change  February 1, 2011

Ridge Sampson, CEO

Anyone who knows Ozone Online knows that we’re a dog-centric company. Dogs are amazing creatures. Mine, Luke the dog (aka Cool Hand Luke), is a working dog who delivers newspapers and performs tricks for unsuspecting tourists and clients. 

What you may not know is that I’m a reluctant adopter of social media. From the start, I’ve struggled with the notion that it may all just be a fad. I’ve also wondered, how does social media actually help our customers grow their businesses? Do people really have time to consume all this content? Do these little blips of information really make any difference?

But over the past few weeks, I’ve been converted from “reluctant adopter” to “rabid fan” ...with the help of a bunch of dogs.

It all started two weeks ago when I decided to follow Luke one morning as he was making his rounds to say hi to everyone in the office. During our rounds, Vanessa called me into her office to show me a video. Lo and behold, there was Luke up on the screen! While Luke and I were wandering around the Marina over the weekend, someone had taken a short video of Luke doing what he does best: performing a few tricks. The video was now posted on this guy’s humor blog. That began my transformation.

In addition to being a project manager, Vanessa happens to be our Social Media Analyst. Within minutes, she had posted the video link to our Facebook page and Twitter feed, and added it to Luke’s bio on our website.

“Great,” I thought. “That was fun. It’s a topic of conversation, and now it’s out in the Twitterverse, whatever that is.” But then it was out of my mind. Yes, I could see that social media is entertaining... but is it useful? I still wasn’t convinced.

This past week, my outlook changed. All that social media stuff triggered one of my friends to send me yet another dog video (they all like to send me dog videos). This one was an amazing video by the band OK Go! Knowing dogs as I do, I can appreciate what an impressive feat it was to get numerous shapes, sizes, and breeds to perform so well together – and with a band, to boot. But to top it all off, the entire video was shot in a single take. Robert Altman would be proud! I recall the opening scene of The Player being around 8 minutes long. One of the actors actually comments on the length of cuts in the scene.

I’ve since learned that OK Go! has a unique style that combines the zaniness of a Rube Goldberg performance with great music. Needless to say, I started sending the link out to everyone I know. I also fired up iTunes after realizing I liked the song almost as much as the video. I sampled a couple of tracks, and I bought an EP and a couple of singles.

Wow, social media works! Not only that, but it worked on me.

I had never even heard of OK Go! But now I own a bunch of their music. A viral video convinced me to buy, but that would be a boring post if it ended there – unless you watch the video.

Another thing most people know about me is that I am an Apple fan (OK, fine. A fanatic.). So of course, I also “liked” the songs on my Ping profile in iTunes.

I told Vanessa the story today, and she pointed out how effective social media is and how comfortable with it I have already become without even trying. The first key to this story was that I am a follower of the people around me both online and offline, so when Vanessa showed me the blog with Luke, I was listening to an advocate I trust.

Next, when we tweeted the blog posting, we as Ozone amplified the message. Because my followers now knew that I had a preference not only for dogs, but for dogs doing tricks, they reflected back a viral video to my preferences. The video was not explicitly an advertisement, but it drove me to purchase.

Lastly, Apple made it possible for me to create a follow-up message for my Ping followers to find next time they logged in, when they could see I “liked” OK Go!

It would be interesting to know exactly how many sales eventually result from the cascading effect of that original video of Luke doing tricks. How many people will ultimately end up becoming OK Go! Fans? Out of those, think of how many will continue to amplify the message. Remember those Breck Shampoo commercials? “...and she told two friends, and they told two friends, and on, and on...” That was sort of a caveman tutorial on how to be viral – and, I guess you could say, social.

So, I now must admit that social media is here and it works on many levels. It has the ability to drive sales, and to build new brands or support existing ones. Our social media team officially gets to say, “See, I told ya so.” Of course, I’m a sucker for a good dog video, so the deck was partially stacked. But now look what they’ve done – they’ve actually got me blogging!

Share your comments and tell us how you liked OK Go!

Brian Sullivan, Technical Director

I can’t even count how many times I’ve been in this situation: I finish some great piece of functionality for a project. It has all the bells and whistles. It functions well and looks even better. Then I test it in Internet Explorer (IE) and it all falls apart.

This isn’t an IE-bashing post. Nor is it a list of IE6’s myriad shortcomings. For better or for worse, IE is here to stay. And IE6, the worst of the worst, is here at least until 2014. But just because Microsoft has committed to keeping IE6 on life support until then, does that mean we must do the same?

The short answer is yes. The long answer is ^%&$* *&^#%!!!....(plaintive sigh)… yes.

Despite the best efforts of those who would like to bring down IE6 now, despite the fact that IE6’s market share is in freefall, and despite the fact that Google has dropped the hammer, IE6 (as of this writing) still commands more market share than Safari and Opera combined. But we’re getting close to the tipping point where we can finally put IE6 in the same category as these other things that were popular in 2001:

IE6 users: Who are these people?
I’ll admit there must be some people who made a conscious decision to stick with IE6. Not many, but they’re out there. Maybe IE7 interferes with their other software – or maybe they’re just trying to be retro. There are also those who are happy with their Pentium II running Windows 98, ME, or 2000 and can’t upgrade, and those who are running Windows XP but skipping browser updates because they are on dialup.

But the largest segment of IE6 users is corporate IT departments who won’t upgrade. Whether they’re putting it off because of cost concerns or because their company intranet only works on IE6, corporate users are the last holdouts. After office hours, IE6 usage drops by over 50%.

The solution? Know your audience
So, how can you determine what level of IE6 support to offer? By answering one question: “Who will be accessing my content?”

If you’re building an internal reporting dashboard that will be viewed only by corporate users, just find out what browser they’ll be using. If you’re rebuilding an existing site or have access to a site with a similar audience, you can learn everything you need to know from your server logs or analytics platform.

Otherwise, you may be able to make certain assumptions about your audience based on the type of site you’re running. For example, if it’s a tech blog, your visitors may skew in the Firefox direction. But if it’s an online store for plumbing supplies, expect to see more IE6 folks.

What you absolutely shouldn’t do is not check. If your site looks terrible in IE6, that doesn’t tell your users, “We’re so cutting-edge that we refuse to support outdated technology.” It tells them, “We’re sloppy.”

Support, don’t enable
We can’t quite drive a stake through IE6’s heart yet. But that doesn’t mean we have to give it the same attention we give to… *cough*… real browsers. In fact, most IE6 users are probably used to things not looking quite right. There’s a point at which rewriting a whole section of JavaScript code, adding CSS hacks, or dumbing down your site to accommodate these users just doesn’t make sense.

If IE6 users can access your content, fill out your form, and do whatever else they came to your site to do, then you probably shouldn’t bend over backwards to make sure they have an identical experience to non-luddites. In fact, it might even be a good idea to prod them a bit.

Five Steps to Tweeting Without Being a Twit

Sean Shoffstall, Director of Product Marketing

For many brands today, social media is a touchy subject. Figuring out how to get your message out there (and where) is often a daunting task for marketing departments.

You hear about it from executives: “Why aren’t we on Twitter?” You hear about it from agencies: “For only X dollars per month, we can put you on Facebook!” But what does social media accomplish if you don’t get out the right message, can’t track engagement – or worse yet, make a mockery of your brand in the social media space?

Fear not! Social media can be fun and profitable if you take the right precautions. Follow this easy five-step process as the starting point for your company’s social media success. It all centers on being L.A.S.E.R.-focused.

Listen
Too many companies jump into the social media space without taking the most important step: listening. Social media isn’t about your brand – it’s about your customers. With tools such as ScoutLabs, Visible Technologies, Radian 6, and a host of others, you can listen in on how your customers perceive you and your competitors’ brands. These tools give you instant insight into not only how and where your customers are talking about you, but also the sentiments of those conversations.

Analyze
Now that you have the tools to listen, be sure to analyze who your customers are and when and where they are active. The answers may surprise you. Facebook and Twitter aren’t the only social media avenues – you may find that other platforms make two-way conversations easier. For example, blogs, forums, YouTube, and Flickr might be more appropriate for your audience.

Find your advocates and detractors; see how they lead their networks to learn key messages. This analysis can also reveal new keywords or phrases your customers are using that you can incorporate into your website or marketing campaigns. Look for trends among your key advocates, and don’t forget to do some research on your competitors’ pain points.

Strategize
Now that you know whom to engage with and where, the next step is how. If you really want social media to work for you, you have to work for your customers (are you starting to see a common theme?).

Who in your organization will be part of the social media team? Think outside the marketing box. Look deep in IT, operations, PR, and even among your administrative staff and interns. Create guidelines to help people understand where to engage (but it is not always best to tell them how to engage). For most organizations, it’s enough to provide employees with simple rules such as, “Keep it professional” and “Our brand stands for X,” and to provide them with paths of escalation for when issues are beyond their expertise.

The last step in strategizing is tracking. What are your goals and how do you measure them? Be smart about using URL shorteners such as bit.ly to embed tracking codes and drive people to landing pages or specific content pages. Make sure your analytics system can properly credit social media sites for referrals. Just for fun, here are a few of my favorite social media KPIs: Sentiment, Message Amplification, Number of Advocates, and Employee Involvement.

Engage
Notice that the “E” in L.A.S.E.R. doesn’t stand for Execute. It stands for Engage, because this is a conversation. Prepare to engage your prospects – not just today, but over the long haul. You might start by presenting a contest or commenting on a blog. The key is to offer something specifically for your readers.

You’ll run into detractors. Craft a plan to turn them into advocates. Meanwhile, provide your advocates with tools to carry your message to their followers. Always remember: this is one of the easiest ways for your customers to engage with you, whether you are in the B2B or B2C space.

Report
In the Strategize phase, you defined your metrics and KPIs. Now, see how you’ve moved the needle. Using listening tools and properly tracked URLs, you can gain significant insight into the effectiveness of your social media. Don’t necessarily expect social media campaigns to drive direct sales (although sometimes they do), but see how they increase awareness of your brand. They may surprise you and help reduce your support costs, or they may simply help drive downloads. In any case, report results constantly and update your strategy according to the results you’re seeing.

With a L.A.S.E.R.-focused approach, you’ll not only engage your customers how and where they want, but also be able to understand the value of those interactions. Don’t forget that your customers are your best sales people. Keep them happy and give them the tools to engage with you.

A final thought: While many of us still tend to think of social media as being “out there,” we have ample opportunities on our sites and in our marketing communications to let our customers engage with us. Provide tools (such as forums) that allow two-way communication. On your web pages and event sites and in your marketing communications, give your customers a way to amplify your message through sharing technologies such as ShareThis. Above all, never forget: social media is about your customers, not your brand.