Capitol Communicator Thought Leadership Series: Limor Schafman and Barry Reicherter of Widmeyer Communications, discuss how to get involved in social media in a Capitol Communicator TV video and podcast sponsored by RHED Pixel (www.rhedpixel.com). The Capitol Communicator TV Thought Leadership Series podcast is up in iTunes now. The transcript and video of that interview follows:
Limor Schafman: Welcome to Capitol Communicator Television. I'm Limor Schafman and with me is Barry Reicherter of Widmeyer Communications. Barry, welcome.
Barry Reicherter: Hi. Thanks a lot.
Limor Schafman: So, Barry, when people are approaching social media, they just don't know where to begin. A lot of companies have no idea where to start. What are the two top things they should be looking at?
Barry Reicherter: Well, there's a lot of confusion out there. Everybody-- conventional is, jump right out there, it's a participatory medium; you've got to jump out and get used to it. And that's true to a fact. But for an organization you really got to do two main things. One is, find out what is going on, what employees, what departments are out there already and take stock of those. Google is the best place to start, find out where employees of yours might be out there blogging already. Departments or product lines or groups within your organization, find out if they're out there already doing stuff and then really bring them together on either just a document so you can-- a living document so you can know where those presences are already and find out how they might be able to be marshaled or not so. And if it's an employee, you've got have clear rules about guidelines about what kind of content is accepted really for that kind of thing. And then the next part is jumping in and auditing what you have in terms of content. A lot of organizations start out by saying we're going to have every presence in the world, we're going to be on Facebook and Twitter and all these other places. But then they soon realize that they don't have enough content to sustain that. And being out there and having a presence started and then winding up being ghost town is actually negative; it's better that you didn't start that at all. So the best place to do is start from a position of strength. Take a look at your organization, what kind of content do you regularly produce. If you're a photographer, obviously you produce a lot of photographs. One would think that you would really start to build from strength from a community like Flickr or a Photobucket or someplace else like that. And start from there. Don't worry about where the most eyeballs are, worry about where you can bring value to that community first.
Limor Schafman: Don't you want to think a little though also about where your target market is? And what if the target market of that particular photographer-- yes, Flicker is nice, but they're not necessarily there. So how should they start incorporating where that market segmentation is for them?
Barry Reicherter: Well the good thing about that is that while that social media tool might not impact your audience directly right away, it has a profound impact on search. So while the target audience might not use Flickr, everybody uses Google. So it's going to have an impact right away. And you're going to find out once you start publishing content in some of these mediums, on a regular and that's what Google and other search engines love is regularly updated content, you'll find that when you go to search for yourself or that subject, you're going to have a lot higher search position usually. And really, search is the first place that people turn to when they're looking for information.
Limor Schafman: So what kind of content is particularly effective on the Web that people should assess whether or not they're generating enough of that and then put that out there?
Barry Reicherter: Any kind of serialized content is really good and well structured. The good thing about a lot of these blogging platforms are while you don't have to be a blogger, you can just post things that are updated whether it's pictures or Twitter feeds or things like that. But if you can use something like a blog as your hub, it's highly structured information, it's something that search engines know and understand quite well, the format in which-- and it produces an RSS feed. So that's a great cost effective tool to start with. It's going to immediately have impact on your bottom line in terms of visits and things.
Limor Schafman: So now how do you manage and balance the blog and everything you're going to do on there with your Web site? And actually I see now more and more blogs and Web sites becoming increasingly integral and integrated, excuse me. So is that the trend? Is that what people should be doing now?
Barry Reicherter: I mean early in digital marketing or active consulting and things like that, it was easy to walk into a room and tell a client, "You need a Web site" and they'd say, "Yes" and you'd have budget. But really it's about maybe forgoing the Web site. Maybe some organizations if they're an information based organization like especially in the D.C. area we have associations and non-profits and issue based organizations that really shouldn't even have-- they should pass on the Web site and go right to the blog as a way because you can have static content on their regular Web pages. But really it's about how much information do I produce. So some organizations we say forgo the Web site entirely; go right to creating a blog as your hub, as your primary hub.
Limor Schafman: And do you find that more and more companies now need to actually have people dedicated to creating blog fees, blog entries or Twitter feeds or Facebook updates or wherever else that they're linked to? Do you need a dedicated staff for this?
Barry Reicherter: Yes, in fact many of our clients, that's one of the first places we start, "Who is going to manage this thing?" Because there's a lot of energy and momentum to get out the door and then realize that there's not anybody who can corral. Even if you have all the content being produced, somebody's got to corral it and publish it in a matter that's compelling on a regular basis and that is something that requires a dedicated resource. It's probably not proper for agencies to go out there and do that. And we've helped clients startup, but really for it to be authentic, it's got to come from that organization and be managed internally.
Limor Schafman: You've used the word authentic several times. What does that mean and how should companies be thinking about it with regard to themselves and the content they're putting out there?
Barry Reicherter: It's the organization's own voice. You know, if it doesn't feel natural to be in that subject area as much as it's common sense, then you shouldn't be talking about it. If your organization is dealing with a certain subject area whether it's health reform or something else and they are experts in that field, then stick to that. But don't try and branch into subjects that really you don't have authority in. That would be authentic. It would also be authentic to come from the individual if it's that spokesperson or the chief executive or whoever it is, if it's being named from that person, it really needs to come from that person.
Limor Schafman: Okay. So even though you have someone managing the content sort of generally doing blogs, if someone says, it's coming from the CEO of this company, you want that CEO to really have written it.
Barry Reicherter: Yes, written or at least been integrally involved with the editing of it and making sure that it went up there, yes.
Limor Schafman: And how do you now fit in Twitter and Facebook and some of the other elements that have shorter elements and shorter postings that are being put out there, how do you really make use of that? What's the most effective way to do that?
Barry Reicherter: Twitter for a lot of our clients has become almost instant focus group for them. While they might be talking primarily from their blog or their Web site, they've used Twitter and we've helped them use Twitter to wind up as an amplifier, an echo chamber for the messages that are going out there. And it's also a fantastic tool to get an immediate gauge of a certain audience. You can find groups, search by people, find out what they're talking about and get instant feedback. While it's not the most scientific, it does get you a pretty fast response from a community in the same way that you would traditionally look to a focus group to give you.
Limor Schafman: And from what I've heard, having a dialog with a community is very important. So how do you start establishing a dialog with people on Twitter?
Barry Reicherter: Well first, listening. And sometimes a point is belabored but you really should spend time listening for quite a while, at least a month to understand the communities, who are the players, who are the ones who have the most influence in Twitter and then wind up engaging them by providing value, you know. Re-tweeting is one easy way to do that, you know, because you're simply voting for in a way that Digg does a story a post that somebody has created. But, you know, choosing when to engage is just as important and you really can't-- because it's a medium where you need to find your voice, you really have to spend that time listening to what the other voices are saying first.
Limor Schafman: Now, Twitter, everyone's talking about it, Facebook LinkedIn, but there are a whole host of other social medias. What other tools are you finding out there that are particularly effective?
Barry Reicherter: It depends on the audience segment, but in education, we have a lot of education clients and Facebook is more prominent than any Web site could ever be. Because the amount of penetration and education both-- from both students and teachers and educators because they want to know what is going on with their students, it is ripe territory for anybody involved with youth or education at this point. So Facebook is one that we're using a lot with our education clients. Clients like Pfizer and Nestle, we're spending a lot of time on sites like Wikipedia because they do a lot with health and nutrition information. And while we always advise our clients not to try and redefine their own organization definition, we do encourage to participate in augmenting Wikipedia as a whole because that type of goodwill is the skin in the game that will get a dialog later on from the community.
Limor Schafman: Barry, thank you so much for joining us.
Barry Reicherter: Thanks for having me.
Limor Schafman: You've been watching Capitol Communicator TV. This is Limor Schafman. Thank you so much for joining us.