The right way to use social media: timely, relevant, actionable

A new study came out this past week that said 56 percent of chief marketing officers at companies who believe they are "advanced" in the use of social media admit they still don't know how to utilize social media effectively as a marketing tool. Scary. I've been giving this a lot of thought recently and have come to the conclusion that there really is a simple rule for effectively using social media and it's this -- your messages must be TIMELY, RELEVANT, and ACTIONABLE. If they don't meet at least two of the three criteria, don't do it!

Eric D. Schulz

It seems that many companies have invested in having people dedicated to social media, and therefore figure that if they've got this person, they better be posting on Facebook and Twitter 17 times a day! And therein lies the problem. If you are doing this, you’re spamming. Grit your teeth, and hold yourself back. Look at every message -- is it TIMELY, RELEVANT, and ACTIONABLE?

Social media is great for giving things away, but most companies are having a hard time figuring out how to generate sales. There are certain industries that are perfectly positioned to effectively use social media -- restaurants, fast food chains, retail stores and movie theatres. Need to stimulate purchases? Need some customers for dinner tonight? Tweet and post a "today only" special. Timely, Relevant, Actionable. Sports teams can use social media effectively to disseminate information and special offers. TV/Radio stations absolutely can use social media to drive consumers. Watch this show for a chance to win X. Listen at 4 p.m. to win Y. A local TV station here in Utah in fact has used social media so effectively to drive it’s 10 p.m. newscast that it was able to rise from a perennial #2 position to #1 in the market and continues to build their ratings/share advantage on the back of their effective use of social media tied to a "watch and win" contest nightly within their newscast.

Consumer product companies have a problem, however -- what can you say about Tide detergent that's timely, relevant and actionable? Probably not much. So, as my momma always said, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. Save your breath. The same study I referenced also asked consumers how often they wanted to hear marketing messages from companies they "liked" -- the answer? Most only wanted to hear from them once a month or less. A smaller portion said once a week was OK -- none said "everyday" -- let alone 17 times a day!

Social media CAN be a powerful marketing tool if you use it correctly. Unfortunately, most companies are just using it for spamming out useless information. If what you have to say isn't timely, relevant and actionable, stop doing it.

- Eric D. Schulz

Eric D. Schulz is the co-director of strategic marketing and brand management at the Jon M Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University. Prior to joining the University, he spent over 20 years in consumer product marketing with Procter & Gamble, The Walt Disney Company, and The Coca-Cola Company. He can be reached at eric.schulz@usu.edu.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We hope you have a safe and enjoyable Thanksgiving break. We look forward to seeing you next week.

Happy Thanksgiving!

A room full of people are smitten by a design

I promised you last week that I’d give you a peek at a new design concept that changed the way we have been envisioning what Huntsman Hall might look like. Hey, you went ahead and looked at the picture already, didn’t you?

Well, what do you think? If you were like those of us who were presented with this preliminary design concept last week, you liked it immediately. Of course, we got to see a three-dimensional model but this image should give you a sense for the unusual, innovative design that we fell in love with. We unanimously voted to go in this direction. We were smitten by this concept.

The new building, Huntsman Hall, as proposed, would be a functional, iconic building that would integrate well with the George S. Eccles Business Building. The first and second floors, which would be mainly classrooms and student meeting rooms, would offer great views of Cache Valley. The third floor will be mainly office space.

The sweeping design will take up where Lund Hall now sits and will extend into the construction staging area on the west side of the business building, and will wrap around the east side of the building to near Moen Hall.

We think it is a phenomenal concept that will look just plain cool. This initial concept includes two large two-story entry ways – one from the side of building that faces Route 89, and one on the northwest side of the building that will offer access to both the George S. Eccles Business Building and Huntsman Hall. It will connect the old to the new buildings in two places and create a nice open courtyard area, which will be sheltered from the wind, between the two buildings.

This is just a preliminary design concept, so the design may change as we work out details. I will share with you more images as the architectural renderings begin to take shape. But isn’t it cool?

- Ken Snyder

Graduating class with brighter outlook

Good news. According to U.S. News and World Report, the class of 2011 has a brighter job outlook than previous years. And salary offers are on the rise in addition to job offers.

That may be the case, but it's still not easy. I read a blog with some tips on what to do between graduation and that first big-boy job.

Paul Lewis Siddoway

The main point I got was essentially "pretend like you have a job." Have a regular schedule, set goals, and spend at least 40 hours a week working toward them. If you have a job, great. If you have time left, spend it looking for a job. If you still have more time left, be working on something else that will help. If you're into marketing, blog about marketing fails (like putting an ad for 5th and 6th graders' ski passes in a college newspaper) and marketing successes you've seen. If nothing else, it shows you are keeping up with your job competition and critically thinking others' marketing strategies. Companies like critical thinkers.

And then be patient and don't stress out.

I think that's good advice for anyone.

- Paul Lewis Siddoway

The best and worst thing about the internet

Sometimes, it’s best to just keep some thoughts to yourself.

Connor Child

Arguably the best and worst thing about the internet is that it gives just about everyone a voice. Once upon a time all you could do was rant about the Raiders’ offense to three of your friends – now, you can get on a message board and say something deeply poignant like “CARSON PALMER SUCKS!!!” and get 15 responses in an hour. The upside is increased feedback, efficient communication and instant responses. The downside is that a phrase like “CARSON PALMER SUCKS!!!” is Shakespearian compared to 90 percent of the drivel you will come across on any open internet forum.

As I said earlier, some thoughts are better off left unsaid. This American Life recently reran one of my all-time favorite episodes, “Right to Remain Silent.” The first segment of the program focuses on Joe Lipari, a man who became infuriated with the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue in New York City and made his anger abundantly clear in a Facebook post later that day. After watching the movie Fight Club, he posted a paraphrased quote from the movie that said, among other things, that he might “walk into an Apple store on Fifth Avenue with an Armalite AR-10 gas powered semi-automatic weapon and pump round after round into one of those smug, fruity little concierges."

One of his Facebook friends saw the post and reported him to the police, and it wasn’t long before he was visited by the police and charged with two felonies. He has spent the last few years in and out of courts fighting the charges. Although the ordeal appears to be over (a judge dismissed the charges in February), he definitely paid a price.

Lipari was obviously being sarcastic. But sarcasm doesn’t come through on the web quite like it does in person. Additionally, it’s probably a good idea to avoid any sort of references to pumping rounds of ammunition into people.

Extreme cases like Lipari’s are the exception and not the rule. The First Amendment is thriving in today’s era of social media, according to an editorial in the Dallas Morning News. In 2006, 45 percent of students surveyed said the First Amendment guaranteed too many rights. That number dropped to 23 percent in the 2011 survey. The increase in use of social media has also led to increased tolerance of opposing views. A group called the Knight Foundation “found a link between social media and tolerance of unpopular opinions; daily users were the most tolerant and infrequent users the least.”

Let’s just hope these people eventually come up with something cleverer than “CARSON PALMER SUCKS!!!”

- Connor Child

Huntsman Hall - What's in and what's out

After brainstorming, prioritizing and more prioritizing, we’ve made some decisions about what we want to go into Huntsman Hall, our new 85,000-square-foot building. Here is what we are planning for now:

Ken Snyder

• There will be 15 to 20 study rooms for meetings and student group projects.

• We are planning on ten new classrooms in the building.

• There will be a nice student lounge.

• We plan to accommodate our students with a café.

• We will have a “resource library” with a quiet study area.

• There will be two rooms for meetings and VIP receptions. One will be larger than the O.C. Tanner lounge on the ninth floor in our current building, and the other will be an executive board room for 25-30 people.

• We will convert the classrooms that are sometimes called “the caves” in rooms 317 and 319 in the Eccles Building into office space, freeing up more room in the new building for new, state-of-the-art classrooms.

• Most of our faculty offices will remain in the Eccles Business Building. We will probably need to move one department of faculty offices to the new building.

• The Orson A. Christensen Auditorium, Room 215 in our business building now, will remain our largest classroom.

The architects also proposed a really cool idea for what the building might look like, but I’m going to save that information for next week. Here’s a teaser, however. It’s a unique design unlike anything we have discussed or envisioned before. Stay tuned for more information next week.

- Ken Snyder

NBA players should form their own league

Memo to: All NBA Players (Past & Present)

From: Eric Schulz

Subject: Game Plan for Starting Your OWN League

Congratulations on turning down the latest proposal from the owners. Bold move. Now, here’s something to think about. How about thumbing your nose at the NBA and its owners, and start up your own league – the UBL (Unified Basketball League)?

When the NBA was formed decades ago, it needed rich people to make it work. But it doesn’t anymore. YOU are all rich people. Screw them. They locked YOU out. You don’t need “owners” anyway. It feels so aristocratic. They want a nuclear option? Well here it is. Blow up their entire system and put them all out of business. You want to strike fear in their eyes – this is it. Starting a players-owned league isn’t that hard, and in fact, you can do it much cheaper and streamlined than they can. And if YOU own the league, YOU keep ALL the revenues, not just half. So, here’s your game plan.

Eric D. Schulz

1) Form A League Where All Teams Are 100% League Owned. This gets rid of “the man” (David Stern, league lawyers, and all the “owners") and you are in complete control. Make your own TV / media deals. Sell your own sponsorships. Sell your own tickets. Instead of having 30 different teams operated by 30 different groups all doing 30 different things, you’ll have ONE centralized system for everything managed at the league level. Each city would need a small staff, but nowhere near the size they are now. And the economies of scale you’d have from one ticketing system, one licensing / sponsorship group, one building leasing group, and one media division would slice out a lot of the costs of doing business that currently exist, and give you great negotiating leverage.

2) Pay Each Of Yourselves A Base Salary + Incentives + Cash Shares That Are Divvied Up At The End Of Each Season. There would be three pay components for every player:

a. Set up your league so that everyone on every team makes the same amount of base salary during the regular season.

b. But here’s the twist --everyone on each team earns a $50,000 bonus for each regular season victory, and a $250,000 bonus for each post-season victory. So, you get paid to play, but you get paid more to win!


c. At the end of the season, you divide the remaining league revenues amongst yourselves, based on a statistical model with the players who performed the best and put butts in the seats (Kobe, Dirk, Kevin, Dwight, LeBron, et al) getting more.

So how would this play out? Assume every player in the league is paid a base salary of $2 million. A team that wins 50 regular season games (earning an additional $50,000 per win) would earn bonuses of another $2.5 million each.

Then, for every playoff win, each player on winning teams makes a $250,000 bonus. With 16 post-season victories needed to win the championship, that’s another $4 million for each player on the championship team. Add it all up, and every player on the championship team would earn a total of $8.5 million as their salary, plus a share of the remaining league revenue splits at the end of the season based on the statistical model. Oh, and by the way, with this system, you can all stop paying your agents 3-5 percent of your salaries. No agents needed!

3) Level The Playing Field Every Season For Every Team. We all know that none of you like living in places like Utah or Minnesota during the winter. Miami and LA are the places to be. We get that. So here’s another twist. Let’s make our league work like fantasy sports. Every year, we redraft new teams, done by random draw (to keep teams from trying to tank it at the end of the season). So, the NBA Draft becomes a draft of EVERY PLAYER, not just rookies. Twelve rounds. Pick your your 12 players for this season. So, if the first ping-pong ball goes to Memphis – you want LeBron, OK he’s yours. Second pick to Dallas – you want Kevin Durant, he’s yours. Third pick to Phoenix – Kobe it is. And so on. This would eliminate the current systems problem of having all the top talent purchased by over-cap spending large-market teams, and spread the best players all over the league, making it more competitive, and giving every team the chance to compete for a championship every year. It also gives every team a chance to have LeBron, or Dirk, or Kobe, Kevin, Dwight, D-Wade, D-Will and others play in their city for at least one season of their career. What would this do to league licensing revenues? Think about it. Now I need to buy a new jersey for my team’s favorite player EVERY year, at $125 retail! And for you players, if you are drafted by Minnesota or Utah, it’s not a death sentence – you’re only stuck there for one season, then can get redrafted by somebody else!

That’s it – a pretty simple operating model that would raise the boat for all of you and stick it to the man. So let me know when you want me to get going on this for you. We should be able to have the UBL up and running by next season. I’ll be your first league commissioner – and we’ll put headquarters here in Logan, Utah to keep down costs!

- Eric D. Schulz

Eric D. Schulz is the Co-Director of Strategic Marketing and Brand Management at the Jon M Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University. Prior to joining the University, he spent five years as Vice-President of Marketing for the Utah Jazz (NBA); he previously was VP of Marketing with the XFL Football League, and served as a General Manager in minor league baseball. He can be reached at eric.schulz@usu.edu.