Last week, British soul singer Adele swept up the Grammy awards and won all six categories she was nominated for.  She handily won the night’s top honours, including Song of the Year, Record of the Year, and Album of the Year.

To many, Adele’s success has to do with her voice, but I think it’s more than that. Many vocalists can sing, but very few connect emotionally to mass audiences.

If you’ve read my other blog, Filthy Pop, you know just how much I love music, so it shouldn’t be surprising that I’m using an artist as inspiration for social media. In honour of Adele’s six Grammys, I present six social media lessons we can learn from this British superstar.

1. Be different.

Describing the process of producing her multi-platinum album 21, Adele once said in an interview, “It’s all about the song and the music; I had no idea what was going on with the charts or what new videos have come out.”

While it is important to keep an eye out on what your competitors are doing, it’s still imperative for your organization to be creative and to adapt a social media strategy that is unique to your business. In social media, as in everything else, strive to be a leader and not a follower.

2. Be authentic.

Authenticity is a word that is often tossed around both in music and in marketing. Adele provides a good example of what it means to be truly authentic.

Recently, after fashion icon Karl Lagerfeld called her “a little too fat”, Adele responded with the following: “I’ve never wanted to look like models on the cover of magazines. I represent the majority of women and I’m very proud of that.”

Being authentic to herself has made Adele a more confident musician and a more successful entertainer. Having a clear picture of her identity has enabled Adele to shrug off criticisms that have nothing to do with her music.

In social media, don’t try to be someone else. Speak the language that is authentic to you, and you’ll attract the right kind of followers and fans. Be clear about your mission as an organization, and let that guide you with your social media efforts.

3. Cry, laugh, holler – show some emotions!

Have you seen Adele’s concert DVD? It’s a fantastic DVD that highlights Adele’s bright personality.

During the concert, the pop star laughs, teases, and flirts with the audience. Overwhelmed with emotions, Adele also cries at one point.

People are emotional creatures, so it’s only natural that we’re attracted to genuine emotions. Don’t be afraid to inject some emotions to your social media communications. When appropriate, laugh with your followers, show delight, or express disgust over something. People want to know that there’s a real person behind that Twitter or Facebook account.

4. Tell a fascinating backstory.

Going back to Adele’s DVD, one thing that makes it fun are the stories that Adele tells in between songs. Before starting a new song, Adele reminisces about its origin, what the lyrics mean to her, and who inspired her to write the song.

Stories are powerful, and not many companies use them to strengthen their social media strategy. What may seem mundane to you might be interesting to your followers. Don’t be afraid to tell the backstory — sometimes the story is more fascinating than the final product!

Images, in particular, are powerful storytellers. Share photos regularly to give your followers an inside look into your day-to-day operations. For a good example, check out what Starbucks is doing on Instagram.

5. Let your talent shine – don’t rely on antics!

Adele’s success has much to do with the fact that she is a breathe of fresh air. In the post-Gaga world, most pop stars rely on theatrics to get attention. Not Adele though. Backed by a band and nothing else, Adele commands the stage with her voice and emotions.

Social media marketers have access to many online tools. Flashy tools are introduced everyday. Sometimes though it’s not the ones with the most tools that win.

Go back to the basics: Focus on delivering a great product or service to your customers, and tell your story through engaging content. Use tools to highlight your products or services, not to distract away from them.

6. Be humble.

Adele has enjoyed critical and commercial success, but she has remained humble throughout this entire era. This humility is front and centre at this year’s Grammys — she acknowledged the people behind the project as well as radio programmers’ support for her success.

If you experience success in social media, stay humble and never stop learning. Have systems in place that will allow you to review your performance. Keep on listening to your community, and strive to use the feedback they give you to improve your business.

More importantly, give credit where credit is due. If you found a great article through a Twitter contact, make sure you’re giving the appropriate RT, MT or HT. Don’t be afraid to let others shine.

What have you learned from Adele?

Are you an Adele fan? What lessons have you learned from watching her success?

© 2012, KC Claveria. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Please link back to kcclaveria.com

Last week, a new study about social media titled “Who Gives a Tweet” finally released its findings, and many tech and marketing blogs picked up the story.

In a nutshell, the study looked at thousand of tweets to determine what type of updates users find worth reading. To do this, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Georgia Institute of Technology created ‘Who Gives a Tweet?’, a website that collected evaluations of tweets.

Many of the coverage that the study received focused on the finding that 25% of tweets are disliked and that only 36% are liked. For me, however, the more intriguing conclusion from the study was the following:

The cliched “sandwich” tweets about pedestrian, personal details were largely disliked. Reviewers reserved a special hatred for Foursquare location check-ins.

This particular recommendation didn’t sit well with me. Partly, that’s because I’m guilty of tweeting about personal details of my life (including my dinner plans) and checking in to Foursquare, but I think there’s more. From my personal experience, these types of updates — the one that the study calls ‘pedestrian’ — are the ones that usually encourage people to respond to me, to engage.

Flawed methodology?

I had to look more into this study. The researchers described their methodology as follows:

André and his colleagues — Michael Bernstein and Kurt Luther, doctoral students at MIT and Georgia Tech, respectively — created the website “Who Gives a Tweet?” to collect reader evaluations of tweets….

People who visited “Who Gives a Tweet?” were promised feedback on their tweets if they agreed to anonymously rate tweets by Twitter users they already follow. Over a period of 19 days in late 2010 and early 2011, 1,443 visitors to the site rated 43,738 tweets from the accounts of 21,014 Twitter users they followed.

I downloaded the entire study just to learn a little bit more about the “Who Gives a Tweet” users, and immediately the following questions emerged:

• Were these people vetted? Are they considered influential? If they are, what were the criteria used to evaluate their influence?
• Were there systems in place to make sure that these people actually used Twitter? What mechanisms were there to ensure that this group wasn’t just a bunch of fellow academics who have never sent a tweet to begin with?
• Were enough info given to participants so that their interpretation of “useful” or “informative” were somewhat similar? A tweet that is useful to a professor may not be relevant to a foodie or a high school student.
• What was the nature of the relationships of these users? (Just because they follow each other doesn’t mean they have a relationship.)

These questions are important because a tweet’s “usefulness” really depends on context, something that seems to be lacking here.

Twitter is about having a personality.

Another conclusion from the study that caught my eye was the following:

“Tweets that included questions to followers, information sharing, and self-promotion (such as links to content the writer had created) were more often liked.”

This recommendation is telling.  Asking questions to followers is definitely a great suggestion, but I can’t help but question the other two.

Anyone who has used Twitter for a while will tell you that self-promotion is rarely liked. It’s fine to do it once in a while, but try doing it every day and followers will soon click that “unfollow” button.

Similarly, Twitter lends itself to information sharing, and that practice is often encouraged. But can you imagine an account not doing anything else besides sharing links to news and blog posts? You will bore your followers to death! It’s been said before, but it’s worth repeating: Social media is not a broadcasting tool.

One possible reason why self-promotion was liked in this study was that users have seen these kinds of tweets over a limited period of time. Over longer periods, both self-promotion and broadcasting are frowned upon on Twitter.

It’s about balance. And authenticity.

Ultimately, it’s all about balance.  Information sharing, self-promotion and dinner pics – these are all fine as long as they’re all done moderately and as long as they feel authentic to you.

I’ve seen plenty of examples of social media users — many of them I consider power users and influencers — who do all of these three, and they seem to be getting good results. Jeremiah Owyang, for instance, regularly share food pics on his Google Plus page, while Vancouver’s Dennis Pang has a reputation for tweeting food porn throughout the day. People respond to these updates, so I would hardly call them “disliked”.

I think this quote from Amber Naslund is also worth bringing up regarding the topic of tweeting food pics:

The compelling, the arresting, the artful wouldn’t nearly be so if it weren’t for the contrast with donut pictures of the world. (Source)

Indeed, in a world of too much marketing, of too much self-promotion, the mundane is a nice break. There’s something to be said about bacon’s ability to unite us all.

Also, it’s important to remember that with social media, just like with life, it is not about being liked. Sometimes it’s about being interesting, about standing out. Trying to change yourself on social media just to get a stamp of approval is a tiring and a thankless process.

Finally, I question whether Twitter really needs to be “useful” and “informative”. Different people have different uses for social media, and this notion that it needs to be a source of information seems a little dubious to me. If you’d like to learn while online, why visit Twitter or Facebook? Social media isn’t an encyclopedia; its main purpose is to connect people, not to educate.

The beauty of social media is that it allows us to express ourselves and to share experiences with others. Don’t let academics tell you what you should and should not tweet. Instead, I encourage you to be you, experiment with what feels right, and have fun when using social media.

Your turn

What do you think of food pics on Twitter? Do you dislike these types of updates?

Photo credit: KayVee.INC

© 2012, KC Claveria. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Please link back to kcclaveria.com

“Building a social agency”, a free webinar hosted by Argyle Social, explored what it’s like to start, expand, and scale a social media agency. The webinar, which took place January 26, 2012, used the experiences of Ignite Social Media, a social agency from North Carolina, as a case study. Eric Boggs of Argyle Social and Jim Tobin of Ignite Social Media hosted the hour-long webinar.

Jim generously offered lots of tidbits about his experience with Ignite. Here are five tips that stood out for me:

1. Walk the walk – a.k.a. Do social media well.

This is true for any type of agency, but it’s even more true for social media agencies – clients expect social agencies to walk the walk and be doing well with social media.

Are you blogging to demonstrate that you know the industry? Is your Twitter account properly managed and do you have systems in place to listen to what’s being said about you and your industry? These are just some basic things you ought to be asking yourself if you’re positioning your company as a social media expert.

Jim also touched on declining clients. He said social agencies should do one thing really well and should not be afraid to turn down work if it doesn’t align with the company’s core competency.

2. Specialize in social media.

Know your core competency, and specialize on that. If you’re positioning your company as a social media agency, then don’t get bogged by adding in PR or advertising services. Just focus on what you’re really good at.

I thought that this was actually a particularly controversial stance. I’d think that clients expect agencies to provide integrated marketing services, but given that Intense is experiencing success, perhaps there’s still something to be said about being good at one thing instead of being mediocre at several things.

3. When creating strategies, think beyond platforms: think POST.

Jim emphasized the importance of taking the time to create winning strategies for the client. Ignite Social Media’s workflow, for instance, calls for 8 to 10 weeks to come up with a strategy. Good strategy takes time to shape.

He also offered the following as a basic structure when coming up with tactics for clients (abbreviation is POST):

• People – This refers to your clients’ audiences. Where are they hanging out? If they’re tech geeks who are early adopters, they might be on Google Plus. If they’re creative women, Pinterest might be their social media of choice. Don’t start coming up with tactics unless you have a super clear idea of the audience you’re trying to reach.
• Objectives – What are your client’s objectives? Is it to increase brand awareness? Increase sales? Let your clients have clear objectives so you can craft strategies and tactics that support those objectives.
• Strategies – Determine the end point you have in mind, and be sure that you and your client clear about it.
• Technologies – Once you have a clear picture of your audience, objectives, and strategies,picking the technology  (blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) comes naturally and easily.

In a nutshell, the POST method encourages agencies to think beyond platforms and to consider outcomes — an important message, I think.

4. Create workflow and feedback loops. Use them.

Social media disasters (such as the recent one with Papa John’s) are not unheard of. For many companies, a social media disaster (either in small or a big scale) is a matter of when, not of if.

A social agency should therefore have “escalation paths”. Be clear on who the social agency needs to contact (PR, legal, etc.) if ever there’s a crisis. Jim also recommended maintaining good relationship with your clients’ PR or marketing departments.

5. Crush your competition by providing valuable content.

Finally, Jim emphasized the importance of content marketing if you’re a social agency. Simply put, you can win clients with your content.

At the very least, your social agency should be blogging regularly. Ignite Social Media provides incentives for employees to blog. Jim said, “If you really want to understand something, blog about it.” I agree with this, and it’s a huge reason why I blog regularly.

It’s also important to be interesting. When hiring new employees, ask them about their passions. Look beyond the skills they’ve listed on their resumé.

Applicable to any agency?

I think that professionals from any industry can learn a lot from Ignite’s way of crafting a social media marketing strategy. These days, clients trust and do business with companies that have clout and that can provide additional value. Blogging is certainly one way of establishing reputation.

What do you think of these tips? What other tactics can social media agencies use to stand out?

Photo: Matthew Burpee

© 2012, KC Claveria. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Please link back to kcclaveria.com

Many companies are starting to blog, but not everyone is doing it well. It’s not unusual to find company blogs that haven’t been updated in a few months or blogs that aren’t getting any readership.

It has been said that “he who fails to plan, plans to fail”, and I think that this quote applies well to blogging. Given its SEO benefits, blogging can be a valuable part of your digital marketing mix, so plan to do it well.

Here a crash course — a business blogging 101, if you will,  that offers some ideas on what you should consider when starting a new company blog:

Blog component #1: Content

Decide what topics you’ll be blogging about. Usually there are two types of content: branded (i.e. content that is specifically about your business) and non-branded, those that are about your industry or about your customers but aren’t directly about you. For blogs, non-branded content works best.

To get started, think about some of the things that your customers usually ask you about your business. Provide valuable tips that people can use. When you meet new people and you tell them about what you do, what questions do they ask you? Think about the possible topics that your customers might search for on the net.

The key here is to produce that content that creates value. If you create valuable content, readers will naturally flock to your blog and you will establish yourself as an industry expert.

Blog component #2: People

Once you have a clearer idea of what type of content you’ll produce, the next logical step is to identify who might produce this content.

Do you have employees who are super passionate about your topic of choice? Who can write, create videos, tinker with websites, etc? More importantly, who has the time to create content for your blog? Will you need external companies to help set up and launch your blog? These are important considerations that marketers should think about when deciding who should write for a company blog.

Blog component #3: Platform

Another key consideration is the platform you’ll be using. If you’re comfortable tinkering with basic HTML codes, a self-hosted WordPress blog might make sense. If you’ve determined that your blog will be media-heavy, Tumblr might make sense. Blogger is another easy platform that companies can use to launch blogs.

There are many blog platform choices available, but having a clear idea of the type of content that you’ll be sharing and the people that can support you will help narrow down the field.

Blog components #4: Comments

One of the reasons why blogs have grown in popularity is because of the feedback mechanism that they provide. Blogs naturally facilitate conversations. A blog that doesn’t allow comments is really just a website.

For comments, consider two things. First, consider having a clear and explicit comment policy. This policy should foster respect among people in your community without hindering conversations.

Secondly, consider having a plan on how to handle negative comments. By nature, blogs are subjective, so not everyone will agree with all your posts. Will you allow profanity in the comments section if it still remains respectful? In what instances will you delete negative comments? These are just some key questions that you need to answer with regards to comments.

For an example of a comment policy, check out this example from Rize Alliance, a Dunn PR client:

Blog component #5: Measurement

In addition to an explicit comment policy, the one other big oversight when companies start blogging is a plan to measure their efforts. Without analytics in place from the beginning, it’s difficult to determine what’s working well on your blog, whether you’re getting business value out of it, and whether there are content gaps that you should fill.

Some possible metrics that businesses should consider include page views, conversion rates, and number of comments. Check out Occam’s Razor, a blog by Google’s Avinash Kaushik, for ideas on what you should measure your company blog’s ROI.

Learn more about blogging for your business

This video from Inbound Marketing University presented by Mack Collier, founder of the #blogchat tweetchat, and Ann Handley of MarketingProfs does a great job of outlining what you need to do to blog effectively for your business. It’s an excellent resource and I recommend watching it.

What do you think of the items I listed here? Are there other considerations that businesses should consider when launching a new blog?

Photo: Niyam Bhushan

© 2012, KC Claveria. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Please link back to kcclaveria.com

Yesterday, I attended a special edition of the Social Media Club Vancouver Pub Night. The organizers of the meetup group teamed up with the folks from the Bunker Project to talk social media. The Bunker Project records two podcasts back-to-back in one night, and although I only attended the first one, I learned a lot listening from the likes of Bob Garlick, Hootsuite’s Kemp Edmonds and Stephanie Michelle Scott share their thoughts.

The podcast I attended focused on a Hubspot ebook that dispels six social media myths. The biggest takeaways from me are the following:

• Publishing on social networks on weekends may be beneficial. In fact, the aforementioned Hubspot study suggests that posts on the weekends tend to get higher engagement. (Check your analytics and identify your audience to determine if this tactic is right for your business.)
• “Please Retweet” (as opposed to “Please RT”) has been found to result to more retweets. There’s still something to be said about spelling words out, it seems!
• Content curation is important (and there are tons of tools to help with that), but what separates great curators from others is consistency AND personality. 
• Providing value should be your #1 goal regardless of the medium. Whether via email newsletters, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google Plus, what makes fans attracted to you is the value you give them. In other words, DON’T SPAM!

Here’s a Storify that has even more cool tidbits from the event. It sounds like the 2nd podcast was just as interesting as the first one! Major props to

Photo: Felice Lam

© 2012, KC Claveria. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Please link back to kcclaveria.com