Digital Marketing Strategy Deep Dive with Jeremiah Owyang

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How social media has caused the scope of marketing to expand inside organizations, why customer service needs to pay attention to customer influence, the concept of relinquishing oversight as a way of regaining control, aligning social media policy with business strategy and integrating social media into destination websites featuring Jeremiah Owyang.     

Digital Marketing Strategy Tips

01:03 — A discussion of marketing keynote speakers lined up to present at the Digital Impact Conference. 

06:27 — An overview of the broader trends in social media based on Jeremiah Owyang’s research at the Altimeter Group.

07:41 — Heather Armstrong’s experience trying to fix a broken Maytag washing machine and how she finally managed to get results by warning her Twitter followers. “So that you may never have to suffer like we have: do not ever buy a Maytag.

I repeat: our Maytag experience has been a nightmare.” Interestingly enough, a Forbes.com story about the incident quoting Pete Blackshaw, the previous guest on this podcast, “The problem with call centers and consumer relations departments is that they tend to look at consumers in a vacuum, independent of influence,” which suggests that organizations need to look beyond individual customer interactions to try to evaluate the customer’s social media influence, which is one of the things that social CRM attempts to accomplish.  

According to Jeremiah, the takeaway is that what happens in support can quickly become a marketing or public relations incident. 

08:27 — “Customers don’t care which department you are in.  They want their problem fixed. The scope of marketing has grown significantly… Companies are siloed and it’s tough [for them] to think holistically about their overall customer experience,” says Jeremiah, who will address this theme in his keynote at the Digital Impact Conference.

09:25 —  A discussion of analyst Charlene Li‘s upcoming book Open Leadership explores how leaders can let go of control to gain more power back because the power has shifted to those using social computing platforms, and organizations need to acknowledge this.

10:24 — Glassdoor.com, a new website where employees can rate their employers, and Unvarnished, which allows you to rate your colleagues and the quality of their work, both reinforce the notion that there are no more secrets.

11:00 — According to Jeremiah, social media policy is a critical component of effective online organizational communications, and he says there are three different policies that organizations need to consider developing. The first is a corporate policy, which would address how to deal with the social Web, and in particular, during a crisis.  

The second is an employee disclosure policy, which would tell employees what they can and can say in public spaces online.  And the third one, which he says most companies don’t have in place and which might have kept Nestle out of trouble, is a community policy, which would dictate how community members should behave and describe to dos and don’ts.

11:56 — An example of a community policy Jeremiah’s seen that he thinks is well done is Dogster’s Community Guidelines.  He also says early adopters like Intel, Microsoft and Sun have had community policies in place for some time now.

12:51 — Best Buy is a good example of an organization with an effective social media policy designed to work for employees who may not have advanced degrees.

13:20 — Inside the enterprise, legal is a standard pocket of resistance. Brilliant strategists should engage them early on. And there are often turf wars between corporate marketing and the social media team because they usually have different ideas about achieving their objectives.  Also, product managers are typically inclined to approach situations differently from strategists because they want to build online communities around products, and the strategists wish to build communities around a lifestyle or a brand.

14:01 — When policing social media policies, Jeremiah suggests turning that over to the employees themselves and crowd-sourcing those capabilities. Use an internal online community to allow people to call out when people are doing things wrong and doing things right.

15:27 — There’s nothing wrong with a measured, step-by-step approach to social media policy development.

16:10 — Not all organizations should be rushing into social media. In Jeremiah’s opinion, organizations should approach social media to mitigate risk when they have the proper research and plans in place.  Companies need to consider what it means to be social, and Jeremiah encourages a pragmatic approach.

17:01 — Using mainstream media advertising to send people to their Facebook page without considering where the transaction occurs.

“If you’re making money through ecommerce on your corporate site, why would you be so quick to send traffic away from a chicklet or a Facebook advertisement away from your site? Most companies say because I want to have trust or word of mouth, but they haven’t thought it through carefully about the ramifications and what that means,” says Jeremiah.

18:06 — Customers visiting your corporate website may be further down the sales funnel, so you may not want to be so quick to send them away.  The future of social engagement, as Jeremiah sees it, is integrating the social experience into your own destination website.

19:14 — In terms of who Jeremiah Owyang looks to as thought leaders in the social media space, he mentions Steve Rubel, Charlene Li, David Armano, Jen McClure, Marshall Kirkpatrick, Ben Parr, and Louis Gray because he sees them putting out new thoughts instead of just rehashing what’s out there already.

21:30 — End

Photo by Thomas Hawk.