Interviews

FIR Interviews

Friday, September 16, 2011

FIR Interview: Jillian Beard, Morton’s Steakhouse

The social media world erupted with speculation when Peter Shankman blogged that Morton’s Steakhouse had read his tweet (written in jest) and delivered to him, via tuxedo’d staffer, a porterhouse steak at baggage claim after he’d landed. It was a PR stunt, many claimed, and nothing more. Others argued that the only reason Shankman got special treatment was because of his 100,000-plus Twitter followers. We’ve gone straight to the source to find out what was really behind the gesture and to learn more about how Morton’s approaches social media.

FIR co-host Shel Holtz spoke with Jillian Beard, Chicago-based regional marketing manager for Morton’s and the face behind the company’s Twitter account for the inside scoop. The conversation includes discussion of the Twitter account, Facebook page, blog, YouTube channel and more.

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About our Conversation Partner

As Regional Marketing Manager at Morton’s The Steakhouse, Jillian Beard executes company-wide marketing initiatives and business strategies from its corporate office to the 77 worldwide Morton’s restaurants. She is also the dedicated marketing liaison for all locations designated within the “East Region” (approximately 40 restaurants), providing guidance with local restaurant marketing tactics, campaigns and current market challenges.

Jillian is a leading member of Morton’s Social Media Team, aligning and coordinating the company’s marketing strategies, public relations campaigns and guest relations with its social media efforts. She oversees and manages Morton’s national twitter handle (www.twitter.com/mortons) while also coaching approximately 40 local Public Relations firms that tweet on behalf of Morton’s local handles.

She was the recipient of the Morton’s “Employee of the Quarter” Award in 2010 and has also completed the first level of examination from the Guild of Sommeliers with hopes of becoming a Certified Sommelier in the future. She volunteers for CASA of Cook County (a non-profit organization that strives to protect abused and neglected children by providing them a voice in court, a safe and permanent home, and an opportunity to grow, learn and thrive) as a marketing consultant. Jillian is married and lives with her husband in Chicago, Illinois.

Connect with Jillian on Twitter: @JillianMktng.

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Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future interviews, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 206 222 2803 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

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This FIR Interview is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

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Posted by shel on 09/16 at 10:52 AM
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Sunday, September 11, 2011

FIR Interview: Jeremiah Owyang, Altimeter, on Social Business Readiness

Organizations are adopting social media to various degrees, running the gamut from fully integrating it into business operations to grudgingly launching a Facebook page and a Twitter account. Only a small percentage of these organizations, however, are taking the steps necessary to be prepared to conduct business amid the new realities of the real-time web, customer engagement, and social-savvy activist groups and NGOs. An in-depth study, led by Jeremiah Owyang and released under Creative Commons license by the Altimeter Group, examined what it takes to be prepared, what the benefits of readiness are—as well as the consequences of unpreparedness—and the steps most organizations still need to take, even those ranked as “advanced.”

FIR co-hosts Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz, speak with Jeremiah about the results of the study and its implications. The full report is available via Slideshare.

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About our Conversation Partner

Jeremiah Owyang is a Partner and Principal Analyst focused on customer strategy at Altimeter Group and author of the popular blog Web Strategy, which focuses on how corporations connect with their customers using web technologies.

In the realm of disruptive technologies, Jeremiah is frequently sought after and has appeared on Bloomberg TV and is quoted in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, and other business related publications. He was featured in the 2009 Who’s Who in the Silicon Valley Business Journal. As a speaker he has keynoted the Internet Strategy Forum, Web 2.0 Expo, SXSW, and dozens of other venues.

Previously, Jeremiah was a Senior Analyst at Forrester Research, focused on social computing for the interactive marketer. Prior to that, was the Director of Corporate Media Strategy at PodTech Network, a podcasting and online video startup. From 2005-2007 Jeremiah held the title of Manager of Global Web Marketing at Hitachi Data Systems and launched the social media program in what he calls BFB for Before Facebook. He also served as the Intranet Architect at World Savings (now Wells Fargo) and was a user experience professional at Exodus Communications.

Connect with Jeremiah on Twitter: @jowyang.

To receive all For Immediate Release podcasts including the weekly Hobson & Holtz Report, subscribe to the full RSS feed.

This FIR Interview is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

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Posted by neville on 09/11 at 06:27 AM
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Friday, September 09, 2011

FIR Interview: Glenn Gaudet, President and Founder, GaggleAmp

GaggleAmp is a service that helps amplify your social media messages. The company describes itself as follows: “For marketers looking to drive engagement through social media, GaggleAMP is the social marketing platform that lets them leverage the reach potential of individual employee, customer and partner accounts through a unique, accountable, and privacy-assured message delivery model. Using GaggleAMP, companies are able to massively distribute their content and messages by creating a network of people (what we call a “Gaggle”) that share, Tweet and post company-created messages and content. In addition to message amplification, GaggleAMP delivers a full range of related analytics on messages distributed on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn messages.”

In this FIR Interview, co-host Shel Holtz talks with president and founder Glenn Gaudet about his vision for the service how it works and its potential for PR, marketing and employee communications.

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About our Conversation Partner

Glenn Gaudet is the President & Founder of GaggleAMP. Gaudet brings over 20 years of comprehensive experience in both strategic and product marketing for technology and media companies ranging from startup to $1 Billion in sales. He has delivered results in both marketing technology as well as using marketing technology to gain results. Prior to GaggleAMP, Gaudet was the Chief Marketing Officer at two different companies including Pulvermedia, an integrated media company that specialized in the voice and video industries. As CMO, Gaudet was responsible for all aspects of branding as well as marketing for the entire portfolio which included event, online and print products.

Connect with Glenn on Twitter: @glenng.

To receive all For Immediate Release podcasts including the weekly Hobson & Holtz Report, subscribe to the full RSS feed.

This FIR Interview is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

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Posted by shel on 09/09 at 08:17 AM
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Wednesday, September 07, 2011

FIR Interview: Betony Taylor and Aden Davies on HSBC social media newsroom

Getting closer to customers, journalists, online influencers and making content more shareable are among the key objectives behind the social media newsroom launched by HSBC bank in the UK on September 1.

In this FIR interview, co-host Neville Hobson speaks with HSBC’s Betony Taylor, PR Manager, and Aden Davies, Innovation Technician, to discuss the bank’s objectives for the newsroom, its development, its structure and content, and how regulatory issues were addressed. The conversation includes perspectives on the bank’s stated goal of enabling employees to blog on the website - planned to start in September - as part of story-telling to hear the "human voice" of the bank, and some outline thinking on what the future for such open and transparent communication might look like.

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About our Conversation Partners

Betony Taylor looks after the brand, consumer and digital innovation PR for HSBC. She is particularly interested in exploring the role storytelling and visual narratives play in modern corporate communications.

In her previous life researching and teaching at university, she wrote on the manipulation of mass audiences through cultural campaigns and the modern uses of ancient history in advertising, communications and film.

Connect with Betony on Twitter: @betonytaylor.

Aden Davies looks at new technologies and trends and how they can be applied to the world of banking and the internal organization of HSBC.

He is currently researching the social web, federated identity and gamification (whilst trying to avoid that wretched term).

In his increasingly rare spare time he tries to spend as much time as possible with his 14 month old son.

Connect with Aden on Twitter: @aden_76.

To receive all For Immediate Release podcasts including the weekly Hobson & Holtz Report, subscribe to the full RSS feed.

This FIR Interview is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

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Posted by neville on 09/07 at 11:01 PM
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FIR Interview: Mark Dollins on communication competencies

Communications competencies continue to evolve. Yet how many organizations inventory the competencies of their communicators and then prepare a plan to ensure members of their team acquire the skills they need? Veteran communicator Mark Dollins has released the results of a survey that sought to get a handle on how companies dealt with competencies and the results may surprise you—particularly regarding longer-tenured, higher-ranking communicators.

In this FIR Interview, co-host Shel Holtz talks with Mark about the study and about competencies and communication professional development planning in general.

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About our Conversation Partner

Mark Dollins is president of North Star Communications Consulting, with core capabilities in communications contract work, and training and development for corporate and agency communications teams. From his roots in network radio and television production and newspaper reporting to his executive communications work with global corporations, his insights and expertise have been cultivated in diverse industries, different companies and increasingly challenging, complex roles.

Mark’s 17-year history with PepsiCo includes a wide variety of leadership roles. Prior to leaving the organization, he was responsible for internal and external communications for PepsiCo’s largest single operating division of more than 70,000 employees in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Prior to that role, Mark was SVP – Communications for PepsiCo Americas Foods (PAF) and PepsiCo Global Internal Communications, where he was responsible for consumer public relations, media relations, consumer and crisis response, executive and employee communications and community relations for PepsiCo’s foods businesses in North and South America. He also was SVP for PepsiCo’s Corporate Public Relations function and accountable for leading the corporation’s global internal communications programs for 285,000 associates in more than 200 countries.

Connect with Mark on Twitter: @MrNorthstar.

To receive all For Immediate Release podcasts including the weekly Hobson & Holtz Report, subscribe to the full RSS feed.

This FIR Interview is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

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Posted by shel on 09/07 at 11:13 AM
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Wednesday, August 31, 2011

FIR Interview: Dell Chief Blogger Lionel Menchaca

We first spoke with Dell’s chief blogger, Lionel Menchaca, in an FIR interview on January 12, 2007, not too long after Dell’s first blog was launched. We spoke with Lionel again to find out how the blog and the company’s overall social media approach has evolved in the intervening 4-1/2 years. The interview was conducted using a Google+ Hangout. An audio version is available.

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About our Conversation Partner

Lionel Menchaca is a nearly 17-year Dell veteran and chief blogger at Direct2Dell, Dell’s main corporate blog. Over the last 5 years, Lionel has authored hundreds of posts on behalf of Dell. Since launching the blog in July 2006, he helped expand it into Chinese, Spanish, Norwegian and Japanese and continues to work to further extend Dell’s global presence. Before launching Dell’s blog, Lionel was one of the main architects behind Dell’s blog monitoring process begun in April 2006.

He works with a team within the company to coordinate activities and content across all of Dell’s internal and external social media initiatives including the Dell Community Forum and IdeaStorm. These initiatives have one thing in common: to open direct lines of communication between Dell employees and their customers to improve the products and services Dell offers.

Lionel also serves as a technologist to help Dell define new software to monitor and engage in conversations in the blogosphere, and to facilitate collaboration among the Dell teams that respond to customer feedback. He’s also been a catalyst in Dell’s efforts to build its presence in social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and Google+.

An avid fan of computer hardware, gadgets and Web technology, his early career included a stint at quality assurance and tech support for game developer Origin Systems and hardware and advanced operating systems technical support at Dell.

Lionel earned a degree in archaeological studies from University of Texas. He lives in Round Rock, Texas, with his wife, Aileen, and two children, Louis and Mia.

Lionel is on Twitter at @LionelAtDell.

To receive all For Immediate Release podcasts including the weekly Hobson & Holtz Report, subscribe to the full RSS feed.

This FIR Interview is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

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Posted by shel on 08/31 at 11:49 AM
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Interview upcoming on Altimeter Group’s Social Business Readiness survey

Your FIR co-hosts are planning an interview for next week with Altimeter Group‘s Jeremiah Owyang about the release of a new study, “Social Business Readiness.” The study was released today - the presentation is embedded below. In preparation for the interview, we’re sharing some of the study’s highlights in this post. Let us know in comments here or in the FIR Friendfeed room if there are any questions you’d like us to ask Jeremiah.

Social Readiness: How Advanced Companies Prepare

View more documents from Jeremiah Owyang

Companies are at various stages of integrating social media into their business processes. (Interestingly, a third of the companies surveyed reported that their social media efforts aren’t meeting business objectives.) At the top of the pyramid are “advanced companies,” those that are defining best practices. The 18 companies (out of 144 surveyed) prepare for social business by…

Establishing baseline governance

All 18 advanced companies provide open access to social media for professional use. Five require approval, seven allow employees to engage providing they abide by guidelines and six actively encourage employee participation. None discourage the use of social media; instead, these organizations support employee use of social channels with policies and education. Most of the advanced companies (72%) offer means by which policies are reinforced and employees learn about policy updates and revisions. Of of the 144 companies surveyed, 74% don’t have such baseline processes.

Adopting enterprise-wide response processes

Enterprise-class companies maintain some 178 corporate-owned social media accounts across the spectrum of platforms. “As workflow across the enterprise becomes more complicated, consistency and efficiency decrease, while risk increase,” according to the report. 14 of the advanced companies surveyed have established processes for conducing triage on issues that arise to ensure efficiency and consistency and minimize risks. The Air Force’s response matrix is one example. The report points to H&R block’s needs assessment as another. Thirteen of the advanced companies also prepare for worst-case scenarios (while 56% of all 144 companies are unprepared for a social media crisis).

96% of companies with a formal crisis plan in place felt prepared for an event, compared to only 22% of those without a plan.

Developing ongoing education programs

Most of the advanced companies surveyed (72%) keep their organizations’ social media practitioners up to speed on social media with programs such as brown bag lunches, speaker series and internal conferences, while only 34% of all companies have ongoing education programs in place. Best practice sharing is another characteristic of advanced companies, something only 35% of companies across the board are doing.

Education reduces risk, according to survey respondents. “For example,” the report notes, “companies with a policy in place are more likely to have employees who know how to safely represent the brand in social media, 62% compared to 23% of companies that did not.”

Best-practice sharing and leading social media through a dedicated, shared central hub

In larger organizations, up to 13 different business units are actively engaging customers in social media. The chart below details the extent to which various company functions are formally involved in customer-facing social media efforts:

“Without proper coordination, this widespread adoption can result in a fragmented customer experience, duplication of resources and increased costs,” according to the Altimeter report. Advanced companies embrace scalable leadership models to minimize that risk. At the center (or hub) of this hub-and-spoke model is a center of excellence, a cross-functional group responsible for coordination the company’s social media strategy, governance, training and education programs, along with research, measurement frameworks and vendor selection. These teams routinely include corporate social strategists, social media managers, community managers, web developers, education managers and liaisons from business units.

The center of excellence (which is the actual name given this group by 16 of the 18 advanced companies identified int he survey) are well positioned to address issues and crises that may arise. Seventy-three percent of companies that have established these teams have clear leadership on social strategy, compared to only 31% among companies without such teams.

Fifty-three percent of companies with a center of excellence “report benefitting from a coordinated approach to social media, compared to just 21% of companies that do not have this team,” the report says.

Despite the steps advanced companies have taken, the study found that even the most forward-looking organizations lack the following attributes:

Applying social media feedback—Sixty-six percent of companies have no process ini place for using insights from social media to fix probems and improve products and services.

Integrating social data into existing systems—Nearly three-fourths of companies are not integrating customer data generated from social profiles and interactions into customer relationship management (CRM) systems, support programs, email marketing and other systems.

Formal measurement strategies—Only 25% of companies have measurement frameworks that inform decisions about how to use social media across the enterprise.

Cohesive, mature technologies—Less than a third of companies have standardized internal tools for monitoring, analytics, community management and other dimensions of social media.

The Altimeter Group works with its clients to adopt the company’s Social Business Hierarchy of Needs (another adaptation of Abraham Maslow’s famous hierarchy). We’ll talk with Jeremiah about the model when during our interview on the results of the study.

Posted by shel on 08/31 at 08:35 AM
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