Dan Erwin

"Demystifying Social Media"

Everybody knows what social media is, but few know how to take advantage of its potency. In a highly illuminating update, the McKinsey Quarterly lays out social media’s core functions. Since General Motors made news today by its decision to stop paid advertising on Facebook perhaps it needs some McKinsey help.  A GM official decided that paid ads have little impact on consumer’s car purchases. General Motors’ paid advertising commitments are among the highest in the world. Although the investment in Facebook was not huge, the decision is liable to have profound implications for both Facebook and General Motors.

So how can you best use social media?
The McKinsey study enables targeted marketing responses at 10 touch points along what it calls the “consumer decision journey.” One of the ten—monitoring what people do and say—is so important that McKinsey says it’s the core function of social media. The other nine uses of social media easily fit into three categories. 

1. Monitoring.  Brand monitoring—awareness of what’s being said about your products and services—makes an appropriate default social-media function. This is the kind of information that should reach the relevant organizational functions such as marketing, public relations, research and development and public relations. 
2. Responding. Although it’s valuable to learn how the medium is doing and what to improve, this kind of response can uncover sales leads and provide customer service. Responding to counter negative comments and reinforcing positive ones is of vital significance to brand management. Recently a hoax photograph claimed that McDonald’s was charging African-Americans an addition service fee. McDonald’s social-media team released a statement declaring the photograph a hoax, asking key influencers to let their “followers know.” The company even responded personally to a number of people who believed the image was authentic. Within just a few days, the firm had resolved the problem and its stock shares went back up.
3. Amplifying.  Amplification means designing the medium with a social motivator that encourages broader engagement and sharing. It means that the campaign provides for experiences that invite customers to broaden or extend the relationship with the brand, product or fellow users. Groupon, for example, provides consumers with credit for referrals.
4. Leading. The medium can be used to lead the customer toward long-term behavioral changes by driving Web traffic to content about a firm’s other products or services. It can, for example, provide time-sensitive targeted deals. American Express created shopping promotions for the weekend following Thanksgiving. 

Although the McKinsey study is oriented to organizational marketing, I’ve found by means of Analytics that the same insights are applicable to my own personal blogging. By regularly posting on four different websites with slightly varying niches, I’m able to gain very useful marketing insight. I’ve been able to identify issues, language, and approaches that, over time, clarify potential consulting and writing objectives. 

Analytics and Quantcast provide me with much free insight. Although conventional knowledge, for example, says that blogs should be kept below 500 words, I’ve found that content is truly king. Three of my top five blogs, by reader stats, are more than 1,000 words in length.  Surprisingly, average time spent on blogs does not necessarily correlate with the length of the blog. I take that info as a means of identifying exceptionally relevant content to my readers. Quantcast is especially useful in that it provides free information regarding income, education, age and categories of interest to my readers. Currently, my blogs reflect readership identical to my strategic objectives. As a result of the marketing information, I’ve been able to fine tune my readership and better reach both the educational and income levels on which I’m focusing. I spend a great deal of time monitoring and responding to the marketing data, blogging to achieve my desired objectives.

Fm: Divol, R., Edelman, D., and H. Sarrazin, "Demystifying Social Media." McKinsey Quarterly, April 2012.

SECOND THOUGHTS ON PERSONAL BRANDING

One of the competencies I've noticed, even been beat over the head with, during my six month blogging novitiate is that there is a terrific amount of blogging on personal branding.  Everyone and his brother is jumping on the personal branding bandwagon.  I find that a bit strange.  I can't really believe that self-packaging--personal branding--is the panacea for our sins or for our vocation.  Still, when you google personal branding there are 84 pages of stuff on the subject.  I assume there will be redundancy on those pages but I lacked the interest to check it out.

 

It's obvious that Tom Peters had his finger in all this, dating from an article he wrote in 1997.  Many people don't know how to read that marvelous guru.  I have a great deal of admiration for Peters.  He's the greatest business popularizer of the 20th century, able to get the attention that Peter Drucker, the master, couldn't get.  (In many ways, he's much like the great New York Times popularizer, Thomas Friedman.)  Peters also has a big heart for the underdog, blue collar and hard working, many who regularly get screwed by business.  That's why you occasionally get a rant about Wal-Mart and other businesses from Peters. 

 

The key to reading and understanding Peters is to never take him literally, about nearly anything.  He writes and speaks to get the attention of closed ears, using hyperbole and exaggeration, all done to create a strong impression and evoke strong feelings.  He is what one of my former Southern colleagues called a "yeller:" an outrageous personality needed to get the attention of the establishment when they're way off track.  Peters' first blockbuster did precisely that.  It refocused business on the customer, although not all business got the message. 

 

FYI:  The American auto business never did get Peters’ customer-centric point which is a major reason why it faces bankruptcy today.

 

With that frame of reference in front of you, let me redefine personal branding in its most basic form.  Hopefully, that will enable you to analyze the stuff on personal branding to make some useful decisions about the process.

1. There is only one purpose for a personal brand and that's to evoke a response from a potential customer.  It may make you feel good about yourself, give you something to put on your website or business card, or even some new language for Twitter, but if what you're creating isn't for the purpose of evoking a response from a  potential customer, forget it.
2. Your personal brand only matters if it results in sales.  Whether you’re an independent consultant or an internal organizational professional, you want clients to have awareness, favorability and purchase of your expertise.  The expertise that you’re selling may take the form of products, services or even ideas, but it’s those results that you’re concerned about.  You can create rather simple metrics to measure the results of your brand, even mere revenue figures, statements of value from your clients or requests for your service.  What all that implies, though, is if there are no sales, your personal brand is a waste of time. 
3. Customers only buy what they perceive to be relevant.  If your personal brand doesn't offer something that customers perceive to be relevant, you're screwed.  If your claims are hollow, then it's impossible for you to seem relevant for very long.  That means that I'm always listening to what my customers have to say about my service, both those on the web and those that I meet face-to-face.  And boy, they'll let me know whether or not I'm relevant to them.  
4. Ultimately, your customers define your brand, not you.  That's why smart firms and smart people are always listening, observing, questioning and measuring their customers.  Inevitably, they're adjusting their brand to their customers' definition.  I'll happily confess that it took me ten years into my business to understand my brand with some clarity.  I was very fortunate.  Some of the smartest people in some of the best companies told me exactly what I bring to the party and what they want from me. 

I have to believe that there's some agreement and a lot of disagreement with this definition, so I'd like your input. 

 

P. S.  Tom Peters has a recent blog in which he declaims on what is NOT personal branding.