Go check out my Posterous, if you wish.

The other nifty feature is that Posterous will automatically repost your blog entries to other platforms. In my case, all my Posterous posts go to Twitter, Facebook and Delicious. If I wanted, I could also have my posts come to this blog, but I’ve held off, as the ease of using Posterous has led me to use it for more personal and frivolous posts.

Thanks to coworking mate Peter Fleck for pushing me off the fence. He’s been using Posterous to fuel a hyper-local community blog, in which community members are able contribute via email — no browser access or tech skills required!

For most businesses, the question of what to play while customers are on hold is not critical. Important, but not vital to customer satisfaction.

What if most of your business is handled over the phone? If you’re the iconoclastic savings bank ING Direct, you help customers cope with waiting by playing messages that are witty, informative and, most importantly, respect your customers’ intelligence.

Check it out!  ING Direct: On Hold Messages

Below are a number of resources related to my talk, “Social Media: Friend or Foe?” given on November 19, at a marketing conference hosted by the Farm Credit Bank of Texas. I want to thank Stan Ray and Lora Blume for their tremendous hospitality and everyone who attended for their kind attention and challenging questions.

Key points

What is social media?
Thousands of web sites that allow individual users to create, share, and rate content — and connect with others who share common interests.

Why should you care?
1.    Rapid growth in use & influence of social media sites.
2.    Resulting power shift: individuals exert more control than organizations over content & message.

Top social media sites/activity include:
•    Blogs (77% of active Internet users read them)
•    User-generated content (photos, video, reviews, documents)
•    Facebook (276MM per month)
•    Myspace (124MM per month)
•    Twitter (7MM users)

Social networking by age/gender
•    35% of U.S. adults
•    65% of U.S. teens
•    85% of Gen Y (2% increase since ‘08)
•    28% of Baby Boomers (59% increase since ‘08)
•    35% of men*
•    35% of women*

Farmers & social media
•    55% of farmers online
•    27% have high-speed
•    65% of farmers* use Internet “constantly or several times a day at work”

How can you put social media to work in your organization?
•    Customer service
•    Market research
•    Employee communications
•    Community outreach
•    Public relations
•    Marketing

How to adopt social media in 5 easy steps
1.    Listen to the conversations.
2.    Determine how you want to engage.
3.    Set boundaries.
4.    Rethink your content.
5.    Embrace R&D as a way of business.

Links and references

Ag and Social Media

• Twitter Blog: Twittering from the Tractor
• NPR: A Farmer, His ‘Tribe’ And The Web That Brings Them Together
• TWEET CORN? Nebraska farmers sharing their experiences via Twitter – Free-Press-Release.com
• Farmers embracing Twitter trend – 14 News, The Tri-State’s News and Weather Leader-
• Twittering from the tractor: smartphones sprout on the farm – CNN.com
• In the Field » Agriculture and social media: Q&A with Sue Colucci
• The Voice of Agriculture – American Farm Bureau
• THINKeEXTENSION » Blog Archive » Can Social Media and Web2.0 save Agriculture and Environment
• Farmers for the Future

Internal Use of Social Media

• Social Media Policies For Your Company: Internal Policies | davefleet.com
• Transparency Not Technology: Internal Use of Social Media

Banking & Social Media

• Banks & social media: shred your marketing beliefs
• The Community Banker’s Guide to Social Network Marketing
• Banks try social networking, jump on Twitter wagon – USATODAY.com

Social Media Trends, Statistics & Demographics

• Overview | Pew Internet & American Life Project
• Adults and Social Network Websites | Pew Internet & American Life Project
• Twitter and status updating | Pew Internet & American Life Project
• twitter.com – Quantcast Audience Profile
• Mindblowing #IranElection Stats: 221,744 Tweets Per Hour at Peak
• Social Media 2008 Statistics
• Growth of User Generated Content Contributors in USA : TechCrunchies – Internet Statistics and Numbers
• 82 Million User-Generated Content Creators and CountingBlogging grows by 68% « Mind Juice
• New Twitter Research: Men Follow Men and Nobody Tweets – Conversation Starter – HarvardBusiness.org
• Nielsen: Twitter Was Fastest Growing Community Last Month
  MySpace shrinks as Facebook, Twitter and Bebo grab its users | Technology | The Observer
  Domino’s Discovers Social Media – BusinessWeek
  Micro Persuasion: Social Networking Demographics: Boomers Jump In, Gen Y Plateaus

Resources mentioned in my talk

• Twitter search
• Google Alerts
• Google Blogs
• Google Trends
• Radian 6 – Subscription-based social media monitoring tool
• Techrigy SM2 – Subscription-based social media monitoring tool
• Filtrbox – Free social media marketing tool

Photo of the Texas capital building rotunda, by Flickr user jasleen_kaur

Feel free to peruse the 50+ postings at johnryanblog.com. Or you can skip to the chase and simply click through to one of the highlighted posts below.

• “Bank mishap highlights importance of employee communications”
• “Going back to the neighborhood” (on hyperlocalized marketing)
• “Prompting interactivity”
• “Using Twitter and social media to fuel your offline marketing”
• “Using free online research to feed your offline marketing”
• “Small steps toward a better customer experience”
• “How to embrace the economic crisis”

HOW PEOPLE APPLY THE BASIC SOCIAL RULE OF POLITENESS TO COMPUTERS

There is a well-known documented fact about human behavior: People will tell you what they think you want to hear. For example, if a waiter asks how his service was, people are more likely to give him a positive response. If a 3rd party asks about the waiter’s service, people tend to give more negative responses. Why? Because, generally, people want to be liked. And people feel they are liked more when they are being polite. (Certainly there are a few exceptions to this rule). You probably don’t need to think too hard to relate to this, your parents taught you at an early age the importance of being polite.

But did you know that people apply that same social rule to computers. I’ll wait a second while that sinks in… Yes, people are polite to computers! Byron Reeves and Clifford Nass, while professors at Stanford University and Co-directors of the “Social Responses to Communication Technologies” project at the Center for the Study of Language and Information, conducted controlled experiments to get to the bottom of this seemingly illogical idea.

In this study, one of their many studies on the subject of people’s social response to computers, participants were split into two groups. They asked the first group to sit at Computer A and participate in answering questions about a series of facts. They were told that they would evaluate the computer’s performance at the end of the session. The computer would state a trivial fact and ask the participant if they know about it, giving them three choices: a lot, not much and none. Based on their answers, the computer would offer additional information about that fact. At the end, the computer would test the participants retained knowledge and let them know which questions they had gotten right. After each reviewed question, the computer would state that it had done a great job. At the end of the session, Computer A asked the participant to rate its performance.

The second group worked through the exact same process on Computer A as group one, answering the same questions about the same series of facts. At the end of the session, they moved to another identical computer (Computer B) where it asked the participants about Computer A’s performance. Hands down, group one had far more favorable responses towards Computer A than the second group.

Mind you, there were no graphics and everything on the screen was text-based (copy and standard UI buttons). During the exit interview, the participants were asked if they provided answers that were polite to the computer. All of them confidently dismissed that notion–they said that they were not being “polite” to the computer in the least [insert image of them rolling their eyes here]. So that means, consciously, that they considered the computer to be an inanimate object. However, their actions obviously tell a different story. You might be thinking that the participants were identifying with a “programmer” behind the computer. But even that theory had been ruled out through the experiment. There can only be one reason for their reaction: people subconsciously apply the social rule of politeness to computers.

Knowing that we treat computers as social actors, what could this mean for your organization and the connections you make with your customers, patients or students online?

1. First, know that feedback solicited on your site (like a survey) will be more positive towards you than if it is solicited through a 3rd party (like a review site). Those 3rd party evaluations will tend be more honest (or at least more balanced) than the feedback solicited on your site.
2. More importantly, turn the study around. Ask yourself if your web site is “polite” to your visitors. Is it nice and is it helpful? For example, when a visitor is presented with an error, does your site take responsibility (“Sorry, I can’t find what you’re looking for [insert helpful instructions here]) or does it make the visitor feel like a criminal ([ERROR: Access Denied! You have attempted to modify your access to the secure Web site. As a result, your session has been terminated. This attempt to falsify your credentials has been logged to our files.] This is an actual message given to a user after he forgot that his username was case sensitive).
   Too often, Web sites speak the language of the organization, or the programmer, which is almost always very different than the visitor’s. If a visitor doesn’t feel connected to your site, they won’t feel connect to your organization or it’s products and services. (This idea actually tips into the social rule of “likability” which I’ll write about in a future post.)
3. Taking it a step further, consider putting a polite human face (or voice) on your product or service. Make a human connection. Don’t speak about features, talk about how this will make their job, health, life better. A more human tone in your copy will increase the likelihood that users will have a more positive, more personal experience.

Mark Dunst, a partner of Polymer Studios, is a Web strategist, interaction and interface designer in Portland, OR.

It’s no secret that the advertising and marketing industry gets walloped quicker and harder than most any industry during a recession. At least that’s how it played out in the last dip and how it’s looking this time around.

If you look at some of the specific crises driving this recession you’ve got a perfect storm:

• The credit crunch caused by the mortgage crisis
• Disappointing 4th quarter retail sales
• The prospect of one or more U.S. automakers going under
• The very real threat to print media (see this and this)

It’s a domino effect goes something like this: Consumers can’t afford to buy > stores can’t sell > manufacturers don’t make > less money for ads > pink slips for creative types.

The headlines in the trade rags and elsewhere bear this out:

• Media agency forecasters pull no punches: Smith, Coen and King see little hope for economic recovery anytime soon (subscription required)
• Ads subtracting: Massive job cuts seen across Madison Avenue
• Magazine ads evaporated in 2008, faster as months went on (subscription required)
• Most media to suffer retrenchment in 2009 (extensive but free subscription required)

The predictions call for even more bloodletting over the coming months. Which is to say, we could be in for the worst of it.

So, what to do? If you’re an agency type, where will you hunt for sustenance? A recent article in AdAge points the way, citing several areas that might make for good hunting grounds. (Comments in parentheses are mine):

• Washington D.C. (new gov’t, new spending)
• Package goods
• DRTV
• Beer (couldn’t agree more!)
• Online video
• Hispanics (with 30+ Hispanic cousins, I can verify this one)
• E-books
• Public relations
• Cable TV
• Marketing consulting (it was true in the last downturn: companies shed FTEs then bring in consultants)
• Digital out of home (see previous post: The shopper marketing revolution)
• Mobile (I’m getting an iPhone this year, recession or no!)
• Pet care
• Marketing analytics (yet another nail in the coffin of print and broadcast, which is barely measurable compared to online)
• CBS (huh?)
• Luxury recycling (2nd-hand yachts for pennies on the dollar!)
• China
• Package and fast food (Can a boom in the weight-loss industry be far behind?)
• Online coupons
• Gun sales (that huge clicking noise was the sound of millions of NRA members locking and loading)

Photo credit: GlobalJet

• 70% of all purchase decisions are made in store.
• 68% of in-store purchases are impulse buys
• 68% of consumers are brand-switchers.
• Only 5% are loyal to one brand.

These numbers, which come out of a GMA/Deloitte research paper called “The Call for Shopper Marketing,” really bring into question how we’ve allocating our time and money in reaching out to consumers. All this advance effort to sell people on Brand X…and for what? They jump to Brand Z on a whim at the last second. I

I’m sure it still makes sense to prime the pump and create awareness about products via online, direct, broadcast, outdoor and print. But with so many decisions — correction — with so many impulsive decisions happening in the aisles, it seems that we are insane not to focus more on the so-called last mile.

Why isn’t there a stampede among creative agencies to develop expertise in this burgeoning field of “shopper marketing?”

Consider two additional statistics, also in the GMA/Deloitte paper:

• Each week, 127 million customers visit Wal-Mart
• Each week, 68 million people on average watch ABC, CBS or NBC evening news.

So, how is Wal-Mart trying to influence all these millions, perhaps billions, of weekly impulse decisions? Of course, there are the usual mainstays of retail merchandising, such as coupon dispensers, end-cap displays and product sampling. Experiential marketing is also getting more play.

But it’s well reported that Wal-Mart and many other retailers are putting their money on digital signage: intelligent networks of in-store flat-panel displays that can be managed to deliver infinitely localized and relevant messages, using variable data such as:

• Time of day
• Day of week
• Seasons an holidays
• Customer language preferences
• Store traffic patterns
• Weather
• Market and economic conditions
• Local news events
• Inventory levels
• Product sales velocity
• Sales goals vs. actuals
• Proximity sensors
• RFID readers
• User inputs (voice, touch, cell-phones, etc.)

For me, digital signage holds much of the promise that excited many of us marketers in the early days of online marketing, when we realized how we could use data to deliver ever more granular and relevant messages to prospects.

The difference is that digital signage all happens in the store. At the moment of truth, where, according to the research, our expensive ad campaigns and brand loyalty initatives come face to face with disloyal and easily distracted customers. Clearly, whoever has the ability to influence fickle consumers in the aisles has a tremendous advantage.

Photo credit: Phil Romans

Talk of the recession is, well, everywhere. And it can get depressing.

So, where are the contrarians? Who’s looking for (and telling others about) the silver lining in this grey economy? Who’s trying to describe an alternate reality?

Well, here are a handful for you to consider.

Graeme Thickins, in The Clear and Simple Solution to the Current Downturn: The Entrepreneurial Economy,  at Tech~Surf~Blog sees salvation in good ol’ entrepreneurism:

The big answer to our current economic plight is not a new one: it is staring us right in the face. It has brought us out of many a recession before this one, and it will do so again. It is simply this: the ingenuity and perseverance of the American entrepreneur.

Graeme also points us to two particularly relevant posts:

• The “Downturn” — Keeping Things in Perspective, by Jay Turo at the growthink blog.
• Fear Kills Businesses Dead, by Brian Solis at TechCrunch

Ben McConnell at Church of the Customer suggests that the downturn, if anything, presents an opportunity for marketers to try ideas they might not have been able to successfully champion during the last boom. Among his more intriguing ideas:

Adopt the simpler and affordable Net Promoter Score.

Evangelize the benefits of Twitter-driven customer support.

Build a customer, supplier, vendor or employee social network on Ning.

Host internal seminars about design thinking.

Speak out against testosterone-driven “barbarian” mission statements. (ed: Kinder, gentler mission statements? I’d like to see that.)

Underlying all this talk of the recession is the question of fear. As Brian Solis’ post puts it, fear kills. It sucks your soul, at at time when you need all the energy and optimism you can muster. If you find yourself losing sleep over the economy, I highly recommend this post by Robert Middleton on his More Clients blog.

Finally, if you’re seeking out the brighter side of the economy (and happen to live in the Twin Cities), be sure to attend the next UnSummit on Sat., March 7. The theme is “Hacking the Recession” and we’ll be discussing ideas and tools that will help us improve our economic well being individually and collectively. Some of the proposed sessions include:

• Social media survival kit — a workshop to get you up to speed
• Getting good ideas when times are tough
• How to increase your employability using community and social media
• Blogging for fun, profit and survival

Photo credit: Alternate realities by James Jordan

Jason Billingsley of the Get Elastic blog recorded this interview with Darren Tomey, VP of Sales from Compendium Blogware, at the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition 2008 in Chicago.

I find it interesting that Darren uses organic SEO as the rationale for why big retailers should be blogging. I don’t disagree, but my first reaction would have been to say that retailers should blog in order to build communities.

Then again, if you do build a community around your blog, I suppose the SEO boost naturally follows (you’ve probably heard that search engines love blogs) and you end up in the same place anyway. So, not only is Darren correct, but he cuts to the chase and presents an argument that is more compelling to retailers, who are notoriously numbers oriented.

Incidentally, Connie Benson describes a conversation between her, Lee Odden, Albert Maruggi and Barry Judge about community building and SEO. Connie brings up a good question: If you engage in online community building (which could include blogging among other activities) with SEO in mind, should you make deliberate use of SEO keywords, which might result in stilted and possibly off-putting language? Or do you write au naturel? She seems to come down in favor of the latter and I have to agree.

Part 1: Dipping your toe into social media

This is the first in a 4 part series about how you can start a social media strategy program started in a risk-averse company. In part 1, we’ll start out very slowly and just dip our toe in to some of the basic platforms.

I’m sure you have a list of your favorite industry blogs, you’ve dabbled in LinkedIn and Facebook and you’ve even heard of Twitter. You undoubtedly know that you “need” to take advantage of social media to stay competitive, but you’re a bit overwhelmed and your company isn’t exactly sure it’s a good fit.

You know that connecting with your customers on a more personal level can improve your brand and your bottom line. You understand that social media can be a great way to influence behavior with minimal out-of-pocket expenses. And you realize that you’ll need to do something fast just to stay competitive. But, because you’re part of a large company, particularly if you’re in a highly regulated, risk-averse industry like health care or banking, your company may feel there’s just too much risk associated with that level of transparency. And thinking about shifting your marketing communications into conversations, your organization might feel like it would lose control over its message and its brand, and that there could be very real legal and IP considerations.

Here is an easy 4-day (or 4-hour) plan to dip your toe into social media. If you haven’t used these tools before, spend just an hour each week and you’ll be laying the groundwork for implementing a social media strategy for your company.

Day 1: Make it brief
Create a communications strategy brief. The operative word is “brief”. Don’t get bogged down in committee meetings, just create a one-page outline of who your target audience is, what your organization’s goals are for the next year and how you think your company and customers can benefit by adopting social media. Then, write down your top 3 concerns. This will be your guide throughout the process. It’s not set in stone, so feel free to update it at any time.

Day 2: Set up basic accounts
If you haven’t already, set up personal accounts on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter and start exploring. This will allow you to get familiar with what each platform offers without involving the company brand. Find a handful of people you know and start connecting with them. These can be friends, co-workers or thought leaders in your industry. The important thing is to explore without any grand agenda.

Day 3: Listen to the chatter
A fundamental benefit of social media tools that often can get overlooked is the ability to eavesdrop on conversations. You can search twitter posts, blog posts and reader comments to find out what people are saying about your brand, your industry and your competition. Here is two good places to start searching–just type in your company name, your product, even your name (come on, you know you want to):

• Search twitter
• Search blogs

What do you notice? Is there even anybody talking about you? Do you see any patterns? Are there people that you’d never heard of that your customers listening to? Did you find anything surprising?

Day 4: Participate in the community
You’ve created your strategy brief (you may have even updated it already), you’re more familiar with some of the core social media platforms and you’ve explored what others are saying about you online. Now it’s time to start participating. The easiest thing to do is to comment on another’s blog. Choose 3 of your favorite industry blogs and post comments on a couple of articles you find particularly helpful or interesting. Your comments don’t need to be lengthy or even deep. Eventually, you‘ll want to provide more insightful comments, but even thanking the blogger for their contribution or insight is enough. Your comments should be informal and authentic and this shouldn’t be used as an opportunity to directly sell your services. Just say what you would if that person were standing right in front of you.

What are you waiting for?
When you start using this simple plan, you’ll be laying the foundation for your company’s social media strategy with very little brand risk. You can do these steps in 4 days or 4 hours. The important thing is to take a little time each day or each week to explore and to participate. Become a part of the community you want to do business with.

In part 2, I’ll kick it up a notch and talk about how you can begin making the case to your risk-averse organization for adopting social media. Part 3 will talk about ideas for implementing social media internally. Finally, part 4 will discuss simple and low-risk ways to turn your social media program outward.

Photo by adactio. Creative Commons image license.