The challenge of talking to a large group about social media is trying to make sure that the information is not too overwhelming for the newbies, but at the same time is not too boring for the seasoned users. The feedback from the audience was pretty enthusiastic, so I hope I managed to reach that happy medium.

The talk covers recent landmark events on twitter, such as Dell reaching $3m in sales via twitter, the success of the Iran Election protesters who used twitter to bring their cause to the world, and some other events. We looked at strategies, tips and tools for creating an effective online presence.

Without further ado, here’s the presentation:

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The Israeli chapter of Digital Eve consists of a very active and professional email list with about 1500 subscribers. People use the list to get advice, find new employees and suppliers, and promote themselves and their own businesses. The list is moderated to maintain a high level of professional dialogue, and as a result it has become a favorite among the general Israeli business community, with many men joining as well and becoming proud “Devas,” as the group members are called.

Jacob Share from JobMob is one of those honorary male Devas, and he likes Digital Eve so much that he calls it “The best English mailing list in Israel for professionals.” Since a particular focus of the Digital Eve Israel chapter is the hi-tech industry, the topic of blogs and social media marketing have come up repeatedly on the list. As a service to the list members and even those not on the list, Jacob has put together a list of Digital Eve bloggers. It’s in a nice graphic format with screenshots of each blog displayed, and little icon links to the bloggers’ various social media profiles.

This list an interesting insight into the Israeli business blogging world. It’s worth checking out. And if you’re not yet a member of Digital Eve, I suggest you join now (go to the Digital Eve Israel website, and click on the big red button in the middle column that says Join Now).

Digital Eve Israel’s Bloggers

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GM is one of the few automobile giants who has enthusiastically adopted social media as part of their marketing strategy. And now GM sales are reported to be up, while other auto companies like Ford and Toyota are reporting drops in sales. Is there a connection?

First GM blog launched in 2005

General Motors was an early adopter of blogging and social media with their first blog, Fastlane, launched in January 2005. The goals of the blog were to:

• Develop a fast way to reach out to and hear from customers, and attract significant web traffic.
• Help GM overcome its lumbering-dinosaur image, and close the gap between customers’ outdated perceptions of GM quality and the improving quality of new cars and trucks.
• Attract other blogs and web sites to link to the FastLane blog

(source: Council of Public Relations Firms )

Fastlane is written by none other than GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz, making GM the first major corporation to feature posts from a senior executive.

Wait a second; am I saying that GM, the old clunky American auto company is actually progressive? Until recently nobody would call GM trendy, but that perception is changing, and it could have a lot to do with the direction communication channels they have with their community.

Second GM Community Site launched 2008

Recently GM launched its second major social media initiative, a new website called GMNext. The GMNext blog is built on the WordPress Open Source blogging platform, and users can collaborate on the site by uploading photos, videos, and more. Here’s how GM presents this new site:

Over the next year, General Motors will celebrate the start of its second century through GMnext, a dialogue-based campaign that engages people via social media and interactive experiences. As a platform to showcase GM’s commitment to transportation solutions employing technologies that are relevant to consumer needs, GMnext will demonstrate our focus on solutions to the challenges that will shape the future of transportation.

Aren’t they just wasting their time?

Why would a global corporation like GM “waste” it’s time with social media? After all, social media is very difficult to calculate direct ROI for, and the big guys like to see concrete results that they can measure on paper for their investments. Well, here’s a list of the benefits GM gets from their social media marketing strategy:

1. Bob Lutz says he receives better consumer intelligence from reading the comments on his blog than those from traditional market research channels, like surveys and focus groups.
2. Forrester compared the results of GM’s Fastlane blog to those of a focus group, and since a focus group costs about $15,000 a month, which works out to $180,000 each year, GM has achieved similar results via their blog, and saved itself $180,000 in cash per year.
3. Creating a sense of cooperation and interest in clients and the community. Beth Lowery, GM’s environmental and technology officer, said that GM is trying to engage their customers one car at a time. Internet experience and excitement is created from the driving experience.
4. Transparency: The company is also much more transparent about its design process, making its challenges and hopes open. Lowery says transparency is engaging suppliers and customers alike, bringing them into the process. (From Social Media Explorer)
5. Increases chances of reaching younger buyers:

Automotive analysts said the strategy of involving customers and potential customers in the online forum is a smart move, particularly for reaching younger buyers.

“If they’re going to grow their market share, they’re going to need to bring in the younger buyers, who are buying imports because their parents bought imports,” said Joseph Phillippi of AutoTrends Consulting. “This is a big step in the right direction.” (From freep.com)

6. Profit? Increase of 2.6% in sales compared with January last year.

GM’s social media strategy is working because they are creating an entire user experience, both on and off the web, and are not depending solely on their online presence. They are making efforts to ensure that their cars match the online experience they describe, and that excited GM owners can join the growing GM community.

Ford succeeds…and then fail at social media

One other auto company that is jumping on the social media bandwagon, albeit more slowly and a little shakily, is Ford. Ford recently released their first social media release. A social media release is an evolving structure that is aimed at becoming the modern answer to the ancient format of the conventional press release. It includes “social” elements that are updated, and that users can break apart and use as they see fit, such as flickr photos, de.licio.us tags, etc.

Unfortunately, a few weeks later Ford’s lawyers did a very unsocial thing and stopped some of their most exuberant fans from printing up a fan calendar with photos of their own Ford cars in it.

“The folks at BMC (Black Mustang Club) automotive forum wanted to put together a calendar featuring members’ cars, and print it through CafePress. Photos were submitted, the layout was set, and… CafePress notifies the site admin that pictures of Ford cars cannot be printed. Not just Ford logos, not just Mustang logos, the car -as a whole- is a Ford trademark and its image can’t be reproduced without permission. So even though Ford has a lineup of enthusiasts who want to show off their Ford cars, the company is bent on alienating them. ‘Them’ being some of the most loyal owners and future buyers that they have. Or rather, that they had, because many have decided that they will not be doing business with Ford again if this matter isn’t resolved.” (From BoingBoing – read more there)

As Todd Defren over at PRSquared put it, “Ford pulled the spark-plug right outta their hearts.”

“It’s not as if the BMC effort was draining revenue from Ford’s coffers,” he continues. “If anything, any revenues resulting from calendar sales would help sustain a Ford Fan Club!”

The struggle of the social revolution

GM and Ford are interesting examples since they are from industries that are traditionally not considered hi-tech. They are also examples of big corporations trying to get a grasp of the new reality of social media. GM, as an early adopter, seems to have understood early on that the traditional control over the customer that they were used to is slipping out of their hands. Instead of resisting, they more or less embraced the new medium and reached out to their customers, and I think we can see real results in their sales reports.

Ford is trying to join the new web, but the above incident with the over-zealous lawyers is a speed-bump of an attempt to retain control. They’ll get the hang of it, and it will be interesting to see how other businesses, both big and small, add social media to their marketing basket.

(I recently experienced a Ford-like episode with a pretty big company that produces one of the world’s most successful Open Source platforms. You can read about it and the resulting comments here.)

Update March 20, 2008: GM announces that it will dedicate half of its $3 billion budget to digital and one-to-one marketing in the next three years. GM will invest in several online methods including gaming, search, mobile and a broad array of interactive applications. See this article for more information.

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We at illuminea try to encourage our clients to incorporate blogs into their websites since, in our opinion (and in the opinion of many others), the typical corporate website is not as effective as it could be. With content that rarely changes, and little to no engagement with clients and potential clients, traditional corporate websites are little more than online brochures, and do not utilize the power of the medium on which it sits: the web.

Jeremiah Owyang, a Web Strategist with Forrester, wrote a great article on the topic called “The Irrelevant Corporate Website,” explaining why the typical corporate website is increasingly irrelevant in today’s age of fresh new content and cooperation with consumers.

The article was so groundbreaking that it’s been translated into many languages, most recently Hebrew. Omer Rosen did the translation.

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Commtouch, one of the world’s leading email spam fighters, has now officially launched their new corporate blog, Commtouch Cafe, which was built by none other than…illuminea (i.e. us)!

Founded in 1991 in Israel and publicly traded on the NASDAQ (CTCH), Commtouch’s technologies help companies avoid the rising costs of email spam by constantly monitoring, identifying and blocking new malware attacks. To accomplish this, the company analyzes the distribution patterns of billions of email messages per month. That’s quite a job.

The new blog, called Commtouch Cafe, aims to “show the face & voice of the people behind Commtouch’s technology; share the type of informal information that [they] are exposed to daily just wandering the halls here, that might also interest our partner community or other spam/virus fighters; and have some fun.” This blog is the place to go if you want to keep up on the latest reports, figures and developments in the world of spam and malware.

Now I know they are my clients, so you probably should take what I have to say with a grain of salt, but this move by Commtouch into the world of social media marketing is very impressive for the following reasons:

• Commtouch is publicly traded. Many publicly traded companies cite the complicated compliance issues of stock exchanges as reasons not to have a blog. Commtouch saw the value of becoming part of the online conversation, and overcame any obstacles that they may have faced in order to do this.
• They also launched with a new viral video. Not only did Commtouch launch a blog, but they combined it with the launch of a cute animated video they made that is now on YouTube. (The video is below.)
• The content is written with a web audience in mind. Big corporations often speak in long expanses of corporate speak. The posts on Commtouch Cafe are short and contain a lot of visuals, like video and images.
• They are an Israeli company. Big Israeli companies in particular are still staying away from blogging. A notable exception is Answers.com, a large publicly traded company with an obscure and hard-to-find corporate blog (if you look up Answers.com blog, you won’t find it): no.stupid.answers. This blog is also pretty good – short, useful posts about questions and answers.

Congratulations to Commtouch on their entry into the world of social media, and may this signal the start of a new trend among Israeli companies!

Here’s the Commtouch video:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnD50mSvLPk[/youtube]

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