Welcome to the first Windows Social Media Team update. We’ve had a lot of questions about what we’ve been up to so I wanted to provide some background on our mission, objectives and what’s coming up.

Social Media Marketing is defined by Wikipedia as a collective group of web properties whose content is primarily published by users (customers), not direct employees (brands). For a quick explanation of how social media can change businesses watch this video. We want Windows to participate in the groundswell of conversation on the web by evangelizing passionate customer conversations and participating in a transparent dialog with consumers. To do that we’ve made 3 big bets:

Bets

a) Infuse customer experiences into our marketing voice. Using the Windows Live and Windows advocate group  personalize Windows by allowing real customer to tell their stories through user generated content on WindowsLive.com [coming to Windows.com in H2]

b) Monitor, report and engage in social media conversations (forums, blogs, chat rooms) increasing share of voice and sentiment for Windows and Windows Live brand.

c) Build Social Media marketing beachheads that compliment broader Windows campaigns reaching customers in networks they are already using.

Customer Experience

People want to engage with each other, and especially with others who are “like them”.   WindowsLive.com engages and showcases a community of people who want to share experiences and insights on how they are using Windows Live services in their everyday lives. UGC brings real, authentic customer stories to our marketing voice.  Since the community launched on August 4th a few top contributors are;

o 20 year old retail sales professional at a Target store in Pennsylvania who loves the new Windows Live Hotmail

o 64 year old retired grandmother in the UK who has uncovered some of the great new features of the Windows Live Messenger beta

o 31 year old IT pro in the UK who used Windows Live Events to plan his wedding

o A Microsoft MVP in Bangalore, India who figured out how to use Windows Live Photo Gallery to “clone” people

Together, the community has contributed over 300 pieces of user-generated content (UGC) sharing personal stories and how-to tips about Windows Live. Great job community!

Social Media Conversations

Since July 2008, we have been monitoring, measuring and engaging conversations pertaining to target audiences on the web . We use a technology called TruCast to collect conversational data which we then use to guide our responses and engage with our customers. To date we have experimented with 5 types of outreach and engagements: blogs and forums, answers/Q&A sites, social networks, social bookmarking/aggregation sites, and video content sites. We measure both the cost per engagement action (cpea) and the ROI for each engagement type. Based on that data, we continue to evolve the outreach program to optimize for value and effectiveness.

Combining this data with our current marketing efforts allows us to monitor the effect marketing efforts and messages have on Windows brand perception in online conversations.  

Social Media Beachheads

As part of our ongoing conversation with consumers we have build two Windows beachheads. Earlier this month we launched a branded Windows YouTube Channel and our Windows Facebook fan page:

Facebook.com/Windows – Become a fan of Microsoft Windows on Facebook. Some features to look out for: I’m a PC Status Randomizer app, exclusive online Windows videos, Best Fan Photo & Free Download of the Week, Windows Live Messenger Themepack and much more. Over the next few weeks, we’ll collect fan photos from all over the world and feature them among our community.  Windows is also running homepage engagement ads using beta video ad units which we customized for Windows allowing users to Fan the page directly from their homepage.

YouTube.com/WindowsVideos - The Windows Video Channel became the #10 most subscribed sponsored channel of all time in just one month and is now the #1 most subscribed sponsored channel of the month. And as we expected, our customers have started to respond. They began uploading and sending us their "I'm a PC" videos, which we now showcase every Friday in the Best of YouTube Playlist.  We are working with YouTube to better understand the reach and opportunities available to tell our customer story through this large, vibrant community. Specifically, we are investigating relevance search terms strategies, improved discoverability tactics, and other beta testing opportunities.

It’s no secret I’ve been a supporter of President-elect Obama for several years. I was in his camp even before he and Hillary went to blows. One of the many things that drew me to him was his 21st century usage of the internet. Much as been made (and rightfully so) of the Obama campaigns use of Social Networking tools to build huge networks of support across the US with a scalable and ultimately cost efficient model.  Obama’s campaign understood the power of building a network database of contacts ONE TIME and using the base over and over again for multiple functions from fundraising efforts to getting the word out about local rally's. There in lies the long term, true impact of Social Media. It’s why my social media team isn’t build around campaigns but rather a long term, sustainable committed effort.

It will be interesting to see what Obama’s team has in mind for the social media networks they have built. I’m a member of several of the networks and haven’t heard anything yet, but he’s been busy so I’ll cut him a bit of slack. This will be where it get interesting. How will Obama continue to use this huge base his has built up? I’m really hoping he doesn’t fall into the trap that campaign mentality can lead to which is spin up a lot of effort to build awareness with mass amounts of activity, then sunset a campaign and go dark until the next campaign rolls out. People will forget about you. They will go on to the next shiny object and lose interest if you don’t continue to invest in your efforts.

Think of all the ways Obama can use these networks. He has real activists that want to help spread his word. He can build consensus among core bases and test messages like a President has never done before. And since the heavy investment in these outreach efforts is in the beginning each incremental usage lowers the cost per engagement.

This morning was a perfect example of why it’s crucial to have healthy social networks established BEFORE you need it. Hotmail rolled out some upgrades over the weekend. Unfortunately there was a bug in the upgrade that only effected Firefox users running on Linux. This is a relatively small segment of the Hotmail audience but a very vocal segment and one we want to keep happy, particularly because the bug happened to effect customers using competitor products. It was not intended to effect that group but it did so the appearance may be that Hotmail doesn’t care as much about that subset of customers – WHICH IS NOT TRUE. The best way to reach customers in a pinch is to do a blog posting. After you do the blog posting explaining the situations you can then use that blog post and link back to it when commenting on blogs that are talking about the situation. It’s not link bate if it is actually offering a resolution to the problem the blogger identified as having in the blog post. It don’t abdicate spamming blogs with your products blog link unless there is a situation where it can resolve an issue the blogger may be having, as in this case it did. But if you didn’t have a communication channel set up in advance (a blog, Twitter feed, Facebook page, etc) this would not be an option for you. If Obama didn’t have the network set up ahead of time he would never have raised money as fast as he needed to when he needed to.  Don’t wait for a crisis to build your community outreach channel, do it today so you are ready when you really will need it. And don’t think of it as a campaign, it’s the cost of doing business anymore as both Obama and McCain learned.

Starbucks is giving free coffee tomorrow to anyone that votes. I saw the ad on tv last night and was really captivated by it. It’s subtle and powerful and drew me in enough to watch the whole ad. I didn’t know until the end who or what was being advertised and was pleasantly surprised when all was revealed. I’m definitely going to claim my free cup tomorrow with pride.

Although I’m giving Starbucks a B- on the viralness of the ad. Since they only have about 36 hours to get this message out they should pull out all the ‘sharing’ guns they can find. They have a great engagement ad running on Facebook today (shown here). In the Event Engagement Ad people can rsvp for an event and then see others in their network that are planning to attend. As you see here I rsvp’ed and a few of the people in my network did so I can see who else is going. Love this. Great way to tell your network and spread the word. Engagement ads get an A.

I went to their own website hoping the get the commercial embed link so I could post it here on my blog. They are running the ad on the top hero slot but there is no embed code, so I can’t post it on my blog. They also don’t have any sharing features next to the ad to make it easy for me to tell all my friends they can get a free cup of coffee too. The first thing I want to do when I hear you can get something for free is tell all my peeps. Starbucks.com  doesn’t enable any of that sharing.  Starbucks.com gets a D.

One other beef I have with Starbucks.com is they don’t have a virtual map. Maybe I’ve never been to Starbucks before and I say to myself I want to try them today since it’s free. Where do I go? I know in some places like Seattle it’s a complete no brainer, they are everywhere. But I travel a fare bit and know they aren’t everywhere in every city. With services like Live Maps it’s very easy to do.  Would be a great addition.

Get your free coffee tomorrow and VOTE!