Chris Ramsey

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• How should we evaluate our social media "engagement" - are there benchmarks we should be aiming for?

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    There are lots of metrics to use… depends on the goals. Is this for customer service in a call center? Is it part of a integrated ad campaign? Is your goal driving people to your Web site? Is it improving the perception of your brand online? For example you could measure how your online Net Promoter Score (% positive sentiment about you minus % negative sentiment about your) is trending over time due to your SM engagement efforts…

• Hey Chris! I have an issue with my co-founder. I'd be thankful for your advice, cause it's a tough one. I'm 26 and on my first serious venture. I got one of my Professors on board to tweak the business docs and open the door to investors. We have a handshake agreement - barely anything in writing - now I feel that he's not pulling his wait at all. Talked to him about it several times but there's no improvement. What's the decent way to 'say goodbye'? Thanks, Alex

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    Hey Alex, lets take that one off line… you can email me at first.last @ radian6.com

    cheers

• Should CEOs tweet?

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    Depends on the CEO :–)

    Is he or she going to keep tweeting after the first week?

• How can blogging be used as an effective marketing tool?

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    1. It can become a source of trusted thought leadership content
    2. It is a means of having engaging dialog with your customers and community

• Is there a danger in hiring a community manager to be the face of your brand? What if that person leaves the company?

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    I think the face of your brand is your brand. As long as your community manager adheres to that same philosophy then you should be fine. You can also use a more generic twitter handle like @comcastcares…

• What brands can you point to as examples of companies using social media well? Why?

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    Dell is a great example. They are embracing sm across the entire enterprise and it has been a huge part of turning their brand around in the past 5 years. Michael Dell is personally driving this across his company. here is a recent initiative that they launched: http://tinyurl.com/35qkqde

• How do followers on twitter translate into paying customers?

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    trust and loyalty are two biggies… if you are trying to be more transactional (and you do need to be careful here) then you may be able to drive the directly to your site if you have the right approach… Dell has sold millions $$ with their twitter campaign re: selling laptops

• How did you grow your company so quickly?

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    Our timing was perfect, and very lucky. The companies before us struggled due to being too early. We seemed to hit the market just at the right time. Couple that with blogs and twitter taking off at the same time, and our target buyers being the same ones jumping on those social networks and we were able to connect with a large amount of key influencers and build relationships very quickly. Also, coming out of our early adopter program, we announce a global roll-out with Weber Shandwick (biggest PR firm on the planet) the day we released our first version of the product… and we’ve been running 100 mph ever since.

• How did you approach your first customers?

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    When we didn’t even have a product we launched an Early Adopter Program inviting companies and agencies provide feedback on our product ideas (we had a light prototype at the time) in exchange for getting access to the product for free for a short period of time after we released it. We simply emailed the target buyers within a list of ideal target customers. That EAP program was critical to our early success.

• When did you hire your first sales person?

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    About 1.5 years into the company. We started in April 2006 and hired our first sales rep in August 2007. By that time we were just a few weeks from landing Weber Shandwick for a global roll-out deal… back to one of my earlier posts – figure out how to sell the product yourself before you invest too much into sales./ Start small, and start bottoms up.