Continuing with our previews for BlogWell in San Diego on February 16 — featuring social media case studies from Starbucks, Clorox, USAA, Intuit, Avery Dennison, Community Medical Centers, State Farm Insurance, and the U.S. Navy — here’s a few more big ideas from our last BlogWell, hosted in Atlanta.

In his presentation, Yann Gourvennec, Head of Internet & Digital Media at Orange Business Services, shared his company’s social media success story. A few of Yann’s big ideas:

• The tools don’t matter. By the time you’ve learned a tool, there’ll be a new one next year. What matters are the company goals you’re trying to accomplish.
• Video doesn’t have to be complicated. Yann’s team dramatically reduced the production process for their online videos by not editing them and filming them in 2:30 segments. Where they were once posting about 10 a year, they are now posting hundreds, in multiple languages.
• ROI is always a concern. When Yann first recommended launching a social media program, his boss asked about the ROI. Yann explained he didn’t know at the time and he doesn’t exactly know now, but he still works hard to measure and address the issue.

See the live presentation here:

Just 25% of consumers say they trust their friends to give them good information about a company, according to a survey by Edelman, compared with 45% in 2008. The same survey shows consumers are more likely to trust CEOs, academics, government officials, industry analysts and nongovernmental organizations than they were a year ago — with all of those sources being cited as more trustworthy than peers.

Social marketing is build on the idea that people trust their friends more than they trust official voices — does this survey mean we no longer care what our peers have to say?

Edelman CEO Richard Edelman says consumers are spooked by the recession and that’s made them less trusting. Edelman says consumers need to hear something from up to five different sources before they believe it. I think the answer may have more to do with quality than quantity.

I’m “friends” with an ex-girlfriend’s best friend’s little sister on Facebook. She’s part of my social circle on paper — but her opinion about a new movie would mean absolutely nothing to me. The problem isn’t just that I’m skeptical of her judgment. It’s that she has no idea what kind of movies I like. My college roommate, however, has excellent taste in films and he knows which ones will appeal to me. If he tells me to watch something, chances are that’s usually good enough for me — whereas getting 20 recommendations from people I hardly know won’t pique my interest in the slightest.

Social networking has changed who we think of as peers. We’re inundated with recommendations and unsolicited advice from friends of friends of friends. Of course we’re more skeptical. But it’s not like my old roommate stopped being trustworthy just because I developed a lot of other meaningless ties.

The trouble is that just because I trust someone to recommend a movie to me, doesn’t necessarily mean I’d eat at new restaurant on their say so — or buy a television or support a cause or anything else. And here’s the kicker: my old movie buddy and I talk mostly via instant message. As far as Facebook knows, he isn’t any more important to me than any of my other friends. My social graph is filled with little contradictions like this. Chances are, your social network is just as confusing on paper.

The challenge is clear: We have a long way to go in understanding how relationships are formed, what they’re based on and how influence spreads. For now, we only know that consumers are becoming more discerning. If you want to get your message out, you need to stop thinking about building buzz — that dull, droning roar that consumers are training themselves to ignore. What you need instead is the ability to whisper in someone’s ear.

Does this study spell trouble for social marketing as we know it? Are you more skeptical of peer recommendations than you used to be? How can organizations best target the key influencers in a consumer’s life?

Image credit, AtnoYdur, via iStock

Our daily social media newsletter frequently features case studies about restaurants such as Domino’s Pizza, consumer packaged goods companies such as PepsiCo and manufacturers such as LEGO that are reinventing marketing –- and in many cases their entire companies — using social media.

Rarely, however, do you read about wildly popular pharmaceutical Facebook fan pages (other than Redbull, ahem) or doctors such as Jay Parkinson — who for years did house calls in Brooklyn using Web-scheduled appointments, analyzing symptoms patients reported online and taking payments via PayPal.  Also few and far between are stories about financial services firms communicating publicly with their customers and being transparent about investments.

Two fascinating panels last week at Social Media Week in New York shone a light on this phenomenon: Navigating Social Media & New Technology in Healthcare & Pharmaceutical Industries and Reinvention from the Ground Up, hosted by Razorfish and organized by SmartBrief on Social Media Advisory Board member Shiv Singh.  Both were eye opening.

During the Razorfish session, David Cooperstein from Forrester said that the complete transformation of business via social media is hampered by the kinds of things that hold all of our companies back:

• Budgets.
• The pace at which large organizations move. Bundle CEO Jaidev Shergill pointed out that many big companies feel that there’s more to lose than gain by experimenting in the social space.
• Organizational structures that are either uncomfortable with loss of control or have a hard time figuring out where the responsibility for social media should lie.

For doctors, drug manufacturers and banks, however, government regulation –- established to prevent harm to patients, protect citizens’ privacy and prevent the next recession — adds layers of complexity.

The primary social media barrier for pharmaceutical companies is the requirement to report “adverse events”  — if they hear anyone say anything bad about their products — to the FDA within 72 hours of hearing it. The other obstacle, ironically, is lack of regulation and an inability of the government to respond to innovation.  According to Bonin Bough, director of social media at PepsiCo, who spent many years working in pharmaceuticals, “Regulatory bodies don’t have the right people to understand the implications of technology. FDA doesn’t understand search tools, and they live in fear of unintended consequences,” he said.

With docs and banks, it’s largely a compliance issue –- they are legally hemmed in by what they can and can’t say online. Even though nine of ten physicians and ten out of ten banks say the Internet is a key component in their practice, regulations on information security (e.g. HIPAA) prevents them from participating in the way we are all communicating now.

All it would take, however, are a couple of breakout stories to get the ball rolling. A few examples where the momentum is starting:

• ZocDoc: Think OpenTable for doctors. ZocDoc provides appointment booking online and patient ratings.
• Hello Health: Facebook meets electronic medical records.  Conversations between patients and doctors can happen via e-mail, IM or video chat after the patient creates a profile and adds a doctor to their team.  Patients pay online in quarter-hour increments.
• Health Tweeder: Data visualization of aggregated Twitter content on various disease states.
• TIAA-CREF: Real-time peer discussions and advice about retirement on myretirement.org, Facebook and TC Talks on Twitter. The TIAA-CREF iPhone app paralyzed regulators, but according to Chief Digital Officer Jeff Fleischman, “made the organization 20 years younger overnight” — not to mention a more nimble and adaptable company.
• Bundle: The program, which launched two weeks ago, shows consumers how their peers/neighbors are spending. The idea is to give info back to people in a safe and personally unidentifiable way that democratizes it and gets them engaged with investment.  Bundle’s investors, including Citi, MSNmoney and Morningstar, aim to monetize and create value for people trying to get out of a financial mess.

These innovations are an exciting start.  We’ll keep you posted as other pioneering examples come to our attention.

Image credit, trigga, via iStock

Today’s guest post comes from Joseph M. Caruso, Publisher of SmartBrief’s Health Care Group

A Social Media Week panel on health care and social media offered insights into some of the major issues facing the industry as more health care-related interactions go online. The panel dove right in, addressing the state of adverse-events reporting regulations — which I like to refer to as “Don’t Ask — You Won’t Have to Tell.”

The panelists acknowledged that the sheer volume of effort required to monitor, assess and then report any adverse events is daunting. However, prohibiting patients from engaging in a dialog through which health care providers might learn how to better serve their needs is not the answer.

Technologies are now available to help companies sift through online conversations to determine what might be considered an adverse event, considerably lessening the reporting burden. Companies can also make reporting easier by requiring users to log in when visiting their Web site.

Health care companies will need to overcome internal obstacles if they’re going to fully realize the benefits of social technology. The current labyrinth of approvals within a company doesn’t lend itself to anything near real-time interaction, panelists noted.  Health care marketing has historically been all about explaining the facts. In the future, companies will need to learn to listen to customers and respond to their unmet needs and unanswered questions. This is how consumer marketing works in the 21^st century. As one panelist put it, “People don’t want to friend Lipitor.” They want unbranded information about their condition and expert advice on what to do.

The industry also needs to find a way to motivate providers and compensate them for participating in a dialog, the panel said. Doctors, for example, have no incentive to interact with patients online, as they won’t receive compensation and they open themselves to potential liability. Electronic medical-record applications are expensive and take more time to complete while providing little immediate benefit.

Technology can play a role here, the panel noted, but to date, doctors are less than thrilled by what’s available on the market, and they are completely turned off by the out-of-pocket costs.  It will take an entrepreneur to develop the “killer app” that can create a win for providers, patients, insurers and pharma companies before significant movement will occur, they said.

Arguing that doctors aren’t “slow adopters,” merely time- and cash-strapped professionals, two former practicing physicians on the panel did acknowledge that doctors also need to become more consumer-friendly to compete in the future. Doctor-ranking sites are emerging where patients can “shop” for the best physician in their area, as determined by other patients. While physicians place little credibility on such rankings right now, they are an indication of things to come.

Image credit, laflor, via iStock