Web 2.0 Expo- Ford Motor Company Case Study

The Ford case study was one of the best presentations at the conference. I wish there were more companies sharing their success stories (or failures) of how to actually implement these techniques in an integrated campaign.

The presentation was led by Scott Monty who manages the social media efforts at Ford and Maggie Fox from Social Media Group who is their social media agency of record. I captured my notes and also embedded the slides from the presentation below.

Getting Started

Before jumping into any social conversations they began by doing a SWOT analysis.What they found is not too much different that what I think most people will find. People are talking about them but they weren't leveraging and integrating these people into their communications efforts.

The Revolution

So they decided to change that. They revolutionized the way they interacted with bloggers. It started by inviting bloggers, the people who were already talking to them to a traditional media event. The bloggers were integrated into the process and invited to see and test drive new vehicles.

They continued that relationship online and as Scott puts it, "we wanted to make storytelling easy." They created web-ready content and distributed it through social media press releases.

What's important to note is that this does not replace their traditional media efforts nor is it packaged and distributed in the same way. Their social media releases are not pushed across the wire. Instead it's a pull method of obtaining content, the releases are optimized for search results, uploaded to the Ford website and RSS enabled so that people can subscribe to the content.

Challenges

Scott said that overall there weren't really any challenges. I don't think this will be the same case for every company. What's different at Ford? Alan Mulally, Ford's CEO. The shift to change their communication style was accepted from the top down. There was a little bit of a legal hurdle to get over since they were opening the access to their content including images and videos to anyone. They agreed to put a creative commons restriction meaning people are free to use the content, but they must link back to Ford and they cannot use the content for profit. Also all images and files are for web use only and can't be reprinted.

Results

More people are talking about Ford, they have received 500 posts since September 2007 and the content of the stories is richer and more inline with the corporate positioning. Some enthusiasts are even embedding the social media releases into their sites as a credible source of Ford news. There are 120 videos posted to YouTube which have received over 1.2 million hits.

Lessons Learned

Ford realized that in today's world, 'everyone is a publisher' not just the journalists and that digital content needs to be an integrated way of thinking, not just an afterthought. Also when it came to making this happen what really helped them get this approved and accepted internally was to sit down and explain this big scary thing called 'social media.' After education and understanding people's fears about it, it became a non-issue. People are only afraid of what they don't know so if you explain the mystery it becomes less scary.

What's Next

The Ford Story is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what's next. The initial creation of this site was done in 4-days (over the Thanksgiving Holiday). The future plans for this site are to pull in 3rd party content and become the centralized hub for all Ford content. They also plan to expand beyond auto bloggers to parent blogs, green, tech and finance blogs.

The Deck

Setting Content Free At Ford - Web 2.0 Expo

View more presentations from Scott Monty.

So, have you driven a Ford lately? Admittedly I haven't but all of this social media outreach gave me some warm and fuzzies so I think I may have to take a test drive this weekend

Cisco Marketing Has Got Game

Some call it social media excellence some just say we've gone crazy...whatever you call it, it seems to be working.

As an extension to the social media efforts that we're leveraged for Cisco's ASR launch, Cisco announced a tournament around the EDGE QUEST game where they are offering $10,000 cash plus a Cisco ASR 1002 router to the sole winner. Not a bad deal for playing a game but the competition is stiff with a top score currently at 204,540.

I haven't exactly kept it a secret that I'm one of the marketers behind this campaign so of course I think it's cool but here are a few specific reasons why I think it’s working for us:

1. We're reaching our target audience in a new, fun, and engaging way. Last year online gaming attracted 28 percent of the total worldwide online population -- almost 217 million people -- and according to CIMS, 24% of those were IT professionals! Us marketers are always trying to fish in a big pond but it helps when they’re all swimming in the same place.
2. Low cost, high ROI. This program was an extension of an existing program. The EDGE QUEST game was created at launch so the cost of the tournament includes just the "carrot" of $10K plus the router. We also invested a small amount in changing the game a bit for the "money round" of the tournament but no budget went into promotion we focused solely on social media outlets. In return we've had an influx in PR and Blog pick-ups and a substatial increase in traffic to the game and product page. All of this activity of course is being measured and considered as part of the ROI of the campaign.
3. It was just a blast to work on. Hey there's nothing wrong with that - it's fun for the people engaging with Cisco in a new way and it was fun to be part of the marketing team to develop and creatively promote the game and tournament leveraging social media tactics which included a social media release, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Del.icio.us, Digg and Flickr.

This particular campaign won't work for everyone but creating a social marketing campaign can get your customers engaged and extend your message far beyond traditional marketing.

Leveraging Social Media and Web 2.0 in a Product Launch

Part of the reason I've been a lazy blogger lately is that I have been consumed with launching "the most powerful compact router every created" - the Cisco ASR 1000 Series Routers. It's been a fun launch and we pulled out all of the web 2.0 stops creating a Virual. Viral. Visual. launch. Here's a laundry list of how we leveraged Web 2.0:

• Pre-Launch Uber User Site - We leveraged light hearted videos on this site and posted them on YouTube to maximize visibility.
• Facebook Group - This was part of the pre-launch so I was able write about this one in an earlier post and even shared our process and tips here.
• Interactive 3-D Game - I would like to give kudos to the vendor - Somnio - who helped us create this very cool online game. "EDGE QUEST" offers our audience a fun and engaging way to learn about the product and interact with the Cisco brand - a no-brainer given the playing statistics of online games.
• Social Media Web Widget - Again kudos to Somnio here for the development of Cisco's first web widget that 'lets our content free' by allowing users to embed it on their site (as shown below).



• Social Media Release (SMR) - It's been nearly a year since I stumbled across and wrote about SMRs. What make them different from a traditional release? It's the approach and the fact that a SMR leverages and highlights all of the social aspects of the announcement.
• Second Life Presence - We were able to leverage Second Life pre-launch by hosting a countdown party and post launch by walking through a product demo.
  Other Stuff - We also leveraged sites like Digg, del.icio.us, Technorati, Reddit and StumbleUpon - we also have a focused blogger outreach program and a pretty cool looking launch page.

Want to know more about this launch? I'll be presenting on March 26 with Wilson Craig, PR Manager at Cisco for the Silcon Valley American Marketing Association to share processes, best practices and results.

Cisco Connected Life Contest Benefits from the Social Web

This is me exhaling. The Connected Life Contest I wrote about in an earlier post is in it's final days and we've already exceeded our project goal by 250%. The social media tactics we used showed a steady flow of entries almost immediately. Next time I'd like to spend more time building an online personality for the character of the campaign and being more active in the social web.

Overall it's been a successful campaign and I am most proud of the blogger reactions to Cisco's first ever Social Media Release:

PR Squared
"The Cisco release is great – it’s straightforward, easy to understand, contains lotsa links to additional content (including a video featuring the band members from KISS!), a YouTube community site link, an RSS feed, a Digg This link, etc. "

Agency Next PR
This ought to tell you a couple of things about the new media era in which some of us now live. Cisco Systems — you know, that company that is the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet — is having a contest to gather the best new connectivity ideas out there from ordinary, imaginative people in the big wide world.

Shel Holtz' Blog
The Cisco release hits most of the right notes with news highlights and facts, tags and keywords, links, quotes, multimedia, contact information, an RSS feed for all company news, a trackback URL and a link to the traditional version of the release. (Evidently, it wasn’t too time-consuming to produce both.) A purpose-build del.icio.us page would have been a nice addition, but overall, a very nice bit of work from Cisco Systems.

The Podcaster
What Cisco have done is allow the online community as well as the media to have access to a large array of additional information through the links. (I am not a journalist but I have Google Alerts and other tools helping me monitor the development of social media and online community marketing so I became aware of this).

Looks like Cisco is taking the red pill too and will be digging into the rabbit hole deeper with an announcement coming next week. I can't wait!

The Value of Social Bookmarking for Marketers

In my efforts to explain the value of social bookmarking for an internal marketing group I created a presentation that outlines:

• What is Social Bookmarking?
• The Growth of Social Bookmarking
• Marketing Value of Social Bookmarking
• Good Use Case Examples of Social Bookmarking
• Recommended Best Practices: What to do & What NOT to do

For marketers, social bookmarking is more than just a way for users to store, classify, share and search their sites - if used correctly it's a way to drive traffic and fuel a viral campaign. The growth of social bookmarking isn't slowing down either. According to Hitwise from August 2006-February 2007 Digg was up 9% and del.icio.us was up 130%.

HP and IBM are ahead of the curve and have already adopted Social Bookmarking in their marketing programs. HP has even created their own widget to encourage users to bookmark their sites and they were also one of the early adopters of Social Media Releases (read an earlier post on this topic). IBM is also using Social Bookmarking links as a way to encourage users to 'tag' them.

Here are some best practices I recommend to get started:

What to do:

• Encourage social bookmarking by adding links to make it easy for users – consider asking email subscribers to bookmark your site as a call to action
• Consider developing a custom widget that matches the corporate website look and feel to leverage multiple bookmarking sites (like HP did)
• Consider what pages of your site make sense to use social bookmarking on (ie. news, events, tools, resources). Typically, anything that is updated regularly or acts as a resource
• Make sure your approach is consistent and sustainable - try to avoid dramatic fluctuations in ranking algorithms

What NOT to do:

• Don't submit content just to get traffic without taking into account whether the content would interest the community – if you waste their time, they’ll stop giving it to you
• Don’t make multiple accounts to artificially promote your content – this is an act of desperation. If you have good stuff, they will keep coming back
• Don’t use software programs to automate the process by spamming as many social sites as you can – nobody likes a spammer
• Don’t pay someone else to do these things either – there are people out there who are obnoxious for a living. Let’s not encourage them

Resources for this post:
Social Bookmarking & Marketing
Hitwise Intelligence Analyst Weblogs
Wikipedia
HP Web Usability, Experience and SEO Blog
HP Social Media Release
IBM Social Bookmarking Examples
Earners Blog

PR Redux

The onslaught continues! It seems no bastion of the traditional marketing world is safe from progressive thinking! The unassuming "press release", the workhorse of public relations since time immemorial, is the latest to fall victim to the influence of the subversive seduction of the two-dot-oh world. I was recently hit with the term Social Media Releases (SMRs) from Brian Solis' post 'Social Media Release - 'Everything you ever Wanted to (or Should) Know' . As far as I can tell, this meme was coined a year ago by Todd Defren of Shift Communications.

Basically it's press release and blog post mashup - it lies somewhere in the middle. SMRs provide a way to package a story so that other people (publishers and bloggers) can take it and make it their own. SMRs leverage social tools like digg, del.icio.us and Technorati and can allow comments like a blog post so readers can respond. Here's a great example of how HP is packaging their SMRs - you can also download a template from Shift Communications here.

This was interesting to me for a few reasons:

- First: It continues on the trend of pull content (vs. push). With SMRs you just put it out there and leave it up to your audience to find it and use it (rather than try to sell them or 'pitch' them the content).
- Second: As a marketer, I'm always looking for the medium to fit the message and this gives me a brand new option. With some focused testing, it shouldn't be too difficult to figure out which messages are best for traditional PR and which can benefit most from SMR.
- Third: Used correctly, this is far more likely than your vanilla press release to create a viral effect. Giving people the power of taking your most timely 411 a-la-carte will make it easier for them to consume, process, and re-distribute.

I'm no expert in SMRs by any means but I am going to work with my PR team to make sure they start considering it for future announcements.