If u don’t have the experts then hire out. That is what Sears is doing this 2011 CES to gain credability with consumers that they are a trusted resource for consumer electronics. Now hopefully this is a longer term strategy to bring more ppl to sears.com and/or the store. In terms of using external bloggers this is genius because Sears can expand their brand to a network of ppl that aren’t familiar, needs to get reaquainted, or haven’t purchased from Sears. Another promo option that they probably had was to send their own staff to CES but they don’t have a huge social following as this external blog crew does.
As far as my experience with the Sears brand, I bought my washer and dryer before from Sears but never any consumer electronics. How about you? What do u think of the Sears brand when it comes to consumer electronics? Comment below.
This blog post got started when I was using the Pulse Android app on my DROID 2 Global and read this:
Sears Recruits ‘Blue Blogger Crew’ for CES – http://pulsene.ws/EymI
I was very intrigued by a blog post on the Conversation Agent where they talked about why a company shouldn’t have a corporate blog. Of course they were just kidding and it went over some of the internal reactions that you would get from starting blogging and essentially social media within your company. Here are my favorites:
You get part time results for part time efforts – been a victim of this before, you gotta put in a lot of effort to write the posts and engage with your community. If you don’t then they won’t.
You publish only “perfect posts” – blogs are meant to cover timely information especially in the age of social networks and instant communication and sharing with your contacts. Quality lowers of course but the content is valuable.
You think it’s a marketing job to write and edit the posts – the key to corporate blogging and social media is letting readers behind-the-scenes of a company and getting to know personal brands instead of corporate brands. Of course, there is a mix of the two but personal brands are key to introducing within a blog.
Do you have any other experiences from corporate blogging and social media? Any do’s and don’ts that you would like to share? Post a comment.
Social media evangelists and/or those that are communicating with the public via online communities need to be trained appropriately on how to respond to questions from a public relations perspective. Opening the flood gates on all your employees to take part in social media is probably not the best idea to start with especially at a medium to large company (1000+ people). They need to be trained and get familiar with how to engage in conversations in a honest, truthful method.
In doing video interviews for social media purposes here are some tips:
Write an outline of what you are going to talk about it (I assume those topics have been cleared by your PR team)
Make sure you are comfortable in answering questions in an impromptu way. If the interviewer asks you a question, you better know how to respond to it directly, honestly, and all within the same shot
Make sure with every video you do has a call to action – where do people go for more information? Make sure you know the web site url (or as Joe Biden would like to say the web site number, you know the ip address, right?..j/k )
Keep it to 30-seconds to 3 minutes. If the video is longer split it up into a series.
Make sure the person you are interviewing is engaging and has a good, clear communication style. If you think people are going to fall asleep within 15 seconds of hearing him/her then coach him on how to change his style, tone, and facial gestures.
The video should be in one continuous shot. Why? You really want the viewers to feel like they are there interviewing the person and not being coached by the interviewee. Style should be a causal conversation.
That’s all for now. What do you think? Do you have any additional suggestions for video interviews that are being distributed online via communities & social networks? Add a comment below.
Next week I’ll be going to the online community forum in Sonoma, California to learn best practices from other online community managers in the industry.
Questions I have:
How do you keep your community engaged? Is it just content or do you need incentives?
What metrics are important when measuring the engagement level of a community?
Do you have an influencer group within your community? How is it organized, how do you provide them assets and get feedback.
What do you see happening in community in 2010 and beyond? Any trends you are noticing?
How do you convert your online community into offline community?
Those are just a few right now that I thought of. Any questions you would like me to ask at this conference? Let me know. Add a comment below.
Here are the top 3 social media tips for job seekers that I’ve found to be very useful:
Get your LinkedIn profile updated with all the latest resume information and recommendations. If you’ve been recently laid-off, make sure to request recommendations from your previous co-workers. Also, jobs on LinkedIn are posted by a company hr representative or a hiring manager and in some cases you might have a connection with them (or a few degrees away). Expand your network so that you are one-step closer to the hiring manager. One last tip on LinkedIn, get involved in LinkedIn Answers and show your expertise on a particular topic by answering questions.
Start a blog is a great way to show your enthusiasm for the industry that you are in and to show your expertise. Free hosting sites like wordpress (which this blog is hosted on) is a great way to start with minimal coding required. Remember a blog will showcase your grammar skills, your creativity, and can be accessed instantly in an interview (happened to me when a guy pulled out his iPhone and accessed my blog and started asking me questions about my latest post).
Yes, now is the time to get a Facebook account. I know you’ve been hating all the poking and status updates of what your friends are having for lunch. However, re-connect with your former classmates and co-workers. Post a status message on Facebook or a note (their version of a blog) with something like this: “I’m looking for a job. Ping me if you know of any product manager job openings in the mobile industry”. You never know if your high-school classmate that you haven’t talked to in 15 years but you are connected to on Facebook have a job opening in his group.
That’s it. Be patience with social media and your blog. Tag your blogs apporpriately with keywords that you believe people will search for. If you are wanting to work for a consumer company, talk about it on your blog and tag it appropriately. It will come up in the social media manager’s Google Alerts. If you have more tips add a comment below. Talk to you soon,
Metrics will be key as companies will need to see a ROI from social media. Smaller social media metrics companies will be bought out by companies like Omniture and maybe even Cisco to provide business with an end-to-end solution.
Executives in all industries will understand the need to communicate with their customers at an individual level and will promote that within their company.
Video blogs will become increasingly popular with less fully-produced videos from companies. The faster the content gets posted the better.
Social media communication tools at the enterprise will increase and be managed within a centralized marketing/pr team. Product managers will be able to respond to blog posts about their products and the lead social media pr/marketer within the company will be able to track that communication.
New media sharing service called Utterz.com is hitting the social media scene pretty strong. You can upload audio, video, text, and photos from their web site and your mobile phone. Plus, you can share it with your contacts that you’ve setup on their site. Here is my first audio post about reaching brands via your blog.
Let me know what you think about Utterz and if you have had a similar blogging experience.
I met up with my friend Linsey Krolik who is speaking this week at BlogHer talking about legal issues/liabilities that bloggers may face and need to be aware. I first met Linsey back in 2001 when she was an honoree (cancer survivor) and fellow runner when I trained for my first marathon in Victoria, BC, Canada with Team In Training. These days she has her own successful business, Law Offices of Linsey Krolik, consulting to high-tech companies in the valley and recently helping bloggers understand the potential legal issues they may face. She is a blogger herself for Silicon Valley Mom’s and has great advice for the blogging community. Watch the video to learn more about Linsey and her upcoming talk at BlogHer this Friday July 18th.
The internet and social networking is amazing! Within 2 hours of me posting a story about Republic of Tea I got a call from the CEO, Ron Rubin. We chatted about the company being based and started in Marin County and actually the office location moved a week before (hence why we couldn’t find it). I’ve been invited to their new location in Novato on Monday June 16 so stay tuned for video interviews and tea tasting with the Ministers (that’s what they call the employees). Have a great weekend. Chat with you all later.
BTW, anybody needing anybody social media / blogging advice let me know. You can reach me at rksar at yahoo dot com.
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