Local Motors is a new car company. They are in the business of Creation, Development, Modification and Sales of cars. They have developed an open source way to make C.O.O.L cars. COOL is their acronym for Community, Open Source, Owner Experiences and Local. To put this in a nutshell, Local Motors has a “build a bear” concept for cars that is fast and nimble delivering an ownership experience for the car enthusiast that is second to none in the industry.

“Co-creation was essential to beginning  the business,” says CEO John (Jay) Rogers.  In the car industry, there is a a big disconnect between what we sell to customers (cars) and what they are getting. In an iterative process, its something that could be solved much faster.  When you don’t engage with the customer as part of the product development process it will never be iterative.    We started a business that engages with customers in a process we call co-creation, where the customer co-creates with the business in order to be able to come up with ideas quickly.  That process generates a large set of differentiated  ideas.  As part of our process, this community of  people who are informed when solving a problem gives us  a greater chance of  solving a problem and developing individual solutions.”

The PDMA Co-create Conference
The recent Product Development and Management Association held a Co-create: Social Product Development Conference in Phoenix, Arizona which is the site for the first micro factory for Local Motors. One full-day was spent at the Local Motors facility during the conference with a number of panel presentation on the Value of Experience, Creating Big Things, Maker Movement and Customer Interactions.  Companies speaking included Ross School of Business, LEGO, Crispin Porter (Dominos), Local Motors, InnoCentive, Harvard Business School, Wired Magazine, Threadless, MakerBot Industries, Ponoko, MESH01, and Quirk. We were able to tour the facility and better appreciate the process that Local Motors owners go through when they buy and build their own car.

Local Motors is C.O.O.L.

I had a chance to interview Ariel Ferreira, Community Evangelist and Public Relations Manager, while at the conference. She explained the COOL acronym for me in the following interview.

Community: The community is the micro factory.  The community is the owners who come in and build their own car. The Local Motors product development  community can join the online community and contribute to design, mechanics, etc. They contribute ideas and may be the ones who’s ideas get voted up and moved along.

Open Source: Virtual resources are the members of the community, along with staff of Local Motors. From the very beginning the process is open. Everyone contributes designs which are protected by creative commons license,  The enthusiasm of the community continues with voting on the best ideas and collaborating to make it better…and what they want.  All the chassis information, body details and data is shared back to the community. This iterative process continues to allow the community to make improvements or modifications for another build or the next design. This  also creates a parts marketplace as well, especially for modification on existing cars.

Ownership Experiences – The owners come to the micro factory for 6 days and work with the team to build their car.  There are individual build bays that have sets of tools, team leaders help to schedule and guide the owners, but its the owners who are putting in the sweat equity into the car.  Local Motors has learned from experience what the process needs to be to make this both a personal experience and a proper quality process so testing occurs each step of the way.

Local:The current car design, The Rally Fighter,  is specific to Arizona and this local micro factory but they have plans to expand to other “local” areas across the country and build cars that suit those local areas as well.  With a limited production of 2000 over the life of the car, more designs will come up for the different areas.  In the works are electric cars for the southwest and east coast urban areas like Boston.

Endings

Ariel Ferreira, Local Motors Image by Wendy Soucie

According to Ariel Ferreira,

“I love watching this [social product development] community develop and get better at what they do. These decision makers and thought leaders are at the cutting edge of what is new, cool  and popular. They are telling us that this is what they want.  The concepts that they are telling us they want are things that would take a larger industry 6-10 years to develop.  We understand things very quickly and can react.”

 

What do you think of Local Motors’ co-creation process?  Can you share other companies building products with Co-Creation and social product development?

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Social Media Academy NCP Model

One way to move social business forward is to be social yourself. That means following a practice model like I do from the Social Media Academy for NCP – Network, Contribute, Participate.  Its hard work to do all three steps, but each one is critical to your success personally, and by extension to your organization. One of the ways I participate is to spend some time each week reading and commenting on blogs and shared content on the web. Here are a few of my responses from the comment sections.

What’s Quirky and why is this man talking about Luxury and Gen Y together?

Comments on  L2 conference Video of  Ben Kaufman, CEO of Quirky.com on the subject of Social Product Development:

WSS: I had the great opportunity to meet Ben in person at the #CoCreatePDMA, Social Product Development Conference. Wonderful guy with vision, passion, and too many good ideas for one head.  He is working to make ideas real, and make money to boot.  Seeing and hearing Ben talk about Social Product Development and the stories he has to tell about ideas taken through a process all the way to Bed Bath and Beyond to be sold, enlightened me on where social can really extend entrepreneurs into real production, also help, those without all the finances, a chance to succeed.

Shankman:  “I Will Never Hire a “Social Media Expert,” and Neither Should You”

Peter Shankman can be brash and annoying. He seems to get away with it. Sometimes, a blog post is written just to get reactions as this one did for me.

Update – 07/15/11 – the link to this article was killed by the blog but here is the link in text if you would like to visit his post http://shankman.com/i-will-never-hire-a-social-media-expert-and-neither-should-you/

Shankman:  “I was going to call this article “All “Social Media Experts” need to go die in a fire,” but I figured I should be nicer than that.  But my title stands. If you call yourself a “Social Media Expert,” don’t even bother sending me your resume. No business in the world should want a “Social Media Expert” on their team. They shouldn’t want a guru, rock-star, or savant, either. If you have a “Social Media Expert” on your payroll, you’re wasting your money. Being an expert in Social Media is like being an expert at taking the bread out of the refrigerator. You might be the best bread-taker-outer in the world, but you know what? The goal is to make an amazing sandwich, and you can’t do that if all you’ve done in your life is taken the bread out of the fridge.  Social Media is just another facet of marketing and customer service. Say it with me. Repeat it until you know it by heart. Bind it as a sign upon your hands and upon thy gates. Social Media, by itself, will not help you.”
####

WSS:  “Harsh!
Point 1: I speak to corporations and groups on the topic of social media in the business to business space. I have never used the word expert or guru in my materials I have supplied. They always stick it in. I always rephrase and explain I am just someone who is spending 20 hours a day trying to keep up with the social media channel and integrate 30 years of experience in business development and marketing with cross functional teams.

Point 2: In the social space, there is a saying “speed is more important than perfection.” Sometimes that means less time for proof reading and some feel that is justification. However, I would never want to work for a company where a boss wrote such a negative statement on a resume (and returned it to the applicant) I hope she/he loses a job when they forget to dot an “i”.

Point 3: Somehow social media makes people think they can be so transparent that they are rude, hurtful and hateful, even if they write with perfect grammar and punctuation.

Signed
A sales engineer working on better writing skills but always willing to hire a professional.

Can the SPAM

In response to Barbara Giamanco talking about SPAM in our social media

Giamanco: “If you’ve ever read a blog post of mine, heard me speak or follow some of my musings on LinkedIn and Twitter, you know that I really hate it when I receive sales spam in my email and/or LinkedIn inbox from people that I do not know. Whether it is a cold call or a cold email, it is still cold.  The effective use of technology presents huge opportunities for the savvy salespeople who get it. These rock stars know that using social media gives them an avenue for building relationships and demonstrating expert credibility BEFORE sales opportunities present themselves. There are however, too many salespeople using technology as a way to send the same boring, boilerplate sales spam to anyone with an email address.

WSS:  Barbara, this post really hit home for me because I am getting slammed with LinkedIn Sales SPAM.  Here was the latest – someone sent me a invite with a custom message (seemed fair enough and it was with a company I might want to learn more about), which I accepted with a reply message that I look forward to see his activity on LI. The next day I got an email SPAM sales letter that I ignored since I didn’t ask for any of the materials or have the time. The following day I got a phone call from a middle east country with a sales pitch. This is happening more frequently since the “sales” teams are getting shut down on email.

I hate to see LinkedIn get abused this way.  I am going to start build a wall of shame for these sales SPAM emails so I can generate an example post like this! Thanks for reminding everyone on the sales side not to “be that guy.

How did you participate in your social ecosystem this week?  Share in the comments.

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The social media strategy question: To build a social media strategy, or suffer the confusion of mindless tactical efforts,  that is the question.

Image from Istock

Over the past two years there has been a lot of education happening on social media – books, webinars, live presentations, videos, and podcasts. In the business to business (B2B) space, the education seems to be taking a longer learning curve. Not because there is more to learn, but because the businesses say they are looking at more proof of concept examples (and ROI). Social media strategy, content strategy and action plans are used interchangeably, but should they be? Are you confused over these terms yourself?

Ready to move forward yet?

Small and medium size companies, especially those in manufacturing, technical products and professional services, are now just gathering the troops to move forward with the social media channel.  Still, the majority of businesses are approaching social media by looking at the tools first and trying to build a tactical strategy around the tool.

Or they are confusing a content strategy with a a social business strategy.  While they are now planning blog subjects, tweets, LinkedIn updates and corporate approved news link sharing out 6 months and tracking mechanisms, they have not aligned the content to a business function that can improve how they work with customers better.  They have not embraced a strategy around their business goals that will transform their organization through a cross-functional social media team ( including customer and partner stakeholders).  Even farther from nurturing customer relationships, they have not empowered their staff to be a unified customer service team nor allowed the greater community to be the amplifier of their message.

Social business strategy comes first

Image coyright by Istock Mark VB - Quail

In an article on Social Media Examiner, Rich Brooks, Flyte New Media   interviewed Susan Cato, Senior Director of Web and New Media Strategies at CompTIA, said,

“You can’t have a social media strategy without a content strategy.”

I don’t think this is true at all. You must understand what content to create that will address goals, which existing business functions you can improve, and how your customer relationships will change.  Which of course makes my case– social media business strategy comes first.

Even with social business leaders such as Axel Schultze and organizations like Social Media Academy teaching leadership and strategy, not enough organizations are taking this seriously and many are making the same mistakes over and over.

Does this sound familiar?

A company decides that they have to be in social media, they have anyone (often an intern – no disrespect intended) build a page and get to it. You can find these pages and profiles, where the activity lasted as long as the internship, or the first few posts due to lack of staff and management buy-in.

Some companies have a strong content strategy for the information they are sharing. They know the questions the audience is asking, they know where the audience is asking those questions and have joined those communities, they get comments and interaction on what they post, not to mention  they even have gathered a variety of tools to measure and track their progress.  The business clearly has the means to the end, but are lacking the end goal.  That of transforming their organization to a social business with relationships with the audience.  How can I tell?  They have regular posts, they have how tos, case studies, view points, reviews, tool commentary, videos and interviews. All the right content around keywords and subject titles.

Your goal could be to improve one aspect of your business

In a post listing 22 social media tactical tools, Peter Kim says

“I haven’t found a single company doing all of these today. Forget divining a big, meaningful business objective before getting started – you’ll end up in analysis paralysis. Just make sure you’re making an existing business function better and get started.” Peter Kim

The points to make note of is the need to find at least one business function that you can improve. To do that your social media strategy needs to align and recognize the business goal drivers.  And secondly, a content strategy will make using one or more tools more effective and efficient.

Enterprise level adjusts to social business strategy
Large enterprise (Fortune 1000) are regrouping as well. They might have started with a social media person/team that was in the marketing group for each division, but they are finding that each group started in slightly different directions with out a unified strategy across the corporation.[ insert visual from forester/owang on organization for SM teams]

This leads to perhaps inconsistent messages, branded profiles. personal profiles, inconsistent brand messages across a platform and across the social media tools.  If you look for them on Facebook, you can find multiple Facebook pages, managed by employees or by non employees. When problems escalate in the social space, people react via emotion and not with a plan to follow. And yes, they forgot to complete a social media policy.

They are moving from the left-side configuration of a social media function to the far right as they re-analyze success and failures.  I think this is the right direction for organizations large and small.

Do you recognize your company or yourself in this description? Are  you now ready to make that effort more strategic?  Maybe it’s time to regroup and work on a social business strategy to guide your progress.

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Can one Green Bay WI native deal with the heat and solve a business problem in Arizona? Picture this scenario – you provide a service that is not needed every

Loading patient on airplane for flight - Photo provided by Angel MedFlight

day, in fact, it might only be once in a lifetime. How do you educate the public about your service, gain trust and stay at top of mind? Would you consider using social media?

Who are you going to call for commercial medical transport?

This is exactly what Cassandra Graper, Director of Media Production, has been able to accomplish with a strategic marketing and integrated social media plan for Angel MedFlight located in Phoenix, AZ. Angel MedFlight, a 4-year old start-up,  provides hospital to hospital transport for critically ill or injured who need to be transferred but cannot fly on commercial airlines. They fly state to state, coast to coast, and country to country. Often their clients are travelers who are injured or become critically ill while away from home. Angel MedFlight uses fixed-wing Learjets, set up as a flying Intensive Care Unit (ICU), with a critical care flight nurse and paramedic on board to care for the critically ill or injured patient. They do not provide emergency response but will coordinate with other ground transport such as RVs with medical equipment.

Start with business goals and strategy

This company, with strong leadership, is savvy enough to understand the critical need to engage with their audience long before their clients have a need to call them. They built their approach to social media on a sound strategy to achieve its business goals. The business goals they are trying to achieve start with their customer. In fact, ‘customers first’ is the most important business goal they have. The goals they hoped to achieve are:

• Staying top of mind when the need arises
• Educate the public on medical transport service
• Gain the trust of the public

Social media first steps

Getting a better view for the next photo - Photo supplied by Angel Medflight

The company took its first steps into social media 2 years ago by just dabbling in social media with a half-hearted FaceBook page.

Graper arrived on the scene shortly after with a Journalism and Mass Communications background.  Not only that, she was a video producer for several TV stations. With a well-rounded social business sense and key Internet skills, she also brought creative marketing knowledge that she perfected at a promotion company. She took control by doing her research and then establishing a focused strategy for the social media channel before they took further action.

“As the Director of Media Productions, I use social networks, photographs and video to help share the true passion of Angel MedFlight with others. I also use creativity to develop unique ways to increase public and media awareness of the services Angel MedFlight provides.” Cassandra Graper

Building the social media plan

Since then Angel MedFlight has begun to use several key tools to achieve their business objective. I took a look at the obvious social footprints to provide my comments.

• Corporate blog for education -  The Angel Medflight Corporate Blog captures the client experience and extends the company story – using the WordPress platform and bringing in a feed from a Flickr (photo) account, the blog has a decidedly corporate business feel to it without any specific author indicated.  The blog has Technorati Authority: 1  and Rank: 104045 . The blog clearly is an education tool on defining the business and terminology around commercial medical air transport.  I was a little surprised at the lack of personality to the blog given so many videos and pictures that infiltrate all their other social web locations.  The author is not named, nor can you tell if there are multiple authors. I think if they created a stronger personal author/voice for the blog, we would  know the person behind it and that would strengthen the public trust.  After all we trust people not corporations!

• YouTube makes the stories come to life – Angel MedFlight has a custom YouTube Channel . As a video producer it goes without saying that video has played a larger role in Graper’s program than other companies who might just be starting in social media. These are not your everyday FlipVideos either. They are very professionally edited and produced.  From humorous coverage of things like the  Director of Canine Operations,  to the story of a very sick 7-year old girl who needed medical transport that will touch your heart, you can find exceptional videos on their custom channel. They have gained some great traction with over 77000 channel views and 92 subscribers.  I think they are doing a good job on educating and gaining the trust of the public with this channel.

• Tweeting trips and travels – You can find Angel Medflight on Twitter in a good way. This corporate profile account gives the latest reports on each important
  

  Angel Medflight Twitter Profile

  trip by tweeting where they are headed, mileage and integrating those tweets with FaceBook.  They really are on Twitter with 439 followers and actively engaged by following 439  people.  They have multiple posts a day  but in the several check ins I had on different days, Twitter is more of a broadcast channel than conversation channel as they post blog, news, activities (some foursquare posts), FaceBook links, Flickr updates etc. This is not pointed out as a negative, but it does appear that they are doing a solid integration between sites, while focusing on the story telling and sharing using Twitter to extend their reach for this news.

• FaceBook is for friends - The Angel MedFlight page on FaceBook that Cassie directs has a considerable following and seems to be one of the significant interaction sites for engagement. With 3432 fans/likes they have an active posting schedule 4-5 times a day.  On top of that they are listening as can be seen by the response time after people have posted questions.  They have a broader variety of posts and links here including sharing blog updates, news, and general issues that medical and emergency responders would be interested in.

What does success look like?

Tracking and measuring the success of these efforts is not lost on Ms. Graper either. Just like the rest of us – spread thin in our roles – Graper wears many hats and is quick to note that they have tried several different approaches but it is the tracking that helps her decide the success of each social media effort.  They can tell the reach of each video and what to do more of.  FaceBook Insights lets them know what  interaction that works best with the 3,400 fans as they are tuned in to what will bring their news into the home pages of each and every FaceBook contact and their social ecosystem.

Angel MedFlight Website Traffic via Compete.com

Over all the social ecosystem that Ms. Graper is developing has a wonderful mix of case study, stories of clients who used the services presented by the clients themselves, company events, and even funny ones about the company pooch – a handsome Labrador who apparently rules the roost back at the headquarters. These I think have all been combined to make a very serious business personal, real and also lets us see the inside of an operation that could be critical to anyone of us. Judging by Graper’s attention to detail I look forward to checking back with her after the first of the year to hear about her results.

What are your plans for 2011 for building a social media strategy? What do you think Angel MedFlight could do to improve?

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