Get Local With Social:  If you’re not there, they’re talking about you anyway

with Sara Lingafelter

Specialty retailers who are not participating in social media miss opportunities every day to serve and build stronger bonds with their customers.  From customer service, to customer acquisition, to community building and influencer outreach, specialty retailers have an opportunity to leverage their competitive advantage as place-based entities to build community and drive sales.  In this presentation, Sara Lingafelter, Social Media Specialist at REI, will present a case study on REI’s local social media program, and host a Q&A session, from which multi- and single door retailers will be able to take away best practices, tips and tricks, and other practical advice for developing a local retail social strategy.

The real draw, though, are the other speakers and panelists – I’m looking at you, Brian Solis and Jessica Northey.

More information:  http://socialmedia301.com/

About the preso:  Based on my own experience as an “Influencer” in the sports and outdoor market, and including research and responses from over 300 survey respondents about what inspires and influences their outdoor activities, this 50-minute presentation takes a deeper look at people who exhibit influential behavior and what makes them tick.

And I think some of the content will surprise you.

Enjoy, and I look forward to your comments!

About Sara

Sara claims to not be a “social media expert,” although many in the industry disagree. By day, she works as a social media specialist for REI; by night and weekend she freelances as a writer and social strategist, is the storyteller and connector behind RockClimberGirl.com, is an active #OIBIZ community member on Twitter as @theclimbergirl, and is the Secretary of the Outdoor Industry Womens Coalition. Find more information about Sara online at http://saralingafelter.com.

Last night, I posted an update on Facebook saying:

Dear REI Southcenter staff: If one of you manages to help me remember to buy a KMTT Mountain CD for my mom before I leave your store tomorrow morning, there might be something in it for you.

I don’t really say things online expecting anyone to listen.  I say things online because I am amused by doing so, and by connecting with people through words and shared experience.  It’s completely selfish.  That sometimes people do listen is kinda cool.

And this time, someone was listening.

When I got to work this morning (first stop, a shop visit at Southcenter REI), I buzzed my way in to the not yet open store.  I dropped my bags, and headed back toward the back of the store to say my hellos.  As I walked through the quiet of the unopened store, the long straight aisle invited me to do a cartwheel and I accepted the invitation.

When I met up with staff for a quick clinic, a staffer named Lisa looked at me a little bit quizzically, and said,

“I’m not sure what this is about… but someone from direct sales just called Heather here, and told her to tell me to make sure that you don’t leave the store without buying a Mountain CD?”

The remark was phrased as a question, most definitely.  I was a little confused… then remembered my Facebook update, and then literally jumped up and down with excitement that…

Someone had listened to me.

Not only had someone listened to me… someone listened to me, and then cared enough about what I said, to pick up their phone, and call the Southcenter store, and help create the conditions for me to achieve one of the items on my to do list today.

While I was making my rounds of the store after the clinic (again, having forgotten entirely about the CD), another staffer, Janine, walked up to me and put the CD in my hand.  Janine is also, by the way, a hugger like me.  Awesome.

At checkout, I asked Rich if I could take a picture of him selling me the CD that I would not have remembered to get for my mother, were it not for a number of people listening and going out of their way to help me, today.

My mother asks very little of me.  She accepts this wacky life of mine that keeps me from spending as much time in Port Townsend as she and my dad would like.  I routinely miss family meals, and commitments… sometimes at the last minute, because I have to.

For me to walk out of that store today with a $14 CD in hand that my mom asked me to pick up for her is a very little thing in terms of a retail sale.

But that so many people went out of their way to help me do this one little thing for my mom is making my heart very, very warm right now.  It helps me love my job.  It helps me want to return the favor.  To approach each day with the question “What can I do for you today?” on the tip of my tongue.

Are YOU listening?

The guys at One Eyed Bird, along with me, and my friends Jonathan and Kristy have put together an event … we think, the first of its kind in Seattle, to bring together folks from the extended family of action sports, adventure travel and OIBIZ.

I’ll be giving a short (10 minute) presentation… this, taken from the event description:

Sara Lingafelter, who proudly proclaims herself “not a social media expert,” will give a short presentation on how to leverage social media tools to build meaningful relationships (with the side effect of building your brand).  By day, Sara works as a road warrior for Waypoint Outdoor; by night and weekend she freelances as a writer and social strategist, is the storyteller and connector behind RockClimberGirl.com, and is @theclimbergirl on Twitter.  Find more information about Sara online at http://saralingafelter.com.

And, Dirk Collins will give a brief presentation on the current state of film, and how film and our industry intersect.

For more information and to RSVP, please visit:

http://aaoiseattleoctober.eventbrite.com/

And come join us on Tuesday, October 19th!

Rapidly, I built a long list of Twitter and real-life relationships with climbing partners, outdoor industry professionals, big brains in various industries of interest to me and #kickassgirls and boys all over the world.

When a new follower connected with me, I’d manually check out their profile, and follow them back if they weren’t a spammer or bot.

Fast forward two and a half years, and the number of people I followed had gotten completely out of control. When I followed 25 or even 250 people, I was able to form strong bonds through conversation on Twitter, and to really get to know interesting people who over time, I became interested in meeting in real life. When I followed more than 2,000 people, even with sophisticated lists and searching, I found it nearly impossible to do anything other than broadcast my own content, and keep up with @reply messages.

Twitter’s value, for me, is in meeting new, interesting people and building relationships with them toward ultimately meeting in person. Maybe that makes me an atypical social media user, but that’s my MO. Acquiring followers and people to follow is of less interest to me than making meaningful connections with interesting people.

I’ve found myself, in the last few months, questioning whether Twitter’s noise-to-signal ratio makes it worthless for forming new relationships, now that the service is so “big.”

Rather than give up on Twitter, I decided to prune the number of people I follow. Mercilessly.

It’s working, already… I already feel more connected with the people I follow, and like I can — in a few minutes here and there — keep up with the people that I care about, and the people that I would like to get to know better.

Here’s how I reduced the number of people I follow, in order to increase Twitter’s signal-to-noise ratio.

Step One: Protect your closest connections.
I used ReFollow.com to “Lock” those people that I absolutely did NOT want to unfollow.  The first time I used ReFollow, I went through and manually “Locked” the top 30 or so people I know in real life… my closest friends on Twitter.  These are the folks that, even if we haven’t talked in a few weeks or months, I don’t want to lose track of.  If they take six months off from Twitter then come back, I want to see what they have to say.

Step Two: Keep the wheat
Because conversation is what’s important to me about Twitter, I used ReFollow to Show users who have @mentioned me. I then clicked “more” to load as many as ReFollow would load.  These folks… the people who listen enough to @reply to me… are more likely to be people I want to get to know better.  I “locked” the whole of them, a total of 790 people, and followed back the ones that I hadn’t yet.

Step Three:  Weed by hand
Rather than just then “Unfollow” everybody who wasn’t on my “close friends” list, or my @mentions, I used ReFollow to manually review the entire list of everybody left over.  I didn’t spend a ton of time making my decisions… I just did a quick review of avatar, username, and their details (ReFollow gives a great “hover over” bit of information) and followed back interesting people I had missed, and locked the people that I was following that I wanted to continue to follow regardless of whether they follow me, or whether they’ve recently @mentioned me.  This took time.  A few sessions, over a couple of days, in fact.  But it was worth it — I caught a lot of people during this review whose content I value, and, I’m not sure ReFollow’s @mentions filter goes back to the beginning — I found people in my manual review that I know I’ve had conversations with that ReFollow’s filter didn’t pick up, and others that I’ve conversed with via Direct Messages.

Step Four:  Lose the chaff
At this point, everybody I knew I wanted to keep following, as close as I could tell was “Locked” via ReFollow.  It was time to “Unfollow” the rest.

ReFollow displays a warning that mass following and unfollowing is a violation of Twitter’s Terms of Service.  I took the gamble, and used their “UnFollow” tool, regardless.  I wound up unfollowing somewhere under a thousand accounts today (after I’d done a semi-manual purge a few weeks ago) and my account wasn’t suspended… but your mileage may vary, and using any kind of mass unfollow tool is at your own risk.

Step Five:  Fix mistakes, and repair relationships
Inevitably, you’re going to miss some valued people.  Once I’d finished the purge, I sent a note out on Twitter to let folks know that I’d just done a big purge, and to please speak up if I’d unfollowed them.  A few people — mostly newer connections I hadn’t yet followed back spoke up — which is great… now I know they’re listening, and I followed back.  Over the course of the day, I’ve been checking other people who come to mind to make sure that I didn’t accidentally unfollow anyone that springs to mind, and have only found a couple that I’ve refollowed (then sent a DM to, to explain and to reconnect).  I’m sure there are others, so I’ll do this a few more times … tweets to ask people to connect with me if I’m not following them back, and thinking of people on my own to double check.

After all of this, I’m down to following 837 people.  It’s far from my ideal of 200 or so, but given how many people I follow that I know in real life, I just can’t get down to an ideally small list anymore.  Today, I’ve been able to keep up with conversations, and actually read the content from the people I follow, in little bits of time here and there.  I’m still going to miss things, but it’s way better than it was with over 2,000 people to try to get to know and keep up with.

Step Six:  Maintain the signal-to-noise ratio
To try to keep the signal strong, I’m going to add new people that I follow back to a list, so that I can keep an eye on them for awhile and see who I build relationships with, and who I don’t.  If I don’t have conversations, and don’t start to build a relationship after a few weeks, and ultimately, find their content to be more noise than signal, I’ll unfollow.

Yes, it takes time.  But, with all the good that Twitter has brought to my life, it’s worth taking the time to keep the signal strong and the noise down.

What are YOUR strategies for increasing Twitter’s signal-to-noise ratio?

There’s some attention being paid to social media at this year’s Outdoor Retailer Winter Market, as I mentioned in my last post.  To make it easier for you busy #OIBIZ folk, here’s a summary of the events I’ve heard about so far.  What am I missing?  Chime in, in the comments.

Outdoor Retailer Winter Market Tweetup!

Thursday, January 21, 2010 from 8pm – 11pm

Location:  Juniors Tavern, 30 East Broadway, Salt Lake City, UT (801) 322-0318

A Facebook invitation is online. This one’s going to be just plain fun.

Boots on the Ground:  Real People Getting Things Done with Social Media

Friday, January 22, 2010, from 11am – 12pm

Location:  Salt Lake City Marriott Hotel (Convention Center Location), Deer Valley Room

Speakers:

• Sara Lingafelter, Waypoint Outdoor (AKA The Climber Girl) (yup, that’s me!)
• Brad Werntz, Pemba Serves
• Darren Bush, Rutabaga
• Paul Kirwin, founder Channel Signal, Kirwin Communications
• Steph Davis, Professional Athlete and Brand Ambassador

Moderated by Elizabeth Castro, O’Malley Hansen Communications, communications lead for Expedition Hanesbrands

“Boots on the Ground” is the first of a series of “unofficial” social media panel discussions with key influencers in the outdoor adventure community. The moderated discussion will focus on real-life case studies that have created incredible connections and opportunities for individuals that showcase the true power social media. Panelists will share their experiences — what has worked and not worked — how to use it correctly and the backlash when a brand lacks authenticity.

What makes this session different? It’s been organized and promoted utilizing nothing more than the social media channels that many in the outdoor adventure community are currently using to make connections. And it was organized one week prior to the event. It’s an experiment. Let’s see if it works.

Format: Traditional panel format where panelists will be asked a series of questions by a moderator. The second half of the session will be dedicated to audience discussion and questions.  A Facebook invitation is online.

The Social Media and Shopper Marketing Confluence: Taking Outdoor Brands Well Beyond the Weekend

Friday, January 22, 2010 from 12pm – 1pm

Speaker(s):

• John Andrews, Managing Director — Collective Bias, MARS
• Rob Rivenburgh, Executive Vice President & General Manager MARS, MARS

Location: Salt Lake City Marriott Downtown, Salon E

Is it time for you to blaze your brand’s own social media and shopper marketing trails? From dedicated channel blog groups to customized apps and more, the ways you can reach your outdoor shopper enthusiasts are limitless. They also happen to be some of the best ways to create followings for your products that last long past the weekend and through the workweek. So why go with your old flow when you can elevate your brands in ways you never imagined?

The Media is Dead.  Long Live Media

Panelists:

• Steve Casimiro, The Adventure Life;
• Stiv Wilson, Wend;
• Rich Kelly, Nielsen;
• Dustin Robertson, CMO of Backcountry.com

Moderator:  Drew Simmons, Pale Morning Media.

The Media is Dead.  Long Live Media:    A panel discussion on the blurring lines between traditional media and social media, journalism and advertising, and selling products and telling stories.   What lies ahead for storytelling in the outdoor community?    What’s the future of advertising in outdoor magazines and websites?   Who will be telling the outdoors’ most important stories …and who will be reading them?  Topics to be discussed include the sobering decline of “old” media in 2009, the Facebook-fueled boom of social media, and prognostications of what new opportunities might lie ahead in 2010 and beyond.

What am I missing?  Speak up, in the comments!

This is what a trade show looks like before the trade show.

There’s something new afoot for this year’s Outdoor Retailer Winter Market.  Channel Signal has partnered with Outdoor Retailer to give some exposure to the show buzz on Twitter.  The official “hashtag” for this year’s show is #ORWinter, so that users who broadcast content via Twitter related to the show can quickly and easily find those tweets.

The most “talked about” brands who are identified in tweets using their username (so, this applies to companies who actually have a Twitter account) will be featured on a ticker updated every half hour during the show, and additional analysis will be shared by Channel Signal.

There’s a lot here that isn’t new.  During Outdoor Retailer Summer Market, traffic using the #ORSM09 hash tag went froma trickle slow enough on day one that I could keep up during breaks between meetings, to a flood later on in the show, which even I couldn’t keep up with.  People used the #ORSM09 hash tag to share their thoughts about products and brands they’d seen on the show floor, and also to organize impromptu “I’ve got 15 minutes and desperately need some caffiene, who wants to meet by the coffee stand?” tweetups.  The Channel Signal / Outdoor Retailer effort doesn’t change that — as long as brands do their social media homework before dipping a toe into the pool.

This is an opportunity for participants to do it right.  To organically inspire buzz, and get the word out about what their Twitter username is.  Twitter usernames aren’t always what you’d guess because they’re handed out first come first serve.

What’s new is the tracking and compiling data with regard to this feed.  It sounds like brands must be mentioned by Twitter username (e.g. @BrandX) as opposed to hashtag (e.g. #BrandY) which will be an advantage for companies who have obvious or easy to remember usernames and a communication opportunity for those who don’t.

I’m optimistic that our biz “gets it” enough at this point that we won’t see companies spamming the #ORWinter tag in an unsophisticated effort to make the ticker.  Valid use by the brands themselves to spread the word about buzz-worthy things:  Sweet.  Despite the best efforts of the show organizers and journalists who do show coverage, the Outdoor Retailer show floor can be a bit like a game of two cans and a string, so having the #ORWinter channel to communicate about events and what’s cool is a fantastic use of the technology, and it’s completely appropriate for brands to use that channel wisely.

As Channel Signal might say… join in the conversation.  I don’t know how much time I’ll actually have to listen in this show, since I’m on the clock rather than on my own time.  But, this time around, someone is definitely listening.

For more information:

• Join the Conversation:  How does your brand add up?
• Living on the Dark Side of the Moon