that is reat on there. The diff is a very non serious non financial expert tiype thing. It’s stuff we have fun.
We also have the QuickenLoans insider which is a newer blog which is about the goofy things we do at work. It’s behidn the scenes and what we do there wheas the diff is us looing at everyone else. it’s never about mortgages.
That’s how we approached tiwtter for the university. It’s never selliung. We do a couple announcements when deadlines are coming up. We post student work is on there. Just before the panel started I just retweeted the industrial design student.
A friend of mine is an industrial student so they retweated it and it’s on the netowrk.
yesterday for April fools program for relfected science so we linekdt oa version of our home page which was a backwards version of our home page and that got retweeted. Its’ hose kinds of things that are essentially faceless.
It’s being a person. not a company. Is this going to be Kelly @ QuickenLoans or is it going jto just be QuickenLoans. We decided this really needs to be a person you can turn to and know the name of. You know that in the back of her head she’s on twitter and she can help me! It can’t just be something htat’ s acompany because they won’t come back to you.
There’s a legitimate question between how far you go with that/ There is some sort ofbrand identification otherwise you’re not doing the organization very good. The other thing is if GMs main presence on twitter is me and I leave. That’s how scott is on Ford.
He really is the face.
I give him a lot of credit though. he’s done a relly good job at being hte face. He’s just going out and being scott. he’s not just being nice. People talk crap about cars. Well actually you’ve got a fact wrong, here’s the supporting eveidence. I’m srr yyou feel that way but ehere’ some supporting evidence.
In the end they need to know who’se behind it. When I’m leaving I’ll say Rebecca’s taking over. have fun with her! We try to keep it non serious as possible. I twas something we were concerned about and not sure what to do.
So lets say ou won the lottery
If I won I would not quit. I like working. I like what I do.
How mujch did I win in this lottery?
I may buy my own Baseball team or something like that.
You’re the director and off you go to an island you bought for yourself so you decide you’re not doing the 9 to 5 thing is there going ot be a hit to the quicken brand?
You love your job, but as long as we’re open about it I don’t think it matters. The whole putting my name on it just happened. I hate to make a big deal on it. It’s something we struggled with. I fi nthe future I end up doing something else we’ll just say it. We’ll be as transparent as possible. here’s rebecca.
It’s agnostic as to what media you’re on. What sit are you using? You almost always need a persona. It can’t be a faceless logo. If that’s what you want go to a marketing or send a press release. If we’re siting up here and talking about marketing. I’m going to say I’m talking next to the ingenuity engine. No I’m gonna say I’m sitting next to chris and Shawna that you have to have. There is a different way to go about it. If you’re on twitter usually what you do is a personal twitter account for your employee,b ut they are a person that works for the company. It’s completely appropriate to put that out there. For Twitter you may have a twitter business account and yo’re twitting about things in the industry. That’s how Dell does it. They tweeted out their sales and they made $200.
You can’t just go out and be like “Here’s my deal” you ahve to give them value. Right it’s a sales job but it’s a really cool dude and I got some value from this.
We’re talking about twitter a lot but a lot of this online conversations gets taken offline. For example we’ve hosted tweet ups myself. That’s how I got my job! Isat down at lunch with someone the other ay I had just quit my job. And I was like “Oh shit! It’s what I do!” I was sitting down with strangers I met on twitter in ap ublic place. I never missed a day at work. They knew what I was all about. It was really good. I made a lot of mone off of it.
As far as rate my student rental goes. I’m JangoSteve. I’m a person I’m on twitter. We have RMSR you can now search craigslist. We have a third account student rentals at twitter which is where we tiwtter links about in ARkansas about some guy found a foot long mouse in his off campus apartment. You really can have. The stuff that goes viral isn’t GM sold a billion cars. It’s “This car is so pimped! TLet;s check it out. It’s the stuff you look at when you’re not working
It’s one thing I hate about th viral thing. They’re like “Welre going to creat e aviral thing.” You can’t decide what will go viral. When you’re creating this stuff it’s really about a “would I watch this if you didn’t work at the company?”
If the anser is no then why the hell are you asking this.
Steve, do you remember when you wrote your position paper? Remember what he said and Kelly said. It reminds me of what you said. I’ll read Steve;s quites. Steve Said “You’re not going to devise Social Network Marketing” but if you are really soure you want to do social marketing the secret to success is twofol. You must love and enjoy doing it that you would do it even if you didn’t have a company. Two, your fans, yes fans, must love you and your product so much that they enjoy talking about it and talking about others who use it. Talk about that steve.
It goes tback to social networking is about people. it’s very much personal interaction. Part of being a person is you’re a person whether you own the company or work for thecompany. You’re a persona nd you’re probably an interesting person. The most intersting is probably the soup person guy. You’re a rpresona nd you[‘re interacting with people. If the answer isNo then you’re not going to have a successful campaign. The good news is even if you said no try it and do it for a few months. More than likely your anwer at the end of a few months is going to be no. You may not like every single channel. there are some people are really good at playing the facebook network. There are somep opl who can’t stand twitter but love social networks. There are people who are passionatea bout hte blog.
You ahve to pick what’s appropaiate fo their demographic. We do strategies and rip these people apart. W need to identify he key elemetns of the user. You’re user experience planning. You[rre planing an experience on multiuple properties. You’ve hit on one half of the other two questions. One is where is our audience. What is our demographic. What are we trying to do? where are we trhing to aaim.
We need a blog because everyone else has one. I hate when people ask should we get a blog. I fyou have to ask the answer is no.
You DO rnned to go into what you are trying to accomplish first.
Except for Kelly’s. her’s is a cool idea.
I also think you need to be there before they need you. You can’t just go in there and bootstrap. I can’t twitter search mortagage because they’ll hate me. I can find some of them but some people get freaked out. We do go out and follow people but it’s sort of weird! It’s a fie line.
Rigoruous measurement of the human element can kill the effects of human influence. ROI is a huge focus. I let Kevin, my boss do it. I put a nmber value on this conversation because it was worht 97% but we didn’t get 100%. Shut up! Seriously! You can say you have X amount of conversations. Does that matter? Maybe maybe n. I’m talking to my mom, maybe that’s more value than if I’m talking to a cold lead. I’d rather focus on the human elements of social media. You could say “I drove this much traffic” or “I had this much conversion rate.” Measure the statistics. you can. But don’t measure humans. You’re only worth $5 and he’s worth $10. You’re 25% my friend right now.
At the end of the day if they found out you put a number on them your credibility is shot. They’ll ostracize you from social media in the fuure. I fyou make people feel maniuputaed or mistreated they will bash you.
We did that at WayneState. OUr account is @WayneState as WayneStateUniv and they started attacking the university. Thers nothing we can do about it. We can’t say “Hey! THey’re bulling ourselfes!” The only thing you can do to counteract that is to just throw more content at them. Praise them for being involved with the university. Prase them! Eventually they’ll get bored. The good news is they were passionate about your brand. E
We didn’t let that discourage us! We didn’t let our brand suffer! We engaged them. We took them in. We still enjoy you being here. You’re doing something great! Thank you! And eventuall we won out in the end. If you really screw up it could spread a lot. One of the important htings to remember is pepl will say bad things anyway.
When you look for research on a topic. Social Media ranks so much better on google than any other content. SWhat they’re writing is going to pop up. If you ignore that or don’t resoond to that it’s like saying “Hey, we crap!” because your google search is your billboard. It’s one of the reasons we started doing it was because we found stuff that wasn’t so great about us. We’re not perfct. We found things that everyone does. We went and started adddressing them. This is a forum we could be active in anyhow. Why aren’t we. Now there’shundereds of social networks people can go to complain about you. Its just a really crappy billboard.
If you don’t have a Google Alert on your name or your company name, DO IT NOW. I fyou don’t know where to find Google Alerts, GOOGLE IT. They’re not all coming from twitter. We have a lot a lot fof discussion coming from LiveJournal. Which is kind of old school. but that’s still where people are hangin g out so we ahve a presence there now because we have to respond to hese things. It’ snot limited to tiwtter or hte big 2 or 3.
The important thing that you’ve gone in there is there’s a dynamci at play to the audience whomever is showing up on google is now just as credible as you are.; There’s literally sites for complains now. Someone may say 5-10-15 years ago “I’m at GM I know more!” Now they’re like “Well, you’re GM, butthere’s somethone over here who knows just as much about cars as you do. So they’r ejust as credible. The tact of “I’m more credible!” just isn’t there anymore! You ahve to recognized they’re just as credible as you are in and if you’re not playing wher ethey’re playing then you’re losing.
One way to think about it is imagine if you ahd ab rick and moraar copmapny. our customers and anyone can build a brick and mortar door in front of your company. What you can do is go and help make the door look good. You’ve got companies like GM who are constantly going do you want us to do that? They’re saying you can’t buidl a door there!
No. They kind of can. The best you can do is work with them. If you don’t work with the individual they’ll build th edoor the way they want ot
The fact is there will be complaints about anyone. It could be about you as a person and there are hundreds of sites which are bout coplains and scams and ripooffs’ And every now and then we get complaints. Otherwise everyone else is going to see them . If there’s not a response from you and your company. You look like an idiot and you’ve lost a relationship and a business and there were witnesses.
98 to 99% of the time you are right. There are communities that from a big business standpoint and I’ve seen their blogs. If we built a car that drove ont he water there are people who will complain that the wheels get wet. Afte a while you can’t gain anything you’re being dragged into a pissing match. I’m giving htem power and happiness because they’re drwing me into this. there are people who have eniuince omplaints. I need to dedicate my time with those folks.
Some people JUST want to complain. I see it in twitter. Every now and then I’ll say something and they just ignore me.
They jst wanted to say something. They want no interaction. I think we all know people like that.
We had someone who was complaining that they had long since sold their GM car. They were getting emails from OnStar. We went out and found them and turned it off. And he said don’. I still want to complain.
You’d rather just have something to complain about.
Alot of people use it to say what they ha for breakfast. if they call a company and it pisses you off they don’t want you to reply to their complaint. They just want to say things and they don’t care to react if you ahve anyhthing to say to them. Even with compliments. They[ll be like “Thanks! WHo’d you talk to! and you don’t get a response.” People don’t care about what you want to do. They care about what they want to do.
I have one last question for Chris. Then it’s your turn
I heard you and steve and all three of us metnioted yesterday you had given 5 tweets to the CEO. and he actually responded to them personally.
If we work in a big CEO. That tells me that you ahve access to the CEO. Can you talk to me about that? It bogles my mind. I couldn’t walk into my CEO’s office and say hi I’m tim. I would like to. I have my elevator speach prepared. Tell me what it’s like with this huge company.
What do you sa? How does that interaction go?
Well, I didn’t assemble anything. THis is an open letterto CEO Jim Henderson. He actually did! To each of them. He did it! I would confess if it was me and I said we’d have to write this out. He said I know what I can do. I’ll do my own stunts. I don’t know if this is applicable to every big organization. We’re in a uinque situation right now. There’s a recognition that we at this point need to reconnect with the audience. That’s nto goignt o happen with traditional methods. Its going to happen with individual interaction. All the way from the floor to the ceiling. It takes a while to recognize but I htnk it’s happening for us. Once you get over that humpand break thewll down there’s no going back. The same people who were fighting 2 years ago when I could talk to aMotorTrend they’re going “Oh, I’m going to talk to Silicon Valley Moms! Is that cool?” That’s cool! Once they get past htat level where the organization starts to get it you’re forever changed. It’s not just communciationtools. It’s a plce. It’s a way of doing his business. It’s about connecting with the audeince. It’s about doing htis as part of our jobs now. The new CEO seems to be getting it.
It’s a good point though we’re talking about how the dynamics change. Think about why you ahve brand lyoatly. Wetry to all preach loyalty to detroit because we live here. We have an uncle who works on the line. IT really strengthens it. not enough can be said about it.
What tools do you use to do your twitter accounts?
I love Tweetie. Tweetie has multiple accounts. On the Desktop I use teetDeck. It’s the best. We usually use TweetDeck. Wehave thesearches on a couple peoples machines all the time. different people are looking thorughout the day. We also created kind of a media manager tool . We have it so we can schedule twets for the fuure. It’s for upcoming deadlines and things like that. We knowthey’re coming up and we don’ need to be at the computer.
We also created a short URL system for hte university. We can now track clickthroughs. TWe track with bit.ly also.
I’ve been using TweetDeck. Another Ive used was Twirrl. last week I started using CoTweet and it allowed me to put alll of my twitter acounts underneath it. Schedule them. Put someone on duty. You deal with this tweet I’ll deal with this tweet. CoTweet so far has been aazing. I saw them at SoutBy and I was xcited.
We do have 5 people who at any given time are peronaing the GM blogs account. Right now Shawn you’ve got it fo the next hour. if something comes you can’t answer you’re on there right now. It’s very time consuming.
That’s why I like mobile apps. The hting you need to know about Tiwtter is everything cool you can do with it si a third party application. I’m in the car and my dog comes to work with me and he’s drooling on the seats. I twitpic and upload it right there. I text on the road.
4:22 In the larger companies, how do you strategise? What are the strategies? What do you do to help peopel become a friend or a fan on facebook? I ask for the larger companies because it’s less of a move for the consumer.
It needs to be organic. Participate in many conversations. I am not goign to get to the world to fololow me. i’m going to join the comnversation and talk with them. If you see something I’ve said maybe I’ll follow you and if you like it you’ll follow me. It’s a challenge when they’re so focused on ROI. Are enough people coming back to us. Are there five hundred followers today or tomorrow. It doesn’t work that way you just try to add value and it snowballs and happens on its own.
I would agree it has to happen organiclly. You ahve to find like minded people. You follow other mortgage companies and real estate agents. They need us to. You can do things like TweetSearch which searches their bios. find people in your industry and start relationships with them. It freaks people out becausee Scott and I are friends. We meet once a month and don’t share business but we talk about where did you go, what did you see, what are you learing? and people are taking pictures of us there. It’s not craz. We’re all in this together. It benefits the industry.
I’ve actually gogtten business from other lenders and brokers on twitter because on mortgages you ahve tobe a lender on twitter. I’ve had that happen a cople times. Its helpful to know those kinds of people.
I’ve done a stragety ofr a comapny where once of their biggest markteing values they haven’t been exploiting is demonstrating their passion. They have all these employees who are so obsessed with what htey do. It’s the best hting fo rhtem! It’s what they get up in the morning for! What? Why don’t you put that ! They’re already facing out and providing value!
Real quick, to answer your question onstarting a twitter account. There’s a couple other things that may not be obvious if you’re not on there already.
When you respond to someones tweat with their username in their resonse they may see that. So that’s kind of what we mean when we say get in the conversation. There’s also a site called wefollow.com which is kind of a twitter directory. It’s a yellow Pages for twitter. Google Twitter Directoriesand you’ll see 100. This lets you categorieze yourself.
If you’re twittering and you’ve identified yourself as a car person then we’re going to come up in your seach.
it’s different in twitter that it’s not weird to follow people I don’t know. On Facebook I won’t follow someone I don’t know.
4L26 You were talking about pssion and that got me going. Passion we have. It’s a humane society. We have the warmand fuzzy. How do you reign that in? We have people who are just getting nito Social Media. It’s great. But it’s rough! These are people who aren’t terribly professional but they’re ecited. Where’sthe line.
I would maybe put them in charge of devleopming media. Give htem something they can really shine. When I do strategies. Media, especially for warm and fuss. I tend to focus on video. it’s the fastest growing media types in 2009.
That’s perfect usbject matter. It’s interesting. There’s people out there about why they’re adopting or why it’s being givenup. That’s what is perfect. Even post adoptees. I adopted my dog and be like “My Dog is Awesome!” I ‘d love to say that. Be the home for your community. OK we came in and adopted pets. Wouldn’t it be great if we could connect with each other through you. By helping us do something for ourselves instead of tring to do something to use. It’s better than saying id you see this story for this perosn.
You’ve already got a leg up because people LOVE your product. It’s OK to not be professional. That’s why peopl keep going back to it. I’m the face on twitter and I’m just going to be tweeting about my fantasy baseball. That piece of personality goes a long way. It’s the top thing. If I just talk about Mortgage Rates all day no one woul like me at all.
As long as you’re not swearing or being disgusting or offending people you’l be all right.
Going back ot what they said before. Theperson you have is he person you trust. One of those 8 people is going to start having a voice that really starts tlaking with the audience. Start a competition on your followers. The one thing I would say back is if given the choice between people who are too passionate between people who are too polisehed I’d take the passionate. It seems more geniuine. Unlessthey[‘re trying to appear rush to appear genuine.
4:31 Do you ahve any experience using social networking within the company to have employees work together better.
We started using Quicker which is the inside twitter. It’s being used between teams right now. Our web interaction team and marketing it’s got htings going on that we didn’t know where going on. It came up in a meeting and then two days liter it happened.
I would say that a lot of the people in QuikcenLoans read our blogstoo. You can get osme following there. We have Quicker and an Internal Wikipedia. I write proposals and statements of work all day long. Wikis are awesome.
In the university setting hte marketers and communicators aren’t all in the same deparment.Each school can have the person who does the ocmmuincations. Alot aren’t as tech savvy. What owrks best for us is a listserver and email. They know how to use email andread email. It blasts out to everybody and everyone
There’s Yammer, which is twitter for business
4:37 Do you have your own forums? So on the intenal forums how do you hadnl that? Do you go out and look at outisde.
You can have an internal and External Strategy. That’s how we do it.
ne f the things with Forums is they’re old school. Thre’s a hierarchy of peope. you see the username the avatar and their rank. You see all star or beloser. People immediately see your rank. NOT the value you’re providing right now. you ahve to work with that. with twitter or facebook it’s person on person interaction. When I walk up and meet Chris I don’t see a star rating above his hea. With forums you do see that. You kind of have to work with it. Rather than answer everyting on eery forum you need to find the one or two you can really speak to and be with the most. You have to build the credibility. It’s a long term thing. Half of your social networks are the ones you haven’t heard of. They’re targeted but they’re wonderful for what you find
We’re active in yahooAnswers so we’re the Knowledge Partner for the Rental and Real Estate Partner. We can go in and answer quesrions. There’s a personal finance part and stuff. That would be the first thing the people start doing social media wise is becoming a Yahoo Answers. In 2007 We won an arward for it.
Walk up to aharley guys and say nice bike and that means something. Walk into a harbor and ask nice bike an dthat doesn’t mean anything. Ther’s probably a designer who works at buick who its really well in the Buick Enclave. It’s important for me to say there’s a community that would benefit.
What you don’t want to do is find a forum through your google alerts create an account answer a question and never answer the question. Forums are a group of people that are about users. I ahve never seen a more tight night group than that Jeep 4×4 forums group. There’s no outher way to decribe it.
You can’t just jump in and say “here’s the answer” That’s not gonna fly.
That’s how I got this job. i was a banker. I had apassion for writing and they interviewed for a job in marketing and it spun after that. I had the mortgage knowledge. I’m not just a girl who knows marketing but I knew the loans stuff and the ins and outs of mortgages. There would be no way I could talk about mortgages if I didn’t know aobut htem. I started as a banker and it evolved into this.
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