Presentation to Cornell Cooperative Extension

Today I was privileged to speak to the Rockland County Capacity Building Initiative for Non-Profits at the Cornell Cooperative Extension.

Many people asked for my slides, so I’ve included them here. Remember, if you attended, email me, and one person who attended will get an hour of my time to discuss how their non profit can use Social Media.

Also, you can find previous slide decks I’ve used with other groups at http://slideshare.net/howardgr

Small Biz Sites and the Mobile Web

It’s not easy to make your website compatible with all browsers – and now you have to consider mobile browsers like Blackberry, iPhone, Palm Pre and others.

Tomorrow’s launch of the iPhone 3GS and last week’s launch of the PalmPre focused my attention on the way people are doing more search and research on products and services while on the go. US consumers are the top group in the world for mobile browsing and spending according to mobile development house Bango, exceeding UK customers.

You can read the rest at the Start-Up Toolkit blog.

Wrap-up of Social Media Camp

Yesterday was Social Media Camp in New York at the Roger Smith Hotel.

Howard Greenstein and Chris Heuer at Social Media Camp - image by Jay Bryant

Howard Greenstein and Chris Heuer at Social Media Camp - image by Jay Bryant

Along with Chris Heuer, I presented or co-presented 5 presentations in the main track. Many of them were recorded via Livestream and are available for you to view. Check out http://www.livestream.com/socialmediaclub and click “On Demand” to see the sessions. Soon, all the sessions will be up and organized on the Social Media Camp Site.

Thanks to Jolie O’Dell of ReadWriteWeb for taping this piece from my discussion on Personal Branding. In this segment, I discuss the evolution of worrying about having embarrassing pictures on Facebook.

The slides I used in that presentation and some other relevant ones are on the Social Media Camp Site under “Creating a Digital Identity.” I also presented on “Using Social Media for your Job Search.”

UPDATE: Great Video from Courtney Crosslin – thank you!

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At Pepsi Innovation Day

I’m at Pepsi‘s innovation day – thanks to my friend Stephanie Agresta and Bonin Bough of Pepsi. This is their opportunity to host a bunch of bloggers and journalists, and show what they’re doing that’s new. This is an open kimono day – except for in R&D labs we can take pictures, video and blog everything.
Learning about their company now -at their flavor lab in Valhalla, NY.

Food facts so far – they’re working to ELEVATE the Core – Lays – remove transfats (2002) lower sat fats, lower sodium, simple
ingredients. Baked, different oils, reduce sodium – different flavors arond the world.
This piece is going to be snippets and thoughts, updated all day.
UPDATE
-Just got done with the R&D lab – lots of fun making my own soda, learning about flavors, and getting an overview. My soda was Lemonade, Raspberry and Passion Fruit – very good flavor but I over-sugared it.

Lunch: Lots of ocmments on Twitter, also:

Carbon footprint labeling in the UK  – Walkers

Performance With Purpose

looking for positive momentum – they feel they’re on a roll because they
are part of the conversation.
Interesting

College Humor – made new Pepsi Retro commercials for pepsi throwback
UPDATE 330pm

Panel now with John  Andrews (formerly of Walmart 11 Moms program), Christine CEA (Unilever head of PR) and Adam Cristinsen from IBM.

Discussion of Earned and Paid media.

How is social media changing that?

ADAM: Former PR person – you used to decide message, control, decide who presents it. Now there’s an opportunity to connect with corporate culture – and

Christine: Cultural shift – the tipping point in consumer-generated evolution. They let go of brand control – in 1st season of apprentice – let contestants create a Dove commercial – generated more interest than some of the ones they had done. Now letting consumers create content, or MTV etc. Part of a conversation – letting consumers interact with the brand.

There are challenges – you have the legal folks watching and interacting – how do you create guidelines to allow connection (twitter) and still handle law.

Q: How do you work with Paid media group
Christine: they don’t have a Bonin to oversee Social media. Therefore it’s been a collaborative effort – by necessity. Lots of different needs in Social Media – many related to marketers thinking they ‘need’ a campaign but not 100% sure why or objectives.

They make them sit with media and PR and help figure out goals, and decide who should be the lead (PR or Media) so they can leverage to existing efforts, and also avoid ‘mess’ and/or ‘mess ups’ and know whats going on if things go awry. How you’re judged in your response is important.

John: Paid and Earned working together – Beyond paid and earned – participation media. As they created longer term relationship with 11 moms, they learned they could include them in that planning process as well. They did a program with “Twilight” and used the 11 mom group as a sounding board.They were part of process, had ownership of process, and helped it be most successful pre-sale DVD launch.

The social sphere isn’t always interested in talking about what you’re interested in. When they tried to engage and it was just another media tactic.

Large scale social platforms – Facebook, Twitter, how have those platforms worked for you?

Adam: Agnostic about where employees communicate – there are 275K IBMers on LinkedIn. We want to let employees engage everywhere. From a tactics standpoint-  alumni network is also valuable.

Twitter – wonderful ad-hoc communication network. Even corporate news travels faster on that kind of a network.

UDPATE 340pm

Christine: Great tools for listening. Also suggest they work directly with Facebook. Casestudy – one activity to reach MySpace consumer, one to reach FB, true to the brand (for a different beverage).

John: At Walmart – not about the tech – about the relationships. Eventually FB won’t be cool but it is about creating relationships. Example: Blog Her network – become an integrator in her network – youre createing relationships with those people in her network. It is much more meaningful that you have the relationship with the core influencers.

Q: (missed it)

Adam: Social Media – don’t overplay – it is just the way things are done now – so the model isn’t to have a social media person – it is to integrate it into the marketing team.

Christine: Social Media handle is a shorthand – but a greater area of WOMMA – 80% is offline – the handle has yet to be created for the ‘conversation space’ – social media, soc net, word of mouth – Soc Media is reudced to something – but as a Marketer you need to think beyond it.

From PR perspective – the measurement challenge – if we could capture the value of PR fully  we’d be millionares for the way to do so. Now we are trying to measure value of conversation, net promoter score,  – those used to more standard measurements – there aren’t as many standard ones now. THere may not be “a model or ‘the’ model.” there may be an engagement model, brand equity, pure sales, and it is harder to compare entities.

Adam: The think that kicked off Social Media – massive employee brainstorm – this was a ‘crowd sourcing exercise’ – helped create current corporate strategy. This isn’t a standard effort that would be measured in a standard way.

John: Every metric under the sun shows up. As he left – standard is being worked on – He saw a great presentation from Tyson – taken a nielsen overlay with specific retailer’s shopper area from Spectra – layered on Sales- what’s result of year long twittering? It was quite compelling.

Q: Integration of Paid and Earned to accomplish goals – what does and doesn’t work from process standpoint to see how they can work together?

Adam: Paid, traidiontal have been 2 sides of house – Communications and marketing just merged last year at IBM. There were always tensions. Communications have now taken over marketing – now thinking about how to do things differently – combination to come up with things that work differently. He gets budget from things that used to be advertising. Culture has been melded.

John: several groups coming into process- esp. customer service group as well as tech folks- and set up as an internal agency to be a consulting group inside the agency.

Christine: Lots of experiements (missed some of this).

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Help A Startup Find the Right Marketing Solution

Sometimes I get reader questions, and this seemed like a good one to share with readers of the Toolkit. Today I’ll put forward the case, and during the next week, several marketing experts will forward me their opinions and I’ll deliver the results next week in part 2.

Matt Pollitt, CEO of PTE Golf told me “We run a golf company that sells tournament enhancement items to country clubs for their first tee area such as embroidered table covers and special tournament cases for their starters areas. We have never done any marketing with the company, only doing 1-3 trade shows a year. Otherwise, all of our business is word of mouth.”

He also noted “We’ve never marketed to past clients and I think that is a big mistake. We do get reorders, but our contact info has changed over the years.” So unless customers actively look for his website, they can’t reorder via the old phone number.

Matt wanted to know the best way to connect with his old customers. Some of the contacts at the golf clubs may have changed. One thought he had was a post-card mailer, since he has the addresses and contact info for all his previous customers.

Whatever method he chooses should allow him to make customers aware of new products, while also generating inquires and reorders.

How would you help Matt reconnect with old customers? And Marketing folks? Feel free to weigh in via the comments below.

(Originally published at the Inc. Start-up Toolkit part 1) and (part 2)

Two weeks ago, I put forth the case of Matt Pollitt of PTE Golf and his challenge — lack of follow up marketing with his customers, and a change of phone number and address.

I asked several marketing experts to comment, and here I’ve provided some of their responses.

Hart Hooton, President of Marketechnique.com suggested,

“Matt should send a ‘We’ve moved and forget to tell you’ mailer — done in a format that keeps it fun. Then come up with a humorous way to follow this up. Try getting a temp or intern to follow up the mailer with calls to everyone on your list. Don’t forget to get the client’s email address. And, do something on the website that references the mailer so that if people go to look it up, they’ll recognize the visual.”

When I contacted the Direct Marketing Association, Neil C. O’Keefe, V.P. Multichannel Segments, gave Matt more than a few ideas.

“You have an advantage over a typical start-up in that you already have an existing customer base. Since you have their contact information, whether you realize or not you now have a database – albeit a very simple one. Add the date of the event and the dollar amount they spent with you and how long ago? If you have their email address, add that too. And by all means ask for the email going forward and be sure to store that information. If your budget allows – do that mailing you considered to your full file of contacts. If resources are tight you can prioritize by dollars spent and how long ago. A recent customer and a high dollar customer are more likely to respond.”

Neil had a lot more to say, including suggestions to advertise in the trade magazines around the trade shows PTE already attends “Advertising here would also spread the word and allow you to more broadly communicate your 800#, Web address, email, and potentially LinkedIn/Twitter/Facebook pages. Also consider making a Golf blog, where readers contribute to the conversation without turning it into an infomercial. You have a wealth of experience and there are many people who can benefit from what you have to say.”

Finally, Belinda Lang, VP, Marketing Strategy at American Express tells Matt,

“As you put together your plan to reconnect with former customers, thank them for the business in the past, and if you have the information, include some reference to what they had purchased, and for how many years they were a customer. Tell them about something new added to your product lineup, and add an incentive for coming back and buying again from you. Finally, let them know you would love to hear from them with any feedback or suggestions. Like any good relationship, you want to recognize them, give them a reason for engaging with you and demonstrate that you are listening. They may even end up talking about you with their friends.”

Matt, hopefully these 3 experts have given you some things to think about as you reengage with your customers. Check back and let us know what you did, and thanks for letting me use you as a case study.

Facebook Pages vs Groups – on Mashable

My Latest article appears on Mashable – and it is on the subject of Facebook Pages vs. Facebook Groups.
Mashable – The Social Media Guide

“Should I create a group or launch a Page?” It’s the eternal question that gets asked as often as, “What is Twitter?” at introductory social media training classes. Ever since Facebook launched their Pages product as part of their larger advertising strategy (along with the ill-fated Beacon) in November 2007, there has been confusion over which to use.

You can read the rest at Facebook Pages vs Facebook Groups: What’s the Difference?

Help Us Find the Wisdom of Twitter: #TwitWiz

Image representing Twitter as depicted in Crun...
Image via CrunchBase

At the upcoming 140 Characters Conference being thrown by Jeff Pulver, Dean Landsman and I will give a talk called “The Wisdom of Twitter.” We both have some good ideas about “How Twitter Can be Helpful in Increasing Our Wisdom” or “What Twitter Has Taught Us.” We also know a bit about “What are the Wisest Ways to Use Twitter,” but we’d love learn more about these subjects from the experts – you.

We intend to curate this talk, and take much of the wisdom from you, the crowd. So, please help us learn about the best ways to use twitter to gain wisdom and knowledge, and please help us by sharing the things you’ve learned by using Twitter – 140 characters  at a time.

Please send them to @HowardGr or @Deanland and tag them with #TwitWiz so we can find them more easily. We’ll credit everyone who shares something of value.

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