Filed under Best Practices …

Oct 25 2011
1 Comment
Best Practices, Branding, Social Media, Social Media Content, Social Media Measurement

7 People You May Need to Have on Your Social Media Team:

Are you hiring a social media “specialist”, “guru”, or “manager”? There are a number of roadblocks most businesses run into when doing so – Team structure is #1 (at least I would hope).

I should start this off with a warning – No one person can do it alone, especially if you’re part of a medium to large sized business. There are so many different contribution points, that if you only have one person you will never be successful.  Trust me, I have been that lone ranger before, and I was over-stretched; so I could only do half-ass everything and not amazing anything.

So, in my honest opinion these are the positions that you should have:

  1. Listener/engager – People are talking about you, deal with it. You need someone who can use a listening platform to monitor mentions of your brand. This is necessary. You can create relationships even if people are saying negative things about you, and it gives you a way to let people know you’re there, you’re listening, and you care. This person should be the same person(s) who are engaging on behalf of your brand in social media.
  2. Content Curator – As we all know, content can be a female dog for some brands in social media. You need something to post on a daily or weekly basis, but where are you going to find that content? Having an entire person dedicated to this position will make your life a whole lot easier. It also gives a little more bandwidth on tracking & optimizing the content that you do post. They can coordinate the “content calendar” if you need one, come up with new themes and coordinate the creation of said content. Easy Peasy, right?
  3. Web Coder/Graphic Designer: This is pretty self-explanatory. You need to be able to get graphics done for microsites, Facebook tabs, WordPress themes, etc.
  4. Public Relations Coordinator – This is crucial as the reputations of brands are more at risk with the uprising of social media. This does not need to be a full-time person, but you need to have this person crafting your overall messaging and voice, as well as risk mitigation.
  5. Social Media Marketing Coordinator – Like any other channel, sales & marketing plays an important role in social media. Coming up with innovative ideas is mandatory, and you also need someone to run social advertising, promotions, and to track the ROE/ROR (Return-On-Engagement/Return-On-Relationship). It is also necessary to tie social media to overall business objectives (website traffic, etc.).
  6. Social Media Analytics Officer – Again, this does not need to be a full-time person. You must measure your social media efforts. Now, part of this job includes staying up to date on the forever changing metrics, tools, etc. Measuring impact and growth/decline of your mentions on any given month, and doing all the reporting. Crucial.
  7. Someone who oversees it all: This could be you. Or not. In any event you need someone to provide coordination and direction.

In conclusion, this seems like a resource-heavy list. However, it is important that all these roles are covered, and depending on the size of your business, each role could be more than one person. This structure is also not right for every business, but it definitely is a good place to start.

PS: Always hire people on contract, you never know with Social Media “Gurus” they could turn out not to know anything about anything. Don’t believe the hype.

What do you think a social media team should look like? Let me know in the comments.

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Oct 19 2011
1 Comment
Best Practices, Relationships, Social Media

4 Tips for Brands on Building Better Relationships with Influencers

Obligatory cat picture, you know, to get you hooked.

If there is one thing we’re all really really confused about, it’s how does a brand interact and build a relationship with a person? Is it through posting compelling content? Maybe it’s about talking to them as a person, not a customer? Mayyyybeee it’s about giving them free products and seducing them to write a bias blog post about them, because.. well you’re giving them something for free so they’re kind of obligated… right?

 

Wrong Wrong Wrong.

 

The truth in this situation is that a BRAND can’t create a relationship with a person (hold on… just breathe, I have a reason for saying this).

Only a PERSON can create a relationship with that person. And one point of contact (ex: Twitter) is not the wheel, it is a spoke in the wheel. I mean think about it. Someone is not your friend simply because you are friends with them on Facebook, right? You have to nurture that relationship through various other channels in order to validate and maintain it. Seeing that person, having a real conversation with them over the phone, talking to them on twitter, Facebook, AND email is the only way to sustain the health of said relationship. Right?!

I guess what I am trying to say is pushing yourself (as a brand) on everyone, everywhere, without ever really caring what they say (“if it’s bad we won’t respond”) will not a relationship make. You need to understand who that person is, find a common ground to build a relationship on, and nurture the hell out of that relationship. If you don’t have anything in common with that person – than you won’t be able to build a relationship with them – I mean what the hell will you talk about?

My advice for brands is this:

1. Qualify, qualify, qualify: And I don’t mean this in a salesy way, but you need to understand who these people are and why you want to talk to them. Find out their likes, dislikes, impact and influence they have on their community, and how you can connect your brand with that person.

2. Engage in conversation: By this, I do not mean pitch. Have a conversation with this “influencer” as a person, not as a brand. If it means using your personal social properties, or email – then so be it. Don’t have a conversation about your products, either. Try having a legitimate conversation with them on topics that they (and preferably you) are interested in. Note: Just because you RT or @ mention someone, doesn’t mean that you are having a conversation. Commenting on a blog or having one email exchange is simply not enough. A relationship takes time to build just like anything else, so invest in it. 

3. Do NOT default to throwing free stuff at them: Contrary to popular belief, just because you give someone something for free does not mean that they will become a brand advocate. Make a connection between your products and that person. Give it to them if you have to, but let them know that this does not mean they have to write an obligatory blog post about your product (because most of the time those blog posts sound forced, anyways). Tell them to try it, and if they don’t like it – that you’re willing to hear their feedback and send it in the appropriate direction. You have to be able to take criticism, every good product and company is willing to adapt to what customers and people in general want.

4. Showcase your people: Like I said before, people relate to people. Most companies have mounds of talent hiding in departments like manufacturing, engineering, production, etc. This is your intellectual capital, and these are real people – not trained in how to talk to people. Like I’ve always said, a brand = the sum of its parts.

This post is half rant, half verbal diarrhea – so if I didn’t make sense, let me know below. I’d also love to hear your opinions on this subject so leave a comment!

 

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Sep 16 2011
4 Comments
Best Practices, Branding

Social Media ROI is not as important as this

In the hype that is social media, I think a lot of brands/people are forgetting one BIG thing.

This is a conversation

We tend to get caught up in the things that don’t matter so much, or are a result of conversation as a whole. People keep asking “well, what’s the ROI of social media”. Does it ever occur to you business-savvy thinkers that loyal customers are the return? Happy people? People who have positive experiences with your brand? These interactions mean a lot more than trying to figure out how you can grease up your tweets enough just to get a sale or two.

We need to start thinking of the real value that social media brings to us. No longer are the days where we have to guess who are customers are & what they’re thinking. They’re there, they WANT to talk to you (they do not want to be pitched, sold, or used BTW) — sometimes human interaction is all you need.

I bring this up because today I had a fantastic experience talking to one of our customers (whom I discovered while surfing mentions in Radian 6). This person wasn’t reaching out to us, they were reaching out to their existing connections in relation to one of our products (a very old product, also). I ended up finding her a solution through the thousands of results I got when searching Google, and we closed on a very positive note. She said she loved Twitter because when she asked a question, she got real help. She told me how much she loves our product and how often she uses it (even though the conversation started with her being frustrated). She was happy. I was happy.

This gave me a sincere feeling of satisfaction — and I remembered that it’s not about ROI, unless you can measure happiness. All the marketing campaigns, press releases, Facebook fans & Twitter followers don’t amount to the satisfaction I get from creating ONE successful relationship where there was none before. This is why I do what I do.

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Jul 26 2011
2 Comments
Best Practices, Events, Social Media, Social Media Measurement

REPORT: The Comic-Con effect. #sdcc and Social Media.

Comic-Con International San Diego Logo

Image via Wikipedia

The more I learn about numbers, tracking, and analyzing social media stuff, the more I love it. Yesterday, I posted the analytics from a conference that I attended and was really humbled by the responses I got. Some, pointing out my errors, and others showing interest. I want to do the same thing but on a much bigger scale for one of the most popular conferences on the planet. San Diego Comic-Con International. This conference is HUGE, it sells out every year without fail and brings about the most interesting people, in full costume, might I add.

My colleague Lucas was doing some investigation into the event and the impact that it has on social media. When he started monitoring the event hashtags (#sdcc & #comiccon) on around July 5th, we were all blown away at the sheer mass of mentions on Twitter. There were 19,00 mentions in the previous 30 days which is massive. I think we both assumed that by the time the conference had actually begun, there would be close to 19,000 mentions per day.

Boy, were we wrong.

On the preview night alone there were just over 26,000 mentions of the #sdcc hashtag. Sheesh.

Here is a word cloud from the conversations that were happening on Day One.

Word cloud (Day One). The bigger the word, the more volume it has.

You can see by looking at the wordcloud that the most popular term was “#comiccon”. In combination with the #sdcc hashtag there were 14,855 mentions.  There was also a lot of mentions of the smash hit show Dexter (one of my favorite shows) on the first day. So it would be interesting to see what the themes of those conversations are:

What you do notice from digging deeper in the individual keywords is that you can actually learn what happened that day (sifting through the hundreds of thousands of Comic-Con tweets a week later would be no easy feat). There was about 2000 posts in relation to Dexter on day one – some announcing the season six trailer, some about Mos Def joining the cast, and others complaining about traffic and such. What greater way to market a new TV show, though? Holding off until Comic-Con for these announcements is a brilliant marketing strategy for Showtime to out in place, because they create so much social media buzz around the premiere of the show.

Moving on…

Still thinking about day one, wouldn’t it be interesting to estimate how many of those 80,000 tweets came from the event itself? The reason I ask this question is because I think it’s equally important to look at how many people are enjoying the conference from the comfort of their own home and the power of Twitter. I’ve split up the mentions of that day by region, to put it all in context:

Breakdown of Tweets on Day One by region

If you click on the chart above you can see that the majority of the tweets came from the United States (about 65,000). This does not mean that every person in the US who tweeted about Comic-Con was actually there, but it’s tricky to tell. Let’s look at a completely different area, Brazil. 2,714 of the posts on Day One came from Brazil. So what were they talking about? Take a look:

Now, I don’t read Portuguese, but I cam tell you that Twitter fans of Comic-Con in Brazil were living the event through Twitter – not through a magazine 3 days later (Note: the above feed is sorted by highest amount of Twitter followers).

The first day of Comic-con generated 81,677 mentions of the #sdcc hashtag. One of the clear big winners in terms of buzz at Comic-Con was definitely Twilight. I hate to admit it, but I am a devoted fan to the series, no matter how corny it might seem That is why it is of particular interest to me to dig a little deeper and understand what news and exclusives were released.

#sdcc vs. Twilight keyword group

During that first day, mentions of Twilight, Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, and Breaking Dawn were mentioned 7900 times out of the 82,000 tweets. That’s HUGE considering the other events that were going on that day. People were discussing the Twilight panel, Robert Pattinson’s hair, the Breaking Dawn trailer, all exciting things. What I find interesting, though, is that this panel is held every year at Comic-Con, pre-movie-release. Another excellent marketing strategy if you think about it. The two movies were filmed at the same time, but are releasing a year apart – in my opinion so that they can get another wildly successful panel at Comic-Con 2012.

Day two was filled with popular topics such as #trueblood (a cast-panel was held this day which generated 2476 mentions for the Trueblood hashtag). You can also combine this with the 169 RT’s of @TruebloodHBO’s tweet:

All in all, there were many topics covered at this year’s Comic-Con that I won’t get into for the sake of your eyes, but I just thought I would share a few more interesting insights:

Most ReTweeted Users at Comic-Con:

Conan O’Brien was the most retweeted Twitter user in relation to Comic-con saying things such as “I have arrived at @Comic_Con. The air is thick with the smell of Cheetos and celibacy #sdcc”

Summary of entire event:

Slide pictured above courtesy of @lucas_powell

The buzz was not isolated to Twitter, either. Comic-con also generated 912 blog posts (that included the keywords we had entered, I’m sure there was a LOT more), as well as various other media types.

Overall, Comic-Con International was a HUGE social media success, with over 400,000 tweets over the entire conference. As a marketer, I would suggest that if you can tie your product in ANY WAY to what happens at Comic-Con, you attend Comic-Con 2012 next year, and  be prepared to tweet… a lot.

What do you think of the impact of events like Comic-Con on social media?

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Jul 13 2011
2 Comments
Best Practices, Education, Social Media, Social Media Measurement

Social Media is about MORE than the tools

There are SO many tools out there that can help you manage, measure, and execute many of the functions that exist within social media. Just like you can have all the books in the world and not be the least bit intelligent; the same can be said of social media tools. You can have all of the listening tools – and still not hear anything. You can have all the management tools, and still be unorganized. You can have all the measurement tools, and still not understand. Even the venues like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are just tools. For people, for brands, they serve as the middleman between themselves and other people. Social media is about more than just the tools, it’s about being social by nature.

What I mean by that, is that some people instinctively get it – and thus they are successful. They can take to Twitter and Facebook the same way they take to a networking event. They can easily mingle, connect, and understand what they are doing and why – even if subconsciously. This is especially true for Gen Y. We grew up with the internet. When something new, or as different as Twitter was in the Facebook era comes out of the woodwork – we can use it without a second thought. We’ll spend 30 minutes playing with it and then we know more than some analysts do.

Do not take me out of context, I am not saying non-Gen Y’ers don’t instinctively get social media, because most of the superstars in the industry do not fall into the “millenial” range. A lot of people have years of experience in marketing, advertising, PR – and social media is a natural evolution for them. For others who have the same experience, social media may not be a natural evolution – they are not comfortable with it. In this instance, we should not force them to adapt – rather, we should let them learn at their own pace and evolve over time. Put the naturally social people on the front lines (regardless of their title or department) and put training in place to teach them not only about social media, but about the restrictions that they have in relation to the brand so that they understand.

What I am saying, though, is that you either get it – or you don’t. This is a problem that I see and deal with everyday. Sometimes I get frustrated when people don’t get what I’m talking about – or if I have to spend more time explaining something when it just seems like common sense in my head. What I have to remind myself is that this is not as easy for others as it can sometimes seem to me. Many brands are still battling the idea that social media is more than just a “nice to have” but is, instead, a need to have. Some brands are not, and will never be social by nature because the more traditional tools and strategies have worked for so long & they refuse to “fix what’s not broken”.

The word “social” by definition means:

so·cial/ˈsōSHəl/

Adjective: Needing companionship and therefore best suited to living in communities

  • - we are social beings as well as individuals
Companionship. Community. Those are hefty words with deep meanings. To be able to create friendships and bring people together around common interests, themes and goals is not a skill that comes naturally to just anyone. Just because you give someone a hammer does not mean they can build a house, so the tools mean nothing in comparison to the people and their abilities.
Social media is really about being social – more than the tools that so many claim make them qualified to be “gurus” :)
BTW I was lacking inspiration for a new blog post today, but thankfully someone gave me a little push in the right direction.
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Jul 11 2011
3 Comments
Best Practices, Social Media, Social Media Content, Social Media Measurement

What is social media content anyway?

Image via justmeans.com

 

This is the question that has a lot of marketers puzzled, to say the least. We’ve pretty much moved past the “if you build it they will come” mentality – and have instead moved into Content is king, and context is queen way of thinking. So where does the content come from?

Working in software, the first idea that comes to mind when we hear “content” is marketing & product content. This is readily available most of the time, and is the easiest way to publish something every working-day to our Facebook & twitter properties. After months of doing this, though, I realized this is not the best route. Our users are engaged, but could we do a better job? You can always do better, I tell myself.

When you search and crowdsource what others in the industry are doing, you will almost always get the same answers:

Start a blog then post your blog. You can leverage existing materials, customer testimonials, throw in the odd product announcement sprinkled with questions and don’t forget promos & contests – this is about ROI y’know.

Right. That makes sense. Start a blog (without having any particular platform, you’ll figure it out eventually). Take your testy marketing materials and push them out to the public that already sees them through other channels. When you launch a product or a patch – you should put that in there too, people are SO interested in that kind of stuff. Then, sometimes – to make the audience feel like you care; ask them a question. Don’t worry about the results though, you don’t have to do anything with those. Sell people stuff, people love it when you do that. Then buy their love with gifts – that about covers it.

If you didn’t catch it there, that was complete and utter sarcasm. These are my tips folks, pay attention:

Tell Stories: This is all you really have to do, and I know I have emphasized this in a lot of my blog posts. The most simple way to attract people to you, is to give them a reason to be attracted. People relate to people, not campaigns. Tell stories about your company, your employees, your customers, your non-customers, anyone! Be attractive to the single most powerful human instinct, emotion. It could even be little tweaks to the things you are already doing, for instance:

You can now buy triple absorbent pads for your Swiffer Sweeper. Available at Walmart, Target, and RiteAid in your city.

VS

Meet Amy, she loves Swiffer Sweeper, so we asked her for some feedback on the pads to see if we were getting the job done right. She told us that the pads weren’t absorbent enough – we listened. You can now get your triple absorbent pads at Wal-mart, RiteAid, or Target. Let us know what you think! [Insert smiling picture of Amy with her new Swiffer]

See what I did there? I turned everyday marketing babble into a story, a story that people can relate to. I put a human face to it. Ta-da. There’s only one catch with this – it has to be authentic. Amy can’t be some marketing persona you made up, you actually have to go find her.

Do stuff: Go to events, talk to people, network. Content will always come from these types of things. You also have a kick-butt way to actually meet your customers, or potentially, find new ones. Take pictures, videos, & build relationships offline that you can transfer into online relationships – then once you’ve done that, tell the story.

Ask questions and then do something with the answers: If there is one thing that could probably not be anymore annoying than it already is, it’s when brands ask their fans for feedback with no purpose. If you are interested in what people are telling you – ask questions. If you’re not interested – don’t ask questions. It really is that simple. If Clairol, for instance, asked me what my favorite hair-dye color was – I’d expect that my answer was not given in vain. Whether it’s producing a cool infographic, publishing the answers on your blog, or actually incorporating that feedback into product development or something of equal value – you must use this information. This is quasi-market-research here, and it is a lot more valuable then you think.

Last but not least, Put your users in the spotlight: With little exceptions, especially in big business, users create better content then you ever will. A tutorial that they create, a photo that they take of themselves using your products, vlogs, etc. are ten times more valuable than anything you will create. Why, you ask? Because they cared enough about you to do it. While they may not always be accurate (especially in technical cases), they are gold. Freekin’ gold. Stop using a push-focused “brand-cuffed” mentality and share user generated content at least three times more than you share your own.

In the social media age, you don’t control the message anymore. The message is completely in the hands of the consumer – so put them first and make it a positive one. Make it human, make it authentic.

What are your tips for social media content?


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Jul 05 2011
9 Comments
Best Practices, Social Media

Why Axe Rocks at Social Media

Since I started my venture into social media professionally – I’ve found a hidden gem of best practices and tidbits in the form of Axe deodorant. They rock social media, and in my opinion – always have. They have completely humanized their brands and created relationships with their customers beyond anything that I’ve ever seen. Now, I know that they have a supposedly “easy” social media target segment – Young Guys. They also are very loose in their corporate speak, and to say the least… they like a little bit of a controversy (ball cleaning advertisements, anyone?). I must admit – they have a lot of freedom & we don’t all have this.

I’ll start with their magnificent Facebook Page. Stunning. A true work of art. They have mastered the art of multiple contributors (which you usually only see on Twitter a la ^carrots). When I started following them their main social media persona was JennieWithAxe. Pretty girl, exactly what you need to hot guys… right? Keep in mind this was about a year ago and I rarely see Jennie w/ Axe anymore… or at all really. A year ago, though, this was revolutionary – yet cautious. By giving Jennie a signature that she included at the end of every post, Axe was not subjected to her personal opinions and not liable for anything she said – or at least that’s what I thought.

I followed Axe along their journey and I was stunned when JennieWithAxe introduced DanWithAxe. Another person, but why? I chopped it up to volumes – maybe Jennie couldn’t handle the hundreds of thousands Facebook fans that were just dying to have their voices heard too. I kept watching – constantly jealous of the casualty of their posts and comments. So fun, so young, so entertaining.

A little while later they introduced LaurenWithAxe, another pretty face to add to their social media front men/women. After awhile Jennie started to fade into the background and Lauren and Dan took over. A month or two ago, I really realized what these personalities do for the Axe brand. They connect with people. Dan for the guys, and few girlfriends that have major purchasing power over their boyfriends deodorant selections. Lauren for those same women, but more importantly – to stroke their male fan’s egos. Smart move, right?

Beyond adding a human face to an otherwise faceless brand – the fans love them. And I mean that. Look at this:

And this:

Not to mention hundreds of other posts that are directed to Dan and Lauren, and don’t have much to do with Axe at all. These people are really connected with Dan and Lauren – and the community that they have built on Facebook is self sustaining, not to mention filled with love and praise. They barely have to worry about trolls because people post about their undying love for deodorants, body washes, and the crew – and the fans crush trolls, so Lauren and Dan don’t have to.

Another point of mention – on top of the aforementioned awesome engagement and relationship building, they post really cool content about their travels, parties they go to, new products, questions, and are constantly looking for user feedback to entertain their 1.5 million Facebook fans.

I’m not going to harp much longer – but I should talk about their other social properties. They also do an excellent job on Twitter and YouTube (though the audiences are much smaller (26K followers, 9800 subscribers at time of post). The point is they have mastered the quality vs. quantity debate and are winning with their fans/friends. This is evident and should be praised by the social media community.

I will  be one of those fans for a long time to come, and if I was asked to recommend a men’s deodorant (not sure why this would happen) I would definitely recommend Axe based on their Facebook page alone.

Who’s your favorite brand in social media and why?

Update: I posted the link to my blog on the Axe Facebook page & they responded with this awesomeness:

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Jun 23 2011
1 Comment
Best Practices, Social Media

Good, Better, Best – Practices

My Command Centre

Social media from a corporations perspective can always be a difficult subject to talk about. Today, I read a blog post from the Influential Marketing Blog titled: 10 Big Brand Lessons From the Corporate Social Media Summit. This article really resonated with me, because even though I use social media in my day-to-day work, sometimes even I lose sight of some important things.

Despite a lot of negative opinions out there about so called “best practices” in social media, there is no denying some brands just do it well. I’ve always been one to look to Cocacola for their best practices. They were one of the first brands to reach fan numbers in the millions (though I don’t necessarily think quantity over quantity should be a best practice at all) and they looked like they were having fun doing it.

Where this blog post really saw Coke shining, was that no idea was too big or ambitious, even though the key takeaway was that the most important number in social media is 360. I see this a tad differently. The main idea of the campaign that Coke ran, was that they would send three lucky travelers on a journey to all 206 countries around the world that Coke is sold. People could chose to follow their travels through a website that Coke put up called Expedition 206. So, on they went – looking for sources of happiness in each & every country which subsequently built on Coke’s now notorious Open Happiness campaign.

In my opinion, where this stood out was not in their marketing. After all, this started as a PR campaign. Absolutely brilliant. Now, while not every brand can emulate Coke’s ambitious campaigns – it shows that they were not scared to try. They tried something that was outside of their comfort zone & they exceeded probably even their own expectations.

Now, to the section that stood out to me -

 ”Best Buy – Nobody owns Social Media”

My subconscious was smiling ear to ear when I saw this. This is what I have been thinking all along!! How can you own something you have no control over? Owning social media is kind of like…. anti-social.

Alas, this was not really what they were talking about. They were talking about their customer service, or, Twelp Force. The same kind of things a lot of brands say:

We’re creating meaningful communications in the digital world.

Don’t get me wrong, Best Buy does a fantastic job on social media. I’m not doubting that whatsoever. I love that they extend encouragement to over 3000 employees to participate in SM. I would love to see more from Best Buy that’s not only customer service focused.

Now… Dell is extremely interesting to me. I love that they’re not solely measuring social media based on ROI, this is fantastic. My favorite part about Dell is that they made social media interesting coming from a brand. To them, it is less about – we need to talk about our products! Sell computers! Sell the fancy schmancy colored covers & how cool they are! Go forth & conquer!

Nope… not them. They have a “Social Media Listening Command Centre”. Ya, you heard right. How awesome is that? They really treat discussions that happen in social media the same way they probably do with a call center. This alone is revolutionary. According to the blog post, they have fully embraced social media in six business areas:

  • Marketing (obviously)
  • Product Development - this is really one of the main reasons they are a best practice. Brands like to say that their listening, but few actually act upon it.
  • Sales (again, obviously)
  • Online presence – Not quite sure exactly what this means, but I’m assuming that it meant that they’re online?
  • Customer service – Right on
  • Communications – Standard

The reason that I like this – is because it’s about more than just customer service. More than marketing. More than communications. They’re basically saying

Hey (your name here), we’re here in case you need us. We can help you, give you advice, tell you about the latest news, and even help you buy a new computer if you want one. Regardless, we’re here. We’re listening to you. You matter.

While there were a few more standouts; Southwest for huminzation, Kodak for listening in real time, & Pepsi for rewarding their fans for just being fans, only one other brand stood out to me.

The funny part, before reading this article is I didn’t even know who they were. New York Life. After Googling for a bit – I realized they were an insurance company. Weird.

Anywho, New York Life’s lesson was Brands need to trust their people. I’ve been hearing this a lot lately, most recently from Amber Naslund (see this blog post for more info). The more I hear this point, the more it rings true to me. When I see these words, I really start to question how little some brands do trust their people. Gregory Weiss pointed out that many large brands are afraid of what their employees might do with social media even though they let their employees (the SAME employees) have phones & use fax machines & talk to people outside of the company.

According to the blog post, his main point was that if you can’t trust your employees to do the right things and make the right choices, then maybe you need to hire better people. Ouch. Hurts, doesn’t it? I don’t even need to speak to this point because I strongly believe it speaks for itself.

In conclusion, these people are “best practices” because they’re really doing it right. I hope we can all as colleagues evolve to the place where we can lean on each other & turn competition into conversation.

Thanks to Rohit  Bhargava for this inspiration for this blog.

What brands do you turn to for best practices?

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