Blog - The Social Media Professor

Taco Bell Stretching the Digital Comfort Zone with Tressie Lieberman

March 30, 2015 by Niklas Myhr Leave a Comment

Intense curiosity and a willingness to take risks. Those are two requirements to be successful, at least for Tressie Lieberman, Director of Digital and Social Marketing at Taco Bell. She came to share her perspectives with my MBA class in Social Media Marketing at Chapman University and the students were treated to a full menu of examples of how Taco Bell under her direction embraces new platforms such as Snapchat and Instagram with real-time marketing while also balancing legal and organizational considerations.

“I actually get nervous if I haven’t been nervous for a while” – Tressie Lieberman

Experimentation is key and instead of buying research data, the best research they do is in the form of the real-time feedback they get from launching initiatives and adjusting as they move along. Internally, she emphasized how critical it has been for their success with digital efforts to educate and provide reverse mentoring programs internally to get executive buy-in. For example, she spent four hours with the CEO showing her everything starting out with her personal accounts to provide a full picture of how consumers can interact with the brand.

To make it possible to have real-time conversations, Tressie Lieberman talked about how she had managed to reduce the bureaucracy needed for various initiatives on social media at the same time as she wants to clearly identify what they cannot do as they don't want to get in trouble which could stop all initiatives online.

“Don't ever let the lack of a budget hold you back from doing something really cool” – Tressie Lieberman

Taco Bell launched a new app by doing a social media blackout so it looked as if they had zero presence on all networks that day. Also, mobile ordering they launched nationwide day one as opposed to doing a gradual rollout.

This all made for higher levels of social conversations about the brand and people started talking about the app. They broke through the clutter of 1,2 million apps and became a top app almost instantaneously.

In conclusion, Tressie Lieberman says it is the best time to be in marketing and working in digital is like working like a change agent and is very rewarding career choice. Also, it keeps her on her toes as “you are only as good as your last week.”

The Science of Haters with Jay Baer

March 28, 2015 by Niklas Myhr 4 Comments

In his closing keynote at the Social Media Marketing World 2015, Jay Baer stressed how important it is to embrace your critics and “Hug Your Haters” by responding to every complaint on every channel basically all the time. By doing so, companies can significantly increase sentiment metrics such as customer advocacy and conversely, if you fail to do so, customer advocacy will go down according to recent research on “The Science of Haters” that he has conducted in partnership with Tom Webster at Edison Research. He even went so far as saying that “answering complaints can have massive financial impact on your business.”

Niklas Myhr and Jay Baer at Social Media Marketing World 2015 — Giving Jay Baer a good luck hug before his keynote 🙂

Reasons why companies do not respond to all complaints range from an unwillingness to dignify complaints to an inability to manage a large number of complaints or even find them in the first place. Still, Jay Baer suggests that with top management commitment and sufficient resources allocated, a company can, and should, respond to all complaints. He used KLM as a case study and mentioned that when the ash cloud from the Icelandic volcano wreaked havoc on flights a few years back, their CEO committed to responding to every complaint. Now they have a full 150 full-time employees dedicated to responding to online mentions across all channels.

An interesting distinction made by Jay Baer was the one he made between so-called onstage versus offstage haters. Offstage haters are those who complain about an experience through a private channel first and herein lies the opportunity for companies to help them out before they go public with their displeasure. Offstage haters skew towards an older demographic and they don't complain as frequently as others and when they do so, they tend to do it from a computer, not from a mobile device.

Onstage haters, on the other hand, are younger, more mobile and tend to also complain more frequently. When they do so, they go to public channels first and expect not only the company to respond, but also that others will see and perhaps chime in on the conversation about the brand. For onstage haters, it is important to have an audience that is watching the duel between the complainant and the company and that is why many review sites are humorous, colorful, and bold.

“Hating is a spectator sport.”

– Jay Baer

White Castle 2 Star Review — This is a 2 star review! How would their 1 star reviews look like?

One benefit of taking complaints seriously is that these can serve as an early detection system by which you can learn about customer sentiments that may become a bigger issue for more people down the road unless you do something about it. Jay Baer also pointed out that most complaints have at least some kernel of truth in them and studied carefully, complaints can provide extraordinary insights.

On another note, Jay Baer brought up Warby Parker as an example of a company that not only responds to complaints but has as its goal to respond to every question posted online. That is, being responsive doesn't have to focus solely on the negative remarks.

In sum, Jay Baer pointed out that having haters is not the problem, ignoring them is. Instead, by choosing to embrace haters, companies have a great opportunity to build customer advocacy.

Jay Baer closing keynote audience — Enthusiastic audience about to enjoy Jay Baer's closing keynote

Consider getting the Virtual Pass to Social Media Marketing World 2015 which should provide a rich library of materials for the year to come, cannot recommend it enough!

Disclosure: Some of the links on this website are so-called “affiliate links” but please note that I only recommend products or services that I either use to satisfaction personally or am confident will add value to my readers based on endorsements by people I trust.

6 Steps to a Content Marketing Strategy with Joe Pulizzi

March 26, 2015 by Niklas Myhr Leave a Comment

Today at Social Media Marketing World 2015 where I am spending Spring Break with 25 of my Chapman University students as volunteers, Joe Pulizzi of the Content Marketing Institute launched his brand new keynote presentation on content marketing here are some highlights. First, he stressed that he was continually amazed over the fact that the majority of companies are still not having a content marketing strategy in place. Amazing to him as it is both effective and not that difficult to do. So, if you want to get started, he suggested the following six-step process:

Sweet Spot. How can you find the right balance between what you are good at and what the market needs. You can niche down really small like a guy who has a big following for his radio show on backyard poultry! What was encouraging to me as a social media professor is that he really emphasized the need for you to also have a passion for teaching. You need to demonstrate your expertise to your community.
Content Tilt. While finding your sweet spot in step 1 is necessary, it is not sufficient as you still need to provide a story with a twist to motivate people to follow you and not someone else's content on the same topic. For example, nobody would care if you release one of ten million SEO ebooks unless you provide some compelling reason for reading yours. One way of doing that is to connect your story to something that is new or current and in this regard, he finds that Google Trends is a very underutilized tool. In the end, you should define your content marketing strategy with the following three elements: (1) core target audience; (2) what will be delivered; and, (3) the outcome for the audience.
Niklas Myhr, Joe Pulizzi, Larry Benet, and Wes Schaeffer before Joe's talk

Building the Base. Once you have defined your content marketing strategy, you essentially should embark on the age-old process of publishing. Here, Joe Pulizzi really stressed the need to be focused at first. Specifically, he suggested that you start with only one content type on one main platform on which you consitently deliver high quality.
Harvesting the audience. The key here is to not only provide valuable content but also to harvest the audience by getting them to subscribe to your email list. You should focus on number of new subscribers as a key metric and he was critical of Starbuck's major investment in building communities on Facebook, etc, as these communities are outside of your direct control. To build your base, he also shared how Content Marketing Institute systematically built their following by identifying and leveraging relationships with influencers in their field and how they gradually got them to begin sharing the content of Content Marketing Institute.
Diversification. Again, Joe Pulizzi doesn't believe that you should start out on too many platforms and media types at once but once you have acheived some traction, he believes that you should consider complementary avenues to add value to your audience whether it would be through more online platforms, books, or in-person events, etc. Joe Pulizzi predicted that we will see a lot of mergers and acquisitions as some are good at building an audience while others are better at monetizing content. For example, HubSpot just bought Agency Post.
Monetization. Patience is needed and Joe Pulizzi has seen that some of the most successful content marketers don't even try to monetize in any way until they have built a really strong and loyal following which could take a couple of years to achieve. However, once you have a community developed, then you will likely find multiple ways in which you can serve your customer base with products and services you didn't even anticipate upfront but have discovered along the way as you got to know your community better.

In conclusion, Joe Pulizzi suggests you create a content marketing plan and focus everything on building a loyal audience. Also, you really have to find out where you have a special story to tell in order to break through the clutter of numerous offerings available from others. So, good luck with your content marketing strategies!

Please see below for the full slide set of Joe Pulizzi's presentation.

6 Steps to Creating a Content Marketing Strategy – #SMMW15 from Joe Pulizzi

Volvo's Customer Avenue

March 20, 2015 by Niklas Myhr Leave a Comment

The drama of this afternoon was when I was sitting in our Volvo XC70 outside our kids' middle school waiting to pick them up or at least bring home their heavy bags and my daughter's saxophone. Suddenly, I heard something crashing into our left rear mirror and saw that the cover of the mirror with a turn signal light had fallen off to the ground.

Then I noticed a distraught and very apologetic boy on his bicycle and soon thereafter, the director of campus safety appeared out of nowhere who brought us to the Principal and then the boy's mother arrived. Even if he wasn't supposed to ride his bike on that road, I hope this boy doesn't get into too much trouble and I am glad he didn't get hurt.

As a result, I once again get an opportunity to test the service capability of our local Volvo dealer where I am writing this text. I admit that I am biased, I basically grew up in a Volvo station wagon and even if Volvo Cars now is owned by the Chinese Geely Corporation, it is still a very Swedish brand. In fact, Natasha at the service desk just told me that they are supposed to work the Swedish heritage even more going forward so I taught her some phrases such as “hej !” (= hi!) and “tack!” (thanks!). And yes, they passed the service satisfaction test this time, too, good people to deal with!

I have also had the great pleasure of bringing multiple groups of Chapman University MBA students to Volvo Cars in Gothenburg, Sweden. The students got an opportunity to test drive the latest models and ironically enough, one of my Chinese students crashed a Volvo as she veered off the demo track but thanks to the safe car she was driving, neither she nor her passenger got hurt. Now Natasha came back and the rear mirror bill will be $302.56…

While waiting, I interviewed sales consultant Ghaleb Abdallah who has been selling Volvos for 21 years. The three keys to selling Volvos he says are: safety, comfort, and durability. Plus that you get a car like that for 15 thousand dollars less than a comparable BMW! He had not seen the Zlatan Made by Sweden ad, though, but enjoyed it when I showed it to him on my phone.

So, now go get one of them good-looking Volvos! [unsponsored post…]

« Previous Page
1
…
6
7
8
9
10
…
22
Next Page »

The Social Media Professor

Contact