Tech Marketing: The Social Media Edition I Autumn 2009 by Phil Sim

Autumn 2009

In this Issue

TECH

MARKETING

successful social media strategy has nothing to do with Twitter, YouTube or Facebook. It’s not about clever viral marketing ideas. It’s not even about empowering or connecting with the consumer. When it comes to social media, the only thing that really matters is this: Are you any good? If you can answer yes to all of the following questions then you’re ready to dive into social media.

Tech Marketing is published for Australian technology marketing managers by MediaConnect Australia

Are your products awesome? Do your customers love you? Are you a fair, ethical and responsible organisation?

Editor Phil Sim (philip@mediaconnect.com.au) Journalist Jo-Anne Hui (jo@mediaconnect.com.au)

If you answered yes to all of those questions then chances are social media is probably already working for you. Your delighted, loyal customers are probably already out there singing your praises on whichever social networks they frequent. That’s the thing about social media. You can’t control it, and it will happen regardless of how much money you spend with fancy, schmancy digital agencies.

Contributors Ross Dawson Matt Overington Brian Giesen Designer Patricia Istiphan

If your product isn’t awesome, you’d be better served directing those dollars into making it so. If your customers don’t already love you, figure out why before you question whether to start with Facebook or Twitter. And if you’ve got dark, shady secrets that caused you to answer no to that last question, you would be better advised to stay as far away from the glare of social media as you can. However, if you truly do rock then social media lets you shine a big, bright light down on your brilliant products and services and puts the spotlight on your smiling, happy customers for all to see. Clever use of blogs, social networks and bookmarking sites can cause your customers to stop liking you and instead fall madly, deeply in love. Because when they said the truth is out there, they were right. It’s on Twitter, Facebook, et al. - Phil Sim CEO, MediaConnect Australia

Publisher Tamara Jawad 104/8 Century Cct, Norwest Central, Baulkham Hills, NSW 2153 Subscription information: visit www.techmarketing.com.au or contact MediaConnect Australia on (02) 9894 6277

Cover Story

011

Case Study

Panasonic dives into social media

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OPINIONS

If the truth hurts you’re not ready for social media

Social Media

Tapping the power of social media, writes Ross Dawson

Blogger Relations

Become a driver not a passenger, writes Matt Overington

010

Digital Programs

Principles of Successful digital programs, writes Brian Giesen

Tech Marketer

Professional Geek, Phil Sim profiles Microsoft evangelist Nick Hodge www.techmarketing.com.au I

Should you get SOCIAL ? At a time when marketers are supposed to have their eyes firmly on the bottom line, we ask is social media really worth the bother? writes Phil Sim.

Social Media: Why Bother?

Marketing 101

Your kids are on MySpace, your mum is on Facebook and now Oprah is on Twitter. Listen to the buzz and the media and you might be led to believe that every man, his dog and its fleas are now on board the social media bandwagon.

Marketing via social media, is still just marketing at the end of the day. And all of the same processes that you’ve always applied to customer profiling and audience segmentation still apply.

However, at least in the business world, the reality is quite different. Marketing leaders on the whole are still trying to work out what the social media phenomenon means to them and how it might be leveraged in their business.

“It still comes back to marketing 101,” says social media strategist Kate Carruthers, director of Digital Business Group and social media strategist. “You start with your brand and your product and you look to see how you can get your brand in front of consumers. All we’re really doing is adding a new media channel to the mix.”

Marketing managers in the IT sector are, almost certainly, under more pressure than anyone to sort out a strategy for social media. With their highly connected audience, the limited number of case studies featuring companies that have made hay from social media have generally emerged from the IT industry. Meanwhile, a legion of social media experts have sprung from nowhere with dire warnings for those businesses who don’t quickly get with the program. But before you take another call from someone selling more social media snake oil, take this opportunity to step back and take an objective, realistic view of where the social media opportunities lie today and where you’d be better off putting your marketing dollars elsewhere. Is it really worth the bother?

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“Social media only works for those companies whose consumers use online channels - they’re on Facebook, Twitter or whatever - and it aligns with their brand.” Simon Van Wyk goes even further. He’s been on both sides of the fence. His interactive marketing agency Hothouse has designed campaigns for customers, but he’s also sought to leverage social media himself with another business he runs, called Ourpatch.com.au “I personally think it is really, really hard for average corporate enterprises to make a return out of social media. The hype drives me crazy,” he said.

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MARKETING “Just because there are some great examples of companies it has worked for, doesn’t mean everyone can do it and doesn’t mean everyone should do it.” However, Tech Marketing readers who think they’ve suddenly just been excused from having to re-work their annual marketing plan to incorporate social media can think again. Van Wyk points out that your chances of success in the IT sector are far greater than those from other industries. “Clearly, social media can work in the technology industry,” he said. “We’ve got a group of connected people who are comfortable using these technologies and are happy to experiment. It’s also not that difficult in the technology sector to deliver something that your audience might value, and that’s really the key to social media.”

The Numbers Game One of the most confusing issues for marketers to get their heads around are social media numbers. There are certainly some very BIG numbers. Like Facebook, which boasts it has more than 200 million active users. Yet, bring things back to a local perspective and those numbers quickly get a lot smaller and become even more difficult to measure. Take Twitter, for example - the current social media darling. Following the rash of publicity it has received of late, estimates are that it could be approaching 20 million users. However, research suggests some 60 per cent of Twitter users abandon the service less than a month after signing up, so it’s questionable if those statistics mean anything at all. Perhaps, a more useful baromater might be to look at Kevin Rudd’s Twitter account, which at the time of writing was boasting some 36,000 followers. If that represents the pinnacle of reach for an Australian Twitter user, then it’s fair to suggest that the service is a long way from reaching the kind of critical mass that other more traditional media forms offer. That’s especially so, when you take into account that to receive any Tweet, one needs to be actively logging into the service at that particular time before the message drops off the user’s Twitter stream. The Australian blogosphere also remains a relatively minor target. Unless a blog post gets linked to by much larger sources, you can probably expect a post by even a relatively high-profile writer like a journalist to measure in the hundreds of reads rather than thousands. Social networks like Facebook are also tough nuts to crack because you’re limited to the reach of your group or profile. These commercial aspects of social networks have struggled to gain traction. Telstra, for example, has less than a thousand “fans” on its Facebook page. Van Wyk said that in trying to promote Ourpatch.com.au, the organisation set up a Facebook group and a MySpace site and then even went to the trouble of convincing friends to sign up, in the hope of starting some kind of viral momentum.

“That’s the kind of stuff that most people are doing and it’s a complete waste of time”, said Van Wyk

Influencing the Influencers If the numbers are so low, then we return to our original proposition: why bother? Surely there is a reason why companies like Telstra and Microsoft, who feature in this magazine, bother appointing people like Mike Hickinbotham (see sidebar below) or Nick Hodge (see page 14), whose job function is devoted entirely to social media channels. “Services like Twitter are great for influencing the influencers,” said Mark Jones, a former technology and business journalist who now works as a social media consultant and speaker. “The big Twitter users have thousands of followers and it’s used by a lot of bloggers and journalists. You’re seeing a lot of examples now of mainstream media starting to include Twitter comments in their stories and all of this stuff happening in this microcosm is increasingly being exposed to the world.” Given the vanity element of social media, it’s not surprising that social media users are the kinds of people who like to make themselves heard. They’re the people who either complain the loudest or cheer with the most gusto. And that’s why a company like Telstra would bother to set up a special customer service channel on Twitter.

TWITTER as a Customer Service Tool If there is one Australian company that has led in its use of social media over the last 12 months, it’s Telstra. First, it became one of this country’s first large corporations to get serious about corporate blogging when it launched the NowWeAreTalking blog as a stakeholder communication tool and providing it with its own response vehicle as part of its daily battles with this country’s major newspaper organisations. Then in October last year, Telstra launched one of the most innovative uses of the Twitter service by putting a crack team of customer support staff on Twitter at twitter.com/bigpondteam. Ironically, although it is now applauded as a beacon of effective, corporate use of social media, Telstra received an initial “#FAIL” from social media commentators, who described the initial service as being too bureaucratic and impersonal. Hickinbotham said that Telstra took head of that criticism and iterated the service, giving its support team more freedom to communicate on a more personal basis. Since making that change, the service has successfully helped thousands of potentially grumpy and vocal Twitter users stand a far greater chance of being satisfied and may even go on to publicly endorse the company and its customer service.

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Cover story Mark Jones

Going Viral A lot is made of the viral nature of social media. A significant element of the utility of social media involves users passing on links that others might find interesting. On Twitter, there is the phenomenon of “re-tweeting”, whereby users repeat messages sent by others, extending the reach from one network of users to another. It’s the viral nature of social media than can result in an innocuous twitter message or blog post, spiralling into a big national news story. From an advertising perspective, we’ve all heard examples of videos which have racked up millions of views providing incredibly cost-effective exposure. However, the reality is that the level of noise has gotten so great on channels like YouTube that it’s now incredibly difficult to get that kind of viral momentum without resorting to the creation of fake or misleading campaigns which can potentially do more harm than good for a brand. Zoe Warne, co-founder of digital agency August said she would define most social media campaigns as “clumsy attempts to use the space that haven’t really achieved their objectives” and she warned against the hoax approach which she believes has only tended to damage the brands involved. “Advertisers and marketers should not be operating in the space if they do not fully understand it and the psyche of the users,” she said. “Users typically have a strong advertising radar and are very protective of their online space, which they reserve for relationships, not commerce. If they forward a fake message on Facebook, Digg or other social networking sites to their friends, it can make them feel foolish or conned, which can seriously erode their perceptions of the offending brand. And once the trust is broken, good luck trying to get it back.”

Director Filtered Media

Social Media Is Participatory While it can be difficult to harness the viral nature of social media to promote your brand, one tends to find that bad news stories spread with far greater efficiency. Social media certainly increases the risk of negative publicity and messages for your brand, but not participating doesn’t mean your exposure to this kind of negative viral effect is diminished. In fact, that’s the one thing most social experts agree on. There are few advantages to staying silent and not responding to negative exposure. As Telstra’s Mike Hickinbotham asserts, “the conversation will take place regardless of whether you’re involved or not”, so it’s better to be pro-active and attempt to manage the process, rather than hiding one’ s head in the sand and pretending these new communication channels don’t exist. “I think of social media from a corporate perspective, as being somewhat like what an individual faces with a public speaking engagement. It’s scary, but when you get up and give it a go people give you credit for doing so,” Hickinbotham said. “And if people take a shot at you in the process, you have to realise it’s not the end of the world. In the end, people will respect you for being open and transparent and involved in the conversation.” Certainly being able to respond to criticism or negative messages is part of the brief of Microsoft’s Nick Hodge, who describes his work as the company’s social media face as a “contact sport”. In order to participate effectively in the social media arena, it is far easier if you have established credibility prior to you leaping in to put out a fire.

Simon Van Wyk

Managing Director Ourpatch

I www.techmarketing.com.au

In a similar mould to his role at Microsoft, Hodge recommends that businesses encourage someone within the company to represent them in social media forums and advises that companies think twice before giving that responsibility to a marketing or communications professional, as they may struggle to achieve credibility and authority within the social media sphere. For technology

Cover story companies, he recommends, it is generally preferable to find someone with a strong technical understanding, who can relate to the audience you’re trying to reach, but who is also a good communicator.

Listen & Learn Even if you choose not to participate, that’s not to say you should ignore social media altogether. As a marketing intelligence tool, there are few downsides to listening to the conversations that take place around your company and your competitors. This feedback can be harnessed for product development purposes, it can be used to provide pro-active customer support services and even as a source of sales leads. And while there are high-end tools and services you can buy to help you monitor these conversations, the current levels of modest activity relating to brands means most companies will generally be able to get by using free Web 2.0 tools like Google alerts, Technorati search and advanced Twitter clients.

So What Should You Be Doing? As was opined earlier, social media strategies should not be formulated in isolation. They should leverage your pre-existing marketing knowledge and strategies and be considered as an additional channel that can be

TECH

MARKETING strategically employed were it makes sense. For many, the cost and resources required to create unique content that is posted to blogs, YouTube, and other social publishing vehicles will not result in immediate returns. In Australia at least, social media is still in its infancy and we trail the US by years in terms of most of these channels being a useful direct-to-consumer media mechanism. Businesses need to cost-justify the associated marketing costs just as they would any other channel when deciding on the best mix of marketing activity. However, there are many social media initiatives that are far less resource-intensive that companies can start with and certainly all businesses would benefit from. “My advice is that marketers dip their toe in the water and learn for themselves what works and what doesn’t,” said Jones. He warned companies to be wary of the “land grab” whereby various external agencies are aggressively positioning themselves as a company’s primary social media advisor. “Social media shouldn’t be owned exclusively by the PR people, the digital agencies, or left solely to a social media consultant. Making it the exclusive domain of one department, is contrary to the whole ethos that is really driving social media, and that’s a broad-based change in the way that we view and use media and also in the way that we communicate with customers.”

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Opinion: Social Media

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MARKETING

Tapping the Power of Social Media

t is now impossible to ignore the power and reach of social media. Yet the rules of engagement are very different to traditional marketing and PR. Here are a few guidelines on how to tap the power of social media without stumbling into the many pitfalls:

1. Participate and play

The only way to understand social media is to participate. Don’t just open Facebook and Twitter accounts. You need to play extensively with a wide variety of tools and discover how they are being used. If you think you don’t have time, think how much time you’ll have if you cannot work effectively in a world increasingly driven by social media.

2. Discover relevant conversations

Find out what is being said about your company, your competitors and your industry. Relevant conversations can easily be uncovered with free tools such as Google Alerts, Technorati, Twitter Search and Social Mention. There is also a wealth of more sophisticated tools available to track what is being said by your current or potential customers that you can learn from.

3. Identify influencers

A little research will readily uncover who are the most prominent influencers outside the obvious journalists and analysts in your space. Think laterally – they are not always the most visible people, but those who have the respect of your key audience.

4. Build a relationship with influencers

Once you find influencers, it is a massive mistake to then deluge them with press releases and product information. Follow their blogs and Twitter, learn what interests them, make comments or replies, and start a conversation. That may earn you the right to raise your favourite topics. Offer them things they value, particularly privileged access or insights, or by making them more visible.

5. Don’t make half-hearted efforts

You need to decide whether it is important for you to create a presence on blogs, Twitter, Facebook or other social media. For some, a presence is essential, though not everyone needs to do it. If you do engage, then you must maintain consistent effort over a sustained period. You will look foolish if you try something and then give up on it, so be wholehearted in what you decide is worth doing.

6. Find experienced guides

There is no substitute for experience in understanding how social media functions. Absolutely dive in and learn for yourself, but also seek guidance from the early explorers and practitioners. Many so-called ‘social media experts’ are recent converts – find out how long and how successfully they’ve participated before putting faith in their advice. Ross Dawson is a futurist, entrepreneur,

keynote speaker and bestselling author. His blog Trends in the Living Networks was launched in 2002 and is ranked as one of the top business blogs in the world.

www.rossdawsonblog.com

First publications rights granted to MediaConnect

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Opinion: Blogger Relations

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MARKETING

Becomenot a aDriver, passenger I

t’s no secret that consumers have more information at their fingertips than ever before. A recent eMarketing report indicated that most consumers read at least three reviews online while considering a purchasing decision. Don’t get me wrong, journalists will always remain a source of high-quality editorial, news and analysis, but the onus is on marketers to find new ways to communicate with online influencers to stay ahead of the competition. A blogger can be found online covering just about any topic imaginable, and marketers have spent the past few years trying to work out the best ways to tap into this pool of influencers. Highly-successful blogger relations programmes can deliver plenty of online goodwill, and provide a boost to search engine rankings. A journalist writes because they have to – they’re paid to fill a certain number of pages, column inches or post a number of articles each month. A blogger writes for completely different reasons – generally a personal interest – and as such their motivations are radically different. As marketers, it’s vital to understand this fundamental difference as it will not only help provide an idea of how to reach the bloggers, but also what to expect from them. They are not obligated to write about your product or service and indeed may even politely tell you that they’re not interested in hearing from you. First, a couple of pitfalls to avoid: don’t leap in without taking the time to read influential blogs and spend some time getting to know the blogger’s style and the type of things they write about. When you’ve shortlisted a few bloggers that you think would be valuable to communicate with, get in touch and let them know you’ve been following their blog. Don’t just research your targets – understand who they are, what motivates them and why they write. When the time comes to get in contact, don’t butter them up, and be wary of spruiking a product. Bloggers are humans, not vehicles to help drive your product message. There’s an expectation that people and brands represent themselves honestly when communicating over the internet. It sounds simple, but remaining open and transparent is the only effective policy in dealing with anyone online. Some of the most high-profile failures have stemmed from a perceived lack of honesty in the approach taken by marketers. This has been recently

www.techmarketing.com.au

evidenced by the furore around a high-profile Tourism Queensland campaign where a video showing a woman getting a pro-Queensland tattoo was revealed as a fake. Kicking off good relationships with online influencers will depend on the type of product or service you are marketing and the audience to which you sell. For example, Canon runs an extensive blogger product review programme at its http://community.canon.com.au portal where interested bloggers are invited to review Canon consumer equipment. This has delivered substantial search engine benefits and has been universally praised by those involved in the programme. Squirrel away a little project money and be prepared to experiment. Some of the most successful online outreach programmes have started small and expanded over time. You don’t need a big bang, and just remember to be yourself. But most of all, roll up your sleeves and get involved. Social media is called social media for a reason: the more time you put into it, the more you get out of it.

By Matt Overington

Head of Digital

Hill & Knowlton Australasia

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MARKETING

Opinion: Digital Programs

Four Key Principles of

Successful Digital Programs

ome say that word of mouth has impact only in “mature” mass media markets like Europe and North America - places where there is a decline in trust in media at the same time there are new ways for individuals to communicate online. Not true. Word of mouth will be just as relevant in places such as here in Australia or across Asia. We’ve discovered four principles to building successful digital programs that amplify word of mouth to influence people positively.

1. Listen First Seems obvious. We hear about the value of listening to customers every day. It is common sense. Still, many organizations find it hard to do this outside the research function. Listening used to be focus groups and surveys. Now, it happens in real time every day. We start every program by finding the conversations going on out there in blogs, message boards, social networks and review sites. We pay attention not just to what people are saying and how they say it but also to those who appear influential in a conversation.

2. Offer Deepening Ways To Engage With People Engagement is the “search for the 21st century gross rating points.” So says The Advertising Research Foundation (www.thearf.org). “Engagement” means interaction, participation and spending time with a brand or issue. Engagement goes where impressions and media hits cannot easily go—toward loyalty and advocacy.

3. Build Relationships Not Just Campaigns Building word of mouth programs sits outside the narrow description of most marketing disciplines. It is closest to public relations, but even we have to adopt some different behaviours to make it work well. Public relations professionals are used to communicating through trusted third parties. For years now, the trusted third party has been traditional media. But it has also been other groups at the community level—patient advocacy groups, grassroots coalitions, trade groups, and more. We were trained to craft messages and deliver them through military-like campaigns. Running a campaign that lasts three months to a year is based upon our historical use of paid and earned traditional media. With our new influencers, it doesn’t work the same way. Today we must move from short-term campaign thinking to long-term relationship and community building. And we must move away from trying to control the message to convening a conversation.

4. Measure Performance Now Digital word of mouth (WOM) is both invaluable and measurable. Peer to peer recommendations are the most powerful marketing tool on earth. Each of us can identify personal experiences where a friend’s recommendation drove us to purchase a product.

If we can offer meaningful ways for people to engage, they are more likely to discuss that experience with friends and family. A clever Flash game can be as engaging as branded entertainment. A company blog can engage people to share comments. Asking people to review products through Digg-style (www.digg.com) ratings or narrative reviews like those found in Trusted Opinion (www.trustedopinion.com) is asking them to engage even deeper.

By BRIAN GIESEN

Director - Digital Strategy Ogilvy Public Relations www.techmarketing.com.au I

Panasonic dives into

social media

Research that revealed just how much users were going online to research their purchases has driven Panasonic to embrace social media, reports Jo-Anne Hui.

hile some companies wade into the social media waters one step at a time, Panasonic Australia instead chose to make a splash, simultaneously launching a presence on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, and with two corporate blogs soon to follow.

That determination to make a mark online has been largely driven by extensive research that Panasonic conducted into its customer’s buying habits, which concluded that digital environments had already become absolutely critical in the company’s marketing mix.

The company chose to trumpet its newly-acquired web savviness during a massive media launch for its new B.I.G. range of products, where it sailed 40 journalists and bloggers to a lavish event on Cockatoo Island. Fittingly, local tech journalists who have taken to Twitter with a vengeance, gave a blow-by-blow account of the launch which was hosted by SBS Rockwiz’s Julie Zemiro, and which featured performances from The Umbilical Brothers and So You Think You Can Dance? competitors.

“We conducted quite a bit of research recently and found that on the path to purchase a consumer undertakes when buying a digital camera or a flat-screen television, online and in-store are the two key areas where people gather a lot of their buying information,” Lemieux said.

The initial interaction that took place with journalists on Twitter, would have heartened Panasonic which has invested heavily in establishing their social media presence. While it’s too early to tell what immediate impact its social media efforts will have, the company is extremely confident they will pay dividends in the future. “It’s early days for us and we’re still working through the logistics, but we believe it’s going to be an important strategy for us going forward,” said Gemma Lemieux, director of marketing and communications at Panasonic Australia.

“So we’re focusing on improving our visibility in those two key areas.” The primary goal of its digital overhaul has been to provide consumers with information on its products and provide better support, with social media seen as a valuable extension to its own websites by increasing its reach, and through its ability to make Panasonic seem more helpful, personable and approachable. “That’s really the driving force,” she said. “Consumers are spending a lot of time online when they’re looking for information and we want to provide them with the best information in the most suitable environment for them.” Lemieux said that the company reviewed all of its social media channels and is trying to use each in a manner that is related to that medium’s core strengths. For example, Twitter allows consumers to ask questions and have them answered immediately, in a similar way to how the call centre would work. Meanwhile, the Youtube presence offers Panasonic a way to communicate with its customers using visually powerful video content. “We’re looking at ways we can better educate consumers in how to optimally make use of our products. It’s going to warehouse a lot of our rich media content and provide a more interactive way for people to engage with our products,” said Lemieux, adding that Panasonic is currently looking at various ways it can generate different kinds of media for its Youtube channel. Meanwhile, Panasonic’s Facebook account allows consumers to interact with the brand on a more personal level and be kept up to date with products, as well as view information and photos.

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Case Study: Panasonic Launch “It really allows us to demonstrate our brand personality,” said Lemieux. Panasonic will also soon launch a consumer electronics and B2B blog, and has overhauled its core, corporate websites.

We’re trying to improve the way we “communicate and to make the brand far more personable ” While the job of launching all of these different social media channels has been daunting in itself, Panasonic understands that is only the beginning of maintaining an active social media presence and Lemieux said that providing the depth of information and the level of contact demanded by social media required both internal organisational change and the help of external partners. Suede, the digital communications agency that Panasonic enlisted to help establish its social media channels will continue to maintain those presences, and all of Panasonic’s marketing partners will contribute at some level. This includes Webquem, which helped develop Panasonic’s core website, PR agency Blackie McDonald and ad agency The Campaign Palace. “We need to be active in these environments, or we’re not going to be helpful, and we wouldn’t be true to our strategy,” she said. “It’s a change in the way that we go about providing information and we want to make sure that as we move through, we lock down as many of the elements of each of the environments as we can, similar to the way we’d do anything offline.”

“We’ve really just looked at each of the environments and utilised them for the reason they were created. I guess advertisement:Layout 1 30/4/09 2:42 PM Page 1 as new ideas are developed, we’ll review them and elect

Gemma Lemieux

Director, Marketing Communications PANASONIC AUSTRALIA what to do with them moving forward. It’s really a whole new world.” While many companies have shied away from social media due to its inherent ability to give greater voice to unhappy customers, Lemieux said Panasonic viewed this as a flawed rationale. “Our thought is they’re going to complain regardless. They’ll publicly go on Twitter or blogs and complain. It’s already there. For us, it’s about trying to be as helpful as we can. By ignoring it, it’s not going to make the brand accessible,” she said. “We’re trying to improve the way we communicate and to make the brand far more personable. It’s better for us to understand it and try to work hard to be helpful, by getting our head around it and understanding that’s going to happen.”

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Geek

Professional

He’s the King of the Tweet, the Lord of the Blog and a Social Media Butterfly. Meet Nick Hodge, the front man for Microsoft Australia’s social media efforts, writes Phil Sim.

t the end of our interview, I ask Nick Hodge Microsoft evangelist and Australian social media identity - what he pictures himself doing next. He cracks a joke that his manager wants to know the same thing, before espousing how exciting it is to be working at Microsoft at this point of time. He then raves effusively about how he loves the opportunity to play with the latest and greatest technologies before talking warmly about his desire to pass on the lessons and knowledge he’s picked up over the years to the next generation. Within those answers, you’ll find all the traits that make Hodge such an effective social media practitioner. He is

good humoured and passionate about both the company he works for, and the industry he works in. He enjoys connecting with people and just comes across as a genuine, likable bloke. He would also probably shy away from being profiled as a tech marketer. When I asked him how much of his role he saw as being marketing, he pinned it at a mere 10 per cent and seemed reluctant to give it that much. He also shied away from my suggestion that his sales management role at Adobe might have helped prepare him for the role as a corporate blogger, instead arguing his technical roles were far more valuable and useful experiences.

thing is “ The most important just to be yourself ”

Nick Hodge

Professional Geek Microsoft Australia

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www.techmarketing.com.au

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Tech Marketer: Nick Hodge Make no mistake though, Hodge is a marketer. He’s just not your traditional marketer working behind the scenes formulating strategies and campaigns. Hodge’s work is done at the coal-face, engaging and interfacing with Australia’s digerati and representing Microsoft in various social media and networking arena like Twitter, Facebook and the blogosphere. “My job is to reach out to the people who represent the digerati in our industry and be the friendly face of Microsoft to those people,” Hodge said. “When they have a question about Microsoft, I can tell them as honestly as I can what the story is.”

When you’re fake, “ people can smell it. It has to be about real people ” Hodge has had his own personal website since 1995 and he created his blog - nickhodge.com - back in 2001, well before it became the hip thing to do. He has long been an advocate of the Twitter microblogging service and has amassed an influential audience of more than 2,500 followers, having made more than 21,000 ‘tweets’ and counting. And of course, he ticks all of the social media boxes with profiles on sites like Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn, Delicious, FriendFeed, and so forth. So it probably shouldn’t be a surprise that it was Hodge’s presence on the LinkedIn social networking site that helped him land the job with Microsoft. At the time, he was working for himself as a contractor, having ended his role as Channel Sales Manager at Adobe midway through 2006. Hodge had just racked up 20 years in the IT industry, a passion that started when he was still in high school and was nurtured when his father bought a TRS-80 computer from an Adelaide reseller called Random Access. Hodge would get a job at that very same business where he’d accumulate ten years experience as well as meeting his wife along the way. He would then move to Sydney to start a job with Apple and then to Adobe, taking on technical positions but in roles that always involved talking to people about technology. While at Adobe, he was used as a media spokesperson and blogged, despite the fact that it was against corporate communication policy. In February 2007, Microsoft’s high-profile and popular technology evangelist Frank Arrigo - who really trailblazed the role of the corporate digital influencer in Australia spotted Hodge on LinkedIn. An associate of Arrigo had written a recommendation for Hodge on his LinkedIn profile and based on that, Hodge was approached with the offer of joining the Microsoft evangelist team. When Arrigo accepted a role at Microsoft corporate headquarters in Seattle, it was Hodge who would step up into the role of being Microsoft’s Australian social media go-to man.

He reckons his job is the second-best job in world (if he could work from home, then it would be the best). As a Microsoft evangelist, he believes he has unprecedented freedom and support to develop his online network. While there are some general, public guidelines for its bloggers - which Hodge describes as the ‘Don’t be stupid’ policy - he believes Microsoft understands that people need to express themselves in their own way to be effective in a social media setting. “The most important thing is just to be yourself,” Hodge said. “I would say only 15 to 20 per cent of my comments on Twitter are Microsoft-specific comments. The other 80-plus percent is just about having a conversation with people and if you think about the way you do that in the offline world, it’s generally about things like what you did with your kids on the weekend.” “Basically I’m creating personal connections with people and once you do that, those people become this great resource. I follow 2,200 people on Twitter and I have over 2,600 follow me. So when I have a question I can’t get answered at Microsoft, I have all these people I can tap into.” And while there has been a lot of exposure recently of companies using fake, viral videos to get cheap publicity, Hodge believes that if you’re going to use social media to its full potential, then you need to build relationships and to do that, you need to have trust. Authenticity and honesty are paramount, Hodge argues. “People see though you when you’re giving them BS. When you’re fake, people can smell it. It has to be about real people.”

NICK HODGE We asked Nick Hodge’s Twitter followers to describe in 140 characters or less “what makes @nickhodge such an effective social media practitioner?”

“Because I sometimes have to be reminded that @NickHodge works for Microsoft” @servantofchaos; aka Gavin Heaton, Brand and Communications Strategist

“Because he makes worthwhile posts which have real applicable value, unlike some twitterers...” @peterhodge; aka Peter Hodge, News Editor and CEO Citizen Media Ltd

“Because he provides a breadth of information via a variety of mediums (i.e blogs, twitter etc..)” @adamabate; aka Adam Abate, Edu IT www.techmarketing.com.au I

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