Recap of Social Fresh Portland: Social Media for Small Business - A Fresh Conversation

The third session of the day for me was "Social Media for Small Business - A Fresh Conversation" moderated by Ryan Lewis of Bonfire Social Media.  He took an informal poll of the room, which was made up of mostly small businesses, with some agencies.  Since the format of the session was a roundtable, we went right into questions from the room.  An audience member asked, for a small business strapped for time, how do you find a balance between hiring an outside consultant to handle social media versus doing it in-house.  Another audience member responded with a success story of how doing social media in-house has really worked for them, with their preferred medium being Twitter.  There has been a lot of debate recently about this very issue, and I also fall on the side of doing social media in-house - when people engage with someone on Twitter, Facebook or other social media channels, even when they are engaging with a brand, they want to be talking to someone who represents the voice of that company, and knows the company well.  There's an implied sense of trust that comes along with following or becoming a "fan" of something, and if those clients/customers find out that they're dealing with a consultant and not someone from the company, that trust can be broken with serious consequences.  I talked about this issue in a little more depth with respect to ghostblogging.

Another audience member asked about who is using Facebook applications, adding that there's huge success there for those who are.  Someone commented that Facebook adds a layer of demographic targeting that can be extremely useful, though it's sometimes necessary to test different advertisements to find success.  Another audience member wanted to know if there was an average price point for the products that are selling, using tools like Facebook. He's found that social media tools are better for branding, because he sells an expensive product.  He wanted to know if a company would be throwing money away if their product is expensive and so they're only using social media for branding.  The room seemed to agree that the answer was no - even if the sales process is not happening through these tools, developing a reputation for a certain expertise is useful in leading to an offline sales process.  (*Applicable to law firms)

The group then talked a bit about whether Facebook or Twitter was a more useful tool for companies.  Someone commented that Twitter is a great tool for communications, but for indexing and critical mass, Facebook will become a much bigger player.  It was suggested that companies incentivize their fans to join their Facebook pages, which we'd heard in the previous panel.  Incentivizing them to become a "fan" of your company and product is one step, but leveraging this group to build a database is what's really important.  HubSpot was mentioned again as a company who does this very well.  To get "fans" to sign up their email addresses and information with a company, an audience member suggested reserving some content for release when they give you this data.  Another audience member cautioned that some small businesses think you go right from getting someone to become a "fan" to getting a sale, and said that it's important to remember to build the relationships further first.  (*Great lesson for law firms)

Another audience member commented that his company wants their employees to develop personal blogs that will be used to express the corporate voice.  He was concerned about blurring the line between a personal and professional voice.  I voiced my thoughts that I think the line is already pretty blurred and that there's utility in giving your brand a personality.  As we hear so often, people want to buy from other people, not companies.

The group then moved on to discussing LinkedIn and everyone agreed that you can do a lot more with groups on LinkedIn than through individual profiles, including emailing members of a group directly.  An audience member suggested that companies start with their email list of clients and then find out where their critical mass is - is it on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, maybe even mySpace?  Another audience member also mentioned meetup.com as a great social networking site, though they pointed out there is a cost to form groups on there.

Lewis commented that traditional media isn't bad, it's just overpriced, which led to an audience member to wonder if companies think that because social media is "free" that it can't be good.  Someone else countered that social media isn't free, because it involves an investment of time and creativity.  The group also agreed that social media is not a replacement for other tools, but is just another set of tools. Marketing is an "evolution," not a "revolution" so companies should take pieces of what they're already doing and amplify these with these new social media tools.

An audience member asked how to deal with people in a company who are afraid of social media and have objections to using it.  I suggested using case studies and another audience member recommended showing the results of Google searches after 60-90 days.  Somebody else commented that they thought the real issue is that people want to keep their jobs, so they don't want to be pioneers.  I feel that the opposite is true - in this current economy, showing yourself to be a leader by understanding and adopting these tools and leveraging them for the good of your company can make you indispensable.

The final thought from the roundtable was that there needs to be a cultural change in companies for social media to work - they shouldn't just hire a college intern to handle their social media.

Social Fresh - What Did I Learn About Social Media?

Today, I attended one of the Social Fresh conferences, which took place here in Portland, Oregon - for those of you wondering what Social Fresh is, it's a conference about social media, focused around case studies, and it takes place in some "underserved cities," as the conference website describes them.  Although it's not a conference focused around the legal field, I felt that broadening my social media education to find out what other companies are doing and what works for them would be useful in my own professional social media efforts, as well as for the law firms we work with.  

Like LMA 2010, I'll be posting re-caps of the valuable sessions that I attended today over the next few days, but I wanted to get a quick post up about my thoughts and the key takeaways from today's conference.  

The theme that I took away from today's panels and presentations was two-fold - 1) know your social media objectives and 2) know your audience.  In terms of the former - it's not just enough to jump into social media, to create a Twitter profile or a Facebook fan page (in terms of your company or firm's brand - I still think there's utility in experimenting for yourself to learn about the tools).  You have to ask yourself why you're on there, what you want to get out of it, and what you're prepared to do with it - have a strategy.  There were a lot of comments that although marketers may be handling a company or firm's social media efforts, customer service is still a large part of the job.  So even if you enter into social media for the purpose of getting content out there, you must be prepared to answer questions and deal with customer service-type issues.  This is true even in the legal industry - for law firms getting involved in social media, you have to be prepared to deal with questions coming up that border on a client-attorney privileged relationship, possible issues with complaints against the firm, etc.  The overwhelming answer on how to deal with these issues today was "have a plan."  Before entering into social media, decide who will be behind the efforts, what happens if a person or group starts flaming your Facebook page, what steps are taken if a crisis arises - think about the possible issues that may arise before they happen.  Everyone agrees that social media is just another channel for the same types of marketing that companies and firms have always been doing, so some of this will just be an extension of an existing crisis communications plan your firms have, but it's essential to discuss strategy and possible roadblocks before releasing a corporate social media strategy.

In terms of audience, this was another topic that was mentioned again and again today.  Speakers emphasized finding out about your audience to determine what social media channels make the most sense for your firm to participate in.  The way to find this out is by asking them.  One speaker used the example of an animal rescue organization that he had donated to - following his donation, they sent him a lovely coffee table book.  Unfortunately, he had no use for this, since he doesn't own a coffee table.  He commented to them that it would be useful for them to follow up with their donors and ask how they would prefer to receive future communications.  They initially said that they already knew their audience, and because of their age and make-up, they knew that they preferred to receive things like the coffee table book.  But they took his advice and started to follow up with donors - an overwhelming number said they preferred email communications, and the organization ended up saving $500,000 in printing costs.  The message was clear - no matter how well you think you know your audience, talk to them anyway and find out what works best for them.  If they're overwhelmingly on Facebook, create a fanpage.  If they prefer LinkedIn, develop a group.  Connect to them.  If they're on multiple channels, connect with them on all of them.   

Some firms might be concerned about getting "out there" on social media because they don't want to deal with the conversation that's happening about their firm or their competitors - but the point was made today that the audience is talking about them whether they're involved in the conversation or not.  So finding out where your audience is and getting involved in the conversation by listening and engaging (make sure you have the right people in these roles) is key.  

There may be those out there who see social media tools as only a flash in the pan and everyone's interest in them akin to "shiny new toy syndrome."  But social media is not going away, and will only become more and more ingrained in our everyday lives.  It can work for law firms as easily as it does for other companies, with the right planning and execution that takes the legal field's special characteristics into account.  Social media is the fourth most popular online form of communication - AHEAD of email.  There was a time when many people believed that email wouldn't catch on, and now we can't imagine our lives without it - social media is the same.  It's evolving, but it's where conversations are happening and great opportunities still exist.

Ghostblogging - The Death of Social Media?

One of the important messages in terms of social media that came out of this year's LMA Annual Conference is that "you cannot be a proxy for someone else's relationship - the lawyers have to do it themselves."  But in the busy world of attorneys, where time is quite literally money, what about ghostblogging? 

For the uninitiated, ghostblogging is much like ghostwriting, where someone else is paid to blog posing as you or your company.  Aside from the usual concerns about liability, which I would say are magnified when discussing the idea of having someone else pose as an attorney, it seems to go against the very idea behind social media, which is to use these new technologies to form personal relationships with people, sometimes for business and sometimes not.

Reading "The Death of Social Media" this morning, I had to agree with Mitch Joel when he asked "Can we stop the madness?"  He says:

"I'm being naive (I know), people will say, 'someone writes the speech for the President' or 'if people like it and connect to the content, who cares who writes it?' I dunno, I do. People have lost faith in marketing (just like they have lost faith in those who serve the public office and celebrities). We allow things that shouldn't be... to be. Saying that ghostwriters have been around for years doesn't make it right or authentic. Times have changed, and these platforms are (or should be) celebrated for the human and real side. Can you imagine that some Blogs, Twitter and Facebook feeds that you follow are not the real person, but the musings of someone else who simply interviewed the person you thought that you were following? Sure, there's a place for ghostwriters, but maybe Social Media isn't one of them? If we keep heading down this road, doesn't Social Media become nothing more than a boring, traditional mass media channel?"

I'm curious to hear what those in the legal community think about ghost blogging, and how lawyers can manage the balance between their valuable time and pursusing social media (Disclaimer: I'm a strong believer that lawyers spending time creating relationships through social media and then taking these offline is a valuable use of their time.)