Happy Earth Day — Social Media Style

Today, my friends Brad and Jon sent me this cute card in celebration of Earth Day. 

Immediately, I thought about a cool experience I had this weekend.  On Sunday, my dad rode in his 11th MS150.  (To say I’m proud is an understandment)!

In order to participate, he had to raise at least $400.  While this isn’t a large sum of money, I can imagine it was a bit akward asking our friends and family to donate during these tough economic times.  To combat that, my friend Mike Boudreaux, an awesome product manager at Emerson, shared his story at the B2B Tweetup last Friday about how he used Twitter to raise funds for the 180-mile bike ride.  

 

In less than 140 characters, Mike asks his followers for help:

 

 

 

They respond graciously! 

 

 

 

In the end, Mike exceeded his goal.  

 

 

Once again, social media saves the day.  Plus, it’s really cool.  I got to “follow” Mike throughout the ride on Sunday and cheer him on both in real life and in the Twittersphere. 

Congrats to all the riders, who helped raise a significant amout of money for a great cause.  You are truly inspirational.

Are you a New Media D-bag or Twitter Hoochie?

Here is a list of my Top 5 Favorite Social Media Video Spoofs.  Enjoy and add your favorite to the comments section!

1. Flutter 

When 140 characters is just too much…

2. Facebook in Real Life

POKE!

3. Old Man Stewart Shakes His Fist at Twitter

Old Media vs. New Media 

Click HERE!

4. New Media Douche Bag Explained

A la Common Craft!

5. Twitter Whore

The Ultimate Cyber Sl*t

SXSW Interactive – Let’s Hear it for B2B

When I graduated college, I thought (B2B) = Boring! But, I was never very good at math.  I quickly discovered that even in the Brave New Media World you don’t have to be shleping the latest energy drink to have a creative online marketing program.  Granted, I will never be the creative genius behind a superbowl ad (despited the fact I once heard a rumor that graphical programming is used to create the “invisible yellow line” on the field); however, I have utilized communities, blogs, social networks, viral videos and of course Twitter to connect with users in a meaningful way.    

I would love to chat with other B2B marketers, fellow community managers, and social media strategists at SXSW!

Susan Zellmann-Rohrer and I will be leading a core conversation on Saturday, March 14 at 11:30 a.m. called ”Nerd Network: Building an Online Community for Developers.”  Please join us to engage in meaninful dialog to learn how social media technologies, like online networks and blogs, can improve products, increase customer loyalty, drive revenue, and reduce support costs.  

Specifically, we want to talk to you about the following 10 quetions: 

1. How do you sell your community project internally and get past legal at a large, tech company? 
2. What are the goals, strategies and metrics surrounding a successful B2B online community?
3. What marketing tactics work best for launching, promoting and recruiting members into a B2B community?
4. What are the differences between marketing to nerds and geeks?
5. Who “owns” technical communities (marketing, support, product, Web, IT) and what is the team structure?
6. How do you reward participation in a technical community (i.e. access to product roadmaps, escalated support, discounts, merchandise)?
7. Which social sites (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube) and technologies (wiki, blogs, RSS) resonate best with a technical audience?
8. What’s it like doing social media strategy for “the man?”
9. How do you integrate online and offline community strategy?
10. What is the next big thing in B2B communities?

If you have other questions you would like us to ask this audience, please submit them here!

Look forward to seeing you at the event.

Brave New Media World

Modified from portrait of Christopher Columbus by Ridolfo Ghirlandaio.

When I first took on the role of Community Manager and Social Media Strategist at National Instruments, I felt like an electronic Christopher Columbus, navigating and exploring the Brave New Media World.   Then, I quickly began my own revolutionary war — preaching the ways of new media.  I identified social media foot soldiers in places like advertising, events, corporate communications, and design.  Their job was to influtrate the current governing body and find ways to utlizile the wonderful user-generated content that exists in places like blogs, forums and online communities in the more traditional forms of marketing communication.  Luckily, we had the support of corporate leadership (just another reason I love working for NI!).  

Our methodology has paid off.  Recently, Forrester Analyst Josh Bernoff made the folowing statement in a Groundswell blog post:

 ”National Instruments makes technical content from its customer community central in its marketing activity -  this is a model other B2B sellers should follow.” 

Thanks, Josh!  

Part of this recommendation stems from Forrester research that shows B2B buyers have very high social participation for both work and business — which just makes sense.  When I’m evaluating a new product for work, like a social media monitoring platform, I’m highly likely to turn to my network on Twitter, read relevant blog posts and create reviews based on my trail version.  

While this all “sounds great,” I’m sure many of you are wondering what does that actually mean.  Here are some specifics: 

National Instruments encourages users to participate in discussion forums, exchange example code, contribute technical tutorial and videos, and even blog right on our domain.  This helps ensure the success of our users.  Since no one idustry represents more than 10 percent of our revenue, it is key for NI to connect like-minded customers and get information from subject-matter experts.  Additioanlly, it is good for Web traffic.  Currently, 40 percent of all visitors come into user-generated and technical content on the site.  

Managing this content and the users is the “communiy manager” part of my job, while the social media strategist side works with the  ”foot soldiers” to utilize this great UGC throughout marketing.  For example, in our award wining online and print newsletters,  NI News and Instrumentation Newsletter, we have dedicated sections in each issue that highlight user-generated content as well as innovative community members.  This helps encourage repeat participation, adds third-party credibility to our story, and helps domain experts looking for specifics on a given topic. 

Someone recently asked me — should social media be integrated into marketing or be its own department?  And I think right now it’s a bit of both.  Just because your on Facebook, doesn’t mean you are Facebook strategist; however, if your social media program does not have a clear handshake with the rest of marketing it will not be successful.  Ashley Brown, at Brilliant Magazine, got me thinking that pretty soon New Media Managers will just become Media Managers.  Unless, we all jump on the semantic Web bandwagon.  :) 

For B2B companies, considering testing out “new media,” don’t be afraid.  If you have clear goals and integration with the rest of your marketing efforts, it will be a great success.  

 

 

Purpose Driven Marketing

The most basic questions that everyone faces in life are “why am I here?” and “what is my purpose?,” according to Rick Warren’s book A Purpose Driven Life.  With the dawn of the new year, I’ve been asking the same questions about my role at National Instruments as well as its entire community marketing program.  When I began this professional soul search, I revisited Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras’ book Built to Last.  This staple in the business world clearly outlines why some coporations struggle to last or fade away in a short period of time, while others in the same market, thrive.  One of the rules discussed is “Preserve Your ‘Core Ideology”….or preserve your purpose.

According to an article in AdWeek, GSD&M Co-Founder Roy Spence said, “I sensed that everyone was selling the same thing. We started believing that the values of the organization would drive the business beyond the need for good product, good pricing, good people. It was powerful.”  This was the birth of the ad agency’s Purpose Insitute.

A few months ago, I got to hear more about GSDM’s purpose at SWOMFest (see my notes hosted on Twine here) from Haley Rushing, founder of the institute.  She explained that her team of social scientists “dig deep into a company’s historical psyche to understand then define its purpose. The benefit of that exam work: companies with a well-defined purpose tend to have stronger levels of word of mouth and customer evangelism.”  Haley nailed it.  I wanted to ensure that I use the NI purpose to increase customer evangelism.

So, I took a step up and looked at National Instruments as a whole.  I’m lucky enough to work at a place where the strong leadership drives the entire organization with this purpose:

I’m not saying that NI is a utopia where nobody has a bad day, but it is a place that even when I come home from the office exhausted or upset that a meeting didn’t go “my way,” I know that the products and services I market enable the amazing community of LabVIEW developers to change the world.

And it’s more than just a tagline – I’ve seen it first hand when kids get excited about engineering while playing with LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT at a First LEGO League competition, and when I met Paul Sullivan at NIWeek and learned about his image processing projects, or even more recently when I read about a customer who built a life-saving spider robot. Yes, you read that correctly!

I’ve also seen that “cult-like cultures,” which are also discussed in the Built to Last book, can inspire, or even more apparent, be fueled by a rabid fan-base.  And I’m not talking about the Facebook Fan, I mean true evangelists.  Daily, the awesome LabVIEW Champions,  are using “innovative NI tools to engineer a better world” and because of their success they are able to evangelize NI products.  This is more valuable than many traditional forms of marketing.

Some social media folks say, “I’ll take a customer quote over a pricey ad any day.”  The approach I take at NI is take that quote and turn it into an ad that people can actually relate to and share.  It’s the best of both worlds.

Does your company’s purpose inspire word-of-mouth marketing?