A recent eMarketer article suggests no, companies “don’t need to respond to every ounce of negative buzz.” The article suggests letting other customers (or brand advocates) address some of the problems. That strategy can backfire, though, if a number of customer questions go unanswered. For example, 49.5 percent of respondents in a Conversocial survey said they’d be far less likely to buy anything from a company that had unanswered complaints or inquiries on their social sites.

If customer questions are bogging down your brand page on social sites and your social media team, consider establishing a separate page for customer service-related issues. For example, Comcast’s @comcastcares and Delta Airline’s @DeltaAssist pages on Twitter are good examples of companies successfully setting up a separate presence to handle customer issues.

If the thought of managing multiple pages makes your head spin and you’re not going to address customer concerns on your brand page, consider directing customers to where they can get help. For example, Virgin Airlines offers a clear statement in its Twitter bio: “Although we won’t address specific guest service issues on Twitter, our team of experts is eager to help you at http://vgn.am/GstHlp or call 1-877-359-8474.” This is also a good tactic if you’re in an industry that deals with sensitive personal and/or financial information, such as banks.

If your company is constrained either by budget or resources—or both—and you know you won’t be able to respond to every customer question that comes in over the virtual transom, I recommend establishing criteria to help prioritize the questions you should respond to. Consider whether the problem or question is related to any of following:

• Brand reputation
• Product quality
• Safety
• A potential legal issue

When you do respond to customer complaints, keep in mind that it matters not only what you say, but also how you say it.

Are you using social sites to field customer service issues? How do you determine which questions or complaints to respond to?

While Karla unravels the buzzword to present a comprehensive definition of content marketing, I came across a number of other buzzwords in CMI’s predictions survey. Namely, content hub, crowdsourcing, content curation, and personal branding. You’ve probably heard these buzzwords bandied about, but below we’ve defined them and provided further reading for each term.

Content hub
Smartphones and tablet computers are useful devices, but using them to surf the Web for your daily dose of news and social media updates can be painful. Enter the content hub, which pulls together content based on your profile and interests together with your social media networks and curates them into a single destination. Content hubs that are making the news are Flipboard for iPhone, Google Currents, and Zite.

And where there is a trend, some marketers are already thinking of ways for brands to take advantage of it. If you’re creating original content for your customers, why not create a content hub that would be useful to your target audience and make it into a destination that they will return to regularly? To give this a test drive, check out the VentureFizz blog post that details how to build a basic content hub for your brand.

Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing, the idea of gathering a group or “crowd” to accomplish a task through an open call, has been around for as long as folks are willing to donate their time for a good cause. The Habitat for Humanity project, which draws thousands of volunteers around the United States to build and beautify homes for the needy, is a great example. Marketers are now using crowdsourcing in social media to increase awareness of their brands and/or campaigns.

Brands have also used crowdsourcing to help them develop new products. My Starbucks Idea, for example, encourages customers to share their coffee-related ideas and wishes online. However, there is an art to managing crowdsourcing projects, as my colleague Siobhan Nash explains in her post, “Why crowdsourcing isn’t a synonym for community.”

Content curation
Content curation is an extension of content aggregation, the automatic gathering of links, often by broad topics such as business, politics, and sports. While aggregation provides no connections between the links, content curation uses human intervention in the form of editorial judgment and organization to present content pulled from a variety of sources that’s relevant and timely. Another Tendo View post describes content curation in more detail: “Content curation: aggregation with a new name?”

Personal branding
We can’t stop some of our friends who are hell-bent on posting embarrassing pictures of us, but we can control what we post about ourselves. You are making personal branding decisions each time you craft your status update, post a comment on someone’s blog, or Instagram that cute picture of your dog. You are defining how others view you. Some content marketing experts say personal branding and corporate branding will collide in 2012, benefiting both parties.

Brands can build trust in the market through the trusted reputation of some personal brands (for example, when your employees post positive sentiments about your company to their friends). Individuals get increased visibility within the industry by being associated with your brand. Read more about how personal and corporate branding will converge.

Have you put any of these buzzwords to good use? Please share your story!

Often a company’s execs will use their personal accounts to cheerlead about the brand. Although that human-to-human interaction may provide the best “social engagement,” having a brand-based identity is valuable for at least three reasons:

• It’s easier to find. Not everyone will think to search for your vice president of development’s feed. They’ll be looking for your company name.
• It’s an information hub. Large enterprises might have a dozen people tweeting about the company and the market niche. For specific announcements and news, though, you expect a corporate site to aggregate it.
• It’s permanent and controlled. When employees leave, they take their accounts with them. A former employee may shut down the account, stop tweeting about your market niche, or even start tweeting about the rival company he or she just joined. A corporate identity is yours, even through staff changes. And you don’t have to fight for it in court.

But there’s one challenge to “@companyname” versus “@companyperson.” If the face of your account is your logo rather than, you know, a face, how do you successfully engage in the most personal and identity-driven form of marketing since door-to-door? It’s no problem when the tweet is “Hey, watch our new video” or “Attend our free webinar.” But what happens when it’s more personal?

Companies large and small have dealt with this potential social disconnect in a variety of ways. Here are a few:

Allstate tweets as a single entity (@allstate), but its page posts names and photos of the six-person team behind the tweeting. Generic announcements of contests and such go unsigned, but tweets directed at individuals or with a personal flair are initialed. It makes a big difference when the tweet responding to a problem and offering direct contact for resolution comes from an identifiable human rather than a cipher behind a logo.

(In a sort of inverse, Michelle Obama initials all the tweets that are actually from her. Tweets without her initials are sent out by anonymous staffers. Either way, it’s about authenticity and the human touch.)

Social media marketing house Radian6 names its Twitter attendants in its profile (@Radian6) and posts their active hours. Is it weird to think of something on the Internet being “closed for business”? Maybe, but at least the company lets followers know when they can and can’t expect responses. Intel tells you who its three tweeters are (@Intel) and links you to their personal Twitter accounts as well, but there’s no way to tell who’s tweeting what on the main Intel feed. Because Intel’s stream is fairly impersonal, even by B2B standards, knowing who’s typing each tweet seems less important.

But @CiscoSecurity names the marketing manager behind the account as Jason Lackey, who runs it with a mix of announcements and interesting security-related links. The recent content I scanned was not much more “personal” than on Cisco Systems’ main feed (@CiscoSystems is as impersonal as @Intel), but just having a name made those “hey, interesting reading” links more appealing to me.

There are different uses and strategies behind a Twitter account, especially when you’re coordinating your brand identity with other, human-identified accounts, so there’s no one correct approach. And norms change.  People become used to the idea of “companies” tweeting.

I turn the question to you—should a brand’s official Twitter account identify its humans or keep them anonymous? If it depends on circumstances, which circumstances persuade you one way or the other?

1. Content type: Trend pieces
Mistake: Promoting a trend that is too navel-gazing and doesn’t consider true audience need
Trend articles are a great way of getting across your company’s point of view of a changing situation in your market. But be sure to think through the trend that you’re focusing on. Is the trend truly something that is happening across your industry or is it a change that you’re hoping will happen as a result of customers using the product that you’re promoting? For example, is it truly a trend that consumers are buying 3D TVs and regularly consuming 3D content? Or is the “trend” the imagination of the 3D entertainment industry and the reality is that not many consumers are crying out for the technology? Readers appreciate authenticity and will place your brand in higher regard if your thoughts are based on fact.

2. Content type: Case studies
Mistake: Being merely a rah-rah vehicle for your company or product
Granted, you’re not going to develop a case study of a competitor’s user, nor are you going to spotlight a customer that’s using your services in a less than optimal way. But that doesn’t mean you should view your case study as a way to pat yourself on the back without considering whether the case study offers lessons learned or tips that could be useful to other current or potential customers.

If possible, consider selecting a case study in which the customer did experience stumbling blocks when implementing your technology or service—and was able to overcome them. Highlighting the stumbling blocks doesn’t put your company in a bad light; rather it adds some realism to the case study and demonstrates that it’s possible to overcome obstacles. We all know that it’s never smooth sailing when it comes to implementing new technology or using a new product for the first time.

3. Content type: All
Mistake: Being formulaic
What types of movies have made a lasting impression on you? Formulaic Hollywood blockbusters, or indie movies with a plot that has interesting twists and turns? My guess is the latter. Likewise, content types can have more impact if you approach them in different ways.

Consider case studies. Instead of introducing Customer A, its problems, and how your technology or product helped it solve the problems, consider a different approach, such as a fly-on-the-wall report. I’ll never forget the day-in-the-life report I wrote about how vendor nCircle creates its security vulnerability testing software. I was invited to be a fly on the wall on one of its crucial days of the month. The article was an interesting way of describing how nCircle’s products work and their benefits.

Q&As are another example. They’re a frequent go-to content type because you can create them with your in-house subject matter expert via email interviews and you don’t have to worry about writing a free-form article from interview notes. You ask the questions and you publish an edited version of your questions and the interviewee’s answers. It’s straightforward. But sometimes it can be more interesting and useful to your audience if they could ask the questions…or if the interviewee was an expert from a third party, such as an industry analyst firm, an industry association, or a customer? Or perhaps have the third party ask questions of your in-house expert? That would help to create a discussion based on issues that really matter to your audience—not what you think your audience wants to hear.

4.  Content type: Response to sudden industry changes
Mistake: Promoting your company without providing anything useful to your audience
In his blog, Friesen describes this content type as “the meteor”—a sudden change in your industry as opposed to a “trend” that may be slow moving. I interpret that to mean news of a major security breach at a credit card company, for example. If your business is personal security or security software, you’ll want to take the opportunity to respond to the news. A good response would be to provide useful tips on how consumers can protect their personal identity if their personal information was potentially compromised. Don’t merely use the opportunity to sell your product. That would seem disingenuous.

Have you come across any of these mistakes? How have you approached these or other content types? We’d love to hear from you in the comments.

I might also have mentioned that’s what old seems to be new again—just revamped for the Internet age. Our parents clipped coupons, we use Groupon. Our parents had garage sales, we have Craig’s List and eBay. We used to make collages, and now we make them online, using sites like Pinterest. However, I can’t really discuss these topics with (Pinterest) authority because I’m still waiting for my invite to join the Pinterest community. When I requested an invitation last Thursday, here’s the message I received:

Hi! Thanks for joining the Pinterest waiting list. We’ll be sure to send you an invite soon. In the meantime, you can follow us on Twitter. You can also explore a few pins. We’re excited to get you pinning soon!

- Ben and the Pinterest Team

They get points in my book for giving me more information—“pins” to explore and a link to the site’s Twitter feed. The email isn’t just a dead-end. However, I found the message to be a big missed opportunity. Here’s why:

I requested an invitation, but that doesn’t mean I know much—or anything—about the site. This is Pinterest’s chance to tell me why it’s cool and why it’s worth waiting for. It doesn’t need to be five paragraphs—I appreciate short and snappy—but give me something. And give me a clue about when I’ll get an invite and why there’s a waiting list in the first place. Is it to create more buzz and excitement? Is it because the servers can’t handle the potential onslaught of traffic caused by the site’s increasing popularity? There might be strategic reasons that the company doesn’t want to share with users, but it can’t be too tough to think of a customer-friendly explanation to provide to people who have expressed an interest in your business.

Also, who’s Ben? Clearly, he’s an informal kind of guy, but should I have to do a Google search to find out that he’s most likely Ben Silbermann, one of the site’s cofounders? A little context in the email would have been helpful.

Lastly, and most importantly, the email omits the fact that if you have a friend who’s already joined, that person can send you an invite. Wouldn’t it make sense to mention that? Had I known, I would’ve emailed a handful of friends or posted something on Facebook to find out if anyone I knew had already joined, thereby spreading the buzz about the company.

Every communication with your customer is an opportunity, especially if it’s potentially your *only* communication with that customer. Don’t blow it.

She outlines compelling reasons why content marketing matters more today than at any other time, and she provides a comprehensive range of examples of how an effective, robust content marketing strategy might come to life. Both of these are important for marketers who want to move past the buzz to understand 1) why they should care and 2) what to do about it.

Why is content marketing so crucial today?
Lieb highlights the age-old publishing adage about the implied relationship—based upon an exchange of value—that takes place between content providers and their audiences. She reminds us that while the business model may have moved from one of interruption to willing participation (“the marketing of attraction”), we’re still asking for precious resources from our audience: their time and attention. Despite the tremendous opportunity that content marketing offers, if you are going to attempt to gain and hold your audience’s attention, then you need to offer content worthy of that request.

Lieb also highlights how the relationship between content marketing and search, social, and satisfied customers (i.e., those beyond the buying cycle) creates a virtuous cycle for discovery, evaluation, and trust in the buying process. The book incorporates compelling survey results from eMarketer and others to demonstrate that we’ve moved past the tipping point in how the online population consumes and interacts with content to create a real opportunity for those companies that employ content marketing tactics effectively.

The heart of the book
Lieb provides an impressive range of content marketing tactics, with explanations and recent best-in-class examples. For many of the tactics, she could’ve written a separate book to provide more specifics, but she succeeds by keeping content at the center, and showing how these tactics can work to achieve marketing goals (that said, my only nit is that it would’ve been nice to see more of a stake in the ground—and more examples—in the chapter on measurement).

Ultimately, Lieb has written a logical, comprehensive, and helpful primer covering everything from basic definitions, audience and content types, tactical content applications, and post-publication activities. It’s a great overview for marketers who want to understand what all the buzz is about and, more importantly, learn the why, what, and how of content marketing. For those of us already immersed as day-to-day practitioners, the book reminds us of the myriad ways we can expand our practice and provide a range of benefits to our own brands and clients.

Content marketing has hit its stride and entered the marketing mainstream. According to a Content Marketing Institute (CMI) study, 60 percent of marketers plan to increase their content marketing budget this year; that’s up 9 percent from 2011.

Before you start creating content in earnest, however, you need a strategy. And before you can create a strategy, you need to get a handle on the content you already have. That means cataloging all of your content—and not just what resides on your website. This list includes:

•    apps
•    articles
•    blog posts
•    case studies
•    newsletters (print and digital)
•    interactive content
•    magazines (print and digital)
•    mobile content
•    podcasts
•    presentations
•    slideshows
•    social media
•    tools (such as an online calculator)
•    videos
•    webinars/webcasts
•    white papers

It’s also a good practice to audit the content you’ve posted on sites such as YouTube, SlideShare, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

At Tendo, we recommend auditing your content at least once a year, preferably every six months. If a lot of the content you’re creating is time-sensitive (as opposed to evergreen), you should consider auditing your content quarterly.

Audience and goals
When taking an inventory of your content, think about the target audience for the content and what stage of the buying cycle it addresses. Ideally, you want a mix of content that targets all your audiences at each stage of the buying cycle. Focus your content creation efforts on the gaps your clean-up exercise uncovers.

Consider, too, whether the content type is the most appropriate and effective for the topic. For example, a customer success story currently executed in HTML or as a PDF on your website may be more effective and reach a broader audience as a video on YouTube.

Finally, review all content for how well it addresses your business goals. You may have a plethora of case studies for acquiring new customers but a dearth of content aimed at retaining your customers. Keep the distribution channel in mind, too. Different channels are more effective outlets depending on the goal. If one of your company goals is brand awareness, then sharing your content on Twitter makes sense. But if you want to improve your company’s thought leadership in the industry, a webinar or SlideShare presentation would be a more appropriate distribution channel.

Creating a variety of engaging content—and enough of it—is a challenge for most businesses. Knowing what content you currently have will help you decide what you want to keep, revise, or repurpose, or get rid of altogether. From there, you can focus your efforts on creating content to fill the gaps.

When was the last time you cataloged your company’s content?

Over the last few years, computer scientists and business intelligence experts have been developing sentiment analysis tools that track and assess the perception of your brand in social media conversations, newspapers, online chat groups, videos, and many other digital sources.

Sentiment analysis is a powerful tool that enables you to understand what customers and potential customers are saying about you. Used correctly, you’d be able to stop negative sentiment from getting out of control or promote and grow positive sentiment.

Experts suggest that there are some 200 tools and platforms that provide sentiment analysis. Some, such as Jive Software’s free Fathom application, provide basic monitoring and analyzing of social media conversations. With Fathom, organizations can keep track of conversations and engage in these discussions, as necessary. Facebook was recently reported to be testing a negative sentiment analysis feature for its upgraded Page Insights offering. Page administrators would be able to view the number of Facebook users who have commented negatively in response to a brand post.

Other sentiment analysis tools provide more detailed analysis and are able to notify and mobilize specific job functions, such as product development, customer support, public outreach, and lead generation, based on the analysis.

What the best sentiment analysis tool should do
The Holy Grail of sentiment analysis tools is not only to listen to conversations on social media and other digital platforms, but also to marry that with customer data found in traditional sources, such as customer relationship management or enterprise relationship management systems used to identify sales and business opportunities. The most effective sentiment analysis tool would be able to filter the noise around social media, understand and take into account different cultural and geographic nuances, predict likely outcomes, and present business decisions as recommended actions.

There are many examples of organizations acting on sentiment analysis. A New York Times article describes how StubHub avoided a full-blown customer revolt by offering discounts and credits to fans affected by a rain-delayed Yankees-Red Sox game. Fans had mistakenly been told by stadium officials that the game had been canceled. The fans were denied requests for refunds because the game was actually played. When fans voiced their displeasure online, the company moved to offer discounts and credits.

Sarcasm or genuine sentiment?
Experts say there are a number of challenges with sentiment analysis. “Sarcasm or other forms of derisive language are extremely problematic for technologies to interpret,” notes a post on the TIBCO Business Intelligence Blog. Context could be another problem. How well would sentiment analysis tools differentiate between these two statements: “Rolex watches cost a great deal” versus “I have a great deal of work ahead of me. Thank my Rolex watch for keeping me on time.” Also, these complex tools likely need the human touch of a statistician or business intelligence expert to analyze the results effectively.

If you haven’t experienced sentiment analysis tools, you can test out the very basic tool at tweetfeel.com. According to the site’s FAQ, the tool monitors positive and negative feelings in Twitter conversations using some “insanely complex algorithms to make sure your results fairly display the true feelings.” Type in a common term, such as “Ashton Kutcher,” and watch the numbers under the happy green icon and the unhappy red icon ratchet up as the real-time tweets showing your search term scroll down the screen.

The TweetFeel FAQ admits the tool can be fooled by sarcasm, though: “Achieving perfection is impossible, but that doesn’t mean we won’t try.”