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By Judy Mottl
Pundits have declared 2009 as 'the year' social networking will take root as an enterprise business tool and marketing venue as everyone's twittering, updating LinkedIn and talking business on their Facebook pages these days.
What, though, does that mean for CIOs who want to implement formal social networking strategies but are more than a bit wary of the security issues that come into play?
IT leaders know how powerful a blog can be for marketing and corporate branding efforts, and how Twitter can generate revenue (Dell's made $3 million in less than a year from its adoption).
But all it takes is one comment, one slip of a data nugget or proprietary technology mention and a CIO can find him or herself explaining a huge stock price drop and negative headlines to an irate company board.
The trick to success, as one company has discovered, is to take a measured, monitored and tightly controlled approach.
Entitle Direct Group, a 30-year-old title insurance firm, kicked off its social networking effort in the last quarter of 2008 after launching a consumer-focused Web site as part of a new sales effort.
Like most insurance companies, Entitle was selling through traditional agent channels but then veered into new marketing territory last August with a direct-to-consumer offering across 32 states.
CIO Fred Kauber, who is responsible for his company's search engine marketing and social media strategy, said the company then began using public Web blogs as a communication channel as well.
"In addition to using traditional media it is more effective to raise awareness among consumers online where they gather to discuss related topics rather than try to drive attention to a central forum that would be under our control," notes Kauber.
So the company began a formal effort to begin comment regularly on public blogs related to title insurance issues and subjects. The interaction led to "an opportunity to educate consumers not just about our offering but to give them a more fundamental understanding of title insurance and its role in their lives as homeowners," says the CIO.
While the blogging drove meaningful and interactive conversation, it was limiting, explained Kauber, and commenting on multiple industry blogs required strict monitoring as well.
"It poses a challenge to marketers as conversations that need to be monitored are distributed across multiple sites and take place at different paces in an asynchronous fashion," says Kauber.
And as blog comments tend to attract the attention of other bloggers, which is what companies want as a brand, it also magnifies the challenge of maintaining disparate conversations.
That's why Entitle Direct decided to implement a policy that only senior management team members do the blog work.
"We feel that it is very important for our management team to engage directly with our consumers and business partners to convey the passion and authenticity we feel for transforming our industry, but we also feel it's important that our messaging be consistent in maintaining the highest degree of professionalism for our brand," Kauber says.
The monitoring effort has been the right road, he says, as his company has avoided embarrassing scenarios other companies have landed in.
For example a Twitter page of a competitor's employee extolled the virtues of that company's recruiting effort in one tweet and the staff member's drunken weekend adventures in the next.
"That is clearly not the context one wants their brand placed in," says Kauber.
The company's blogging strategy advanced further this past March to include Twitter, the micro-blogging tool in which just 140 characters are used to communicate.
"It has been quite a successful endeavor for us," says Kauber, noting the company has 2,000 followers and that Twitter has brought in new product sales.
"Twitter has rapidly become one of the top 10 sites that refers us traffic, and represents a very different experience than the blogsphere. The environment is at the same time more dynamic and informal, while also being easier for a marketer to manage given that it is a single eco-system of dialogue," says the CIO.
Additional networking tools such as Tweetdeck and CoTweet, are also helping the company identify potential new clients.
"It much easier to identify kindred spirits and engage them in a dialogue than is possible in the blog sphere at large," Kauber explains.
The company's successful social networking is tied to several elements.
The first is that the social strategy provided value to the audience, says Kauber.
"There is no one right answer to how a brand can best offer value on Twitter, but the decision needs to be appropriate and authentic to the brand," he advises.
"In our case, the content we have offered has been a mixture of highlighting relevant general news and facts about the real estate and title insurance industry coupled with an outreach to people that are tweeting on those topics to put the news and product offerings in context for them."
For example, if a follower tweets about not being able to qualify for a home refinance because their home has lost value, the company might suggest they look into an FHA loan that has less stringent requirements.
"We also will reach out to consumers that tweet about buying or refinancing a home in a state where we offer our products and offer a suggestion as to how they can save in that process," he notes, explaining that this often requires reviewing the tweet stream of the consumer to learn about the potential clients and engage in a manner that is informed and helpful and not overly commercial.
Such interaction has created a "balance" in which followers have responded to over 300 public tweets from senior management as well as many private direct messages.
The lone negative feedback was from competitors trying to detract from its efforts, he added.
Companies also must make a serious commitment to making social networking work, says the CIO.
"Whether blogging, tweeting or using any of the myriad other forms of social networking, there is a time commitment involved to conduct a truly authentic conversation in these channels," says Kauber.
For example, just cutting and pasting a response multiple times simply won't be effective.
"As the person responsible for evaluating these channels in our organization, I have employed a very hands-on approach to managing them as I feel it is critical to get a feel for the norms in each channel; these insights will be key to scaling our efforts," explains Kauber.
The company's social networking strategy continues to evolve and Kauber is looking to bulk up resources to advance the effort.
"We have begun to develop our presence on Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networking sites," he says.
"Our tactics will adapt to these channels as they tend to be more insular than an open platform like Twitter, and so gaining critical mass requires a different approach, although we will bring a consistent brand identity and authenticity to each."
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