TANDBERG’s Break Down the Walls Wins Best Corporate Blog

I’ve written previously in this blog about the success of TANDBERG’s Break Down the Walls social media portal. Tuesday night that success was officially recognized as Break Down the Walls took the prize for best corporate blog at the inaugural Northern Virginia Technology Council (NVTC) social media awards.

TANDBERG wasn’t the only winning Strategic Communications Group client. Neustar took home the award for best use of viral videos. Full disclosure alert — while I consult on social media tactics with a number of business units inside Neustar, the viral video campaign was executed by the agency Apollo Bravo.

Me, Brad Beckstrom of Apollo, Stephanie Klaiber and Jim Leach of Neustar

Some of the other winners underscored the overall strength of the Government 2.0 scene here in Washington. Other winners last night:

• Best use of Facebook — State Department
• Best use of LinkedIn — Army Contracting Command
• Social media campaign — Arlington County

Our client at TANDBERG Meredith Lawrence could not have been more gracious to Strategic when accepting the award. In fact, she insisted I take the stage with her. This doesn’t happen too often anymore. I had my time on the corporate spokesman side of things. My role as a PR consultant is to make the client the star, not garner attention for myself.

Plus, when you practice b2b and b2g PR your successes are often private. You know you’ve accomplished the project goals, and so does the client. But the success isn’t usually public knowledge, or trumpeted in Bisnow’s Fed Tech.

So it was much appreciated when Meredith credited the Strategic team for making Break Down the Walls so successful. Great work for great clients, as we like to say at Strategic.

Meredith accepting the award

There are a lot of talented communicators in the DC area, and a lot of good firms. The competition for business is fierce. As my colleague and partner Marc Hausman likes to quip, “Don’t expect a lot of thank yous in this business.”  Which makes getting one all the more special.

Me and Meredith with the prize

Breaking Down Walls with TANDBERG

Late last year, I wrote about the success TANDBERG was having with its public sector blog from an SEO perspective. The client had a strategy, and stuck to it. We had helped them launch the blog, had attracted a large readership through the consistent publishing of quality content and were ranked #2 in organic search results. (Update — now #1)

In other words, TANDBERG was ready for the next step. So today, TANDBERG public sector launched the social media portal Break Down the Walls.

What do I mean by the next step? Transitioning a blog to a social portal is part of Strategic’s methodology that has been proven out for clients like Microsoft, BT and Sun Microsystems. Launching a social media portal gives the loyal audience that’s been built up more choices on how to interact with the company, and do it in a less formal environment than the main corporate site.

TANDBERG is experimenting with ways to turn very interested readers into potential prospects, primarily via resources that require registration to access. We also are planning webinars specifically focused on how to implement video conferencing in the public sector, with registration happening within Break Down the Walls.

Obviously, this next step needs to be done in ways that respect the audience we’ve built. We’ve already achieved a great deal of success with the blog, including expanded press coverage of TANDBERG’s federal leadership in video and the SEO ranking I discussed last year. Now it’s critical to establish a measurable ROI that directly supports TANDBERG’s business objectives, by giving readers easy ways to self-identify as potential prospects. This can be done without weakening the editorial mission of the site whatsoever.

Social media initiatives must demonstrate measurable value to earn their place in marketing budgets during tough economic times. Grounded in strategy and executed properly, social media can build audiences that directly support the bottom line of an organization.

SEO — A Success Story

How to empirically measure the value of public relations is a challenge as old as the profession itself. The rise of social media offers exciting new opportunities on this front. Last week one of my clients achieved validation of our hard work over the past few months. They now show up as the #2 organic return when searching on Google.

Let me give some context. Earlier this year we helped launch and support a blog for TANDBERG Public Sector. TANDBERG is the market leader for video conferencing, particularly in the public sector. But Cisco and Polycom have better known brands. TANDBERG engaged with Strategic Communications Group to build awareness and eventually support revenue growth via social media channels.

Week in and week out, we make sure that good, fresh content is published twice a month on the blog. As any writer will tell you, this takes discipline. There are always urgent PR issues that can trump a blog calendar, but TANDBERG kept its eye on the ball and stuck to the plan. They also gave us clear instruction to tag the content with the acronym VTC for video teleconferencing, since it was best known to their customers and prospects.

So today, when you search “VTC and government” on Google, you get this result, with the TANDBERG PS blog being the second organic listing on the search engine response page (naturally, another acronym, SERP). And as important, not a sign of any competitor:

Now there are some “black hat” consultants who promise to tinker with algorithms and game the system to achieve this kind of result. In my experience, there is no substitute for old fashioned hard work. Months of quality content and consistent tagging and promotion resulted in this placement. Plus, online shoppers and researchers put more trust in the organic results as opposed to the sponsored links.

This kind of placement can be priceless. First, your content being highlighted to any online visitor who searches on the terms you’ve identified as most important to your service. Second, this kind of organic listing can remove the need for funds dedicated to sponsored Adwords. We’ve got clients who spend into the six figures on such campaigns — how much could they save with this kind of organic performance?

So what are the lessons learned? First, as with any social media campaign have a strategy that reinforces the overall objectives of the organization. Don’t confuse tools with strategy.

Second, identify the terms connected with your product or service, and produce quality content on a regular basis that is properly tagged and promoted to online audiences.

Third — STICK WITH IT! This honestly is the toughest step, especially in this age of trimmed communications budgets and departments. Don’t let the day to day imperatives distract from a approved course of action. Companies today should think of themselves as publishers on their issue of expertise, with the corresponding deadlines for copy.

Now that we’ve built a large audience and achieved this kind of SEO success, Strategic is working with TANDBERG to evolve their blog into a social portal that gives visitors more choice in how to interact with the company. Watch for an update to this post – and have a great Thanksgiving!

How to Measure the Value of Social Media?

Recently I participated in a very timely online conversation on the topic of quantifying the success of social media. I’ve been a member of the Ad-Marketing listserv for a long time, originally started by the Morino Institute. Thanks to Mitch Arnowitz for keeping the list alive.

This is a very hot topic right now, with more PR and marketing budget dollars being dedicated to social media. Social media has rapidly achieved a level long held by PR in general. It’s generally acknowledged to be a valuable commodity, but it’s difficult to measure.

The responses to Mitch’s inquiry were very interesting. Lynn Miller of Miller Strategic Marketing talked about the value of Twitter that hard to measure quantitatively:

With regard to your list of success metrics for social media – I suggest you add a qualitative category to cover “learnings.” This could be anything from insights into consumer wants, complaints, trends, etc., to competitive insights, relationships formed, etc. One might say that you cover this under “Traction in Social Networks,” but I actually think it is quite different. Many people are so fixated on followers that they regard that as “traction,” even when they’ve LEARNED nothing from those “followers” because the encounters are so superficial.

Susan Kuhn Frost suggested not focusing too much on empirical data to support social media efforts, and shared how it has led to new relationships and opportunities for her:

Hi Mitch, I personally look at social media as relationship building, learning, and opportunity seeking. I would say that as I understand it more, I change what I do to seek a better return. So I don’t burden it with too much demand for measurable success in the beginning. I value the learning process as much as I value the results it brings. That said, I am looking essentially to create and sieze new opportunities. Conversations, visits to my blog, comments on my blog, signups to my e-mail list are all indicators that I am moving in the right direction, and as I get better I expect these indicators to go up. But I have had many “successes” that don’t follow that path, but come strictly out of individual relationships. So, my “metrics” are about relationships: — richer relationships with people I know but don’t see much, but who I now work more frequently with,– new relationships that develop online and lead to in person working relationships and opportunities, — learning from (and access to) leaders in several fields which increases my value, — building relationships with people in other countries, esp. England and Australia, whom I learn from– being more able to help others because I have access to so many people and information…

Dirk Johnson of ROI Websites was having none of it. He feels that in most cases social media can’t justify the spend and as a result will fall to budget cuts.

I think that every business is going to establish their own criteria for “success” with this. Things like event promotion and event communication fall into the productivity category, and are not really in the lead generation category. Nothing wrong with that, but if someone is at an “event”, (however that is defined, online, etc), and
tweeting, then they are already on the radar screen. Maybe I am reading that one wrong.

In the end though, it really all comes down to lead generation/sales/ROI.

A $50K per year employee typically needs to generate ten to twenty times that amount of new sales to justify their seat. That is a very tall order, in a lot of situations. Can a newly hired “social networker”, usually new to the business, generate a million bucks in new sales inside Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter?

It might happen. If not, then they are just more overhead.

You just might be hiring a genuine slacker that views the Web and social networks as entertainment. Many of these postings are aimed directly at attracting that type of person as applicants.

Despite all the Kool-aid being drunk over this subject, this could all just evaporate as a business fad as quickly as it has come on. Mainly due to follower overload, etc. At some point, there becomes too much info to follow, and so most of us begin to ignore most of it.

Again, I know it works in certain environments, but the call for real, verifiable ROI will only get louder from now on, as the costs of doing all of this start to hit the bottom line.

Mayra Ruiz-McPherson – @marketingmisfit — talks about a “sphere of influence” (SOI) as opposed to ROI:

At the recent BlogPotomac event held a few weeks ago, someone (I think one of the speakers) shared or coined the phrase “SOI” for “Sphere of Influence” vs. “ROI” for “Return of Investment.” And I think the SOI term is actually really rather far, far more accurate, more so than ROI which implies some kind of direct monetary return which is *not* what the social web is meant to do or cause, no matter HOW much marketers or sales people or CEOs and senior execs wish it would. Social networks were primarily established for folks to communicate and share information. It is us, the marketing/PR/sales peeps, who are imposing ROI-type of expecations onto a scene that actually openly rejects being sold to.

Yes, there are definite cases where participating in the social web can lead to ROI; not negating that at all. However, the primary focus should be SOI and SOI should directly and indirectly facilitate ROI over time. Just as in real life … sales people have to establish connections, develop/build/nurture relationships and at some point … the fruit of these efforts may *or may not* materialize into sales leads. Ideally we’d love for every sales person to convert every sales lead into a revenue generating account. BUT that is not always realistic … and this scenario also applies to the social web. Not sure why folks can’t translate these every day sales-related scenarios onto the social web … seems like lots of folks believe that simply by engaging on the social scene, soon they’ll see lots of $$$ trickling in in a matter of days or weeks. Not the case. Possible??? Yes …but shouldn’t be expected just like non-virtual/real life sales/biz dev scenarios.

Based on my experiences handling social media activities for clients over the last 24 months, there is no question social media contributes to sales and revenue growth. It’s not always easy to measure, and it does take time. Mark Hausman of Strategic wrote a good post last month where he talks about quantifiable ROI as the “last mile.” We’ve had clients who could show a direct correlation between social media activity and lead generation. But we’ve also had clients who experience the value of social media in harder to quantify ways.

GovDelivery uses their widely followed Twitter stream (over 1450 followers) to provide near real-time customer support. Their excellent corporate blog has also led to media opportunities for their CEO, Scott Burns, who had become a “go-to” guy on all questions Government 2.0.

TANDBERG public sector has also used its new public sector blog to highlight the company’s leadership in government video teleconferencing. The blog focuses entirely on government video, and helped land a profile piece in this month’s Washington Technology.

David Kellogg also writes an excellent thought leadership blog on enterprise search for his company Mark Logic.

For Microsoft’s State and Local business group, what began as a YouTube channel is becoming an online community. Strategic launched The Bright Side of Government to help Microsoft collect user generated videos from state and local customers. It has become such a strong brand that it is being expanded into a full online community, with a blog, open forums and multiple social distribution channels.

Enterprise deal capture can also be supported via social media. While I can’t give specifics, Strategic has helped clients through a prioritization of key deals they are pursuing, and then an intensive social media audit of the participation patterns of the prospects. We then help our clients engage the prospects in their chosen online environment.

So is quantifying the sales benefits of social media difficult? You bet! But as you travel down the social media road towards the last mile, a lot of positive things will happen.

Quality Blogging — It Aint Easy

At my firm Strategic Communications Group more and more of our client work is in the social media arena. Usually a piece of the strategy involves helping the client launch a company blog. This can be a very valuable tool for thought leadership, spurring conversation and awareness and eventually for producing leads that support revenue generation. My colleague and Strategic founder Marc Hausman wrote recently about what he calls the three stages of social media maturation here: http://tinyurl.com/cmg4xf

Over the past 12-18 months we’ve stood up blogs for clients such as BT, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Inmarsat and GovDelivery. These implementations have led to a short list of best practices and issues to address prior to launch. The technology platform is the simple part. There are more fundamental questions to answer before launching a corporate blog — you can’t just  “throw it up” and hope for the best.

Here are the issues most of our clients have grappled with (successfully) as they launched their corporate blogs.

• Are you willing to take a stance? Many companies tend to be very careful with public statements, which is often a smart course. But middle of the road, consensus driven content doesn’t attract a strong readership. A company needs to be ready to take a clear position and welcome differing opinions.
• Response time needs to be swift. Responding to breaking news can be a very productive source of timely blog content. But if the marketing content must track down a subject matter expert, who then has to get his or her comment cleared, that’s not going to happen fast enough. Companies need to designate approved commentators, and they need to be accessible.
• Is everyone internally on the same page? Sometimes ownership of the corporate blog becomes a bone of contention between the IT department and the marketing/communications staff. Lines of responsibility need to be clear and agreed to prior to launch.
• Reasonable and clear metrics of success.  These can vary greatly depending on the nature of the content and the audiences targeted. Consistent growth in traffic is usually the best indicator. Sometimes clients focus on the  number of comments, which are harder to garner due to the increased effort required of readers.
• Finally, respect the time investment. At Strategic we have weekly calls with clients totally devoted the blog editorial calendar, and direct access the senior executive contributors as needed. If a company isn’t ready to dedicate the time and access required for quality content, they should reconsider launching a blog.

Here’s an interesting graphic courtesy of Matt Dickman at Technomarketer that illustrates some of these points well:

Blog Decision Tree

As communication professionals it is our responsibility to bring these issues to our clients early on and make sure they are successfully addressed. Companies that truly make the culture shift consider themselves as publishers, and bring that sort of serious consideration to their content.

With the decline of the technology trade media, quality corporate blogs can fill an important vacancy in technology coverage and become a trusted source of information in their specific market.

Got a story about a great company blog, or want to add to the list above? Please drop a comment or contact me directly.