Social Media

Apparently CEOs Still Don’t Get Social Media…or Do They?

September 18, 2014 By Steve Borsch

In January of 2009 I wrote a Minnov8 post called, “Why Executives Don’t “Get” Social Media” and it hit a nerve: The post ended up with tens of thousands of pageviews. Looks like not much has changed, especially when it comes to CEOs.

More than 4.5 years after that post was written, I received an email today from a woman in PR for CEO.com. Turns out they’ve just released their annual Social CEO Report and found only a marginal increase in social use among Fortune 500 executives since last year. An astounding 68 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs have no social presence at all — not even on Twitter or Facebook. In this day and age, this calls into question their true commitment to their brand.

Their PR woman had this to say about the author, Marc Fischman, and this report: Social media expert, Marc Fischman has a platform that can analyze CEO activity on Facebook and Twitter – down to the impact of a single tweet or post – and the chatter it creates. Armed with this data, he has a unique understanding of which leaders are really advocates for their brands. He understands some of the reasons bosses don’t tweet, but says they are missing out on a tremendous opportunity to extend their brand’s influence with key audiences who want to know what they, as leaders are thinking.

The 2014 Social CEO Report

The teaser page here will enable you to get a sense of what the report offers before you hand over your name, email, company, and other data to snag it:

Are CEOs Finally Going Social?

It’s that time of year again. We searched for the social profiles of every single CEO on the FORTUNE 500® list on five popular social networks to determine which CEOs are lighting up social media – and which CEOs are still in the dark. Here’s a peek at what we found:

A whopping 68% of CEOs have no social presence whatsoever on the five social networks.
More CEOs are on Instagram than on Google Plus.
On average, younger CEOs are much more social than older CEOs.
LinkedIn dominates as the “entry” network of choice for CEOs. Of those CEOs who are only on one social network, 74% are on LinkedIn.
Only 69% of CEOs who have Twitter accounts are actually tweeting.

There is a lot of very good information in this free report and you should download and read it. That said, Fischman concludes with two slides which, in my view, the data presented doesn’t seem to support his “educated guesses“:

The first cites a Weber Shandwick study (without an actual citation) which purports to outline that CEOs are just “opting to communicate internally” and that CEOs who are on social media are “viewed as more innovative.”

In what I view as a leap in conclusion, Fischman states that CEOs who are NOT on social media “are doing their brands and companies a massive disservice.

My take? That the trend in CEO-level social media engagement and use is increasing but Fischman needs to talk to as many CEOs as he can to find out why more of them don’t leverage social media. Or, if Weber Shandwick’s study included deeper CEO-level insights, he should include that data so we can gain those insights ourselves.

Most of my client CEOs are adamant that they just don’t see their personal social-media-payoff-for-time-investment. This goes beyond a monetary return on investment (ROI) for company management and use of social media.

I’ll simply reiterate my “bottom line” opinion,stated in my last paragraph in my 2009 post, about why most executives still don’t use social media:

One senior sales & marketing leader from a large local company I talked with recently — who has an atypical awareness of the social media technology space but admits he could care less about building relationships, community or honing his people skills — said it best when I asked why he didn’t invest time using Twitter sending out tweets, blogging or otherwise creating a presence in the social media space. “Because I’m getting sh*t done and I can’t invest my attention or energy there.”

SPS Commerce VP Says Marketing Has Been ‘Transformed’

August 5, 2014 By Graeme Thickins

Speaking at a meeting of the Business Marketing Association (BMA) this morning, Peter Zaballos said the practice of marketing has changed dramatically in the past five years. “It’s completely transformed,” said the VP of Marketing and Products at Minneapolis-based SPS Commerce, which runs a supply chain cloud service for retailers. And a lot of that transformation has to do with “how businesses buy,” according to Zaballos, citing the advent of the iPad as but one example in recent years. “My largest spend is technology, not media,” he said. “Marketing organizations have had to retool.”

Zaballos joined SPS (NASDAQ: SPSC) just two and half years ago, and the company has seen its revenues double in that time. (For the full year of 2014, the company expects revenue to be in the range of $125.7 to $126.5 million.) What undoubtedly surprised attendees at the meeting was learning that, before Zaballos joined, the company had no marketing department — only a group of top-performing sales people who each kind of did their own thing. But SPS realized it had to formalize the marketing function if it was to achieve the aggressive growth plans its management and board had laid out. Today, the firm continues to expand and add employees, Zaballos said, ”and we’re now the largest cloud service in Minnesota.” It reported recently that its retail sourcing community exceeds one million items and 7,000 retail members.

The topic of today’s meeting of the Minnesota Chapter of the BMA, attended by some 80 members and guests, was “Success Stories: How Marketers Overcome Their Greatest B2B Challenges.” After Zaballos gave his opening talk, he moderated a panel of marketing execs from local firms. (Left to right in the photo below: Zaballos; Audra Wendt, Cargill; Guy Wray, MOCON; Britta Iwen, Ecolab; and Judy German, Cachet Financial Solutions.) He led off the panel with his take on marketing today: “It’s about affecting change, including getting sales to adopt new tools” — citing a challenge all the others on the panel went on to talk about, among other topics.

It was a lively discussion, with panel members openly sharing their experiences navigating the new world of B2B marketing and the challenges they specifically have faced at their respective companies. Some of my takeaways:

• When the panelists were asked what was the one medium each of them relied on the most, invariably “content” was the word that quickly came out of each panelist’s mouth — whether it was about developing it, sharing it, repurposing it, or “leveraging it across all channels.”

• It seems social media is at the top of every B2B marketer’s mind these days, too (much related to the above), and is only becoming more important. At least one panelist mentioned the CEO pushing to do more with it. One reason: compared to older, traditional methods, it’s just much easier today to segment and identify prospects with social media — for example, by advertising on LinkedIn. “I can spend $125 (targeting certain titles or functions) and get 35,000 impressions.”

• The new product management is “growth hacking,” said Zaballos — meaning iterating improvements, and trying new things, or “failing fast.” When the panelists were asked how they encourage that, they all had good answers. At Cargill, it’s recognition — a “Fail Fast Award.” At MOCON, a heavily engineering type environment, it fits the culture to simply call them “experiments.” Ecolab encourages employees to talk about what they learned. At Cachet Financial, the youngest firm in the group, one concludes it’s just sort of built in to the culture, in what is more of a smaller, startup environment. (And, by the way, kudos to BMA for having an early-stage firm on the panel of an organization that’s more populated with large firms, including many of our local Fortune 500 giants. I say mix it up more with startups, and everyone benefits!)

• Asked about the technology they use — what and how much — it was not surprising to hear the word “data” mentioned most. As in analytics.

On that last point, I hope we get to hear more voices from the local BMA chapter speak at the “Marketing Analytics” conference I’m helping to plan this fall, being put on by the MinneAnalytics organization, on whose board I serve. I’m very happy to say that SPS’ Zaballos has agreed to speak about how his firm leverages its considerable customer data to obtain insights previously unavailable — arguably one of the most significant of those transformations happening in the world of marketing today. (Watch for more on that upcoming conference soon on Minnov8.)

>>> Here’s a video interview I did of Peter after the meeting. <<<

And be sure to check out more great events upcoming from the BMA Minnesota Chapter this fall as well. If you have anything at all to do with B2B marketing, you really should follow the organization on Twitter (@BMAMinnesota) and consider becoming a member!

8thBridge 2nd Annual Social Commerce Study

December 11, 2012 By Steve Borsch

8thBridge, the smart social commerce startup in Minneapolis, has just released their second annual Social Commerce IQ study and it’s a free download.

There are several revelations in the study, none the least of which is about Pinterest and the report conclusions surprised me. Several retailers, marketers and clients I know have been thinking for some time that Pinterest is the be-all, end-all of driving social commerce. Turns out the study discovered, “…a major shift in social commerce strategy that is perhaps best exemplified by increasing interest in Pinterest, which has been adopted among 78 percent of IR 500 companies in less than a year but has not generated a corresponding rise in traffic or sales conversion.”

8th Bridge Social Commerce IQ Study Highlights (click for larger view)

The other revelation for me, some of which has been reinforced from time I’ve invested with Internet Retailer itself, are how many companies there are out there that most of us have never heard of and are actually selling a lot online. More importantly these are the ones that are learning what it takes to succeed with social commerce and not waiting around until everything is crystal clear in order to do so (since by then it’s too late!). Take a look at these “Top 10 Retail Brands”. How many have you shopped at? Is your brand waiting around to have others figure out social commerce?

The top 10 retail brands by Social Commerce IQ:

1. Fab.com 2. Deb Shops 3. Coastal Contacts 4. ModCloth 5. PetFlow.com	6. ShoeDazzle 7. JackThreads.com 8. CafePress 9. Birtchbox 10. Totsy

The other interesting aspect were the consumer findings in the report. Some of these didn’t enlighten me — such as that 70% of people would rather get a trusted recommendation from a friend than from some brand — but what did was that 56% of people don’t share things on social networks to get something in return. So how do you motivate sharing?

Consumer findings from the report include:

70 percent of respondents would rather hear about a new product from a Facebook friend, than from a brand.
57% have asked their friends on Facebook for advice before purchasing a product
31% say they don’t share products on social networks, while 63% say they share on Facebook, 25% on Twitter, and 22% on Pinterest
64% said that more Facebook “likes” on a product do not increase the likelihood that they will buy that product
44% say they are most likely to discover new products on Facebook compared to 21% on Pinterest and 13% on Twitter, but 37% don’t pay attention to posts about products
56% do not share things on social networks to get rewards.

Brand findings from the report include:

Facebook Upstream Traffic: 2.46%
Pinterest Upstream Traffic: 0.13% (Low)
Twitter Upstream Traffic: 0.06% (Distant 3rd)
35% of companies researched had apps on Facebook that were not functioning and/or were out of date.
51% of companies have incorporated the Pin It button

See the full press release right here on Minnov8 or go to the 8thBridge site here to download the report.

Magnet 360 Acquires Reside, Rebrands as ‘Social Enterprise Agency’

April 4, 2012 By Graeme Thickins

Magnet 360, a Minneapolis-based marketing and technology consultancy, today announced it has acquired Reside, a Minneapolis-based cloud solutions firm, to establish a single entity that will provide a comprehensive set of social business services. The new business will operate under the name Magnet 360, with a Minneapolis headquarters and an office in New York City.

“We’re coming into this space early, and already we are seeing amazing traction,” said Scott
Litman, Magnet 360 founder and managing partner (photo), in the company’s news release. “Our clients – executive leaders – are recognizing that social is the next big thing that will transform the way we do business and engage with customers and other audiences. They are looking to us to help build and manage programs that will deliver meaningful and measurable outcomes.”

The news release said the new entity’s offerings will include CRM, social, mobile, user experience, agile application development, insights and analytics, marketing automation, and channel marketing – “all key components of an enterprise social strategy.”

The company said its social focus, paired with its deep technical capabilities, is “what will make Magnet 360 unique among agencies.” It quoted Jim Schroer, Magnet 360 investor and former EVP Global Sales, Marketing, and Service for Chrysler: “The demand for this kind of integrated offering is huge. Companies need to embrace social to stay competitive. That doesn’t mean that existing marketing programs go away – but it does mean that they need to integrate to an overall social strategy. Today’s big agencies were built for a TV-centric marketing world; Magnet 360 is shaping itself around the new integrated, social world.”

The company said the combined forces of Magnet 360 and Reside are already working with several leading brands to plan and implement social business programs. Active clients include General Mills, Ecolab, Medtronic, 3M, Honeywell, Toro, AMC Theaters, and Carnival Cruise Lines. It said the new Magnet 360 organization is planning for market expansion and rapid growth.

“We’ve worked with hundreds of clients to help them implement cloud solutions with social elements,” said Matt Meents (photo), Reside founder and now Magnet 360 Managing Partner, in the news announcement. “But that was just the tip of the iceberg. This combination allows us to enable the social business holistically, with total integration between marketing and IT and with exponentially greater bandwidth. It’s a very opportunistic time for our clients – both B2B and B2C – and we’re excited to help them gain huge competitive advantage in this space.”

Update 4/5/12: The “new” Magnet 360 has more than 60 employees in total, the majority in Minneapolis. It also has a New York office. The company said “all Reside and Magnet 360 employees have been retained in this transaction.” It also stated it is currently on a $15M annual run rate, with plans to grow revenue to $20M total in 2012.

Tech Cocktail Mixes It Up In Minneapolis

October 5, 2011 By Graeme Thickins

We were really honored to have Tech Cocktail in town last night hosting its first startup and entrepreneurial mixer in Minnesota. The event was held at CoCo Minneapolis (on the floor of the historic Grain Exchange in downtown Minneapolis). I’m here to tell you it was a blockbuster success! More than 200 people were in attendance.

I’ve been *so* wanting these folks to come to our town, and was delighted to represent Minnov8 at the event, along with my colleague Steve Borsch. Tech Cocktail’s events have the stated purpose of “helping connect, amplify, and showcase the local technology scene” — and it’s now held such events in more than 20 cities, founder Frank Gruber told me. The local sponsors who made this one happen were W3i and Ovative Group — kudos to them! (And a special shout-out to our friend Kim Garretson.)

It was a really fun evening, with a group of technologists, investors, bloggers, and entrepreneurs as diverse as I’ve seen at a local tech event, mingling and learning about a great group of local startups that were selected by the TechCocktail folks to show their stuff:

Best Attendance – Take attendance, manage event schedules, and update membership rosters online.

BookBottles – Reserve VIP service at the hottest clubs in the world.

ByME – A digital community that is powered through user connections and location to provide an easier way to navigate and interact.

Fantools (Four51) – Connects businesses and customers so businesses can deliver relevant deals to active consumers.

fitparel – Find correct size apparel no matter the brand – just enter a brand that fits you, and they will recommend other brands.

Proliphiq and Shopntella (Echidna Inc.) – Proliphiq delivers credible people, topics, and content to you, while Shopntella lets you shop with the wisdom of crowds.

My Gluten Free Deals – Deep discounts at gluten free-friendly restaurants and on gluten free products.

ServerCyde – Build web apps for most platforms, in the least amount of time, with only one language and zero server configuration

TelemetryWeb – Their AgSphere tool helps manufacturers of agriculture technology build solutions that harvest data from the farm.

Toovio Software – A real-time decision-making solution that is focused on centralized orchestration of each customer marketing interaction across every channel.

Zingstring – An intuitive, web-based interface for non-technical folks (marketers, customer service people, etc) to create pre-programmed conversations that are triggered by keywords in incoming messages, on Twitter, Facebook, SMS, and other messaging platforms.

I shot some pix during the event and posted a Flickr set. Thanks again to Frank Gruber and his great team at Tech Cocktail! We’d love to have you folks back soon — how about twice a year? : – )

Best Buy “On” Officially Debuts

January 6, 2011 By Steve Borsch

Though we’ve been aware of this “Best Buy On” adventure for some time, this week Advertising Age reported that Best Buy company had officially rolled it out saying that it is, “…a multichannel network filled with original editorial content spanning everything from how-to videos and gift guides to new-technology primers and behind-the-scenes looks at popular movies. The network, called Best Buy On, includes a website it bills as an “online magazine” and a huge in-store component with its content and ad messaging “broadcast” on screens across the store, including in the TV, mobile and portable entertainment sections.”

In today’s online media, content must be shareable, give me added value world, “On” is a brilliant strategy to be deeply involved in delivering high value content for a variety of needs and create even more reasons to lean on Best Buy for ones technology.

There is a lot of content at Best Buy On, but we went there today specifically to seek any content related to the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) going on right now in Las Vegas. Take a peek at this CES press preview where the Best Buy crew shot video:

CES is THE place for most manufacturers in the world to rollout their new gadgets and tech. Today we’ve been viewing videos, listening to podcasts and reading blog posts about all the hot introductions at CES in anticipation for tomorrow’s recording of the Minnov8 Gang podcast.

Here’s the potential problem with how easy it is to be plugged in to CES’ introductions: Consumers who are interested in knowing what’s coming in the near future are consuming that exact same content! I’ve often wondered: wouldn’t consumers knowing the next generation technology shown at CES this week virtually kill the sales of the current products on the Best Buy shelves today? It stands to reason that if someone sees the next, hottest, must-have gadget in some CES recap online (and we can safely assume that that product will be on store shelves within weeks), wouldn’t consumers just wait to buy that new one?

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Innovative Social Networking with a Purpose

October 24, 2010 By Steve Borsch

The Table Project is a non-profit, pre-launch, remarkably innovative social networking service for churches of any denomination being delivered right here in Minnesota. The project’s mission is to, “…help churches “Live Church Together” through community-building software.” They do this by going beyond traditional social media through their platform called “The Table,” one which enables churches to custom tailor a solution for their congregation.

Recently I sat down with the executive director of The Table Project, Ken Finsaas, to learn more about the project, their mission and get some more background. I have to admit that I was more than a bit skeptical about YASN (Yet Another Social Network) being developed when I was introduced to Ken by a guy I know who specializes in placing senior leadership in tech organizations (Kevin Spanbauer, a Senior Partner at VTL Search in Eden Prairie).

My skepticism came from the fact that there are so many other social networking, group collaboration and other similar platforms already in existence. Since Ken has a senior leadership background in I.T. systems, consulting, and outcome-based project delivery, it wasn’t until meeting him and understanding more about their approach—and mostly because Ken later provided me with login credentials so I could poke around inside The Table and actually experience what they’re delivering—that I completely changed my mind and realized that YASN for churches was not only needed, but perfectly positioned for the next phase of growth and meaningful connections by church-going youth.

(Click for larger image)

An non-profit organization called YouthWorks is the parent organization spearheading The Table Project. YouthWorks’ purpose is to, “…provide life-changing, Christ-centered youth mission opportunities. This is our reason for being. We create extraordinarily fun and significant mission adventures, targeted to the needs and capabilities of youth, ages 12-19.” That organization sprung forth due to a recognition that outside-the-U.S. mission trips were incredibly costly and beyond the reach of most youth and their families. Besides the positive impact on youth who engage in these mission trips, YouthWorks saw a great need right here on U.S. soil for youth to help communities and individuals in a myriad of ways.

Experiencing the acceleration in the always-on, always-connected, increasingly-mobile, and socially connected young people that comprise the core demographic YouthWorks serves, The Table Project was begun to empower churches to deliver a platform to connect their members together, while simultaneously extending their respective ministries in to the online and social realm, and to be where young people are increasingly congregating, connecting and socializing….and that’s online.

So is it likely that YASN for churches will work?

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