Minnov8 Liveblogging: ‘BlogWell by Gaspedal at General Mills’

The Minnov8 Gang (Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott, Graeme Thickins and Phil Wilson) posted LIVE throughout the day at BlogWell and this is an archive of those posts containing all of the comments, videos and images taken.

9:36 AM: Philson Loading up and “charging up” devices for Blogwell. Video, photos, insight and more all day at @Minnov8.
10:14 AM: GraemeThickins Limbering up the fingers to blog my brains out at Blogwell… 🙂 I’ve live blogged and tweeted a ton of tech conferences, but this ScribbleLive thing is the coolest way I’ve seen to do this yet! (Esp for a team of bloggers.) I see it as a great solution between doing long-form stuff on my own blog (too slow), versus doing a lot of really short blurts on Twitter (too bite-sized for many folks).
10:29 AM: sborsch
10:29 AM: sborsch The Minnov8 Gang is getting ready to blog at BlogWell…and we’re prepared:
11:53 AM: GraemeThickins at General Mills HQ for #blogwell … now have to ride the shuttle van back to get my glasses!
12:09 PM: GraemeThickins on da bus to #blogwell … yfrog.com
12:53 PM: Philson The Minnov8 Gang has found their seats and we are setting up in the welcome session. Video soon.
12:55 PM: timelliott
12:56 PM: timelliott The BlogWell general session will start in about 5 minutes… the gang is ready and powered up
12:58 PM: Philson
12:59 PM: timelliott The room seems about half full but people are streaming in… about 300 expected in attendance
1:01 PM: Philson
1:03 PM: GraemeThickins I am so pumped… sitting next to @dougpollei and in close proximity to the Minnov8 boyz. Did some nice audio interviews with @arik hanson … Jesse Engle of @Cotweet … and Gia Lyons of Jive Software (those will get posted later at Minnov8).
1:03 PM: Philson The great things so far is seeing so many unfamiliar faces from our local Social Media Community. They may very well be the ‘real” practitioners of Social Media
1:05 PM: timelliott Not a lot of seats left, so I would think we will be underway in just a minute or 2…
1:07 PM: Minnov8
1:08 PM: GraemeThickins I also did an audio interview of General Mills; Don Smith… he told me that more than 300 people are registered, coming from several states. Phil Nieman of GasPedal said this one is stacking up to be the largest of all Blogwell events so far — the NYC version had more registered, but said he expects more to actually show up here. So, hey, let’s claim #1!
1:08 PM: GraemeThickins Andy Sernovitz, GasPedal CEO:
bio: gaspedal.com
Andy’s blog: andysernovitz.com
Twitter: twitter.com
1:09 PM: GraemeThickins Andy is now doing the intro … this is the sixth Blogwell.
1:10 PM: timelliott You can follow others on Twitter by searching on the hashtag #blogwell
1:12 PM: timelliott Marc Belton from General Mills is now welcoming attendees…
1:14 PM: GraemeThickins A General Mills SVP taking stage to welcome us (missed his name) … telling us the company’s CMO will be speaking later. Wants to hear about “thought leadership in the space… what’s coming. What can we do to build partnerships, etc… We’re in a unique place to change the rules of the game.”
1:14 PM: timelliott A clear point of view on social media, thought leadership and shared learning is what Marc is hoping to take away from this conference today.
1:14 PM: sborsch There are an amazing number of companies in attendance: Carlson Marketing, Target, Medtronic, Best Buy as well as many people I recognize as key people in the social media space in the Twin Cities: Rick Mahn, Meg Canada, Cam Gross, Greg Swan, Nathan Eide, Doug Pollei, and a bunch of others I’ll probably feel ‘really’ bad about forgetting to mention!
1:15 PM: GraemeThickins Magic word “measurement” just got dropped by Marc Belton… what he’s looking for.
1:17 PM: Philson Wow, really staying on time here. Marc Belton got the hook via a polite bell.
1:20 PM: GraemeThickins Guy from GlobalPark (a sponsor of the event) says that General Mills is a customer…presented an award to a Gen Mills exec.
1:20 PM: Philson
1:22 PM: Philson “Do you have permission to record this?” May need to communicate with GasPedal staff about Social Media sharing thing.
1:22 PM: GraemeThickins Andy Sernovitz, GasPedal CEO:Now explaining what the “Social Media Business Council” is… not an industry trade assoc, but a “collaborative group” of lots of big cos… he showed a monstrous logo slide 🙂
1:24 PM: timelliott Guy from Ford is still working on his Powerpoint in front of me… good to see I’m not the only one who tweaks presentations right up to the talk.
1:25 PM: Philson Andy Sernovitz, GasPedal CEO: The Social Media Business Council. Another organization spawned by the internet.
1:25 PM: GraemeThickins Andy now saying how it’s not so easy for big cos to do soc media… like it is for an individual to launch a blog, for example. “Fighting against extrenched bureaucracy” inside the co… meantime, getting pushed by “all the bloggers out there” to get with the program.
1:26 PM: Minnov8 Liveblogging two tracks could get *very* confusing for you to follow…so here’s how our session coverage will work: two Minnov8’ers will cover one track and two will cover the other. Before each speaker comment is posted, we’ll preface it with Person’s Name: so you can follow…
1:27 PM: Minnov8 Taking a few minute break so people can go to the Track they want to see.
1:29 PM: sborsch
1:30 PM: sborsch Coming up in Track 1 Mark Addicks, General Mills CMO:
bio: www.generalmills.com
Wharton Business School publication story on Mr. Addicks: knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu
1:30 PM: Minnov8
1:31 PM: Minnov8 Coming up in Track 2 Lee Aase, Mayo Clinic:
bio: www.linkedin.com
Minnov8 story: minnov8.com
Twitter: twitter.com
1:32 PM: sborsch Mark Addicks, General Mills CMO: Talking to the group about demonstrating the power of social media yourselves in order to show the efficacy of it
1:33 PM: sborsch Mark Addicks, General Mills CMO: What they’re seeing is that most of the innovation isn’t coming from big companies…but rather smaller ones
1:33 PM: timelliott
1:33 PM: GraemeThickins Lee Aase, Mayo Clinic:
bio: www.linkedin.com
Minnov8 story: minnov8.com
Twitter: twitter.com

Now in the Mayo Clinic session, Track 2… announcing a big $250k program today, he says. “Talk about RIO.”
1:35 PM: sborsch Mark Addicks, General Mills CMO: He’s talking about the volume of brands they have….but that the brands have always been the consumers. They’re embrace of social media is all about inviting consumers to participate with ‘their’ brands
1:35 PM: GraemeThickins Lee Aase, Mayo Clinic:Lee showed slide of most important marketing channels – word of mouth is top one. Showing slide of sharing.mayoclinic blog for employees and patients…
1:36 PM: sborsch Mark Addicks, General Mills CMO: They invite people to co-create with General Mills. “Invite, Inspire, Include”
1:39 PM: GraemeThickins Lee Aase, Mayo Clinic:Mayo started getting its employees more involved in its Twitter acct, instead of just doing auto-tweets, as they had been …incl getting more engaged in conversation w/Twitter followers — as a result, number of followers has increased by 400%.
1:40 PM: sborsch Mark Addicks, General Mills CMO: Examples of how “social” is creeping into General Mills, Inc. (GMI) are being discussed like Yoplait and Susan Komen Breast Cancer organization, as well as various initiatives within many of their brands, including Betty Crocker, a brand that has gone almost completely digital.
1:40 PM: timelliott Mark Addicks, General Mills CMO: Mills test markets their products and watches for social reactions… another example of co-creation.
1:41 PM: GraemeThickins Lee Aase, Mayo Clinic:Now talking about a cute YouTube video called “atrium piano” that got posted just casually by a Mayo employee…. a charming older couple playing a duet. Now more than 3 million views! (Go watch it — so cool!)
1:41 PM: sborsch Mark Addicks, General Mills CMO: Showing “the money slide”, a graph of Fiber One bars and the #1 driver is that it’s in the store (distribution) but there is an almost *exact* correlation between online buzz and sales.
1:43 PM: timelliott
1:43 PM: sborsch Mark Addicks, General Mills CMO: Talking about MyBlogSpark (http://www.myblogspark.com/) with 1,800+ bloggers to have a conversation with primarily women bloggers who’ve agreed to receive news and information. (SB NOTE: Clearly Mark and GMI overall “gets” that conversation is what social media is all about)
1:44 PM: Philson Lee Aase, Mayo Clinic: Mayo considers radio as still an opportunity…in addition to podcasts.
1:44 PM: GraemeThickins Lee Aase, Mayo Clinic: The tools of Twitter, Facebook, etc are what made all the views of that video possible, and got Mayo a lot of major media coverage, too.
1:45 PM: sborsch Mark Addicks, General Mills CMO: Long history with Cheerios distributing children’s books with an initiative called “Spoonfuls of Stories” and have seen a significant increase with postings and online discussions (SB NOTE: clearly GMI is watching, listening and paying attention to ‘anything’ going on with their brands)
1:45 PM: Philson
1:46 PM: sborsch Mark Addicks, General Mills CMO: Launched a new product (Progresso Chicken Broth) going out ‘only’ through their blogging network
1:46 PM: GraemeThickins Lee Aase, Mayo Clinic: Officially launching a new podcasting program on August 22… “Medical Edge Radio” is the blog where it all will be happening.
1:46 PM: timelliott Mark Addicks, General Mills CMO: “There’s nothing more fundamentally social than food recipes.”
1:47 PM: GraemeThickins Lee Aase, Mayo Clinic: Followc progress at radio.mayoclinic.org … hashtag #mayoradio
1:47 PM: sborsch Mark Addicks, General Mills CMO: Boxtops-for-Education program has raised over $300M for schools and this year $50M (24M households collect boxtops) and their social media networks are the ones that get the word out and keep driving it.
1:48 PM: sborsch Mark Addicks, General Mills CMO: “Boxtops” program community forums are “in its infancy” but Mark sees great growth
1:49 PM: sborsch Mark Addicks, General Mills CMO: Talking NASCAR support and rather than pushing ads….they’re trying engaging women NASCAR fans with their programs
1:49 PM: sborsch Mark Addicks, General Mills CMO: …and those NASCAR programs are social delivery
1:49 PM: Philson Lee Aase, Mayo Clinic: Just scored a testimonial from @megcanada. “Can I talk with you after with my Flip?” he says.
1:50 PM: GraemeThickins Q&A time for Lee Aase, Mayo Clinic:Ward Tongen of Medtronic is asking about internal resources.. how much? Lee says “as little as possible”… low cost important to show ROI… as success comes, then resources can expand.
1:51 PM: sborsch Mark Addicks, General Mills CMO: Pillsbury took the principally recipe focused website and modifed it to be more social focus (e.g., discussion forums) and their involvement of the site has gone “way, way up”
1:52 PM: GraemeThickins Question for Lee Aase, Mayo Clinic: Whatcc about considerations for such a highly regulated industry? “We’re fortunate enough to have an attorney who’s on Twitter,” says Lee. (I laughed out loud.)
1:52 PM: sborsch Mark Addicks, General Mills CMO: Interesting comment: “we’re more about curating than creating” with their social involvement
1:54 PM: sborsch Mark Addicks, General Mills CMO: Key learnings headline: it’s all about the loyalists and we do couponing and ads to engage more people. But what does this mean organizationally? (SB NOTE: Seems the jury is still out since they’re in learning mode)
1:55 PM: timelliott
1:55 PM: GraemeThickins Question for Lee Aase, Mayo Clinic: Doesn’t all this Twittering burn up a lot of doctors’ time answering question? Lee says, no, it actually gets answers out to a lot more patients… since there are so many followers reading those tweets.
1:55 PM: Philson Lee Aase, Mayo Clinic: “Demographics are more of an “old media thing”. We’re interested in building community.”
1:56 PM: sborsch Mark Addicks, General Mills CMO: Audience question: Can you talk about how it happened? Was your social media organic bottom up…or top down. Answer: “It was organic. Where we truly are, authentically, that we’ve tried a lot of things but the question now is: how do you get your ‘company’ to embrace social as a way of living?”
1:57 PM: timelliott If you want to ask us questions, just tweet @minnov8…
1:58 PM: Philson
1:58 PM: GraemeThickins Lee Aase, Mayo Clinic: “I can’t do a presentation without a Flip cam.” Is there a bandwidth issue uploading all these vids, asks Nathan Eide of Deluxe Corp? No, hasn’t been a problem.
1:59 PM: sborsch Mark Addicks, General Mills CMO: Question: Can you talk more about “curating vs. creating” and what that means? Answer: “We created everything. We used to create every recipe and tens of thousands came in from Pillsbury Bakeoff, for example, but as we look at the world we saw that there were *many* great ideas on where our brands could go….so they flipped the model and everything starts digital and user generated, user rated, vs. focusing on print and created media. We want to create a greater community.”
1:59 PM: GraemeThickins Lee Aase, Mayo Clinic: “We don’t ask employees to tweet on behalf of Mayo”… they each have a disclaimer on their personal Twitter page that they don’t speak for Mayo.
2:00 PM: sborsch Mark Addicks, General Mills CMO: (SB NOTE: Mark is talking about the fact that this is quite intentional and that they have people who really examine what’s going on with brands and the content users are generating.
2:01 PM: sborsch Mark Addicks, General Mills CMO: Question: How do you find the influentials? Answer: “As they profile themselves, you can start to see people segment themselves. You can tell which people want to participate, want to be involved, and then let them go further and let you know what things they want to be a part of.” He continues, “If they’re given an authentic chance to participate, they will.”
2:02 PM: sborsch Mark Addicks, General Mills CMO: End of session.
2:04 PM: timelliott Another short break before the next sessions… Graeme & I will cover the Wal-Mart session and Steve & Phil will do CME Group…
2:06 PM: Philson Break time. Recharge, upload, repeat.
2:09 PM: Minnov8 We’ll get started in just a few minutes…
2:09 PM: timelliott Dave Tovar and Suraya Bliss, Walmart: “A Store of the Community: Retailing then, now and next”
2:10 PM: sborsch Our session starting in Track 2 is with Allan Schoenberg, CME Group:
bio: www.linkedin.com
Twitter: twitter.com
2:11 PM: sborsch Allan Schoenberg, CME Group: cis with CME Group, the largest futures group and is going to talk about “Marketplace 4.0”
2:11 PM: GraemeThickins Suraya Bliss, Walmart: Sr Dir of Corp Web Properties is her title… and Dave Tovar is a sr director of media relations, also participating.
2:12 PM: sborsch Allan Schoenberg, CME Group: Giving an overview of CME: www.cmegroup.com
2:13 PM: GraemeThickins Suraya Bliss, Walmart: 8000 retail units … 200 million customers per week… 2.1 million employees, 78% of which want to connect online… 22% of Americans know someone who works at Walmart.
2:15 PM: timelliott
2:15 PM: GraemeThickins Suraya Bliss and Dave Tovar, Walmart: PR is no longer just a matter of getting major media stories… “people everywhere are talking to each other on social media, telling stories.”
2:16 PM: sborsch Allan Schoenberg, CME Group: 1.0 was in 1848, the “original crowdsourcing, 2.0 was new audiences, 3.0 was electronic trading…
2:16 PM: sborsch
2:18 PM: sborsch Allan Schoenberg, CME Group: Social media…strategy or tactic? Both. (SB: He’s saying all the reasons why it matters strategically but now tacticaly with a customer run Facebook page)
2:18 PM: GraemeThickins Suraya Bliss and Dave Tovar, Walmart: “Community” used to mean meeting people at the store… the way Sam did it. “Now we’re looking for new ways to do that”…
2:18 PM: sborsch Allan Schoenberg, CME Group: Late 2008 they created their own Fan Page on Facebook (he loves the analytics) with Twitter integration.
2:19 PM: sborsch Allan Schoenberg, CME Group: Before their own conference in Naples FL, last year they had their own #hashtag and now they have 800,000 followers on Twitter!
2:19 PM: sborsch Allan Schoenberg, CME Group: He’s encouraging us to look at StockTwits stocktwits.com
2:20 PM: sborsch Allan Schoenberg, CME Group: StockTwits, an article he’s referring to now about traders using twitter for market intelligence, is clearly about paying attention and having awareness
2:20 PM: GraemeThickins Suraya Bliss and Dave Tovar, Walmart: Touch points now are numerous… “we’re trying to engage through all of these” … “It’s not about ‘control’ — its about ‘influence’.”
2:21 PM: Philson Allan Schoenberg, CME Group: Twitter equals influence for us.
2:22 PM: sborsch Allan Schoenberg, CME Group: Big user of #hashtags; creator of original content (e.g., #exchtalk, TwitPoll); and he tries to respond to ‘everything’ out there..
2:23 PM: sborsch Allan Schoenberg, CME Group: Taken a “hard core look” at LinkedIn with private groups: Careers; Media & Bloggers; Forex; Interest Rates. It’s authentic, transparent and safe AND it gives them more control over their engagement
2:24 PM: GraemeThickins Suraya Bliss and Dave Tovar, Walmart: “General Mills is a great partner of ours.”
Now showing the Walmart customer community… more than a million customer and employee comments on the site already. They also have a new “Check Uut blog” — to engage with influencers and opinion leaders. Showing a post by their PC buyer.
2:25 PM: timelliott
2:25 PM: GraemeThickins Uh, that was “Check Out Blog”
2:26 PM: Philson Thanks to all following along as we live blog. Keeping up as best we can.
2:26 PM: Minnov8 Allan Schoenberg, CME Group: Lessons learned: Know your limits (would my CEO approve of this?); Focus on your stakeholders AND whatever you post, expect and DO RESPOND; Find the resources that fit ‘your’ needs (e.g., RS reader, CoTwet, TweetDeck, Facebook integration, LinkedIn, Bit.ly, Digg, Delicous)
2:26 PM: GraemeThickins Suraya Bliss and Dave Tovar, Walmart: Twitter acct called @walmartmeeting is for their shareholders meeting … employee who tweets here reports right to the CEO.
2:27 PM: Minnov8 Allan Schoenberg, CME Group: What’s next? Measure and evaluate; Educate employees; integrate w/traditional communications; develop and integrate SEO; Implement video/audio content.
2:27 PM: GraemeThickins Suraya Bliss and Dave Tovar, Walmart: That employee also tweets at @walmartkelly …
2:28 PM: GraemeThickins Dave Tovar, Walmart: His concern is watching the Twitter acct to know “at what point will NY Times call?” Gotta be ready….
2:28 PM: Minnov8 Allan Schoenberg, CME Group: Question: What were the key obstacles you had to overcome to do so much in social media. Answer: Why should we do it, who will do it, how will we do it. He did this through discussions with his various company functional areas about how to respond.
2:31 PM: GraemeThickins Suraya Bliss, Walmart: Talking now about employee research… figured out what functionality they needed for “MyWalmart” site… recently launched it, already 400k users … 90% of employees return to the site each week. Work in progress, but they’re very happy with the site so far…
2:31 PM: Minnov8 Allan Schoenberg, CME Group: Question: Craig from Space150 says he looked up both Facebook and Twitter and why are the Facebook numbers so low and Twitter so high? Answer: Just hundreds in Facebook and 774k in Twitter are more on the tool and how easy it is to follow on Twitter and..like you..I don’t go to my Facebook page much and I suspect others aren’t going to FB either.
2:32 PM: Minnov8 Allan Schoenberg, CME Group: Question: What about metrics and measurement? Answer: Like all things metrics, it’s a constant battle. Twitter has been the driving force at the exchange due to the huge numbers.
2:33 PM: GraemeThickins Q&A now for Suraya Bliss and Dave Tovar, Walmart: What have you been doing with mommy blogs? Dave: “Important audience we want to reach out to. We had a big presence at BlogHer.”
2:33 PM: Minnov8 Allan Schoenberg, CME Group: Question: Getting back to the right tools, as a trading company, what do you see as a drop off after 4pm? Answer: Haven’t really looked at it, but after Noon and certainly after 4pm it drops off (SB: didn’t have numbers).
2:36 PM: Minnov8 Allan Schoenberg, CME Group: Question: You use alot of video, why are you focusing so much on it? Answer: You can do so much in it and it can be short and brief. We also have access to so many people that no one else has access to.
2:37 PM: Minnov8 Allan Schoenberg, CME Group: Question: How do you allocate your people resources to manage your presence? Answer: You’re looking at the resources (laughter) but right now it’s me.
2:37 PM: timelliott Wal-Mart has wisely tied their mywalmart site with pay check info that results in 90% of their associates logging on every 10 days.
2:38 PM: GraemeThickins Another question for Suraya Bliss and Dave Tovar, Walmart: Employee web site, content? Suruya: “We work with all the depts.. New site uses social media functionality”…replaces old static sites, like a benefits site. Dave: “We get a huge spike on the new “myWalmart’ site on 1st and 15th when employees go online to (securely) view their paycheck… so, if we have any important content to push out, we do it then.” Suruya: “This site is off-limits for employees at work — they can only view it when away from work.”
2:38 PM: Minnov8 Allan Schoenberg, CME Group: Question (from 3M): Do you have a plan or strategy to grow your social media presence or is it organically growing? Answer: Both. (SB: He describes a few ways but nothing concrete)
2:39 PM: Minnov8 Allan Schoenberg, CME Group: Question: If you had to hire someone to do your job, what traits would you look for? Answer: A passion for this stuff, willingness to experiment, a background in economics and finance, understand the space, and you have to be a conversationalist (i.e., be social).
2:40 PM: GraemeThickins Question: what do you think of what your competitors are doing in this area? Dave Tovar, Walmart: “We certainly are aware of some of the similar good things Best Buy is doing.”
2:40 PM: Minnov8 Allan Schoenberg, CME Group: Question: What’s the goal? Revenue? Customer retention? Answer: This is not something that will drive our bottom line (maybe cost savings) but it’s brand recognition and “issue management” that is our focus.
2:42 PM: timelliott Sessions are over… now a 30 minute break before coverage continues… thanks for watching.
2:59 PM: Philson
3:01 PM: Philson
3:03 PM: Philson
3:15 PM: timelliott
3:17 PM: GraemeThickins Andy Sernovitz, GasPedal CEO:
bio: gaspedal.com
Andy’s blog: andysernovitz.com
Twitter: twitter.com

Now in the ethics session… led by Andy. “Building trust.” First, disclosure issues… it’s about “the difference between honesty and sleazery.” (Is that like strategery?) Who are you? Were you paid? Is it your real opinion?
3:19 PM: timelliott
3:21 PM: GraemeThickins Andy Sernovitz, GasPedal CEO: Talking about FTC always being involved in policing untruthful advertising… so, says Andy, should crackdowns be happening with blog posts that are not legit. He believes no company should ever pay for a post. “Always disclose.”
3:23 PM: GraemeThickins Andy Sernovitz, GasPedal CEO: When you encourage bloggers to talk about you, always disclose…”remember ads should look like ads.”
Biggets risk is failing to train your teamc
3:24 PM: GraemeThickins “Biggests risk is training your team.” Create formal ethics policy, says Andy. “Hold agencies accountable to meet or beat your internal policy.”
3:27 PM: GraemeThickins Andy Sernovitz, GasPedal CEO: Showing “Disclosure Best Practices Toolkit” slide – will post it on my Flickr set later. Disclose identity, how to handle blogger relations, etc… Said you can download this toolkit from GasPedal web site. (Or is that the Social Media Business Council web site?)
3:29 PM: GraemeThickins Andy Sernovitz, GasPedal CEO: “I call on you guys and your companies to maintain your integrity… say something when you see something wrong.” He says the govt is investigating it, Google is investigating it… “don’t lose you good judgement and embarass your brand.”
3:31 PM: timelliott Another short break between sessions…
3:32 PM: Philson
3:32 PM: Philson
3:34 PM: timelliott Next session: Heather Oldani & Steve Wilson, McDonalds
bio: www.linkedin.com
Twitter: twitter.com
3:35 PM: sborsch Up next in Track 2 is Matthew Lehman, Progressive:
bio: www.linkedin.com
Twitter: twitter.com
3:35 PM: sborsch
3:36 PM: sborsch Matthew Lehman, Progressive: My team manages all the web properties and I tell people my day job is the websites…and my night job is social media
3:37 PM: timelliott
3:37 PM: sborsch Matthew Lehman, Progressive: We’re #1 in many markets. Were the first insurance company with a website, first in the mobile space, pretty innovative company.
3:37 PM: sborsch Matthew Lehman, Progressive: But….(puts slide up that says “We sell the most boring product in the world” by John Swigart, CMO Esurance, a competitor)
3:38 PM: GraemeThickins Heather Oldani, McDonalds:
Director, U.S. Communications
bio: www.linkedin.com
Twitter: twitter.com
also presenting: Steve Wilson
Sr. Director, Global Web Communications
3:39 PM: GraemeThickins About to start the McDonald’s session… get your arteries ready. (No, there are no free 1/3 Pound Angus burgers)
3:40 PM: sborsch Matthew Lehman, Progressive: Make it relevant; find your ‘in’ and get some early wins; mine your assets and have fun; measure, measure and then measure
3:40 PM: timelliott
3:40 PM: sborsch Matthew Lehman, Progressive: They’re in a “low touch” environment since most customers deal with them 2x per year. So their challenge is how to leverage social media and making it relevant in that low touch world
3:41 PM: sborsch Matthew Lehman, Progressive: He’s show June Compete.com data showing twitter, facebook, youtube with 23M on twitter, fb at 122M, and youtube with 78M and the biggest TV show last month had 13M viewers
3:41 PM: GraemeThickins Heather Oldani and Steve Wilson, McDonalds: “What’s it all about? What is the brand opportunity? … enable key audiences to become brand ambassadors.”
3:42 PM: sborsch Matthew Lehman, Progressive: for Progressive, the “in” (he says careingly) was around disasters and with Twitter since there is so much discussion going on and insurance is key and reaching out to customers needed
3:42 PM: sborsch Matthew Lehman, Progressive: Also during disasters, people often have more access to Twitter than they do to any other medium
3:43 PM: GraemeThickins Heather Oldani and Steve Wilson, McDonalds: “We’re #32 in the ranking of top 100 social brands… 27 million people walk through our doors very day… 700,000 employees in U.S. alone.”
3:44 PM: sborsch Matthew Lehman, Progressive: for those in companies that don’t “get” Twitter and social media, during the South Dakota floods last year a guy out there was able to collect river levels posted in order to anticipate potential losses and needs
3:45 PM: sborsch Matthew Lehman, Progressive: Get some early wins: When we started to do customer service on Twitter, we needed to show some concrete examples of wins (shows example of a guy’s tweets interacting with Progressive’s guy)
3:48 PM: sborsch Matthew Lehman, Progressive: Mine your assets: In our case, we’ve partnered with content partners, finding content that can be shared or is trending up. (SB: this is about finding ways strategically to bring people to Progressive and, obviously, get the “low touch” rates of customer connections to be higher)
3:48 PM: GraemeThickins Heather Oldani and Steve Wilson, McDonalds: “Looking at where conversations are online… what are our employees listening to or watching?” Had to take control at HQ earlier this year of all social media initiatives, as all their regions had started things, which were not coordinated.
3:49 PM: timelliott Heather Oldani & Steve Wilson, McDonalds: Social media focus now is on blogger outreach/engagement, Facebook pages and Twitter accounts.
3:49 PM: sborsch Matthew Lehman, Progressive: Have some fun: Progressive was the first insurance company to offer “pet injury coverage.” If you’re in an accident and have a pet with you, we’ll cover the injured pet. This has been *very* powerful as a halo effect of the pet trend (SB: pet trends are HUGE)
3:50 PM: sborsch Matthew Lehman, Progressive: As an outcome of the fun pet injury coverage, we’ve “sold thousands of additional policies” because of it.
3:50 PM: GraemeThickins Heather Oldani and Steve Wilson, McDonalds: Has started a Twitter account for “McCafe” … but yet to start a “general brand” Twitter acct. Looking at regional or local Twitter accts, too… like “McDonaldsATL.”
3:52 PM: sborsch Matthew Lehman, Progressive: Mentioned their YouTube channels and its popularity: www.youtube.com
3:52 PM: timelliott Heather Oldani & Steve Wilson, McDonalds: Testing regional community managers to drive local promotions and customer engagement… @McDonaldsATL is first to roll out.
3:52 PM: Philson
3:54 PM: sborsch Matthew Lehman, Progressive: Last thing is Measurement. Progressive is an NPS (net promoter score, a way for measuring customer loyalty emerging as a favorite metric for managers seeking organic growth) being used for social media. www.businessweek.com
3:54 PM: GraemeThickins Steve Wilson, McDonalds: Talking about unsuccessful blogging initiative internally early on that only attracted 20-some employees to blog after several months. Now, new “MindShare” site is getting a lot more participation… stores sharing ideas, tips. Threaded discussions from that are now integrated into main corporate portal.
3:55 PM: sborsch Matthew Lehman, Progressive: Not only we looking at using NPS for identifying first level people talking about Progressive, but are finding ways to go deeper and find out who else, that you influenced, talked about us too
3:55 PM: sborsch Matthew Lehman, Progressive: Early results are encouraging with our measurements (SB: he skipped past this quickly)
3:55 PM: timelliott
3:56 PM: sborsch Matthew Lehman, Progressive: Matt’s Twitter account is twitter.com/mattcleveland
3:56 PM: sborsch Matthew Lehman, Progressive: Question: Are you starting to think about new ways of insurance online now that you’re growing your social network? Answer: Yes…can’t really talk about specifics but we think social is a better way to grow that
3:57 PM: GraemeThickins Steve Wilson, McDonalds: Now showing “AboutMcDonalds.com” site, launched 2005. Recently added corp social responsibiliy blog called “Value in Practice” … extremely successful.
3:59 PM: sborsch Matthew Lehman, Progressive: Question: Who is PGRMike? (SB: It’s the Twitter person that answers customer tweets). Answer: I have a team and PGRMike is part of that team and is a part of our call center. We’re also looking at the next generation of customer service and how our people interact with customers. We can’t engage in the kind of dialogue, sometimes, in a public forum since we’re in a highly regulated industry and many of these dialogues are private (SB: mentions reminding people NOT to put their acct info in tweets and people chuckled)
4:00 PM: sborsch Matthew Lehman, Progressive: Question: How did you approach engaging socially with your compliance dept? Answer: Baby steps and also finding the value (SB: like we all are, my sense is that Progressive is like all companies now…we’re all feeling our way along in the twilight)
4:01 PM: Philson
4:02 PM: sborsch Matthew Lehman, Progressive: Question: How do you calculate your ROI on all of this social activity? Answer: Not to be trite, but we are generating sales on this effort. The investment to get up on these sites is very low and we have in-house expertise with alot of the support technologies. So we’re using a mix of traditional business metrics and we’re very goal oriented (and 3.4ths of the time we’re meeting those goals)
4:02 PM: GraemeThickins Steve Wilson, McDonalds: Showed a “Crew” site called “Station M” that now has 40,000 employees actively using. Also showing other employee sites around the world: “KetchUp” is one! “What will we be selling in 2015?” someone once asked Ray Croc. “I don’t know,” he said, “But we’ll be selling more of ’em than anyone else.”
4:03 PM: sborsch Matthew Lehman, Progressive: Question: Can you talk about customer retention vs. acquisition? Answer: Heavily on the customer service side again, to get those customer touch points to grow. Engage, listen, react, retain eventually moves into acquisitioin.
4:03 PM: Philson Matthew Lehman, Progressive: Engage, Listen, React, Retain
4:04 PM: sborsch Matthew Lehman, Progressive: Question: How has this impacted the local Progressive agents? Answer: We just announced a partnership with Webs.com to deliver agent websites…and it’s been re-tweeted hundreds of times today (which means this is being received very well)
4:06 PM: sborsch Matthew Lehman, Progressive: Question: We’ve heard a lot about how important social media is, can you quantify the shift from traditional mktg to social media? Answer: I think about percentage of time and that’s doubled…but at this point it’s people effort vs. ad dollars
4:07 PM: sborsch Matthew Lehman, Progressive: Question: Talking about the agents, did you run in to any fear with the agency engagement online? Answer: Haven’t seen many issues and it’s new, just launched
4:07 PM: sborsch Matthew Lehman, Progressive: End of session.
4:07 PM: GraemeThickins Q&A time. People who work for you really aren’t employees. They’re franchisees and people who work for franchisees, right? Heather Oldani, McDonalds: “We know that many want to engage with the brand regardless”.. so co is giving them opportunities to do that.
4:09 PM: GraemeThickins Heather Oldani, McDonalds: “We’re looking into online review sites like Yelp” and how that may affect their social media initiatives.
4:11 PM: Philson
4:12 PM: Minnov8 We’re taking a short break….back at it in 8 minutes….
4:12 PM: GraemeThickins Question from a Gen Mills person: how do you coordinate everything internally between depts? Heather Oldani, McDonalds: “Regular monthly meetings, which are getting bigger and bigger! …It takes a lot of time” (to get everyone on the same page)
4:13 PM: GraemeThickins End of McDonald’s session… thank you:
4:13 PM: GraemeThickins Heather Oldani and Steve Wilson, McDonalds:
Director, U.S. Communications
bio: www.linkedin.com
Twitter: twitter.com
also presenting: Steve Wilson
Sr. Director, Global Web Communications
4:13 PM: sborsch Matthew Lehman, Progressive:
bio: www.linkedin.com
Twitter: twitter.com
4:15 PM: timelliott Next up here is @scottmonty from Ford in about 5 minutes…
4:16 PM: GraemeThickins Just saw the link for GasPedal’s Flickr page: www.flickr.com (Lots there, more coming.)
4:20 PM: GraemeThickins Scott Monty, Ford:
bio: www.scottmonty.com
Twitter: twitter.com
4:20 PM: timelliott
4:21 PM: GraemeThickins Scott says you can also follow Ford on Twitter at, you guessed it… @Ford.
4:22 PM: sborsch Session change and our speaker is Sean Cheyney, AccuQuote:
4:23 PM: timelliott For those following along at home, Scott uploaded his slides here: www.slideshare.net
4:23 PM: sborsch Sean Cheyney, AccuQuote: (SB: They’re an insurance company: www.accuquote.com )
4:24 PM: GraemeThickins Scott Monty, Ford: When Scott came on board, he thought the brand had no personality… He actually first turned down the offer to go to work for the company. But came to really respect the leadership team. Likes Alan Mulcahy, CEO, a lot, and Bill Ford, chairman. It’s a “passionate” environment… likes being part of a company “that’s being turned around.”
4:24 PM: Philson
4:25 PM: sborsch Sean Cheyney, AccuQuote: Talking about the kinds of analytics tools they’re using: Omniture is the tool they’ve used for some time and are now using it for social media (e.g., blogs).They were one of the first insurance companies to blog.
4:27 PM: sborsch Sean Cheyney, AccuQuote: Discovered that 2% of their leads were coming in through their blogs and mid six figures in revenue for the company due to the blog and the 5-7 weekly posts.
4:27 PM: sborsch Sean Cheyney, AccuQuote: Next step was podcasting and it has grown to them building a complete studio and are using Feedburner for feed measurement as well as on the podcast.
4:28 PM: timelliott Scott Monty, Ford: “Social media is the cocaine of the communications industry…” (nice Bill Cosby impression, too)
4:28 PM: GraemeThickins Scott Monty, Ford: Whoops, that was Al Mullaly, the CEO… okay, I give up trying to spell it. Back to Scott: “A lot of social media is about just being in the right place at the right time.” Channeling Yogi Berra: “90% of social media is just showing up. It’s the the other half that’s hard.”
4:29 PM: sborsch Sean Cheyney, AccuQuote: How social media fits in to the BIG picture:+ Lead gen
+ Life insurance education
+ Recruiting
+ PR
+ Strategic partner promotion
4:30 PM: timelliott
4:30 PM: sborsch Sean Cheyney, AccuQuote: Because they’re measuring these areas, they can walk into their CEO and show proof points of ROI
4:30 PM: GraemeThickins Scott Monty, Ford: At one point, he was spending 20 hours a day trying to keep up with social media conversations.
4:31 PM: sborsch Sean Cheyney, AccuQuote: This year they launched an education series on video.
4:32 PM: GraemeThickins Scott Monty, Ford: “Our strategy is to humanize the co by connecting customers with Ford employees and with each other when possible, providing value in the process.”
4:34 PM: GraemeThickins Scott Monty, Ford: “We set our content free… Flickr page is all Creative Commons licensed… we have 144 videos on YouTube that have been viewed hundreds of millions of times… ten active Twitter accts… many others reserved.”
4:36 PM: timelliott Now showing the back half of Ford CEO on Twitter video: www.youtube.com
4:38 PM: GraemeThickins Scott Monty, Ford: “We even have Alan Mullally on Twitter!” Now showing YouTube video of him showing Alan how to Twitter, and tweeting him for him at first. This is pretty cool — Alan is obviously digging it. “You know, you could just move in with me, Scott, and we could do this all day long,” he says.
4:38 PM: sborsch Sean Cheyney, AccuQuote: He’s discussing recruiting with social media and is showing a slide on their cross-posting: on the blog, do a tweet, which ends up on facebook, yadda-yadda-yadda
4:41 PM: GraemeThickins Scott Monty, Ford: This guy is a great presenter, and obviously is fired up about his company! He has great slides/photos, too. Now showing the “Fiesta Movement” site… pretty cool, just letting people talk about the car. Ford now ranked #12 top social brand – achieved his three-year goal in six months.
4:42 PM: sborsch Sean Cheyney, AccuQuote:
VP, Marketing and Business Development
scheyney@accuquote.com
Sean’s Twitter: twitter.com
AccuQuote Twitter: twitter.com
Blog: blog.accuquote.com
4:43 PM: timelliott
4:44 PM: sborsch Sean Cheyney, AccuQuote: Question: ARe you using the recruiting costs in your ROI calculations and how effective is the Omniture use for social media analytics? Answer: HR is generating applicants out of Twitter, the blog and facebook (or even the LinkedIn for cost offering) and we factor that all in to get to the positive ROI numbers. Omniture is pretty accurate and we’ve looked at it in several ways and are comfortable with it.
4:44 PM: GraemeThickins Scott Monty, Ford: Saw a tweet from a guy (a VW zealot) saying he was test driving an Edge for the second time in a week, and he was asking @Ford “can you have Alan Mullaly call me and tell me I’m not crazy?” So, Scott did! They talked for 20 minutes, and the guy did a huge blog post about the experience.
4:46 PM: sborsch Sean Cheyney, AccuQuote: Question: If you’re taking a more educational approach to selling (something Sean mentioned in his talk), what are you expecting?Answer: We’re expecting subscribers to not engage right away and we know it’s going to take time to see them engage (SB: so they’re patient).
4:47 PM: GraemeThickins Scott Monty, Ford: Would not be possible to do what he has at Ford “without the support of senior leadership.” The co runs an extremely lean communications operation. He’s been a social media staff of one, just now doubling to two. Uses a couple of agencies… Ogilvy360 and, I believe he said, Social Media Group.
4:50 PM: GraemeThickins Question from @PerfectPorridge: how are you handling indiv employees who want to blog, tweet, etc? Scott Monty, Ford: Doing a pilot program to train dealers who are savvy… then another one with folks who aren’t savvy… then will do a train-the-trainers thing, and “maybe we’ll get 10% who will be really doing a good job.”
4:51 PM: sborsch Sean Cheyney, AccuQuote: Question: You were mentioning you wouldn’t necessarily have a CTA (call to action) on your blog and you had an educational giveaway, why wouldn’t you? Answer: Oh…we would and we’ll have pretty strong CTA language..but not on our blog (but we’ll still give a link). We have ways to do it without being in their face.Money quote: “If we give something of value in this medium, we’ll get the return”
4:51 PM: sborsch Sean Cheyney, AccuQuote: End of session.
4:51 PM: Philson
4:53 PM: GraemeThickins Scott Monty, Ford: “We are not measuring social media on sales… it’s more complex than that. We are completely aligned with our business goals, and our soc media efforts support those goals.” He says they track how they compare to the competition, what’s affecting the news cycle, constantly measuuring… “but when I can use anecdotal evidence, I do that, too.”
4:54 PM: timelliott Scott Monty, Ford: This session is over… thanks for watching our coverage today!
4:54 PM: GraemeThickins End of Ford session. Thank you, Scott!Scott Monty, Ford:
bio: www.scottmonty.com
Twitter: twitter.com
4:58 PM: GraemeThickins Reception time! Can I stop blogging now?
4:58 PM: Philson
4:59 PM: Philson
5:00 PM: Philson
5:00 PM: Minnov8 Thanks for watching Minnov8’s liveblog today. Stay tuned to future posts from Minnov8 since the group that put this on, GasPedal, will be posting full videos of the sessions on their website and we’ll post on Minnov8 to let you know.Your feedback would be GREAT! Email us at feedback@minnov8.com