I have been attending the Outdoor Retailer and Snowsports Shows for a long time. OR or ORWM (Outdoor Retailer Winter Market) is held in Salt Lake City. The Snowsports Industries of America Show is held in Denver…moved recently from Vegas in a moved that has been brilliant.

I have not seen more upbeat shows in a decade; no, over a decade. OR was first. I attended the Thought Leaders Dinner the evening before the show, and the mood from the industry leaders was positive to the point of being giddy. Numbers, customers and momentum all swinging to the right and up. The first day of the Show was the same. Very positive. Much conversation.

Then a funny thing happened. The Show got quieter, and I don’t think this was a bad thing. I believe people were doing business. Retailers busy with their “open to buys” and brands busy showing the product lines. Mind you, still loud and positive…but a little more business like and subdued.

The SIA Show was not the same. It was loud, positive, and not subdued…until the end. During the Show it was announced that the snow industry sold over a billion dollars in December, a record. I overheard the President of Rossignol, Tim Petric, asking a retailer how business was. The retailer replied that it was just excellent. Just excellent. And that vibe kept up throughout the show.

My congratulations to the OR team led by Kenji Haroutunian. Great show and well worth it for the brands, retailers and the other attendees.

And to David Ingemie and his team at SIA. The move to a ski town, Denver, combined with a well run show, the great winter and good business cycle made for an industry rapidly gaining its health.

There have been a few lean years. However, those who kept their heads down, stuck to the business basics, and forged ahead with a smile are now reaping the rewards.

It couldn’t happen to better industries or the people in them.

Jonathan Salem Baskin writes a blog called Dim Bulb. I like him because he is a contrarian in a social media world of  people who are always “so excited to see you!!!”

He provides balance.

Here he writes about Best Buy and how it has deployed employees to tweet. Baskin reminds us that content is not necessarily information. Nor does it lead to more knowledge. Sometimes, content is just a person with a megaphone attached to his/her stream of consciousness…and brands may be sorry they resorted to branding “by thousands of voices” with no central message.

Have a read.

DimBulb

Well, it is time to climb back into the saddle and start the new year of blogging. Actually looking forward to writing and hearing back. In 2010 many comments were insightful. I learned a lot.

So, what does Listening to the Crickets mean, anyway?  Well, it goes back to conversations I am having with business leaders who seem to believe that monitoring online marketing channels can be done without participating in the conversation.

Business Leader: “Why don’t we just listen for awhile and get the hang of this?”

Me: “Because, based on what Channel Signal is picking up, there is no content to react to. So, we are listening to the crickets, and nothing else.

Business Leader: “What does that mean?”

Me: Remember, a long time ago, when you were sitting on the front porch with your girlfriend, and she asked you a question that you couldn’t or wouldn’t answer. She waited, and you just stared at her. And there was this awkward silence. Well, there is that same silence now from your company, online.

Business Leader: Well, they tell me that our products are doing well and consumers are writing reviews.”

Me:” Yep, that’s true. We can monitor for Customer Reviews and that’s a start, but you and your team should engage in several different channels; blogs, social media (twitter, youtube, facebook), and online traditional media. If you want to have an impact online, you must engage.

Content is the center of  a Push strategy, to push content into the online channels so that consumers will read and engage your brand in those channels.  Then, a company can start to monitor, engage, and measure. Can start to Pull real data. And measure.

Listening is important.  But you must be interesting first, so that people want to talk with you.”

Useful content. Responses that answer consumer questions. Good replies to good comments.

Be human. Listen. Comment. Answer.

And your company will hear more than just crickets.

To all of you who are readers, I thank you.

And wish you a wonderful holiday season filled with family, friends and good cheer.

And peace. Most of all I wish you peace.

The kind of peace that creates patience, understanding, and good will.

Peace that gives you time for the little ones, and the old ones.

The kind of peace that makes you give and receive with humility.

And peace to the environment and all things wild.

The mountains is a place where I seek peace, and often find it.

And I pray that you have a similar place.

Peace on Earth.

Goodwill.

“If you can’t measure, you can’t manage.” -Peter Drucker

And that says it all. If a company is throwing content out into the sea of social media with no means of measuring, then the company is throwing money away.

Reminds me of when companies first launched their own websites and the marketing directors would be excited because they got 10,000 hits the first day…thinking hits were visits.

Context.

What does this mean? And that will be the question that all social media managers will need to answer when reporting to senior management.

What does all of this mean?

Internal (Done by the Company) Measuring and Reporting

A company will want several people on this because the task is a big one. First, all of the information needs to be taken to a new organizational level. A month of posts will need to be filtered again, organized, and placed into a quantitative report that makes sense to senior management and its respective departments. Words. Graphics. Simple but accurate. And then there needs to be Qualitative Information…information that provides context to all of the data.

This event was successful because…This marketing initiative is not successful because… And, here are the metrics we used to measure it.

And senior management probably won’t like or understand the first few reports so major overhauling will be necessary.

CEO’s will ask questions like, “What does brand mentions mean? “We had 1,000 tweets on our running event. Is that good? And how does that 1,000 tweets compare to the $25,000 we spent to sponsor it? How do we measure this?”

You won’t need answers for the first round of questions like this. You will need more answers for the second meeting on social media.

In short, buzz is one thing. Measuring and interpreting that buzz is another thing.

Plan on over 3 full days a month for the first year for one person. (30 hours a month.)  A manager should plan on a full day a month for overseeing, helping to interpret, editing the report and presenting to management.

External (Subcontracting Out the Social Media Measuring and Reporting)

Almost all monitoring and measuring companies offer functionality that allows you, the company, to pull down reports. But it is all automated, which means that the data stream and filtering of that data will be there, but the organization, interpretation and presentation aspects are not there.  A company must allocate other human resources. About 2 days a month to gather and organize the information and then provide interpretation and analysis.

Few monitoring and measuring companies offer the actual assembly of these reports and interpretation by an analyst assigned to the company by the outside vender.  If the monitoring platform assigns an analyst, then it will take simply a few hours a month to review the information with the analyst and submit the report. 2-3 hours a month.

Adding everything up:

1. Internal Collection, Filtering, and Sentiment Assignment= 3 hrs./day/one person

2. Managing the External (Sub-Contracted) Collection and Filtering of Social Media (many monitoring companies do not include sentiment filtering) = 1 hr./day

3. Internal Sorting and Distribution= 3 hrs. a day/ one person + variable costs due to confusion, inefficiency and lack of support for Gatekeeper

4. External Sorting and Distribution= 1 hr. a day/ one person

5. Internal Measuring= 30 hours/month for one person to gather, organize, interpret and present data. (about 1 hour a day)  It will take another person 8 hrs./month  to prepare, add further interpretation, and write the report. Count on these hours for at least a year.

6. External Measuring= 16 hrs./month  for one person to  gather, organize and review/prepare the report for senior management. If the sub-contractor supplies an analyst and the reporting, then the workload is cut to just a couple of hours a month.

Grand Totals:

Internal Cost of Do-It-Yourself Social Media Collection, Filtering, Sentiment Assignment, Sorting, Distributing, Measuring, and Reporting =  170 hours a month + variable costs associated with confusion and inefficiencies of building the program,  lack of support for the gatekeeper, and senior management’s discontent with the reporting.

External Cost (Subcontracting) of the Social Media Collection, Filtering, Sentiment Assignment (often not included in the service)  and Automated Reporting of Data = 80 hours a month.

None of the above includes creating new media programs, writing content, and engaging. That is many more hours and people.

So, it is a matter of cost verse price. The price might be $2,000-$3,000 a month to subcontract out for a social media monitoring and measurement program. However, what is the cost to do it internally?  In real time and real salaries?

This series of articles should get companies thinking about…the real cost.

In our last article we addressed social media monitoring from the standpoint of Collecting and Filtering. “Internal” being defined from the Do It Yourself mode where companies choose to do everything internally. And “External” where companies sub-contract out the Collecting and Filtering. We examined it from the true cost of both approaches.

We now continue with the Sorting and Distributing of Social Media Within a Company

Internal: Sorting and Distributing the Important Social Media Information.

The Gatekeeper and the management team will need to decide what channels or bins all of this information will go into. Will it be segmented by social media, traditional media, customer reviews, and blogs? Will it be segmented by department? Will be be segmented by Influencers, non-Influencers, Consumers? Etc. This will take a lot of human resources, engaged in long meetings to match the segmentation with the corporate culture. Once decided, a platform will need to be built to handle the channels and place the posts in them.

The actual sorting will take one person about 2 hours a day. This assumes a social media load of about 1000 posts a day, some free 0ff-the-shelf filtering, and the resulting number of important posts to place into the channels to be about 10% of the total. So, perhaps 100 posts to sort). The variable costs could be big if there is confusion and a lot of management direction needed.

Distributing. Yes, you can use email, but senior managers get hundred of emails a day and many of these “urgent messages” from the Gatekeeper will be missed or ignored.  A company will need to set up an effective alert system that draws attention to important social media posts coming through via email or any other distribution system. The back and forth here is a variable time drain. Again, the process could be efficient if the Gatekeeper gets strong backing from senior management. Otherwise, a gatekeeper could spend hours a day just trying to get the attention of managers and subsequent action on posts.

Internal: At least, 1 hour a day of the Gatekeeper’s time to follow-up with managers to insure action has been taken, assuming cooperation from the managers.

Total: 3 hours a day for one person + variable costs due to confusion, inefficiency and lack of support.

External: Sorting and Distributing the Important Social Media Information.

A good social media platform can make these tasks much easier. Some platforms automatically separate posts into Channels to allow for easier management. And some platforms have functionality in place that allows for quick distribution and encourages dialogue between employees and managers so decisions can be made. A good platform makes sorting and distribution of posts much easier because a Gatekeeper can quickly find posts, assign them to a manager, the manager can quickly read a Gatekeeper’s comment,  and issue instructions back using the same format. Another good thing about distributing posts in one platform is that is can all be tracked, so the company has a running record of what was said and who said it.

External: Estimated at 1 hour for one employee a day…with a good platform that offers some degree of automatic sorting and a good distribution system. The higher the price the more likely it will include the two functions. Pricing is all over the place for platforms, but my knowledge and research indicate that a good platform for collecting, filtering, sorting and some distribution capabilities will be in the area of $500-$1000 a month.

So, to sort and distribute will take an employee an hour a day, in general…and a good social media platform will be needed.

Next Up: Reporting and Measurement

Recently, a CEO was in a senior management meeting and said, ” Why don’t we just monitor, distribute and measure all the social media ourselves. We’ll hire about 5-7 people at 7 dollars an hour and collect the stuff, distribute it by email, and then measure it. Should be easy. Save us a lot of money. We’ll use Google Alerts.”

Whew! Okay. It’s time to address the real cost of social media monitoring and measurement.

Three things to remember: Social Media should be set up in three major components:

1. Collection and Filtering

2. Sort, Distribute and Reporting

3. Measuring that is achieved thru the Reporting

Social media must be done on a daily basis because social media problems explode in real time.

And social media must be closely managed because it can rapidly become a painful variable cost.

This will be a three part series that examines each of the major components to social media.

We start with Collection and Filtering.

Most major companies in the Outdoor Recreational Verticals receive more posts than they realize. Facebook and Twitter accounts are just the beginning. Collecting and filtering the posts can be a drain on your people and how much time they allocate.

Let’s break this into two groups: companies that integrate social media vendors into their operations and companies that handle all collection, distribution, and measurement internally.

Internal: Collection and Filtering of Posts.

A mid-sized company collects between 500 and 1000 posts a day. They can pick these up from free services like Google, Yahoo, Bing, Twitter, YouTube, etc. It will take 1 person (Gatekeeper)  about 1 hour a day to collect this information, an hour  to filter through it, and another hour to assign sentiment. However, it will take many hours to set up the collection system. Which to use? Which provides the cleanest data? There is a learning curve that the  company Gatekeeper will go through. And it will, most likely, be painful…for the Gatekeeper and the Manager, and the Manager of the Manager. What do I do with all of these tweets? What do you want me to do with the retweets? What about our sponsored giveaways on Twitter? Do you want me to collect impressions on our sponsored programs? How about our pr releases?  Athletes? And what blogger qualifies as an Influencer? And it goes on.

1 Person= 3 hrs/day for Collection, Filtering and Sentiment Assignment

External: Collection and Filtering of Posts (Gatekeeper is now in a postion of managing the collected and filtered posts.)

Here the Gatekeeper tells the sub-contracted search or monitoring service what he/she wants to see and, for the most part, the Gatekeeper sees that information. There is still a lot of information and there is a learning curve, but the monitoring and filtering is manageable. Not precise, because everything is automated from the sub-contractor’s end, meaning that collection and filtering is all done within the confines of the software. In short, all done within the computer via key word searches. And, in most cases, no sentiment is attached to each post. So that has to be done by the Gatekeeper.  An initial collection load of 1000 posts are automatically filtered and then approximately 400 posts delivered to the company. Now the Gatekeeper needs to look through all of the posts to both further filter out and then assign sentiment to the posts which are to be kept. Sometimes sentiment is not determined until the gatekeeper reads deep into the post. Take YouTube for example. A 3 minute video will take, at times, 3 minutes because it will need to be viewed to the end to make sure there is not a drastic turn to the positive or negative. Yes, sentiment assignment is time consuming.

1 person = 2 hours/day  for Filtering and Sentiment Assign + about $200-500/mos. for the social media monitoring service

Keep in mind this is just for the first phases of Social Media Monitoring and Reporting.

Next up: Sorting, Distributing, and Reporting

Last week I wrote about Customer Reviews and how to respond to the bad ones. This week more about Customer Reviews.Why?

Because they are growing in power. More consumers are reading them and more consumers are writing them. The circle continues to grow.

And it seems that consumers take seriously the advice of people they don’t know.

“For many purchases, shoppers find the best advice comes not from family and close friends but from strangers who have similar interests or who embody a lifestyle the shopper aspires to achieve,” said Jeffrey Grau, eMarketer principal analyst and author of the new report “Customer Product Reviews: The Next Generation.”

Customer Reviews are the most honest posts of all social media. Consumers either like the product, are disappointed, don’t like the product, or liked or hated the service. There isn’t much “in-between” here.

And it is personal, emotional…and that’s what makes it real. It is the reflection of a business and its service. It’s the mirror held up by consumers.

And now retailers are getting into Customer Reviews in a big way. Reports are that 80% of all retailers will publish Reviews by the end of 2010.

I wonder if many retailers are equipped to handle Reviews. They are inviting consumers to publish their opinions about product and service. And that means the good with the bad. I wonder, if retailers not used to the “rough and tumble” have the “tough skin” necessary for consumers reviews.

Reviews are not point-of-purchase tools, advertising, or good signage. They are for the benefit of the customers, and customers will publish, read and take this online page very seriously.

I applaud retailers for allowing shoppers to write and read reviews. But, this can not be ignored. Engagement will be critical…and not with just the bad reviews. Engagement even with the good ones.

You see, when you give consumers mirrors and allow them  to reflect their impressions of your store, you are trusting that your image is consistently strong enough to withstand the negative that will surely come along.

True confidence will be rewarded.

False confidence will be a different issue.

Channel Signal has recently been in conversations about how to respond to consumers. Should we be brand formal? Should we be informal? Should we add personality? Should we just stick to the facts? How do we do this? I’ll provide some examples here that should help make the points.

Example:

Customer: I ordered two jackets from this company on Jan. 10, 2008. They charged my card on Jan. 14, 2008 but I never got a confirmation e-mail, an e-mail with tracking number, or my jackets! Still to this day Feb. 14, 2008 I have received nothing or heard nothing. I sent them 7 e-mails and called all the numbers on their site but never heard a word from anyone. I even looked up another number on switchboard.com but no one answered that. The mailbox is full so I could not leave a message. I just ended up contacting my Credit Card company and they could refund the money. I also filed a complaint with the Better Busines Bereau.

Aside from Bureau being misspelled, the reviewer is reporting the facts. Not emotional besides being a little frustrated. And is taking action.

This should be responded to in the same fashion. The facts. The fixes.

However, this is not a product problem but a customer service problem and the company representative that handles this should be well versed in dealing with people, and come armed with “fixes” for the problem.

1. We heard you. We apologize for charging your card and not delivering the product.

2. Here’s what we are doing to fix the problem.

Handled  in a straight-forward fashion. The sign-off should be contact information…a direct number to the supervisor. And tell them that it is a direct number and that the person will either pick-up or get back to you right away.

———————

Example:

I ride mostly park in the northeast. I had this board for 6 days. In the first 5days i can say the board was light, poppy, mid flex, super responsive, great dampening, stable at high speeds, and super fun. But on that 6th day, the same thing that makes this board fun (slimewalls) was the downfall! I hit a burr on a round rail doing a boardslide and it caved in my edge like a semi-circle and pushed my edge out on the bottom. Totally wrecked the board but landed my trick. That i wouldnt call good craftsmanship! 6 days on snow!! Come on!!

This rider is young. Look at the content, lack of caps, and the casual writing style.  However, he/she knows her stuff.

This one is a product development problem. A representative well schooled in snowboarding and the technical aspects of the product should be handling this. Not customer service.

1. This needs a conversation so more can be determined. Was this truly a construction problem or was this pilot error? How was this burr hit, and at what speed?

2. This can be done via email, but would be better in a phone conversation. And listen.

3. Once the real problem is uncovered, then make amends.

———————

Example:

This is seen a lot. The mother is complaining, but the real customer, the daughter, seems to be satisfied with the product.

Recently purchased this item for my college-bound daughter. When it arrived I was disappointed that the fleece was so thin. I was expecting a much thicker and warmer pullover for $50. The only reason we kept it was because she loved the color (retro pink).

So, who do you respond to? You respond to the writer, the Mom.

1. There isn’t really anything factual here other than the “fleece was so thin”.  Thin according to what measure?

2. The best course of action is to respond with a gift certificate for $50 for the Mom. She can then decide if she wants to pass that along to her daughter.

Nothing much to go on here. This is a customer service problem, and humanity based. The representative should come with a fix and hope that solves the problem.

———————–

I could go on, but here are a few things to remember.

1. When it is a product driven complaint, allow product development to handle it or have your customer service representative talk extensively with product development to handle the problem. My strong suggestions is to just let someone with people skills in product development handle it.

2. When it is a customer service problem or an “angry” customer problem with no factual relationship to the product, then it is customer service.

3. Match the demographic. Don’t have a 50 year-old customer service rep talk with a snowboarder. And don’t have a snowboarder talk with a 60 year old customer that is complaining about a fleece jacket for winter walks around the park. Recognize the demographic and match-make the people.

4. Forget your brand “voice”. It works when you are broadcasting. It doesn’t work in conversations with customers. Remember, you, the brand, are trying to solve a problem.

And that means relating to the customer.

And that means communicating with them.

And that means you listen and forget about the company, and concentrate on the problem.

Your brand will get stronger.

You won’t win them all, but do it right and you will win many of them.

This is the last of our three part series: What Motivates People, Builds Real Social Media Traffic and Increases Sales. We established that it wasn’t giving product away, that simply attracts the discount shoppers and the coupon sites, and lowers your price points. We did establish that consumers want to buy from brands that “stand for something.” In fact, 83% of consumers want to buy from companies that try to make the world a better place.

Now, lets take a look at how companies that have a Purpose effect the employee performance of those companies. And remember, in social media, employees have networks, many times big networks, that can have real viral communication power. The smart companies also have built large Cause Marketing Campaigns around a primary Purpose and have utilized these large employee networks.

MIT did a study on what motivates employees and it has been masterfully presented by Dan Pink through Cognitive Media. Watch it, because it is worth it. I promise… you will learn several things that will help as you build your companies and your communications channels.

So, when a company is Purpose Driven and has a Cause, then the employees are motivated. And this ties directly into the main purpose of this series of articles.

1. Companies must stand for something. When they do…83% of consumers approve and want to buy from you.

2. Companies must stand for something. When they do…employees are motivated not just to do a good job, but they believe they are making the world a better place.

3. Companies must stand for something. When they do, they pack social media with great content that educates and motivates…and that drives consumers to their products through many channels, including employee networks.

Social media is a cocktail party. A very very large one. And the most popular people at that cocktail party are  the people who stand for something.

Now, go be one of those companies.