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What’s the Definition of Value?

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Earlier this week, I participated in a Facebook discussion kicked off by Toby Bloomberg, the Marketing Diva. In addition to Toby, other way bright people in the conversation included B.L. Ochman. If you don’t already know who these fine folks are, make it your business to do so!

Turns out that Toby, an influential blogger, received an email from the PR Director of a major brand asking her to support their latest campaign.  The discussion thread covered areas like pay-to-play and bad PR pitches.  But, theDefinition of Value part of the conversation that caught my eye was the definition of perceived value.  Not value to the brand or PR Director sending Toby the note, but how the blogger or person receiving the communication defines value.

We execute influencer outreach campaigns on behalf of clients and sometimes reach out to bloggers. We don’t typically begin a conversation asking someone to support our brand or cause. Rather, we try to find out what turns the reader on, where the value is for them – usually referred to as the Whats In It For Me.  Sometimes the value is not a free pass or sample! A free trial download may be valuable to our client, but may not be valuable to the person that they’re trying to impact. Instead, value may be defined as access, education or an audience.

Recognition of community participation on a leaderboard can be an example of value, demonstrated by the rise of social gamification. As these dated (but still on-point) articles detail, value to some customers can be offering product input or even involvement in product creation.  Having said all of that, sometimes people do want dollars off!

On the Internet, beauty truly lies in the eyes of the beholder. While the end game may be brand support or sales, experience has taught us that the reception of our campaigns is greater when the focus isn’t solely on the client brand. It has to be about the people.

The other interesting issue discussed in this thread was relationship-building. B.L. Ochman nailed it when she said “we’d like you to support our brand” is like saying “can we pick your brain.” In other words, building relationships by focusing on the other persons needs is a good place to start. You may not always be able to deliver, but listening goes a long way.

But enough about us.  How do you define value?

2012: The Year of Living Dangerously with Social Media

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Why are companies and organizations still so afraid of social media?

They seem to understand why they should be using social media – they’ve been presented with all the business cases, case studies and marketing plans to prove its worth. Now there seems to be a major aversion to actually diving in and utilizing social media in the best possible way for the brand – not as a broadcast channel, but as an engagement channel. Now that they’re on social media, they really have no idea what to do with it.

Here are my responses to the two biggest fears I’ve heard:

What if it doesn’t work?

You could say that about any marketing your company does. Has that stopped you from launching that email campaign? How about print campaigns? While the cost of social media isn’t free, it can certainly cost you a heckuva lot less than some of the other marketing you do – so if fear of a direct mail campaign not working didn’t stop you from spending bucketloads of precious marketing budget on it, then why is this same fear stopping you from launching your social media effort?

Perhaps it’s more of a fear of the unknown – something that’s experimental and new versus tried and true. I read a really interesting article in The Conversation on CIPR about PR’s schizophrenic attitude to creativity. Andrew Smith cited recent research from Cornell University that points up key reasons why there’s a general bias against creativity:

  • Creative ideas are by definition novel, and novelty can trigger feelings of uncertainty that make most people uncomfortable.
  • People dismiss creative ideas in favor of ideas that are purely practical — tried and true.
  • Objective evidence shoring up the validity of a creative proposal does not motivate people to accept it.

So the business case for social media may have been made, but actually implementing new and creative ideas for using it presents a roadblock for many people. It’s understandably difficult for us as humans to do things outside of our comfort zone; but if we were always afraid of something not working, nothing would ever get done. For companies to succeed in social media, they have to step outside of what is safe. Don’t be afraid to try something new – if it doesn’t work, learn from it and try something different.

What if someone says something bad?

Leslie White wrote a great post over at the SocialFishing Blog that addressed this very fear. A lack of control is what drives it – many companies and organizations feel that they have to steer the message in a very calculated way, all the time. They feel like social media will give people a platform to say anything they want about the brand, and they can’t control that. NEWSFLASH: those conversations are already happening, but you’ve been too wrapped up in your “message” to see it. Sure, there are negative things being said; but guess what – there are positive things being said too. By your customers and members.

So, no, you can’t control the conversation on social media; but, as Leslie White puts it, “social media gives us many ways to try to influence it.” Instead of ignoring negativity or avoiding social media completely, there are steps you can take to influence the conversation:

  1. Religiously monitor mentions of your company, brand and products on social media.
  2. Create a plan of action for dealing with negative comments, based on what you’ve monitored (and for funneling those comments to appropriate channels). Here’s an oldie (but still goodie) blog post I wrote a few years ago on dealing with negative feedback in a positive way.
  3. Create a plan for engaging and empowering the people who are making positive comments – they are your customer brand evangelists.
  4. Use everything you’ve found to make improvements  – negative feedback is still good feedback.

Let’s make 2012 the year of living “dangerously” – stop being afraid of social media and start thinking of how it can work for you, not against you.

What We’re Reading, July 29th: The Too Damn Hot Edition

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It’s hot…damn hot. And while you may not be able to avoid going outside, at least we can provide you with some insightful posts to keep you inside and in the A/C a little longer. Hey, if you keep reading you might even get some free JELL-O Pudding out of it!

And now, some fun stuff (as if social media wasn’t enough fun):

And remember how hot we said it was? Here in DC, it was actually hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk: