Open up your mind and say, ahh...

Campaign Spending in Swing States

How effective was all the new campaign spending? I’m sure the analysis will be debated until the next election.

Preliminary estimates of total:

Also, if you’re all worked up about the election (as I was yesterday), it calmed my nerves and restored my faith in democracy a bit to read this article from Cracked (which is having oddly insightful articles lately)

Guest post by Chris Beck of 26DotTwo

You allocate increasing amounts of budget, time and resources with social media to connect one on one. What about the other 90% of your budgets? What learnings can be cross-pollinated to increase your impact?

The focus in social is on the 5th P (people); communities, niche groups, and influencers. Traditional media consists of the 4Ps; product, price, promotion, and place. Consider integrating the 5th P into traditional; not just a ‘Follow us on Twitter’ or ‘LIKE us on Facebook,’ but deeper learnings that can create significant impact.

Here are 6 social insights you can and should start applying to traditional…

TARGETING

Chances are your social campaigns are highly geo and contextually targeted. What about your traditional? Does it mirror your segmented user targets? Or is it a commoditized plan reaching broad demographic groups, using essentially the same creative?

Highly targeted ads create much higher consumer connection. You can see this clearly with social. A hyper targeted campaign on Facebook will generate upwards of 0.1% CTR’s with 60+% Fan Click Through Rate (FCTR). A broadly targeted demographic campaign may only generate a 0.2-0.3% CTR and 25-30% FCTR. Thinking the same way about traditional can dramatically increase your impact and ROI.

How are you customizing your outdoor and place based messaging? Do you use wild postings in urban areas and day-parted messaging with digital out-of-home? We do. In fact, we even use different messaging for men’s and women’s locker rooms. Do you have broad demographic targets for your radio and TV, or separate campaigns and music beds for your different segmented groups? The more traditional is customized, the greater your ROI will be.

CREATIVE OPTIMIZATION

Is your creative approach focused on the big idea? Or are you using a series of smaller ideas designed to resonate in specific markets and within specific niche groups? Typically the same traditional creative may be running in all markets for several weeks. However, traditional can learn lessons from social’s top creative, where top performing social ads may only perform for 36 to 72 hours before needing to be optimized. In the case of the Facebook Ad Server, it will save you from creative burn out because it will just stop serving your ad. However, your traditional could keep running and running…

LISTENING

Are you listening to conversations and then attempting to tap into them to promote the next deal period or sale? Looking at consumer insights for the 4th of July, it became clear that BBQ recipes and cupcakes were the most searched for items historically. Thus, we integrated these topics of interest into our creative to better join in the conversation and fulfill actual wants and needs.

MEDIA MEASUREMENT

Most of the media analytics applied to traditional are decades old and primarily mechanisms of commoditizing a buy to broad demographic groups. Effective social campaigns are focused on reach and frequency.

GRPs and IMPs mean nothing in terms of actual reach and frequency; 100 GRPs can be a 50 reach and 2 frequency or a 10 reach with a 10 frequency. They also do nothing to indicate the environment that the message is being showcased in. Are you looking at GRPs and CPPs or reach and frequency with different consumer segments? If not, you could be entirely over-reaching logical frequency levels with one group and entirely under-reaching another.

ENGAGEMENT

Think about the amount of time devoted to strategizing your 1 or 2 daily Facebook posts. Think about the analysis of the timing and content of when your tweets are most amplified. Could your traditional use the same analysis to better engage? The first step in the process is an understanding of how the consumer is actually consuming media and what other media is being used simultaneously.

Pandora Web is used mostly in-office and Pandora Mobile is generally used in the car. Won’t your messages engage more effectively if you take advantage of where people are consuming media? That’s why we’re huge advocates of heavy use of day-parting; it engages better. Drive time radio may have slightly higher usage, but much lower consumer attention spans and receptivity. A well produced :05 or :15 might better engage people in drive time, while an engaging :30 is a more effective messaging tool middays and weekends.

CROWDSOURCING

Think of crowdsourcing as the focus group of the future; it can offer much deeper information than a series of “controlled” focus groups ever could. It’s the next level of listening, by actually reaching out and having on-going insights on your creative, product mix, line-extensions and promotions. It’s no longer what you or your agency is thinking “back to school” may or may not represent, but what your segmented consumer groups want and will engage with.

Consumer’s media consumption, adoption of new technology and increased reliance on social elements will only continue to explode. Astute marketers will see that this translates into much less value to the “old days” of traditional commoditized media plans, siloed strategies and one size fits all creative. Integrating best practices from social can help your traditional better connect and create higher ROI.
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Chris Beck is a 30-year marketing veteran and is the founder and Chief Vision Officer of 26 Dot Two. The company works with leading brands, including Whole Foods Market & Popchips. He can be reached at chris@26dottwo.com
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Image Credit: Shutterstock

Often we consider an opportunity based on how easy it is. The problem with this analysis is that if it’s easy, it’s often not worth doing. It’s easy to start a blog, but of course, starting a blog doesn’t really deliver a lot of value. Posting 4,100 blog posts in a row, though, isn’t easy. It’s do-able, clearly do-able, and might just be worth it.

Successful organizations seek out the do-able. When Amazon went after the big bookstore chains, analysts ridiculed them for doing something insanely difficult. But it was clearly do-able. Persistence and talent and a bit of luck, sure, but do-able.

Sometimes we seek out things that are actually impossible. Building a search engine that’s just like Google but better is impossible (if your goal is to dominate the market with it). It’s fun to do impossible projects because then you don’t have to worry about what happens if you succeed… you have a safety net, because you’re dreaming the impossible dream.

Do-able, though, is within our reach. Ignore easy.

I’ve been thinking through my social presence, but further more, I was thinking about what it’s going to be like for a business (small or large) to manage their social presence. The thing is, there are a lot of different ways people are going at this, and not any one of them is perfect, but I like looking at what is there and then thinking about what else I’d want.

For instance, I’m a user and affiliate for the Hootsuite application. If you look at the graphic to the left, it lets you post messages and read messages from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, FourSquare and elsewhere. It also lets you cook up searches in Twitter search, plus a few other things. There’s a built in link shortener (though I’d love to be able to swap out my own), which means that I get stats and tracking, too.

But what else would something like Hootsuite have to do for you to make it your standalone dashboard for managing your social presence? Here’s a small list of thoughts:

• • A way to listen beyond Twitter search. I need Google Blogsearch, for instance, so I can have bigger ears. Plug in Radian6 or Sysomos or similar and this would be done (for a fee).
  • A blog editor. (They’ve dabbled with linking Hootsuite to WordPress.com, but this shouldn’t be that hard.
  • Email marketing integration. Would love to have my stats in one place for my Blue Sky Factory account.
  • Site analytics, like Google Analytics.

Social Presence Management Needs

But What Else?

What else would you want with a presence management dashboard? What else do you need it to do for you? And what would move it past managing your own (or business) presence, and into managing relationships?

Kind of fun to think about, eh?

I’ve been using Hootsuite for a while now, and have really been interested in a few things more than other parts: scheduled tweets and stats. I want to talk about the latter today.

Checking Stats

I became interested in which of my tweets with links were successful or not, so I started looking at the details of what Hootsuite provided. For the picture above at the top of the post, I was surprised that so many people clicked the link about how introverts view confidence, but also not surprised that there weren’t a lot of retweets.

In another case, I tweeted a link to Coca-Cola’s wrapped up social media year:

I got over a thousand clicks of that link. And just an hour before I started writing this post, I sent this link about getting more Twitter followers:

That post is a joke post, but the text of the link is linkbait.

What I Believe

People tend to click more on things that aren’t self-promotional. For instance, I get around 300-500 clicks when I push subscriptions to my own newsletter. Thus, promoting myself via Twitter isn’t really as effective as promoting really great content.

Except that it is. Here’s the other stat to throw in.

Every time I tweet something that pops over 1000 or more clicks in a reasonably short time, I *also* get a few hundred (up to 1000 or so) new followers within a few hours. So, that means that people are retweeting it a lot, sending it out to their audiences, and overall giving me a lot more attention when I find the gold.

Are You Looking At Your Stats?

Every link shortener, even the ones built into the twitter.com client, have stats pages. You can do some analysis of your own. When you do, I think you’ll be surprised by what hits and what doesn’t.

Thoughts? Questions? Bits to share with the peanut gallery?

This week BP successfully recapped its ruptured oil well in the Gulf of Mexico. Test results are favorable and show that oil and gas are, for the time being, confined. This news inspires cautious optimism in the hearts of residents and spectators alike. Online, however, the social effect continues to flow across social networks and social graphs, echoing anger, hope, and the demand for resolution and prevention from BP and the Obama administration.

If we were to look back and examine the extent of these online conversations and the associated sentiment related to this catastrophic event, we realize just how pervasive social networking is becoming to society. Social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr served as primary media hubs for sharing pictures, videos, and information. And, studying this activity could yield an ocean of insight.

If one social community represented a repository of collective consciousness for study today, there is no need to look beyond Twitter.

Twitter as a Human Seismograph

Twitter recently reported 105 million registered users with 190 million monthly page views. Whatever the actual user count is and how many of those users actually Tweet vs. solely consume content, it’s clear that the public stream and the oceans of conversations it feeds is the Web’s most important database of collective consciousness.

Our voices and our thoughts form much more than trends and trending topics, when assembled, they reveal raw human sentiment, perception and also indicate the responses and actions that materialize as a result. What was once purely a human seismograph for measuring events and reactions has now evolved into a vibrant society where the united intelligence that’s available to us both historically and in real-time is greater than the sum of its conversational parts. If Twitter were the United Nations, its representatives would span the globe and rank 11th in terms of overall population, just behind Mexico and just ahead of the Philippines. Needless to say, the communication and connections that power the Twitterverse are indeed representative of a universal culture.

Study: Evolving Sentiment Towards Obama and BP

Working with PeopleBrowsr, we focused our research on the U.S. Gulf oil crisis, one of the most important stories dominating the news, our hearts and minds, and now history books. While emotions, opinions, and hope run deep, this report will focus on the state of human sentiment as defined by public conversations on Twitter.

The goal of this report was to surface and spotlight views and feelings as they evolved over time. Concurrently, we set out to demonstrate perception vs. actuality by separating the developing attitudes that defined the state of Obama and BP over the course of several months.

To align our calendars, the BP oil spill was first reported on April 20th, 2010 as a result of Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion that killed 11 platform workers and injured 17 others.

This study examines sentiment dating back to March 2010 and continues into June 2010.

It’s important to consider in this analysis that we viewed all conversations related to the White House and Obama as a whole and not isolated by the oil spill specifically. We did so to demonstrate the Gulf’s impact on White House sentiment as it became clear that the explosion was much more than an unfortunate incident. Also, the following sentiment data is the result of human sorted tweets that were randomly sampled over time.

Sentiment: Obama

Using Twitter as a micro approval indicator, the BP oil spill does not appear to be “Obama’s Katrina.” Based on the data reviewed thus far, Obama’s public approval doesn’t seem to indicate the intense backlash shortly following Katrina.

Between March and June 2010 (98 days), Obama and the White House was the subject of over 2.5 million tweets. Of that, an estimated 213,000 were specifically related to the BP oil spill. And over the course over those three-plus months, sentiment averaged 64.55% neutral, 28.5% negative and 7% positive.

Sentiment: BP

Applying the same lens to BP, total conversations tied to BP and the oil spill between March and June 2010 (98 days) skyrocketed to an approximated 1.1 million tweets. Of those conversations, 59.06% were deemed negative with an additional 8.98% categorized as very negative. 28.20% of those tweets remained neutral and believe it or not, 3.14% were viewed as positive.

Sentiment: Comparing BP and Obama Over Three Months

Positive: Starting with positive sentiment, the nosedive for both is grave. Doubts for resolution and swift response caused the lack of public support for both Obama and BP and ultimately shifted towards sharp criticism and deafening cries for action and resolution.

Prior to the oil spill, BP was perched at its apex of positive sentiment. As the attempts to cap the gushing well failed, sentiment plunged 61.5% over three months. Obama also fell 63.3% from its high in March to a three month low.

Neutral: When either negative or positive conversations increase, it’s usually at the expense of indifferent banter. As expected, BP conversations hurtled by 53.39% between March and May. On the other hand, Tweets related to Obama and the White House actually increased over the course of 90 days by 24.9%.

Negative: When reviewing negative sentiment related to BP, there’s a reason the term hockey stick is used when referring to graphs. In March, BP was already the subject of negative commentary; however, after the explosion, critical conversations skyrocketed 107.05%, representing a devastating vertical spike in antipathetic public opinion.

On the contrary however, unfavorable Tweets related to Obama practically remained constant, declining a bit by 1.29%.

The average sentiment comparing BP and Obama eerily aligned, indicating that from a public perception standpoint, proactive leadership and resolution is critical.

March

April

May/June

Hashtags

Hashtags were originally introduced into the Twitter stream by Chris Messina as a way of categorizing conversations by topic and theme. Over time however, the role of hashtags expanded beyond classification to now also convey emotion or observation. For example, conversations related to the oil spill include hashtags as sentiment or for conveying implicit messages such as “I can’t believe the BP oil well is still gushing #IhateBP!” and “The BP oil spill represents why offshore drilling should be banned #helpsavethegulf.”

Tweets populated with references and messages conveyed through hashtags were overflowing and for the purpose of this report, we focused on spotlighting only those densely tied to the event as well as President Obama.

To demonstrate the extent of these particular hashtag references, we visualized them through an overlay graph dating back to the beginning of the year and running through the end of June.

The number of Tweets including the following hashtags between April 20th and June 30th demonstrate only a sample of all oil spill related conversations, but offer a glimpse of the role hashtags play in this unique forum.

Total Hashtag References: April 20 – June 30, 2010
#oilspill = 438,926
#gulf = 35,225
#obama = 92,430
#bp = 225,365

Gallup: President Obama Job Approval

Reviewing President Obama’s Job Approval at Gallup, we can visualize a steady decline in approval and rise in disapproval with 47% and 46% respectively.

For Obama advisors as well as those on his communications team, a month-by-month comparison of the erosion of BP and White House sentiment screams for decisive action.

#ThankYou

Thank you to everyone contributing donations and volunteering time to the Gulf Coast clean up effort.

By Brian Solis: www.briansolis.com

Image Credit: ShutterStock

Here’s a way to get more strategic.

Instead of arguing for a course of action based on the status quo or your emotional gut, describe the theory of the case.

A is true.

B is true.

If we do C, then A and B should permit us to get D.

The method of this strategic analysis is that you expose your assumptions, you describe your actions and your posit the results. This permits your teammates to supply facts that might change your analysis.

Wait, A isn’t true.

Wait, we’re not capable of doing C.

Wait, if we did C, it’s not clear we would get D. Tell us how that would work…

This is far more useful than saying, “I hate you, you’re an idiot.” By making your assumptions and logic clear, you allow a more productive conversation to take place at the same time get buy in from your teammates who might be coming from a different worldview than you do.

Even better, you can then weave the case into a story, a vivid one that resonates.

If any of your steps involve doing something that’s never been done before, you’ll know where you need to focus your energy.

Too often, people fixate on a result they want and presume that if they just try really hard (with good intent) then maybe it’ll happen.

PS if one of the steps is, “and then a miracle happens,” you probably need to work on your case a bit.

Twitter is a stream of incredible collective consciousness.

Every day, people all over the world share their experiences through a truly personal lens, providing insight into the real-world experiences and observations that inspire conversations, define communities, and move markets – all in real time. Perhaps one of the most profound and largely untapped treasures in all of Social Media, Twitter indeed represents one of the world’s richest conversation mines. The openness of Twitter holds the information necessary to learn, adapt, earn relevance and ultimately establish significance in our respective markets.

We have to listen in order to mature…

Brands are consistently among the most discussed subjects on Twitter and as such, studying the activity transpiring on Twitter gives us insight into size, scope, and scale. Once again, I partnered with PeopleBrowsr, the data mining, analytics, and brand engagement company, to mine and analyze the conversations defining the most discussed brands on Twitter.

Our goal was to gain a comprehensive view of the conversational landscape for a period of one month, April 2010. And, in order to do so, we pulled running data from PeopleBrowsr’s new Analytic.ly service and also reviewed several lists to verify our top 20 brands for further analysis.

Upon review, we then ranked their stature based on individual share of voice as well as examining consumer sentiment through a form of manual curation to capture a true reflection of sentiment.

The Top Brands on Twitter: April 2010

We examined 20 of the most actively discussed brands on Twitter for the month of April, which equated to an astounding 24.3 million references. As you can see, only a handful of those companies dominated the overall conversation.

At the top, and to be expected, Twitter commanded a 36% share of voice with 8.76 million mentions. Twitter of course, rolled out several new and much discussed services at its first annual Chirp conference, which only fueled activity.

Following with 21% or 5.2 million appearances, YouTube was the second most discussed, or more accurately stated, shared brands on Twitter. Driven less by news and more by sharing the content within the network, YouTube nonetheless, enjoys a great volume of traffic as a result.

Facebook followed in third position with 9% (2.25 million mentions), driven by the buzz associated with its new “Like” feature, privacy concerns, as well as all discussions leading up to, through, and following the f8 Facebook developer conference.

With 1.5 million discussions, Apple earned a 6% slice of the conversation pie driven by the iPad and amplified by the news of what appeared to be the next generation iPhone 4.

In fifth position, Google captured 5% of all dialog related to brands at just about 1.32 million. Propelled by discussions around Android, new search functionality, new products, and of course, existing services such as Chrome, Google Docs, Adwords, etc.

Share of Voice

Twitter = 36%

YouTube = 21%

Facebook = 9%

Apple = 6%

Google = 5%

MySpace = 2%

Amazon = 2%

HP = 2%

Yahoo = 2%

Blackberry = 2%

Disney = 1%

Starbucks = 1%

MTV = 1%

eBay = 1%

BBC = 1%

Nokia = 1%

Sony = 1%

CNN = 1%

Nike = 1%

Microsoft = 1%

Brand Sentiment: April 2010

Sentiment reflects the state of mind or emotion of an individual as captured by their tone and cemented through their words. As long observed in any review-based network, experience-drive commentary is extremely emotional. In fact, in Amazon alone, most reviews skew either between 5 stars (the top) or 1, simply because of the strong emotional tie either way.

However, attitude, view, and intention are among the most difficult  to truly measure, no matter how sophisticated the software algorithm used to examine the dynamics of conversations.  When we review sentiment for these reports, we manually curate mentions to ensure that feeling is represented as planned. Click image to view detail…

According to our analysis, most of the discussed brands in our Top 20 report, were in fact, revered.

Ranking at the top with 98%, Twitter seemed to shed its epic #failwhale to earn a state of unrivaled prestige.  Drafting Twitter’s top position is Facebook, earning a 97% positive sentiment. And while it also earned a 97% positive sentiment ranking, Youtube followed closely for the third most positively discussed brand for April 2010 with MTV trailing closely for the fourth most coveted brand on the list. With 96%, BlackBerry performed well enough conversationally to garner the fifth spot.

In order for winners to exist, we must also balance the equation with, well, those on the other end of the spectrum. In the case, the separation between positive and negative among the top 20 is extreme. As mentioned, Twitter earned a 98% positive sentiment analysis, but on the contrary, Microsoft earned 18% negative share with Apple and MySpace following closely with 17%. In Apple’s case, it was clear that the Twitter community didn’t support its strong arm tactics behind the iPhone 4 investigation.

I’ve always believed that neutral conversations symbolized some of the greatest opportunities for steering indifferent or blasé updates towards positive territory. In April, HP ranked atop the conversations that sat in the middle with 80%. Myspace followed with 73%. Interestingly, Google drafted Myspace for a third place finish. And, with 59%, Apple chalked up a solid position of indifference good enough for the fourth spot.

April 2010 Sentiment Breakdown

Positive: 98%
Neutral: 2%
Negative: 0%

Positive: 97%
Neutral: 3%
Negative: 0%

Positive: 97%
Neutral: 3%
Negative: 0%

Positive: 97%
Neutral: 3%
Negative: 0%

Positive: 96%
Neutral: 3%
Negative: 1%

Positive: 94%
Neutral: 6%
Negative: 0%

Positive: 94%
Neutral: 5%
Negative: 1%

Positive: 86%
Neutral: 12%
Negative: 2%

Positive: 85%
Neutral: 12%
Negative: 3%

Positive: 85%
Neutral: 13%
Negative: 3%

Positive: 81%
Neutral: 17%
Negative: 2%

Positive: 76%
Neutral: 22%
Negative: 3%

Positive: 72%
Neutral: 18%
Negative: 9%

Positive: 70%
Neutral: 29%
Negative: 10%

Positive: 51%
Neutral: 43%
Negative: 6%

Positive: 35%
Neutral: 47%
Negative: 18%

Positive: 24%
Neutral: 59%
Negative: 17%

Positive: 22%
Neutral: 72%
Negative: 6%

Positive: 11%
Neutral: 80%
Negative: 10%

Positive: 10%
Neutral: 73%
Negative: 17%

“Top Brands” as reflected in this report s not necessarily indicative of how well brands are engaging and performing online today. Tracking share of voice, volume and sentiment is only the beginning. Measuring share of voice within relevant conversations sets the stage for something much more meaningful and profound. In addition to monitoring the activity of communities as well as identifying and connecting with influential voices within each network, will also factor into performance, affinity, and overall stature.

For example, with Analytic.ly, businesses can analyze other brands that are often referenced by their dedicated Twitter audience. And, if you’re seeking influential spokespersons, PeopleBrowsr can also reveal the influential and also celebrity voices who are already reaching those discussing your brand or competitors today.

Previous Reports:

SuperBowl Ads Sentiment 2010
The 2009 State of the Airline Industry on Twitter
The Twitter Hollywood Report 2009
SXSW Sentiment 2009 vs. 2010

By Brain Solis: www.briansolis.com

Image Credit: Shutterstock (edited)

In Part 1 of this post, we did a quick recap of how Greenpeace and hundreds of outraged environmentally-conscious web denizens turned to Nestle’s Facebook wall to air grievances on Friday March 19, and essentially turned the company’s Facebook embassy into a battleground. If you missed it, check out the post (and the comments) here.

Today, we’re going to look at ways that this Social Media management disaster (and PR black eye) could have been handled by Nestle, had their Social Media team (internal or outsourced) been prepared for that kind of crisis. We already covered some of the major points of how to avoid this yesterday (hiring professionals to manage your Social Media outlets, planning for crises, training in crisis management and real-time PR, etc.), so – for the purposes of today’s post – let’s assume that Part 1’s advice was taken to heart and that trained, experienced professionals are now in charge of all of the company’s Social Media properties, including Facebook.

Some comments from nestle’s wall

What to do if your Facebook Page comes under attack by an activist organization and/or scores of angry commenters:

1. Be there. You can’t gain control of the situation if you aren’t there, monitoring and ready to take action. So monitor keywords. Monitor channels. Expect attacks and crises to come, and be ready to act. In case your boss forgot to tell you, if you are charged with managing a company’s Facebook presence, you’re N.O.R.A.D. for them on Facebook. Keep your eyes on that radar screen at all times, and have a well-thought-out yet flexible plan of action if you spot missiles heading your way.

Recap: Nestle’s team was painfully absent when its wall was attacked on march 19th, and the result was a bloody trouncing of the brand that lasted not only hours but days. Whomever was being paid to manage that page essentially sat on their hands while it was taken over by hundreds of facebook users with – in many cases – legitimate concerns that needed to be addressed. Not exactly a stellar display of skill, professional savvy, or… presence, for that matter. Someone should have been there to at least try to manage the complaints.

2. Carefully but quickly gain control of the situation. (See 3 to 6.) Why is this here? Because it is important to realize that “response” isn’t enough. in order to be effective, you have to be more than simply reactive. You have to regain control of the situation. You have to regain the initiative. If you don’t, you will find yourself in a defensive position for days, and nothing will get resolved.

3. Introduce yourself. Put a face, name and role to your official presence. Don’t just reply from behind a faceless corporate identity and avatar. Be a human being. Talk like a human being. Feel like a human being. Engage on a personal level with commenters. Look at what Scott Monty does for Ford, for example, and how he does it.

Recap: Nestle’s “presence” on facebook on March 19th was remarkably corporate. This didn’t help establish the kind of rapport needed to begin a real discussion. Even if Nestle’s engagement had been stronger, its faceless approach put them at a disadvantage from the start. Humanizing its presence would have been a great first step.

4. Make a point to welcome the comments. Invite them. Keep it up. See number 3, above. This is important. Popping up with a comment every three hours won’t cut it. Get in there, ask your boss to go on a Starbucks run, and brace yourself for a long day/night. Like it or not, this is where you earn your pay, so strap in and enjoy the ride. Think Marathon, not 5K.

Once you get into the game, be cordial, be kind, be professional, and assume your role as the custodian of facts. Not propaganda: facts. If someone claims something about your company or products that is inaccurate, politely respond to their comment with a link to factual information that will help them reconsider their position. That infant formula comment in the screenshot of Nestle’s wall (the one about no nutrients) should be addressed. Without getting defensive or getting drawn into an argument, the facts need to be stated.

Recap: Nestle’s first attempt at “engagement” seems to have focused on the improper use of its corporate logo in commenters’ avatars. Not exactly an inspired way to get things rolling in the right direction. After a few unfortunate exchanges, Nestle backed off and went relatively silent, allowing a free-for-all of anger and in some case, inaccurate information that is now searchable on the web. This was not the most effective strategy.

5. If you haven’t done it already, create an area for Discussions on the Facebook page. This will give discussion topics their own tab on the page, and a place for people to go to start and participate in discussions that isn’t necessarily the wall.

Recap: Nestle did not have a Discussions section on its Facebook page on March 19th… and still doesn’t. And still doesn’t. And still doesn’t. (Nestle: You still don’t have a discussions tab on your facebook page. FYI.)

Why is having a Discussions area important? Several reasons:

First, it helps move a lot of the traffic and activity off the wall, which isn’t a bad thing - for obvious reasons. (Not all of it, but a good amount of it.)

Second, it helps keep all of the conversations focused. Instead of a mess of anger and random grievances, you can create a discussion thread for each specific grievance. In the case of Nestle, these individual discussion topics could be: Saving Oranguntans. Preserving Borneo’s rain forests. The health impact of using palm oil in candy bars. Baby Formula. Etc. When the mess of noise can be turned into specific discussion threads, the company can better listen and better respond. Now you’ve created order out of chaos for both the company AND the angry commenters. It works for everyone.

This is one of the first tangible ways that you will regain control of the situation: Manage the influx of comments. Organize it. Redirect it. Refocus it. Give the discussions purpose and focus.

Notes on tone, self control, and gaining control of an unstable crowd:

A) DO NOT GET DEFENSIVE. Ever. Don’t get drawn into an argument, don’t argue. Listen. Acknowledge. Treat every commenter with respect. Be professional. A lot of angry commenters just want a fight. Don’t give them one. Offer them your ear, a platform, and hopefully a solution.

B) Don’t be a push-over either. Don’t let the angry numbers fool you: You’re the community manager. You can and must  assert your authority when people get out of line. Do it calmly, do it politely, but let commenters know when they are out of line. Don’t worry too much about the improper use of logos or “rules,” the way Nestle did early in their ordeal. It’s a weak position to try and defend, it serves no purpose, and it may only add fuel to the fire with a mob looking for weakness. (So pick your battles carefully.) That said, threats against company employees, deliberate personal insults, etc. should be met with a courteous but firm response. Example:

C – “Your executives should be hanged for what they’ve done! Baby killers! And you’re a soul-less sellout!”

R – “I understand your anger. I really do. (I wouldn’t be here talking to you if I didn’t care, and if my bosses didn’t care. We WANT to have this dialog with you.) But please let’s keep things from turning into… that. It’s just not constructive. Let’s talk about what we can do to fix these problems: What’s the first thing we should focus on?”

What you have to understand is that an angry mob looks for two things: Strength, and weakness. Show strength and they will respect you. Show weakness and they WILL tear you apart. Any loss of control (fear, anger, not knowing how to manage a Facebook crisis, etc.) is weakness. A calm, collected, confident, patient, open to dialog, knowledgeable attitude is strength.

6. Recruit your detractors’ help in fixing the issues they are angry about. Don’t just give your angry commenters lip service. “Thanks for your comments. We will review your suggestions and share them with management” doesn’t cut it anymore. Instead, ask your audience for advice and suggestions. Right there and then. Don’t wait. They want to express themselves? Great! Redirect their energy: Shift them from anger to deliberate empowerment. They’re angry at your company? There are specific things they want you to stop doing? Perfect. Take the discussion a step further and ask them to give you better alternatives to what you’re doing now. No, really. Do it. Keep probing. Keep asking. Make them think about practical solutions together.

If Step 5 gave the conversation order, Step 6 gives the conversations purpose. Do this, and you’re already half way there.

Why is this important? Several reasons:

First, it refocuses the angry mob’s energy. The passion that drives their anger and outrage is still, at its core, passion. Use that. Remove anger from the equation and channel that passion to a more constructive end. Lead them from the path of anger to a path of passionate, constructive discussion. In a matter of hours, the traffic to your facebook page will no longer be an endless churn of insults and angry attacks, and that’s a pretty important objective to accomplish.

Second, refocusing the mob’s mood and energy further shifts control of the conversation to you, the community manager – and by default to the company/brand as well. How? One word: Initiative. The moment your questions begin to drive the discussion, you’ve gained the initiative. You’re finally in the driver’s seat. You can safely land that previously unmanned 747 anywhere you want. Lose the initiative and you lose control. You don’t want things to go back to a mob of angry comments and insults, do you?

Third, you aren’t arguing anymore. You aren’t fighting or protecting or defending. You’ve potentially turned your enemies into allies. Even if that good will is tentative, it sets the stage for what could come next, and there is tremendous value in that. Very good things can come of it if you follow that path. Plant that seed, prove that with trust and good will, good things can happen, and build on that proof of concept.

Fourth, in the case of Nestle, an army of environmental conservation experts is right there, screaming to be heard. Why not benefit from their combined expertise and their willingness to share? Maybe the mob of activists can provide you with ideas that will help you adopt cost-neutral, sustainable methods and processes that will solve some of your resource management challenges, make your company more environmentally-friendly and improve your position in regards to consumer sentiment. There could be a huge practical win in this kind of dialog.

Fifth, the way your Social Media team turned an explosive and completely chaotic situation around in a matter of hours will not go unnoticed. Instead of being another case study in failure, you could be one of the still rare case studies in “this is how it’s done” success.

7. Follow-through. What starts on facebook or twitter or wherever doesn’t stop when you get to the other side of the activity bell curve. Once the crisis is averted, you have to take advantage of that little bit of trust and collaboration you’ve helped your detractors (and your bosses) glimpse.

Step 1: Once the crisis is over, thank the commenters for their help and invite them to continue what they started. Continue to be a good host. Build the community as a community, not as a fortified brand embassy.

Step 2: Convince management to let you turn the feedback from your new virtual think tank into something a little more formal. Form a team to look into how to take those ideas and make them happen. That kind of review process will identify what ideas have merit, and what ideas don’t. It’s a valuable exercise in that alone.

Step 3: Consider creating a crowd-sourcing mechanism like BestBuy’s Idea-X and Starbucks’  My Starbucks Idea. In the case of Nestle, a specific category, tab, or even separate microsite focusing on sustainable and responsible environmental practices might not be a bad idea. Don’t just rely on Facebook discussions to take care of it. Give solid feedback the home it deserves.

Step 4: Invite your detractors’ chosen experts and think tanks to the table. Recruit their help to propose solutions. This is a more professional and official extension of the crowd-sourcing element of the follow-up, and one that obviously needs to happen at a much higher level than Social Media management. (So yes, this requires real buy-in from the C-suite.)

The idea here isn’t just to pacify your opponents and get good press out of the effort. It’s to leverage their expertise and resources to actually find solutions to the business challenges that were at the root of the attacks to begin with. In the case of Nestle, this would mean inviting Greenpeace and key environmental action think tanks to work with senior Nestle supply chain execs on finding realistic alternatives to current methods of production.

Is there a PR component to this? Of course. You can turn anything into a media circus if you want. (That’s what conferences, summits and ground-breaking ceremonies are for.) But sometimes, less is more: Focus on finding solutions, focus on genuinely doing the work, and let the PR department do its thing. If you do that, it’ll all pretty much work out.

Step 5: Build on the momentum and trust you’ve earned, and keep going.

Is all of this difficult? Does it require A LOT of hard work and tireless effort? Yes. It does. I’m not going to tell you any of it is easy. It’s incredibly difficult to do all of this, and the bigger the organization, the more corporate, the more vertical the hierarchy, the tougher it will be for everyone. There’s no magic pill, no cool new app, no bit of enterprise software that will transform your organization overnight for you. Success requires hard work. It requires dedication. It requires vision, leadership, courage and A LOT OF WORK. But it also isn’t brain surgery. From crisis management to community management to change management, it’s all pretty simple, really. You can map it all out on a cocktail napkin. The trick lies in a) deciding to make it happen, and b) making it happen.

The alternative is… well, going through what Nestle just went through. And going through it again and again and again, until something finally gives. Not exactly a golden plan.

So remember:

Be there -> Monitor -> Introduce yourself -> Acknowledge -> Engage -> Take charge -> Redirect -> Manage -> Follow through.

Cheers,

Olivier

Update (25 March, 2010 – 21:15GMT) : For a similar perspective expressed in white-board “war room” format, check out Jeremiah Owyang’s Social Warfare Analysis here. (image) Really nice exercise that, remarkably, touches on many of the points we discussed in parts 1 and 2 of this feature. Consider it a solid “second opinion.”