The Chronicle of Philanthropy recently released the results of a survey of their subscribers’ use of social media in 2009.

They found that 88% of those responding were currently participating in some form of social media; more than half of those had been doing so for less than a year; most were participating via “general social networking” (e.g. Facebook) or blogs / microblogs (e.g. Wordpress, Blogger, Twitter.) The most popular tools used among respondents were Facebook (86%) Twitter (57%) YouTube (37%) and Blogs (48%).

All this use of new communication tools is great, but since so many organizations are new at this, they run the risk of doing a lot of communicating without saying anything. Every communication, even those limited to 140 characters, is an opportunity to tell your story. If you’re an organization doing great work, the stories you have to tell are probably some of your most valuable assets.

John P. Kotter, bestselling author, Harvard Business School professor and thought leader in the field of leadership and change wrote, “Those in leadership positions who fail to grasp or use the power of stories risk failure for their companies and for themselves.”

In the spirit of learning and collaboration (not picking on anyone), I have taken the liberty of writing alternate Tweets for a few organizations by way of example:

Read the rest of this entry »

How we interact with our customers has changed a great deal over the last century and a half and is morphing even more rapidly than ever before.

Once upon a time, if your customers had an issue with your products or services, they would hop on their horse and gallop to the local store and speak to someone face to face. This very personal interaction would encourage the business to work closely with the customer to resolve the issue or face the possibility of that person telling the whole town how bad the store is.

Then along came the telephone and businesses had to establish call centers to stay connected to their patrons. The customers now had a choice - visit a physical location for help or just pick up the phone from the comfort of their own home. While this new era of options was a positive development overall, it gave some companies the option to hide from their customers behind a menu system and switchboard. They no longer had to look a customer in the eye and tell them that they couldn’t help them with their issue. However, the customer still had the option to tell their friends about their bad experience so the risk to the business of not assisting their customers was still relatively high. The only difference is that those conversations would happen one-to-one in person or during a phone chat so the risk of a lot of people finding out about poor service was relatively low.

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Today’s entry is brought to us by our guest blogger, AV Flox, editor of the hugely popular social media blog OMGOMGOMFG.com.

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Once upon a time, a woman complained about a job offer on her Twitter account and earned the scorn and ridicule of the world when an employee of the company in question cornered her with a series of tweets.

For those of you who missed the fall of Cisco Fatty, here’s the run down: a woman by the Twitter username @theconnor, tweeted: “Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.”

Not long after, a long-time Cisco employee, @timmylevad, replied: “Who is the hiring manager. I’m sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web.” He went further with more tweets about the applicant’s naivete, contacted bloggers to write about the incident and asked followers to retweet his comments. Read the rest of this entry »

Not long ago, KARMA Media Labs launched our Twitter profile @karmamedialabs and blog BROADB®AND as a place to share factoids, ramblings and things we find interesting in the land of social media and beyond.

Once launched, the KML team looked at me and my partner somewhat quizzically and asked if there were limits or rules for what to post.

My answer? Anything you find interesting.

As far as who should post: Anyone who has something interesting to say.

We believe its not only important to have interesting content, but it’s important to get other people’s perspective, knowledge and interaction on our blog and externally.

Some things we keep in mind:

• Be social!  Read/comment on other blogs
• Send an email or comment if you like something
• If you want to have a blogroll, add things you really like
• If someone posts a comment on your blog, reply to them as a comment
• Invite other people to guest blog

And speaking of that last point, KML is always looking for guest bloggers to share what social media means to them personally and professionally.  We get excited when we have the chance to learn more about other people’s philosophies, challenges and opportunities.

Interested in sharing your opinion? Send me a note.

PS. If you’re wondering how to be a good guest blogger, check out this great article.

Earlier this week, I was getting on my blog soap box to talk about not one, but two unfortunate experiences I had with restaurants last week - both which overcharged by adding extra entrees to our bills.

As someone who is in the field of Word of Mouth Marketing, and even more importantly, a consumer who felt “wronged”, I did what many are now doing these days and chose to speak about my experiences online - on Facebook, Twitter, and even this blog.

I challenged both restaurants to keep in mind that consumers now have the ability to not only share their opinion, but amplify their negative experiences on review sites such as Yelp, CitySearch, TripAdvisor, etc.

According to a recent study by the Society for New Communications Research, 59% of consumers use social media to vent their frustrations about service experience, and research other consumers’ experience with service before dealing with them.  Furthermore, 81% say blogs, online rating systems and discussion forums can give consumers a greater voice regarding customer care, but less than 33% say they believe that businesses take customers’ opinions seriousl.

I had thought the same about the two restaurants last weekend. But I was wrong.  One of them- Taste on Melrose - listened and responded here on this blog.

I was impressed not only that they listened to what one of their customers said, but they turned it into a positive by making it right.

I couldn’t be happier- as this is one of my favorite restaurants, a place I’ve taken family, friends, co-workers and have recommended to others. I’ll keep doing so.

Thanks for paying attention Taste and righting a wrong through social media.

Need some helpful SEO tips for your blog?  Check out these four basic tricks:

1. Categories — when you are adding a post to a category, pick one category. Putting a post in more than one category creates duplicate content and search engines will think you wrote the same thing multiple times.
2. Tags – use as many possible to describe the content. Always use names, places, events, etc. if they are relevant. When you publish it, it will cross reference with those names/etc.
3. Page Title– 60 characters or less. Be descriptive and tight, anything beyond that is dropped.
4. Description — 160 characters or less. Make sure your title words are repeated in your description. It ranks better and weighs heavier. Also make sure that the URL reads with words in the title and description.

Aside from these four basic guidelines, there are many more ways to get your voice heard by building awareness and word of mouth around your blog.  Stay tuned for more from KML…

Yes, that happens to be KARMA’s tagline.  But it also defines Word of Mouth — and much like KARMA, it can be both positive and negative.

As a business, individual or company, you want word of mouth to be positive, but the reality is through new social media platforms and exchanges, consumers have more ways to amplify their experiences– the good, the bad and the ugly.

Take, for example, my recent restaurant going experiences over the weekend.  Not one, but two restaurants (that shall remain nameless for the time being) slipped in extra entrees on our bill, hoping we would not check.  And we almost didn’t.

In the first instance, since we were taking a family member out for their 65th birthday, we didn’t want to cause a scene and just ate it.  Annoying.

In the second and far more annoying instance, a restaurant, where my husband and I are considered “regulars”, slipped in an extra entree, the entree we usually order when we’re there but didn’t this time.  Was this a random error?  No, they figured since we usually get the same thing every time, they’d try to sneak it in.  When we called the waitress over, body language had “oops we’ve been caught” written all over it.  We won’t be going there again.

My point with the above, is as an irritated, frustrated, and somewhat direct consumer, my first inclination was to go wherever possible online to warn people not to go to these two restaurants.  My Facebook and Twitter updates mentioned this annoyance, and look, here I am blogging about it.  I’ve decided to not name the restaurants, but if I truly wanted to cause some damage and give these two places the consumer F%&* YOU, I’d be a little more specific.

Consumers like tell others how much they like or dislike products, services and experiences. eMarketer reports that 65 million adults in the U.S. are talking about products and services and 27 million of them are doing it online via forums, blogs, consumer review sites, social media sites etc. That trend is only going to increase.

Sure, businesses should try to do things right in the first place to garner positive reviews, but they shouldn’t be afraid of the bad ones.  It’s possible many of them can turn this around to be a positive by connecting with their target audience, hearing feedback, and understanding their audience’s perception.

So I’m not sure if Pace in Laurel Canyon or Taste on Melrose will do anything about my experiences to make it better, but if they were smart, they’d not only keep in mind that consumers like to blab about shifty practices, but they should pay attention to what’s being said.

Oops! I slipped the names of the restaurants.  Kind of like how they slipped in those extra entrees.

E!'s Answer B!tch, Leslie Gornstein

The KARMA crew attended the book signing party for Leslie Gornstein, best known as the E! Answer B!tch on eonline.com. We helped her celebrate the launch of her new book, The A List Playbook, which got us super excited (as we tend to be obsessed with behind the scenes Hollywood gossip).

Over snacks, wine and great conversation with supporters of Leslie and her book, we asked ourselves: What is happening in the world of literary marketing? With all the hard work that goes into writing and publishing one’s work, how does an author connect with their target reading audience and promote their book? Is it supported by the publisher? Is it up to the author? What is the secret to book marketing?

The publishing market is more competitive than ever with 180,000 new titles released every year and over 2.5 million titles available on sites like Amazon.com and BN.com. It’s a little known fact that of all the books published each year, fewer than 1% sell more than 2,000 copies.

As we have had more conversations with authors on a quest to market a successful book, we began to realize that this is a real challenge, but even bigger opportunity to leverage social media to promote the book, showcase content, reach target fans and elevate the profile of the author. We think now is the time for word of mouth marketing - it’s engaging, it’s impactful, and it’s cost effective.

Leslie is well on her way to embracing social media and is a great example of not only showcasing the book and connecting with fans, but also extending the experience online through her blog www.alistplaybook.com.  So with that quick shoutout to the one and only Answer B!tch, we thank her for giving us the wisdom and insight (and especially thank her for the juicy gossip in her book). Thanks Leslie!

Social Media Marketing = Word of Mouth = Awareness

Social media is as simple as its component parts – social interaction meets media — the sites, events, communities and resources that enable people to share with each other, collaborate, communicate and reinvent.

Social media marketing is harnessing that media to drive conversation, build awareness and spark word of mouth around a brand, individual or particular subject matter.

Your audience is living in the new media space – on Social Networks (Myspace, Facebook, LastFM), Sharing and Bookmarking sites (Digg, Stumbleupon), opinion and voting sites, UGC and video sites (YouTube, DailyMotion), and a variety of communities and blogs targeting niche interests. For successful social media marketing, it is important to:

1. Find those consumers;
2. Listen to them;
3. Amplify their voice; and
4. Engage them with the information and content they’re asking for.

Why Social Marketing is More Effective.

Traditional Media = Monologue
Social Media = Dialogue

Now, more than ever, consumers have the opportunity to involve themselves in the marketing mix, and they will. As new, digital media became the preferred media of the Millennial Generation, information and content became easier to create, share and manipulate. This democratization has led to an unprecedented interconnectedness both to the world and one another. This real-time, interconnectivity creates a two-way communication channel for everything, always, which is one of its primary advantages over traditional media.

Traditional media is characterized as monologue, slow if ever to adapt and respond. Social media is defined by dialogue, evolving constantly and responding instantly. Consumers have gravitated to and adopted social media because it allows them the opportunity to interact with and engage the people, brands and ideas that matter most to them. And this two-way communication channel requires that brands interact and engage in return. After they are done speaking, they are now required to listen and respond. Those that don’t will be left behind.

Once people are engaged it becomes increasingly likely that they will share and this sharing is the ultimate value for brands practicing effective social media marketing. All of the actions we take online are now shared with our friends – we are clicks away from sharing the links we like, from seeing the clothes and music our friends just purchased, from reading the restaurant reviews posted by our neighbors. And we know this sharing is the most important factor when influencing consumers to adopt a specific brand identity or purchase a certain product.

Ready…Set…Go!

We thought we’d kick off our blog by continuing the chain-letter-esque, tag you’re it, game that seems to be sweeping people young and old (and apparently those with time on their hands).

Here are 25 amazing factoids you didn’t know about the KARMA team.

1. We like to swear. We swear a lot. Ok maybe just a few of us do (raising hand).
2. Two members of the team grew up together in the same town, went to grade school together, graduated high school and didn’t speak for 18 years until reconnecting on Facebook.
3. We like the good kind of KARMA. Not the bad kind.
4. One of us won an Emmy Award for his digital media work on Heroes.
5. We have a mascot. Check out our team bios and you’ll be really jealous.
6. We set our agenda around happy hour and pizza.
7. We still debate over what’s better- the iPhone or the Blackberry. And then get distracted checking our text messages.
8. One of us flies home to Chicago just to eat fries at Nookie’s Diner and pizza at Lou Malnati’s.
9. One of us has an unhealthy obsession with The Snuggie and talks with it on Twitter @thesnuggie.
10. If we were a TV Show, we would be the A Team.
11. To us Twitter is a noun, a verb, an adjective and pretty much our way of life.  We are what we tweet.
12. We like to move it, move it.
13. One of us knows all the lyrics Bring the Nooz by Public Enemy and can rap them on command.
14. One of us knows all the lines to the movie Fletch. And realizes some on the team weren’t born yet when the movie was out.
15. Not only do we like working together, we like each other. So there.
16. We fight over music. One of us won’t let the 80’s go. I’m not saying who.
17. One of us worked with Adam Sandler for nine years.
18. If we could be different members of the Spice Girls, we would be Crafty Spice, Strategic Spice, Cayenne Spice, Smarty Spice, French Spice, Swifty Spice, Insomnia Spice, Snuggie Spice and Old Spice.
19. We are 20% vegetarian, 30% midwestern, and 12.5% French.
20. If we could film ourselves running around being crazy we would. And some of us have.
21. One of us is an actor in a web series.
22. Only two of us actually filled out the “25 Random Things” on Facebook. And I wasn’t one of them.
23. We’re passionate about social media.
24. We’re not about fitting in to the “norm”. We like to create our own.
25. We love a challenge. Bring. It. On.