Technical Disaster

Corporate Social Media – Intermec Review

Barry — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 02:08:04 +0000

This is an article I just wrote today on corporate social media. The crowd here seems like they would get the big picture statement in it regarding social media marketing, and for those interested in reading more I would greatly check out the list of corporate campaigns that I mention from Mashable.com.

*****************************************************

Monitoring the huge trend in corporate social media, executives around the world are testing new ways of sharing information and trying to discard some old school stumbling blocks. Many corporate decision makers are left looking at advanced spreadsheets and blindly take shot after shot in the dark (hoping they hit the mythical beast “the prospect” in the process.)

As our team at 123 is often moving around and speaking to these decision makers, we occasionally like to flex our brains a little and examine a company online. Are they doing it right? Are they doing it wrong? Are they even trying? Most importantly, what type of information is available by spending a few minutes browsing around the net?

One of the companies that caught my attention for reviewing was Intermec. When I first visited the Intermec site I thought “uh oh, another corporate site” and then I noticed they had a few unusual links at the bottom: del.icio.us, Digg, and Technorati.

I found this odd, mostly since a good portion of users coming to this site (business decision makers) have little knowledge of what del.icio.us, Digg, or Technorati is.

On a flip side, I would have to assume that no one on del.icio.us, Digg, or Technorati has any clue what Intermec does. (BTW, they are in Seattle and I am one of the rare people who actually knows what Intermec does.)

For those of you who don’t know, “Intermec Inc. (NYSE:IN) is in the business of helping you achieve the most return from your automated information and data capture (AIDC) and mobile computing systems. That means we do more than design and build the industryâ€™s most complete lineup of rugged, reliable and versatile equipment. We also work with you to get inside your challenges, to know your unique situation and then leverage our strong relationships with resellers and industry-leading alliance partners to help you create a total solution that harmonizes with your networks, platforms and processes. Our collaborative, connected approach can ensure a more complete and seamless implementation whether your needs call for our Gen2 RFID, bar code systems, rugged computers or a Cisco WLAN infrastructure.” (Quoted from Intermec site.)

What does that mean? Well… that is the type of stuff you see on many corporate sites these days. It is the officially confusing way to make sure that social media doesn’t work and that the general visitor suffers a quick case of avoidance. If you land on nearly any page of the Intermec site, you discover brochure pages that would be confusing for the general population of a larger social networking site. If you are lucky, they may actually take a second to read the “about us” page and be baffled by the terminology of an industry, or be lost when a company uses acronym descriptors like AIDC, WLAN, or Gen2 RFID.

If you were a user of Intermec’s products or looking for like-minded information, the site design may be presenting the information at the right experience level. However general social media sites are not experienced in the vocabulary of your industry, so examining the actual social networks they are trying to maneuver in reveals some problematic issues:

Technorati has 100 results for the term “Intermec” on various blog posts and articles. I am unfortunately not spotting any official Intermec blog or centralized source of information to harness that exposure. It appears as if all the product reviews and random commentary are either not pointing back at the main Intermec site, or randomly linking to a nestled product page. With the amazing amount of information Intermec releases in newsletters and articles, it is somewhat baffling to find that they are not syndicating the content through a branded blog or properly setup information site.

Digg reveals another unfavorable scenario:

Ouch. Zero results. Perhaps someone working at Intermec should Digg a few results…. or they may have tried doing that a little too often and found themselves removed from the Digg platform for spamming (I didn’t check to see if it was removed for spamming.)

Del.icio.us reveals that while popular is popular, it is also a strange way of losing money.

Del.icio.us has 259 mentions of Intermec. At first glance this would probably mean “success” to most corporate marketers. They have tagged content for words that could produce some relevant traffic for the business. Unfortunately a variety of suppliers (and Google) seem to be buying the traffic via the adwords campaign highlighted in red on the screenshot to the left. Intermec itself is buying the keyword “Intermec” for brand protection, paying $1.75 to $2.90 per visitor.

Rather than receive “free traffic” from a social media site, Intermec is actually losing advertising budget to both del.icio.us and Google. This is a typical Google issue found on many sites that utilize the Adwords system for monetizing traffic, social media transforms from organic traffic to paid traffic.

Moving away from social media sites and looking at Compete.com, we can see that Intermec has been doing a decent job this year for increasing traffic. According to open data sources, traffic is up roughly 160% since last year. The top relevant keywords sending traffic to the site are:

intermec
intermec technologies
rfid tags consumer products
rfid chips

These keywords are ultimately one of the “sweet spot” targets for other competitive companies. Collecting the information on five to ten competitive businesses usually reveals the best keyword choices and open targets for driving organic search traffic. Allowing your competitors to do the heavy lifting work of experimenting with keyword phrases is an effective way of reducing the project cost of your own keyword campaigns (either paid or organic.)

Back to my questions from the beginning of the article:

Are they doing it right? Are they doing it wrong? Are they even trying? They are trying, but missing to target the right demographic in social media. This is a general promotion issue in many marketing campaigns: the target is missing the demographic.

While sites like Del.isio.us, Technorati, and Digg have massive communities, they may or may not have a niche audience that fits with your overall mission objective. Even if an article or project page was “Dugg to the Top” what results would 500k generic visitors produce? (Probably none)

When corporate social media campaigns are launched, it requires strategic mindset to analyze the available audience and choose an appropriate goal for the business. The steps to examine in launching a promotional effort with social media has a very simple core:

Needs of the Business
Budget and resources (labor, talent, available bandwidth, and dollars)
Competitive Analysis (like minded information, finding sweet spots with maximum ROI)
Understanding of the available audience
Conversion goals of the campaign
Measurement

In Intermec’s case, there could be useful reasons for using Digg, Del.icio.us, or Technorati, but the benefit for a corporation in such an audience would need to focus on relevant campaigns that work within the confines of the audience. There are also additional benefits that may be a step removed, such as promoting an article or whitepaper within a community like Digg to produce a specific search engine result.

If you would like to read another article on other types of information that are readily available online, read my article on Intelius, which includes financial, marketing, and brand impact information results you can find online.

Barry — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 02:20:15 +0000

The article was originally titled “Social media Training with Joe”, but for the audience it was changed to “Biznik Relationships- shaking hands to co-hosting”Â I wanted to share it with everyone here on Biznik because part of the story expands outside of my main readership and touches upon a key fact of building relationships with people within the community.

*********************************************

My friend Joe Hage and I did a marketing workshop last night for a small group of professionals. Normally hosting a marketing workshop wouldnâ€™t be a noteworthy event, but in this case it is a wonderful case example of starting a connection using social media and developing into a trusting business relationship.

Who is Joe Hage?

As a professional, Joe is one of the few marketers I have met that has an extreme grasp of both tactical and strategic marketing. He has a sparkling resume of working with companies like Cardiac Science, 1-800-Flowers, Kraft Foods, Jell-O, and Safeco. When he originally met me, Joe didnâ€™t know a huge volumes about my specialty in social media, and he immediately rolled up his sleeves and began devouring information. In any line of marketing work, the ability to absorb new concepts and create new strategies is essential to exceeding expectations. From a business perspective- Joe is the â€œfull meal dealâ€ when it comes to marketing strategy.

How did we meet?

I originally met Joe by being a casual member of a local online community here in Seattle called Biznik. You can view both of our friendly profiles here – Joe Hage and Barry Hurd. In terms of the relationship between us, Joe and I would simply not have met in real life if not for Biznik. Realizing that two extremely busy professionals such as Joe and I can form a strong and healthy relationship using online networking is an eye-opener for other professionals like us.

How do we interact?

Joe and I use Biznik as a place to shed some of our daily job duties and dive into a creative problem solving mindset working with independent business owners. While I cannot speak entirely for Joe, planning the occasional workshop with a different group of professional personalities allows me to really flex my brain and bring my marketing mind to bear. While some topics in such a class may seem very â€œ101â€³ to either of us, the unexpected difficulties and obstacles our attendees have require us to think outside of our own box.

What was our workshop about?

The official positioning statement: â€œTo Biznik members in the real estate and related industries, Joe and Barryâ€™s Real Estate Marketing Workshop is your opportunity to learn and apply strategies you need to better stand out in a market crowded with half-hearted real estate professionals.â€

In our two-hour session, you will:

Apply recommendations from the real estate marketing article to your own business.
Share and learn best practices used by fellow Bizniks in the space.
Get Barryâ€™s counsel on which search engine optimization key words are virtually impossible to get.
Walk away with some of Barryâ€™s best tricks to get your name on the Google searches you are targeting.

What did people learn?

A lot more than those four bullet points above. The attendees had a chance to hear relevant and like-minded marketing problems analyzed and trouble-shot by two marketing veterans. However the real value only becomes apparent when the audience and the mentors agree to see things from different angles.

In the normal world most of us accept our problems and obstacles from our own point of view. When we see a wall in front of us, most of us see an option to steer around it or stop.

Joe and I do not see things from the same angle. Yes we are both marketing professionals. Yes we both have a lot of experience.
Yet we each have a fundamental viewpoint and core to the way our mind works.

In an interactive workshop, attendees have the ability to utilize the wisdom and talent of the entire group. Joe and I may lead the discussion, but we cannot see how anyone else perceives the same problem. We can only observe how we see it, along with how we view the interaction of the group members.

By utilizing skill, talent, experience, and different perspectives – a team of professionals working in unison can creatively offer solutions to maneuver around almost any obstacle. With only a few extra viewpoints, the team may also benefit from knowing what is behind the obstacle before they even decide to expend the effort to get around it.

Conclusion – What does this mean in regards to social media?

Simply put= When used correctly, social media allows any professional to use the wisdom and talent of the entire conversation. They may be smart and talented in respect to a certain field of focus, but the intelligence, talent, and return on effort is magnified significantly by the ability to accept that they may have a perspective that is hindering progress. (I.E. truly wise people can admit that they are wrong, not â€œthe bestâ€, or simply need help.)

As a professional who utilizes the online world, every day of my life is exposed to the benefit of having hundreds of experts in my networkÂ that serves as a sounding board to my own ideas. That exposure is not just simply readership and promotion for my business, but results in the benefit of my ideas interacting with the talented viewpoint of professionals like Joe and all of you.

********************************

If you haven’t caught my main company blog at 123SocialMedia.com business social media promotion,Â I suggest you come on over and check out the original copy of this article Social Media Training with Joe and leave a comment on it (and visit a few other articles)

Interesting question…

Barry — Wed, 21 May 2008 02:34:56 +0000

I had a “big idea” question on my main blog yestery about how influential business thinkers are rated and created. The “gist” of the article was the fact that the Wall Street Journal had compiled a list of influential business thinkers and relied on Google to do it, but didn’t really take into account how search engines work (or why people search on an engine)

I would love to hear from some of my professional contact about systems of rating and categorization of professionals.

How does everyone feel the ranking system is working?
Do you know of the ways people have abused and manipulated it? Do you care?
Are there better ways for defining thought leaders?
Should community members be able to vote other members up or down?
Are there thought leaders here that don’t receive honorable mention?

Does anyone have a site or system that has an incredible way of indentifying industry leaders?

Seattle Social Media Updates

Barry — Sat, 17 May 2008 00:51:40 +0000

I’ve been busy busy busy, and yes this blog has been left rather unattended- but for good reason. I decided to write more around an educational idea on social media @ 123socialmedia.com promotion and branding. My newer articles cover a wide range of different topics and I hope that everyone learns from my experience. In the past two weeks here are some samples of my articles:

Enterprise Social Media Measurement and Analysis – I receive plenty of feedback from peers in the social media space about â€œreporting and analysisâ€ of the metrics behind online conversations. How do you measure buzz, authority, perspective, bias, trending, cost? All of the above? A mixture of it all?

Seattle SEO and search engine optimization? – So many companies are trying to get on top of Google for different keywords, and I have often pondered the great question of â€œis it worth it?â€ All too many companies want to define themselves by phrases such as â€œSeattle SEOâ€ or â€œSeattle Search Engine Optimizationâ€ but the truth of the matter is that less than 20% of our traffic comes from keyword search engines such as Google and Yahoo. Sure we may be in Seattle, but SEO is only a small fraction of what we do.

Social Media Measurement and Brand Control -Social Media Measurement usually refers to tracking online communications and networking patterns that occur on blogs, podcasts, videos, social communities, and the various commentary that exchanges between them. Many companies are struggled with the task of analyzing when and why people are talking about them online, or if there is something a company needs to be aware of relating to the industry with competitive companies and products.

Social Media Influencer Marketing - Influencer Marketing is the act of targeting specific thought-leaders, critics, industry giants, celebrities, and just plain interesting personalities. Wikipedia currently has it defined as â€œa form of marketing that has emerged from a variety of recent practices and studies, in which focus is placed on specific key individuals (or types of individual) rather than the target market as a whole.

Ethical Media Consulting – As a marketer I am responsible for helping my clients promote themselves, as a public relations contact I am responsible for helping them strategically maneuver, as a professional I am responsible for making sure that I do not sacrifice my clients well-being for my own, and as a thoughtful human I must hold myself responsible for everything else.

Honoring people who pushed every limit

Barry — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 19:16:53 +0000

My brother runs a site that covers motorcycle events and news in the Northwest called www.biker-events.com

Many of his articles are not in my niche, but one struck me as I hadn’t heard the news Evel Knievel died last night at the age of 69.

This was a guy who, whether he was an entertainer or just a motorcycle rider, touched and inspired millions of people who sat in the audience and witnesses a man that redefined the limits every day of his life.

In all my efforts, I can only hope that in some strange way my life interacts and influences so many people. To have a talent to inspire the crowd, to leave them in awe, and to believe that something impossible really is possible.

As my brother says “Check out his website www.evelknievel.com and take a moment to send a thought to him and his family on this sad weekend.”

Seattle Network invite only business group

Barry — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 17:46:12 +0000

A lot of people ask me things like:

When was the last time you used the Yellow Pages? Probably never.

Simply put, the bricks and mortar business model is changing. I spent a good portion of my career at the largest directory company (Verizon), and was constantly examining how social networks, business networking groups, home office technology, video conferencing, inexpensive video blogging, and the general acceptance of online and virtual companies was forcing everyone to reconsider basic business models.

The branding and reputation is moving more and more online: Google, Facebook, Digg.com, YouTubeâ€¦.

Consider this brand new networking group we are starting here: all that is required to do so is a website, a club membership (The Columbia Tower Club provides us with all the faciltitesÂ necessary to do business, not only in Seattle, but in any major city, at a small fraction of the cost of an office) and the search engine placement that we already have after just one week:

Seattle Networking Club Google Search

SeattleÂ Business Club Google Search

Seattle Networking Google Search

This is the new model:

You join the Columbia Tower Club (I have the premium membership which makes all Club Corp clubs worldwide available to me!)
You have search engine placement and placement in social networks which feeds you business
Your office is a website, your meeting place is online and at the club and at events, your books are online; CRMâ€¦
You work from wherever you are, at any time of day and night!

Leveraging Online Conversations

Barry — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 18:09:11 +0000

As business professionals, many of us have extremely busy and sometimes hectic lives. Our daily routine usually involvesÂ handling the immediate tasks at hand, overcoming the â€œhere and nowâ€ obstacles, and dependingÂ on our workload- some of us manage to make time for a networking event: sometimes ranging from a casual friendly dinner or an intensive conference.

The end goal of these events: finding new clients and professional contacts.

The problem: there are only so many hours in the day.

In the real world, many of us would be happy to have a professional dinner where we have the chance to share who we are with twenty-five professional contacts or prospects.

Imagine if you had the power to spend the same one hour a week sharing that information with a hundred, or even a thousand contacts and prospects. Suppose for an instance you could take the greatest party of your life and share the detailed conversation you had with that one lucky person with everyone who attendedâ€¦

That is the â€œEconomy of Scaleâ€ found within social media and online conversations. Professionals of all types (not just real estate professionals) are multiplying intellectual and conversational communication a hundred-fold by using community oriented online networks. Rather than coordinate new groups or shaking hands in the physical world, professionals are marketing themselves in digital communities and social groups. For some, this simply has the benefit of having more informational available to qualify an introduction, with such basic features as profile information. For others, they understand the online power the communities have in search engine marketing and other online marketing efforts.

An additional benefit of this online version of networking is historical conversation.

Historical conversation is what happens when an article is taken from a social media site and is indexed by the major search engines. Very popular phrases and search terms used in a conversation will continue to pull up an article that was written years ago; along with all the commentary and discussion surrounding it. These phrases and search terms can be very precise or sometimes be two to six words in length. Marketing professionals refer to longer search phrases as â€œThe Longtailâ€ of searching.

A new visitor finds the conversation by looking for a phrase in a search engine and finding the article. When a new visitor arrives and reads it for the first time, they have the ability to add additional remarks to the previous conversational thread of the article. In the conversation system (blogs, forums, as well as the search engines), this new comment resurrects the old article and brings a discussion â€˜back from the deadâ€™.

Many popular bloggers note that very popular articles continue to pull in high amounts of traffic six to twelve months after they were written. By noting what articles tend to draw visitors, you can watch your stats and when the article seems to be forgotten you can even resurrect the conversation yourself by writing a more current article that links back to points in the older article. This allows visitors to benefit from past experience and conversations, and it saves you from rewriting the same idea over and over again.

If you have ever heard or witnessed â€œthe perfect conversationâ€ in real life, you can understand the value of being able to browse through the best of the best conversations you have been involved in and using them as points to leverage for your business. With the right steps, a professional can perfect an ordinary idea they had into an ever-evolving conversation that becomes better and better with time.

To learn more about leveraging your conversations, see 3net Search Engine Marketing Blog

About the author:
Barry Hurd is president of Social Media Systems, an online marketing and advertising consultant group working with search engine marketing and leveraging social media communities. He has over 15 years of entrepreneurial Internet and online marketing experience. As an author and prolific blogger, he has reached online audiences around the world. Since the mid-1990s, Barry has been involved in numerous efforts to bring forth technical innovation through online business models. Past projects have included NIKE, REI, TMP Worldwide, Monster.com, Verizon Superpages, Intuit, and RISMedia.

For more information, visit www.socialmediasystems.com.

Sorry for the absence…

Barry — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 16:25:54 +0000

I have actually decided to move a majority of my professional thoughts over to my other two blogs at www.socialmediasystems.com/blog where I will talk about various advertising ideas and impacts, and socialmediakit.com where I will talk about the “online 101″ items and reviews that I wander across.

Technical Disaster will be put on the back burner for the next few months as I examine some projects and figure out which one works best here.

Returning to the Blog Manifesto

Barry — Tue, 29 May 2007 01:52:36 +0000

Having been involved in blogging for years… I’ve been challenged by the numerous changes to electronic communication, the ethics behind the words, the emotions that underlay the ideas, and the personalities that are introduced.

In the 80’s and 90’s I was an active member of multi-line bulletin board systems (BBS) and I was one of the first adopters of the net when things went visual. The years of 300 baud dial-up modems vanished to the world of high-speed multi-page online browsing enhanced by wireless communication of video commentary and nearly instant relay.

So a few years ago I wrote the Blog Manifesto, a series of thoughts and ideas that were inspired by the Cluetrain Manifesto. Having been written before the age of the recent online social revolution, I thought the Blog Manifesto was something that detailed how I felt.

I now realize that within a few short years that many of the things I wrote about have indeed materialized in one way or another. I think that is amazing.

I also realize that the Blog Manifesto is already coming and passing- it may indeed be outdated already. Scary how technology and society can move so quickly.

Google, fraud or not?

Barry — Mon, 21 May 2007 03:03:51 +0000

I have been reviewing a good number of Google and Yahoo marketing campaigns, along with several other services like Idearc, InfoSpace, and a pile of others.

One thing that I have been finding more and more distasteful is that the largest online marketing and search companies out there tend to be the ones that are bending or breaking the most rules (perhaps being the engine themselves, they believe there are no rules?)

As part of a series of articles I’m doing over the next month, I’m asking some tough and hard questions about what online marketing should be about and why “the fine print” in the “big boys” of online marketing tend to be so cluttered with bad clauses.

I released the first one today Google Adwords Qualified Company- Fraud or not? and hope to get some input on it. The Biznik community seems to have a different vantage than many clients I deal with and I wonder what perspective everyone has here.

After reading my article, I would love to converse about what things business owners see when they see a “certified by X” brand.

Does it hold any weight in your buying decision? is this type of thing fraud in your eyes or merely deceptive marketing?