Michael is the Director and General Manager for the Global Small and Medium Online Business at Dell, and is responsible for the overall online business and strategy for Dell SMB worldwide.  When he spoke with us from his offices in Stuttgart Germany, Guy Powell and I were able to find out a great deal about how Dell manages and measures their social marketing and their online presence.

In our first episode, we learned about the Four Pillars of the online marketing strategy they employ and in episode 2 we heard about the five Customer Value Drivers and the five key metrics they apply to measure the success of their online efforts.  In our last episode, Michael shared how Dell works hard to present a broad offering of online communities and communications options to support the B2B and B2C initiatives and to give customers a chance to have their voices heard and to drive the innovations in products and services they want to invest in from Dell.

In this episode, we wrap up the conversation with Michael with him sharing how Dell is absolutely committed to social media as a fundamental tactic because they see success in it and they see how well the customer base responds to it.  He also points out that the massive increase in social engagements in other geographies, away from North America, to other regions that including Brazil, Russia, India and elsewhere.

A second area of focus for Dell is an increased effort on Search; Michael suggests that search is where customers are looking for information and they expect to increase and improve their presence in search engine marketing (SEM) and as for a business like Dell, you should ‘fish where the fish are’ with paid advertising in the search engines.

The next key element he suggests will be businesses targeting market influencers.  Influencers can expand your exposure and credibility in social media and influencers provide a multiplier effect to your efforts – he sees Dell and other companies beginning to target those influencers with a more consistent and focused effort.

The fourth element he shares is an encouragement for businesses to development an engagement ecosystem of online and offline media assets that present a cohesive and consistent message for customers so that the marketing message carries between them seamlessly.

Next is the topic of mobile computing and this is getting to be a red hot space for businesses wanting to adopt social media.  Mobile is a big area for deployment of social media, particularly in light of the migration of social activity to other geographic areas that will have different connectivity models, one where mobile devices will be the dominate access tactic.

He restates that ‘Marketing is the New Finance’ and businesses wanting to improve revenues and reduce costs need to look to more efficient marketing to do so, but not without some metrics and measurement.  As social becomes a bigger part of the marketing mix, businesses need to understand how to engage and further to grasp the idea that a social campaign is not as streamlined as traditional marketing campaign.  Social media is still a bit of a jungle and businesses need to be prepared to handle a few mistakes along the way.

Lastly, and possibly most important is that Michael makes it clear that social media is not a gimmick for him and the team at Dell – it is a way of working and a way for we, as humans to interact with one another more and to deliver a higher degree of service to customers.  He suggests that if a company understands that, they can excel in their respective marketing effort, but social needs to becomes a part of the culture and not just a shtick or PR stunt – those efforts are a sure way to get your brand called out or worse, ignored.

Play / Download Michael Buck / Dell Episode 4 Podcast Here

You can find and connect with Michael at Michael_Buck@Dell.com, or via Linkedin, or on Twitter as @WorkingForDell

Here are links to material related to the interview that you may find useful; the entire conversation in one extended recording and a transcript of the conversation

Play / Download Michael Buck / Dell SMB Entire Interview Podcast Here

Read / view the Michael Buck / Dell SMB Podcast Transcript at Scribd.com

We’re very interested in your perspective on the topic and, if you have a great interview who can add to the conversation, please let us know – we’re looking to interview them and put it up here!

Thank you again to you our listeners – hope you enjoyed the effort and work we put into it!

The Podcast and Credit For Where Credit is Due – This podcast / transcript was developed from a live recorded interview on April 13th, 2010 between Michael Buck, Director and General Manager for the Global Small and Medium Online Business at Dell, Guy Powell and Steven Groves.   The interview was arranged via Jerry Dimos.

The podcast interview was downloaded and processes in Audacity, which is available from SourceForge.net, and with ‘4toFloor.wav’ music loop from member ‘Rooks’ and posted at SoundSnap.com.

The transcripts are sponsored by Social Marketing Conversations and the introduction Voice Talent is Ms. Cynthia Propst.

Related posts:

• How Dell SMB Supports Customers in Diving Deep in Social Media
• How Dell Does Online Media – The Four Pillars
• What the 5 Customer Value Drivers and Top 5 Metrics are for the Dell SMB Social Presence

We begin our interview with Andrew as he shares a few bullets from his presentation at the recent ad:tech conference in Singapore on the Windows7 Launch.  The campaign focused on the aspect of the development of Windows7 that leverage consumer input and ideas and with 8 million beta users, the campaign put real users in front of consumer in a way that helped people to see themselves in the role of “I’m a PC and Windows7 was my idea’”.  The campaign was a great success for Microsoft and helped support the worldwide launch very effectively.

Microsoft’s approach to social marketing comes from a perspective that they should be a leader in social media and able to engage very effectively.  With 93 of out every 100 PC’s sold coming with the Microsoft operating systems and the majority of people are buying a PC today to connect to the Internet, most computer systems today present an opportunity to connect consumers with their social media presence.

For Microsoft, social marketing is an integral part of a campaign strategy that is embedded into their thinking.  When planning a campaign they look to 3 digital networks to get their message out –

1. Paid Media – this is the area that lets a company go out and buy media assets (content and advertisements) around the brand on sites (banner ads, SEM, etc.) 
2. Owned & Operated Media – Microsoft owned 3 of the top 10 site on the Internet; Microsoft.com, Windows Live, Bing.  In Asia Pacific they have a reach of the 160M consumers through Microsoft, MSN, Hotmail and Windows Live Messenger.
3. Earned Media – this is where social media resides in the marketing strategy; whether it is words, pictures or video, this is where consumers will pick up the content and re-purpose it and re-present their interpretation of the brand.

The three are inter-related and the earned media component Amplified and magnifying a message in ways that Microsoft might never have considered.

Play / Download Andrew Pickup / Microsoft AsiaPac Episode 1 Podcast Here

To get our posts as they happen, follow us on Twitter (@ROISocialMedia) or subscribe to SocialMarketingConversations.com via email or your RSS Reader.

To support the work in uncovering the ROI question in social media, we’ve set up a Fan Page at Facebook, and a LinkedIn Group.  Come join us and let us know what the pressing issues are in your efforts to determine an ROI in your social media presence!

Related posts:

• Microsoft Marketing in AsiaPac a podcast with Andrew Pickup / CMO
• Managing Hundreds of Millions of Messages – Microsoft Marketing in AsiaPac
• The Best ROI in Social Media is From Owned and Operated Media for Microsoft AsiaPac

FTB has also seen some ‘cross pollination’ between social and traditional too.  In one effort, FTB leveraged unsolicited online testimonials to build proof points in traditional print ads.   In the ads they turned it around and invited other customers into the online conversation.  While sometimes hard to hear, they also took in the less positive comments and recognized that they served a useful purpose on what they need to be paying attention to in terms of operations or service.

The key tactics Dan and his team focused on initially include an approach that acknowledges the difference in a long-term, ‘let’s-plan-this-out-to-forever’ vs. a more nimble, agile approach that allows experimentation and testing to see what works best.  Dan and his team acknowledge that the thought of the potential for failures is behind their experimental approach, it suites the organization and the financial services industry at large.

Dan tells us that they need to understand the customer and approach them with messages that are appropriate and as they find the places where the social marketing connects to traditional marketing, they will tend to act more prudently.  They’ve learned that if a post on a Facebook exhibits unintended consequences, they have the ability to react more quickly, likewise, when they uncover social elements that work well, they can be leveraged up and expanded to better connect with the consumer just as fast.

Play / Download Dan Marks / First Tennessee Bank Episode 2 Podcast Here

To get our posts as they happen, follow us on Twitter (@ROISocialMedia) or subscribe to SocialMarketingConversations.com via email or your RSS Reader.

To support the effort in uncovering the ROI question in social media, we’ve set up a Fan Page at Facebook, and a LinkedIn Group.  Come join us and let us know what the pressing issues are in your efforts to determine an ROI in your social media presence!

Related posts:

• Obstacles to Banking / Financial Industry Social Media
• What works and what doesn’t and the evolution of social marketing in banking
• ROI of Social Media in Nonprofits–What’s it all about?

FTB is the leading blank in Tennessee and is committed to staying in contact with and listening to their customers.  When Dan noticed that 11% or more of their target audience was already involved in social media, Dan decided that the bank needed to be finding ways to connect with them online where they already were are.

The social presence for FTB includes a Facebook Fan Page (http://www.facebook.com/firsttennessee) where they have 2,687 fans and a new Twitter ID (@firsttennessee) where they post the question to others who comment on FTB, “I work for First Tennessee Bank, is there anything we can do to assist you with any issues you may be having?”

The path to this point has not always been easy for the FTB team though.  In this episode, Dan cites the biggest obstacle for the use of social media as a financial institution. 

The two he points out are -

1. banking is typically fairly conservative, so any action that might be seen as risky might be hard to adopt and
2. a perspective that consumers might feel that a bad decisions in marketing for the bank might impact the safe & secure image a financial institution need to project

FTB very very careful in assessing what risks they’re taking and they are not alone in financial services.  There are concerns about security, safety and soundness as well as a perspective that some people in management that may not completely understand the effort and see it as merely a youth oriented tactic.

Play / Download Dan Marks / First Tennessee Bank Episode 1 Podcast Here

To get our posts as they happen, follow us on Twitter (@ROISocialMedia) or subscribe to SocialMarketingConversations.com via email or your RSS Reader.

To support the effort in uncovering the ROI question in social media, we’ve set up a Fan Page at Facebook, and a LinkedIn Group.  Come join us and let us know what the pressing issues are in your efforts to determine an ROI in your social media presence!

Related posts:

• Tests and trials support a nimble approach in social media for banking / financial services
• The ROI of Social Media, Again
• What works and what doesn’t and the evolution of social marketing in banking

Trying out the PollDaddy app from Automattic i this post, so we are only collecting 100 votes – When it fills up, just leave your comments below – thanks!

Related posts:

• About
• How to Let People Know Where You Are in Social Media
• Twitter’s Social Capital is Unlimited – Joe Jaffe is wrong…

The process of working with Guy Powell and Jerry Dimos has been a tremendous experience and I cannot begin to tell you how much I’ve learned in the process, but I do understand how it will impact the level of service I can deliver to my clients.  The association with these two men allowed me, as primarily a social media guy, to really grasp the scope of what social marketing does and what it will mean to marketers wanting to honestly connect with the audience of influencers, consumers, and individuals.

The video podcast posted here (after the break) is one that Guy and I recorded as an introduction of us to others – we’ll be pulling Jerry into one here soon.  In this episode, Guy and I talk about our backgrounds and how we came to meet.  The process of connecting with one another and the work we’ve undertaken so far has been a fantastic case study in the power of social media (we met via Linkedin) and the ROI for a personal brand in social media.

We hope you enjoy the video and, because it is presented here using Viddler, you can make comments on in the timeline for us and others that will come to view the video. 

My Co-Authors on the ROI of Social Media

Guy Powell is the author of ‘Marketing Calculator: Measuring and managing return on marketing investment’ and runs DemandROMI, a global marketing consulting firm our of his home in Atlanta Georgia.  The conversations we’ve had, the tactics he’s shared, and the ideas we’ve discussed have established the foundations for the several models we produced for the book that are (at least in my mind) very good in helping to understand the ROI of a social presence for business. 

Jerry Dimos is a brand strategist with The LiTMUS Group in Singapore and as the third co-author, he influenced the content of the book in ways that a) assured we addressed many strategic brand / branding concerns and b) provided an international aspect to the book that we might not have otherwise been able to achieve – this book was written with an international marketing in mind and many of the interviews and case studies explored the use of social in a global marketplace.

Through the process of writing the manuscript we’ve all become friends and are committed to exploring the question of ROI in social marketing and social media explored – the book will take the discussion a few more steps down the path for the industry we’re sure, but regardless of what we think, it is you all who will buy the book and read it that will tell us what kind of value it brings to your efforts. 

We cannot wait to hear the feedback from everyone and we’re committed to supporting the conversation via our Facebook group (now at over 815 members and we’ve not yet shipped the book!), at Linkedin (95 members) or wherever it makes sense to connect and explore the content.

About the Video

The video podcast was captured using ooVoo, with the intro audio developed using Audacity, which is available from SourceForge.com, and based on clips from ‘4toFloor’ a music loop from member ‘Rooks’ and posted at SoundSnap.com.

Related posts:

• ROI of Social Media is now live on Amazon!
• What does Social Media ROI Looks Like Globally?–a Bangkok Perspective
• How to Save Time in Social Media

If you would have told me a year ago that a 90 year old company would be an innovator in enterprise social media, I’m pretty sure I would not have believed you.  After the time spent with Aneta, I can tell you that a 90 year old company is being really innovative in the enterprise deployment of social media and they’re showing a measureable ROI.

In the last two episodes we’ve covered elements of how PB has done it too.  First, they approached it from an understanding that social media is not a set-and-forget proposition; they recognized a need for needed a sustainable program that at the same time, did not inhibit individual participation.  They also understood that they needed to put some tools in place, watch key performance indicators (KPIs) and apply metrics, looking for the ROI; those efforts have led to a $300K saving in call-center deflections in a 3 month period.

I know that Guy and I are looking forward to connecting with her at the MeasureUp event in Chicago next month and to put a live presence with the enthusiastic personality she has  shown in the podcast series here.

In this episode Aneta lets us know that while they do set certain measures and metrics in place, they are certainly open to evaluating them and updating policy as PB learns what actually makes a difference to their customers and to the bottom line.   We open the discussion referring to the Twitter, Facebook and online forums that PB maintains, but Aneta tells us that social media at PB is not about an overarching corporate social presence. At the end of the day social media is about people connecting to people, and it needs to be a sustainable level of one-on-one social media interactions with PB employees taking the lead.

Aneta shares that she approaches her responsibility as someone whose job it is to think differently, a little outside the box, and to be a guide for PB to a more social future.  This perspective is what constitutes her biggest responsibility in working supporting the PB business units.  He position is not to handle the effort herself; she focuses in on strategy, training and supporting the PB staff, the business units get to decide how and where in the social media ecosphere to reach out to their audience.

We close this three part series with Aneta sharing aspects of the process of social media measurement at PB.  As she sees it, the situation is similar to the early 90’s when corporations struggled to understand how best to develop and present a web presence; she suggests that right now is the time to establish a presence, explore the environment and measurement best practices.  Companies who do so today, and periodically adjust their business model along the way are going to be the winners in the new market model supported by social media.

She and the team can be found at Pitney Bowes on Facebook, @PBNews, @PBConnect and @AnetaH on Twitter, and she blogs at AnetaHall.com.    As we wrap up she disclosers her passion (and addiction) to social media and how she looks forward to the time in between session at the upcoming MeasureUp conference, after all, that is where the real connections get made a conferences don’t they!

Play / Download Aneta Hall / Pitney Bowes Episode 3 Podcast Here

This is the final episode of the three part podcast with Aneta Hall.  Guy Powell and I want to thank her; we appreciate her perspective and taking the time to share it with us in our podcast interview!

Here are links to material related to the interview that you may find useful; the entire conversation in one extended recording and soon, a transcript of the conversation

Play / Download Aneta Hall / Pitney Bowes Entire Episode Podcast Here

Read / view the Aneta Hall / Pitney Bowes Podcast Transcript at Scribd.com

We’re very interested in your perspective on the topic and, if you have a favored presenter or person who can add to the conversation, please let us know – we’re looking to interview him / her and put it up here!

Thank you again to you our listeners – hope you enjoyed the effort and work we put into it!

the Podcast and Credit For Where Credit is Due – This transcript was developed from a live interview on Thursday, February 4, 2010 between Aneta Hall, Guy Powell and Steven Groves using FreeConferenceCall.com.

The podcast interview was downloaded and processes in Audacity, which is available from SourceForge.com, and with ‘4toFloor.wav’ music loop from member ‘Rooks’ and posted at SoundSnap.com.

The transcripts are provided courtesy of Institute for International Research, the organizers of the MeasureUp Conference.

The Introduction Voice talent is Ms. Cynthia Propst.

Related posts:

• Creating Sustainability and Providing Loose Governance Essential for Enterprise Social Media – An Interview with Aneta Hall / Pitney Bowes – Podcast Episode 1
• A 3-Tiered Model for Measuring Social Media Success and How Social Media Saved Pitney Bowes $300K – An Interview with Aneta Hall / Pitney Bowes – Podcast Episode 2
• Increase Touch and Engagement Using Social Marketing – Scott Chappell / Sessions College Podcast Interview

In this episode, Aneta talks with Guy Powell and myself about how the elements of a relevant online strategy for PB includes traditional elements, like before social media came to onto the scene, but now it has changed many of the ways PB structures campaigns to their audience.

In 2010 a major goal for PB is to bring structure to their investment in social media.  The investment includes technology, and organizational structure and people.  Aneta shares how PB now makes the effort to evaluate interactions relative to the ROI of the time and resources it takes to connect to the audience, ‘No more free lunch’ says Aneta.

She shares the 3 tiered model for measuring social media that PB uses, each have several Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) beneath them.  The major categories are -

• Attention,
• Engagement, and
• Influence.

All these help understand the contribution to the leads, sales, and brand awareness for PB and it’s business units.

Aneta discusses how involvement with philanthropic campaigns has allowed PB to experiment with social media and develop an understanding of how to use social media, to monitor the interactions and to measure their results.  Early campaigns have been focused on philanthropic efforts, with the example of teaming with American Red Cross for the ‘Holiday Mail for Heroes’ campaign last year.  The effort connected US citizens to American Troops and Veterans around the 2009 Q4 Holiday Season.  

PB also investments in an extensive community driven customer support effort in their online forums.  Aneta suggests that it is hard to get a message out, if you are not ‘paying attention to your own backyard’ and responding to calls from the community for help and support – they just cannot hear the marketing message and they are unlikely to buy if they are not happy with your product. 

In order to encourage user to user support in the forums, PB staff monitors the questions and wait at least 24 hours before responding, allows time for research into the issue and to allow the community to support one another – PB believes this results in a substantial amount of call deflection to the user support center.

An ROI example she shares is that for every 5 visits to a specific answer posting in the forum or for every 25 visits to a general posting (figures from the book Groundswell) they have calculated that they have averted around 30,000 calls to the PB customer service center.  They estimate that every call into the customer support center costs about $10 USD, so they conservatively calculate that they’ve save over $300,000 in call deflection.  This consider this real ROI that is shared with all the business units leaders and helps drive the investment in social media.

Play / Download Aneta Hall / Pitney Bowes Episode 2 Podcast Here

To get our posts as they happen, follow us on Twitter (@ROISocialMedia) or subscribe to StevenGroves.com via email or your RSS Reader.

To support the effort in uncovering the ROI question in social media, we’ve set up a Fan Page at Facebook, and a LinkedIn Group.  Come join us and let us know what the pressing issues are in your efforts to determine an ROI in your social media presence!

Related posts:

• Empowering a Team and Thinking Outside the Corporate Box = Success in Social Media – An Interview with Aneta Hall / Pitney Bowes – Podcast Episode 3 of 3
• Creating Sustainability and Providing Loose Governance Essential for Enterprise Social Media – An Interview with Aneta Hall / Pitney Bowes – Podcast Episode 1
• Increase Touch and Engagement Using Social Marketing – Scott Chappell / Sessions College Podcast Interview

As part of the series around the ROI of Social Media, and leading up to the 2010 MeasureUp Conference in Chicago next month, we interview Aneta Hall, the Emerging Media Manager at Pitney Bowes.  She is a presenter at the 2010 MeasureUp Conference in Chicago, where her topic is “From Fear to Trust – Employee Engagement in Social Media”.

Aneta introduces us to the processes Pitney Bowes (PB), as a 90 year old company, has adopted using social media to connect with prospects, customers, employees and stakeholders around their mail and information needs.  The changes have driven real change in the various business units, particularly as in the last 10 years they have acquired a variety of businesses.  PB now provides a broad range of solutions to the market, not only in mail instruments and document management, but also location intelligence, traffic pattern analysis, predictive intelligence, and relationship marketing.  Aneta shares how sees social media technology supporting the ability to tell the PB story to the market.

The role of the Emerging Media Manger at Pitney Bowes is to help the organization understand and constantly analyze the evolving landscape of social media.  In her role, Aneta teaches other how to use the technology and she often presents the model outlined in Chris Brogans’ awesome book, ‘Trust Agents’.  She also maintains the strategic roadmap for PB and is often glued to the PB Radian6 console, because of the value she places on listening to the conversation in social media versus trying to use social media as just another channel to broadcast the same messages used in traditional media.

Pitney Bowes is using the information Aneta manages for several of their business units.  As you might expect, some are more advanced than others in their use, but most are looking to up their social media investment in 2010 and take advantage of what social media can provide.

The major topic she finds herself discussing with business unit leaders is in the sustainability of the social media effort.  Aneta sees covering this issue as a key component of her work and that means the units find they need to invest in training, guidelines, tools and tactics that support users, and providing a ‘loose governance’ structure that does not stifle the conversation between PB and it’s audience.

Play / Download Aneta Hall / Pitney Bowes Episode 1 Podcast Here

To get our posts as they happen, follow us on Twitter (@ROISocialMedia) or subscribe to StevenGroves.com via email or your RSS Reader.

To support the effort in uncovering the ROI question in social media, we’ve set up a Fan Page at Facebook, and a LinkedIn Group.  Come join us and let us know what the pressing issues are in your efforts to determine an ROI in your social media presence!

Related posts:

• A 3-Tiered Model for Measuring Social Media Success and How Social Media Saved Pitney Bowes $300K – An Interview with Aneta Hall / Pitney Bowes – Podcast Episode 2
• Empowering a Team and Thinking Outside the Corporate Box = Success in Social Media – An Interview with Aneta Hall / Pitney Bowes – Podcast Episode 3 of 3
• Increase Touch and Engagement Using Social Marketing – Scott Chappell / Sessions College Podcast Interview

The first is the booming growth in the adoption of mobile, their application for placing orders on a variety of mobile platforms is growing rapidly.  Today you can use your Blackberry, Android, or iPhone to place an order from the 1800Flowers.com Mobile Gift Center in several categories for personal or business.

1800Flowers.com has not been afraid to try out new ideas has often been a first mover in many areas to stay connected to their audience and they try a lot of things, sometime uncertain of the outcome; case in point was the effort in creating a 1800Flowers.com store in the 3D social platform of Second Life, which they discovered was not the right platform at the time to connect them to their audience.

A success is the development of the ideal customer model, which they have named ‘Tina’. Tina is the aggregate persona of the ideal 1800Flowers.com customer, which embodies the characteristics of the buying behavior they see in the market overall.  Lewis shows us how they referenced Tina in the ‘Spot-a-Mom’ campaign leading up to Mothers Day in 2009.

To begin with, you need to know that Mothers Day is one of the two largest holidays for florists all year – Christmas is a bit bigger in terms of number of people ordering flowers and Valentines Day is third.   I know some of this because my Mother was an award winning florist and we always knew that during the big floral holidays, we were not going to see Mom for the weeks leading up to the holiday.

For Mothers Day 2009, 1800Flowers.com wanted to make sure that there was ‘No Mom Left Behind’, that all Mom’s, regardless of how they came by the title, we’re recognized with a gift.   Leveraging the 1800Flowers blog by Floral Lifestyle Expert Julie Mulligan, and with support by their PR organization, they undertook an outreach program 6 weeks before the holiday.  In the effort, they identified several types of bloggers, reached out to them and gave those bloggers a reason to talk to their readership regarding 1800Flowers.com.   By the time the holiday came around, they estimate that they had touched around 6 million prospective customer, even before they started the formal advertising campaign, and the net result was increased sales and more sales earlier than ever before.

When we asked ‘What metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) does 1800Flowers track ?’, Lewis tells us that there are three primarily -

• With sales revenue as a primary objective, they use promotion codes extensively.  A set of codes are given to partners, those partners can then provide them to their audience, and as an incentive for the consumer to use the code, it also provides a discount on a 1800Flowers.com order.
• A second measure is ‘untagged’ traffic.  This is the number of visitors to the site that have not been referred or do not use a promotion code, and
• the third is a ‘share of mind’ or the number of discussion going on about 1800Flowers.com vs. key competitors in the social media ecosphere

Twitter use is growing for them as well.  They have over 50 CSR on Twitter and part of their job is to look for people who have issues in their use of 1800Flowers and tweet some comment about it.  Lewis talks about how they set up the first-responder program, again just prior to the 2009 Mothers Day holiday and what their results were.  As a measure of the success of the program, they evaluated the tone and sentiment of messages in the week following the holiday and they found that of all the mentions on customers experiences around flowers and florists, around 2/3 were positive for 1800Flowers.com and in comparison, 3/4 of the comments made about a major competitor ranked negative.  A definitive measure?  No, but certainly it shows that 1800Flowers is listening and that the ability to provide a first responder capability can impact market perception.

Lewis wraps up the conversation explaining how they have implemented 3 Twitter channels, each focusing on a different type of conversation – one for communication / interactive (marketing & branding), one for customer service, and one as a discount channel.  The discount channel helps move perishable inventory at a savings for the customer and at a profit for 1800Flowers.com that might have been otherwise been taken as waste / shrinkage.

Play / Download Lewis Goldman / 1800Flowers.com Episode 2 Podcast Here

Our first episode with Lewis Goldman of 1800Flowers.com was well visited; here is the second and final episode, as well as the entire interview in a single podcast.  We’ll post the transcript as it becomes available – Guy Powell and I want to get the podcasts of the MeasureUp Conference speakers we were able to interview posted right away.  To get the updates to the posts as they happen, follow us on Twitter (@ROISocialMedia) or subscribe to StevenGroves.com via email or your RSS Reader.

To support the effort in uncovering the ROI question in social media, we’ve set up a Fan Page at Facebook, and a LinkedIn Group.  Come join us and let us know what the pressing issues are in your efforts to determine an ROI in your social media presence!

Here are links to material related to the interview that you may find useful; the entire conversation in one extended recording and soon, a transcript of the conversation (Update – 02/13/2010 – Transcript Posted)

Play / Download Lewis Goldman / 1800Flowers.com Entire Episode Podcast Here

View / Download Lewis Goldman / 1800Flowers.com Podcast Transcript at Scribd

We’re very interested in your perspective on the topic and, if you have a favored presenter or person who can add to the conversation, please let us know – we’re looking to interview him / her and put it up here!

Thank you again to you our listeners – hope you enjoyed the effort and work we put into it!

About the Podcast and Credit For Where Credit is Due – This transcript was developed from a live interview on Wednesday February 3, 2010 between Lewis Goldman, Guy Powell and Steven Groves on FreeConferenceCall.com.

The podcast interview was downloaded and processes in Audacity, which is available from SourceForge.com, and with ‘4toFloor.wav’ music loop from member ‘Rooks’ and posted at SoundSnap.com.

Introduction voice is Cynthia Propst.

Related posts:

• Social Media and e-Commerce: Fad or Fundamental Change? An Interview with Lewis Goldman of 1800Flowers.com
• What the 5 Customer Value Drivers and Top 5 Metrics are for the Dell SMB Social Presence
• The ROI of Social media Series – Marcel LeBrun CEO Radian6 Episode 5 – Final Episode