This guest post is by Jeremy Epstein, founder and chief marketing navigator at Never Stop Marketing, and Jay McBain, head of Lenovo’s small- and medium-business sector.

For six consecutive quarters, the small- and medium-business team at Lenovo had trailed its industry by an average of 10%. That changed significantly when Jay McBain, the director of the group, and his new team decided to try something different.

Instead of targeting on demographics, as had been traditionally done, they targeted based on behavior. But not behavior as in a “Like” button or a purchase, but as in “where” and “how” do people spend their time. “Targeting” is what they did only in the loosest sense of the word.

The Lenovo SMB team members employed the principles of Dandelion Marketing, taking advantage of the cost structure of digital, to spread their efforts to as many communities as possible. Instead of a few “big bets,” they made a lot of small bets, and more often. Much like a dandelion distributes its seeds — amid the reality that many of them will fail — this approach assumes that enough will succeed as to make it worthwhile.

How They Did It

McBain and his team identified 30 communities in which they thought their customers might be active. Then, they committed to executing 30 different marketing activities per community. Three of the most effective were:

1. Instead of doing the traditional room drop or lunch sponsorship at a major convention, Lenovo gave away a Harley-Davidson, which cost half as much, but drove 50 times as much attention.
2. Using a coveted keynote slot at a major industry event to pitch a Wi-Fi toothbrush — not because Lenovo was announcing one — but to illustrate the point of pervasive computing and positioning itself as the hardware vendor of the future.
3. Embedding with a mobile cupcake vendor in New York City for the day.  The mainstream media became interested in a location-based business using Twitter and Facebook to make sales.  Lenovo was the technology enabler and received dozens of media mentions.

Once they began the “conversation” with potential advocates and customers, they worked to cultivate those relationships, earning people’s trust and attention. Among other things, the Lenovo team members fully committed to participating in a genuine and authentic way. They added thought leadership to the communities — as opposed to selling to or through them.  They fully engaged in forums, guest blogs, podcasts and webinars, as opposed to just advertising.

What about ROI?

Measuring success for Lenovo was a challenge. There isn’t the instant feedback that a direct mail or coupon code gives.  So they took a “barometer” approach to measuring the business, rather than the traditional thermometer approach.  For example, measuring the impact of a tweet would be foolish, but the underlying momentum of the community and the resulting behaviors are easier to gauge.
Lenovo’s success provides a glimpse into the future of how organizations must rapidly identify, test, and adapt their efforts to a highly fragmented world. Numerous small bets really can, in concert, generate big results.

This post is by Kaukab Jhumra Smith, a contributing editor at SmartBrief.

A team of researchers from Facebook has come up with a way to predict the ethnicity of Facebook users in the U.S. by using a combination of U.S. Census data and an analysis of users’ first and last names. The team won the award for best paper at a social-media conference organized by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence in Washington, D.C.

The Facebook Data team confined its analysis to the country’s four largest ethnic groups: Caucasians, African-Americans, Asian/Pacific Islanders and Hispanics. It used Census records to identify the most likely ethnicity of a user based on his or her last name. For example, said data scientist Jonathan Chang during his presentation, if your last name is Mueller, Census records show you have a 97% chance of being white. Similarly, if your last name is Washington, there is an 89.9% chance you’re black.

The team then refined its predictions by factoring in users’ first names, Chang said. That helped reduce confusion, for example, between Caucasian and African-American users with the same last name. A user with a first name such as LaToya was probably African-American, Chang explained.

By applying their predictions of ethnicity to users’ friend networks, the team found:

• The ethnic makeup of Facebook users has steadily become more diverse and now generally reflects the U.S. population, unlike a few years ago, when Caucasians and Asian/Pacific Islanders were over-represented.
• Users are more likely to be friends with, and communicate most often with, people of the same ethnicity.
• Users are more likely to be in romantic relationships with people of the same ethnicity.
• Particular ethnic groups tend to behave similarly online, with Asian/Pacific Islanders engaging in “unexpectedly high number of wall, video, note, gift, comment and group-sharing actions.”

The team acknowledges a few caveats: Its analysis didn’t account for a lot of factors, such as socio-economic status and education, and it didn’t include smaller ethnic groups in the country. The researchers plan to use more detailed Census data to factor in user locations, professions and other self-disclosed data to “improve the predictive power” of future analyses, the paper concludes.

So what does this mean for businesses looking to refine their marketing on Facebook and other social networks?

Approached after his presentation, Chang said he knew little about business and could not answer how his team’s findings would apply to consumer marketing.

But surely, now that it’s possible to predict ethnicity on Facebook with relative accuracy (accuracy that will only improve with subsequent studies), the next logical step would be to allow marketers to target users based on ethnicity and not just age, location and known preferences.

It would be a simple matter to rotate racially appropriate photos in Facebook ads aimed at 30-year-old women in the Washington, D.C., area, for example, in the hope that they would respond better to someone from their own race.

What do you think — does that kind of marketing cross a line or is it just one more refinement on what advertisers do all the time?

Image credit, Rich Hobson, iStock Photo

This post is by SmartBrief contributing editor Kaukab Jhumra Smith.

Videos that are going to be viewed primarily online or on mobile screens must be created differently than those watched on TV, says Mary Coffman, a broadcast journalism professor at Northwestern University’s Medill News Service.

Coffman, who also leads video-training sessions at the National Press Club, offers the following tips:

1. Pick the right story. Make sure your story features a persuasive central character and vivid visuals.
2. Get the best sound possible. “One of the most important aspects of the video story is the audio,” Coffman says. “People will put up with lousy video on the Web, but they will not put up with lousy audio.” Avoid scratchy, static-filled or muffled sound by using a camera with a good built-in microphone. Get as close to the sound as possible and use an external mike if you must stay farther away.
3. Use a tripod. “You don’t want your shots to be shaky,” Coffman says. “Having a tripod makes all the difference.” She recommends an inexpensive tabletop tripod in addition to a traditionally sized one.
4. Channel the moment. Capture details — such as a person’s jiggling foot or the natural sounds around you — to let online viewers experience what you saw and heard when you were there.
5. Shoot sequences. A sequence shows the way things happen, Coffman explains. Shooting a combination of tight close-ups, medium shots (from the head to the waist) and wide shots will help your editing later. “When you’re editing, you don’t want to go from a tight shot to a tight shot of the same person or scene,” Coffman says. “You want to have a wide shot and then go tighter on the scene.”
6. Avoid extremely wide shots. “Keep in mind the size of monitors people use to watch your video,” Coffman says. Extremely wide shots may look fine on big TV screens, but they pack in too much information for little screens.
7. Don’t pan or zoom. “Too much movement online tends to make your video jerky and jittery,” Coffman advises. “Panning or zooming works better on TV than on a little computer screen or a mobile screen.” Instead of zooming in, move with your body -– as long as you can hold the camera steady –- or let the action happen within your frame.
8. Hold each shot for 10 seconds. You may not use all 10 seconds, but having that footage will help you find five clean seconds of good footage when you’re editing. “Newbies don’t hold their shots long enough,” Coffman says. “Get the shot and count to 10, and then get another shot.”
9. Don’t rush through editing. “Look at what you’ve got,” Coffman says. “Don’t just pick the first shots; look for the best.” The shots you pick will dictate how you write your script.
10. Match your sound to your video. “Write to your video,” Coffman said. “If you’re writing narration, pictures are going to trump your words each time.”
11. Keep it short. Your videos should be less than two minutes long. If you must have a longer piece, Coffman recommends breaking it into two-minute chapters. That way, interested viewers can simply click on the next chapter to keep going.

What are some things you’ve learned the hard way when making videos for the Web? Tell us what’s worked for you and what you still struggle with.

Image credit: cybrain via iStockphoto

Some people just  manage to maintain their brand’s Twitter account, but Liz Dee of Ce De Candy has taken it to another level. She is leading her family-owned company through the ever-changing trends of social media. Rebecca Pollack met up with Liz at the Sweets & Snacks 2010 Expo in Chicago and learned that the “little guys” are giving consumers something to talk about online.

You are the director of digital media at Ce De Candy, home of Smarties candy, and are finishing your master’s in Media, Culture and Communication at New York University with a focus on Food Studies. How do you find a work-life balance, and how do your work and personal lives overlap?

It’s a good thing I love what I do, because my work, personal and academic lives overlap tremendously. One week I’m live-tweeting from the Sweets & Snacks Expo in Chicago and the next I’m in Bloomington, Ind., for a Food Studies conference panel on new media. The overlap really works for me. Not only do I get to see my whole family while I’m at work — check that off the to-do list — but I also conduct research that is useful for future digital media projects, as well as my forthcoming thesis on candyways.

What is “candyways?”

Candyways is a term I coined to mean candy culture. Like folklorist Don Yoker’s term, “foodways,” it is meant to describe thoughts, behaviors and customs relating to candy. Candy deserves its own term because candy is so different from other foodstuffs in terms of how, when and where we eat it, as well as what it represents to consumers. If you want to know more, you’ll have to wait for the book. Just kidding! Sort of …

How did you gain support from your family-owned company to set up Facebook and Twitter accounts, as well as oversee a redesign of the website, Smarties.com?

My family understands the value of having a strong Web and social-media presence, but to do this properly requires constant attention. Thankfully, company leadership allowed me plenty of autonomy to create and execute projects. For buy-in as well as fresh ideas, I try to keep everyone as involved as possible, from the initial brainstorming phase to the final approval. Plenty of communication is key.

I like your new website, particularly that you offer games like digital air hockey. How is that related to Smarties, again?

I’m so glad you like the new website. Our developers actually recently received the “Oustanding Achievement” award by Interactive Media Council for the site, which was really exciting. So, why air hockey? We are all about fun. We want to entertain our site visitors in addition to providing them with information consumers need and want to know, such as nutritional facts.

Consumers update their statuses or tweet that “they are eating Smarties” or “something smells like Smarties.” How are you engaging with these consumers and promoting brand awareness?

Proust wrote volumes inspired by a madeleine cookie, and together, consumers write volumes about Smarties candy. Like Proust, our consumers are inspired by memory and sensory experience. On Twitter, I try to respond to people who write about our product in a way that shows we are listening, we care about them and we appreciate their input. I also post information about the candy, funny photos and whatever else seems to be interesting, fun and of-the-moment on Facebook and Twitter. In short, I spread the Smarties love.

For more candy news, check out NCA SmartBrief.

Image credit, Maica, iStock Photo

This post is by Kaukab Jhumra Smith, a contributing editor at SmartBrief.

When Twitter agreed to allow the Library of Congress to archive its tweets, the public response to the news brought down the library’s website. That hadn’t happened since the release of the Starr Report in 1998, said Hope O’Keeffe, the library’s associate general counsel.

The government’s agreement with Twitter holds mutual benefit, she said: Twitter gets recognition as a culturally relevant tool, while the government preserves “a snapshot of our time.” Although historians and researchers are delighted, many members of the public have expressed alarm at the privacy ramifications of such a deal.

O’Keeffe and Elizabeth Hochberg, assistant general counsel at the U.S. General Services Administration, addressed the legal issues that crop up as agencies move to follow the Obama administration’s directive to increase transparency, participation and collaboration between citizens, communities, businesses and government. They spoke at the recent Gov 2.0 conference in Washington, D.C.

O’Keeffe and Hochberg’s advice is useful both for government agencies and the people who do business with them. Their biggest tip?

• Friend your lawyers. If you jump into a project because you think it’s easier to ask for forgiveness later than permission upfront, you may be risking jail, a lawsuit or the loss of your job, Hochberg said. Or you could be risking having your software platform yanked out from under your feet for noncompliance after you’ve spent months developing it, she cautioned.
  “You know you’re going to have to work with us in the future, and trust is really important,” Hochberg said. “We can help speed things up exponentially if you bring us in from the beginning.”

• Go by FAR. The Federal Acquisition Regulation applies to all software applications contracted for with appropriation funds, just like a tangible item purchased by the government.

• Don’t be deficient. If you offer your software application to a government agency for free when it usually commands a price in the marketplace, your software is considered a gift and requires the agency to jump through several internal hoops before accepting it. Otherwise, the agency could be held in violation of the Anti-Deficiency Act.

• Negotiate terms of service. Standard terms of service from software providers usually don’t fly with government agencies. “We understand that you have your policies, but we have our laws,” Hochberg said.

Trouble spots can include:

• Indemnification. The government will never agree to unlimited or undefined compensation for injury or loss.
• Jurisdiction. The federal government cannot be sued in state court, only in federal court, according to the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution.
• Endorsement. The federal government cannot call any business a partner or an official provider. It will allow you to use the agency in a case study, but only if it scrutinizes each word.
• Federal records. The government has to comply with federal records laws.
• Intellectual property. The federal government has a right to copyright its images, and IP provisions must be hammered out in any terms of service. “People think they can screen-grab federal government pages and use them for themselves, but that’s not true,” Hochberg said.
• Privacy. “Privacy is going to be a bigger and bigger and bigger issue for all of us,” O’Keeffe said.
• Accessibility. All electronic and IT services have to be 508 compliant — that is, accessible to citizens with disabilities.
• Advertising. The government has to negotiate out any advertisements that would give the appearance of endorsements, like it has on its Facebook pages.

Make your case. If your lawyers end up being more of a roadblock than help, O’Keeffe and Hochberg suggest building a business case for adopting new technologies. Anticipate their objections, and show them that what you want to do is “a logical outgrowth of something that you’ve already been doing,” O’Keeffe said.

Identify lawyers who are open to technological change and add them to your team working on larger Gov 2.0 goals. Early notice and engagement can go a long way to winning lawyers over, O’Keeffe and Hochberg said.

Image credit: RTimages, via iStockphoto

Some of his social-media advice:

• Realize that buy-in is key. You need to get not just your leadership, but also other departments, on board to launch a successful social presence.
• Education is an advocate’s best weapon. Your role as a social-media evangelist is to take away colleague’s fear of the unknown.
• Use social media to help broaden events. He notes that encouraging video and blogging and conference helps bring that live experience to a wider audience.

Check out our full interview with Midkiff.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Want to learn more about managing the integration of social media into your trade association or nonprofit’s operations? Join SmartBrief on July 20 for Buzz2010: Social Media for Associations in Washington, D.C., where workplace columnist and author Alexandra Levit, Securities and Exchange Commission New-Media Director Mark Story and American Red Cross Social-Media Manager Wendy Harman will share their thoughts on managing the pitfalls of social media.

Cindy Kraft is billed as America’s leading career and personal brand strategist for corporate finance executives, with more than 14 years of experience partnering with clients to help them understand their marketability, clearly articulate their value, and position themselves as the clear and compelling choice.

You’re a big proponent of finance executives using social media to promote and develop their own careers. Why do you think participation in those networks is so crucial?

Everyone, executives included, has an online reputation to manage. That can either be done proactively or reactively. Reacting to negative information or misinformation is a much more challenging, time-consuming job. Take the website Spokeo.com for example. IMO, it comprises everything bad about Web 2.0 technology. It pulls information from other sources that is already available — and yes, information about you is already out there — makes assumptions about that information, and then publicly houses it on their site. It is information most people probably don’t want others seeing, particularly in light of these stats:

• 79% of U.S. hiring managers and recruiters reviewed online information about job applicants. (Microsoft, 2009)
• 70% of U.S. hiring managers rejected candidates based on what they found. (Microsoft, 2009)

Beyond monitoring and managing your reputation is raising visibility among your target market. If you’re brilliant but no one (internally or externally) knows about it, does it matter? Creating a visible, compelling value proposition that attracts the kinds of opportunities you want while you are a passive and high-value candidate is just a great career-management strategy.

Many finance executives feel constrained from using social media by what they perceive as regulatory restrictions on their behavior. Do you think that perception is accurate? If so, how do they overcome that?

Yes I do believe that perception can be accurate, and is a reality within a highly regulated industry. One strategy is to position yourself as a thought leader within your current company. If you are allowed/encouraged to speak at conferences, serve on panels, write articles for newsletters or magazines, or even be interviewed by industry publications, that material can be leveraged for social-media purposes and repurposed to build a strong, visible digital footprint.

What is the most common mistake you see finance execs make when it comes to their personal use of social media?

Being a wallflower. Creating an incomplete, boring profile on LinkedIn and thinking, that’s it — now I can say I use social media. I belong to two chief-financial-officer exclusive communities and have my own private CFO group on LinkedIn. Conversation is minimal — even behind the gates where it is safe to explore engaging with others. My thought is that this phenomenon is indicative of a bigger issue — the general discomfort many CFOs feel around networking whether online or offline.

Do you think there is a role for finance to play in developing organizational social-media policies?

Absolutely! The poll SmartBrief just conducted revealed 50% of respondents either had a firewall in place to ensure no social-media activities by anyone or were clueless about social-media strategies. IMO, these companies are missing out on several fronts:

• Personal customer/client engagement. If you don’t know what your customers are saying about you, how can you react, let alone react in a timely fashion? Web 2.0 technology allows every company to engage with customers on a very personal level, respond quickly to issues and learn what customers — and potential customers — want and need.
• The competition. If you want to know what your competition is doing and where they are heading, go to the front lines. There are two positions in business — always running behind the competition or setting the pace. Web 2.0 technology, along with a brilliant and creative team, can set the pace.

Since finance affects all business units of the company, it would make sense that they would be involved in developing and executing corporate social-media strategies.

Want to learn more best practices for social media for financial-services companies? Check out SmartBrief’s recorded webinar, Building Equity: Social Media Meets Finance, with industry social-media pioneers including Mark Story from the SEC, Amy Dobra from The Vanguard Group, social-media maven Shiv Singh from Razorfish and Amy Sochard from FINRA.

Image credit: Petrovich9, via iStockphoto

A few takeaways from my discussion with Gilvar:

• Marketers need to find ways to meet users on their own terms. Brands need to work to make themselves accessible.
• “The more you do [social media] the more work there is to do.”
• Storytelling is a kind of currency in social media. Seeing your story being shared is one of the surest signs that your efforts are succeeding.

Check out our full interview with Ted.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Some of Swaysland’s best advice:

• Begin by listening and defining your goals.
• Unify your communications strategy and your social strategy. “If you try to take it apart, it doesn’t work,” she says.
• Start on small, preferably integrating social into an existing campaign that’s already got internal support.
• Get the lawyers on your side with a strong social-media policy. Having guidelines makes everyone feel safer and can increase executive buy-in.
• You can’t outsource this. You need to find people internally who are passionate about social technology. Don’t try to fake it.

Watch the full video here.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Ashley McMaster, the senior health care editor at SmartBrief, recently interviewed Christina B. Thielst about her new book, “Social Media in Healthcare: Connect, Communicate, Collaborate.” Christina Thielst is a veteran hospital and health care administrator and entrepreneur. To learn more about Christina’s research, professional interests and specializations, visit her blog.

What do you see as the greatest challenges to achieving widespread health care provider use of social media tools? The greatest challenges are fear and not having a clear understanding of the technologies and how they can be applied.

Which medium/media do you see medical professionals using most often?
Right now medical professionals, especially physicians, are using social networking sites to connect with others who share common interests. Sites like Sermo and Physician Connect.

What benefits do providers say they see with using social media? What risks?
Benefits include increased exposure and new audiences; increased traffic to their websites; enhanced communications; more effective collaboration; reduced media costs; and awareness of unsatisfied patients families, employees and the public. There is a risk that someone will leave an unpleasant comment, but it is outweighed by becoming aware and being able to respond. There are other risks, but these can all be addressed by planning.

How are providers using social media to stay connected with patients?
Examples include Hello Health, which provides a social networking platform for physicians to incorporate into their practice, OneRecovery is offered by some providers to facilitate the patient’s aftercare plan and for peer support, and many are using social media to deliver education (podcasts, videocasts) or to engage health care consumers — i.e. blogs, www.PatientsLikeMe.com, etc.

How do they use these tools to communicate with vendors?
One example is a provider who used Twitter to connect with vendors and employees during a disaster. Others are collaborating on wikis and communicating on social networking sites and on blogs. We are in the early stages with vendors, but I see growth, especially as vendors reach out to their customers (the providers) using social media.

Image credit, VisualField, via iStock Photo