Building Brands with Social Media Tools

Social Media in Marketing — this last-minute add was the highlight of this year’s Entrepreneurship Week events.  A panel discussion conducted by Robert Scoble of RackSpace and the Scobleizer, Loic Le Meur, and THE MC Hammer focused on building your personal and professional brand with new media tools. 

If you were even conscious during the early 90s, then you would probably be psyched to see MC Hammer.  I sure was… and so was Stanford.  The Bishop Auditorium was packed and buzzing waiting for Hammer (as he’s known around the Valley) to arrive.  The big question on everyone’s mind? Will he wear the parachute pants?!

The event started out with a speech by the Stanford GSB’s Dean, Garth Saloner, who stressed the importance (and the difficulty) of finding a voice online.  He segued to Robert Scoble, a popular blogger based in Silicon Valley. Scoble and friends focused on the uses of Facebook, Twitter, Google Buzz, and personal blogs as the primary platforms in enhancing your social media portfolio.

Scoble gave a great analogy for anyone trying to wrap their head around the fast growing space that is social media…

It’s as if you were to double pennies.  If offered $100,000 or to take a penny that would double every day for a month, which would you take?  If you take the penny, you stand to gain much more value.  However, most people won’t see it’s value of this opportunity until about day 20.  That’s how innovation works — sometimes the idea is too fresh and people can’t see the value of the concept until much farther down the line. ((To see the math, click here.))

Shame on us for not being more familiar with Scoble and Le Meur.  They gave some great tips for those trying to cultivate their online presence.  For building credibility and expert status on social media platforms, Scoble suggested that you (1) Watch key people, (2) see what they’re interested in, (3) assert what they’d like to have shared with them and share it!

Loic Le Meur’s hints were specifically targeted at getting people engaged with your business.  He says that he would “rather have criticism than to have no one talking aobut your brand.”  Even in a crisis, he recommends answering every bit of criticism.

People want to hear from real people.  As part of developing your voice, it may be helpful to be casual and open, answering real questions in a very personal way.  This will keep your customers and fans feeling a personal connection to your brand. Similarly, you need to continue to identify your biggest fans. Make them feel loved and empowered (by knowing their feedback is heard and valued)… and a little bit of swag never hurt!

Then came Hammer… He opened with: “Can’t Tweet This.”  And the laughter erupted.  For those of you who had assumed that Hammer had crawled into a dark hole after his pop hits, you couldn’t be more wrong.  He’s been tied in to Silicon Valley, performing last year at Google’s Xmas party, meeting and advising YouTube, and starting his own host of businesses from Fashion blogs to support his musical stylings to an online “Citizen Journalism” platform.

Hammer said he’s focusing on “recommendation” features as the new trend is that “recommendation is going to go further than headline reading.”  Additionally, he advised the audience on using the Blogspot platform, which he uses because it returns results higher up in the Google algorithm than other blog hosting websites.  The crowd hung on his every word, and were just excited to see that he wasn’t still suffering from his over-publicized bankruptcy.

Our gurus confessed that to be effective in the space, a user needs to be engaged 24 hours a day — on all platforms — a difficult task considering the incompatibility of various platforms.  (I find this to be difficult unless it’s how you make your living as Scoble and Le Meur do… side note: that day Adam and I lost ALL power in ALL our electronics!)

If trying out social media tools, Le Meur stressed patience.  These tools are new to existence and new to society.  It’s going to take a while, both individually and socially, to work out all the kinks.