July 20, 2010

Adventures in taking a Fortune 500 social

My client, Norfolk Southern Corporation, recently announced it is actively engaging with stakeholders on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr, as well as offering RSS feeds and links to all its social media pages via the corporate home page. While this may not seem like news relative to what consumer businesses have been doing for years, this is unprecedented in the railroad industry and for many other Fortune 500 companies in the B2B sector.

I have been consulting with Norfolk Southern for several years on developing their social media communications strategy. It’s taken a lot of training to get the corporate communications department on board. I put together several social media 101 presentations and training sessions with along with Amber Karnes of Chop Chop Design (Norfolk Southern’s Webmaster at the time).

Shortly after, the company put together a New Media Team, composed of employees across the company to advise the company’s social media and new media strategies. Karnes and I offered more training sessions and presentations, and with the support of the New Media Team, launched these social media initiatives.

Our biggest challenge was not gaining the buy-in from management (the widespread adoption of Facebook and Twitter eventually made that case for us), but ensuring the legal department there would be no problems. The best way to handle that obstacle was to approach social media cautiously and show success through baby steps. For example, Norfolk Southern’s first YouTube video was a 30-second commercial that had aired nationwide on television. Once the lawyers could see there was little need for concern, we began slowly posting more content.

Check out Norfolk Southern’s social media profiles, for a first-rate example of how social media can work for a large B2B organization. The Thoroughbred of Transportation is taking the lead on social media engagement in the freight rail transportation industry. So far, NS has more than 9,000 fans on Facebook, more than any other railroad. We’re engaging with rail fans across the country, and this is just the beginning as we are continuing to set forth a strategy to enhance our community outreach. In fact, Norfolk Southern has recently added a position to the Corporate Communications department that handles Community Outreach, both online and offline. I look forward to sharing more as Norfolk Southern continues engaging stakeholders online.

Tags: b2b, clients, facebook, Flickr, Norfolk Southern, social media, Twitter, YouTube
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January 13, 2010

Studio Rio: how radio publicity is enhanced through social media

Last year, I helped Studio Rio, a women’s-only gym in Virginia Beach, Va. that offers pole dancing classes, enhance their marketing and public relations efforts. During that time, they developed a new Web site, established a blog and developed a Facebook, YouTube and Twitter presence.

This week, the local radio morning team at WNOR FM 99, Rumble and Shelley, started talking about pole dancing on the air. When Studio Rio heard they were mentioned, they quickly responded to invite the morning team in for a free private pole dancing class. The morning team took them up on the offer and had a blast. The morning show hosts shared their experience with listeners this morning and it was hilarious and entertaining. Studio Rio could not have asked for better publicity.

But it does get better. The morning team has uploaded a YouTube video of their pole dancing lesson as well as an audio clip of the radio bit that aired. That extends the reach of publicity far beyond listeners who happened to tune in to the radio this morning.

The best part is that Studio Rio has been consistently communicating with its members and prospective members through online social media. Because Studio Rio actively engages with customers via Facebook, Twitter and text messaging, they were able alert customers instantly to tune in and listen. Then after the radio exposure, when the clips were posted online, Studio Rio used social media to share the links and get the word out even more. Congratulations to Studio Rio for getting some great publicity and for effectively using online social media to make the most of it.

Tags: Best Practices, facebook, publicity, social media, Studio Rio, Twitter, YouTube
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March 9, 2009

Rising to Stardom YouTube study

Dr. Yuping Liu and I are waiting to hear back on a research proposal we entered in the MSI & WIMI User-Generated Content Research Competition. Hopefully we’ll get some funding, but either way we’re working on our study, Rising to Stardom: How Do Some User-Generated Contents Become Popular? The key questions are how to predict UGC’s eventual success during the early stage of dissemination and what makes one piece of UGC extremely popular and others not. Continue Reading…

Tags: research study, user-generated content, viral video, YouTube
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