Jennifer Navarrete interviews Peter Fasano and Brian Kotlyar of Dachis Group to discuss Social Advertising and making engagement a priority.

Social advertising is moving mainstream as social brands have moved from fan and follower acquisition to story driven engagement. Large and small brands that have disengaged Twitter or Facebook followers will have be challenged to drive sustained success with social advertising if they lack a social content strategy and engaged community. We will talk about the fundamentals of organic social strategy to prepare for future social advertising.

Fasano shares “Ads are good but stories are better,” as stories develop from engaged community, brands need to focus on community engagement in terms of quantitative vs. qualitative.

Check out the full interview below,

Learn more about Dachis Group or connect with our guests on Twitter, @PFasano and @BKotlyar.

Chris Heuer, Co-Founder and Chairman of Social Media Club recently interviewed Natanya Anderson, Director of Social Media for Whole Foods Market.

Did you know they have nearly 1,000 people working on social within Whole Foods?  Their values driven culture has helped them focus on engagement by creating localized content. Whole Foods local marketing teams know their customers better and that engagement lives best on local level through promoting of specials, education on products, customer service experiences and more.

Anderson goes on to say that engagement is customer service driven, so saying ‘Thank you’ when guests share positive customer service experience is part of their strategy. Whole Foods seeks to support customer needs first and provide content second.

Watch the entire video to learn how Whole Foods Market is measuring engagement and what their goals are for the future.

I was following the #SxSW hashtag late Saturday afternoon to see if anything interesting was trending. The hashtag #sxswlurkers kept popping up with tweets like “If you’re a community manager, your job security is lurkers.” I was intrigued. So, I started following the #sxswlurkers stream myself.

The tweets were coming from the SxSW panel discussion: “Lurkers: Your Most Important Community Members.” The panel consisted of Heather Strout – Director of Community Services at Farland Group, Jim Storer – Co-Founder of The Community Roundtable, Mike Pascucci – Social Strategist at Ektron and Mark Wallace – VP, Digital at Environment Data Resource Inc.

Judging from the tweets I saw, there is a lot of disdain for lurkers from community managers. In fact, I know one Facebook community built around fans of a particular sports team where the community manager got frustrated and kicked off over 200 members, just because they weren’t participating enough in the discussions. Even when some tried to get back in, he told them they were banned. Not a good way to build up a community.

Your lurkers are a vital and necessary part of your community. They often make up a majority of your membership but are dismissed as valueless members of the community. Treating your lurkers as if they have no value could be a fatal mistake in managing your community.

For one thing, most community members start as lurkers (people who join, but just look around without saying anything). Many of them are often your evangelists, you just don’t see it happening because it’s either offline or in their other communities.

Lurkers are learners. They access your community for information. Consider them entry level community members. They are there to learn first. Just showing up is a level of contribution. These lurkers could be your next evangelists. The community member cycle starts with non-followers that move on to become lurkers, then they become engaged members and finally they’re evangelists.

How do you deal with lurkers? Lurkers are people you need to nurture in your online community to turn them into active members. Give them a glimpse behind the screen so they can get a sense of what they’ll get from membership. Give them enough information about your community’s purpose and quality content. Create safer places for them to share, even if that means creating private groups within the community.

Don’t be afraid to take conversations offline. You can also use traditional methods that work when engaging with customers. One way to engage lurkers is to create qualified mailing lists and craft newsletters specifically for them. Be inviting. Ask their opinions. Survey lurkers and the community at large to get some metrics on things like satisfaction. Do research to find out what converted other former lurkers.

Turn lurkers into contributors by engaging them immediately. It’s important to create a personalized welcome to each new community member. Some have had success with having members welcome other members as a way to engage them. Also, make it easy for them to take initiative with simple, small tasks like uploading photos.

Sometimes, engaging them is about making sure you’re being engaging yourself. For instance, if you’re writing a blog post, don’t end with a generic question like “what do you think?” Write a compelling question at the end of each post to bring lurkers out of hiding. In fact, it was suggested that 40% of the time making a blog post should be spent working out the question you want readers to answer in the comments. Some went so far as to say you should write that question first, before you write the post.

Remember, active feedback is the goal of community. When you post and get no active feedback – that is feedback telling you that you’re doing it wrong.

You can turn lurkers into contributors. Just start with great content and seed the community – no one wants to be first at a party. Pay attention. What resonates with them? Use what you learn to engage them.

That’s what I picked up lurking on the lurker panel feed. Thank you to the panelist and everyone who tweeted out the great content that became this post. Now, if only someone had tweeted a good question I could ask at the end of this post.  So, how are you dealing with lurkers? What’s worked for you?

[image by Mona Loldwoman http://www.flickr.com/photos/40147761@N04/4335555919/sizes/s/in/photostream/]

What does Maximizing Engagement mean? Industry experts, David Meerman Scott, Eric Qualman, David Carter, Chris Heuer, Paul Gillin, Mike Lewis, Brian Solis and Peter Fasano gathered Sunday afternoon to share their insights and share examples of brands using the Social Media tools to engage with their customers.

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I think they could have talked for hours on this topic, so for now, get a little taste with this 58 minute clip. The internet conveniently died about 10 minutes before the end of the Summit, but we have the balance on hard tape we are currently having edited and will post once available.

A couple key takeaways:

• Paul Gillin: Early findings in a research report he is working on with Awareness finds companies are getting comfortable with the tools and expanding their reach, however, there does not seem to be a standard for determining ROI across any of them.
• Peter Fasano: Produce content authentically. Do not be who you think you need to be, be who you are.
• David Carter: Don’t try to use all the tools at once. Start slow and add to your ‘portfolio’ as you can manage. Looks bad if you have an account somewhere, but no one is there monitoring and maintaining it.
• Chris Heuer: It is not about your time commitment, but about your commitment over time.

I think my favorite moment of the day was when David Meerman Scott asked that we stop using Dell, Zappos and Comcast as the case studies de jour. We totally agree more examples need to be shared and I am glad he threw the gauntlet down so we all benefit from new stories and experiences. So here we go…throwing the baton back to this fine group of men and will ask them each to share ONE company they feel is doing a great job using the tools to engage with their customers. David, Eric, David, Chris, Paul, Mike, Brian and Peter – please provide this in the comments below. ::all eyes on you now::

Our heartfelt thanks to Christine Major and the folks at Awareness, Inc. who sponsored the summit and assisted us in bringing this great group of industry leaders to the Clubhouse. This is a meaty topic for sure and we will work on putting together the Maximum Engagement Summit, Part II (this time will be with all women just to balance it out).

On Sunday March 14, 2010 Awareness Inc is bringing together a group of leading thinkers, executives and communications professionals to grapple with the topic of Engagement in a way that few have yet considered fully. The executive round table being held at the Social Media Clubhouse in Austin, TX will be streamed live, right here so you can join us and participate remotely.

Together we will listen to insightful communications professionals such as authors Paul Gillin, Brian Solis and David Meerman Scott. They will be joined by a handful of experienced executive such as Mike Lewis from Awareness Inc, Jennifer Milano of Kayak.com, and James Hart of ASOS.com Other participants in this round table conversations include Jason Falls, Peter Fasano, Wendy Tan White and a dozen other experts who can really answer this question and get at what matters most.

This unique conversation will be facilitated by Chris Heuer who seems to think that engagement is the third generation of marketing philosophies, following on the broadcast and interactive eras. As moderator, he promises to be fair and balanced, but he clearly sees engagement as a way for great companies to differentiate themselves and find a new path to success.

In our attempt to definitively answer whether engagement is just another buzzword or if there is something bigger brewing, we are fortunate to be joined by Brian Solis, author of the new book Engage! who has quite a bit to say about this subject. While many believe he engagement meme is on the edge of the cliff he believes we are on the cusp of a big breakthrough in the marketing profession, a day when marketers will realize the true power of engagement. But first they need to understand what’s different and what’s the benefit.

So we will build upon Paul Gillin’s research to explore what is being called the Social Media Multiplier and how that not only creates maximum engagement for a brand, but also maximizes the impact of the brand’s marketing efforts. His published findings that will be discussed include the belief that the next big challenge is to get procedures and organizations in place to integrate social media into other communication programs.

But that has always been the challenge.

In the 90′s it became clear that the most effective way to market products and services was through the use of multiple channels. Email, banner ads or direct mail used on their own were never as effective as integrated programs running within and across multiple channels. Any channel used on its own were as good as the proverbial one legged chair. The importance of an integrated muilti-channel approach has proven to be true yet again in social media.

With the rise and widespread adoption of social media, the technical barriers to participation have been removed enabling consumers and businesses of all sizes to embrace the power of their voice online. Not only can they speak to their jubilation or frustration with any company, but they can potentially be heard by all. As a result, companies are adapting to the shifting balance of power and responding to the market’s demands for respect, transparency and even, dare we say, love.

Just as some individuals like vanilla and others chocolate ice cream, different people have different channel preferences for interaction. Some will come to you, some want you to come to them.. Some prefer Twitter, others Facebook, and others still Bebo. With new social destinations appearing daily across the web, organizations are facing an increasingly complex world of multi-channel conversations making it even more difficult to deliver satisfaction to a more demanding market.

Internally, organizations are facing the challenge of which group “owns” social media. As marketers determine how to tie social media into their broader business objectives, they are receiving conflicting messages about whether social media needs to be centralized and most are still determining how to measure success.

For those that crack this connundrum, there is the promise of a tremendous payoff. But is it real? Is the idea of genuine cross-platform engagement more buzzwordy goodness or is it really the harbinger of a new era in business, marketing and society as the engagement evangelists proclaim?

If you are a marketing professional this is a not to be missed livestream. If you are going to be in Austin for SxSW you can request an invitation to join us in the clubhouse studio, but please understand there just isn’t enough room for us to accommodate everyone as it being hosted in a private house as opposed to a big venue like a convention center.