Real-World Examples of Social Media ... - Business 2 Community

This is the first in a series of interviews I am conducting in partnership with Content Marketing World and my online radio show, Content Marketing 360. Content Marketing 360 Radio Show was designed to bring the best of the best in content marketing to the internet airwaves. This mission is guaranteed as I interview many of the speakers for Content Marketing World ?12!

I had the absolute pleasure to interview Jason Falls. Jason blogs at Social Media Explorer and is the author of No Bullshit Social Media: The All-Business, No-Hype Guide to Social Media Marketing. He is a straight shooter, no holds barred marketer and it was a real treat to spend some time with him. He?ll be speaking at Content Marketing World on ?Cut the Bull ? Blog with a Purpose and Drive Your Business.?

Here are a few highlights from our conversation:

• Some things businesses need to be aware of as we move further into this digital age and social media
• Some of the common fears from business owners who are hesitant to take the plunge into social media
• How to break down the fear of sharing too much competitive intelligence in the age of digital marketing
• The seven business drivers of social media marketing
• How to measure social media
• How to use content marketing and social media strategies to drive sales
• A case study on how to use Foursqare to drive business
• How social media can help with research and development ? with a great case study

There are several ways you can get the interview with Jason:

Pamela: My guest today is Jason Falls. He is author, speaker and CEO of Social Media Explorer. Of course, social media strategist extraordinaire. I?m very excited to have Jason today. He is also a co-author of a book that was recently released. And, Jason, this title is truly one of the best I?ve seen in a long time, No Bullshit Social Media: The All-Business, No-Hype Guide to Social Media Marketing.

Jason, welcome to Content Marketing 360 Radio.

Jason: Thanks for having me, Pam. I?m glad to be here.

Pamela: This is so fantastic. This is the Internet so we can swear if we want to. The FCC doesn?t regulate us yet. However, I love the fact that I get to say bullshit as a title. I got to say that.

Jason: It?s really funny. The reaction has been 99 percent of the people love the title. And then, there?s that 1 percent that?s going to be like, ?Oh, that?s offensive.? Or, ?That?s unprofessional,? or whatnot. And those are the people that, obviously, number one, the book wasn?t meant for them. That?s fine. They don?t have to buy it. But, if they actually read the book and realize why we?re saying that, they might actually come down off the high horse a little bit and say, ?Oh, OK, I get it now.? But, we anticipated there would be more push-back against the title. But, quite frankly, most people have the same reaction you have. ?Oh, that?s a neat title.?

Pamela: Yeah. It?s great. And it?s an attention-getter. But, even more than that, Jason, I?ve had the pleasure of following you for a few years now with Social Media Explorer. You have a fantastic blog, and you put out some great information. This is really you. This is your brand. And this is the personality that goes along with who Jason Falls really is.

Jason: Yeah. And the inspiration for the title actually came from people that I talked to around the country. I tour around and speak about social media and have done so for a couple years now, long before I had a book. And it seemed like every time I would come off stage, somebody would come up to me and say, ?Man, I really appreciate your style. You?re kind of a straight shooter, no BS kind of guy.? And it just sort of evolved from that. And I kept hearing that over and over again. So, I thought, ?Yeah. That sort of sums up the way I look at the world.?

And when Erik, my co-author, and I were sitting down trying to figure out a title for the book, I said, ?We?re really doing the no BS thing. We need to call it that.? And, of course, we were a little nervous that the publisher would say no. And the publisher was like, ?You know what? We don?t have a problem with it. We need to make sure that the retail channels don?t have a problem with it.?

And so, they had to go to the Barnes & Nobles and the Books-A-Millions and Amazons of the world. And they all liked it, by the way. Nobody ever complained about it. But, it?s funny. You cannot use the word bullshit in an Amazon review of the book that has bullshit in the title because it doesn?t pass the Amazon profanity filters.

Pamela: Oh, that?s good.

Jason: So, the title of the book?s there and the header?s there and everything. But, if you go comment and say, ?I read ?No Bullshit Social Media,?? it?ll flag your comment as being inappropriate.

Pamela: Oh, that?s hilarious. That is fantastic. Now, I think it?s great. And we?re going to be talking about a couple of other things where I?ve got to warn the audience, my friends out there that are listening. There may be some swear words. I should have probably said that when we started the show. One of those disclaimers we tend to see before television shows, that if this is inappropriate, you may want to stop now.

Jason: No. We?re not going to go NC-17.

Pamela: No, no. I think it?s fantastic. It?s an attention-getter and you?re absolutely right. I?ve seen you speak. I?ve had the pleasure of seeing you speak in person as well. And you are. You?re the straight shooter. You?re this straight talk kind of guy. And in a world where, gosh, we?re seeing a lot of different media personalities, I think it?s very refreshing. So, I?m very excited to have you participate in our radio show and share a little bit of your straight talk with our listening audience as well.

Jason: Thank you.

Pamela: So, let?s do that. Let?s kick the tires, if that?s OK, and start with an area of the conversation. Like you said, you?ve been doing this for some time. And you?ve seen the evolution, I like to say, when we talk about anything digital, especially social, we kind of talk about like it?s in dog years.

So, one of the areas of your business that you really focus on is how the consumer has changed. And just the way that businesses need to, not only to be aware of it, but how we can start addressing that and working with that. So, tell me a little bit about that. How has the consumer changed? What are some things that businesses need to be aware of as we move in further into this digital age and social media?

Jason: Well, and keep in mind that a lot of this argument that we make in the book is really focused on those businesses that aren?t really touching social media yet. We wanted to sort of draw them in a little bit. But, the consumer has changed. And I think people who have been talking about social media for the last few years sort of understand this. But, the Internet and social media, the lowering of the barrier to entry to get online and to publish your own thoughts and comments and to connect with other people of like mind through social networks and whatnot, has really sort of unleashed this Pandora?s box of consumer behavior.

In the past, when we wanted to share our ideas, we had to be pre-qualified. We had to be edited by a newspaper editor. We had to go to journalism school and learn how to be a broadcaster. There was some barrier to entry for being able to publish yourself. Whether it be convincing a publisher that your book was worth publishing, whether it be getting hired as a writer for a local newspaper, etc., etc. There was some barrier to entry. Although a radio station did put me on the air at age 14, which was ridiculous. So, there were some exceptions to the rule.

But, if you wanted to be heard by a larger group of people, there was a barrier to entry. Now, there?s not. Because the technology has advanced and the Internet is so ubiquitous, really, in today?s world, that anybody who just has access to the Internet, which you can get for free at a public library, can publish their thoughts online and can connect with other people outside of the geographic bounds of their life. And so, it really expands everyone?s world and everyone?s world view.

And so, when you have that sort of power of connectivity and the power of publishing and sharing, what has happened is the online consumer, which is the majority of the people, at least, in the Western world. Certainly, there are some folks in third world countries that aren?t online. But, at the same time, I?ve been told by my business partner who?s traveled there a couple times, you can go anywhere in Africa and, literally, kids who you think are dirt poor are walking around with cell phones.

Pamela: Right.

Jason: So, people are plugged in. People are connected around the world. And so, what that means is the consumer?s attention has deviated from traditional media. Now, I?m not going to make the argument, and I think it?s a mistake to make the argument, that newspapers are dead or radio?s dead or TV?s dead. I would never say that because they?re not. What I think has happened is the Internet has become the primary screen. The television has maybe been relegated to a secondary screen. I watch TV and tweet at the same time.

Pamela: Yes.

Jason: And I know lots of other people do, too. I know that people still pick up printed newspapers and read them in the morning. I know that I still subscribe to five magazines. Not digitally, the actual analog printed version of the magazine. So, none of these other mediums are dead. But, how people consume them and when people consume them and how long people consume them has shifted and has changed.

What that means is for brands and businesses, in order to reach the audience that you reached 15 years ago with advertising or with direct mail, so on and so forth, you?ve got another channel to consider. And that channel is the Internet. And that channel is broken up into multiple sub-channels. Blogs, social networks, micro-blogging, online advertising, so on and so forth. So, there are lots of more ways to reach consumers now. And what you want to try to do as a brand, as a marketer, is find the most effective way to reach the audience that you want to try to reach and deliver a very relevant message to them.

The digital world offers you some unique opportunities to do that in ways you didn?t do 15 years ago. But, it also offers unique challenges because you?re basically having to fragment and segment your audiences and your messages in ways that you never thought you would need to before. You?re having to reach much, much smaller, more relevant audiences which means your marketing is much more effective, but with a smaller group of people.

And so, instead of the spray and pray approach of the old days, buying a TV commercial and hoping a bunch of people see the message and think it?s cool and come buy your product. Now, you have the opportunity to actually go talk to 50 people in a chat room who are really, really interested in your product. And you can convince those people to try it or even to buy it. And then maybe, if they like it, they?ll turn around and tell their friends as well.

So, the consumer behavior really has further fractured the media landscape. It?s not just about 500 television channels and nothing?s on any more. It?s about there?s millions of options. And finding your audience amidst those options is a bit more difficult. But, when you do find them, it?s a bit more effective because you?re finding an audience that is ripe for your message and ready and willing to listen.

Pamela: And it?s interesting that you mention all these traditional components to the marketing process. I agree wholeheartedly that nothing in terms of traditional has truly died. There?s just an evolution going on of how we use these tools. And man, it?s amazing. And just for the audience, we are actually recording this show here. Where are we at? March of 2012. So, if they end up downloading later, they kind of get a sense of what I?m referring to. But, recently I just saw the first ad on television, Jason. It?s for Lowe?s, the hardware store.

Jason: Mm-hmm.

Pamela: And, of course, now we?re seeing the Facebook and the Twitter icons at the end of commercials, which is indicating we have a Facebook page. We have a Twitter handle. But, I saw my first Pinterest on Lowe?s. I said, ?OK. That was quick.? So, what you?re really talking about is that 360 degrees of how we intake information and media and content. And that it?s all kind of working together. You mention that your book was written for those that are needing to step further into the space.

Jason: Mm-hmm.

Pamela: And so, one of the questions that comes up as you talk about this consumer change. If I can ask this, what are some of the fears that you?re seeing with companies that are hesitant?

Jason: Oh, wow.

Pamela: Why they?re not stepping in faster because it?s not going to go away. It?s going to continue to evolve. So, what are some of those fears that you?re seeing from business owners that stop them from taking the plunge?

Jason: Yeah. Well, the fears that we?re seeing today are the same fears we saw three or four years ago. And what we?re having to realize is that the world?s a really big place. There are lots of businesses. There are lots of executives out there. And so, the success stories that we can look back three years ago or four years ago and say, ?OK. We convinced this company to take the plunge. And now, they?re seeing some value from social media marketing.? There are hundreds and thousands of other companies out there that are still afraid of it. And the fears that I?m seeing are the same ones.

Number one, they?re afraid that they don?t understand the technology. When I ask my mother-in-law how she gets on the Internet, she still says, ?I double click the big, blue E.?

Pamela: Right.

Jason: So, she goes to Internet Explorer and that?s how she knows to get on the ?internet,? even though her entire computer and every software program on it are connected to the Internet. But, you still have, I think, several generations. Two or three generations of people out there, especially decision makers at large companies, small business owners, so on and so forth, that are just simply intimidated by the technology. They just don?t understand how the web works and how websites work. And they just don?t get it. They know they can open up a browser and go to different places, but they never see themselves being able to create a place for their business online.

So, fear of technology is one. When you start talking social media, one of the first things you hear is, ?Well, there?s no return on it. There?s no ROI on that. So, I?m not going to try it.? And it?s because they don?t understand what social media marketing can do for their business. Therefore, they assume it can?t do anything. And they don?t see case study after case study of businesses saying, ?We invested this much money and we got this much money out of it. And, therefore, we had this fabulous ROI.? There are lots of different reasons for that. And we can dive into ROI a little bit more deeply a little bit later. The one that really continues to surprise me is that they?re afraid of letting people say bad things about them on their own website.

Pamela: Yeah.

Jason: And I don?t get that. I really don?t get that because, first of all, if someone comments on your blog, it?s not above the fold right under the headline on your website. It?s buried on one page that very, very few in the grand scheme of things, very few people who visit your website, are actually going to see, first of all. Second of all, you can always establish expectations for your audience and say, ?Look, if you want to comment on this blog or if you want to leave a review or recommendation on this website, here are the parameters that are acceptable to us. You can?t use foul language. It has to be on topic. If you call us names, we?re going to remove it.?

And so, you can moderate and control as long as you establish those expectations for your audience. And I still, to this day, hear executives saying, ?Well, we don?t want to allow negative comments on our blog.? Well, first of all, A) you don?t have to and B) even if you did and it was someone being constructively critical, it?s a lot more powerful if you actually just respond to them and say, ?Hey, thanks for pointing that out. Here?s how we?re going to address that issue.?

Pamela: Yes.

Jason: Makes you look so more invested in your audience. But, there are still executives who feel like control is what they have to exert in their marketing. And I?ve got news for them. They?ve never had control over their marketing. The difference between 15, 20 years ago and today is that 15 or 20 years ago there were several hundred thousand water coolers across the country. And people would go to the one nearest them, and they would have conversations with other people. And sometimes, they would mention brands and companies and so on and so forth.

Today, there?s one big water cooler where everybody goes and the conversations are documented. They?re indexed. You can search and find them, so on and so forth. That?s the only difference. You didn?t have control over the hundreds of thousands of conversations about your brand when you screwed up really royally, and it was publicized in the media 15 years ago. And you don?t have control over those conversations today. Only now, you can see them. So, it scares the hell out of people.

Pamela: Yes. It?s interesting because I?ve had that same confusion. I just can?t understand why folks get so excited about the idea of negative comments when there?s so much opportunity to actually serve a consumer in front of so many eyeballs. It?s usually the reaction of a bad experience that creates more loyalty.

Jason: Sure.

Pamela: And I just want to touch on those fears. Because I think just hearing them, if you?re a business owner listening today and hearing some of the things that Jason is saying, maybe we struck a chord. And part of our conversation is to hopefully alleviate some of those myths and fears. And get you to step that foot a little further down the social media path.

And another one that comes up is the whole competition conversation, Jason. I know I?ve run into this myself a few times. I don?t want my competition to see what I?m doing or my competition X. Just this conversation of if I put my stuff out there, my competition can have it. Well, you write some really good stuff in terms of your competition in your book. And I?m just going to say it because, again, I get to say it without FCC regs. Your competition may have already kicked your ass.

Jason: Yeah. Yeah, that?s true.

Pamela: Because if you?re not out there, somebody else might be. Give us just some insight to that, into breaking down the wall of this whole competition conversation and digital marketing.

Jason: Well, I think there are two things that we need to address here. First of all, participating in social media doesn?t mean that you have to unroll proprietary information about what you?re doing. Or insider based secret plans for your company on your blog. That?s not what participating in social media necessarily means. But, let me paint a picture for you because there?s a really good analogy and case study that?s in the book that I think will help people. And for those of you out there who don?t want to get into social media because you don?t want to share things that your competition may see, you?re going to be Telligent . OK, that?s the name of a company. And you?re going to be Telligent in this particular scenario.

So, one day on Twitter there was a gentleman by the name of Chris Geiger [SP]. And he tweeted one day. He worked at the time at a business process management software company. I don?t know what that means, but that?s what they?re called. The name of the company is K2 and they?re in Redmond, Washington. And one day he tweeted, and I quote, ?Alternatives to Telligent community server recommendations.? So, you are Telligent and he?s tweeting that he?s a little dissatisfied with a product that you are presenting him or that he?s a customer of. And he?s looking for alternatives to you.

Pamela: Yes.

Jason: And so, you?re not locked into social media, so you don?t know that he?s tweeted this.You don?t know that he said this. But, there?s a gentleman by the name of Michael Fraietta who works at Jive Software, which is a competitor of Telligent. And he sees that tweet. And so, he responds to Chris Geiger on Twitter in a very natural, organic way and says, ?Chris, check out Jive Software. If you?re looking for an external community server, here is ours.? And he drops a link to it.

Now, Chris and Mike didn?t know each other. Chris had no idea who Mike was. But, Mike responded to that tweet and said, ?Hey, Chris. I saw you were asking. Here?s an alternative, and it happens to be the company that I represent and that I work for.?

Now, the Telligent folks. If it was you and you were afraid of social media and you didn?t want to participate because your competition might see what you were doing, you would not have known that Chris was even dissatisfied unless he told you. You wouldn?t have seen the tweet because you wouldn?t be monitoring the web. But, your competition was monitoring the web. And they were participating in those conversations. And they reached out and said, ?We?ve got an alternative solution.?

Now, I don?t know if the deal actually closed because Chris and Mike both left their respective companies shortly after this conversation started. But, I do know that K2 started talking to Jive Software about switching from Telligent to their solution. And so, it was a qualified lead. It was a hot prospect. And Michael Friada, the community manager at Jive Software, potentially won Jive a converted customer that day. And Telligent lost it.

So, you?re Telligent. You?re afraid of social media. You don?t want to be in it. You think your competition?s going to see all your stuff. Well, guess what? They already are and they?re taking your customers away from you.

Pamela: Right. That?s an excellent example. By not participating, there?s an absolute bottom-line loss. And that?s one example but there are hundreds of examples that are going on out on the worldwide web with that. And in terms of the competition and the customer, one of the things that we?ll probably touch on in R&D is writing a little bit of research and development. But, you touched on not being a part of the conversation as possible ROI challenges.

Now, the return on investment conversation is one that I think all of us that work in any marketing or social marketing space, we get this question from business owners and the folks that make the decisions. In today?s world, we?re doing this in 2012, there are some things that are available to us now that weren?t there even two, three years ago in terms of being able to measure and the analytics and things that we can look at. But, this is a passionate area for you. I know it is. You write about it a lot. This is a part of your blog on a regular basis. You do a great job of sharing it in the book. This measuring of social.

Talk to us about what measuring social media means, Jason, to you.

Jason: Well, the first thing you need before you even talk about measurement, you have to understand what social media marketing can potentially do for your business. Because you have to know what you?re going to try to measure. And so, in the book we spell out what we call the seven business drivers of social media marketing. And these are the seven big bucket things that you can use social media marketing for.

So, the seven are, and I?ll try to go through them from memory. I don?t have them written down in front of me. But, I?ve talked about this book enough, I should know them by now. You can use social media to enhance your branding and awareness. So, make people more aware of who you are. You can use social media to protect your reputation. And that can be in the search engines to make sure you rank well. If you deserve to be the number one result for a certain keyword term, there are things that you can do on the social web to help you stay there.

And then, there?s also finding those negative conversations about you and participating in them so that you can mitigate them and, at least, bring those conversations back into a neutral not negative standpoint. Maybe, even turn them from a detractor to someone who is an advocate. So, that?s the second one.

And the third one is it extends your customer service. So, you can perform customer service on the web. It also allows you to enhance your public relations. So, PR has a lot of fingers, and each of them has some sort of corresponding activity online. And social media plays a big part in that. You can use social media marketing to build community. That?s the fifth of the seven. The sixth is you can use it to facilitate research and development. And the last one that we talk about is the one everybody wants to talk about. You can use it to drive sales or leads.

Pamela: Right.

Jason: So, if you look at those seven and you think, ?OK. If my goal is to build community, how do you measure building community?? Well, you measure it by the size of your community. Maybe, you measure it by the value of the members of the community as customers compared to people who are not in the community. So, people who purchase who are community members, how much do they spend with you versus random people who come by and buy things who aren?t necessarily interested in being your community? So, there are a lot of different ways that you can contextualize and measure community and see how successful you?re being there. And money has a play in that regard.

But, let?s think more broadly. If you?re using social media marketing to enhance the awareness of your brand, think about how you measure that. You have to plan to measure your awareness. And wouldn?t it sound silly if I were in a board meeting and the CEO of the company said, ?Hey, Jason. How is the branding and awareness campaign going online?? Wouldn?t it sound silly if my answer was, ?$57.000??

Pamela: Right.

Jason: Because you don?t measure awareness in dollars and cents. You measure awareness in how many more people know you. What?s the reach of your messaging? Are those messages resonating with the audience that you?re trying to reach? So, you measure awareness in lots of different things. Number of eyeballs reached. The pervasiveness of your messaging once it gets out there.

And you actually, physically measure that by doing surveys and looking at social media monitoring to see how many people are mentioning your brand. Did they have a positive reaction to you, a negative reaction to you? Q scores fall in there, so on and so forth. But, you don?t measure awareness in dollars and cents.

In fact, if you look at the seven business drivers that I mentioned, there are really only two that are primarily measured in dollars and cents. Obviously, driving sales and leads. And then research and development, I think you can make a really strong argument. Because if you develop a new product based on a social media idea or you enhance a feature based on a social media idea, you can then measure how much revenue you get from that new product or feature being in the marketplace.

So, those two you can absolutely say the ROI of what we?re doing is XYZ. The other five are more primarily measured in intangible benefits. They?re still important. You still need to build community. You still need good customer service. You still need good public relations. You still need branding and awareness. You still need to protect your reputation. But, you don?t measure those things primarily in dollars and cents. Like I mentioned in the building-community example, there are ways to bring dollars and cents into that measurement, but those are more intangibly measured.

And, therefore, asking the question of ROI, I think, is the wrong question to start with. You still want to ask that question because you need to be looking at money and the bottom line. But, ROI is always going to be a financial metric. It?s an accounting measurement. It?s how much money you made, subtract how much money you spent and then divide by how much money you spent. And the result is a percentage. And the key factor there is the two numbers that you need to measure that are dollars and cents.

So, you can?t possibly measure ROI of an awareness campaign because you don?t measure awareness in dollars and cents. So, what I say we need to do is pull back further and say, ?What do I get in return?? Because you still are including return on investment. You?re still including money because you can get that in return. But, you?re also including the other intangible things that you can get. You can get more subscribers, better website traffic, lower cost per lead, lower call center costs, higher customer satisfaction scores. There are lots of different things you can get out of social media marketing. You first need to decide what you want to get out of it. And then plan your strategies and your tactics to achieve those goals and objectives so that you can measure them.

And I think the one mistake that most companies make, even mature companies in the social media marketing world right now, the one mistake they make is they don?t plan to measure.

Pamela: Hmm.

Jason: They say, ?We?re going to do this for branding and awareness. And they don?t ask, ?How are we going to measure that?? until three or four months into the campaign. And they go, ?Well, how many ?Likes? do we have on Facebook? Did they go up? OK, I guess we did well.?

Pamela: Right.

Jason: You?re always going to be dissatisfied with your measures if you don?t first define what measures are important.

Pamela: That?s an excellent point because you can only manage what you measure.

Jason: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Pamela: A couple of things that you mentioned throughout today is this qualified prospect who becomes then converted to a sale. Which is what excites me about today?s world. When we were in the industrial model, it was so much more 100 calls a day. As much as you tried to get qualified, there?s nothing like the qualification process we can do today with the data, the intel and the conversations we can have.

Jason: Yeah.

Pamela: So, when I talk to business owners I say, ?Would you rather have 100 people and have 20 percent convert or would you rather have 10 and have 80 percent convert?? That?s really the kind of numbers we?re able to deal with today. And you?re talking about, creating almost a sales funnel with some of this process.

I want to talk a little about research and development. But, since we?re talking about the sales piece, if it?s OK, let?s touch on that because this is an area, I think, is very confusing for some businesses. How can I use these different strategies of content marketing and social media to really drive sales? What does that really mean? Obviously, measurement. Knowing what you want to measure. But, what are some examples or, I guess, insight you can provide, Jason, when talking from that sales conversation?

Jason: Well, let?s start out with a small business example because I think that?s going to help a lot of people sort of wrap their brain around how social can really help you. Miss Shirley?s is a restaurant in Baltimore, Maryland. And they have an awesome Sunday brunch. And the Sunday brunch is so good that they often have a two hour wait for a table. So, apparently, Miss Shirley?s is the place to go on Sunday mornings if you?re in and around Baltimore. They have two locations. So, look them up and go check them out.

Pamela: Excellent.

Jason: They sat down and said, ?You know what? We?ve got Sunday under control. But, we want to drive more sales during the week. We need to figure out how to drive more Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday sales. And so, they started brainstorming and looking at all the options out there, both social media and digital and then offline as well. And they landed on Foursquare. And for those out there who don?t know, Foursquare is a mobile app you pull down on your phone.

And when you go to a place, you check in and you tell your social networks, ?I am at this place. I am at Miss Shirley?s. I am at the bank. I am at the grocery store.? Whatever. And your social network then sees that and the potential is, ?Oh, they are shopping at this store. Or they?re dining at this restaurant. Maybe I should, too.? So, that?s kind of the nuts and bolts of how Foursquare works.

Well, Foursquare also has this sort of silly little thing where if you check in more frequently than someone else at a given location in a certain amount of time, Foursquare names you the virtual mayor of that location which sounds really stupid. And, quite frankly, it is really stupid unless you think about it. It?s kind of rewarding people for checking into the location.

Pamela: Right.

Jason: But, if you?re the business, and you don?t have any control over who the mayor is, that?s all Foursquare activity, you can actually use that to your advantage. And what Miss Shirley?s decided to do was, ?We?re going to educate everybody that comes to Miss Shirley?s about Foursquare. We?re going to put table tents and posters and we?re going to do emails. And we?re going to say, ?Download this app on your phone, and when you?re here, check in. Because we want to know when you come to Miss Shirley?s. We want to be able to identify our loyal customers.?? So on and so forth.

And so, that motivated people probably to download the app and start checking in when they got to Miss Shirley?s. But, then they added a little incentive. They said, ?If you come in on Sunday morning and you are the mayor of either location, you don?t have to wait for a table.?

Pamela: Oh, nice.

Jason: So, now all of a sudden, instead of having to wait two hours for your Sunday brunch with your family, if you come to Miss Shirley?s several times this week and check in and you become the mayor, you don?t have to wait. Well, they saw a 427 percent increase in check-ins on Foursquare.

Pamela: Wow.

Jason: Which is a little bit of what we lovingly refer to in the book as a hippie and tree-hugger stat.

Pamela: Right.

Jason: Because it doesn?t actually mean anything for your business other than you taught people how to use Foursquare. Good for you.

Pamela: Right.

Jason: But, they also measured a corresponding 18 percent increase in sales. Because in order to be the mayor, you had to check in on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and Thursdays and other days other than Sunday. You had to come in more frequently. And when you came in more frequently, you probably had a beer or you bought lunch or you bought dinner or whatever. And so, they noticed that because they did this one little isolated social media thing, they had an 18 percent increase in sales over a three month period. And that?s an 18 percent increase in sales in the middle of a recession in the restaurant industry, which is incredible.

Pamela: That?s amazing. That is amazing. And there are so many other elements that you talked about, Jason. They did; they know their community, so they worked with their community. And their brand awareness probably went up as well if more people were checking in. There are a lot of different components to that. And I think the most important is they knew what they wanted to measure before they went for it.

Jason: Yep. Absolutely. They knew that Foursquare check-ins would be an important metric for them. But, they also knew that they needed to watch sales. And from what I understand, that was really the only sort of marketing thing that they changed over that three-month period.

Pamela: Wow.

Jason: So, they can definitively say that 18 percent increase in sales was most likely the result of this Foursquare promotion and what we were doing on Foursquare. Now, you can always say, ?Well, there are marketplace changes and fluctuations and weather.? And all that stuff has a lot to do with it. But, from what they were doing for spending their marketing dollars, they can attribute that 18 percent increase in sales to Foursquare.

Pamela: I think that?s fantastic. That?s a great example and a great small business example. Let?s face it. That?s the majority of what we have out in our wonderful country. And these are the folks I think have the greatest opportunity with the level playing field that has become marketing. Because you could be a Coca-Cola or you could be this little restaurant in Maryland, and you could be using the same tools.

Jason: Absolutely.

Pamela: I think that?s phenomenal. I mean this is just an unheard of opportunity for marketing and small business. And one of the pieces I just want to touch on as we kind of wrap things up and we?re moving into that space here, Jason, is research and development. Again, I think small business owners sometimes miss the boat on this. And I know that this is an area that you share about really well, is using social as a research tool. Launching new product. Getting intel or due diligence on your customers. So, tell us a little bit from your perspective about how this space can really help a company with research and development.

Jason: Sure. And when we?re talking R&D, we?re probably talking larger businesses, because those are the ones that have the money to invest in research and development. But, social media also, though, makes it very, very possible for small businesses to conduct R&D on a reasonable level. Now, you?re probably, if you?re doing a customer survey or a consumer survey that you?re throwing out there on your Facebook page, will not. You have to worry about sample size and how many people are going to answer the survey and is it really relevant data.

But, at the same time, a small business can very easily throw up a poll or a couple of questions on their Facebook page and start getting intelligence from their customers right away. So, R&D in social media sort of levels the playing field to a degree.

Probably my favorite R&D story is actually a big brand. But it?s a big brand that saved a ton of money and did not have to spend a ton of money to get some really good insights. And they?re my home boys here in Louisville, Papa John?s. I don?t work for them. I?m not endorsing them at all. But, they?re in Louisville and I?m in Louisville. So, there you go.

But anyway, the Papa John?s folks did a Facebook contest. And on the surface it appeared to be just a gimmicky way to get ?Likes.? They basically said instead of going to our executive chef and getting a new pizza recipe to put in stores, we?re going to turn to our Facebook fans and say, you guys submit a new recipe to us and we?ll choose a winner and we?ll put that in the stores.

And so, it looked like this gimmicky thing. But, they actually formulated the contest for a specific reason. And that reason was R&D. And the requirements of the contest were if you?re going to submit your recipe, you have to videotape yourself making the pizza. And we want to know why you?re putting the ingredients in. We want to know how much paprika and how many pepperoni slices and how you?re going to knead the dough. And how long you?re going to put it in the oven. And you have to explain to us the logic and the reasons why you?re putting all this stuff in this pizza. So, that was the video requirement to enter the contest.

Well, they got hundreds of entries. And, therefore, they literally got hundreds of hours. I don?t know if it was hundreds of hours, but they got dozens of hours of actual consumers looking in the camera and saying, ?This is why I make this pizza the way I do. This is why the ingredients go in.? Can you imagine how much money they would have had to pay to a market research firm to go out and get that from focus groups and whatnot in the field?

Pamela: That?s phenomenal.

Jason: It would have been millions of dollars.

Pamela: And not only that, but it almost feels competitive. You talk about the Foursquare checking in process. There?s something about this competitive nature of human beings that you can tap into as well. That?s fantastic. I love how they asked all those specific detailed questions. You have to literally give us your reason why you did X, X and X.

Jason: Oh, yeah. And the winning entry, by the way, was Cheesy Chick Cordon Bleu. It actually made it into the stores. They sold it. So, they were able to say, ?Hey, Facebook contest has an ROI because we sold Cheesy Chick Cordon Bleus.? They also put a bunch of the runners-up in stores as well. I think they gave the winner $10,000 or something in honor of having their pizza in stores.

So, it was a gimmicky little contest. But, the reason they ran it was to get all that consumer insight that they would have literally had to pay millions of dollars for. So, that whole thing had an element of gaming, because there?s competition between the people. It had really high engagement levels because people were looking into a camera and talking to the brand. But, they were able to glean insights that really helped them understand their consumers a lot better. And they didn?t have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on it.

In fact, you can go out and do a video contest on Facebook. And you can probably find some third-party applications and whatnot that you can do it for probably under $10,000 if you wanted to. Now, Papa John?s is Papa John?s. They probably spent a lot of money to make it, design it nicely and have all these bells-and-whistles functionality. So, they probably put a little bit of money into it. But, I promise you, they didn?t put as much money into it as they would have had to have done if they?d gone to a market research firm and gotten the same information.

Pamela: Well, the hit-the-streets factor is so different.

Jason: Yeah.

Pamela: The manpower it would have taken before social media to get that kind of intel at that scope.

Jason: Yep.

Pamela: It would not have happened.

Jason: Absolutely.

Pamela: I just don?t think it would have happened because they would have started going through the cost process and say, ?Ah, we?ve got to try a different route.? No, I think it?s fantastic. And I love these examples because even though it?s a large organization, I believe that we as small business owners or folks out there listening as a small business owner, you can take an idea from that.

Jason: Yeah.

Pamela: There is something in that, like you said. And you mentioned the quality. We seem to be a little more forgiving in terms of quality since YouTube.

Jason: Yeah, that?s true. It?s really funny. I?m actually seeing bigger brands are becoming more and more insistent upon higher quality, which I find ironic. Because, I think, we in the social space have tried to show them over the years that it?s OK to just throw up a flip cam and ask somebody a question.

Pamela: Yeah.

Jason: But, the more bigger brands get involved in it, the more they say, ?Well, this is a way we can separate our video content from others. We can still put some production value into it.? I don?t see any problem with that. I really don?t. But, at the same time I still think it?s cool to have . . . If Scott Monty from Ford Motor Company is at a trade show and opens up a flip cam and interviews somebody for two minutes and throws that up on the Ford page, that?s much more compelling to me than some slick video of a car driving around a beach.

Pamela: Well, it?s authentic. It?s the real deal.

Jason: Yeah.

Pamela: It?s kind of the straight shooter approach.

Jason: Yep. Absolutely.

Pamela: Well, Jason, I always enjoy hearing you speak on the topic of anything social and digital and content. And you have a great way of getting the information out to the audience that I think is pretty much no BS, straight shooting, direct. I could talk to you again and again. I think there?s a lot of stuff here, especially in your book, that folks need to embrace, understand and move on. Let?s do it, people, because now is your time. Now is the time to get involved.

Jason: Absolutely.

Pamela: So, Jason, as we wrap up, I always want to make sure that our audience knows all the different ways that you would like them to connect with you or the easiest way to do that. So, how do we do that, Jason? What?s the best way to connect with Jason Falls and Social Media Explorer?

Jason: SocialMediaExplorer.com is a real good starting point. That?s the blog and then you can find links to our events and the other things we do there. I?m really easy to come by. I?m Jason Falls on most social networks. I?m on Twitter probably more frequently than I?m on anything else. But, I?m happy to connect with folks on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+ or whatever else. I?m out there and when I have time, I respond as frequently and as in depth as I possibly can.

Pamela: And I highly recommend that you do check out all the stuff that Jason has. Connect with his blog. Put that in your RSS feed because it?s good stuff. In the meantime, I want to also remind folks that his book that he?s co-authored with Erik Deckers. Is that your co-author? We want to give him a shout out, too.

Jason: Yep.

Pamela: OK

Jason: Yep. That?s Erik.

Pamela: Hi, Erik. Thanks so much for being a part of the book, No Bullshit Social Media: The All-Business, No-Hype Guide to Social Media Marketing. Jason, it?s a great book. You do a great job. I look forward to seeing you again live really soon. And I appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule to be a part of our show today.

Jason: Well, thank you for having me, Pam. It?s an honor to be here.

Pamela: Excellent. Thanks so much and enjoy the rest of your day.

Jason: You, too.

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