Blogging at OEB http://bit.ly/9xg0GL until further notice

Hey all I’m moving to Social Insight @ One Eyed Bird for blogging until further notice. Thanks for following me and reading what I have to say over the last couple months. I hope you join us over there to continue the discussion. Dirk Collins and I are teaming up to take it to a new level. I’ve been asked to join him and build the Seattle office this year. Sadly I’m not so ambitious as to think I can manage two blogs. The site just launched so we’re working out a few kinks between now and June 1.

About OEB

“One Eyed Bird is a lifestyle based marketing and entertainment agency. We provide brand and campaign management focused on integrating high quality film, events and social media. Our specialty is creating authentic, personal experiences within action sports, outdoor adventure and cause related missions.  With credibility among core influencers we help build long term relationships between brands and their audience.”

Social media strategy with Northface #2

According to Joey Shepp http://bit.ly/97MbGk in “February 2009 the North Face had no social media strategy.  They considered their efforts an utter-flop for the brand.” and gives credit to Amy Mengel’s article in April 2009 to giving them a kick in the a...  with big results (I provide an initial update on Northface’s strategy last week). He mentions that hiring a content, creating custom Facebook pages, having athletes post and posting more as the reason why, but I’m not so sure. It maybe an better “marketing” strategy, but it’s not “social.” As I have said before, a social marketing strategy encourages a two way conversation. He does mention creating the “microsite, NeverStopExploring.com (branded content from brand influencers, athlete contributors) and the community at PlanetExplore.com. These last two point are a bit more interesting, at least functionally. While they seem to have more tools at their disposal, after an initial review it still feels like “social media” for Northface is just another marketing channel rather than a way to build social relationships with their customers.

Social marketing strategy at Northface #1

I was reading Amy Mengel’s http://bit.ly/cYvFXw comparison of Mountain Hardware and Northface’s social media strategy a year ago and thought I’d give an update on the Northface side since they lost the first smackdown.

On Twitter, the @thenorthface is now following 787 (327 a year ago) and has 11,380 (1839 a year ago) followers with 1,100 (91 a year ago) tweets since October 2007. In her assessment a year ago, they were really only just getting started and were keeping the marketing to a minimum while attempting to make direct engagement with followers.

They've obviously ramped up their usage considerably,  but in revisiting their timeline, it looks like it’s all marketing with offers, events, athlete and partner promotions etc. and they’re no longer  trying to have a two-way conversation with their customers. That’s too bad. There also seems to still be an imbalance between with the number of folks they’re following, which would indicate little attempt to engage. As it is, only 7% of their community can actually send a message directly, which tells me their not quite ready to dialogue for real.

On Facebook they have more that 220k fans, which is a whopping 594% up from 37,000 fans a year ago. In that time, they’ve added another 8 photo albums (now at 13) and fans have added another 290 since last year (from 100). They have also built another 34 pages that are specific to local stores, which I like. Otherwise, it’s pretty much the same as Amy’s description. Interestingly, as I go through the posts, there are a lot of one way messages from the Northface and comments. Nobody is dialoguing though which is, again, unfortunate. I’m of the mind it’s the brand’s responsibility to encourage this behavior. It appears this is just becoming an advertising and PR platform for the Northface.

On YouTube they seem to have actually reduced the number of videos to 48 (from 60)in the last year. Not much as changed here.

As for their website, just read Amy’s assessment which boils down to finding a confusing but extensive array of reviews, rss feeds, blogs and podcasts that miss the opportunity to drive community and a personal level of engagement with  their audience.

All in all, I’d say the didn’t gain a lot of ground. For the next post I’ll look around into other activities by Northface to be fair…