Citizen Marketer 2.1

Aaron Strout

Bring on the Content at SXSW 2012!

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The guts of this post were cross-posted from colleague, Meredith Owen’s, fabulous write up on the WCG blog. Big thanks to her for doing the heavy lifting on this.

If you hadn’t noticed, it’s that time of year again. Yes the time where all of your social media friends flood your Twitter stream and Facebook walls with pleas to vote for this panel or that panel at the grand daddy of all digital/social media conferences, South by Southwest (SXSW). While some people look at this as a nuisance, I take it as an opportunity to look at trends in the space. I also like to keep my eye out for new faces and voices in the world of digital/social.

To that end, a number of my colleagues at WCG have submitted panels this year. All of them look great on paper and having listened to most of them present, I can tell you that it would be worth your while to vote any/all of them through. I’ve also included my panel in the mix. In addition to the one I’ve submitted below, I am also lucky enough to be in the running with friends, Tim Walker, Kate Brodock and Troy Nalls for a panel titled, Down in Front! How to Control Bad Fans. While SXSW only allows panelists to sit on one session, I’m hedging my bets to increase my odds. I’d be thrilled to get the thumbs up on either of the two panels.

Without further ado, here are the eight panels submitted by us WCG-ers:

  • Ultimate Healthcare Reform – Reshaping Our World – Bob Pearson, WCG’s Chief Technology & Media Officer, sits down with Jeff Arnold, founder of WebMD and Sharecare, for an epic discussion on how the technology leaders at SXSW can take people from information to action to create healthier world.
  • Social Media…A Responsibility of WHICH Department? –Matt Snodgrass tackles the elephant in the room during this solo presentation that will dissect various industries and companies to examine where social media responsibility should lie.
  • Friending Pharma: Patients, Industry & New Media – Last Monday was a big day for pharma too. WCG Director Brian Reid joins a sundry team of health influencers including Pfizer VP Ray Kerins, Cancer Health Activist and Patient Expert Alicia Staley, and diabetes bloggers and patient advocates Kerri Sparling and Allison Blass as they examine the risks and benefits of connecting patients and biopharma companies online.
  • My Doctor Poked Me. Giggidy! – Anecdotal evidence suggests that health care providers’ use of social media is in the early stages of an explosion.  Social media analysts Andy Booth and Naimul Huq sit down with long-time MD and leading blogger Dr. Bryan Vartabedian to explore how social media is changing the future of the doctor-patient relationship.
  • Social Networks are Killing the Company Org Chart – Every company has an org chart – but we all know intuitively that work is done based on relationships and connections across the organization.  Mapping those connections can reveal a whole new world to smart corporations. Greg Matthews (a former HR exectutive) and Humana’s Director Learning Innovation Brian Foye explain how social media can map and measure the real corporation underneath the org chart.
  • Inside Out: Internal Social Media & Big Business – Industry leaders Brian Snyder, Jonathan Mast and Blair Klein join WCG Director Brad Mays to bring together the collective insight of some of the biggest corporate brands on best practices for using social media for internal collaboration and productivity.
  • Future of Location Marketing: Dummies Perspective – 2012 marks the three-year anniversary of Foursquare’s launch at SXSW.  Location-based gurus Aaron Strout and Mike Schneider will walk through the 5 golden rules of location-based marketing and how to leverage the “there” there.
  • Social Media Strategies of Top Tweeting Businesses – WCG’s Ricardo Guerrero understands the business of Twitter- if fact, he created most of Dell’s Twitter accounts, which generated $6.5M of revenue in their first 2.5 years.  During this panel Ricardo will examines the top 1,000 business Twitter accounts to analyze whether or not Twitter success translates across social media channels.
In addition to some of these potentially awesome panel submissions, I also have another seven I am excited to see. In no particular order, here they are:
  • The community revolving door: staying a step ahead – Welcome to the biggest challenge presented by community. From continuing to seek out new members, to finding the next evangelist, membership evolution can be an unexpected challenge, but so is content evolution and most importantly, strategy evolution (Heather Strout, Farland Group, Jim Storer, The Community Round Table, Mark Wallace, EDR and Mike Pascucci, Ektron).
  • Aristotle Shops @WalMart | CSR, Ethics & Community – Today, Aristotle would be a Wal-Mart greeter, or perhaps manage its online community. What happened? The company changed their vision when CEO H. Lee Scott Jr. launched a massive Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) campaign to, in his words, “…create a better story”. (Kyle Flaherty, Breaking Point Systems & Alex Hahn, Vox Global)
  • The Facebook Customer Service Challenge for Brands – Managing customer service on a Facebook Page is a messy proposition, particularly for large businesses and brands. Increasingly impatient customers and fans are flocking to the Facebook Wall to fire off specific questions or complaints about product and service issues, with the expectation of receiving a rapid-fire satisfactory response and the threat of making a big stink across their social networks if they don’t.  (Bryan Person, David Berkowitz, 360i, Molly DeMaagd – AT&T, Eric Ludwig, Rosetta Stone).
  • No Wallet? No Problem. Enter Mobile Payments. – The days of having that lump of a wallet in your back pocket or forgetting your wallet at home are over. Consumers around the world could generate as much as $50 billion in sales through NFC-based mobile payments by 2014, according to Juniper Research. Google already has merchants like Macy’s and The Container Store are using Google Wallet, powered by NXP’s secure NFC chips, to increase engagement and offer deals to consumers (Allen Tsai, David Berkowitz, 360i, Rob von Behren, Google, Jeff Miles, NXP Semiconductors, David Messenger, American Express).
  • Will the social web build a world we want? – Social media is transforming politics, the Middle East, corporate behavior and social activism. But how far can it go? Can citizens and customers, armed with social media and connected by shared values, create the movement for change that our world needs? Or will political manipulation, corporate self-interest and consumer fatigue overwhelm them?  (Simon Mainwaring, We First)
  • Can growing a moustache change the world? –  Join Adam Garone, CEO/co-founder of Movember, as he discusses how Movember leveraged the support of a few daring partners and pockets of loyal fans to generate a global movement that saw 450,000 moustache growers in 2010. Learn how Movember captivated the attention of a demographic infamous for not discussing their health, converted them into evangelists by turning the brand over to them, and sent them off to build the campaign. (Adam Garone, Movember)
Did you submit a panel this year? Or is there one that you know of that should absolutely make it to the next round? If so, feel free to include the link in the comments along with a little plug.

 

EDR’s Community Wins Groundswell Award: An Interview with VP Mark Wallace

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A few years ago, I had the pleasure of working with my friend, Mark Wallace, at a company called Shared Insights (subsequently merged with Knowledge Planet and became Mzinga). At Shared Insights, Mark was the head of sales, our mutual friend and colleague, Jim Storer, headed up product/community management and I lead our marketing efforts. The three of us were not only lucky enough to get into the social/community space well before the social web started to gain critical mass but we also had the benefit of working with some smart companies like Deloitte, Webex/Cisco and Environmental Data Resources (EDR).

Since that time, we’ve all gone our separate ways with me heading to Powered Inc., Jim co-founding a company called The Community Roundtable and Mark jumping over to EDR to run their community. I mention this only because the three of us stay in semi-regular touch and of course I’ve taken more than a passing interest in Mark’s social and community efforts at EDR. To that end, I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered that EDR’s community, Commonground, had just won Forrester’s prestigious Groundswell Award for Best B2B Support Community.

As someone that likes to know about these things and is always interested in sharing great case studies, I couldn’t resist asking Mark to do a quick e-mail interview with me:

  1. Tell us a little bit about EDR and what they do?

    2. Environmental Data Resources, Inc. is the leading provider of environmental risk information services and related workflow applications in the United States. As the innovator of the most comprehensive database of environmental and historical land use information, the company provides reports, subscription services and other solutions to help its customers reduce environmental risk.

  2. How did you come to work at EDR?

    3. EDR was one of our early clients when I led sales at Shared Insights. When SharedInsights was recapitalized, I worked with them from while I was with Mzinga. Shortly after I left Mzinga, I was attending the Community 2.0 Conference in Las Vegas when Rob Barber, CEO of EDR, Barry Libert, CEO of Mzinga, and I started talking. Next thing I knew, Rob and Jay Gaines, CMO of EDR, created a position and I joined the company shortly thereafter.

  3. Talk about how the commonground community came about?

    4. EDR has always prided itself on innovation. We believed strongly in the importance of social networking and the value it would have for businesses moving forward. EDR invested resources to build commonground to enable our marketplace to harness the power of social media to improve customer loyalty, educate our marketplace, improve our web presence, expand both vertically and horizontally, and ultimately generate new sources of revenue.

  4. What role do you play in the EDR commonground community (strategic and day-to-day)?

    5. My title is VP of Social Media for EDR. In that role, I am responsible for leading social media strategy and monetization efforts. I do whatever is required to deliver a valuable experience for our members while focusing on achieving the objectives outlined above.

  5. So you just found out that you won Forrester’s prestigious Groundswell Award for best B2B support community. Who was your competition?

    6. That is a great question. When we saw the other submissions from SAP, Aflac, Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Pitney Bowes, NetApp, we were pleased just to be in the same category as those market leading companies. When we found out from Josh Bernoff that we won, we were absolutely thrilled as it validated all the hard work of our members, partners, and staff.

  6. Why do you think that Forrester picked you?

    7. I think Forrester picked us because we were able to share real success metrics on the true business benefits to both members and EDR. Plus we have an extremely high customer satisfaction rate.

  7. What are 2-3 lessons that you’ve learned that you might share with other companies thinking about community?

    8. The three most important lessons I can share are a) Before you select technology, make sure you have a clear and concise strategy with defined metrics b) Content, either user or expert generated, or both, is the key ingredient to a thriving community. c) Many companies fail at building communities. It is not easy to build a thriving community. Therefore, set reasonable expectations up front and make sure you have the proper senior management support, resources, and organizational commitment to realize them.

  8. Thoughts on “build vs. join” i.e. do you feel like you’ve got all your bases covered with your community? Or are you a believer in participating in 3rd party social networks?

    9. I believe in both. It depends on your goals and objectives. Those will drive what makes the most sense. Often times, both in tandem are the best option. As the leader in our market, we decided the best approach was to build commonground. We also have a LinkedIn Group and a Facebook Fan page.

  9. Freestyle – give me any other pearls of wisdom or color commentary you’d like to share here. If you feel like you’ve answered everything you can skip this.

    10. When building a community, it is way too easy to get distracted. Focus is critical if you want to be successful.

NOTE: I interviewed both Mark this year in my Experts in the Industry series. If you want to learn more about him, head on over and have a look see.

Experts in the Industry: Mark Wallace (62 of 45)

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I’ve known Mark Wallace, VP of social media for EDR, for a few years now. He and I were part of the exec team at Shared Insights (along with Jim Storer) — a company that ultimately merged with Knowledge Planet to become Mzinga. The reason I mention this is that Mark and I have spend A LOT of time together… in a good way. From trips to Vegas (conference related) to attending Tool concerts together, we’ve had a chance to bond well beyond a tradititional business relationship.

What I appreciate about Mark (and have from the day I interviewed with him) is that he is a top shelf sales guy. Not the snake oil varietal but a guy that has worked his butt off building relationships, delivering value and ultimately trying to figure out how he can make his partners that much more successful. To that end, it’s not surprising that he ended up at Mzinga client, EDR, heading up their social and online community initiatives.
I could go on and on about Mark but for your sake, I’ll let his answers do the rest of the talking in the Experts in the Industry series:
In one sentence, please describe what you do and why you’re good at it.
I am building a community for environmental and property due diligence professionals for Environmental Data Resources called commonground and have succeeded and failed enough times over the years to recognize how to create a vibrant and valuable community.
How did you get into the world of online community, social media or social marketing?
I originally got involved in online communities back in 2001. I worked very closely with Jim Storer at DCI building online communities in support of our exposition, conference, and seminar business. I remember when we sold our first web seminar for crmcommunity.com members to Siebel Systems (will always be one of my favorite sales of all time) when web seminars were an emerging trend. I remember the high fives flying.
If you had $10 million to invest in one company and one company only based on their use of “social,” which company would it be and why?
I think I would invest in HubSpot. In addition to the fact that I really like their business model, I feel like they are a company that has truly embraced social media through all aspects of their business. And, I really find value in the products and services they deliver.
Which business leader, politician or public figure do you most respect?
If I had to pick one, I would have to say Leonard Abess, Chairman and CEO, of City National Bancshares. What an amazing story. He succeeded where most other banks failed, distributed $60 million in bonuses to his current employees and former employees, and did not show up to take credit for the success when the bonuses were paid out. He is the true definition of a leader and team player. I would love the opportunity to meet him.
Would you join a toothpaste community? Why?
I don’t think I would join a toothpaste community although it certainly sounds appealing! What I would like to do is to spend time with the folks who manage that community. I suspect it would be a fairly challenging task. Imagine what we might learn!
Freeform – here’s where you can riff on anyone or anything – good or bad. Or just share a pearl of wisdom.
Three of the most important things I have learned over the years are:

  1. Communication happens in three ways – face to face, over the phone, and online. Ignore that as part of your social media strategy and you are doomed to fail.
  2. Members, partners, and the community owner, need to receive value. If they do, they will participate and even spend money. 
  3. It is important to make time. Find a way.
You can also follow Mark on Twitter at @MWallComm

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