Why Women Are the Most Powerful Brand Ambassadors In the World

Last December I wrote of the need for more brand ambassadors. The need, as I surmised it, was based on a finding from a study conducted by Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council and Lithium, a social media tech firm.
There was one study finding in particular I based my belief on.
This one...

I wrote in my aforementioned story...
"This particular finding speaks directly to the power of suggestion and the power of peer pressure in many ways for it shows just how truly powerful a brand ambassador can be and how much influence these folks can carry with their friends."

Well today I want to take this a step further... a GIANT step.
In discussing the findings of a study conducted by her own company, BlogHer - the leading participatory news, entertainment and information network for women online - CEO and co-founder Lisa Stone said the following...
"...there’s no one a woman trusts more for advice, recommendations and guidance than another woman in her circle.”
And when you factor in that women account for 85% of all consumer purchases including everything from autos to health care, it only stands to reason that the most powerful ambassador a brand can have... is a woman.
So... to all brand managers and brand marketers out there it's really quiet simple.
Engage with and empower more brand ambassadors who are women.
Ok, that's an incredibly simplisitc direction but you get the idea.
Create and foster relationships with those making the bulk of the purchasing decisions.
Stay actively engaged with them... key word being "actively."

Empower them by offering them exclusive offers and "insider" type of info about contests and promotions, etc.
Then when one woman in their "circle" - be it online or off, asks another for advice or suggestions or recommendations, they will tell them all about your wonderful brand... and there will be joy in the land.
Or something like that...
Your thoughts please.
Do you know who you specific brand ambassadors are?
How do you empower and reward them?

6 Habits of True Strategic Thinkers

You're the boss, but you still spend too much time on the day-to-day. Here's how to become the strategic leader your company needs.

In the beginning, there was just you and your partners. You did every job. You coded, you met with investors, you emptied the trash and phoned in the midnight pizza. Now you have others to do all that and it's time for you to "be strategic."
Whatever that means.
If you find yourself resisting "being strategic," because it sounds like a fast track to irrelevance, or vaguely like an excuse to slack off, you're not alone. Every leader's temptation is to deal with what's directly in front, because it always seems more urgent and concrete. Unfortunately, if you do that, you put your company at risk. While you concentrate on steering around potholes, you'll miss windfall opportunities, not to mention any signals that the road you're on is leading off a cliff.
This is a tough job, make no mistake. "We need strategic leaders!” is a pretty constant refrain at every company, large and small. One reason the job is so tough: no one really understands what it entails. It's hard to be a strategic leader if you don't know what strategic leaders are supposed to do.
After two decades of advising organizations large and small, my colleagues and I have formed a clear idea of what's required of you in this role. Adaptive strategic leaders — the kind who thrive in today’s uncertain environment – do six things well:

Anticipate

Most of the focus at most companies is on what’s directly ahead. The leaders lack “peripheral vision.” This can leave your company vulnerable to rivals who detect and act on ambiguous signals. To anticipate well, you must:

• Look for game-changing information at the periphery of your industry
• Search beyond the current boundaries of your business
• Build wide external networks to help you scan the horizon better

Think Critically

“Conventional wisdom” opens you to fewer raised eyebrows and second guessing. But if you swallow every management fad, herdlike belief, and safe opinion at face value, your company loses all competitive advantage. Critical thinkers question everything. To master this skill you must force yourself to:

• Reframe problems to get to the bottom of things, in terms of root causes
• Challenge current beliefs and mindsets, including your own
• Uncover hypocrisy, manipulation, and bias in organizational decisions

Interpret

Ambiguity is unsettling. Faced with it, the temptation is to reach for a fast (and potentially wrongheaded) solution. A good strategic leader holds steady, synthesizing information from many sources before developing a viewpoint. To get good at this, you have to:

• Seek patterns in multiple sources of data
• Encourage others to do the same
• Question prevailing assumptions and test multiple hypotheses simultaneously

Decide

Many leaders fall prey to “analysis paralysis.” You have to develop processes and enforce them, so that you arrive at a “good enough” position. To do that well, you have to:

• Carefully frame the decision to get to the crux of the matter
• Balance speed, rigor, quality and agility. Leave perfection to higher powers
• Take a stand even with incomplete information and amid diverse views

Align

Total consensus is rare. A strategic leader must foster open dialogue, build trust and engage key stakeholders, especially when views diverge. To pull that off, you need to:

• Understand what drives other people's agendas, including what remains hidden
• Bring tough issues to the surface, even when it's uncomfortable
• Assess risk tolerance and follow through to build the necessary support

Learn

As your company grows, honest feedback is harder and harder to come by. You have to do what you can to keep it coming. This is crucial because success and failure--especially failure--are valuable sources of organizational learning. Here's what you need to do:

• Encourage and exemplify honest, rigorous debriefs to extract lessons
• Shift course quickly if you realize you're off track
• Celebrate both success and (well-intentioned) failures that provide insight

Do you have what it takes?

Obviously, this is a daunting list of tasks, and frankly, no one is born a black belt in all these different skills. But they can be taught and whatever gaps exist in your skill set can be filled in. I'll cover each of the aspects of strategic leadership in more detail in future columns. But for now, test your own strategic aptitude (or your company's) with the survey at www.decisionstrat.com. In the comments below, let me know what you learned from it.

Paul J. H. Schoemaker

5 crisis PR lessons from ‘Kony 2012’

KONY 2012, a short documentary produced by the nonprofit Invisible Children, went viral last week, racking up millions of views on YouTube and Vimeo and clogging up social media feeds everywhere.

The social media campaign called for the arrest of Joseph Kony, the Ugandan warlord responsible for kidnapping and abducting Ugandan children to turn them into child soldiers for the last three decades.

Last week, the issue became a trending topic on Twitter and Google, and the video grabbed more than 55 million views on YouTube. However, it also drew sharp criticism from people, who said the nonprofit simplified an issue, support military intervention, and misspends funds.

Of course, it didn’t take long for media to catch on, turning Invisible Children’s awareness campaign into a crisis communications challenge.

Ultimately, the organization has some important lessons to offer for everyone working in nonprofit PR when faced with a media storm.

1. Communicate immediately

In a crisis, the longer an organization stays silent the more they are perceived to be hiding.

Not long after Invisible Children’s video went viral, so did its critiques. On the same day, Jedediah Jenkins, director of idea development for Invisible Children, reached out to media to call the criticism “myopic” and said the video got young people fired up about an issue on the other side of the planet that doesn’t affect them.

By Thursday, the founders of Invisible Children were talking to major TV networks and online news sources promoting the video and speaking to concerns.

2. Address specific concerns

Flooded by more traffic than it anticipated, Invisible Children’s website crashed temporarily on Wednesday. When it was restored in the evening, the site included an official point-by-point response to many of the critics’ “false and misleading information.”

The post doesn’t shy away from any accusations, addressing specific concerns with facts while taking into consideration its stakeholders’ context. It also includes detailed information about the organization’s financials and spending practices.

3. Include social media in your response

Invisible Children mainly uses social media and films to raise awareness, so it’s no surprise the organization immediately took to Twitter and Facebook to respond to stakeholders’ concerns, sometimes replying to people directly.



4. Have others speak for you

When crisis strikes, your credibility is automatically weakened. It doesn’t matter what the truth is—what matters is the public’s perceived truth. So, how do you regain credibility? Have a credible, outside source speak for you.

Within 24 hours of facing the online backlash, Invisible Children pointed to a video of a Ugandan woman affected by the LRA crisis address the critics. “I grew up in northern Uganda, I have been a sex slave, I was abducted as a child soldier and I know what it means,” Jolly Okot says in the video.

On the same day, Joseph Acaye, the former child abductee featured prominently in the film, spoke with The Guardian from Kampala, championing the organization’s efforts. Meanwhile, high-profile supporters of Invisible Children took to social media to drum up peer-to-peer support.



5. Ask for public input

Many brands have learned that asking for input on social media can quickly go awry due to its viral nature.

But Invisible Children is asking policymakers, fellow nonprofit workers, people affected by the LRA crisis, and the general public to work with them to improve Invisible Children’s work.

“We would like to encourage you, if you have critiques, to get specific: find facts, dig deeper, and we’ll gladly continue the conversation from there,” the organization writes. “If encountering something you disagree with, suggest an alternative to what we are doing- and we will absolutely take heed.”

By Mike Duerksen

Mike Duerksen is a communicator and copywriter. He also blogs at NonprofitPR, where a version of this story first appeared.


INVESTOR PERCEPTION STUDIES WEBINAR

Think Like a Politician: Use Investor Perception Audits as a Strategic Advantage

In politics, there is an age-old debate as to whether elected leaders should vote according to the wishes of their constituents, or vote their conscience as the people’s representative. We have seen politicians criticized for using polling too extensively to guide policy (see Bill Clinton) — and not enough (see Barack Obama). When I worked as a political consultant prior to entering the IR profession, we used polling to gauge the electorate’s opinions on a certain issue – not to change policy, but to determine what audiences need focused communication and how messaging should be used to address misperceptions. And this is exactly how IR practitioners should use our own version of polling – the investor perception audit.
I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed about investor perception audits by Broc Romanek of TheCorporateCounsel.net. The podcast is available here: http://bit.ly/doE4gw. An investor perception audit is a survey of a company’s capital markets audiences – past, current and potential institutional investors as well as sell-side analysts. Typically conducted by a third-party via telephone to protect anonymity, the perception audit usually includes questions about the company’s strategy, prospects for growth, communications, management strengths, and catalysts for investors to purchase stock, among others. Think you already know what they perceive about your company? Certainly, investors and analysts are usually not shy about voicing their opinions. However, many companies are often surprised at the feedback they receive when investors are not speaking face-to-face with management.
Today, many boards of directors have come to view the perception audit as a valuable tool to take the pulse of their investor base and determine whether there is any under-the-surface shareholder discontentment. It’s better to find out what the reasons are for any disapproval now, rather than during a contested proxy battle. Because of the growing trend toward shareholder activism, boards have become much more interested in the IR function, and good IROs are keeping their directors in tune with investor sentiment. An annual perception audit and a quarterly summation of feedback from one-on-one meetings usually go a long way toward achieving this goal.
Much like a political poll that dissects each demographic and geographic group and locates which constituents need extra communication, a perception audit can ensure that the company understands the concerns of its many investor types. Again, it is better to resolve (or at least understand) any differences that management may have with diverse types of shareholders with various investment styles before they make a choice between the company’s board nominees and those of an activist shareholder. Additionally, the act of reaching out to shareholders through a perception audit demonstrates management’s appreciation for their opinions.
Public companies have long used perception audits to evaluate investor perceptions and then refine messages. In 2010, a tidal wave of shareholder activism has raised the stakes, making the perception audit a highly strategic tool for boards and management alike. So as you plan your IR program, think like a politician and use “polling” to curry favor with your most valued audiences.
David Calusdian

What PR pros need to know about Facebook Timeline for brands

Facebook rolled out its Timeline for brands feature on Wednesday. Read our first look.

When Facebook launched Timeline for personal profiles, social media managers began speculating on when the format would be rolled out for brand pages. We now know that day will likely be Wednesday. Is your brand ready for the change?

By most accounts, brand will have three months before they have to adapt to the format, but you should start to see the rollout happen much quicker than that, with some early adopters taking advantage of the format immediately. Facebook premium ads are also expected on Wednesday, and leaked documents give some in-depth info on what that will mean for your brand.

The first thing that marketers should realize is that Timeline for brands will differ from Timeline for personal pages. Further, brands will need to rethink their Facebook strategy. And with any of the medium’s past iterations, there will be some growing pains.

That said, here are a few points that will help communicators ensure that they’re ready for the launch:

Plan first for the aesthetic changes

Obviously, the Timeline format is significantly different from the current format. The cover photo will serve as the brand’s showcase. After the original announcement was made, several thoughts began to circulate about what these pages might start to look like. Mashable published a gallery of how some brand pages might look once Timeline launches.

I can say that our agency has already been honing the look of our brand pages in this new format, realizing that the sooner we can switch our brands to Timeline, the sooner we can start taking advantage of what it has to offer. But it’s not as simple as that. Much of what Timeline will have to offer is left to speculation at this point.

In its early stages, focus on what you know you can control with Timeline. For example, you can control the look and you can control the message your brand presents.

Tell your brand’s story (or less sexy, its corporate history)

As you contemplate this messaging, keep in mind that Timeline offers the opportunity to tell your brand’s full history. For brands that perform well in the social space, the key has always been to tell a compelling story, and this won’t change with Timeline. What will change is how you do that.

To what extent will your fans be interested in these types of stories? Obviously, it’s yet to be seen. But we know that nostalgia plays well on the Web. For example, I spent an inordinate portion of my day looking at a gallery of old sports posters.

You will need to determine how much past content you feel is worthwhile to populate your Timeline’s early years.

The way you interact with fans will change

In a recent Forbes post, Vitrue CEO Reggie Bradford outlined how interactions will shift for brands on Timeline:

“Facebook is still personal and Timeline will call for more meaningful interactions. Moderation will become more important—so forget inundating the Newsfeed with irrelevant attempts at mass appeal. Instead, emphasize the chapters of your story that are relevant and interesting to specific audiences.”

No one is expecting the customer service activity on Facebook to go away. Quite the contrary. People will still post to your page to share their feedback about your brand. You’ll still have to respond to these people and continue monitoring. Over time, these interactions will likely take less precedence than, say, major product launches, etc.

But the content you put out to the public will need to shift. Superficial engagement posts are less important in this format. Think of it this way:

If you’re a potato chip purveyor, you may ask your fans to “like” a post if they eat your potato chips at lunch. With Timeline, it will be more important to note that on a particular day, thousands of your fans had your brand of potato chips for lunch because they shared the fact that they were eating your chips.

How will Timeline affect apps?

It looks as though existing apps will live—for now. They may need some maintenance or updating, but social media marketers should be excited about some of the new possibilities that Facebook apps can offer. We’re moving past the “like” and into other verbs like “pinning,” “running” and “listening.” The list will grow, and brands will be able to have some control in how people talk about using their products.

As Advertising Age pointed out in the original Timeline-for-brands announcement:

“For one, the tabs or apps marketers currently host on their Facebook pages to sell products or take polls may turn into boxes on the brand's Timeline, much like how apps for Spotify or Washington Post Social Reader live on users' Timelines.”

The more familiar you can become with the possibilities of Open Graph, the better your brand will be. Open Graph will allow you to develop apps that continue to be a part of people’s timelines, which will be key to expanding your reach in this new format.

By Kevin Allen

10 Little Known Social Media Tools You Should Be Using -- Now

Editor's note: A version of this article previously appeared at KISSmetrics.com.
Social media is everywhere. It's in our homes, places of worship, schools and, of course, our businesses. Everywhere you look, people are using social media and are talking about it. And it seems that every week a new type of social site pops up.
And as the number of social networking sites grows, so does the number of services that are created to measure, track and monitor those services. What's a marketing professional to do?
To help you cut through the clutter, here are the 10 must-use social media tools that can not only help you make sense of your social media efforts but make them more effective.
1. EditFlow
EditFlow is a plugin from open source content management system WordPress that allows you to manage your editorial team seamlessly.
With it, you can get a snapshot of your month-to-month content with the calendar feature. It also offers improved content status beyond WordPress' default draft and pending review. And user groups can help you keep your team of writers organized by department or function.
Who should use it and why: Any business owner who manages a multi-author website should give EditFlow a look. This tool can keep all of the things that are important to a multi-author blog in one spot so management is easy, clean and documented.

2. TweetReach
This tool allows you to see how far your tweets travel. For example, with TweetReach I can search my blog and come up with these results. It breaks down how many people your messages reach and how many tweets it took to reach them. For instance, TweetReach can tell you how many times your tweets have been shared by retweets, replies and other standard tweets.
Who should use it and why: From a social media manager to a small-business owner, basically anybody who is interested in finding out how effective his or her tweets are based upon the number of people they touch should consider using TweetReach. It can also useful from a metric standpoint in terms of justifying the results of your social media campaigns with senior management or partners.
3. ArgyleSocial
This Durham, N.C.-based startup is a social media platform that aims to help marketers connect the business dots with the social media dots. ArgyleSocial offers a single dashboard to monitor Facebook and Twitter that allows you to delegate tasks to your team. It also offers easy reporting on the ROI of your social media efforts.
If you'd like to be an affiliate, you can use ArgyleSocial's white label brand and resell the social media platform to your clients. All of your accounts can be wrapped up into one bill and sent to you to distribute or absorb as an included service.
Who should use it and why: From the social media manager to the one-person business that needs to prove to management, clients or themselves that their social media campaign is paying off.
4. HootSuite for iPad
HootSuite users should be happy with this iPad application. It includes a stationary column in the sidebar that keeps track of all streams being tracked.
Among the other things HootSuite says you can do with this iPad app include checking in using a Foursquare account, scheduling messages to send at a later time, examine click-through statistics, add geo-location coordinates to messages and shorten URLs with a built-in Ow.ly tool.
Who should use it and why: HootSuite for iPad is for heavy iPad users who want to manage their social media content and engagement.
5. TweetLevel
You might be thinking you don't need another Tweet metric tool, but TweetLevel, allows you to specifically search for hashtags, which can lead you to insights on who to follow based upon conversation versus person.
Once you've found someone you'd like to follow, you can use TweetLevel to help measure his or her social influence. You can also evaluate the buzz around a certain topic to determine if it's a trend worth paying attention to. Then take a peek at related phrases around your topic to gauge the true scope of the trending idea.
Who should use it and why: Public relations managers and social media marketing professionals who want to analyze a campaign should give TweetLevel a try. This tool can help you identify the Twitter conversation, where it's going wrong and how to correct that mistake.
6. ReFollow
When it comes to Twitter, numbers might not be as important as the people you follow and who follows you. ReFollow is an application that allows you to lock in those followers that you've connected with and make sure they continue to follow you.
Other features include filtering a search on Twitter to uncover insights, such as what you have in common with certain followers. This can lead you to connecting with someone who maybe you're Twitter conversation has been close to zero, but with a simple direct message to that person you can make a connection and build a business relationship.
Who should use it and why: This can be the perfect tool for the person who wants to grow a list of highly-qualified, like-minded people. Consider using ReFollow if your concern is quality over quantity, which it should be.
7. TwitterSearch
You've probably heard of TwitterSearch but, more than likely, you aren't using it correctly.
New media expert Thomas Baekdal offers a number of little-known tips for using TwitterSearch. For instance, to see what people are saying about your competitors, search with to:competitor or from:competitor. Replace "Competitor" with that company's Twitter handle.
To uncover top trending topics search that topic plus –rt filter:links. For example, "digital marketing-rt filter:links". That code will remove all of the retweets from the search.
Who should use it and why: Anyone who wants to use and search Twitter more effectively should brush up on his or her TwitterSearch skills. And knowing what's trending on Twitter can be a useful way to generate ideas for your business blog. When you see trending topics, you can create a blog post with content relevant to that discussion.
8. Traackr
One simple way to find and follow people who are influential in your space is to use Traackr. It allows you to identify the "authorities" in your industry who can mean the most to your business or your client's.
What's also useful about Traackr is that you can watch how social media leaders are responding and contributing to content you are sharing. An ad agency, for example, can see who it should target to help social media campaigns get off the ground, build its engagement strategies based upon Traackr's unique intelligence and then see results of those campaigns.
Who should use it and why: Traackr can be a useful tool for either advertising agencies or brands that want to build social media campaigns that improve over time and show how they pay off in the end.
9. SocMetrics
The Topical Influencer platform by SocMetrics is a web-based tool that allows you to identify influencers, understand who these people are, interact with them and then monitor your campaign.
The "Competitive Influence" feature allows you to specify brands and drill down for detailed influencers. What's slick about this tool is that you can narrow your search to a long-tail keyword, seeing who is truly influential.
Who should use it and why: Any marketing professional who wants to build an effective social media campaign based upon influencers in a specific industry should give this a look. SocMetrics can help you harness the power of thought leaders, which in turn can help you build your brand and sell more.
10. Social Scope
For BlackBerry users who've longed for an app that combines Twitter and Facebook on one screen, such as TweetDeck for your desktop, consider trying Social Scope.
And on that same screen you'll see a thumbnail image if someone shares something from TwitPic. It also has a built in retweeting feature, hash tag search and will also let you see the entire URL to know where a truncated URL is pointing.
Who should use it and why: Anyone who owns a BlackBerry and has a Facebook and Twitter account is a prime target for this app. It's probably the closest you can get to a desktop-type app on a BlackBerry.

An International Take on Annual Report Value

An International Take on Annual Report Value

If your company has plans to expand buy-side ownership overseas,  it may be wise to hold on to that traditional, artfully-rendered annual report;  despite what the US buy-side has been telling you. Last month we telephoned nearly 250 buy-side investment professionals in the US,  Europe and developing Asia and found a huge dichotomy of opinion regarding whether a company’s annual financial filings eliminate the need for a high-gloss annual report. The answer in the US (with its abundance of readily available SEC data) is a rather emphatic “yes” while elsewhere it is “not so fast.” Most US investors (70%, the blue portions of the top chart) report that annual financial filings eliminate most if not all the need for a high-gloss annual. Conversely, literally two-thirds of the non-US investors (64%, the red portions of the bottom chart) say that annual filings eliminate only some and certainly not all the need for traditional annual reports.