The first panel discussion is “The Bottom Line on Real Time” with panelists Bert DuMars, VP E-Business and Interactive Marketing, Newell Rubbermaid; Marla Erwin, Interactive Developer,  Whole Foods Market; and Doug Ulman, President & CEO of LiveStrong.org; moderated by Steve Rubel, SVP, Director of Insights, Edelman Digital.

First topic was on how to begin, what changes Twitter has made in your organization:

Marla: Whole Foods just began with some employees on Twitter. It grew so fast that we had to bring in someone full time. Now we have one full-time and 3 part-time Twitterers. We issue a social media guide monthly from corporate, give them a few pointers, but the stores are self-managing.

Doug: It has really changed our organization.

Bert: We are concerned with brand building and manufacturing. We’re literally one step away from the consumer. We have 30 brands on Twitter, in multiple accounts with, multiple employees per account.

Steve: How do you measure success?

Marla: We do count followers, but measure success by whether the number rises or falls. Best measure is ReTweets.

Steve: How do you look at all that data, how do you link it back to a business objective?

Doug: We track across the issues, who’s taking action. Ex: health care reform debate – of 110,000 people who signed our petition, 70k came from Twitter. In 2009, first full calendar year we used Twitter, our online fundraising was up 17%. Twitter is the main driver to our website.

Bert: We have a lot of touchpoints where you will make the decision to buy one of our products. Twitter is one of them. From ROI perspective, must look at it wholistically. For the Sharpie brand it was repositioning. Twitter really helps with that.

Steve: You have to create surface area. How do you create enough scale? How do you stand out among the noise?

Doug: Twitter is a great platform that is part of a broader social movement. It’s less about us and more about giving our publics a platform to advocate on. Our followers then are able to engage their communities.

Bert: Don’t forget community. You have to build it up one follower at a time. Where it plays out is when you need it most. Recent Graco recall: major news outlets linked Graco to “baby dies” even tho it was in a competitor’s crib. By the next day Graco didn’t have to reach out, the followers, the community was doing all the work. Community based on trust, but it takes a long time to build, took Graco 3 years.

Steve: Marla – how do you integrate Twitter with your other marketing initiatives?

Marla: The easiest way to track is by click-through on links. We cross-promote. We have a landing page on our website which lists our Twitter accounts. It’s a little harder to measure when we cross promote, but we do generate buzz. Ex. billboard advertising a flower promotion with “worth twittering about.”

Steve: Are you increasing your efforts on Twitter or integrating other platforms?

Bert: It depends on the brand. Some are having a lot of success on Twitter, a lot on FB. We don’t pick winners. We like them for all different reasons. You need to tie them all together and you have a compelling story, then you can reach the consumer where they want to be reached when they want to be reached.

Doug: There’s been a lot of chatter about electronic medical records. We used Twitter to put out a survey to gauge opinion, got 4,000 responses.

Steve: You are all a high interest brand or touch a high interest issue. What kind of advice could you offer to someone who is smaller or less well-known or doesn’t have a high interest topic?

Marla; Anti advice ; you can be a brand on Twitter, don’t have to be a person. Can pick out accpunt by logo. practical – some accounts wouldn’t fit.

Doug - Note – shameless self-promo – if you put a yellow wristband on your avatar it stands out (crowd laughs). Go to livestrongaction.org and get yours right now. I would disagree a little bit – creating unique, individual stories helps us the most to spread the message.
Marla – I didn’t mean to imply that you have to be a brand, just that you can be a brand (as opposed to some advice where you have to be a person.)

Bert – We are going toward more branded accounts. It helps in doing a search! At the end of the day people really want to talk to a person, so surround your brand with real people.

Q & A

For a brand starting out – how do you grow the audience? What would you suggest? Who handles your Twitter account?

Bert – Start slow. There are a lot of nuances in your own consumer and community groups. Be careful. A big part is just talking. Don’t go out and follow thousands of people. You’re just like a spammer at that point.

Marla – Our Twitter account is run by our content department, not marketing or pr. Put out info that is valuable and interesting.

Doug – Ours is is all internal, mktg. dept.

Bert – We manage it out of brands, some is marketing and communications, some by brand managers, will soon be including customer service.

How do you determine what conversations are important?

Marla – That can be a tricky one. We look at @ replies first, people talking directly to us. Try to respond to problems; compliments; it’s difficult, we have to sift through hundreds of conversations a day.

What about the use of Twitter with email marketing? What’s it bringing to the whole concept of social CRM?

Doug – 15 yrs ago it was all about your database. It doesn’t matter anymore. How many people do you have who are passionate about your cause? We aren’t doing email newsletters the way we used to, don’t use them much anymore. Communicating to people who follow us, who want the info, is more effective for us.

At what point do you outsource your social media?

Bert – Typically for a brand like us, at some point you get to a size where you don’t have enough employees to support the effort. I still think it’s important that the face be an employee, but wrapping them with researcher, content providers is important.

Where do you go from here with metrics?

Bert – It’s important to integrate with what the retailers do.

Doug – It’s about action, people leading with a mission and a cause.

Marla – Hard to say at the global level. On the local level, we’ve had a lot of success, so will be measuring a lot more at the local level.