There are seven titles here, and even if you don’t have time to read the entire blog, if you simply make sure the seven titles are addressed, you’ll be on the way to a successful outcome.

1. SCOPE CLARIFICATION:

• Make sure the scope of the project is clearly defined in one document called: Internal project scope for ABC Co.  This will include:
• Who is the client? Website included
• Client point person(s)
• Relevant research – where can it be found?
• What is the project?
• What is the goal – really, it’s your goal to make sure this is met.
• What is the absolute timeframe? Have you padded the timeframe a little to make sure you are covered with miscellaneous happenings?

2. CONTRACT CLARIFICATION:

• Where is the signed SOW? Also find out, should this be seen by all team members or just the client executives and agency executives?
• Team: names, contact info and roles and goals for each team member
• Note:   Have all team members signed a mutual non disclosure
• If there are any contractors and are all 1099’s in order?

3. ONLINE CLARIFICATION AND ORGANIZATION:

• Create another document called:  Internal Data for ABC Project:  This document will show where the files are stored online i.e. Basecamp? Dropbox? Both? Others?
• Who should be invited to the project management tools you are using?
• Who is the admin for these tools?
• Do you need a kick off training session on how best to use your choice of online project management?
• Should client also have a separate folder?
• Do relevant people have passwords?

4. PAYMENT COGNITION:

• Is the client payment process understood? Is it all in place? Do you need to talk with your accounting department and make sure they have all relevant information?

5. BUDGETING COGNITION:

• Budget:  sometimes the entire budget is not openly shown or sometimes what is shown are the hours per scope of work so people understand.  Our rule is that the more transparent you can be the better.
• What are hours per budgeted for this project?  Have you padded the hours by 20% for misc.?  Best to be conservative versus over optimistic. The client wants what they signed up for: “Be on time and on budget and deliver what we all agreed to.”

6. KICKOFF COLLABORATION:

• Are you prepared for the internal kickoff meeting to make sure everyone knows relevant information?
• Do you have an agenda? Did the client agree to the agenda before the kickoff so to feel included and also clear?
• Are you prepared for the client kickoff meeting so the client feels ‘safe’ and also included?
• Have you included all key stake holders in this agenda prior to kickoff so everyone relevant is heard?
• Are you including a strategic framework in the kickoff meeting?
• Are you making sure the kickoff is set up so it is a working session and a lot of the key foundation information will be created in this meeting?

7. COMMUNICATION COLLABORATION AND ORGANIZATION:

• What documents are already organized and what else is needed from the client?
• What should the files be called? My rule of thumb is files and folders within Dropbox or Basecamp are named after the proposal’s deliverables so it is effortless for both the client and the agency to understand and keep track.
• Do you understand how the client wants you to submit reports? Sometimes a client likes to use their own templates so they don’t have to do a bunch of editing before submitting to their direct reports.
• Do you have a clear Creative Brief template prepared?
• Content template deck prepared? Etc.
• What project is this similar to, so you can reference and walk your team through the similarities and best practices?
• Do you have weekly status templates in order? Does everyone understand this and when they need to submit their hours and status to you in order for you to have time to prepare for the client status report?  And is the communications process understood by the client and internally? I.e. Once a week calls on xx date and time.
• Are some using some other apps like Google docs? Or only Basecamp? Do you need to make a decision for only one app in order to avoid confusion?
• Is all contact info and conference call numbers uploaded on Basecamp so people can refer to it?  Use free conference call if possible: freeconferencecall.com
• Is Skype set up, is there credit for long distance, and are video cameras available for all users.  Very inexpensive and easy to set up.
• Are all team members on ichat or alternative IM tools too
• Are the metrics clearly defined with process for tracking?
• Are the review meetings scheduled within a given time frame (i.e. 6- months) to view results and tweak strategy?
• Is the team excited about this project?  Are you excited about this project?  This is a crucial step for a successful outcome.
• Have fun. Be on time and on budget and/or warn the client as soon as you see there might be a change looming. Never surprise the client or your colleagues.  Be 10 steps ahead. Be you.

Good luck, and I hope you found some of this helpful.

Be well,

- C

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Yes, as innovative and generous as the US are as a nation, we’ve been FAT THINKERS. We’ve become rather lazy with our thinking. We even have cars parking for us for goodness sakes. Our arms are fat. Our brains are fatter.

So, back to Social Media – our business is busy. We have and continue to be approached a lot as people are ready to think more resourcefully. Ready to truly put what they learned at school about integrated marketing into actual practice. Interconnecting dots is for a lean brain. We can all do this.

The ROI of Social Media:

1. Asking questions leads to better informed answers and solutions. This is always an immediate time and money saver. Access to real time information and knowledge and being able to act on that information and knowledge, is the new competitive advantage.
2. Measurement is key. Here we talk about measurement against objectives, not against resources.
3. Interconnecting the dots is definitely an exercise for leaner thinking. Fun though.

For additional points, call us and help us understand your business and initiatives and we can help you figure out the relevant ROI framework for your specific business case.

Contact: info@tcgagency.com or Michelle Smith at +415 864 1431

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I believe social media allows us to have all 3: IQ, CQ and EQ. A circular, dynamic, mobile and participatory conversation with the ability to interconnect with other conversations through push and pull abilities. Therefore creating relevant and timely communication.

Yes, I like CQ. Do you? I am in the midst of writing a book on this subject, if you’d like to comment, the best comments/thoughts will be included in the book with your permission and name reference.

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A consistent mistake many online commentators are making is equating ROI to money. As a CEO, I understand the link. Marketing dollars, especially now, are precious and it is responsible and prudent to ensure that every dollar you commit to marketing shows a measurable and positive return on your bottom line. As a CEO who runs a Social Media company it is imperative we have simple case studies to help our clients understand the importance of relevant social media strategies and implementation. In addition, we also use Social Media to promote our company. Like most CEOs, I do want to find out if I commit x dollars towards my marketing what return I am going to see on my bottom line and how I am going to measure that. By the way, I want to see this information efficiently too.

This current economic climate leaves little room for experimentation. No company can afford to gamble on something that might bring huge rewards, but might just as equally fail.

In my research for this post I came across a blog post that I think sums up where many people are going wrong. Jay Deragon suggests that you cannot look at social media as having an ROI. You can’t quantify it in monetary terms, and if you are trying to do so then you are approaching it incorrectly. Jay argues that trying to establish a definitive ROI for social media is wrong, and he suggests that you spend your energy on ensuring you are participating and engaging with your customers.

While I appreciate what he is trying to get at, I disagree with his argument. Measurement and analysis are key to any social media strategy. ROI refers to Return On Investment, and this return does not necessarily have to be measured in money.

Take, for example, the 2008 U.S. presidential election. Obama, as part of his comprehensive marketing campaign invested heavily in social media for his campaign and his return on the investment was winning the election. Another example can be found in the increase in social media around sustainability. The return on investments here can be identified as the change in people’s behavior and the rise in their level of awareness.

If achieving your goal is the ROI, then start off by understanding your objectives and setting your goals. Understanding how you will define your ROI has to be the starting point.

I teamed up with Alasdair Munn to create this checklist on how to get the most out of your social media campaigns, in short, the best bang for your buck. Every situation is different and requires a different approach. The following serves to illustrate how a typical campaign might be approached.

1. Start with a full analysis of your current position.
   1. What are you trying to sell? To whom/who cares?
   2. What marketing is working for you?
   3. How are you measuring the success?
   4. What is not working?
   5. What is your , 1, 3, 6 month, 1 year or 5-year plan?
   6. Do a SWOT analysis.
   7. How strong is your brand? How are you measuring it’s strength and weakness?
   8. Is using social media the right decision for your company?
2. Look at what your competitors are doing.
   1. What is your positioning statement?
   2. What are they doing right?
   3. What are they doing wrong?
   4. What is your USP?
   5. How can you leverage that?
   6. Where are the gaps? And/or how are you going to go about identifying the gaps?
3. Understand your audience, their learning styles and how they are/are not using social media.
4. Set goals and objectives. What do you hope to achieve from your social media campaign? Do you understand social media? It’s a good question to look at.
5. Engage an agency or person to create a social media strategy. There are few entities/individuals who can truly do this well: Your strategy needs to align to your social media goals and objectives, your organization’s 5-year plan and all other marketing initiatives. Your strategy will also need to assign roles and responsibilities as well as set budgets and action steps. Elements of your strategy might include:
   1. Understand which social media tools are best for your goals and objectives. These may take the form of social networking (Facebook and LinkedIn), sites that allow people to discover and share content (Digg, Magnolia, Delicious, Stumbleupon, Newsvine, Reddit, etc.), video clips or photos on YouTube or Flickr, branded software, images, blogs, forums, user comments, and much more.
   2. Who is responsible for executing the strategy? What resources can you afford to dedicate to your strategy?
   3. Understand which measurement and analytical tools work with those chosen social media tools. For example, Google Analytics, AideRSS, Xinu, and Feedburner are useful, helping companies leverage SEO efforts.
   4. Integrate the social media campaign into your entire organization (get buy in). Terry Starbucker has written a good blog post about the effectiveness of social media in a business context. His view concentrates on SMO (Social Media Optimization) and how, among other things, it has to be relevant to the organization and how the people within the company need to truly understand social media and how to “speak in it”.
6. Integrate your social media strategy into your CMS and/or LMS. This is not appropriate to all social media strategies and companies; however, through integrating social media tools into your CMS and your LMS you can create effective communication tools, both external and internal, that have measurement, analysis and functionality built in.
7. Start by listening and understanding the rules. Different social media sites and tools have different rules of engagement. They have their own norms, rules and protocols. Jumping straight in without understanding these, or without first gaining trust can be costly.
8. Engage your audience. Catch their attention and provide compelling content that fits your message, goals and objectives.
9. Measure
10. Participate/build relationships. Allow users to fully engage with your brand identity and spend time fostering new and established relationships to expand your user base.
11. Measure again.
12. Analyze. It is no use gathering all this information and measuring it if you are not going to let it inform and guide you.
13. Adapt strategy to reflect customer attitudes and responses.
14. Measure once more. Your new strategy and direction needs to be measured against your old strategy. Is the new strategy working? Are you achieving the results you had hoped to? Do you need to refocus?
15. Re-engage, measure, analyze, and re-focus. Continuing to engage, measure, analyze and refocus are key to any lasting social media strategy. It is a dynamic process that never sits still.

Jacob Morgan’s blog post entitled, “Why Social Media is More Measurable Than Traditional Media” is a good read for people who want a simple understanding of why you should be measuring your social media campaigns and how you can go about it.

In closing I do wish to offer a few thoughts. Setting goals and objectives, measuring against those goals and objectives, analyzing results and revisiting strategies are all important. However, do not lose sight of the following:

• ROI is a trailing indicator, not a leading indicator. ROI focuses on historical data. This helps us make sense of where we have been and allows us to make informed decisions as to its historical effectiveness. Any future direction cannot be made solely on historical data, especially when you consider the pace of change within social media and its qualitative nature.
• Do not overanalyze. With social media, over analyzing each individual part will make you lose sight of the whole. There are too many variables to consider. We do need to remember that we are dealing with people and people do not always make sense. They say one thing and do another and their emotions come into play. The Pepsi Taste Challenge leading to the introduction of New Coke, followed hastily by the reintroduction of the old Coke under the name Classic Coke, is a testament to the fact that pure data and research does not take into account loyalty, perceptions and human behavior.

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As I stated in How does one give a powerful presentation , a good speech or presentation is so much more than ‘good’ content. Presentations are live and dynamic, and there has to be a level of interaction. How you engage an audience—work off them, gauge their mood, or alter course if needed—is an essential skill for all those who regularly present in front of people. It is also about positioning yourself well, as the potential contacts you make could be invaluable.

All of the above elements can be taken forth into a virtual space. With the advent of social media tools, most notably video uploads, presentations can live online beyond a conference, bringing you all the benefits of feedback, questions, comments, new contacts and connections.

Social media tools and applications are making all of this easier to execute. New social media platforms such as SocMe^TM allow for the easy integration of content from a website into other sites, incorporating tools, applications and widgets that can instantly provide feedback, analytics and content tagging, as well as create a space for further collaboration and dialogue. 

Here are a few things to consider before posting online. And forgive me if some of these seem rudimentary, however I come across so many presentations online that have not given thought to the following:

1. Ensure that the footage is of high quality and captures some of the ambiance of the room. Audio is another crucial element, so make sure it is set up well.
2. Title the presentation and, if relevant, include any copyright/trademark components.
3. Consider carefully where you are going to post your presentation. You would never think of presenting at a conference that had little or nothing to do with your subject. Similarly, you need to identify appropriate and relevant online target audiences.
4. The presentation needs to be delivered in context. Provide a link and some background information about the conference, its objectives and important observations about what it did and/or didn’t achieve.
5. Pay close attention to SEO (Search Engine Optimization) when uploading the presentation, especially since most people find online presentations through search engines. Make sure you have correctly and thoughtfully tagged the presentation.
6. Where possible, allow people to download the presentation to watch at their leisure. If this is not an option on certain websites, then provide a link to where people can download it. 
7. Just as a live presentation offers an opportunity for dialogue and interaction, so too must your online presentation. This is not a hard sell opportunity, rather an opportunity for engagement. Ask for viewers’ participation and comments through providing them with the online tools to do so. Also provide contact details and a link to your company’s site.
8. The communication tools you choose will help set the tone for dialogue. A web form or email may be considered more formal while setting the expectation of a delayed response. A chat style or IM format might be considered less formal, but will set the expectation of an immediate response. The ability to leave comments or send emails are good standards.
9. Make it easy for the viewers to use social bookmarking features such as Stumbledupon, del.icio.us and Digg. Once this is done, use online analytics tools to monitor traffic to your presentation.
10.  Promote your presentation through using social media optimization (SMO).
11. Keep everything as concise as possible.  We truly believe EVERYONE is busy.
12. Write as you speak if possible.  Unless you are pedantic as a person, writing as you speak typically keeps the tone congenial and therefore more easily heard.
13. Finally, once the presentation is outdated, clearly communicate it as such and archive. You do not want to appear out of touch.

Have you used social media in your presentations? If so, how? What worked? What didn’t work? What would you like to try next?

Leave a comment or write to us at clarity@tcgagency.com

We are always interested in hearing and learning from other people’s experiences.

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A few years ago I would have put this down to a publicity stunt. I was verging on anti consumerism and toying with the idea of boycotting large companies. Now, I applaud this initiative whole-heartedly.

For every person who decides to boycott a company like Tesco’s, there are tens of thousands who choose to shop there. The only way people are gong to change their consumption habits is if they are given viable alternatives to the way they consume now. The greatest opportunity to do that is through organizations that touch the greatest amount of people. The single most effective method of changing the way we consume is to change the way we produce.

The majority of people are driven to consume based upon price, availability, convenience and habit.

Organizations such as The Rocky Mountain Institute have known this for years and as a result have spent their energy on engaging producers and researching viable alternatives to the way we produce, yet we are only now seeing the start of the shift.

This idea has been rattling around in my head for a bit, but the person who first articulated it for me in a way that brought it all together was Carl Pope from the Sierra Club. I was attending a talk at the ad:tech conference in San Francisco in April this year entitled Green Marketing in the Digital Age and he was one of the panellists.

Carl was defending Sierra Clubs decision to attach their seal of approval to Clorox’s new Green Works cleaning products label. He asked the audience if they had ever heard of several “green” products that Sierra Club had put their label to in the past. Most people had not. The reason given by Carl was they had all had the best intentions, they were formed on the best principles with the soundest eco practices, yet they had failed to take off because they did not have the backing of mainstream distribution and marketing, nor the muscle or financial backing to produce on a scale that made it a viable prospect cost wise for consumers.

“Green” products have to stop being a sub category. They need to be brought into the mainstream to compete with all other products. For this to happen their case has to be built upon established rules of business offering competitive advantages over other mainstream products. They need to be available, affordable and convenient. These are the principles that Tesco have built their empire on.

http://twitter.com/ajmunn

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