Mary Henige, General Motors Director of Social Media & Digital Communications
On Friday, March 30th at 1pm EDT, well-known social media strategist and author Deirdre Breakenridge will join me for an exclusive thirty-minute live conversation with Mary Henige
who currently serves as Director of Social Media and Digital Communications at General Motors.
Henige has been with GM for over 25 years and currently leads GM social media strategy; employee policy and training; Blogs; Community engagement on GM’s corporate brand channels; and crisis monitoring and response.
Her team works in cooperation with other areas to broaden the reach of GM’s “stories” including video development and media outreach.
GM has received both mainstream
media and blogger
attention at this year’s South by Southwest Conference. We’ll talk with Henige about that success and the resources and tools GM makes use of to develop and execute its social media strategies. And we’ll discuss how and why marketing and PR at GM have managed to work together so effectively – more effectively than many in the marketing/PR agency world might imagine.
The discussion, which will take place on Blog Talk Radio, is sponsored by LiquidPlanner, (affiliate link) a leading enterprise-class online project management application and Ragan, provider of world-renowned newsletters, conferences, research reports and guides for leading corporate communicators.
You can listen live on Friday at 1pm EDT / 10 AM PST on Blog Talk Radio.
Introducing the Digital Reality Conversation Series
: The following is the first in what will be a series of conversations (some written and some recorded on Blog Talk Radio) between VMR and other digital media marketing agency and in-house practitioners. There’s no shortage of insightful talk about digital and social media marketing theory. But as Chris Brogan of ChrisBrogan.com recently opined:
With those words in mind, these conversations will hopefully complement the theory-oriented dialogue by introducing our online community to some of the best and brightest marketing and communications leaders who are putting the best theories to work. Our focus will be how best to apply the theories to the every day practice and implementation of internet marketing and communications initiatives in the age of the real-time web. I’m delighted to share the first conversation in this series, with a rising star in the world of digital marketing and communication, Thunderbird’s Samantha Novick.
– HM
Samantha Novick
is Public Relations and New Media Specialist for Thunderbird School of Global Management, one of the world’s most prestigious international business schools with operations in the U.S., Geneva, Moscow and Beijing. Samantha’s past professional experience includes work as a journalist and editor for newspapers and magazines in the U.S., Europe and the Middle East.
In September 2012, she taught in the N2K Media Sustainability Program at Thunderbird, sponsored by the US Army and the State Department, which delivered business skills training to radio broadcast journalists from Afghanistan. Her program focused on social media engagement via mobile and SMS technology, essential in a country with less than 6 percent Internet penetration.
A journalism graduate from Arizona State University who has undertaken advanced coursework at The World Bank Institute and Thunderbird, Samantha is a member of the Phoenix Committee on Foreign Relations and leads the Academic Conference Call series between Thunderbird and the Council on Foreign Relations. She is an avid hiker and world traveller. What follows is the result of an email exchange in February of this year. Special Thanks to Samantha for her willingness to be interviewed by VMR.
Hugh Macken:
Samantha, can you summarize in a nutshell the nature of your social media /new media work experience at Thunderbird to this point?
Samantha Novick:
I am responsible for leading and executing our institutional social media strategy. That means taking care of the content for our diversity of social media sites— http://knowledgenetwork.thunderbird.edu/research/social Mainly, I work with Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. I also work with different stakeholders around campus to help them meet their goals through social media. So that could mean assisting someone in Executive Education with finding a new client through LinkedIn. Or by helping someone in Admissions and Recruiting publicize their event through Facebook or a combination of platforms. I’m there on the strategy side, but also spend a fair amount of time training and helping my colleagues understand these platforms and utilize them to their best advantage. I also guest lecture in our digital marketing class and in our global business plan course.
HM:
It sounds as if you’ve worn quite a few hats at Thunderbird. Of all your roles, which one (if you could pick one) do you feel has had the biggest impact on Thunderbird’s embrace of and success with social media communications? Strategy leadership? Execution/Content Development? Training/Education?
SN:
I feel that my most valuable contribution to Thunderbird has been the training and mentoring I’ve been able to give to my colleagues and even those outside the organization in social media. One of the best parts of my job is being able to work with someone else and show them how they can achieve one of their goals in a new way. Sometimes these training sessions turn into big strategy sessions, and that’s when it gets really cool. You can see people looking at sales, connections and their personal network differently. There is always an excitement about it too, and it is great to be in a position to encourage that discovery.
Social media is not completely rewriting business development, but it is changing it. And I want my organization to be on the cutting edge of that trend. So being in the position to dispel myths, provide a new way of thinking and share my experiences has been really powerful.
HM:
Do training sessions often turn into strategy sessions and vice versa?
SN:
Usually. What I do when I go through training an individual or a group, is customize the presentation to their needs as much as I can. It is always very fluid and there will be lots of questions. I always start each training session with—- “what do you want to accomplish? What is your top goal with this?” These types of questions. That usually sets the tone of the discussion differently, and we work out as a team how to make social media work for them.
HM:
How do you respond to colleagues who ask you how to link social media outreach to quantitative ROI measurements?
SN:
I always tell colleagues to have a very clear goal in their mind before doing anything in social. What do you want to get out of this? You don’t know how many times I have gone into meetings with people who can’t answer this question, or else say— “well, we just have to be there.” That doesn’t tell me anything, and that doesn’t help you. Define what you really want— Do you want to have a better line of communication to prospective clients or the media? Do you want to have a quicker, more transparent line of communication to your customers? Would you like to be better aware of your competitors? Would you like to connect with prospective clients in XYZ industry? Social media is a tool you can use to meet some of these objectives. Say you are in the business development side of a firm, and you handle B to B sales. If you need to close three deals this quarter, there are certainly ways you can use social media to help you meet that. It can help complement the work you are already doing—- hitting the pavement, collecting business cards at conferences, making cold calls.
HM:
Do you have to report the ROI from your work? What qualitative or quantitative measures do you find to be most useful?
SN:
At this point, I am not asked to report anything more than follower or fan growth per each platform, even though that only tells part of the social media story. I like to look at metrics like number of retweets, mentions and click-throughs on links. Other things could be the number of online RSVP’s you receive on Facebook or LinkedIn events. These show how engaged your audience is with your brand. I think Crowdbooster is a pretty adequate platform for providing this kind of data. It can also gauge your impressions— an estimate of the total possible number of times someone could have seen your tweet. I frequently will “favorite” tweets that have something really positive or constructive to say about our brand. These are great to have easily accessible, and help to make a case to someone who is wary. Anytime you can participate in a conversation that you couldn’t have been apart of before is a value add.
HM:
Does Thunderbird use social media monitoring using tools like Radian6 or Crimson Hexagon or google alerts to evaluate sentiment or share of voice?
SN:
We use Cision and Google alerts to monitor our web coverage, but do not necessarily pay for any further advanced social media monitoring. For an organization of our size, it doesn’t really make sense. I also feel that the technology behind social media sentiment analysis has a little ways to go before it is worth investing in.
HM:
What is one of your top strategic priorities / goals for 2012 for Thunderbird’s social media outreach?
SN:
I think that we would like to do more with international social networks, specifically influential platforms in China such as Renren, Sina Weibo and Tudou. There is huge potential here if it is accessed effectively. Also I think that we would like to do a better job of monitoring foreign language content and becoming more prominent in international blogs. We could do a lot more by utilizing our international base and our foreign language capabilities.
Seriously though, I guess the biggest question in my mind regarding the new social media platform is whether there will be anything even remotely comparable to Facebook Pages. From what I’ve seen so far, google + is for circles of friends to communicate in real time. But what about brands? What about organizations? Will they be able to set up a profile similar to a Facebook Page profile on google +? Deep Focus’ Ian Schafer
wrote a thought-provoking post(worth reading) that suggests Google Plus will revolutionize how brands share content and the importance of content quality.
Really? How so? How will this be any different than twitter or Facebook?
I’m genuinely curious. And…since I never got an invite, I’m a bit in the dark about this. I’d really appreciate an inside heads up from someone more in the know on this topic than me.
Karlie Justus wrote a thought-provoking post recently on the pros and cons of banning social media at your B2B company. Banning your employees or athletes from using Twitter does not prevent third parties connected with your employees or your athletes from posting something online that results in legal problems and/or a damaged reputation.
Take t
he case of University of North Carolina, whose football coach, Butch Davis ( according to an ESPN report) informed players yesterday that they are now forbidden from using the popular microblogging service.
This move is understandable in light of all the problems UNC has had as a result of Twitter. But my concern -perhaps unfounded – is that Butch Davis and other college coaches think they have eliminated the risk that Twitter and other social media pose when they ban its use by the people who are under their supervision.
A larger risk most definitely remains. And here’s why:
One of the biggest misconceptions about social media risk in general is that if you stop employees, contractors, athletes and others under your supervision from communicating through social channels, then you eliminate social media risk altogether. After all, your organization is, therefore, “not getting into social media” by doing so.
Right?
Wrong.
Here’s the reality: Even if you could block people under your supervision from using social channels 24/7 (which of course you cannot practically or legally speaking for corporate employees), you’d still have the problem of *third parties* outside of the institution posting information, images and other material that could result in just as many headaches.
Again, UNC is a good case in point. As the Washington Times reported, Natalie Nunn was a model who had appeared on the reality television show “Bad Girls Club”, not an athlete at UNC. But her tweet *referenced* an athlete, and ended up being one of the many factors contributing to an NCAA investigation and the athlete’s suspension by the team.
The debate about whether to ban people affiliated with your organization from using social channels is a fair one. But focusing on that debate often results in overlooking the fact that unaffiliated third parties can cause just as many headaches and pose every bit as much of a threat from a legal and corporate reputation perspective.
The legal system is not likely to bury it’s head on this.
Neither should you.
Failing to understand the fully transparent and vast online ecosystem (Twitter is one of literally hundreds of social sites used by today’s young people) known as the social web is a strategy that has already gotten plenty of companies and organizations in legal hot water, resulted in massive financial losses and damaged their reputations in the process.
At the very least, learn from their mistakes: Formulate, Implement and Enforce.
One final piece of advice for Butch Davis and other coaches around the country: The best way to keep your school out of the headlines is to keep your athletes on the straight and narrow. That’s one very, very tall order, which is why I agree with ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit, who recently suggested on ESPN radio that, in order to help address the issue of sports agents paying college athletes, sports program’s should have one full-time person whose sole responsibility is to watch over the well-being of the athletes.
In light of all the potential headaches that social media can cause for athletic programs, I would propose that that number should be two full-time supervisors. Kids need to be protected from themselves and taking just this one step would go a long way toward nipping the problem in the bud.
This really just scratches the surface of this issue but hopefully it gets you thinking in more level-headed terms about the magnitude of the threats for every organization and person regardless of their official involvement in the social web.
Important: “Any information contained on this site is general in nature. You should not rely on any articles, postings or other information on these pages as legal advice or to create an attorney-client relationship. If you are in need of legal advice concerning a particular matter, you are encouraged to contact an attorney in your state.”
Surprisingly, though, neither MindJet nor any of its competitors (to my knowledge, at least) currently offers Social Network *API-driven* Mapping.
Say wuh?
Say this…
Go on over to http://apps.asterisq.com/mentionmap/ Type in the username of someone on twitter you’d like to know more about in terms of their connections. Try chrisbrogan for example. Then, press Start.
Pretty nifty, right? Hat tip to the folks at Asterisq.com.
But here’s what I have a hard time understanding: To my knowledge, there’s not a single mind mapping application out there (mindjet being the best of the best from what I have seen) that is able to tap into the APIs of social outposts like twitter to create these sorts of maps.
Why not?
What if you could automatically create maps like this based off of your linkedin connections?
Or your blog community?
Did I mention Facebook?
How might you use a mapping tool like this that was able to tap into social network APIs?
I’d love to hear your ideas.
As always, I will be listening!
Full Disclosure: Neither VMR nor Hugh Macken is currently affiliated with MindJet or Asterisq.com in any way.
Relationship Economics is about understanding both the art and science of business relationships. It has been my experience that though many get the art – 30 second introductions, remembering names, building rapport – few truly understand the science. The concept of Social Network Analysis (SNA) has been in existence since the 1930s and is the intersection of psychology, anthropology, sociology, organization design and mathematics – specifically graph theory. Its roots are ingrained in academic circles and are too complex for many to comprehend, much less apply to teams within organizations.
What is Social Network Analysis?
Social Network Analysis, in its simplest term, is the process of mapping and measuring relationships and flow between people, groups, organizations, and other information/knowledge-processing entities. SNA provides both a mathematical and a visual analysis of human relationships. The term has been used as a metaphor for over a century to convey complex sets of relationships between members of a social system. In 1954, a social scientist, Jay Barnes, began using this term to denote patterns inside and outside founded groups such as tribes or families and social categories such as gender or ethnicity. In recent years, SNA has evolved from suggestive metaphors to a true analytical model in various methods and research circles.
Analysts are able to deduct key insights from a deep dive of “whole to parts” from structures to individual interactions and from behaviors to attitude. By studying the whole network, which contacts specific ties or relationships between individuals, key assumptions can be made as to the frequency, quality and expansive nature of an interaction between two individuals.
Think about it: Why do you socialize with some co-workers more than others? Why do some colleagues’ names appear more often in your Sent e-mail folder than others? Give me a copy of a person’s calendar and checkbook and I can tell you the breadth and depth of their relationships. The same could be said for several key attributes of individuals with whom you tend to engage considerably more often than others. A number of those attributes could be easily explained by your role or realm of responsibilities.
Other attributes of our most valued links simply include people who get us. These are the people who are a lot like we are and with whom we have chemistry. If you have been through any of the behavioral or psychological assessment tools, you realize that similar profiles naturally gravitate toward each other.
Why Social Network Analysis Matters
The shape of our social network – whether small or more expansive, both internal and external – can also highlight the true collaborative nature of an individual or team. In other words, a group of individuals who only communicate and collaborate with one another already share the same knowledge, and to a greater extent, the same set of contacts. Conversely, a group of individuals with connections to a broader, more diverse array of social worlds is more likely to have access to a broader knowledge base and, by deductive reasoning, access to greater opportunities to overcome obstacles.
This is why it is critical to prioritize diversity as the single biggest asset in your portfolio of relationships. The broader your social network, the bigger your relationship bank and sphere of influence.
David Nour is a social networking strategist and one of the foremost thought leaders on the quantifiable value of business relationships. In a global economy that is becoming increasingly disconnected, David and his team are solving global client challenges with Strategic Relationship Planning™ and Enterprise SocialNetworking
best practices.
David is the author of Relationship Economics
(Wiley, 2008), The Entrepreneur’sGuide to Raising Capital
(Praeger, 2009), ConnectAbility
(McGraw-Hill, 2010), and the Social Networking Technology Best Practices
Series. He is a contributor to TheSocial Media Bible
(Wiley, 2009) and is currently researching and writing his next commercial book on Listen Louder.
David’s unique perspective and independent insights have been featured in a variety of prominent blogs and print publications including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The AtlantaJournal and Constitution, Association Now, Entrepreneur and Success
magazine.
There’s so much confusion these days about social media strategy largely because foundational principles of presence management, listening and engagement get lost in the noise of continual hype about the latest and greatest technologies that are 1000% guaranteed to generate instant ROI.
Earlier this year, at a presentation for folks in broadcast media
who were looking for some clarity mixed with a healthy dose of common sense on social media, Tom Webster, VP of Strategy and Marketing for Edison Research, (co-presenting at the time with Triton Digital’s Jim Kerr) provided a simple, usable framework to help media professionals formulate an engagement strategy for social media.
I’m not a broadcast media professional, nor was I in attendance at the conference (though I wish I was!) but I read about the framework shortly after the conference on Tom’s blog, commented and made a mental note that this was definitely worth sharing with those of you who are kind enough to partipate in the dialogue that occurs here on the VMR blog. The salient point, in my view, was the following:
“You need to have a strategy for your own web properties, and a strategy for web properties you don’t control or own.”
Sounds straightforward enough but try explaining that to those who are not very familiar with social media and you might just get them to scratch their heads and look at you funny but not much more. If that’s their response, this matrix
will help you to begin your social strategy conversations on a simple, straightforward note.
Without going into too much additional detail, I’m going to strongly suggest that you hop on over to Tom’s blog
and read the entirety of his post explaining the simple but very useful matrix (which Tom has graciously given me permission to copy here) below.
It’s an oldie but a goodie. I call it the Webster Engagement Matrix and a classic worth referencing time and again.
What about you? Have you come across useful matrices like Tom’s? Do you think this will help you explain social media strategy to those with whom you work or to your clients? I’d love to know so please do share the love!
UPDATE: The Blog Talk Radio portion of this chat has been cancelled. The twitter chat will still take place at #monitoring. Our apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.
Next week, on Thursday, June 22, at 11AM (New York) / 3pm (GMT) I’ll be chatting with the folks at Synthesio
about social media
monitoring. You are welcome to join us as we explore the following topics:
1. What are the differences between free and paid monitoring tools?
2. When is it time to make the jump free to paid tools?
3. What factors should companies consider when choosing a monitoring platform? Follow twitter hashtag#monitoring using www.tweetchat.com during this lively discussion!
International callers: If you’d like to join the live on air conversation, youcando so free if you have a skype account byclicking here. Look for the “Use Skype to Talk” button which will appear on the day the program airs.
Callers within the US: To call in and ask a question or make a comment on air, simply dial (347) 884-8912 during the program.
Will Google offer services that upend the social media analytics market?
Earlier this year, renowned enterprise social technology experts and Altimeter Group
Partners Jeremiah Owyang
and Charline Li, held a webinar entitled “Developing A Social Strategy”
that had over 495 participants. Regrettably, I was not present for the live webinar but I watched a recording which the Altimeter Group was nice enough to post to their website.
One observation in particular made by Mr Owyang has gotten me thinking about the effect of the slowly evolving semantic web
on analytics platforms like Radian6 and ScoutLabs.
Here’s what Owyang had to say about Radian6, Scoutlabs, and the many other analytics platforms (the words after “produce” were hard for me to decipher):
I do not know what was meant by this comment but it has prompted me to consider the following:
1. Will search engines like google directly compete with the services offered by these very sophisticated analytics platforms which now include customizable, multi-user interfaces, such as the recently announced Radian6 Enagagement Conssole?
2. If so, what role, if any, will the semantic web play in prompting the search engines to contend more aggressively in this space?
Comment away! I would really appreciate any insights the community would like to share.
In a blog post
published the next day concerning the research paper, Vittal pointed out that “Far too often, [marketers] focus purely on the software costs associated with such tools.”
Vittal makes an interesting point and one that marketers will ignore at their peril: When budgeting for listening, don’t forget the internal costs of human resource allocation.
How is your company or organization dealing with the human element of listening?
