So I just ‘broke’ this news over on the Voce Nation, thought I’d share it here too, the short of it is this: 1) Voce has scooped up the entire cnp_studio team, a group of web developers that specialize in social media design and development work; 2) We’ve formed a combined (social media marketing + web development) service team within Voce that’s now called “Voce Connect;” and 3) We’ve been quietly working together for months now, winning a mix of social media marketing and web development projects with some of the biggest consumer and business brands in the world, much of which we’ll be showcasing and sharing on our new company site which we rolled out today too. Our press page has all the details, and I’ll be posting more on this shortly, but suffice to say, it’s a big day for our company and a good measure of how our firm’s thinking about the changing landscape for marketing and communications. There’s much, much more to come.
Updates from April, 2009
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Voce Adds Web Dev Team, Forms “Voce Connect”
mike manuel
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Corporate Social Media Teams Are Growing
mike manuel
So not that it’s terribly surprising, but the headcount for in-house (corporate) social media teams seems to be growing — very quickly — despite the economy. Two years ago, even in the biggest companies, you had, at best, a collection of quarter-timers, loosely coming together around launches and campaigns. Thereafter, part-time social media/community/online strategists started to take foot, now, shit, most companies have *at least* one dedicated person, with many, many companies having far more. The other observation worth noting here are the organizational models, (err, model), which seems to in a lot of companies boil down to a very lean, very skilled cross-functional strategic team that establishes standards, protocols and practices that are then pushed out to a much larger set of business unit practitioners and regional teams for local implementation. It’s just interesting to see familiar patterns of corporate organization and structure finally taking hold around a new discipline, a sign of the industry’s maturation?
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Social Media Education, an Ongoing Challenge
mike manuel
I just chewed through Jennifer Leggio’s piece today which analyzes the results from her second ‘Social PR Survey,’ it’s a good read, and while I can’t say much of the findings were terribly surprising, still, there’s some interesting data points for agency folks at all levels. One of the sections touches on agency education and training, something the lion’s share of respondents seemed to oddly dismiss as a ‘non-issue.’ Really? Really!? I’m telling you, based on my own experience, plus what I hear from my peers at other firms, this dismissal is either our industry spinning itself in the worst sort of way, or people are absolutely clueless about what social media training and education efforts really entail (hint: “learning” and “changing”). I’m not convinced we’ve seen enough of either yet. Oh, and one more thing related to all of this: too often this industry points and prods at undergrads and junior staff as needing the most ‘training and education,’ when sadly, in reality, there are some senior folks who could use a kick in the pants too. In fact, I’d argue if the end result of agency training is, well, organizational change, then top down learning is where it all starts.
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Integrated Programs Are The “New Normal”
mike manuel
Alright, the need to integrate marketing and comms work these days makes a world of sense, trust me, I get it, but you know, when that need requires competitors to come together and work directly with each other, perhaps in ways they might not otherwise, it really forces you to rethink what were once comfortable business boundaries. Case in point, I’m spearheading a social media program and working with an ad firm (that offers social media services), a PR agency (that offers social media services) and a web shop (that, yes, offers social media services). It’s unique for sure, and yeah, at times, it tests an already unhealthy paranoia most service folks have over their IP, but it’s also becoming more common, especially in this market, so maybe in an odd sort of way it’s just slowly turning into the new normal?
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The Rise of Agency Apps
mike manuel
So earlier this week a reporter asks what I considered to be “some interesting agency trends?” Aside from the chronic spread of social media expert-itis, oh and some Grade-A Twitter shilling, the one I felt the strongest about was what I’ll just call, for now, the “rise of agency apps.” Net-net, I think we’re starting to see some early signs of agencies developing all sorts of custom-built web apps — each app designed specifically for the way it does business and packaged up as a value-added service/perk for clients and prospects. Converseon’s been doing this for a while now (see “Conversation Miner“), Edelman got in the game too (see “StoryCrafter“), WaggEd as well (see “Twendz“), and yeah, Voce’s keeping in step (see “Bridge“). I think we’ll see a lot more firms roll their own apps this year, probably suites of apps too. Watch this…
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Corporate Social Media Must Keep SEC in Mind
mike manuel
The WSJ just posted a piece on clients Intel and eBay, but with a focus on eBay and the story behind its use of Twitter for corporate news. This was actually something I pointed to here a few weeks ago that kicked-up quite a bit of discussion (check out “How to Tweet Material News”). I’ve known Richard Brewer-Hay for years now, he works hard and has the support of some very smart people inside eBay. It’s good to see he and the team leading the way on things and getting a little bit of recognition in the process. It’s well deserved. RBH will be sharing his story inside eBay at two upcoming events, including the NewComm Forum and TWTRCON.
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Social Media Will Lead Interactive Spending
mike manuel
So an upcoming Forrester report (for release, I’m told, later this spring) indicates growth in social media budgets will outpace all other forms of interactive marketing — they even have this colorful chart, so shit, this *must* be true. Now don’t get me wrong, these numbers are all fine and good, but here’s the problem with the data: the dollars for social media programs are coming from *all sorts of pockets* within companies — PR, HR, IT, Web, customer support, etc. — social media programs are by no means the exclusive line item for corporate branding budgets. And you know, generally speaking, I think that’s a healthy thing because we’re still seeing a lot of interesting applications that cross organizational boundaries. -
The Inefficiency of Social Media
mike manuel
So one of the big headaches that comes with social media inside large companies is that you often have too many departments that are each operating various platforms and activities, most of which have feedback channels enabled (comments, messaging systems, etc). So, true story: a large business software company had a blog, a Facebook page, a Twitter account and a YouTube channel — all of which were being run through different departments — and all of which were receiving AND answering the same exact questions (sometimes from the same people) in all four places. I mean, I’m all for good customer service, folks, but this is a great example of good intentions working against your business. And it’s exactly this sort of thing that amplifies the challenge of decentralized strategies and programs.
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Old Practices Still Apply to New Tech
mike manuel
It’s funny how the presence of new technologies and tools can sometimes oddly distract marketing and PR folks from really good, time-tested methodologies and practices. Case in point, the frequency at which I have to each week pull people back down to reality with fundamental questions like “what’s your objective?,” “what are you hoping to accomplish?” is, well, surprising. There’s something about social media that sparks peoples imaginations, in the best sort of way, I just wish I was less often the guy holding a big bucket of cold water.
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Social Media Expert-itis
mike manuel
For as much as I and others I know bitch and moan about the recent spread of social media expert-itis, the truth is 1). we’re jaded; and 2). what we’re seeing is just another marketing discipline take shape while its practitioners awkwardly, elbow, fit and fuss their way to the marketplace table. Some will say it’s for the better, others for the worse, but in the end, like every other discipline, there will simply be a spectrum of people who “do” social media work. Everyone will call and consider themselves “experts,” but the marketplace will decide who can actually make a living doing so…
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Welcome to Voce Chris Thilk
mike manuel
So my colleague Josh Hallett just posted the news that we’ve hired Chris Thilk, and yeah, to say the least, everyone on our team is very fired up to be working with him.
Chris was one of the early social media strategists at MWW Group, working with folks like Tom Biro on the Nikon and Samsung accounts and really helped shape what became the DialogueMedia digital division. For a long time now, Chris has also been the guy behind the guy blogging at Movie Marketing Madness. I think Josh said it best with:
“[We've] always had a list of folks in the industry that we really respect. Folks that walk the walk, more than they talk the talk, and Chris Thilk is one of them.”
It’s true. While there’s no shortage of social media experts these days, finding people who actually have solid experience managing both the strategic and tactical parts of big brand social media programs, is, well, almost impossible to find. With Chris, we found both. And he’s already busy working on Comcast, Intel and a few client wins we’ve yet to talk about.
The addition and news of Chris marks the first in a sequence of announcements we have quietly in the works. More to come…
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How to Tweet Material News
mike manuel
So here’s the deal: if you work for a public company and are interested in extending the application and use of Twitter for corporate news — this post is for you.
So late last week, our (Voce’s) client at eBay, Richard Brewer-Hay, decided to share the backstory on something eBay’s PR and legal teams have been chewing on for a few months now — and that’s the development of guidelines and a set of SEC disclosure best practices that outline how eBay (well, any public company, really) can successfully (err, legally) use Twitter to share material news.
If you read Richard’s post, you’ll see these guidelines were born out of his desire (and his history) of using eBay’s corporate Twitter account to “live tweet” the company’s quarterly earnings calls — something that’s been increasingly catching the attention of industry influencers, media, enthusiasts, etc, who wouldn’t otherwise have participated or tuned in to the actual earnings calls. And yes, as Richard indicates, this activity also, for better or worse, caught the attention of eBay’s corporate IR, PR and legal teams.
It turns out, this was for the better…
The easy, protectionist response would have been to just stop doing this, shut down the account and move on. But thankfully it didn’t, instead, the IR/PR/Legal groups within eBay all came together to figure out a way that concerns regarding disclosure and cautionary statements — especially pertaining to quarterly earnings calls — could all be addressed with the development of this simple legal page (which is now a permanant extension of eBay’s corporate blog, eBay Ink), and maybe more interesting, I think, are the ‘twitter sized’ (140-character) disclosure statements they co-developed. You can read them here.
While we all wait for the SEC to further bake its guidance for disclosure on the web, something it introduced at a surface-level last July, I believe what eBay’s done here might help shape and inform the SEC’s thinking in the interim, as well as provide other public companies with a good working model for material disclosure via emerging practices, like microblogging, livestreaming and the like…
Update: Domnic Jones of IR Web has some sound counter points regarding the archival of earnings information, be it in a company’s Twitter stream or otherwise. Shel Holtz also captures both eBay’s and IR Web’s perspectives on this news in episode #429 of For Immediate Release (show notes here).
Update 2: PRWeek just posted this short piece on the news.
Update 3: Man, this one’s evolving quickly. Yesterday, eBay put its new Twitter disclosure guidelines to work as part of its Analyst Day. IR Web has a great recap of that effort. As does PRWeek (again).
Update 4: The WSJ makes mention of eBay’s use of the web and Twitter.