Monthly Archives: February 2010

Fantasy Sports: Social Networking or Time-Wasting?

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Most of you likely looked at the title of this post and wondered, “Tommy, what the heck are you talking about? Fantasy Sports is not social networking.”

On the surface, it’s easy to see why the game could be viewed that way. But I’m here to tell you that fantasy sports are as much a vehicle for social networking as Facebook, Flickr, and even foursquare / gowalla.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the game, let me elaborate. In its most simple format, 10-12 participants join a league before the season starts. Pretty much every major sport has a fantasy game associated with it. Prior to the first day of the season, the team owners get together in person or online to draft teams of real players from real teams, assembling a lineup in accordance with the league rules. Then, when the season starts, they start or sit players depending on a variety of factors (healthy vs. injured, good vs. bad matchups, etc.). Teams then receive credit for the actual statistics each player tallies. The overall goal is to end the season as the best team in the standings or to win the playoffs, depending on how the league is set up.

To many of you, this may sound rather pointless. In fact, there’s even a rebellion by “Fantasy Widows” as some have called them (you can learn more about on the Women Against Fantasy Sports website, complete with a line of related apparel). But these games play a role much more important than killing time and maybe blowing a little cash.

Believe it or not, fantasy sports are every bit a vehicle for social networking that many of the leading services are. Let’s take a quick moment to look at some attributes of the game that lead me to this conclusion.

  1. Tribe-based – All activities happen in pre-determined leagues where all the participants agree to play within the same scoring system, by the same rules, using the same tools and features. This sounds a whole lot like my friends on official social media sites.
  2. Online - Although the first fantasy game, Fantasy Baseball, was originally administered by avid fans using box scores from their local newspaper, the game has migrated completely online. So what if it started as a truly social activity and not a cool new web toy. It was social before it was online, so it most certainly qualifies.
  3. Interactive - Fantasy sports are all about the ongoing activities you must undertake to win a league. All of the team managers must take part in a live draft, with full chat functionality in the online draft room. Then, the season is  a mix of lineup decisions, trade negotiations, and adding and dropping players from the free agent list (a.k.a. the list of players who are not already on a team).
  4. Real-time – If anything is real-time, fantasy sports fit the bill. Games happen every day or every week, and real-time scoring is a must for the hardcore fantasy sports players. Team rosters can be adjusted in many ways on a daily basis. Team owners can work out trades at will, post messages in a threaded format (like blog comments), talk smack right on their team pages, and email back and forth between participants. Sure, the bulk of the action happens during live games, but whom among you spends 24 hours a day on social media sites anyway?
  5. Content-heavy – An entire industry has been built around fantasy sports blogging, analysis, advice, products, and games. Breaking news is a huge piece of this puzzle, and tools like Twitter and Facebook now play major roles in the dissemination of real-time player-related information. If you don’t believe me, you should have been paying attention to the chatter on Twitter leading up to the NBA trade deadline on February 18.

I know there are as many perspectives on this topic as there are fantasy games to choose from. What is your opinion? Do you play fantasy sports? Do you see it as a social networking activity? Is it just gambling, or old fashion bonding and honest fun? Let’s get a good conversation going in the comments, because I think it’s due time that fantasy sports gets the positive press it deserves.

For more information about the fantasy sports industry itself, read more from the Fantasy Sports Trade Association website. Industry writers also have their own Fantasy Sports Writers Association, of which I am a proud member.

Social Media: It CAN be measured too!

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If you keep up with the local Austin startup scene or even with new social media services as they pop up, then surely you saw the announcement from Spredfast about their Social Media Campaign Management Dashboard product. It would easy to dismiss this as just another hype-laden announcement about a new social media tool, but that would be rather short-sighted in this case.

Ken Cho headshotI recently had the opportunity to spend upward of two hours on the phone with co-founder Kenneth Cho (virtual high-five to another UT-Austin MBA Alum!), first to learn the philosophy and history behind the product, and then to take a guided tour through it firsthand. What I learned is that these guys “get it”, and the best is yet to come.

You see, this product is an evolution of Ken and his partner, Scott McCaskill’s, previous venture, Social Agency. The previous organization was focused on actually managing the social media campaigns themselves on behalf of their large business clients. Given the slow adoption of social media to date in the enterprise space, Social Agency was able to do very well in that capacity. Almost too well; they found themselves overwhelmed with managing a variety of disparate tools and services on behalf of their clientele.

So the SpredFast concept was borne. SpredFast is intended to be a tool for social media campaign execution and engagement. What does that mean? They built it to help with getting messages out, scheduling them, tying in the multiple channels, and publishing to those channels (channels in this product are the multiple SocMed “tools” out there such as Twitter, Facebook, etc.). But they didn’t stop there, because there are free tools for many of these activities  (e.g. HootSuite, my personal favorite), and their intent was to monetize the product to create a real business (novel, huh?).

I must say, for a first release of the product, what I saw holds a great deal of promise.

SpredFast GUIThe first impressive thing you notice is the intuitive GUI and seamless integration across the various tools that are included on the first release (more to be added in the future) – most notably Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Flickr.  You can manage all tweets, status updates, video postings, and photographs from right within the SpredFast product, including RTs and the like.

Even more importantly, they listened to what we’ve all been screaming about and built a measurement system right into the product. The model, while not yet a full ROI calculation, should prove helpful for measuring the impact of your efforts on the conversation and the marketplace. And all statistics should be fully accurate, since the product uses APIs to collect the data directly from each channel.

The model as it stands today includes three key areas as follows:

  1. Engagement - A measurement of what actions result from your ongoing social media activities. This metric includes number of replies, comments, Re-Tweets, bit.ly clicks, Facebook “likes”, and many other affinity-related behaviors.
  2. Reach – A straightforward count of how many people your social media campaign is, well, reaching. Metrics include number of followers, Youtube subscribers, Facebook fans, and other standard counting numbers associated with “direct reach” (i.e. being connected to you or your brand directly). In the next revision of the product, they are even considering adding extended reach indicators such as friends-of-friends or followers-of-followers.
  3. Activity – Quite literally, this is a measure of how many things you are doing on the various channels, including things like number of messages, tweets, and links that are published through a particular campaign.

SpredFast Three Metrics

For now, these indicators are most useful in telling you how influential your activities are (Reach), and then helping you benchmark whether your level of Activity is generating the appropriate level of Engagement. If your Activity/Engagement ratio is too high or too low, you either need to change the level of activity or change the actual approach, because something is not working as intended. Return-on-investment? That would be a stretch in this iteration, but what it can do it show a return-on-activity in the form of engagement.

In our extensive conversation, we dug pretty deeply into philosophies about social media, where it fits, how important it was, and some key areas where this product can be built out to truly reach the vision that Ken and Scott have in mind. Of course, I won’t steal their thunder by going into too much of that detail here, but I do recommend that you give this product a look. Particularly for those of you in larger or mid-sized companies where social media is still a work-in-progress, it can offer a starting point for measuring and justifying your efforts.

What other tools have you seen out there that may rival this approach? Some of the established players do have similar models (as indicated in Aaron Strout’s guest post from last week), but who do you think is best poised to get this right? And most importantly, what do you want to see measured to better gauge whether your SocMed efforts are working or not? Let’s discuss, because the power of social comes from free sharing and discussion among us.

Value of Planning Ahead (Avoiding the Dreadline)

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Last night at the February Austin Tweetup (Big Ass Twitter Happy Hour, actually), I had a very interesting conversation with @andreaschulle about the different ways that marketing professionals are motivated. You see, 2010 looks to be a heavy trade show and regional event year for Anue Systems, and it has been keeping me on my toes of late, to say the least.

Andrea is one of us who is very comfortable being driven by deadlines. In fact, it motivates her; she even thrives on it in a way. I, on the other hand, am very much the opposite. Deadline? More like dreadline.

Yeah, we laughed a bit when that word organically emerged into the conversation. But this illustrates a very important fact that we all need to keep in mind. Everyone works differently. What motivates one of us can really drag down others. The only thing we have in our arsenal of tools to offset the “dread” feeling comes in the form of planning.

Planning in advance can really help benefit both sorts of folks. For those of us who really thrive by having deadlines toward which to work, planning ahead is a great way to prioritize and schedule those events and activities in a strategic manner. For those of us who prefer to operate more progressively, spreading out the various tasks and requirements over several days or weeks, advanced planning can really turn a dreadline into a more comfortable execution process.

I guess the gist of this post is simple: No matter how you work, plan ahead. Don’t wait until the last minute. We are not all alike. While you may thrive at the adrenaline rush of the last minute charge for the finish, others are more methodical and calculated. Or maybe you see other procrastinating until the last minute and it makes you worry that things will never get done in time. Regardless which of these profiles suits you, planning helps everyone work together while still getting everything done.

How do you operate? Are you a deadline person, or do you see impending due dates as dreadlines? Have you seen the benefits of planning, or does it just seem like additional busy work?

Social Media for B2B: It CAN be done

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Aaron Strout

This week, Return On Now has the privilege of sharing with you a guest post by Aaron Strout, CMO of Powered Inc. right here in Austin, TX. In addition to running marketing, he also serves as a key “social voice” for the company.  In that capacity, Aaron continues with his speaking, blogging, podcasting, and social networking activities with an eye toward creating awareness and lead generation for the company. Aaron co-hosts the Quick-n-Dirty weekly podcast with Jennifer Leggio, he maintains a social media blog titled Citizen Marketer 2.1, and he is well-known as a thought leader in online and social media marketing.

For today’s post, Aaron has agreed to give his overview on B2B and how social media can actually be used to benefit the business. With all of the discussion surrounding concerns about measuring impact to the bottom line, I felt that this would be an important topic for all to hear.

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Why is it that, when it comes to conversation about social media, business-to-business (B2B) seems to get the short end of the stick every single time? As someone who does a lot of webcasts, blog posts, and speaking gigs, the question/comment that always comes up is, “what about B2B examples.” Fortunately for me, I’m able to mention companies like BreakingPoint Systems and Hubspot that do a great job tapping into the power of social media, but I often wish there were more examples (with public results) that I could discuss.

BuildingsIn thinking about this topic, one of the main reasons that B2B has taken a little longer to adopt social media into its marketing mix is that it’s harder to do effectively. It’s also feels risky because there is less control then  in other channels. With that said, I personally believe that B2B companies stand to benefit the most from social media because they live and die based on the strength of their customer relationships. On top of that, many B2B companies actually know exactly who their prospective customers are, so seeking those folks out in a meaningful way and creating relationships with them can have a huge impact on the bottom line.

Given that I’m a prescriptive kind of guy, I’d feel remiss if I didn’t offer up some tips about how companies can start thinking about putting social media into practice. There are obviously tons of ways, but here are a few (including a diagram that provides more color commentary on item number three):

  1. Start listening. This is easier to do than you think. Set up a Google alert for your company’s name, your competitors’ names, and keywords for your industry. If you’re already doing this, consider hiring a “listening” service like Techrigy, Radian6, or Meltwater Buzz. This will help you find where all the relevant conversations in your space are happening.
  2. Create a Twitter account for your business. However, resist the urge to put up links to press releases, product specs, and links to press that are singing your business’s praises (at least out of the gate). Instead, talk about things that people in your industry care about. For instance, if you create bill payment software, talk about the needs of small-to-medium sized businesses across the financial spectrum (payroll, credit, vendor management, etc.) Link to reports and industry analysis. Point out other peoples’ blog posts and magazine articles.
  3. Set up a blog. Before you do this, though, make sure you have someone (ideally internal) who is willing to commit to posting at least 5-6 times/month. This can be someone on your marketing, product, or PR teams, or even better, one of your executives. Think about creating an editorial calendar to help guide your topics. Most importantly, spend time looking at other industry related blogs — in fact, you should spend at least a month doing this before you set up your own blog. Be sure to comment on those blogs (talk about the topic, not your company). This will help with getting to know the relevant “social” people in the space.
  4. Create an online community. Once you’ve gotten comfortable with items 1-3, start thinking about an online community. Ideally, this is for both current and prospective customers. Some businesses feel more comfortable about creating private communities where customers can talk to one another. The key in either case is to hire a great community manager and let them help you create relevant content via webinars, blog posts, and conference calls (see diagram below). A community manager will also help you draw out your customers and ensure that conversations stay relevant and productive.
  5. Measure, measure, measure. This is less difficult than you might imagine. This really should start with looking at your current goals — i.e. new customers, greater retention, larger share of wallet, referrals, etc. Then make sure you benchmark (i.e. look at your webstats and current KPI’s) before you launch your social efforts. Then, look at how you’re moving the bar over time. A key place to look is your web analytics, to see what kind of traffic and engagement your Twitter feed and/or blog efforts are driving. Also, it doesn’t hurt to survey customers and ask them if your efforts are impacting their loyalty to your company.
B2B Community Model
B2B Community Model

I won’t lie to you; everything I mentioned above takes effort. But it’s worth trying, especially when it’s done right, because it will yield results. One thing that I failed to mention is the importance of integrating the recommendations above with your existing marketing/channel activity. Social media doesn’t live in a vacuum, and if nobody can find the fruit of your efforts, you may as well not have exerted the time and resources.

Am I missing anything? You bet I am. But that’s where you come in. What types of social media have you tried? What’s worked? Please feel free to share in the comments section below.

Social collaboration: Collaborating people, not tools

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This weekend was full of birthday celebration, so I decided to take a pass on my weekly self-written commentary. In my stead, I offer to you a guest post from my friend and  colleague Julie Hunt. Julie is a Market and Competitive Intelligence professional, and one of the best strategic and analytical minds with whom I’ve had the pleasure of working in the past decade.

Julie Hunt HeadshotThe following post originally appeared on her Highly Competitive blog under the title Social collaboration in the enterprise: The heart – and goal – of Community is “collaborating people”, not collaboration tools. Yes, this was focused on the enterprise, while this blog tends to hone in on SMB and Entrepreneurial topics. Regardless, the message is relevant to business professionals of all types, and it is most applicable for those of you who want to sell to and interact with larger companies.

Without further ado…

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Community and collaboration in business enterprises is about people working together more effectively, quickly, and proactively – to achieve the goals of the business as robustly as possible.  This may sound like a simplistic statement, but it seems to be eluding many companies that are adopting social media tools.

There is a constant stream of information on the internet on how to implementing social collaboration software in enterprises, both for internal and external purposes.  Quite a healthy industry of solutions, consultants and advisors has sprung into being.  Many blog posts and articles are devoted to recommending the best ways to take advantage of social media software.

But for many companies, implementation efforts for social collaboration software will be doomed to failure for one simple reason:  most enterprises have failed to engender a “collaboration culture” based on real human interaction. The executive management of many companies does not even understand what a “collaboration culture” is.

Frankly, executive management of many companies is hard put to authentically value employees – these companies want to de-humanize employees with such terms as “resources” and “human capital”, and think that it is enough if they sling around a few “mission statements” claiming that they “value” employees.

The proliferation and subsequent failure of traditional formal enterprise collaboration tools proves that collaboration is not successful just because there are software tools.  These formal collaboration solutions are usually unwieldy, result in silos of information,  are extremely opaque, and most importantly, fail to engage the humans for whom the collaboration venue is meant.

The newer social collaboration tools are better at ease-of-use, agility, relevance. But it is still essential that companies grow and nurture live collaboration cultures, where collaboration is a natural response for business activities, for any departments in the enterprise.  Planning a healthy collaboration culture also requires a dynamic plan for the role social media tools will play to bring the people in the company together in worthwhile interaction.

Returning to the human side of business won’t happen magically – it will take real work and real commitment, from the executive level through all levels of management and employee departments.

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And, of course, you’re not getting out of here without my two-cents worth. This comes down to the desire to control everything by large companies. Until they can figure out they no longer own the messaging and conversation, this problem will continue. As entrepreneurs and SMBs who can adapt and react quickly, you should view this fear of change as an opportunity for you to get a leg up on the big guys.

Now go forth and prosper!