You are waiting in line to order your coffee and while the six people in front of you are going through excruciatingly long orders, you happen to glance at a display next to you featuring a Bruce Springsteen collection you’d never heard of. All you need to do to own the Boss’s greatest hits is take the small credit-card-sized iTunes card to the barista and gladly hand over your $9.99, plus the cost of the latte you ordered, drive that puppy home, turn on your computer, log onto iTunes, type in a 10 digit code, download the album and sync it with your iPhone! In just seven easy steps, you can be listening to “The River” and “Pink Cadillac” and just a few hours prior, you had no idea that you even wanted to.

While it is certain your life is now more enriched, one may ask – why in the world did you go through all of those steps, when you could have just opened up iTunes from your iPhone and downloaded the album? The answer is simple. It’s for the same reason millions of people have bought magazines in grocery stores for more than fifty years, when they could get a subscription for nickels on the dollar.

Impulse zones.

You had absolutely no idea you needed Bruce Springsteen until you saw his mug on a display . . . in the impulse zone. That special place where we, as consumers, lose all of our inhibitions and simply must have whatever it is that is in that place. Magazines have been successful at this for decades; so have candy bars, gum, mints and overpriced flavored water. Impulse zones are the highest revenue generating areas of any retailer and often have sales per square foot that by far surpasses any other square foot in the store. It is also the most competitive part of a store, usually costing marketers a pretty buck to put their product there.

Marketers are increasingly trying to figure out how to reach audiences in the digital marketplace, since that is where a massive upward moving trend indicates buyers are now going. The challenge, however, is that online marketing has a tremendous amount of clutter to break through. If one is marketing a product in a brick and mortar store, they simply need to secure placement near the cash registers to improve sales velocity. Online, the cash registers are embedded with the actual product. So, apart from spending an incredible amount of advertising dollars and implementing extensive word of mouth campaigns, how does one get through the clutter online and be noticed by a potential consumer?

Impulse zones.

Online marketers need to remember that there is a real world too. And in this world, there are plenty of brick and mortar stores. Apple demonstrates this perfectly with its iTunes/Starbucks partnership. All digital marketers need do is bridge the offline world with the online world, using the impulse zone. With that strategy in place, tons of tactics pour forward: coupon codes on countertop handouts, QR codes on countertop displays, promotional giveaways referring visitors to a website, location-based social network promotions, etc.

It amounts old school marketing, but in the new world of communications. Find where your customers are and reach them offline in order to influence their behavior online.

Mason Cole

Mason Cole directs public relations for Oversee.net and its operating divisions and is responsible for Oversee’s relationships with ICANN, trade associations, and partner companies. He directs the company’s intellectual property efforts and has secured seventeen patents in the United States, Canada, and China. He joined SnapNames in 2001 as Vice President of Marketing and was editor and publisher of the respected State of the Domain industry analysis newsletter. His previous experience includes marketing and public relations responsibilities in agency and corporate roles. He lives in Oregon with his family and enjoys traveling, aviation, and competitive swimming.

Q. Noting that you first joined Oversee’s subsidiary, SnapNames, in 2001, this year then marks your 10th anniversary with Oversee.net. Can you briefly describe the ten-year evolution of the company from a startup pioneer in a fledging industry to its position today as the leader in monetizing, registering, selling and developing domain names, coined by Oversee, as Internet Real Estate(tm)?

A. I started with SnapNames at a time when very few recognized the inherent value of domain names as assets. Those that did have turned some of those names into formidable properties and businesses on the Internet.

SnapNames’ role was to help those people (and lots of others) acquire the domain names they were interested in. Oversee, which purchased SnapNames in 2007, began not long after SnapNames, and was founded by two men who very clearly understood the concept of online real estate. They had formed a very successful “monetization” service where domain name holders could provide relevant information and links tothose searching for specific data by using the domain name itself as the navigation tool.

By the end of 2008, when Oversee had put together a complete collection of domain name-related functions, the marketplace fully understood how valuable brandable words are in domain names, and the marketplace for these names was growing quickly. We had evidence of this, naturally. Oversee has sold or brokered single names for million-dollar figures. So we started talking about our capabilities and were attracting some business media attention.

The online real estate comparison was just an easy way for us to make a sometimes arcane concept understandable to consumers and businesses. In our relationships with the media, it let us describe what we did and why it was relevant in a way that got head nods from editors. Since then, we’ve talked about that concept very broadly, and it always helps bear fruit in our discussions, no matter who we’re talking to.

Today, Oversee is widely recognized as the industry’s thought leader. Our brands include DomainSponsor(r) (domain name monetization), SnapNames.com(r) (daily auctions of useful domain names), Moniker.com(r) (domain name registration and security), and the DOMAINfest(r) series of conferences in the U.S. and Europe. Those companies help customers buy, sell, broker, auction and monetize domain names. We also own and operate several vertical market-focused businesses, including LowFares.com(r) (travel), CreditCards.org (consumer finance) and ShopWiki.com(r) (comparison shopping).

Q. Can you discuss the many positions/responsibilities that you have held at Oversee over these ten years and how your view on marketing has evolved over time?

A. I joined SnapNames to handle communications and PR, and to edit and distribute an industry newsletter titled State of the Domain. The newsletter became popular beyond our expectations. At that time, it was the only tool anyone had for monitoring the growth and development of the domain name industry. I spent a ridiculous amount of time getting the statistics together, verified and ready for publication, never mind also writing and editing the articles. Once we published, which was monthly, I was on the phone for another solid week talking about the numbers with the investment analysts trying to understand what they meant for the markets, and with reporters, trying to understand what they meant for this burgeoning industry. It was great credibility for SnapNames and it attracted both customers and partners, as we were the only company speaking with any industry-wide authority status.

I was simultaneously handling PR for our products and services. By 2004, SnapNames had endured a layoff and some management changes, and we were preparing to update our service offering to meet some challenges from competitors. State of the Domain was taking a disproportionate amount of my time as well as of a few of my colleagues, so we elected to stop publication. It was the right move. We had established our credibility (not just through that publication), and others were getting into the stats game. We needed to focus on managing the company.

I continued handling communications and PR, but our management team was running lean. In a previous life, I worked for a Congressman in Washington, and industry regulatory issues were moving to the fore, so I began monitoring legislation and establishing relationships in Washington. Our company testified before both, the House and Senate, on Internet governance issues. Our industry is closely coordinated by a quasi-government non-profit (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers-ICANN) that meets three times yearly, and I have attended those meetings since 2003, addressing the non-government side of industry regulation.

Also, SnapNames had filed for patent protection for its products, but for whatever reason, no one was shepherding the applications along. I’m not a patent lawyer, but I gave it a try and, with help from our firm, we have since secured 18 patents from the US, Canada and China.

We grew the business nicely for the next couple of years and then in 2007 were acquired by Oversee.net, a Los Angeles-based company with operations in all parts of a domain name’s life cycle-registration, buying, selling, auctioning, brokerage, lead gen, and monetization. I moved into the VP Communications and Industry Relations role for the parent company, managing the company-wide PR and government relations efforts, and have been there for the past four years. I also now serve as chair of the Registrar Stakeholder Group (RrSG, in ICANN lingo) within ICANN, a group that represents about 1,000 domain name registrars worldwide in the Internet policymaking arenas.

My view on marketing hasn’t changed very much, honestly. The tools of marketing have changed in the past ten years, to be sure, but the premise of marketing hasn’t. In my experience, authenticity is the key to success. If you have an outstanding product or service, it usually “speaks” louder than anything you can spin. To successfully market and communicate, you need to understand your market exceedingly well before you sell into it. When I was in agencies, I used to ask clients to talk only about what they understood about marketplace pain for the first hour of our initial meetings, then tell me what they had created to alleviate that pain.

Q. As today’s Vice President of Communications and Industry Relations for Oversee.net, how is your department structured in order to encompass the company’s many subsidiaries as well as the gamut of communication disciplines that include public affairs and also intellectual property (patents) interests?

A. We still run pretty lean. The PR team is my very talented colleague in Los Angeles, Corinne Forti and me (I’m in Oversee’s Portland, Ore. Office). We have an agency in Washington DC that is highly specialized in this industry and handles PR support, while also advising us on industry governance. Oversee has a very strong marketing team led by the highly capable Aaron Kvitek, and our departments work to support each others’ efforts and make sure messages are always in agreement.

Anyone managing a function like this one, would always like to have additional resources. Since I don’t for now, Corinne and I frequently consult with the business leaders to make sure we have good information flowing to us. We also make it a point to talk to the sales teams, resources which I believe PR practitioners should use far more often to understand what’s happening in customers’ minds. So even if we’re sometimes stretched thin, we have a great network inside the company that helps make things efficient

Q. In what way does your position interact/collaborate with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)?

A. I interact with ICANN very frequently. Even if I didn’t chair the RrSG, ICANN’s role has grown so large that it’s hard to imagine it could be ignored. The hurdle for participation at ICANN is very low, and the organization attracts all kinds of people, so it’s growing all the time and taking on more and more policy work-more — than it can thoughtfully manage, really. Even governments are understanding how valuable domain name assets are. They’re portals for economic growth, intellectual property protection, education, and other functions. They have significantly increased their participation in ICANN. So has law enforcement, as they’ve looked to the ICANN and the domain name system to help combat crime.

Increasingly, all kinds of varied interests are looking to ICANN to help satisfy their agendas, at least partly through the domain name system, that includes ours. So on Oversee’s behalf, we interact with ICANN in a way that sorts through those agendas and identifies ways to work inside the ICANN policymaking process to take advantage of opportunities and deal with threats.

Q. Since Oversee’s competition can come from many sources, how do you market against so many fragmented messages and voices in the marketplace?

A. It’s a good question. Actually, I think the fact that the marketplace is so full of fragmented messages, gave us an opportunity to speak clearly when others didn’t always. As the Internet ramped up, online commerce was a scattershot of providers, each one trying to get a message across.

When we understood we had a pretty complete collection of services, we stayed mostly out of the tactical “buy my e-mail service” or “our domain name registrar is better” kinds of messages and, in PR, talked more about where the industry was headed in a macro sense, and what it meant for businesses and consumers. It was clearer, less cluttered and easy for everyone to understand, and it made us stand out against the other guys.

Also, our operations and marketing teams are extremely diligent in what we learn from customers. We have a very good set of data from opt-in customers, and we’ve worked really hard to give them the information they’re looking for. So by executing very well across all our product lines, we not only have a good reputation with our customers, we deliver what’s extremely relevant to them at the right moment. We always try to validate a customer’s reason for doing business with us every chance we get. Talking about yourself is one kind of marketing. Doing something particularly valuable is the better kind.

Within the political arena negative campaigns are commonplace, even expected and accepted. It seems to be the norm to engage political gurus in stealth tactics to “uncover” opponents’ weaknesses or momentary ethical lapses. But short of the political arena where all is “game,” the days when smear campaigns actually work are over, given this transparent world.

Facebook got a whiff of that today…

What left Facebook red-faced, is the big buzz that ensued over the story that broke about the “clandestine” way it went about to clobber Google about privacy issues. It secretly hired a top notch public relations firm “to pitch anti-Google stories to newspapers, urging them to investigate claims that Google was invading people’s privacy” according to the Daily Beast.

Apparently two ex-broadcasting “stars”, now working for the PR firm, had been very busy indeed, packaging a negative story, concocting some of it and, even offering to help an influential blogger write a Google-bashing op-ed, promising to get it placed in major mainstream media outlets. And all this, without revealing the identity of its client. And to what purpose, the public good?

When the claims proved largely untrue or at the very least exaggerated, the blogger blew the whistle and the whole incident became an embarrassing PR fiasco resulting in temporary dings to the otherwise “trustworthy” reputation of Facebook and the stellar reputation of the PR firm, Burson Marstellar who, over its 58-year history, has represented blue-chip corporate clients . This whole incident underscored the rivalry between Facebook and Google, as they go confronting each other over Internet users’ time and advertisers’ budgets.

Look, tomorrow this incident will be yesterday’s news. Both Facebook and Burson Marstellar have issued statements that although purposely vague, do have semblances of apologies. This whole matter will have been but a “blip,” or hiccup, but it has left some questions about the crossing of ethical lines according to the Public Relations Society of America’s ethical conduct policies.

PR professionals fiercely guard their reputation with the media as trusted sources and for good reasons. This transparent world of ours will not bear any infringements on that trust. Public relations should not be used as a weapon to destroy competition, rather should be forthright in communicating an organization’s contribution to the well-being of society, whether through products or services the consumer can use or want, or contribute to the public good in terms of laws, regulations, environmental concerns or social interests.

If this sounds altruistic, it’s not, for it is the norm for the code of conduct within the PR industry.

Digital communities are an integral part of any business-to-business marketing strategy. According to a recent survey by the Worldcom Public Relations Group, the world’s leading partnership of independently owned PR firms, nearly all companies now recognize the importance of social media, but many are still unsure how to use the medium to humanize their brand.

As companies commit greater resources and personnel to their digital marketing efforts, we now anticipate a greater comfort level with social media by this time next year.

According the survey, more than half (54%) of surveyed companies plan to increase spending on social media in 2011. This bodes well for Twitter, the most popular channel, used by 85 percent of global respondents, followed by Facebook (74%), LinkedIn (72%), YouTube (69%) and corporate blogs (60%).

The survey of more than 100 business-to-business (B2B) company leaders confirmed the significant increase in the use of social media. Nearly all companies (83%) are using social media to communicate with target audiences, and 66 percent have been doing so for more than a year. Most executives (89%) believe social media will increase in value for their company over the next year, and 58 percent expect the increase to be significant.

It is interesting to note that Western European companies appear to be using social media as a source to actively find new contacts and business leads, while the U.S. has taken a different approach, by promoting a company’s thought leadership through social media as a way to generate inbound leads.

The biggest difference between social media use in North America and Western Europe is the approach to “thought leadership.” In North America, thought leadership promotion is the primary use of digital tools (30%); but it was not mentioned by any of the respondents in Western Europe. European companies focused primarily on social media to communicate with potential clients (31%) and current clients (25%).

This is also reflected by the difference in platforms used. In North America, 91 percent of respondents were using Twitter compared to only 62 percent in Western Europe. Facebook is the most used platform for Western European companies (31%) followed by Twitter (25%) and corporate blogs (25%). In North America, Twitter was used most (31%) followed by Facebook (25%) and LinkedIn (19%).

More than 80% of companies surveyed globally are using social media to communicate with potential clients, and when asked about the “most important” use of social media, 26 percent cited communication of their company’s thought leadership, followed by “communicate with clients” (23%) and “communicate with potential clients” (20%). Companies are also using social media to build a community as an extension of their website (60%), communicate with journalists (58%) and communicate with potential employees or alumni (50%), but very few cited any as a “most important” use.

When broken down by revenue segment, small (under $50 million) and large (over $1 billion) companies emerged as the social media leaders. Nearly 80 percent of small companies and 88 percent of large companies have been using social media for more than a year, compared to only 57 percent of mid-sized companies. In fact, 34 percent of mid-sized companies surveyed have been using social media less than six months. Mid-sized companies are still grappling with the role that social media will play in their communication and business development strategies, and only 46 percent plan to increase social media spending this year compared to 68 percent of small companies. Many companies still lack a dedicated team of experts in this area and are unsure as to which platforms make the most sense for their business.

These findings are from the Worldcom Social Media B2B Study that examined the use of social media at B2B companies primarily in North America and Western Europe. The survey was conducted by independent market research firm Persuadable Research in April 2011.

Twitter can sometimes be foreboding. One logs in, takes a look at that ominous “What’s going on?” question and may think . . . “What is going on?”  And that person may not have an answer.  Sitting there? Drinking water?  Procrastinating on a project?

Looking for something to discuss, the “Twitter-blocked” may browse through the main feed searching for inspiration.

Stanlopez forget about it.

Covid My buddy broke his collar bone.

Xfdgg TOP 10 WAYS TO GET 10000 FOLLOWERS IN JUST 1 WEEK!!!!

Ronmalone My 12-year-old is great at Photoshop!

Xfdgg TOP 10 WAYS TO GET 10000 FOLLOWERS IN JUST 1 WEEK!!!!

Mikehilton Time to close the laptop.

Xfdgg TOP 10 WAYS TO GET 10000 FOLLOWERS IN JUST 1 WEEK!!!!

Nothing.

The Twitter-blocked may look around the office hoping for something to tweet about. Color of the walls maybe . . . or perhaps how quickly the coffee has gotten cold.  Nothing is clicking.

The Twitter-blocked is generally not using Twitter to talk about “coffee” or “sitting there,” instead he/she uses Twitter to build a brand presence. The Twitter-blocked understands that endless tweets about the brand won’t work and that there needs be a genuine connection with the Twitter community. A trusted network builds meaningful relationships, thereby strengthening the brand. Sounds easy, right?

But what to tweet about?

When I have “Twitter-block”, I resort to my personal “C.R.A.S.H.” formula:

Comment
Reply
Ask
Share
Help

Comment
Every time you go into Twitter, tweet something. Anything.  It could be “Good morning, Twitter,” or “Sitting down to start my day,” or anything benign.  Just write.  Once you do that, the rest comes easy. The hardest part of filling out a blank page is writing the first sentence. Just get something out and be natural.  Twitter isn’t always about broadcasting your brand; sometimes you can just talk. Casual conversation builds trust within your network and identifies that the brand is supported by real people. It is easier for people to connect with a person than it is for them to connect with a logo or product.

Reply
Reply to someone. Find a tweet and reply to it.  It doesn’t have to be Shakespearean, just say, “@neatfollower Good point!” or “@hungryfollower Yeah, pizza sounds good now” or “@Xfdgg Why do I need 10,000 followers?”

Ask
Ask a question. The question could be something like: “How does one get past Twitter-block?” Or it could be a discussion question about your industry. Or something personal like “What is going on with all of you today?” Questions encourage conversation and the more people that you respond to, the more conversations evolve. Check your @replies frequently and make sure that you aren’t missing out on connecting with someone.

Share
Share something. Either tweet a link for a blog you’ve read or retweet something interesting someone else said.  You can pipe in many RSS feeds into FriendFeed and easily post them on Twitter straight from there.  You can even tie your blog into FriendFeed so that it tweets whenever there is a new post.  There are Twitter applets and Firefox apps that will help you tweet from wherever you are browsing. Make it a habit to simply share what you find as you find it.  Link retweets are the most popular type of tweet for a reason.  Most people are there to find news and websites, and if you post interesting things people will notice you more.

Help
Help people. Use Twitter Search (or some other 3rd party search system such as Monitter.com or any of the Twitter desktop applications) and find conversations that you can contribute to. Search by whatever your expertise is and jump in – give advice, help people that are asking questions and peddle your smarts.

Use hashtags (#) on your topics so that they reach a broader base of people, such as: “Writing press releases is good for your SEO! #PR #SEO”. When you use hashtags the tweet shows up in a feed on Twitter Search, which many people follow.

Using the C.R.A.S.H. formula once a day keeps you a valuable and contributing member of Twitter. Leveraging your own expertise and the benefits of your brand in each of those steps will build awareness. But most importantly, C.R.A.S.H. will help you get rid of that dreaded Twitter-block.

The British should be familiar with parodies.  After all they invented the form…

BP is ripe for mocking, as witnessed by the launch of the faux BP Twitter account, @BPGlobalPR,  which already has outdistanced BP’s real Twitter stream, attracting nearly 60,000 followers, compared to the company’s 7,000 followers.

While it is true that the company’s real twitter account @BP_America offers continued updates about actions taken toward a solution of the international calamity, no one buys that the effort alone is commendable.  And yet, in reading and watching all the hyperbole that the company puts out, all the gaffes made by its CEO and all the meager attempts at “talking” to a public through full page ads in the NY Times, daily, the company continues to exude a righteous behavior that is irritating and obnoxious, as well as arrogant and disdainful – certainly not characteristics that can endear a company to its many publics.

In the words of a tweeter, “The engineers (may) be busy but PR (folks) are (in) hiding.”

And so, while BP’s PR advisors seem to be AWOL, people turn to mocking.

It’s a real circus out there.

Twitterers are tweeting about the now “extinct mermaids” to the “sharks getting entangled in oil geysers” to changing the word catastrophe and agreeing to call it a “whoopsie daisy.”  The faux account has sold “BP cares” T-shirts with the profits from the sales going to the nonprofit Gulf Restoration Network. Apparently its humorous blasts have been re-tweeted by everyone from filmmaker Michael Moore to singer Michelle Branch.  And then there were preposterous headlines made by Kevin Costner and numerous TV appearances by Bill Nye, the Science Guy, the children’s show host who is apparently now an authority on the issue.

Apparently the faux twitter account’s fictional character “Terry” who has steadfastly remained in character, weakened and fell out of character when asked as to why this effort, to which he answered, “Companies screw up and then they hire folks like me to come in to make it look like they’re doing something while they figure out how to make money again.”

Well, there you have it – the public mocking of a company…

The curious thing is that according to a dialogue that Ad Age had with BP spokesman Toby Odone, he said that, “he wasn’t aware of any attempts by the company to have the feed taken down.” In playing the role of a real BP spokesman, the bogus one took the opposite stance – the one that the real BP should have taken in the first place by saying, “I’ve heard rumors of fake BP PR accounts, and I assure you if we find out who is in charge of them, we will annihilate them.” In further mocking the company, he added, “BP is doing everything we can to save our reputation and hopefully salvage some oil out of all this.”

Here’s advice for BP: hire the faux twitter account owner for advice as to next moves or push your PR folks out of hiding and make them unleash a PR campaign that is based on critical thought and one that is substantive…

We introduce our fifth guest blogger of our monthly series on the 25th of every month, in celebration of our 25th anniversary this year, Kathleen Kaufman, published author and educator.

Kathleen Kaufman is the author of environmental fiction and an inner city educator. She is well known in the social media community as a Facebook influencer and entertaining blogger. She can be found on her publisher’s website, The Way Things Are Publications, on Facebook and on her website.

Facebook marketing is a dirty word. No one wants to feel like they’re friends with a person who is trying to sell them a product, be it a book or a copyedit.  The most successful Facebookers, the ones who have converted their page into actualized business, are not marketing, rather they are participating.   It’s not as easy as it sounds; for one, you have to mean it.  The simple act of being genuine on Facebook is easier said than done.

I am certainly not an expert on how to juggle professionalism and sincerity in a virtual world, but I have learned a few lessons along the way as to what not to do.

1.  Mass Emails: I currently have approximately seventy-three messages waiting for me on my page.  I have no intention of reading them, for the most part, because they are all invites to ‘The Best Opening Night Of The Best Play Ever!’ or ‘Open Mic Night At The Improv!”   Thus, most of them are for events that are in Boston, Chicago, or New York.  It becomes painfully obvious that the sender has no idea that I live in Los Angeles, and even more painfully obvious that I am just a number, a member of their growing horde, an inadvertent member of a fan club.

“QR,” as “Quick Response” technology is referred to, has been around in Japan ever since the technology was first created by the Japanese corporation Denso-Wave, back in 1994.  It is simply a bar code that delivers an arsenal of information to a device that can scan it. Surprisingly, while Japan has been immersed in it for the last 16 years, we are just now starting to see a “QR” phenomenon in the US.  As it turns out, mobile phones are the perfect scanner for QR.

If this catches on in the US, beyond only elite tech gatherings, the possibilities for corporate communication seem endless. On a practical level, QR code can instantly deliver contact information to a phone with a simple scan, direct mobile browsers to websites, or display phone numbers that can be instantly dialed. The more sophisticated codes can automate social media following or access cloud software.

For starters, companies can instantly tap this trend by putting QR into the social media activities, whether on blog posts, Facebook walls or websites. Beyond that, brick and mortar businesses, especially, have an opportunity to take advantage of this by offering special deals, access to specific (and hidden) microsites, or by setting up social media networking protocols into QR code. These are only a few ways of bringing offline marketing into the online world.

Other practical applications can include putting QR code on business cards for easy networking at trade shows, setting up QR code “bread crumbs” throughout a community leading consumers to store locations, or simply using it on products or storefronts so buyers can “like it” on Facebook in real time.

To begin messing around with this, search for “QR” in your smart phone application directory and read this blog again, but through the QR code. Or better yet, go to Kaywa and start making your own QR codes for free.

The next video by The Pollack PR Marketing Group as part of our monthly 25th anniversary celebration:

The curious power of modern computer technology has allowed us to view the world around us through our webcams and iPhones, and in so doing, we have been able to super-impose images, video and sound over our view of reality. The result: augmented reality.

This new trend of entertainment technology has led to some remarkable applications.  For example: face-recognition technology uses your webcam to put a Transformer’s head on you; it allows you to try on virtual sunglasses as well as translate street signs by looking at them through a mobile device, or bring animated characters to life on your desktop with a webcam.

While this entertainment technology is very entertaining indeed, what are the implications for marketers? There is currently much discussion on the potential marketing value of augmented reality technology, what with new mobile applications and online programs popping up everyday, but there is little clear regard for measurable and useful marketing tactics.

Certainly, the use of augmented reality to develop viral social media campaigns is viable. According to Businessweek, it has been done by Kia Motors, Nestle, Frito Lay, and Wise Foods however with mixed results.   Still, it is expected that $170 million will be dumped into mobile augmented reality advertising within the next 5 years.

Viral videos, tactically, are only one slice of the augmented reality pie. Take for instance what iPhone apps Layar and SekaiCamera are doing. Both apps have taken augmented reality and geo-positioned this together into a whole new virtual universe, where consumers can hold up their iPhone, see information about the business in front of them, as well as its phone number and Wikipedia article. SekaiCamera takes it further, and allows users to post their own comments (virtually) on that business or location. Already a huge success in Asia, the SekaiCamera phenomena could potentially transform the world into a series of post-it notes visible to anyone who holds up their iPhone or Android. The ability to slap a comment on a restaurant’s physical location makes Yelp look like child’s play.

The marketing potential for an app like SekaiCamera trumps imagination. Coupling geo-positioning and augmented reality is a great way to get the word out about one’s brand. In one sense, the whole wide world can be an advertising platform wherein companies can post messages in physical locations right where their audience is. Creative campaigns could even include treasure hunts, whereby customers who uncover particular messages in particular locations, get free prizes or discounts. Or companies could award discounts to consumers who post in the sky about their product. Brick and mortar locations could encourage customers to post virtual tags all over the wall, telling other customers of their positive experiences there.

The overarching point is that the online world has now come full circle and the once global universe of social media marketing is now being transformed into a geo-located virtual reality  – right back in the middle of your target audience’s physical location.

While it will take time for SekaiCamera and other apps like it to catch on in the U.S., location “check in” apps like FourSquare are already transforming the market. The trend is inevitable: mobile technology and augmented reality will bring customers back into the real world and away from their global social media safety net. Online or off, it is still about location, location, location.

Associated Press

Almost a year ago, on April 17 of ’09, in my blog titled, Bringing Brands Down Without A Safety Net… I wrote about Domino’s nightmare customer-generated video, showing disgusting and filthy antics from a server in preparing a pizza.  The video exploded virally on YouTube, causing unspeakable damage to the 50-year old reputation of the company.  As it turns out, the story had a happy ending, with Domino’s ultimate brand pivot — as they reformulated recipes and opened up a first-ever transparency communication on social networks.

Now it’s food giant, Nestlé’s turn to battle social media wars, as Greenpeace-backed environmental activists used social media in the last two weeks, to attack Nestlé over its purchase of palm oil for use in their KitKat candy bars and other products.  As reported by Emily Steel of the Wall Street Journal, the protestors “have swamped Nestle’s Facebook page with negative comments, used Twitter as a loud speaker and, posted a negative video on YouTube.
The activists claim that, “Nestlé is contributing to the destruction of Indonesia’s rain forest, potentially fueling global warming and endangering orangutans.”  Yet according to Nestle, only 1.25% of all the palm oil Nestlé used last year was from the Indonesian firm.

Not much chance that Nestlé will be responsible for destroying any rain forest in the near future.  Clearly much ado over nothing, but that’s not the point.  It’s out there, regardless.

Look, attacks on brands by individuals or consumer groups are not new. The “genie is out of the bottle” and there is no stuffing it back in anymore.  Companies will have to live with the fact that social media has offered all those who wish, a speaker’s platform with a “mega-bullhorn,” giving credence to all, without thought as to “from whose mouth it cometh.” Social media channels have enabled the volume to be turned up and the speed to quicken as to damaging rhetoric, leaving brands exposed and naked, with little recourse how to halt the onslaught.

Nestle’s contemporary dilemma has elicited various responses from professionals.  Some have suggested that Nestlé should temporarily shut down its Facebook page. Some have suggested they should cut down any two-way communications for now. Others have encouraged the company to post changes that will abate the protests, which it did, but the din continues. Nestlé itself had asked YouTube to take down the videos, but unfortunately only after the videos had spread virally beyond control.

I would offer that preparedness might be the answer. It always was so, but traditionally crises plans were more geared to accidents, product failures, whistle blowers or general company disasters, such as manufacturing delays.  A crisis communication plan clearly should include social media “attacks” from consumer groups, replete with a multi-media planned response approach.

I would add that a policy of ongoing transparency, coupled with daily interaction and consumer engagement can, with any luck, catch a disgruntled comment that can get an immediate response, well before it spirals out of control.  May be time consuming to do, but necessary…

The Army had it right – Be Prepared.

Photo courtesy of Wired

It was unofficially announced that the cost for subscription to The Wall Street Journal on Apple’s new “must have” device, the iPad, will run a news hound $18/month. This produced an immediate gasp in the media world as to whether this is too much money for an app, when you consider that a subscription for the print version is only $9.

Still, the argument in favor of the premium price is that this is, after all, The Wall Street Journal – not just “any” news app. Another, is that online version promises to have far more features than found in the print version, Also, it will be the very first newspaper app on the iPad and counts for something.

Whereby at first glance the $18 price tag seems over the top – double, when compared with the print version, I began to wonder what should the cost of newspaper apps be on the iPad, how is it formulated and what will the market bear?

Thinking about the standard price formula, I translated some of the costs involved. If we already know that pricing is generally based upon the sum of variable costs, fixed costs, and profit, then without a degree in Business Economics, I may be able to figure this out.

We can assume that WSJ has priced their print to include all of their costs for producing content and that it costs the WSJ less than $9.92 per month to produce it and still make a profit. So, let’s focus then on the costs involved on an app.

Not really knowing as yet the average costs for developing apps on the iPad, it is safe to assume that it will be similar to developing one for an iPhone. According to this discussion, it takes 200 hours at $50/hour on average to produce an app for the iPhone. If I assume that WSJ hires someone at $50/hour to do this, than one only needs to add the application license fee from Apple of $399.  As to downloads, iPhone applications, on average, are downloaded 25,000 times per year. It is therefore safe to assume that the WSJ iPad application will follow this pattern and be downloaded that many times.

So here is the formula that will figure out the WSJ app’s ideal price:

(Development Hours X Hourly Rate) + License Fee/Average Number of Downloads = Price (Apple’s Commission) + Print Subscription Price

Or, shortened:

If we follow this formula, it will cost The Wall Street Journal $10,399 to produce the app, including the license. If they fall into the average, then approximately 2,083 will be downloaded every month. The total cost then per download is $4.99. When you add Apple’s commission, the cost becomes $6.49. Next, when you add in the current price of the print subscription (which theoretically includes the cost of producing content), the price according to our formula should be $16.41.

If you consider the “prestige” category and that and the fact that the app will contain added features, then $18/month makes perfect sense. Also, if WSJ continues to support and develop the app throughout the year, then the costs would stay relatively the same monthly.

Does that mean the market will bear that price? Time will tell but the sticker price is no longer so shocking.

In such a crowded online world, one point of differentiation a company can make is to be recognized as a thought leader. Consumers are generally more attracted to brands that they perceive as leaders in their field and a resource for their needs and the simplest way in which to communicate this is through blogging. The problem is, the people needed to be the face of a company’s online presence, the organizations’ leaders, are often the very same people that have absolutely no time to do that sort of thing. Fortunately for them, the web has generated tons of tools to help with just that problem.

Here are three of them:

1. WordPress

WordPress is arguably the de facto blogging platform for prominent bloggers. It is also increasingly becoming a favorite engine for corporate websites by web designers. Its robust customizability, free price tag, and expandability through widgets and plug-ins make it a leader in content management systems.

Still, your average thought leader in a company does not have the time or resources to navigate WordPress’ technical back-end. But if one’s IT can set up the right configuration for the blog, then  a thought leader, would need to do no more than send an email to post a blog. Simply put, if they have time to send emails, then they have time to blog.

2. Tumblr

For those of us old timers who remember the state of blogging way back in the salad days of 2007, we all believed that Tumblr would be just as useless and boring as Twitter. It was yet another micro blog with seemingly very little purpose. While Twitter eventually proved us skeptics wrong, Tumblr has remained a dark horse in the blogging world, trapped somewhere in between a micro-blog and a regular blog.

The site has taken on so many features that it is a bright answer to those that find either blogging or Twittering too limited. For our time-starved thought leaders, Tumblr is an incredibly simple and adaptable platform on which to blog. Firstly, one can blog by sending not only an email, but a text message. Secondly, if one does want to blog from the site itself, there is no technical back end — only a place in which to type, upload photos, or share links.

Another very useful component of Tumblr for thought leaders, is the ability to post from a browser, while on a particular web page.  As such, while thought leaders read the news,  all they need to do to comment on the article they just read ,is hit the Tumblr button and — and voila! A blog post!

Tumblr also tweets blogs, so one doesn’t have to get involved with that other micro-blogger and waste even more time. It is a powerful blogging tool for many more reasons, but a bottom line for thought leaders is that it is simple and accessible.

3. Posterous

Posterous has garnered a great deal of attention lately and is an up and coming contender to the legacy blogging applications of so many dozens of months ago (Tumblr and WordPress). Like its contemporaries, Posterous allows one to post blogs simply by sending an email. Yet Posterous takes it to a whole new level.

A single email that you send can update all of your social networks automatically, including Facebook, Twitter and even Tumblr and WordPress. You can also pick and choose what particular social network gets updated by sending an email to a particular address. To make things even easier, there is a browser button that allows you to do the same exact thing.

Posterous also has something that the others don’t have. It can intelligently recognize multi-media you are sending in your email and post it correctly. If it is a picture, it is posted as an image and then cross-posted to Flickr. If it is a video or a link to a video, it embeds it for you. This means that without ever having to leave Outlook you can post a beautifully designed blog complete with image slideshows and videos simply by hitting “send.”

So for even your most time-strapped thought leader, blogging can be easily incorporated into a daily regimen. Using browser buttons to share and comment on articles that one is already reading, and then sending emails off to be automatically posted and shared on various social media sites, can remove many of the hurdles that get in the way of creating a resourceful point of differentiation.

It is arguably widely known in the public relations world that “social media press releases” can tremendously impact the appeal of a press release to both the media and consumers. Popularized by communications professionals like Brian Solis, these releases offer a different tone in language and often include multi-media assets like photos and videos  as well as widgets that make the release easy to share. In the past two years, wire services have caught onto the trend and now provide social media release templates in their service packages.

While social media press releases do make an otherwise dry communication tactic more interesting, the real potential of how press releases can evolve has yet to be realized. There are many emerging tools that can make releases compelling, interactive and even viral. Thinking outside of the “press release box” can add a mark of creativity on press communication that not only garners more attention but also invites the recipient of the release to be more involved with the news.

When constructing a social media press release, one should consider assets not traditionally used for multi-media and develop a narrative around the release that will captivate and engage a wide audience.

Following are examples of the potential for creative interactive elements that can be used:

1. Slideshows

Many companies already know about the power of SlideShare. The ability to create a presentation, upload, and use on other sites as embeddable content, can be an invaluable communication tool. In the context of press releases, this can be a way to organize the message and make it interactive. Also using SlideShare provides the added benefit of having your messages exist in a social and sharable online network.

It is often awkward to have more than one photo on a release, but a SlideShare embed will allow for as many photos as you please and can be easily browsed by the reader. Another use is presentational communication. Putting key points with engaging images can be a visual way to punctuate information within a release.

In particular, releases about new products, studies, or other stories that require a great amount of support data, a slideshow, can encapsulate the information visually for the reader and encourage media to re-use the element in their story.

Podcasts may bring visions of radio production with a mixer board, headphones and cables into one’s head. In reality, podcasts are very easy, extremely popular and effective. In the increasingly mobile world, podcasts are an upward trending way consumers access information. For the purposes of a press release, it can be a one-shot deal or part of a regular program of communication.

Podomatic is a powerfully simple website that allows one to freely record, host, and embed podcasts. Once recorded, they can be shared, downloaded, embedded or distributed throughout social media. Putting key messages into audio in the form of a “news report” or interview can be a powerful way to demonstrate the newsworthiness of the story and also deliver an element that the media would be inclined to use in their coverage.

3. Video

With innovative sites like xtranormal you don’t need a camera, actors, or location to make a movie. You can simply type in a script and use animated characters, in a setting you choose, to speak the lines. This, like the others, can be easily embedded and distributed online.

Many in the blogosphere have taken advantage of xtranormal and often make  humorous movies that offer commentary for their audience. This can also be a valuable tool for press releases. Putting information from a release into a visual conversation creates a shareable element for media to use, but also delivers the messages in an engaging way to viewers.

Here is an example of one I made to demonstrate the point:

All of these methods ultimately accomplish a broader objective of bringing messages out in a variety of vehicles to reach a broader audience. Using sharable tools like the ones mentioned here provide a level of interaction in social media releases that images or twitter buttons alone won’t accomplish. They also provide more reasons to push that “Share This” button.

Last week a Digital Trenches discussion noted the rising trend in interest surrounding daddy bloggers. But in face of this week’s eMarketer published report, mommies still have that edge with marketers.  And for good reason. According to the report, 68% of new mothers began using “mom-centric social media” after having children, and 33% increased their use of social media in general. Couple that with the current estimate that mothers control 80% of household spending, then it becomes clear why marketers prefer Moms. Senior eMarketer analyst Jeffrey Grau commented that moms come together to “share information about product deals” – a valuable bonus to marketers.

Is the value of mommy bloggers in their buying power? Or is it more about their networking power? The evidence is in what marketers approach mommy bloggers for: endorsements. If their value is really buying power, then simply advertising on a “mom-centric” social network like BabyCenter or Circle of Moms would likely get the job done. While that may be happening, the activity getting the most attention in 2009 by, not only the media, but the FTC, was product reviews.

One can easily conclude then that the value of mommy bloggers is their ability to influence other moms and to leverage their buying power. If that is true, then a mommy blogging is something akin to consumer journalism and marketers would be wise to take note.

Here are five ways marketers can earn a mommy journalist’s respect for a highly valued third party endorsement:

1. Construct meaningful, personalized and targeted pitches about products that clearly appeal to the blogger.
2. Don’t expect a positive review, but an honest one, and do not try to tell the mommy journalist what to write.
3. When following up, be respectful of time and do not spam with email or voicemail messages.
4. Read the blog before pitching so that there is a thorough understanding of what they do or do not write about.
5. Thanking a mommy blogger for writing about the product can build a long-term professional relationship down the road.

Mommy bloggers have an invested interest in their readers and approaching them with a journalistic respect will show that marketers truly understand the value of a mom.

You do not want to be Chase Bank these days.

It has just suffered a public humiliation by a single customer whose several requests for negotiating overdraft fees went unanswered by Chase and who, despairing at the lack of response, resorted to waging a YouTube war against Chase’s customer service — or better yet, lack thereof.  In a You Tube video (watch below) Chase was called – evil.

It’s the classic tale of David winning over Goliath, a real vindication for all of us who have, at some point, been rendered completely helpless in trying to solve a need or problem whether banking, retail, warranty or other, via an 800 number, that then asks us to punch in number after number only to get more and more recorded messages that finally leads us to a “thank you for calling, goodbye,” message, without ever solving the problem in the first place.  Or, if lucky, you can leave a message for a supervisor knowing full well that chances of a return call are about the same as becoming famous overnight.

Chase can take an example from companies on the edge of consumer trends that have begun to equate social media with customer service. Those companies ‘get’ that today’s customers view social media as a communication tool for dealing directly with a company’s customer service and have created a platform for dealing with each, in real time.

But it’s not only about Chase.  Southwest got hit recently when film director Kevin Smith tweeted that the airline kicked him off a plane because he was too fat, a photo of which subsequently landed in the mainstream print and broadcast media.  Happily for Southwest, its blog, Nuts for Southwest, addressed the news story giving it a social media bullhorn in which to respond.  But the company did have to publicly apologize.

Clearly, a well-oiled company’s social media effort like Ford’s, does not wait for ignored customers to vent, offering a platform for interaction where the customer can get heard.  In other words, they have “invested” in online conversations with their customers.  Ford also understands that social media is threading its way through not only marketing and sales, but also through research and development and, most importantly in this case, customer service departments.

And then there is Comcast that “invested” in online live chats with a Comcast service representative allowing for an open forum, as well as its online community forum, where customers can get answers from fellow Comcast customers and moderators.

Another company that understands this is Best Buy.  In my blog of July 8, 2009 titled, “Sales, Service And Twitter, An Ideal Threesome” I wrote about Best Buy’s Twelpforce, which was launched on July 19, 2009 with a 500 person sales team that was to engage with consumers by Twittering away, entering into 140-character conversations with those who are both consumed with consumer electronics as well as those who needed answers to product uses or other questions. Best Buy had basically made a “pay forward” move, which now, eight months later, has the service humming away with happy customers.

The Chase video is yet another example of how social media has put the power to undo companies’ reputations in the hands of customers. Not bothering about customer care today is akin to loosing loyal customers tomorrow.  It takes people to react to people…

Recorded messages and 800 numbers are so yesterday.

Mommy bloggers certainly captured a lot of attention in 2009. This often elusive, yet highly influential network of moms that took to social media with flagpoles, megaphones, and important insights on parenting, was all the rage in the media. Headline after headline we saw that these parental bloggers were so influential, they began accomplishing the “Holy Grail” of social media: churning a profit. If advertising was not enough, companies began buying reviews from mommy influencers to the point where the FTC had to step in and wag a finger, a story we weighed in on in our Strategy and Musings blog last June.

But if 2009 was the mommy blogger year, 2010 is already being penned as the “year of the daddy blogger” by an expert, a daddy blogger, a social media marketer, and a poll (currently resulting in 65% favorable to the idea). We even discussed the rising trend in Strategy and Musings last August in response to Sony’s DigiDad project.

Certainly daddy bloggers are on the rise and so are networks that are supporting them. They have taken to Twitter with their stories on parenthood and are already involving brands in their publications. Like the moms, each of them target a particular interest, but with a focus on parenthood, as a theme.

Here are a few:

The Dad List: http://www.thedadlist.com/

Natural Papa: http://naturalpapa.com/

Daddy Is Tired: http://www.daddyistired.com/

Mocha Dad: http://www.mochadad.com

DaddyGotCustody: http://daddygotcustody.com/

Playground Dad: http://playgrounddad.com/

LookyDaddy:  http://www.lookydaddy.com/

DadGoneMad: http://www.dadgonemad.com/

CynicalDad: http://www.cynicaldad.com/

LaidOffDad: http://laidoffdad.typepad.com/

DadCentric: http://www.dadcentric.com/

DadLogic:  http://dadlogic.net

This new trend of blogging begs the question, is this actually a new trend? And if so, is there a discernable difference between mommy and daddy bloggers apart from gender? Certainly topics will vary between the two types of blogs, but ultimately they are parenthood blogs and so, therefore, will appeal to the same demographics with the same marketing tactics. Parents read these blogs to participate in conversations about parenthood and to seek peer-oriented advice on products parents need. From a marketing perspective, the objectives and tactics will remain the same, whether or not the parent is a mommy or daddy.

The media is already making noises about  the next big trend and companies are not far behind in trying to tap this rising market. There is even talk of a daddy blogger convention. Regardless of whether that will happen, marketers will be trying to get a piece of the pie. Just follow any of the new daddy bloggers, and it will be obvious that an influencer can come out of anywhere — dads or moms, and that what matters most is the transparency in these types of consumer engagements.

Maybe 2011 will be the year of the Kiddy Blogger.

In light of Google’s decision to shut down six music blogs on Google’s properties Blogger and Blogspot for copyright infringement, there are perhaps many in the webiverse that are second guessing what they have on their sites. The fact is, it is extremely easy to violate copyright on the web and, increasingly, it is very difficult to know what the rules are.

To save brand managers and marketing and PR professionals the hassle of getting a law degree, following are three places where content can be found that is not bogged down with the threat of copyright litigation:

1. Flickr.

Flickr is arguably the leader of hosted web images on the web, although certainly sites like Picasa and SmugMug are certainly worth noting. Flickr’s unique feature of isolating “Creative Commons” licensed images, separates it from the pack. Creative Commons is a “copyleft” movement that attempts to put better controls on copyright law by allowing publishers to license their content however they choose. Some licenses are stricter than others, but each license makes very clear how the image, or work, can be used.

To use a photo or an image from Flickr on your blog or website, simply go to flickr.com and search for your picture. Click on “advanced search” and scroll down to the Creative Commons section. You can choose to look for pictures that you can use non-commercially, commercially, or with adaptation privileges. Then the resulting search will provide photos that you can, rest assured, use with the artist’s permission.

Note that even with Creative Commons there are limitations so be sure to read and understand the license. Most of the licenses under Creative Commons require that you attribute the source of the photo.  Often a link back to the Flickr photo with the Flickr user’s name is sufficient. When in doubt, Flickr makes it easy for you to contact the source and ask how he, or she, would like to be attributed.

2. Google

If you can’t find what you need on Flickr, Google has a photo search by Creative Commons as well. When you click on “advanced search” on the Google page you’ll see a selection about “usage rights” and you can easily choose your criteria from there before searching. This will pull up not only images, but also texts and blogs.

The search will return many Creative Commons licensed media, but also can include other more software-oriented licenses like the GFDL(GNU Free Document License) and things that are simply in the public domain. However, always check the source and make sure it explicitly releases those rights to you and, when in doubt, pass for something you are sure about.

3. Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg is perhaps the largest online collection of public domain and freely licensed content on the web. One can read, download and email all the works of Shakespeare and Plato and listen to CD’s before downloading sheet music. There is so much content here, in fact, that it may difficult to sift through.

Gutenberg can be a resource for text, commentary, books and music, and each article explicitly details what is appropriate use of the content. Gutenberg boasts that its content can be used for “nearly all uses,” but there may be limitations that are detailed by entry.

The bottom line to copyright infringement is to use common sense.  Resting on with the idea that you are safe under “fair use” rules is not stable ground. Fair use is often ambiguous, vague, and easy to argue. Free licensing and public domain are safe avenues because the usage is clear. There are many tools in place to determine if what you are using is okay or not.

If you don’t know the source and can’t determine the copyright than don’t use it, because it isn’t yours.

The first time that Pepsi elects to forgo its past 26 years of advertising on the Super Bowl and selects to spend $20 million for a massive multi-channel interactive social media campaign, it collides with the Annual Trust Barometer from Edelman PR, which reports that peer to peer trust has surprisingly waned in favor of more credible sources.  Not that, at first glance, one has anything to do with the other, except that just when viral marketing seems like a smart strategy, smarter than even Super Bowl advertising, the Trust Barometer’s survey results show that trust in friends and peers as credible sources has dropped by almost half, from 45% to 25%, in the last two years.

And the parameters of the Pepsi Refresh campaign is all about the populous votes of “friends and peers” who will decide as to which ideas or projects Pepsi should fund in grant money in six categories: health, arts and culture, food and shelter, the planet, the neighborhoods and education. It will be the people’s choice as to which of the 1000 ideas submitted are to receive grants that range from $5,000 to $250,000, figures not to be taken lightly.  And the criteria for voting is exactly — what?

How does that work?  “Oh this is cool, I think I will vote for this.” Click. Or, “My boyfriend is really into bands, so I think I will vote for that.” Click.  How about, “I’ll feel good if I vote for the local health clinic.” Click.  Some ideas submitted are more political as in “Help free healthcare clinic expand services to uninsured in rural Tennessee (TN).”  Click.  (I live in rural TN.)  Or I live in Kansas so I vote for, “Build a fitness center for all students in Hays, Kansas community.”

Click. Click. Click.  “And the check goes to…” Every month, Pepsi will award up to 32 grants to projects voted on by the most clicks.

By all accounts the “ Pepsi Refresh” initiative is everything that an ideal interactive campaign can be – creative, innovative, highly engaging and very popular, while building on the brand in a fun and social way.  But I venture to say that the challenge that Pepsi faces, and that other companies are bound to also face, as they delve deeper into social media’s ever-expanding communication opportunities is that at some point, critical thinking will matter.

Look, the “Pepsi Refresh” program should be nothing like an American Idol segment where voters root for the next star just because they “like.”  Nor should it be like clicking on “like” on a photo or comment on Facebook.  In creating a program that allows a populous vote to decide on grants, votes that can make a difference as to whether a school’s music program gets funded or whether an elder care facility expands its programs, Pepsi’s challenge is to go against the very fiber of social media’s whims, set a criteria upon which they can deliberate, and turn the populous vote into a credible one.

Failing that, it is but a game — one that is being played out with a lot of money, with no sense of fairness and with little trust in the voters’ selection.

Any serious and worthy projects submitted should not mistake it for anything else.

Today, the agency introduces a new channel on the corporate blog called “Digital Trenches,” which will feature tactical suggestions and guidance on trending digital communications and marketing topics including search optimization, social media, mobile marketing, online media and the blogosphere.

Consumers are in the driver’s seat now. They expect companies to take care of their problems and to do so on their own terms. Consumers will not tolerate anything less than service in real time, without phones and web forms, and without hassle. Like the phones and websites of the days of yore, social media is currently the consumer-demanded touch point of today.

So why is ROI in the mix? Do you measure ROI on phones and websites? Sales firms will use phone call metrics to determine employee efficiency. Widget manufacturers will track traffic and determine the ratio of conversions. These metrics would be around things like productivity, efficiency, and sales. But are they measuring the ROI of these channels of communication?

The purpose of ROI is so that decision-makers can justify an investment because that investment is directly connected to a monetary return. So as companies brave the social media landscape they enter it with ROI glasses on and wonder how they can justify the time and cost to enter this channel in the first place.

I believe that this approach is way off. Time and resources put into social media is not an investment. It’s an expense. Like a website. Or a phone. Using social media is not a competitive option that will yield dollars to one’s bottom line, it is a cost of doing business.

Therefore, you should monitor and develop metrics that make the expense as inexpensive as possible: develop efficiencies, improve productivity, escalate reach, increase conversions, etc. None of these things have a direct monetary value and neither does your phone or website. They are business tools to fulfill a consumer demand of adequate channels of communication.

So a “return” on social media has more to do with operational considerations: website traffic, the size of one’s presence and influence, the number of impressions one creates to reach the largest number of eyes, changes in sentiment, and resolution of customer issues. Even taking on new prospects and converting them to customers or selling a widget is a function of operational costs, not investments.

The context around social media’s ROI needs to change. We can no longer afford to sit back and decide whether or not social media is “worth it” based upon the amount of time spent, but instead focus on how to make social media efficient, productive and essential for company’s operations given that it is now a necessary channel of communication.