Getting started is a step in the right direction, but how should you proceed? As we discussed in Chapter 15, the answer is simple: The whole process starts with you and a new mindset. Every organization is different, so a cookie-cutter approach is not feasible. However, some factors are universal. For example, a champion must lobby for change, including new ways (and mindsets) to reach customers and influencers (perhaps in ways not even possible within existing infrastructures).

Lobbyists (or champions) could exist in the C-Suite (corporate level) in marketing communications, customer service, Public Relations, advertising, or interactive product marketing—any department where external dialogue either is a job requirement or could benefit through interaction and feedback. A champion is key to jump-starting this new and important outbound service-minded approach.

As discussed in the preceding chapter, thought leaders are currently debating this very subject. We suggest that you don’t wait. To advance your own career and keep the business you represent from falling off the radar of its existing and potential customers and fading into obscurity, take the time to investigate how socializing your role and your department will inspire champions (and perhaps even inspire change just based on your actions alone). You might even want to take this issue to your own Web communities and discuss it among peers. Start a forum or a group to determine what other people consider the best approach from a PR perspective.

Again, this is no longer an inbound-only process. As discussed previously, Social Media is not something you can engage in from the sidelines. Those who remain spectators will inevitably remove themselves as an option for their customers, enabling their competitors to make them obsolete.

Any good PR person must research and analyze. Compare your position to that of your competitors. Monitor conversations. Document answers (or the lack of them). Measure the frequency of relevant conversations across each social network and in the blogosphere, charting it from month to month. If you do your homework, you will quickly see the opportunities and be able to chart and demonstrate potential rewards.

Then speak up. Present the conclusions of your research (along with supporting data). Make it your goal to pull your company into online conversations to help influencers, customers, and prospects gather the information they need. Also empower people to help each other. By engaging influencers directly, you strengthen the integrity of “the grapevine,” as stories and benefits are passed across the Social Web. A beneficial side effect is that you are investing in your knowledge and experience—and in your career prospects and future. You will immediately become a more valuable asset to any organization you choose to represent. The PR industry has fought hard to be understood as a valuable company resource. Your participation in an outbound customer service approach will demonstrate that value to “the suits” even more.

After completing all your homework, you are ready to create a listening and response strategy. Your strategy should assign the listening and responding responsibilities to the most appropriate persons, which could be within your organization or external (champions in the field). As discussed in the preceding chapter, businesses are hiring “community managers” to keep the company’s “ear to the ground.” These managers act as the hub for coordinating all outbound conversations. The community manager usually works directly with PR, product marketing, customer service, sales, and the executive team to coordinate the most relevant and effective person or response based on each discussion. Community managers are also responsible for directly answering questions, when appropriate.

An easy and cost-effective way to start is by setting up Google Alerts and by monitoring http://search.twitter.com for your company, products, key personnel, and competitors. Every time you receive an alert or uncover an interesting conversation in a Web community (such as a rumor, unpleasant experiences, simple questions, or a hostile “share of voice” takeover of a brand), you have an “almost” real-time opportunity to engage.

It’s also important to evaluate and utilize services that track conversations and relevant topics (services such as Technorati, Blogpulse, Twitter, FriendFeed, or Google Blog Search). Then you can assess which of these tools enables you to proactively monitor memes and individual instances that determine your level of engagement. Your participation also sets the stage for perception management and reduces the risk of negative discussions publicly snowballing.

Social Media isn’t limited to blogs and communities. In the new world of PR, marketing, and service, we must find and participate in the relevant and potentially influential conversations taking place across the Social Web. In fact, Social Media is fueling social networks (which are springing up everywhere as niche communities based on different topics) and enabling us to find and host conversations related to brands and products. For example, we can create Facebook groups and Fan Pages. We can find or build dedicated networks for our brands or services on social networks such as Ning. We can create and monitor a dedicated product page on GetSatisfaction. We can also search other related networks. We have incredible opportunities to converse with real people who hunger for content, information, and community (and, in the process, perhaps influence groups of like-minded people).

Corporate and employee-driven blogs also help stakeholders and customers find information relevant to their objectives. Companies can also host an integrated social network or discussion forum (such as those provided by Leverage Software and KickApps). These companies facilitate hosted networks and conversations directly on the company site as a way of embracing customers and encouraging peer-to-peer interaction (thus building and strengthening their community). This level of customization and integration requires high-level buy-in and participation from the chief marketing officer and the Web marketing team.

Micromedia is also critical, such as creating a presence on Twitter, Kwippy, Plurk, or Identi.ca (among others).

Micromedia helps you and the companies you represent to find, listen to, and respond to relevant discussions. These microformat tools can help companies track discussions related to their brand in real time. Try it. Go to search.twitter.com and type in your company or product brand name. You’ll see that these conversations are taking place, right now, without your support, advice, or insight. And although you’re probably in more places than you thought, that presence alone is probably not enough. PR is expanding to include more than media, analyst, and blogger relations. PR is aligning with outbound service to embrace a new opportunity for hypeless and spin-free influence.

For example, companies can create a corporate or user-driven account from which they can proactively update their customers (a.k.a. followers) with new updates, answers, and so on. Cisco does this on Twitter through @CiscoIT, @CiscoNews, and @CiscoRSS; Zappos through @Zappos; JetBlue through @JetBlue; H&R Block through @hrblock; Dell through @richardatdell or @lionelatdell; and Comcast through @comcastcares. Customers can also contact them through “direct” messaging or public @companyname posts. Keywords such as #hashtags are a growing trend within the service. These enable users to call out specific topics such as #nike or #comcast for others to locate through a dedicated search tool such as twemes.com or hashtags.org. If you use services such as tweetscan or search.twitter.com, you can find these keywords without a hashtag.

However, even though these new technologies and associated opportunities are impressive, we can’t overlook an important Web 1.0 component: User groups and forums, such as Yahoo! and Google Groups, Amazon reviews, and e-pinions, haven’t gone away. You need to figure out which communities host conversations that are important to your business, and determine which communities are critical to maintaining customer service and to instilling satisfaction and fostering enthusiasm among your brand enthusiasts.

With all the communities and tools we have mentioned, you’re probably wondering which ones to use. The best way to begin is by surveying the landscape and then starting the process of listening. The results will tell you where to engage and how. Monitoring the culture of each community and the sociology of the interactions will guide you in how to participate. Just remember to take the time to think about what you’re doing and why.

Be helpful, sincere, and transparent, and definitely be prepared to answer the same questions and concerns over and over again. Know what you’re talking about and how your story benefits a wide variety of specific communities.

In some ways, we relinquish a portion of our message control in Social Media. Although we can’t retain 100% control of what we say, what others hear, and what others share, we can help steer perception. Instead of speaking in buzzwords and hyperbole, we need to ensure that our solutions and benefits are clearly understood by all the different users (demographics) who populate our markets. Feel the pain and deliver the painkiller.

When we’re not representing companies, we are also customers. We share with others our appreciation of products and services that deliver value, and we react as other customers to an oversell, hype, or spin situation.

Remember that customers need to hear things differently across each market segment, demographic, and psychographic—people need to hear things front-loaded with the benefits and painkillers that will compel them. Reaching the masses is still important, so casting a wide net doesn’t necessarily go away, but focusing on specific niche markets is also critical to creating groundswell. Those customer groups respond to only unique and dedicated storylines. The requirement of engagement is that you participate according to the rules and terms of the community (just like everyone else) and as defined by the group’s culture across each network, forum, blog, and so on.

Social networks aren’t thriving because their citizens are eager for marketing. Remember that, in the real world, we are all customers. We buy products and purchase services, complain about the ones we don’t like, and recommend those that we love (our trusted brands). A satisfied customer tells many, but an unsatisfied customer tells many more. We need to bring our real-world experiences to the table in order to provide a genuine and empathetic perspective.

Companies today must be aware that unsatisfied customers can reach millions of people via Social Media tools. The lesson is that we have to “be” a customer to think like one and legitimately approach a customer. As communications professionals, we must embrace Social Media and understand the technology so that we can be an immersed customer, similar to so many of the people with whom we want to converse. Connecting with them any other way isn’t truly genuine, it extinguishes any chance for an honest relationship, it eliminates the possibility for a solid foundation on which to build trust, and it just might push customers away and fuel resentment. If we can think, communicate, and act like our customers, then we will truly be the people we want to help.

One of the most compelling ways to showcase solutions and benefits is to prepare a portfolio of customer experiences across multiple-use cases. Customer success stories can only benefit PR and marketing programs (not just in a traditional sense, but also in Social Media). These stories foster peer-to-peer connections based on real-world experiences. Showcase them on your blog. Have them in the form of quotes or even Web video endorsements on YouTube, or create a branded channel on Magnify.net. Record podcasts about them. Invite satisfied customers to events. Partner with them to be proactive voices to help rally other customers. After all, satisfied and enthusiastic customers keep you in business. Show them that you know this by reaching out to them, not just waiting for them to come to you. If you wait, they could easily become someone else’s customers.

The process of influence is shifting from a top-down message-broadcasting system to include a multifaceted, direct, less-is-more approach—focusing on the more valuable and influential people across all market segments that are important to our business. We now want to include storytelling rich with benefits and solution delivery based on strategic market influencer relations. All this requires individuals within marketing, sales, or service departments to visit each camp of representative and potential constituents to increase the visibility of the company’s value proposition and explain how it helps and matters to each segment. Traditionally, PR professionals have written news releases and fabricated quotes for executives; that’s largely still true today. Some even laugh about how horrible the quotes really are. They inject adjectives and irrelevant positioning statements. Then they identify potentially interested journalists and bloggers (usually through a database instead of targeting or qualifying them), and queue up the release for wire distribution. They contact those with whom they have established relationships, and then they send the news release to everyone else on that list. This is why PR often seems to be synonymous with spam.

You can now augment your activity with human and individualized market solutions to include a more street-level approach that connects you directly with the very people you’re trying to reach. In addition to the top-down approach, your process of storytelling is now reverse-engineered through three easy steps:

In addition, you’ll garner incredible insight throughout the process of research, listening, and observing. In this way, you can also identify the new influencers (who can then reach new groups of people).

As you can tell, we are huge proponents of the social sciences. Therefore, we believe that these processes invoke new techniques and principles—all are available online (and in this book) to help you learn. If you either skipped or slept through those courses in school, brush up on those subjects. (Chapter 11, “Technology Does Not Override the Social Sciences,” explains their importance in more detail.) To be a true member of the online community, you must humanize your intent and story, and learn how, where, and why to participate. By doing so, you reset the dynamic for engagement from top-down to one-on-one interaction.

This is probably one of the most important tips of the book, and it’s critical that you understand that PR is no longer rooted in broadcast methodologies and the single-focused, general messages that drive them. PR needs to follow the authoritative dialogue, wherever it takes place. Without you, who will answer questions, clarify confusion, defend the brand, or develop relationships for the long term?

Message broadcasting is usually ineffective in New Media, especially as it relates to influencer relations. Traditionally, PR has focused on the right half of the infamous bell curve of product adoption. For those who might be unfamiliar with it, the bell curve features segmented portions that reflect the stages of market adoption, going from left to right. In Figure 16.1, innovators represent 2.5% of the market opportunity, early adopters represent 13.5%, early majority represent 34%, late majority also represent 34%, and laggards are at 16%. When we say that PR has concentrated its efforts on reaching the masses, they’re usually lobbing news releases, messages, and pitches to the right side. Social Media unlocks and reveals the thriving communities and corresponding influencers that reach and stimulate the left side of the bell curve.

Figure 16.1. Categories of innovativeness

This is an important distinction and a new opportunity for general PR. Historically, adoption of new trends, as well as information in general has moved from left to right, as each group is influenced and motivated by the segment before it. By using the bell curve, we know that by reaching customers who are innovators, early adopters, and early majority, we can spark enthusiasm and support to help carry our story to the late majority and the laggards, which represent the other 50 percent of our market opportunity. However, speaking to and potentially befriending highly sophisticated customers requires an entirely new approach than what most PR people have learned. They’re usually not swayed by our usual tools of relationship-marketing techniques. They want to hear and see things specifically, and know how a new approach will earn them the distinct and regarded position of trying something new without wasting their time.

In addition to our top-tier reporters, analysts, and A-list and magic middle bloggers, a collective of powerful influencers are present in each unique group you’re trying to reach: They are the tastemakers. However, they don’t usually appear in any marketing database to which communications or marcom typically subscribes.

Tastemakers are customers and consumers who reside higher on the ladder of influence than the rest of those who define the market. Similar to traditional journalists, analysts, and now A-list bloggers, tastemakers are a beacon for trends and activity, and their decisions and publicly shared opinions (through blogs, tweets, Facebook messages, and so forth) spark and affect adoption.

Tastemakers have typically been recognized as determining or strongly influencing trends or styles in fashion or the arts. But they are increasingly visible and active in almost every market and industry. The tastemaker category isn’t new; neither is the desire to reach them. The Social Web makes this category even more interesting. The same tools that have democratized content and amplified our voices beyond their previous realm of influence have created a broader and more extensive network of tastemakers and new influencers who might not realize they possess this powerful ability to help people make decisions.

Social Media tools now make it possible to more easily identify and reach tastemakers. It all starts by listening and tracking conversations related to your brand and identifying those individuals who continually emerge as pundits, focusing on those with extensive social contacts (a.k.a. the social graph—usually the number of friends and followers they have in a network). This is a new and relatively undeveloped practice for PR, and, quite honestly, it changes the approach and dynamics of communications. This is an elusive group of incredibly sought-after innovators, and they do not respond to spam, pitches, or general contact. Reaching this group requires an intelligent, well-researched plan that provides and delivers benefits to both sides of the equation.

Whereas marketing might have previously focused on demographics and target markets, socially aware organizations are now also balancing profiles with psychographics. This change in focus represents the difference between categorizing people by gender, class, and age, versus grouping them by interests and behavior.

A demographic is a representation of a grouping or market segment, usually aggregated by age group. For example, a marketer might want to create a campaign that reaches females, middle class, age 18–24. Psychographics, also referred to as IAO variables (for interests, attitudes, and opinions), is the observance and classification of attributes relating to personality, values, attitudes, interests, or lifestyles.

When classifying target groups and markets, researchers first determine which segments exist so that they can paint a clear and divisible picture that represents and segments the characteristics of a typical member of each group. After these profiles have been identified and documented, we can use them to develop a marketing strategy and plan.

In the increasingly Social Web, brands, and those who represent them, are learning that demographics might limit the full potential for reaching those people who share common interests—whether they’re 8 or 80. People are making connections with each other because they share interests and passions. This creates and forges social graphs that expand the potential for reaching a larger, potentially captive series of audiences.

Aside from demographics versus psychographics, let’s take a look at a few more examples of companies that are embracing a more outbound, socially focused service infrastructure.