This is a presentation that Woodhouse co-created with Jay Peak Resort. The purpose of the presentation is to provide an overview of how social media is changing the PR discipline and to outline practical steps to modify the PR approach. It was developed specifically for the Ski Resort Industry, but it could be for any industry

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Kodak and Social Media

Kodak's Tom Hoehn (@TomHoehn) was recently interviewed in the social media maven series on the Viral Garden blog. In the interview, Tom shared the Kodak social media approach and strategy that he co-developed along with Kodak Chief Blogger Jenny Chisney (@kodakcb). After reading the interview I had a few thoughts and decided to share them openly. First, a few disclosures:

1. I am a big admirer of what Kodak has been doing with social media. They have a great blog, their chief marketing officer is highly active in Twitter and is leading an effort to use social media to continue a successful brand turnaround.

2. I am not associated with Kodak in any way. I have never worked at the company nor have I ever had them as a client

3. My understanding of their social media strategy is limited and based solely on the interview in the Viral Garden blog and with a few Twitter exchanges with their CMO.

What I like

There is much to admire in the strategy shared.

First and foremost it's a strategy and not a bunch of tactics and / or tools tied together in some loose fashion. Tom and the rest of the team have clearly thought through the various aspects of social media and created a framework that has actionable goals and associated tasks/ projects. The notion of proactive and reactive is a powerful way to organize work streams.

Tone takes a big place in the strategy. Many companies miss this very important guide post. Social Media is the most powerful tool that marketers have to truly activate their brand and bring it to life. Tweets or Facebook messages that do not properly represent the company brand and culture can do serious damage. On the flip side, a consistent voice regardless of who is conversing helps fully establish the positioning in peoples mind. Kudos to Kodak for bringing that front and center.

Cross functional team. I'm guessing here, but it looks like a cross functional team has been established. This is crucial. Customers do not think in internal organizational silos. One moment they might have a new product idea and another moment they might be pissed off because their digital camera broke. If they spend the time to write about it online, it is a major opportunity missed if a company does not respond quickly and accordingly. This takes coordination and a team of people across marketing, corporate communications, customer service, product development, sales and the executive suite.

What I think is missing

Passion points. These are the subject areas that connect brands to a wider audience. A fundamental question that every brand should ask, "If social media is about conversations, what conversations should we have and initiate?" It is a crucial question because the conversations that brands initiate and engage in says a whole lot about who they are as a company. It also establishes them as a member of the community that is passionate about a subject area.

I'll make up an example for Kodak to help bring this to life. Let's pretend that after doing a thorough review of the Kodak brand, the social media team at Kodak decides that they will focus on 5 passion points, the first being independent films (I have no idea if this fits with their brand but I don't think it's a stretch given their products aimed at film makers). With that passion point in mind, Kodak creates new presences in social media platforms (for example@Kodak_Films). It then uses tools like Radian6 to search for people talking about independent films and to discover and follow the influential bloggers and online press. Kodak then staffs a team of people and experts to dive into the subject and discuss it wherever and whenever they can. To help establish expertise and to add value, new content is created and posted frequently.

Why would Kodak do this? Because it serves a business purpose. It becomes a very powerful way for Kodak to associate itself with independent films and establishes itself as a leader in that community. The more that Kodak posts content and converses about independent film, the more followers and fans it will get that share that passion point. Brand awareness goes up in the community, brand associate happens and the next time one of their fans or followers is out looking for a video camera, they will most likely place Kodak in the consideration set.

Most people do not realize that Kodak is so much more than just digital cameras. Much of its business comes in the form of B2B sales. In checking their website, they list 18 B2B verticals. This might have been done or is in the works, but each and every one of those verticals should have it's own social media strategy and approach. Although each vertical is tied to the same brand, I am sure that they have very different sales cycles, target buyers and competitive pressures. These factors need to be taken into account.


Wrap Up

Kodak seems to have fully embraced social media and the notion of sharing. I have found that when you share things openly with people you usually get something back in return. Hopefully my comments have provoked some additional thinking.

Arthur Germain from the Communications Strategy Group just posted a piece called "Does your brand have a front man". It's well thought out and he makes the argument that brands should encourage a strong personality within the company to be tightly associated to the brand, a front man if you will. You can find his post here.

I disagree. Making one person a core element of a brand is very risky. It can be powerful, yes. People love to connect with other people, especially those they admire. But what happens when the person falters, has health problems, dies, retires, acts like a jerk, or screws up? Martha Stewart comes to mind. Arthur mentions Jobs and his health problems. GE struggled when Welch retired.

In the past when most, if not all, communications were one way, the notion of a single person as the core element of a brand were few and far between. For every Jobs there are thousands of nameless CEO's.

Social Media is changing that. Social media is a two way conversation and increasingly, individuals are becoming the know entity for a brand. Frank from Comcast. Jeffrey W. Hayzlett is the strongest voice on twitter for Kodak, @JeffreyHayzlett. More and more companies are placing incredible power in the hands of one individual. Big mistake.

Barry Judge is the CMO of Best Buy and has become a strong voice of that company in twitter. His twitter name is @bestbuycmo. He had an exchange with an influential blogger in twitter and he came off like a real jerk.

That hurt the brand. I watched it unfold, made a judgment (Barry is a real jerk) and then my judgment and perception transferred over to Best Buy... what kind of company hires jerks like that to run things?

This will become a larger problem as more and more companies empower an individual with the power of being the brand through conversation in social media.

What my company recommends is that a well thought out engagement manual is created that clearly spells out the dos and donts and establishes the brand voice. We also recommend that several people represent the brand in social media. A cross functional team is best. Brands are much too important to leave in the hands of one person, even if that person is Barry Judge, Steve Jobs or Jack Welch.

Get going already

In a recent report from Marketing Sherpa, close to 50% of marketers reported that the lack of knowledgeable staff was the biggest barrier to adopting social media for business purposes. Even though the idea and practice of online social media has been around since the beginning of the internet, new technologies, platforms and rules of engagement have many brands perplexed. And it’s not just brands. Agencies are struggling as well. If you belong to one of the brands or companies that want to jump into social media but don't know where to start, here is our checklist:

1. Define your objective. Social Media is not a strategy but instead a tool to help companies achieve strategies and objectives. A common mistake many companies make is to jump into social media without a clear understanding of what they want to accomplish. The top objectives that social media can help advance include:

• Increase brand awarness
  
• Improve trust and brand perception
  
• Improve customer service
• Sell products or services
• Improve inter-company communications and collaboration
• Improve communications and collaboration with partners, vendors, re-sellers
• Recruit new employees
  

Don't try to do all at once. Prioritize your objectives and then start with the highest priority.

2. Develop a strategy. What conversations do you want to have? Why those? What will those conversations do for your defined objectives? Who are the most influential people in those conversation areas? How will you approach those people and develop trust?

3. Learn the tools. There are thousands of resources available online to improve your IQ but the best, by far, is mashable.com. Go to mashable.com and read the articles and posts, subscribe to their RSS feed, follow them in Twitter and become a fan in Facebook. Your IQ will increase rapidly

4. Watch others and learn from them. Other brands are using social media, some very effectively. To start, follow Wholefoods @wholefoods, Kodak @kodakcb, and Dell @delloutlet in Twitter. In Facebook, become a fan of RedBull www.facebook.com/redbull, the NBA www.facebook.com/nba and Volkswagen www.facebook.com/vw. For a great niche B2B Facebook page see what IBM Research is up to at www.facebook.com/ibmresearch.

5. Listen to what people are saying about you. Conversations are happening right now about your brand. Make sure you fully understand the subjects being discussed and the sentiment of the conversations. A good free tool to start with is social mention www.socialmention.com.

6. Allocate resources. Engaging with people in conversations is not a part time job. To be successful at least one person should spend 40 hours per week. Create the position and source it with someone who has experience. If obtaining approval for a new resource is difficult, then look to outside companies that provide this service. They are few and far between but they are out there. For competitive reasons I am going to mention only one, Woodhouse Agency…

7. Find experts. Depending on the conversations you are going to pursue, an outside expert might be required to add credibility and to establish trust. For example, a technology company that specializes in data security might want to recruit a lawyer that is recognized as a compliance expert.

8. Take stock of existing content. Content is critical to add value to the community being engaged. To quote the guys at TippingPoint Labs www.tippingpointlabs

"Social media boils down to the marriage of two main concepts — content and conversation. Without content, conversation is mere networking. Without conversation, content is dead. It goes nowhere."

After a thorough inventory of existing content determine what makes the grade. Ask yourself, will people find this valuable and is it relevant to the conversations that will be pursued? Can we / should we break it up to be more bite sized?

9. Create new content. There is a good chance that you will have big holes in your content. You might be missing entire subject areas. Create a plan to develop the content and the schedule of when you will share it. The good news is that content does not need to be an expensive proposition. User generated content is free. Blog posts do not cost much. Even online video can be had for significantly less than their broadcast cousins. Because the stakes are not nearly as high as content developed for traditional media, you can create a lot more of it. Frequency is one of the most important aspects of social media so make sure you are loaded with content on an ongoing basis.

10. Establish your policies and procedures. Depending on the company you work for, the notion of engaging with customers can be a scary proposition. What if people say bad things about us? How do I make sure employees don't share proprietary information? Won't competitors check us out and steal our ideas and thinking? These are just a few of the questions we get from companies consider moving forward with social media. They are all great questions and they can all be handled with a policy and procedure manual. This is also a great time to bring in the ever dreaded legal department to get their buy-in.

With this check list in hand, a healthy passion for making it happen and, if needed, an outside company to help you along, you will soon be recognized as an innovator within your company and several promotions will come your way...

Content is the currency of social media.  Smart companies get this.  But it’s different content then what companies are used to producing.  It’s not a 30-second TV spot, a white paper or a webinar.  It’s bite sized content that proves their brand and brand elements and it engages people.  It could be an online application, it could be a quick video or a online radio interview.  Something longer  than the 140-character limitation of Twitter and that attracts people to the company or creates good will between the brand and its loyal followers.  
 
Good content attracts more friends and followers and becomes something people want to share, which in turn attracts more friends and followers.  This is amazing.  Things move so quickly in social media.  Old-school word-of-mouth campaigns relied on people telling other people in the physical world.  By bringing word of mouth into the digital world, a single person could share your content to tens of thousands of people.  And do it for free.

Companies need to re-think how they produce content. A good model to follow is the nightly news. Good quality, interesting storyline, topical, short and powerful. Easy to say, tougher to do as most agencies are not set up to help companies accomplish this.