In preparation for the upcoming Social Media Breakfast Madison with a Panelist program on Social Media in Healthcare, I thought I would see what the story was in the social ecosystem. No better tool than Storify.com to quickly get a sense of the action.
Brilliant graphic shows where and when you should post status updates: We spend so much of our time writing here about the ins and outs of social media that our heads can get buried within the complexities of the various social networks but luckily today we spotted a simple graphic that explains it all for you. Instead of having a complicated strategy and worrying about where you cross post to and what to do when you are in a bar it could be good advice to simple have a copy of this with you at all times…
Wendy's Note: Just a little disappointed that this guide total makes LinkedIn a boring choice. Its certainly can be a safe choice.
When talk of Halloween began in early October, it got us thinking. Horror movies and strange noises in the dark definitely put one on edge this time of year, but what’s really scary for pros in our industry? What do social media professionals think is most frightening? The infographic below shows what they told us in a survey conducted this month.
Note from Wendy(all my social presences at Xeeme.com/wendysoucie) : Infographics are one of my favorite types of sharing. What are some of the best you have found?
After attending the recent National Bicycle Tour Directors Association Conference,I have a new respect for directors of any athletic event, but especially bicycling. I met people from all over the United States and Puerto Rico who are organizing non profit and for profit rides in great places. Some of them are day long, some multi day like the La Vuelta Puerto Rico (www.vueltapr.com) which a three day bike ride around Puerto Rico.
My favorite of course is Bike Wisconsin and the three multi-day rides they host in Wisconsin each year. I have enjoyed talking to Mark Evans, Kathy Schramm and Eric Schramm about how they market today and how they can use social media to share the experience of their tours. They have been listening as one can see by the activity on their Facebook pages: Bike Wisconsin, Sagbraw, GRABRAAWR, Bike Northwoods tours.
A few months back, I had the notion to Tweet about interviewing any business in Wisconsin who was using social media. I got a couple of responses including Cousins Subs. The headquarters is in Menomonee Falls, just a straight shot east from Madison. I spoke with Justin McCoy, senior marketing manager. They have only been using social media about 1 1/2 years but have gone slow, listening first, planning and building a strategy.
The most useful tools have been Facebook for overall brand conversations and Twitter for a news and conversation stream. It was refreshing to talk with Justin, who seems to have put in a lot of thinking time and assessment before putting his toe in the water. Even with that, he says he spends only about 20% of this time on social media related activities. Keeping a couple of extra tabs open - one for Twitter and one for Facebook - keeps him very responsive to his audience.
I was surprised that they haven't used video more, seems like a natural connection. But Justin assures me they plan to do more video on their Youtube Channel in 2010.
Here are a few questions I asked Justin:
1. How do you measure success in social media?
2. What advice do you have for businesses just getting started?
Be sure and follow Cousins Subs on Twitter (@cousinssubs)
A lot has been said about Social CRM and what it may be. For some it is just a strategy, for other just some social features to traditional CRM. For some it is about business rules, workflow, processes with social characteristics and for some it is just a reaction to market changes, and then it includes attributes like trust building and loyalty. Do we need yet another definition?"
Wendy's Note (http://www.xeesm.com/wendysoucie): I have recently started using the Xeesm Edge Social CRM Product and am posting my progress and adventures at www.wendysoucie.com. If you want to track some of the conversation do a search on Twitter for #scrm, join the LinkedIn Group Social Media Software Group, or follow Xeequa, the company who developed Xeesm on LinkedIn. You can even subscribe to the Xeesm.com blog to follow the progress.
If you are interested to test - the free version lets you have a social media address book to follow your customers and prospects. {Disclosure that Wendy Soucie Consulting is a Business Partner with Xeesm.com]
In true extravaganza style, The National Mustard Museum had their Grand Opening on Friday April 9 through April 11, starting with "The longest Mustard Pass in History." Covering approximately 17 miles along country roads from Iowa Dane county's Mt Horeb to Middleton.
This caught my attention. A quick search found no history of any condiment pass longer than 20 feet while this pass should be roughly 17 miles - supported by the cross country and track teams of Mt. Horeb and Middleton high schools.
The National Mustard Museum partners with bratwurst.
Levenson has taken his passion to great lengths when he created a museum with his vast collection of English and American mustards. He ultimately quit his "real" job to take on the curator role full time with Mrs. Mustard, Patti Levenson.
The history of mustard has a sordid past but can be found in early Roman reference and even by Pope John XXII . In that reference the Pope was "reportedly so enamored of mustard that he established a new Vatican position, Grand Moutardier du Pape, which means “mustard-maker to the pope.”
The only reference I could find to a historic pass was the longest football pass in the NFL. That was a 99-yard pass play which has only occurred 10 times in NFL history.
Mustard Lore and Legend
German lore advises a bride to sew mustard seeds into the hem of her wedding dress to assure her dominance of the household.
In Denmark and India, it's thought that spreading mustard seeds around the exterior of the home will keep out evil spirits. The Danes also had an interesting "cure" for a woman's frigidity which involved a potion made of mustard seeds mixed with ginger and spearmint. It was not indicated what exactly one did with the potion. I wonder.....
Moving to historic digs.
The museum has been very successful up to now in their location in Mt Horeb, but the move to Middleton should be a different but successful environment to grow its business.The building was the original "Friendly Building" and the contractor was able to reuse the original bricks to match the old Opera Building across the street.
How could this business really leverage social media - let me count the ways.
Working in the business to business space for over 25 years doesn't give one many opportunities to have fun like Barry Levenson does with mustard. The closest I came was during my 7 years as a sales engineer calling on Harley Davidson. Talk about an enthusiastic engineering and manufacturing force almost giddy with enthusiasm and pride for their product. This type of evangelism is hard to come by and in the social media space of today is the real social capital that success with this channel will be measured by.
The events planned for the weekend at the National Mustard Museum really play to the fun and quirky nature of curator Barry Levenson and mustard in all its forms. While they have made good use of traditional marketing efforts for print, TV and radio along with their website and e-commerce store, social media presents a great way to help them tell their story, sponsor contests, showcase video and pictures all while having fun. The National Mustard Museum has a lot of content to leverage into the social media spaces and with an e-commerce site as well as a retail store they need to drive all sorts of traffic.
Lets assume that the National Mustard Museum has invested the necessary time and resources to assess the market and their target audience for products they want, issues that could be solved and opportunities that the National Mustard Museum is uniquely qualified to solve.
5 Social Steps
Here is a look at 5 social media tactics they could consider using to drive the results they are looking for and build a evangelist community.
1. Brand - The National Mustard Museum is a unique entity and a tourist attraction - likely no matter where they reside. They should claim their brand on every social media site they can - today! Check out www.Knowem.com
2. Blog - The Museum should have its own blog identifying new products, new recipes, crazy ideas, contests, etc. Mr. and Mrs. Mustard (Barry and Patti Levenson) are creative genius who could have a lot of fun (as if they need any more excuses) with a blog. Creating valued content for sharing gives back to the audience and community that buys their products.
3. Pictures - there are 407 images referring to "mustard museum" on Flickr.com but none are front and center referring back to the National Mustard Museum website. The National Mustard Museum should start their own Flickr profile and share with images with a creative commons license and requested linkback to their site. This would allow them to share easily information about the site. For example, On google their are 353000 images with the title "mustard museum" and non of the first several pages tie back to "Ol' Poupon University."
4. Video - although there are many videos on Youtube under "mustard museum", none are controlled by the mustard museum through a custom video channel. Various people have posted, media sources, vendors, but the Video channel for the museum is missing.
5. Facebook - Let's face it, if your consumers are on Facebook and you need to go where they are. Create a strong strategy here, share your blog, bring in your Youtube channel, collect your feed from Flickr, identify your special events, upcoming promotions, ask questions and engage the audience. consider taking the leap to incorporate your e-commerce site directly into Facebook as well as your website (check out Best Buy's Fan page as an example). Include the feature that lets your fans evaluate and rate different mustard.
6. Promote - Share your social places on the web, in print, on your cards, and emails
By the way, my favorite mustards are variations of honey mustard. Although the Tomato vodka Mustard got my attention at the store this week. According to Barry Levenson, the Mayor of Middleton made it illegal to eat ketchup within 300 feet of the Mustard Museum!
Here is my capture of the event on my YouTube Channel - Wendy Soucie Consulting
A neverend book contains the written word as well as color images, video, audio, hyperlinks, mini-applications, downloads or whatever else enhances a book's topic."
Wendy's Note: I am not sure I like this. I love audio books and reading books (when I am not too tired to read). The better the book the more I hate to have it stop. But how would I ever get any work done? I know during one suspenseful book series I was listening to on my way to St. Louis Mo, I almost missed my turn after digging in for the 8 hour session.
During an interesting business book recently, I ate my lunch in my car all week just so I could keep listening. At least with an audio or reading book, chapters and setting the book down let you take a break. You can also curl up in front of a fire, listen while you exercise on a bike trainer - basically multitask with non electronic efforts. We all need to consider unplugging every once in a while, right?
The danger of a "never ending book" is that no one may get their work done. This is based on the premise that the book and topic are so engaging we want to interact. You can chat, view videos, click links and so on. I visited the site but quite honestly I was not impressed. Who would want to work with never ending Calculus or Chess? If all your senses and hands are taken up listening and being interactive while in the book - who's going to make dinner?
Life is Messy – Use Your Words by Adrienne Corn: "Here’s my thought on it: Service providers have been facing this very issue from the get-go. A service is intangible. It is only seen once the service is provided. And often, the service being provided is a back office function of some sort. So how are service providers able to sell their services? Do they whine about it and tell the public they MUST pay? Not the good ones. The good ones offer potential customers a solid value proposition, so the customer doesn’t just see blue smoke and mirrors, but can clearly understand how the service will impact their bottom line. The value proposition–a good one–becomes the tangible in an economy of intangibles. And what we all know is this: people will pay for value."
Wendy'sNote: Adrienne Corn is one of my respected Social Media Academy faculty. I enjoy reading her posts that give me a perspective on human talent. In this post she talks about value propositions and ROI of social media. Those of us on the consultant side should read and take note. The last time I got such good advice was reading Million Dollar Consulting by Alan Weiss.
I will take her advice and 5 steps for proposing value in Social Media to heart.
Thrive, an economic development organization in Wisconsin, is using social media to further their efforts to promote business and economic growth in this 8 county region.
After our February meeting in of the Social Media Breakfast Madison group. I am trying to find our businesses and organizations who are using video in their efforts to get the word out.
Thrive's Jennifer Smith, shared with me how they use Youtube, FaceBook , eNews links , Twitter , and direct emails for message sharing.
At the SMB Madison event she also mentioned that they product DVDs of the video clips and provide to those who are less technology savy or who would prefer a non web version. All great ideas to share valuable content that can brand you and carry your message farther.
I had a morning meeting with the Wisconsin-Based Ice Age Trail Alliance to chat with Rebecca Hildebrandt, Director of Development, about a presentation I will be giving on social media at their annual meeting on April 23, 2010. We met to talk about the business goals and strategy they were going to employ for 2010 and to format a direction that would be most helpful for their attendees which is typically around 250 members.
I also nterviewed Tim Malzahn, Director of Trail Operations briefly before sitting down with Rebecca. Here are a few of Tim's thoughts on his role, the Alliance, "Big Audacious Goals" and of course social media.
Following a good model to build a strong network on social media should be part of every Business to Business organization's strategy. After assessing the environment, and creating a strategy that aligns with your business goals, you are ready to start building your networks. How do you start?
NCP Model
I would like to share a recent presentation I did on a methodology and social ecosystem building. I follow the Social Media Academy's NCP Model as part of my strategy and engagement on the social web. As an alumni, certified social media consultant and Black Diamond I have found creative ways to integrate this process on behalf of my technical product and professional service clients.
NCP stands for Networking - Contribution - Participation.
Network provides the reach
Contribution is the active engagement and content contribution over such networks
Participation is the positive or negative reflection of the contribution and the actual conversation.
Conversation is the currency in social media.
In this presentation, given and recorded as part of the Social Media Academy's Knowledge Series, we talk about two examples, the social media strategy, approach and NCP strategy based on goals, budget, resources and sometimes, what the customer is ready to do and do well.
Your comments are always welcome if you too are following the NCP Model
I just reviewed some new research just released by Adrienne Corn. My first exposure to Corn was through the Social Media Academy where I received a Social Media Consultant Certification and am a founding member. She presented on how social media has played a role in human resource management and talent management developments. It is the first quantitative research available that examines social media and identity. The research explores how accurate social media profiles are in reflecting the individual as well as its use by Human Resource departments, recruiting professionals and job hunting.
The results are encouraging in that 73% of those surveyed feel their social media profiles accurately reflect their identity: who they are, values, and personality.
What's your Internet dating personality?
Have you ever done any online dating? If you are not accurate in how you portray yourself, you may have to kiss a lot of toads before you find the right cyber toads. Social media and its success depend on being willing to share your authentic self and find the right associations. How do you portray yourself on LinkedIn (considered to be the most professional of networking sites) versus Facebook (considered to be much more casual with opportunities to be more playful)?
What side of your personality do you show on LinkedIn?
When I first started on LinkedIn, I was all business. On Facebook, I was all about my weekend activities. However over time and as I considered Facebook for business use, I found it too hard to separate the two. I also realized that either one alone was not an accurate reflection of my personality – I take my work seriously but not always myself. I do like to have fun at work and I recognized that my business contacts need to know how focused I am but also what I do in my downtime and the things that make me laugh. I want to know that about them as well. In other words, I need to know they are human not business machines.
In true extravaganza style, The National Mustard Museum had their Grand Opening on Friday April 9 through April 11, starting with "The longest Mustard Pass in History." Covering approximately 17 miles along country roads from 
Introducing neverend books: Subscription Electronic Books With Social Media Built in - WKOW 27: Madison, WI Breaking News, Weather and Sports: "A neverend book is a continuously updated (down to the paragraph level), Digital Rights Management (DRM)-free, ad-free, multimedia book that you can read on an 
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