As a social media agency, we have mostly gotten inquires from companies who are a) Not sure if or how they should enter social media or b) They have been thrown into social media and need some help.

More unfortunate are the companies that get thrown in. Take Dell for instance. From a disgruntled blogger Jeff Jarvis came an onslaught of negative blog reactions and a case study that has been referred to since as “Dell Hell”. Or ask Kryptonite bike locks, who are still suffering (at least in web presence) from bloggers revealing that its locks could be picked with a Bic pen.

In my opinion, the most unfortunate part of a company “getting thrown in” is that it often restricts social media tactics to damage control. The crisis communication plan doesn’t have “blogging” anywhere in it, there often isn’t a clear communication channel established, and as a result it takes companies days or weeks to respond.

With an increased emphasis on real-time communication, customers are bloggers – and they are expecting companies to respond in the same medium. So the question exists – are you ready? If you were thrown in – would your company sink or swim?

In order to help get you and your company on the right path (or to see how many of these you’ve gotten right), I’ve excerpted verbatim the 5 pillars of online reputation management from an excellent post from ViperChill:

1. Taking Stock – Before you can take any effective steps toward ensuring a better digital brand, you will need to monitor the existing situation, i.e. your existing online presence. You would need to know what people are saying about your company, a good way to do this is by setting up Google Alerts for relevant phrases and, of course, your company name. This way, you can stay up to speed about what people are saying about you.You can find more in our post about 5 free Brand Monitoring solutions.
2. Analyze your Online Presence within the SERPS – With the web moving more toward user generated content and search engines which now update their indexes more frequently, it’s not uncommon to find a negative comment or blog post in the SERPS for a particular keyword. Something like a company scandal similar to the Media 24 Scandal can live on the Google front page for months. You therefore need to keep an eye on you and your competitor’s search engine environment.
3. Gain Points with Optimization – Correctly optimizing your site for search engines mean that your site will rank higher for important key terms therefore preventing any negative publicity from rearing it’s ugly head on the first page or the SERPS.A good idea is also to link out to positive resources on your brand to help them rank for your name aswell.
4. Get your Hands Dirty – As a brand, you would also need to actively participate in social networks and online communities through blog posts, forums and social networking sites like Facebook. For example, commenting on blogs will help paint your brand in a positive light as a large percentage of consumers turn to blogs when looking for advice on whether or not to try new brands, etc. This can also help in terms of responding to any negative criticism that has been written about you.
5. Wash, Rinse, Repeat – It should be noted that online reputation management is not a once-off but only effective an ongoing process. Be proactive and understand the consumer’s perception of your brand and your organization when choosing an online reputation management strategy. “

Since we formally announced the launch of this social media agency we call Ignite, we’ve been swamped with calls from companies asking how we can help them. Some have very specific questions and are well-informed on what they’d like to do. Others have an understanding that the social media marketing space is critically important, but they’re not sure how it can help them, how much it costs, etc. In this post, I’ll try to give some rough cost guidance.

First of all, asking how much a social media marketing campaign should cost is a lot like asking how much an advertising campaign or a PR campaign costs. An ad campaign can cost $5,000 or it can cost $250,000,000. A PR campaign can cost $2,500 a month or it can cost $100,000 a month. So it really depends on two factors:

1. How much do you need to do? and
2. How much can you afford to do?

Social media marketing isn’t for everyone. But it can work for lots of types of companies. And when it works for you, it works in different ways. So how much do you need to do is a question that we simply need to work through individually.

I told one company yesterday that they should probably allocate their budget in other ways; social media marketing wasn’t going to be their best ROI. I told another company yesterday that they should allocate a significant portion of their budget toward a few different social media marketing efforts. There is no pat answer.

As for how much can you afford, that’s a standard series of questions:

• How much is your marketing budget overall?
• What tactics are you using already and how are they working?
• What percentage of your overall budget should be redirected to social media marketing.”

That might be 5% of your budget or it might be 100% of your budget. Again: it depends.B.L. Ochman has a good post on her site about general costs. In it, she says that you can do an effective campaign for as little as $50,000. And that she’s done other campaigns that cost $500,000 for three months.

That range seems about right to me. We can build you “tools” (sites, widgets, networks) for much less than $50,000. (They can also cost much more than $50,000.) But you can’t really do a campaign unless you have a team out there working it properly. And while much of social media is “free”, time (whether it’s yours or ours) never is.

The right answer very much depends on your situation. So take a look at your overall marketing budget, your target audience and your goals and call me or someone like me to figure out what’s right for you.

If you’re run your own campaigns and want to share rough budget ideas, feel free to talk about them in the comments section below.

For those of you who happen to read this blog, (and who also live in areas around and encompassing the Triangle)- we’d like to announce that we are starting a Triangle chapter of the Social Media Club.

Our first meeting will take place on Wednesday, November 14th at 5:30 in our Ignite Offices. It will be a roundtable discussion on “Corporate Blogging Best Practices”, covering topics such as who should blog, how to interact in the blogosphere, the benefits of blogging, best practices, etc.

We hope you will come out, as our vision of the club is to strengthen our relationships, have some fun, and learn more about the applications of social media through each other’s insights and vision.

If you are interested in attending, please RSVP by leaving a comment to this post with your name and email address. This will give us an idea of how many drinks and snacks are necessary and will ensure you get a friendly reminder closer to the event.

To read more about the event, please visit our club wiki, or read the full press release here.

In my earlier post, “Is Shoutlet Overselling Itself,” I took a look at the Shoutlet website after their product launch announcement and wondered aloud, basically, “What is this thing? Does it work? Or is it hype?”

Jason Weaver, CEO of Sway, the company that developed Shoutlet, was listening and last week offered a couple of us from the Ignite Social Media team a demo of the technology conducted by him and Jason Konz.

Here’s what I thought after that demo:

Shoutlet is an evolving product that has good features today and a well-thought out plan for additional features going forward. The Sway/Shoutlet team understands the space, is realistic and are putting together a product that will save social media agencies and social media practitioners a lot of time. It may not allow you to do anything that you couldn’t do before, but it does seem like it will allow you to do much more of it, much more easily, more quickly, and with one place to go to measure your efforts.

Basically, what it does is helps you distribute your content more easily, via email, via podcast, via RSS, across multiple social networks and multiple content distribution platforms and more. Here’s one easy example: You’ve got a video you’d like to have on 5 different sites. Upload it each time and your done. Or upload it once via Shoutlet and your done faster and you can track it in one place. Which one is easier?

They also have pretty easy widget creation tools that can work either embedded on websites or on a desktop. You can then send updated content to these widgets as you wish. Simple. Cool.

What I like about it too is a coming feature that will allow you to take a campaign of a lot of different pieces and shout them out simultaneously across email, podcast, RSS, video, widget updates, etc. etc.

So, Jason/Jason, and the rest of the Shoutlet team, I said in the first post that: “I may yet be their biggest fan and biggest client.” We’ll work on the last part, but I can say at this point that I think you’re on to something that may well end up as an essential tool for a social media agency like Ignite.

Subway, Jimmy John’s and Erbert and Gerbert’s Subs and Clubs. Three companies with three degrees of national recognition and three very different marketing approaches to selling pretty similar turkey sandwiches.

Everyone is familiar with Jared, the Subway guy, and his sub diet, thanks to a marketing campaign that has stormed the airwaves for the past few years, most recently including a NFL star athlete fueled by the same ham and turkey combo that Jared chooses. But not every sandwich shop has the advertising budget for national 30-second prime time spots, with celebrities in tow.

Jimmy Johns takes a guerrilla marketing approach, stopping by our office at 3:30 on Thursday afternoon to ask us whether we want a veggie, turkey or ham sample sized sub right as the mid-afternoon dreariness sets in. Easily the most craving inducing campaign as of yet, but does it really seem economical?

Lastly, Erbert and Gerbert’s Subs and Clubs, an emerging sub shop in the Midwest who has turned to social media. One hundred and fifty T-shirts, one admirable iron, 9 hours of standing and one male model produced a YouTube video that is sure to put them on the map. An obsession with flipbooks, the abundant availability of humans and a story of a boy’s hunt for a sandwich is the concept of this viral marketing campaign that a friend recently sent me. Since when does an advertisement for a sandwich get passed around? Since social media came to town.

Again, an instance of Web 2.0 hoisting the little man and his product up above those national brands that we are so tired of watching (sorry, Jared) and those two professional sandwich makers going door to door of office buildings. Instead it is passed around from inbox to inbox with no added charge. What does the little sandwich shop around the corner have to lose?Social media is not only about saving money; there are some pretty high-end videos being passed around out there. More importantly, Ebert and Gerbert have broken through mass media into a realm of effectiveness that only the consumer can decide. Would you rather spend 30 seconds of your day with Jared or a little boy that travels in and out of a t-shirt looking for a sandwich? Social media just might make this franchise spread like a wildfire, or more appropriately, spread like mayonnaise.

Click here to see how the commercial was made.

According to an article in Marketing Daily, a survey of 50 businesses and organizations was conducted in September by Prospero Technologies. Survey questions ranged from what current social media applications were being used, plans and budgets for 2008, ROI, how ROI is measured/assessed, and social media challenges.

The article stated the following results:

• 59% of respondents reported that social media performance in 2007 met or exceeded their marketing objectives, boosting future spending expectations—with 31% planning to spend significantly more on social media applications in 2008.
• 35% reported positive ROI, and 41% said that ROI was “unknown.” Responses to questions about how Web marketers measure ROI reveal that direct sales revenue is not a top measure for determining social media success.
• Total number of site visitors (17%) was the most important criterion for assessing social media performance. Total number of page views and number of subscribers (15%, respectively) were next, followed closely by length of visit on the site (14%).”

Though I’m a little hesitant of this survey from its relatively small sample size, I do feel that it captures the slight confusion that exists of social media and how marketers feel it is measuring up. While 41% of these marketers were confused of the ROI of social media in terms of traditional measurement, the survey found that “the majority of respondents see engagement with their brand as the most important measure of social media success”.

Lets remember that brand building takes time. While many companies have experienced an immediate impact in sales through social media, we are still too early in the age of social media adoption to measure the results of a strengthened brand over time. This effect is likely to be stronger and greater.

In my previous post about the value proposition of social media, I discussed that successful applications give value back to your customer.

In light of this, I stumbled across an article in the Alley Insider that introduced a new Facebook application that I think accomplishes this quite well. The gives a basic overview:

“Long Island City-based music site Amie Street – freshly funded by Amazon – is rolling out a Facebook app that lets you set up a fantasy record label based on its mostly-indie music catalog. Your “label score” goes up and down as songs get more or less popular. The better you do, the more credits you can earn toward mp3 downloads.”

A useful and valuable Facebook app is a rarity these days, but taking a further look at their website (which operates as a social networking site) it is clear that Amie Street understands how to apply value there as well.

In fact, the site articulates this value proposition to both of its niche audiences (emerging artists and music enthusiasts) in the following statements:

“Amie Street gives fans the incentive to discover and purchase your music through our unique pricing model. All songs on Amie Street start free and rise in price up to 98 cents based on the number of times they are bought. The first several downloads of your songs are free because this encourages fans to experiment with your music even if they haven’t heard of you. “

“Amie Street gives fans incentive to spread the word about your music to their friends through our innovative recommendation system. For example, if a fan recommends your song when it’s free, and the price your song rises to 98 cents, we give that fan 98 cents worth of credit to buy more music.”

This is a great example of a company that “gets” the value proposition. I’ll be watching this one to see how it catches on.

Quick post to Triangle-area social media folks: Nathan Gilliat over at Net-Savvy Executive is pulling together business bloggers for dinner on October 15.

It’s at Champa in Brier Creek which, by the way, has killer Pad Thai.

Don’t think I’m going to make it this time (crazy week), but wanted to share the news with other business bloggers… Be sure to RSVP to Nathan if you want to go.

Back in August, we wrote a post about how Wal-mart’s latest social media marketing campaign was inherently flawed. We predicted that it would, once again, blow up in the retail giant’s face. (Note to the folks in Bentonville: Let Edelman focus on the traditional PR. Give us a call on the social media marketing stuff, k?)

Here’s what we said then, in a nutshell: This campaign won’t work because Wal-mart is talking “style” when they are known for “practical.” The campaign should focus on the utility of trying to move to a dorm. Alas, it was too late for them to listen.

But Target, on the other hand, did listen. (Note: Check with legal, Do they owe us royalties?)

As it happens, while Wal-mart was prattling on about something they don’t understand, Target was listening! (See Listening is Social Media Step One on how important that is.) They began to understand the flow of the conversation among incoming freshman. They began to understand the Facebook platform and how conversations occur there. They wisely noted:

“We aren’t there so much to tell a story, but to put on a party, giving the students a platform for social interaction.” Any content provided by a marketer in such a setting “needs to work as social currency. ... Whatever story there is, it’s mostly told by the users, not by the brand.”

Their Facebook page was about dorm room survival. They had practical tips, they had photos, they (gasp) let users upload their own photos in place of the ones they carefully designed first.

They made the marketing very subtle and were rewarded by posts from people saying how much they love Target (See that: brand evangelists doing the marketing work for you, if you (a) deserve it and (b) give them the platform on which to do it.)

Wal-mart, on the other hand, had vicious wall posts slamming their corporate practices, for example.

“Wal-Mart is toxic to communities and livelihoods.”

There’s so much right with what Target did and so much wrong with what Wal-mart did, I could go on for days (maybe I have already), but here’s 5 points to take away from this (different than our earlier 5 Steps to Rolling Out a Social Media Campaign):

1. Listen first. Social media marketing is cocktail party dialogue. When you enter a new group, you listen politely first.
2. Talk on your prospects’ terms. Back to the cocktail party analogy. Incoming freshman were talking about their fear of being properly prepared for dorm life. Wal-mart said, “Let’s talk style!” Target said, “Let’s talk survival.”
3. Understand the value you bring. There are a lot of people who hate Wal-mart. This doesn’t preclude Wal-mart from participating in social media, but they ignore this truth repeatedly and get slammed for it. They don’t understand the value they bring. Target, on the other hand, doesn’t have that baggage, and played their “we’re the place you can get cool, functional stuff pretty cheap” card beautifully.
4. Social media campaigns can cost a fair amount. Target budgeted $500,000 for their campaign. Facebook’s media kit talks about minimum investments of $50,000 per month. People think of social media as “free” and it can be. But you’ve still got to budget for time, at a minimum, and if you want to buy you’re way onto a media platform like Facebook or MySpace, you still need a budget of some kind.
5. ROI measurements are different, and not very evolved. Target had 7,176 members of their group by September 31. That’s great, right. If you calculate a CPM (cost per thousand) relative to members, the CPM is over $69,000. Of course, CPM is more traditionally applied to “impressions” which were no doubt higher. But the point is, the value of over 7,000 people engaging with your brand in a positive way is much, much higher than 7,000 people being exposed to an ad. The ROI calculations, however, are still being fleshed out.

Kudos to Target for getting it. That will pay dividends now and in the future.

Oh, and their campaign started July. I guess they don’t owe us royalties… Dang…

North Carolina’s first social media agency, Ignite Social Media, announced today the hiring of Lisa McNeill as Social Media Strategist.

“We’re happy to have Lisa on the team,” said Jim Tobin, company founder and president. “We brought Lisa on during the soft launch period and she’s proven herself a prolific worker and someone who really gets what social media marketing is all about.”

Lisa brings a background in advertising and marketing to her role. She’s experienced in working on local, regional and national accounts. As a social media strategist, Lisa will outline social media tactics and develop social media campaigns to help companies reach customers and build brand advocates. Her expertise in project management and marketing will additionally guide the execution of these campaigns.

Lisa graduated from Appalachian State University Magnum Cum Laude, earning a Bachelor in Science, Communications Degree.