MARKETINGPROFS — Marketing at the enterprise level has a unique set of challenges—lack of agility, decentralized teams, and long approval processes -- to name a few. Lucky for us, we had the opportunity to chat with SocialTech presenter, LaSandra Brill of Cisco Systems, about ways they have overcome these challenges in their social media program, and consequently, have driven significant return on investment. As LaSandra revealed during #TechChat (transcript available here), social media made the launch of Cisco’s ASR family of routers one of the top five most successful launches in Cisco history, reaching 90 times the audience of previous launch campaigns, at one-sixth of the cost...

NEW MARKETING LABS BLOG — Professionals are always talking about the business implications of social media and digital campaign efforts. Questions like "How do I measure success?" and "What is the ROI?" are common and often debated questions. What I am seeing less and less of though is discussion and understanding of the culture of social media and the people that are active participants in online communities. It is said that the massive majority of individuals using sites like Facebook, Flickr, Friendfeed and Twitter are merely observers. They use the channels for news, a bit of photo viewing and may post an occasional update to friends. This leaves a very small percentage of us that are in the heavy-to-power user class. These are the people that not only consume massive amounts of content but also produce the majority of the content the community sees. They are also often the people in the crosshairs of businesses trying to get the word out about their brand, product, launch or initiative. In the article today I’d like to share 4 cultural factors and tips that businesses need to be thinking about when creating campaigns or initiatives within the social media space...

RADIAN6 BLOG — Increasingly, companies need to adapt their codes of conduct and employee manuals with guidelines for employee participation on the social web. While you might have roles that are "officially" social media related, every person in your company is now a potential spokesperson. And if they’re active online in any way at all, you want to be prepared for those inevitable interactions with customers, as well as help people understand what’s acceptable, what’s encouraged, and what’s frowned upon when they’re engaging in social media on behalf of your company. In addition to thorough and continuous training to immerse your teams in the culture and practice of the social web, having a clear set of guidelines can make things a heck of a lot easier. They don’t have to be complicated (many are less than a page), but they do have to touch on a few key areas...

DIGITAL INFLUENCE MAPPING PROJECT — There seems to be a shared experience among big brands as they advance along their use of social media. many are quite sophisticated in terms of the programs they are deploying from social customer care to alternative marcom programs to B2B lead generation. Many start by hiring the one "social media guy/gal" and then evolve to a core group (3-7) that form a "center of excellence" around them. This "center" is actually a federation of of folks from other departments - marketing, communications, HR, customer service, product development and more. Often the center of excellence is formed after some experience with social media marketing - even years worth of marcom programs and basic social web page deployment (e.g. lets get our main Facebook page and Twitter handle up and active). All sorts of challenges arise at this point not the least of which is the CMO's Dilemma...