EXCLUSIVE! Twitter's Top-Followed CMO Ted Rubin Talks to NYAMA

Ted Rubin, Chief Social Marketing Officer at Collective Bias, inventor of the term ROR: Return on Relationship, top tweeter, blogger, speaker, father, and social media shaman, offers us some answers to current marketing queries.

Q: In your blog (tedrubin.com), you recently talked about Google+, and how marketers should learn the intricacies.  Is there anything in particular you like or dislike about G+?

A: G+ is simply not just a social media infrastructure - like Twitter - it is a social media platform. G+ has the opportunity to be a social media Swiss Army knife. Google has a massive portfolio and it can call upon any one of their products and integrate that into G+... i.e. Analytics, Gmail, Google Apps, Google Voice, YouTube and the most viral property - the Android mobile platform.

There is an amazing opportunity for brands to build interactive two-way engagement, interaction, and sharing within this platform, but consumers will have to adopt it to make worthwhile and only time will answer that question.  

Q: Clicking "delete" is even faster than changing the channel - what's your advice on delivering "wow" in an e-mail subject line to get your customer to open it?

A: Email subject lines are an art and not simply a place to "wow" your prospective customer. Get to know your audience, test, re-test, and test again to make sure you are using what gets the best results. Most important...do not assume you know what is best without trying many different approaches, and never get comfortable.

Q: Your "Divorced Dad" blog (tedrubin.com/category/divorced-dad/ ) is so thoughtful - and so rare! Do you agree that it's hard to find feelings-oriented, from-the-heart stuff from men in media - or are we just not looking in the right place?

A: In general, men communicate differently from women and therefore express their feelings in a different way and most often less visibly. That said, it is not as hard to find as you expect if you look in the right places. The Dad Blogger community is expanding rapidly, finding an audience, developing a voice, and creating a fair amount of such content, and engagement. But here is a piece of advice...look for the ones who cater to more of a female audience, and you will find more of the feelings-oriented content you seek. Why...because it is the encouragement and support of the female audience that brings it out and makes it more rewarding for the male publisher.

Q: Your daughters are teenagers - as a parent, do you think 13 is too young an age requirement for facebook? Or is it foolish to even try to keep kids out of social media?

A: Whether or not 13 is too young an age is unfortunately something we cannot control with online access so easily available. So it is not about trying to keep them away, but learning how to teach them and ourselves how to address.

My daughters are 14 and 16, and the whole social media world is a concern to me. Right now I believe it is more about the learning curve with regard to the dangers, rather than the dangers themselves. What I mean is that there is danger everywhere and we have spent years developing content and curriculum making our children aware of the danger of strangers on the street, people in their daily lives, smoking and alcohol...and I believe have done a fairly good job. We do not yet have the tools, or the learning, that allow us to do the same with social media, so we are not doing a good job of relaying that message to our children.

Q:You're credited with coining the term "Return on Relationship," or ROR - how do you respond to businesses that acknowledge their Twitter followers or Facebook fans as already brand-loyal (in that they followed/liked because they already were loyal to the product)? How can they better serve the customers that seek them out in social media outlets?

A: First let's make something perfectly clear...no consumer is "brand-loyal" for any longer than you keep them that way as a brand. It is not so much about "how better to serve" as it is about "how to build a relationship " that will last and spread, through advocacy, to those in their social graph. When customers seek you out via social they are opening the door to a relationship and the opportunity to build an emotional connection . That is a job that never ends and in today's social media world brands MUST step up to the challenge or risk being left behind. If you let that opportunity slip by, due to the hubris of believing you already have them, the game will end before it begins.

Most marketers are focused on trying to assign a dollar value to each Facebook fan or Twitter follower instead of paying attention to the fact that without the engagement and interaction that takes place in these mediums, the value of each user is greatly diminished. The relationships built with existing and future customers fuel activation (the conversion of users into advocates/influencers through meaningful experiences), and therefore hold the true value and strength of social media/marketing. If we don't value Social Media with the end in mind, our numbers are essentially meaningless indicators of simply who shows up online, but not who matters to brand success. 

Consumers don't fall in love with your brand and become Brand Advocates by simply being a customer; they fall in love with your high quality product, excellent customer service, and a consistently enjoyable experience - all natural byproducts of the interaction and engagement that leads to strong relationships.
Relationships ARE the new currency - honor them, invest in them, and recognize their value!

Q: Can you recommend worthwhile web resources to the NYAMA community?

A: Two blogs where I publish and think have incredibly valuable input for marketers... http://TheSocialCMO.com
http://12Most.com

Ted Rubin is the CMO of Collective Bias and the most followed CMO on Twitter. He is credited with inventing the term ROR (Return On Relationship), serves on the boards of OpenSky and SheSpeaks, and is the Social Marketing and Engagement Advisor to Big Fuel Communications.