Engaging Beyond the Customer

The results of the study reminded me of Charlene Li’s excellent predictions for social business in 2012. Li made some great points about what businesses should focus on in order to make tangible steps toward becoming more social and more open in the next year. Her third point is especially valid: that a culture of sharing that empowers and connects employees with consumers will create a sustained competitive advantage for businesses willing to implement it. I would take it one step further and assert that social businesses will be more effective at engagement with all stakeholders.

Most companies are making headway in consumer engagement via social on some level, but they aren’t considering other stakeholder groups as part of the social business puzzle. The Trust Barometer emphasizes more than ever an engagement approach inclusive of employees, partners, and others as well as current and potential customers.

Engaging with all of these stakeholder communities at scale is a challenge. However, I believe that an influencer approach can help provide some focus, and will allow for the most effective communications with all audiences.

The Bigger Picture of Influence

The idea of influence amongst consumers is nothing new, and brands and their agencies have long targeted the most influential consumers in order to gain third-party credibility, spread awareness, and ultimately drive sales. Some have argued that a “cult of influence” will even emerge in 2012 that will see businesses obsess over turning influence into business value. Services like Klout are built around helping brands do this at scale. But there are influencers in every stakeholder group that are driving the culture and perception of businesses. These deserve attention and engagement just as much as customers do.

Through a comprehensive influencer mapping process, businesses can identify and engage with the most influential voices in each group – whether that be the blogger who drives online conversation around a brand, the employee who sparks water-cooler conversations, or the journalist who covers the industry. The reality is that these groups have already been engaging with each other, but businesses have never before had the tools to bring all stakeholders together under an umbrella engagement strategy. But the new reality illustrated by the Trust Barometer demands it.

Social Business Planning Leads the Way

What that engagement looks like will depend on the unique position of each company, but a smart social business plan will be the roadmap to engaging at all levels of influence. Most likely it will involve:

• Some combination of internal and external community management. Have you implemented an effective employee collaboration hub – one that is about culture sharing as much as information sharing?
• Social media training – for all departments, not just marketing – and policy development.
• Collaboration between departments – especially HR, which has an increasingly important role to play.
• Buy-in from C-Suite executives, who are the biggest influencers for most stakeholders. This will prove to all parties how important a culture of sharing and open communication is to your business.

If trust is indeed shifting from institutions to individuals, then businesses need to understand which individuals are responsible for driving their company perception, and put in place an engagement strategy. How are you positioned to engage with your stakeholders in 2012?

Image credit: Jean-François Chénier

As part of Movember, the annual charitable giving drive when men grow mustaches in order to raise awareness and funds for men’s health issues, a team of dad bloggers and general fatherhood aficionados was assembled in order to harness the collective growing power – and social influence – of the group. The result has exceeded even the organizer’s expectations: over $30,000 raised in total from a group of around 50 dads, including contributions from supporting bloggers and sponsors.

“I wanted to try to include as many dads as possible in this great wave of social media for social good,” said Doug French of Laid-Off Dad, the organizer who invited all the dads (including me) to participate. “I had high hopes and tempered expectations, but this turnout has blown them both away.”

Marketers have been looking for reasons to take dads as seriously as they take the online mom community, and efforts like this should verify the legitimacy of that decision. Online dads are at the forefront of the changing role of the father in the household – a change that the research is increasingly supporting. According to the recently released Edelman Modern Family study, households are increasingly run by both parents playing equal roles, including when making purchasing decisions.

Since many brands have not yet made an effort to reach out to dads, those who begin to incorporate dads into their campaigns now will benefit from the small but influential voice of this community, while securing long-term brand loyalty. At the very least, brands should consider how their messaging to mom could be perceived by dad, who is often influential to her decision making and can be turned off by an overly negative or one-sided parenting message.

Dads have long been the parenting underdogs, especially online. It looks like 2012 may be the year they turn a corner.

Making the transition to fatherhood can be difficult for many guys. Women seem to have a built-in support system that creates a well-worn path to motherhood. Guys, on the other hand, have a journey and a role mostly neglected by society.

This disconnect has been reflected online as well. But fathers are starting to realize this, and in recent years, men have been working hard to create resources online for other dads, both new to fatherhood and expert diaper changers. In honor of the Modern Media Man Summit happening in less than two weeks, this week’s Friday Five focuses on highlighting some of the best resources for dads around the web.

Digital Dads

As C.C. Chapman searched the web in 2009, he noticed that there were few sites writing about being a dad, and the ones writing about men’s topics rarely included content for men who were also parents. As a result, he and some other involved dads started Digital Dads, which strives to be an honest view of what it’s like to be a dad in today’s world. C.C. has been a huge advocate for dads online for some time now. He also recently launched Digital Dads TV, a partnership with the Pulse Network, where he’ll be streaming live discussing all kinds of topics related to being a guy.

The Good Men Project

The Good Men Project seeks to start a national conversation about what it means to be a good man. Although this online magazine, book and documentary isn’t for dads alone, much of the content focuses on issues to which dads can relate, including a section of the site dedicated to fathers. I’ve had my eye on this project for a while and I love how they are striving to make men out to be more than the media portrays us to be.

The Art of Manliness

Another resource focused on overall manhood as opposed to just fatherhood (although again, they do have family focused content) is The Art of Manliness. The site attempts to provide men with the resources they need to live virtuous lives. Don’t let the name or the moustaches fool you – this site isn’t frivolous or for entertainment only. Brett and Kate McKay, the founders and editors, are serious about helping men recover some of the skills that used to be associated with being a man. I mean, come on – “How to Make a Corn Cob Pipe?” Not your typical guy-related content.

Dad Blogs

Started by Pete Janelle and Joe Schatz in January 2009, Dad Blogs has been slowly growing into a serious resource for dads to connect with one another online. Although it is a self-described “social networking site primarily for dads and dad bloggers”, Dad Blogs doesn’t discriminate, and has actually seen moms come in to participate in the conversations. Members can contribute blog posts, discuss topics in the forums and network with other dad bloggers.

GeekDad

This last resource is for dads as geeky as I am. Wired magazine’s highly popular blog is for those who are unafraid to pass on a little geek to their children. Covering everything from Comic-Con to games to the latest geeky toys for your little ones to play with, GeekDad takes father/son bonding to the next nerdy level. How often do you get to create your own edible clone trooper army together?

If you’re a woman interested in blogging and social media, you have your choice of events that cater specifically to you. But so far men have gotten the short end of the stick event-wise. Enter the Modern Media Man Summit.

The M3 Summit is an attempt to give men that space to learn and connect with other “media men” in a setting designed with us in mind. As a blogger and a father, I’ve been looking for an event such as this for quite some time. And with great speakers and an awesome lineup of sessions (including a meet and greet with Cal Ripken, Jr.), M3 promises not to disappoint.

But the M3 Summit represents much more than a great event. I’m hoping this will be a watershed moment for dads online, when brands finally start recognizing the important role that dads play. I’ve stated before that I believe this shift is coming. And as dads get even more connected and have a more cohesive voice online, companies are beginning to recognize that working with dads – not just moms – is in their best interest.

I’ll be speaking about this exact subject at M3, and I’d love to get your ideas and your feedback in person. As if this wasn’t enough to wet your appetite, you can listen to an interview I gave where I chatted with the folks organizing the Summit about some ideas to get this process started.

If you’re anything like me, you’ve been wanting to meet some of the amazing men bloggers out there, and connect with other guys making a career out of social media. So let’s all get together in Atlanta on September 9. Modern Media Men: Assemble!

Mashable Live-Streams Social Media Day

Mashable’s Social Media Day, a day to “celebrate the revolution of media becoming social”, brought social media addicts together in meetups around the globe. How did they compensate for the time zone differences? By using Ustream to broadcast several of the meetups as they happened. Unfortunately, Chicago wasn’t one of the streams offered. What’s up, Mashable?

Twitter Moms Care for Content Over Coupons

An important study done by eMarketer that shows moms care about more than getting discounts. They want to read relevant, useful information that they can retweet. Here’s a highlight:

Check-In Apps Make Entertainment Social Again

A new round of social networks is trying to connect users with similar tastes in entertainment. The most popular, GetGlue, allows users to “check-in” to certain activities, such as reading a book, watching a TV program, or drinking a bottle of wine. The aim is to share a history of your offline activities in the hopes of connecting online. These kinds of sites are still growing, but I expect interest from brands to be just around the corner.

Social Networking Makes You Want to Cuddle

In my favorite news of the week, a fascinating study proves that the same chemical is released in the brain when connecting socially online as when falling in love: oxytocin (the “cuddle chemical”). If there was ever a biological reason for companies to enter the social space, here it is.

Posterous On A Mission to Be Your Blog/Photo Sharing Service/Everything

Posterous is making a bold move to get more users from other services. A few days ago, it announced on its blog that it was going to spend 15 days making it easy to switch from 15 different “dying” platforms. Obviously this didn’t sit well with its competitors, some of which went so far as to announce legal action against it.

NBC Turns Television Into a Social Media Game

Fan It is an interesting new initiative by NBC that aims to tie social networking directly into its programming. In combination with myNBC, NBC’s online fan community, the program rewards users who converse around and promote – through Twitter, MySpace, Facebook and Foursquare integration – NBC shows. This kind of social integration into television should provide new information for NBC to know early which shows are building a passionate fanbase.

Foursquare Snags a Deal with The Today Show

As if you needed another reason to pay attention to Foursquare, the location-based network has added another mainstream media partner to its ever growing roster. The Today Show partnership will center around the show’s yearly Concert Series. Users can earn special badges by attending the concerts and get tidbits about New York City venues.

You Can Now Skype From Your TV

Skype-on-TV sounds like something from the future, doesn’t it? Not anymore. If you own a Panasonic or Samsung internet enabled HDTV, all you have to do is purchase a special webcam once available, and you can start video chatting from your couch – with multiple people. This is big for Skype, considering the announcement that Google may be hot on their tail.

Google Close to Making Web TV a Reality

Speaking of Google, looks like it’s finally getting close to making its “Smart TV” platform a reality. We don’t know much yet, but partnerships with Sony and Intel should make this system smart, fast, and very web-content friendly. Could Google be making plans to integrate Google Talk into Smart TV, taking yet another swipe at Skype?

In the Future, We Will All Be Replaced by Telepresence Robots

Kind of puts the Google versus Skype discussion in context, doesn’t it?

You may or may not have seen the post today by Liz Gumbinner of Mom-101 regarding mom bloggers working for free. If you haven’t already read it, I’d encourage you to do so. Liz makes some fantastic points about an emerging theme in the parenting blogger community: marketers don’t respect us enough to pay us for our time.

Recently influential bloggers such as Liz have become increasingly annoyed by advertising and PR firms asking bloggers to participate in programs – asking for placement of promotional banners, email blasts, social media promotion and the like – without compensation. I may get some blowback from other agency people for this, but I’ll go ahead and say it: Liz is right.

If we are asking bloggers to spend their precious time and energy promoting our clients, why shouldn’t they get paid (with full disclosure)? And by “get paid”, I don’t mean that we provide giveaways for their readers, or links to their blogs, or free products, or other things that are used in place of compensation. Don’t get me wrong – those things are great ways to build relationships with bloggers and their readership. But bloggers (and I include myself in this) are right to be insulted if this is all we offer them for weeks, months, or in some cases years worth of speaking up on behalf of our clients.

I am not so naïve as to think that there aren’t bloggers out there who would agree to this kind of exchange. But taking advantage of an already overworked blogger in the name of more publicity for our clients is a predatory practice that must end. At Edelman we make it a point to always pay our bloggers when participation in a program comes with specific requirements, and that’s one of the reasons I’m proud to be a part of this team. Of course we also have programs that involve open opportunities that give bloggers the option to participate in a variety of ways (or not at all), and those don’t involve compensation. But requirements for participation are where dollar signs need to be present.

One important caveat to make: I’m not talking about “paid for” posts. We never pay for product reviews or any posts about our clients, and in the instances we’ve been asked for money to review a product, we’ve declined. As Liz points out, editorial content is a different beast altogether.

What do you think? Are bloggers being taken advantage of by agencies? Or are they responsible for demanding compensation for their time? Let’s start a conversation about how to make this process better for everyone. Read the comments and add your own thoughts.

Image credit: thevamoose

Google Places Tackles Location From the Search Angle

Google has renamed its Local Business Center to Places, and added a host of new features. Since many people use Google for location-based searches, it’ll be interesting to see how this competes with the growth of location-based social networks.

YouTube Introduces ‘Show & Tell’

YouTube is collecting an amazing source of the best marketing and advertising campaigns on its platform into one channel. Partnering with the Art Directors Club to curate content, Show & Tell will be a place for marketers to learn what makes for successful YouTube content. Follow this car’s journey as a guide.

Half of Teens Send More Than 50 Text Messages a Day

Not surprisingly, a new Pew Internet report says that teens like to text. 88% with cell phones text frequently, with girls texting more than boys. And if the above number doesn’t startle you: one in three send more than 100 texts a day. This has huge implications for mobile marketing as these teens become young adults making purchasing decisions.

Volcanic Ash Causes a Rise in Web Conferencing

This is an interesting side effect of this week’s chaos in Europe caused by the volcanic ash from Iceland, as travelers were stuck with only technology (like iPads) to keep them company. Guess this isn’t as big of a deal if you don’t come into the office at all.
Also, Lonely Planet stepped in to provide stranded travelers their normally $10 iPhone city guides for free.

Facebook Wants You to Be Even More Connected

Facebook has made some big announcements this week, not the least of which is rolling out Community Pages, the object of which is to be a resource of shared knowledge about a topic or activity. These pages can be linked to by using the new universal “Like” button. Facebook is rolling out its “Like” button across the web via its new Open Graph technology. Expect to see the “Like” button across the web in the weeks to come.

As the dad blogging community grows, the buzz around it is increasing. Since moms have shown themselves as a force in the blogosphere, speculation is emerging over whether dad bloggers will be a force in their own right.

I’ll go ahead and say it: dads are coming up, and brands need to understand how to engage the community successfully.

Being Daddy in a World of Mommies

First let’s put the modern-day dad in context. Dads who blog about fatherhood are by implication active in the lives of their children. As a father I can attest to the uncomfortable role in which active dads find themselves placed by society. Initially we’re hailed as heroes for being active at all, since the bar for what most people consider a “good” father is low. The smiling faces I get when I take my son out for an afternoon without his mom attest to this.

But underneath the smiles is a quiet condescension about my role in his life. It’s commonly assumed that my afternoon with my son is a break from his “real” parent. My session of “babysitting” won’t replace what he gets from his primary caregiver, right? It’s in this tension that dad bloggers live: between the burden of discovering their inabilities as a father and the low expectations placed upon them by others.

Whereas mom bloggers are struggling not to be put in a box, dad bloggers are fighting for a seat at the parenting table. They’re trying to bring respect to the institution of fatherhood. Being a dad, especially a stay-at-home dad, is being a minority in a field dominated by women.

Respecting the Role of the Father

Brands should acknowledge that dads have a role to play in the lives of their kids. Blogging moms (taking care not to say ‘mommybloggers’) have had the attention of brands because numerous studies have shown them to make most of the purchasing decisions for a household. But in many households, parents collaborate on purchasing decisions, especially on big ticket items. Why not have the support of both parents? What about stay-at-home dads and single dads?

Some industries, such as consumer electronics, already have the attention of most men and could benefit from collaboration with dads. Last year Sony made an important step. In an effort to reach out to their readership, Sony sent some high profile dads products to try out with their families. They called it the DigiDads Project.

What made DigiDads work was a recognition that dad bloggers have their own voice, and their own ideas about what to share with their audiences. Sound familiar? The same successful formula has been used to engage moms online. Treating dads as an equal part of the parenting equation goes a long way towards gaining their respect.

At the same time, all bloggers are individuals and should be treated as such. I’m a father, but I don’t always blog about being a father. Dad blogs cover a variety of subjects. Knowing the interests and quirks of each person is an important step in the engagement process.

The Year of Daddy

I think we’re going to hear more about dad bloggers in the coming year as agencies and the brands they represent realize the potential of the dad blogger community. When mom engagement began online, it blew up when brands and moms began working together. My hope is that the same will happen with dads, and we’ll be treated like blogging equals instead of a passing trend.

Weigh in: What do you think about the growing community of dad bloggers? I’d especially love to hear from other dads.