The Steroid Effect of Collaborative Content Development

Great news…you have a content rich, thought leadership fueled social media marketing program in place.  Yet, readership and audience engagement has become stagnant and, like many organizations, you’ve struggled to raise the impact of the campaign.

At Strategic Communications Group (Strategic), we’ve repeatedly stepped into this dilemma in the execution of client programs during the past four years.  Audience interest tends to grow in a series of steps, rather than the always desirable (yet rarely achieved) hockeystick model.

An approach we now employ to juice up the readership ranks, as well as the frequency and intensity of their engagement is collaborative content development with customers, partners, market influencers and other industry thought leaders.  In addition to how it swells readership, this collaborative approach to content also instills third party credibility on a social site.

Here is a recent example:  Strategic clients British Telecom (BT) and Polycom come together to produce and jointly promote a Web-based video on the environmentally-friendly impact of video teleconferencing:

BT and Polycom Talk Green Applications of VTC

Video Series:  ICT toHelp the Environment

To get the most from your investment in collaborative content, consider the following best practices:

1.  Not all customers, partners and third-parties are equal.  You’ll want to select those with a strong brand and reputation, as well an extensive social following.

2.  Always…and I mean always…remember that social-distributed content must engage, educate and entertain.  Regurgitated marketing slop or overly promotional gunk will rarely garner much in the way of interest.

3.  Promote the content through multiple channels (i.e. social media, Email marketing, events, sales team distribution, etc.) to reach the broadest number of targeted readers, while tying everything to a defined organic search engine optimization (SEO) strategy.

4.  Study your analytics each and every day.  Readership and audience engagement provides near real-time feedback from the market in how your messaging has resonated. 

Who is visiting your site?  How do they find you?  How long do they stay?  Do they share the content with anyone? 

This knowledge will inform your content strategy moving forward, as well as empower the sales team with insight and intelligence that can help them more effectively close deals…and faster.       

Social Media Takes to the Field

During the past three decades football has eclipsed all other sports as the passion of the American fan.

It’s a game that idolizes glamour positions such as quarterback, wide receiver and running back. These players typically dominate the headlines and bask in the accolades that come with victories.

Yet, for all of their royalty these darlings of the gridiron would fail to produce a championship without the efforts of the men on the line. These hulking masses repeatedly slam into each other with the goal of gaining a mere yard or two of advantage.

Yes, the football divas stand as stars. However, championships are won with blocking and tackling.

The same can be said about business. C-suite executives, strategists, subject matter experts and industry thought leaders often command the attention of journalists, analysts and other influencers.

Consider the reporting of corporate adoption of social media marketing. Scan the headlines of influential trade magazines like Brandweek, BtoB, PR Week and Advertising Age and one gets the impression that social media is the domain of corporate communications and marketing departments.

Yet, like in professional football, headlines and recognition can be misleading as to who contributes the most to corporate success. At Strategic Communications Group (Strategic), we’ve established a rather unique niche of building social media campaigns for field sales and marketing organizations.

It’s in the field that we have found social media marketing to be most accountable in areas critical to a company’s growth – lead generation, cultivation of sales prospects, deal capture and search engine optimization (SEO). Corporate sets the plan and establishes the guidelines, but it is the field that moves the business forward one deal at a time.

Let’s explore a couple of examples.

Monster: Discretion in Data Sales

Best known for Monster.com, the online site for job seekers, the company also has a productive business selling proprietary job market data and trends to educational institutions and government agencies.

For example, economic development offices in local municipalities need to know what kind of training is required to get unemployed workers back on the payroll.

The company’s “Unleash the Monster” social media marketing campaign allows the field sales team to directly engage with targeted customers and prospects in a thought leadership environment. By providing helpful information to federal, state/local and educational audiences, Monster builds community while more rapidly pushing opportunities through the sales pipeline.

British Telecom (BT): Doing Well by Doing Good

In the US, the BT Americas field sales and marketing division sells telephony and data communications to Global 2000 companies. Connectivity is a commodity that prospects typically think about only when they need more, such as when expanding facilities.

The company wanted to boost awareness with executive level decision-makers, so when a prospect needed to add telecom capacity they would consider BT. If not exclusively, then at least in addition to market leading vendors like AT&T and Verizon.

Using social media as its channel, BT leveraged its strong commitment to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to cultivate relationships with like-minded companies on its prospect list. BT’s CSR Perspective campaign has elevated the company’s standing with top level prospects, while enhancing its overall positioning and brand awareness in the US.

Social Media Remains an Innovator’s Game

Dive into the trades on the topic of social media adoption and the read is confusingly mixed.

Surveys say it’s a priority for corporate marketers with spending expected to jump this year and beyond. Other research points to interest, yet a lack of investment in social media marketing programs because of unproven ROI.

I live in the trenches of social media adoption as I’m charged with selling comprehensive programs to senior corporate executives. Unlike the mixed message from industry surveys and pundit banter, my experience has been remarkably consistent.

One set of prospects are intrigued, yet have failed to engage in social networks in any organized and meaningful fashion because it is not consistent with their corporate culture. These “slow adopters” are comfortable resting on the sidelines until there is a more extensive portfolio of best practices and lessons learned.

A second group of organizations have followed a bag of tactics methodology to integrate social media into their communications program. There may be a Facebook fan page. A Twitter account may have been set up. Someone in the organization has a blog.

While this is certainly an initial step, these companies typically lack a defined strategy, an alignment with corporate goals and any type of measurable benchmarks for success.

Plus, it’s often a junior member of the corporate marketing team tagged with social media responsibilities. Their intentions are admirable, however they fall short on strategic credentials and decision-making authority.

There is little doubt that we are still very much in the early adopter phase of corporate use of social media marketing in a professional and disciplined manner. This immaturity is understandable because there are significant risks when an executive champions something new and unproven.

If a social media marketing program misses the mark or (equally distressing) is perceived internally to be a waste of resources, the executive sponsor tends to be in a world of corporate hurt. They may even find themselves ushered out of job and into the worst unemployment environment in three decades.

For most, the horror of social media failure is too great to confront.

At Strategic Communications Group (Strategic), we have been fortunate to stumble across a group of corporate marketers who savior the opportunity to prove new ways of promotion. We’ve found this elite class at Microsoft, British Telecom (BT), BearingPoint, Monster, TANDBERG, Inmarsat and Avnet.


They cast aside the safe play for what they believe is the right thing to do to help their employer more successfully compete in the market.

Social media marketing remains an innovator’s game. The business case for adoption is compelling though because of the measurable tie to lead generation and other sales benchmarks. It will be a slow adoption curve, however I do anticipate more marketers will think it through, raise their handle and embrace what’s possible.

3 Social Media Portals Revealed

In early May I introduced the business case for an organization to create a social media portal in a blog post I thought would generate a significant amount of interest. Readership was modest and there were a couple of retweets, yet the feedback I received was tepid at best.

Thankfully, we were a bit more persuasive with a set of Strategic Communications Group’s (Strategic) clients who recognized an opportunity to elevate the success of their digital programs through a portal approach.

Let’s take a moment to revisit the original post, entitled “The Goodness of Social Media Portals.” My premise is that organization-wide adoption of social media – although a positive development – creates a number of significant headaches for corporate communications and marketing professionals.

For starters, there is the issue of consistency in strategy and messaging. The potential for a cacophony of competing voices is one of the reasons why the Pentagon is considering a limit on the social media engagement of military personnel.

Then there is the requirement to monitor the distribution of information to the market to ensure financial, legal and other contractual agreements are adhered to. I realize there are some in social media circles who argue for a free flow of information across social networks.

However, these purists lose sight of the fact that the real world is comprised of lawyers, shareholders and governing bodies. The value of an open exchange with little in the way of guidelines does not outweigh the pain of an SEC investigation.

Fast forward several months and Strategic has three clients that have now gone live with a portal as a core component of their social media program.

British Telecom’s (BT) “Secure Thinking”

Microsoft’s “Bright Side of Government"

Monster Government Solutions’ “Unleash the Monster”

While it’s inappropriate for me to divulge the strategy or specific success criteria for these innovative social media programs, I can share a couple of important factors that shaped the thinking at BT, Microsoft and Monster.

1. Develop a strong, clear and consistent voice to the market, leveraging social networks to connect with and engage a myriad of key stakeholders.

2. Publish compelling thought leadership content from multiple sources within the organization, structured in a manner that easy to access and digest.

3. Share community across multiple social media platforms to extend reach and influence.

My colleague Chris Parente also has an interesting take on social media portals and how they help a company effectively organize and present its content.

The Great Content Angst

It arrives in the early morning well before I am scheduled to rise. It begins with the sweats and quickly moves to feelings of dread.

What is this ailment? It’s a relatively new phenomenon of the social media era: the content terrors.





















During a new business presentation an often asked question centers around the demand for content to drive the success of a social media initiative. It’s true. Content that engages, educates and entertains is the foundation of any digital campaign.

Yet, we’ve found the obstacles to be few when it is time to launch a program. The editorial strategy typically flows from the agreed-upon goals and we are often able to repurpose existing content from multiple sources within an organization.

The content angst surfaces a ways down the road once a community of followers is in place. That’s because readers are fickle with their time and their investment with you can be fleeting.

Exceptional content pulls them in, yet also sets an expectation that future posts will be equally (if not more) insightful and inspiring. Fail to deliver and readers will drop you from their RSS reader faster than you can say “Friendster.”

Consider my Strategic Guy blog. Earlier this year I was on a readership roll with interest peaking in late spring at more than 2,000 unique visitors a week after a series of best practices posts. It has been slow drift downward ever since.

Each weekly check of Google Analytics creates a self-induced pressure vice that has lead to my terror-filled nights.

Others are feeling it too. For instance, accomplished blogger and marketer Beth Harte just announced that she is taking a hiatus because of the time and intensity involved in content creation.

So, what is the answer to this content conundrum? Here are a few ideas I am considering:

1. Tap into my relationship eco-system. Microsoft, Monster, British Telecom (BT), BearingPoint, Inmarsat, BroadSoft, GovDelivery…we are fortunate to represent a set of premium brands. Can I partner with their marketing leaders on content? Perhaps a guest post or executive Q&A?

2. Go back…for the future. As new readers sign on, I suspect many will find well-read blog posts from prior months to be of interest. Should I repurpose this content into a “best of” series?

3. Aggregate from credible sources across the Web. For our Open Road to Savings campaign, we have compiled content that provides insight into how companies are saving money in a challenging economic environment. The response from readers has been enthusiastic.

I read through nearly 150 content sources a week, such as business press, trade magazines, blogs and discussion forums. Could a collection of interesting articles help me keep up with the reader demanded pace of content creation?