The Non-Story: A Win for All... or Maybe Not

It never ceases to amaze me just how fast the news cycle really is.

Last Thursday, Allstate Insurance issued a news release on the best and worst drivers based on their zodiac sign. Virgos held the dubious distinction as the worst, while Scorpios were the best. Allstate based the results on an internal study of their own customers.

This was a complete non-story. There is absolutely no news value and the study is only on Allstate customers. But the content is interesting and bound to generate traffic. Allstate gets free attention and the news site gets traffic. A win for everyone, right?

The journalist in me scoffs at the blatant publicity for Allstate, but the PR professional in me thinks this is great way to raise more visibility for the company. I even spoke with a colleague and commented on the pointless article, but what a great idea it was to get a news mention (and potentially get picked up by Yahoo, MSNBC, Gawker and other big outlets). I considered looking at ways my company could do something similar.

What could possibly go wrong with this seemingly harmless story?

Well, hell hath no fury like a Virgo scorned.

Today, Allstate issued an apology for the study and removed the study from their online newsroom. People were vocal, threatened to not consider Allstate and thought Allstate used this information seriously when deciding whether to raise premiums or issue new policies.

I never thought this non-story would get such a hostile reaction. Allstate's PR team probably thought the same thing. I'm not really sure Allstate could have done anything different to change people's reactions either. Did people have such a negative reaction because the study came from Allstate rather than a journal or university? Multiple studies say men are better at "x" than women or women are more likely to "x" than men. None of those stories elicit an apology.

I guess the lesson is no matter what you may think is harmless, people can still get upset. Yeah, that's not really much of a lesson. Anyone else have a better take away or are people's reactions too unpredictable?

The social media bubble: Does it exist and will it burst?

I never thought I'd be interested in hearing about social media from General Motors.

GM's Christopher Barger sat down with ZDNet's Jennifer Leggio and talked about how he handles social media and his thoughts on the future. The interview is a great read, but Barger's comment about a social media bubble really piqued my interest.

Barger says the social media bubble is going to burst just like the dot com bubble a decade ago.

But do we even have a bubble? Is it going to burst?

I completely agree with Barger when he talks about social media "gurus." Most of their advice is absolutely worthless. They define engagement as constant linking and retweeting without any engagement of their followers. These people also believe having thousands of Twitter followers or Facebook fans is the path to success.

These egomaniacs have absolutely no idea what they are talking about. They take advantage of businesses and people to make themselves look good. Those awful books about how to increase your presence on Twitter? These people write them. The 'RT me and get 500 followers' scams? Yep, these gurus are the culprits.

Barger argues the "gurus" will cause the social media bubble to burst.

I don't buy it.

The number of followers, likes and the ridiculous Klout score mean absolutely nothing. Having one million followers means absolutely nothing if there is no interaction and engagement (unless you're already a celebrity in person). But five hundred followers who regularly interact and engage are of great value.

The "gurus" will fall apart when people see through their charade. Sure, some people will fall into their trap and end up not utilizing social media properly. But this happens in business and real life regularly. There are people who think they will get rich fast by selling knives for Vector. I don't think these people are so much creating a bubble as they are taking advantage of unknowledgable social media newbies.

And how awful is the Klout score? If you think the Klout score matters, I'm here to tell you to stop drinking the Kool-Aid. Boiling down social media relationships and engagement into a score makes no sense. You can't put a number on relationships. It's like giving a girlfriend/boyfriend/wife/husband a score based on dates, intimacy and overall relationship.

"Susan, honey, the relationship score-o-meter says we are only at a 42. We need to boost our sex life, have one more kid and travel to Australia in order to increase our score."

Klout is just ridicuous.

There is no bubble. Even if there was, Barger's only argument for the burst is the proliferation of "gurus." This is hardly enough to make the bubble burst.

However...

There are social media specialists who are actually the real deal, though. These are people who encourage discussion and engagement within the community. They realize social media ROI can't be assigned a simple numeric value, but rather is an analyzation of relationships and discussion monitoring. These specialists provide compelling content and spark discussion with thoughtful ideas.

We shouldn't discount all social media specialists because they are outnumbered by "gurus." There are many specialists who can help people and companies do great things with social media. Just stay clear of those who say you will be a social media opion leader in a week. And the ones peddling a book.

Social Media is 24/7, Coffee Fight and More: News Roundup

Did you hear about that crazy storm shutting down the Midwest this weekend? Guess who was caught in its crosshairs?

Me!

Fortunately, I wasn't one of those stuck on the road in Indiana for over 12 hours. United Airlines canceled my flight from Chicago to Cleveland Sunday afternoon. The only rebooking option was flying the next morning and connecting through Washington D.C.. I hate connecting, but I only had a carry-on so it ended up working out alright (My 3:30AM wake-up call? Not so much fun).

Which brings me to my first subject:


Social Media Doesn't End After Business Hours

United Airlines left their Twitter account completely abandoned when all hell broke loose in the Midwest last weekend. I mean, when your largest hub has over 1000 flights canceled over the course of two days, leaving your social media account unattended isn't the best idea.

It took me an hour and a half on the phone to rebook with United when it canceled my flight on Sunday. I ended up checking my new itinerary online several hours later and my rebooked flight was not showing up on my account. I tweeted United asking if I should be concerned. No response.

I had to call reservations and wait on hold for almost two hours. The man who finally answered said my reservation was there even though I was not able to check in for it online. To be honest, I had my doubts about what he told me since United outsources their call centers and I've known people who had problems with them. Luckily, my reservation actually existed and I was able to get home (after dealing with a surly flight attendant on my 6 AM flight to DC, but that's another story...).

Social media is a 24/7 animal. If an incident happens after regular business hours, it needs to have attention. American Airlines, for example, responded on Twitter about a flight skidding off the runway in Montreal on a Wednesday night immediately. They even beat out the @BreakingNews Twitter account.

United knew a major weather disruption was happening, yet didn't have anyone assigned to their social media accounts. Social media is not a 9-5 job; it's 24/7.

PS: United did end up responding on Monday, after I landed in DC. Their advice was about adding my Mileage Plus number to the reservation, which didn't make much sense.

PPS: My nonexistent economy plus for my return trip has not been refunded yet. Boo.


Coffee Fight!

Starbucks and Kraft are bringing an end to their relationship.

Well, Starbucks is actually kicking Kraft to the curb but Kraft is not leaving without a fight. Starbucks wants to go at it alone on the grocery store front since their VIA product is a huge success. Starbucks wanted to buy Kraft out of their agreement, but Kraft thought the offer was way too low.

The result? A legal battle between Starbucks and Kraft plastered throughout business headlines. Starbucks says Kraft intentionally stymied growth of their coffee in grocery stores. Kraft says Starbucks is making unreasonable demands and wants Kraft to shift focus away from its own Maxwell House coffee.

It's going to be an ugly battle.


Yahoo Rearranges Deck Chairs on the Titanic

Yahoo gave the pink slip to 600 staffers yesterday. This should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone.

Yahoo has no real identity and is not on top like it used to be ten years ago. The company acquires the most random entities (Flickr, Rivals.com, Associated Content, MusicMatch, etc...) and just sits on them. I briefly mentioned this in my post about MySpace.

All Yahoo does is respond to what others do. It hasn't come out with an original, successful idea in a long time. Google won the search engine war. Pandora is better than Yahoo Music. Examiner is more known than Associated Content. Though Flickr and Delicious are probably the most successful Yahoo entities right now. This goes to show a company can't buy its way to success.

If I worked for Yahoo right now, I'd be looking for another job as fast as I could. This isn't the first and it won't be the last round of layoffs. Unless Yahoo can be innovative, it's going to die.

My B2B and social media approach

We all know B2B and B2C marketing and public relations require very different strategies. Most B2B companies can't simply sign up for Facebook and Twitter and automatically attract a legion of loyal followers. If a B2C company has a good product, they'll easily attract fans. If a B2B company has a good product, that can mean nothing in the social media sphere.

Why? Well, if Susie has loves muffins from Muffin Company X, she's very likely to follow them on Twitter and like the company on Facebook. If Susie works for a clothing store and uses a program to help her do inventory in five seconds, while she's happy inventory takes her no time, she won't run off and find the company on social media. Hence the B2B challenge with social media.

I work at a B2B software company right now and I had a big social media dilemma. The consensus I've read is B2B companies aren't sure how to make social media work for them. B2B companies can't give discounts at checkout because pricing is very situational. B2B products often don't get much mainstream attention.

How am I, an entry-level employee right of college, going to use social media to help my company? Besides monitoring industry news and discussion on LinkedIn, how else do I use social media?

It took me a while, but here is how I am approaching social media (LinkedIn is exempt from this strategy since it's already being utilizing):

1) Use social media channels as two-way communication.
This is all about relationship management. I want my company to use social media and engage prospects, current customers and industry players. We need to interact with them and be a good social media neighbor (retweeting, sharing information from others, etc...). Obviously we're not going to promote our direct competitors, but we'll pay attention to the industry magazines, government agencies and other players.

2) Provide compelling content.
There's only so much talking you can do without providing the goods. I want my company to post relevant articles related to our industry. I also provided links to new classes and resources our company provides to customers. New customer case studies will also be content to share.

3) Position company as an opinion leader
My company is pretty well-known in our industry, but we have no social media presence. One of the ways we're going to change this through blogging. I've stated my feeling about blogging before, so I am going to make sure my company doesn't fall into the trap of updating the blog once in a blue moon. My company has people with a ton of industry experience and have fantastic insight to share.

A company can't half-ass their social media effort and expect it to grow overnight. My focus is on cultivating relationships, sharing content and giving our take on the industry. I want the return of investment (ROI) of our social media approach to be better customer, prospect and industry relationships.

This is just the start of my approach. I'm sure it will evolve as time goes on. Does anyone have any advice for a B2B approach to social media? Am I heading in the right direction or am I off my rocker? How do you measure social media ROI as a B2B company?