The UnPanel Rules. @CKGolfSolutions is laying down the law for us here before we get rolling officially.
First question from Jeff Ciecko: George Moen, from Blenz, how does Blenz control what people are saying?
George: We don’t. But @shanegibson told me that there were conversations about our brand that we wasn’t, at the very least, listening to. It took us about six months to get our shit together and start engaging people.
Q: Is there a tool that lets your organize your contacts and integrate them to social media?
A: Gillian: I like Hootsuite for that.
A: George: I do that at GeorgeMoen.tel.
A: Scott: You need to pick your platform. Then you can use that site’s interface to engage your contacts. You want to use the platform most appropriately. Don’t sync your tweets and Facebook tweets. “RT” and “@” DON’T WORK ON FACEBOOK. Please stop doing that. Please stop.
Q: How do we measure relationship ROI beyond follower growth & report to execs to justify social media?
A: Scott: Here we are preaching to the choir. We need real metrics to have conversations outside of our social media space. Real metrics include things like “conversation share” – percentage of a particular conversation online. “Your brand is mentioned x% of the time. How much is it work to you to increase that by 10? This will lead to sales if the conversation is positive and the product is good. You need to speak the language of the executives. You need to speak their language. You can’t say “Boss, I want 38.5 hours a week to tweet!” We need to break out of the social media bubble and speak the language outside of that.
A: Kristi: I work with small business people, new business people and people with no social media presence. I ask them why they don’t want to be there and they get started by just giving it a try with a plan behind.
A: Scott: Use @shanegibson’s line about conversation about your brand happening that you’re not a part of. That should smack people out of their resistance.
Q: What’s the value of building your own network or channel?
A: Scott: We are judging social media harder than we judge other media. We know it’s good to be measured in regular media, but we’re sceptical about being mentioned in social media? A bit.ly short link has more metrics than most other marketing tools than we’ve seen in 50 years! I believe companies are afraid of the conversation because marketing has been one-way for so long. Now it’s a conversation and I believe some companies don’t care. They just want you to shut-up and buy things without caring.
A: Meena: It’s always been about repetition and frequency to get people on board.
A: George: I love that many businesses don’t get it. It gives me a hell of a competitive advantage. You know how tempted I am to get the Twitter accounts of my competitors? They were all available 6 months ago. I don’t care about the ROI quite yet – I’ve always had to buy paper and radio and it we talked about reach. About 36 months ago, Facebook explodes and guys like me hijack it. It’s a business distribution channel for our business. It’s EARNED media. It’s word of mouth advertising. I get to own my own distribution channel. I get to create my own channel as Blenz and as George Owen and we’ll always own it. We get to build our own NBCs!
A: Scott: Social media can push stories into big media. We can create a buzz in social media and than it gets picked up in “big” media.
A: Gillian: The Victoria police has a blog for stories that they couldn’t get into the local media. That blog now gets international traffic for certain stories – it’s not their primary business, but they’re getting stories out in a big way. People lose sight of getting the story out there because they get wrapped up in the tools.
Q: Can you comment on the concept of social equity measurements such as Klout and whether there’s value and accuracy?
A: Scott: Klout measures reach, followers, etc.. It’s a measure of influence on Twitter. I’m rated higher than Oprah and I’m 3 below Obama. Am I more influential than they are? No, but on Twitter, I am. Companies run klout scores to decide who gets free products. In Vegas, people get hotel upgrades based on a klout score. It’s worth what you decide to make it worth?
Q: Why are businesses having trouble understanding social media?
A: Scott: It’s 2-way communication. Companies are used to pushing and they don’t know how to respond. In the old days, PR people addressed things. People look to protect their brands, jobs and overhead. When you say “social media” is just talking, then people are scared. You can’t get an MBA in Twitter. I’m good at Twitter and I’m an idiot. People who are “experts” fear it for this reason.
A: George: One thing I’ve discovered is that technology moves fast and people don’t. I look at social media back in 1995 and I remember an exec from Nestle Canada was flying to Switzerland to get an email account and get training. And there was discussion about whether the Internet might catch on. The reality is that we suck at building relationships and this new way to do that is a problem for many.
Q: Hootsuite has gone from free to pay-for-service. What are your thoughts on the paid model?
A: George: It’s great, I’d pay for it. I’m addicted.
A: Scott: It’s crazy that people get excited about this. What are they thinking? “You want me to PAY? That’s nuts. I want a refund on my 8 months of using this for free.” I’d pay for Twitter. I’d pay for geographic tools to breakout my twitter followers. Hootsuite is genius.
A: Meena: People would pay $5 for Angry birds, but not for a tool they use every day?
Q: What’s your favourite tool?
A: Kristi: I love hootsuite
A: Scott: I hate Hootsuite. I’m from Toronto and I’m an ass. Actually, I would have stopped using Twitter long ago without a good mobile app and I got going with Ubertwitter.
A: George: I love auto-unfollow.
A: Scott: I don’t follow back everyone. Just because you follow me, doesn’t mean I’m interested in you. I don’t want to be a diva, or twiva, that only follows a hundred as an individual. Now as a brand, if you don’t follow everyone back, you need to. You need to look good. As a person, it ruins my feed if I follow everyone.
A: George: I don’t use the main screen anyway.
A: Scott: I don’t auto-DM or auto-unfollow.
A: Gillian: For apps, I use Hootsuite. It works. If you’re on hootsuite, you can just schedule tweets ahead of the time. [Scott hangs his head & holds himself together - barely]
A: Scott: Will I appear in an article if I get at you? Automating authenticity? Twitter is one thing, but automating a newsletter is different. Depends on your account – if it’s CNN, that’s automated. If I find out you programmed a tweet and I thought I was following a real person, I’m hurt. I feel dirty.
A: Kristi: I work at 1AM and no one would be listening then. Scheduling helps me with that.
A: Scott: The most reaction to a tweet happens in 5 minutes. If you’re tweeting and coming back in 6 hours doesn’t work for the conversation. Automation is a tool for laziness. if you’re there, be there.
A: Gillian: I think transparency
A: Scott: We’re so self-important that we feel we need to schedule tweets when we’re away? You’re not that important!
A: Audience: If I RT someone else’s tweet an hour after it comes out, then I think it’s creating a broader impact. It’s a great use of scheduling tweets.
A: Scott: Don’t me wrong – with automation, do anything you want with MY tweets. With my content, please.
Q: You’re saying Twitter is a conversation space, but you don’t follow everyone back?
A: The conversation has nothing to do with following. I don’t need to follow you to have a conversation. Following you just opens up the DM’s. It’s about the conversation. People test me on whether I will talk back. I don’t care about the number of followers – I just care about engaging. That’s all I know.
Q: How many personalities use ghost writers and tweeters:
A: Scott: I’ve never tweeted. It’s all a farce. Actually, this happens often with celebrity accounts.
A: Kristi: Lots of businesses have people tweeting for them.
Q: What are your thoughts about politicians using social media with ghost writers?
A: Scott: There’s too much credit given to social media and not enough to themselves.
A: Gillian: It’s what they’re saying – it’s not about the tool.
A: George: It gives them more opportunity to screw up, too.
A: Scott: Do people change parties based on social media? Twitter isn’t a game changer here – politics are about values and issues.
A: George: I disagree. With politicians, it’s just different. At the end of the day, you can’t protect yourself from real conversations in social media. If we get unfiltered direct access, then we get a better feel for them. I think it’ll be a levelling tool. I think people who *should* be elected, funded campaigns become less relevant. It’ll democratize elections.
A: Scott: It does remove the budget aspect.
A: George: We were the #7 brand during the Olympics because of social media. We got into play with the big guys like VISA and such. VANOC and the rest were coming at us hard, but we used the power of social media to outbrand VISA. We spent less than $50,000 – VISA spent $17 million locally.
Q: How do you get people in an organization to tweet?
A: Scott: People are the biggest asset for companies so they should be the biggest asset in social media. It’s the top levels, usually, that are the barriers. But mandatory engagement isn’t the way to go, but we should embrace those who want to. I find it ridiculous when employees are help back from engaging.
A: George: You support your champions wherever they are in the organization. And we have a policy to go talk.
A: Scott: Policies are always so negative. Policies shouldn’t just be handslapping, it should be about embracing people who want to promote the brand.
A: Meena: Ensure you know your corporate culture. Does your team and staff embody and live the culture? If they do, they’ll say what you would like them to say.
A: Scott: You still have to monitor it. When you have personal lines crossing over corporate guidelines, it needs to be monitored.
Q: How do you keep going if you don’t get immediate ROI?
A: George: I basically bought my Twitter audience in Vancouver initially. I gave out gift certificates to people who mentioned #Blenz on Twitter. It’s the best $5 I’ll ever spend! I got that momentum going.
A: Scott: I tweeted #Blenz today.
A: George: Social media is free, but my time is the most valuable thing I have. Eventually we all run out.
A: Scott: Twitter is lonely at first. I did phases: Attraction. Then momentum. There are phases in anything for communication. It takes time. The biggest point is that the abandoned Twitter account is huge. It’s one of the first Google results. People will talk to old accounts. If people are speaking at your dormant account, you’re accountable. [See his story about Fatheadz]
Q: Let’s talk about the different language of the different platforms.
A: Scott: Tweets die in two minutes – it’s very active. Facebook is more filtered, it’s a different angle. It rewards engagement. Facebook uses “presumed relevancy” so you’ll see the things they deem most relevant from the past 24 hours. It’s about comments and likes from your circle. A corporation’s job there is to create engagement in those updates. Awesome gets rewarded on twitter – engagement gets rewarded on Facebook.
Q: Gillian, there’re lot of reporters on Twitter, but not many on Facebook. Can you speak to that?
A: It’s a personal choice. Facebook is more personal. I know people who have a totally personal Facebook with different names, then they have their business one. I make contact with friends on Facebook and chat on the wall – it’s not all about business. You’ll see things that aren’t totally work on my Facebook. I do that more on Facebook. It’s personal. I can’t speak for my colleagues, but you’ll see *some* of my work stuff on Facebook.
A: Meena: I see people using LinkedIn professionally and Facebook personally.
A: Scott: I can’t get into LinkedIn. I give each platform 3-6 months. I just can’t like it. It was self-serving, one-to-one, good for a sniper approach versus a community approach. I have an account that I check every few days, but I’m close to pulling the account because I don’t use it.
Q: Is RT’ing talking, really? On Facebook, I’m sharing. Is Twitter really talking?
A: Scott: I don’t think Facebook is as much geared to conversations the way Twitter can be. Facebook is more self-centred – there’s not as much dialogue. The Facebook is more “look at me”.
A: Scott: I have a different take on LinkedIn. I do a lot of networking and I’ve found through LinkedIn I can connect with people from previous years. Every card I now get in business, I don’t have time to input to a database – but I have time to connect on LinkedIn. That gets people to my database. That’s the modern day goldmine. With social media, any platform, anything counts forever.
Q: George, Scott. Leafs, Canucks, Go.
A: Scott: I broke up with them 3 years ago because they hurt me. Go to “Dear Leafs, I’m breaking up with you” on YouTube.
And that’s the end of the day. Cheers, All. After party at the Caprice.
