Eric Mattson

Previously, I shared my research on social media usage by the Inc. 500 and college admissions departments. Today, the third piece of that series, non-profit data, went live. Using a similar methodology to the first two studies, we surveyed the 200 largest charities in the US (as defined by Forbes magazine) about their familiarity with, usage of and attitude towards social media.

The numbers are pretty interesting and indicate that social media is making some serious inroads into the non-profit world. You can download the executive summary here for detailed stats.

On Thursday, Nora and I spoke at DocTrain East in Lowell, MA about our research into social media adoption by the Inc. 500. In addition to giving me a chance to enjoy the Northeast’s fall foliage, the audience at the conference had some great questions that I believe truly illustrate the diversity of knowledge levels about social media.

A few examples:
1. How do we get people to read our blog? (Provide real value to the READERS)
2. Isn’t social networking just a waste of time? (It depends on how you use it.)
3. How do we get buy-in for doing a technical wiki for our customers? (Show them numbers/examples. Educate them.)
4. How are companies measuring success of their blogs/social media? (Most aren’t. But it doesn’t have to be that way.)

If you’re struggling with questions like this, I can help or point you in the right direction. Give me a call at 206.331.1178.

Yesterday, my research partner (Prof. Nora Barnes of the UMassD’s Center for Marketing Research) and I were interviewed by a reporter from The Journal News, a newspaper in New York. The focus on the interview was our recent research into how college admissions departments are using social media (executive summary in PDF format).

A podcast of the interview can be found on their education blog and a newspaper article is pending.

In July, my client and I started planning a conference called Finovate to take place in early October in New York. Any seasoned event planner will tell you that a 12-week time line is crazy. We did it anyway.

While we were at it, we threw out the traditional conference format and patterned our event on DEMO. Twenty innovative companies presented their latest and greatest products in a mere seven minutes each (ten in the morning session, ten in the afternoon). No fluff. No powerpoint.

Just cool products and 225 great people including prominent press (Wall Street Journal, Money Magazine, Fast Company Magazine), bloggers (Payments News), analysts (Yankee Group, Celent) and senior finance executives (Wells Fargo, Chase, Citi & many more).

The result…

Glowing reviews from the blogosphere (one, two, three, four) and an exciting new line of business for my client.

The bottom line…

Great companies are built around good ideas and stellar execution. If you’re interested in some of both, give me a call (206.331.1178) or drop me an email.

Last Wednesday, I was invited by Professor Rob Wiltbank of Willamette University’s Atkinson Graduate School of Management to speak to his class of 75 first-year MBA students about entrepreneurial strategy and marketing.

For my part of my class, I presented a case example of a high-tech startup idea and then led a discussion using a framework that Rob has developed over the years. The framework is a useful one for evaluating any idea so I thought I would share it.

Basically, there are six qualities that high-growth business ideas often possess. Rarely does an idea have all of these at the beginning but, with the right strategies and execution, most can gain them.

1. Feasible - Can you actually build the product or deliver the service?
2. Reachable - Can you reach potential customers (efficiently)?
3. Valuable - Is the product / service worth something (a lot?) to the customers (and you)?
4. Scalable - Can you scale the business? (Is the market big enough, can build or buy the systems necessary?)
5. Durable - Can you build in some sort of sustainable competitive advantage?
6. Saleable - Is it clear how you might exit the business?

I hope you find this useful! If you’re interested in discussing your idea and your marketing strategies, please feel free to contact me.

My research partner, Prof. Nora Barnes of UMass Dartmouth, and I recently had our research findings about the social media monitoring habits of corporations published in the summer 2007 issue of the Journal of New Communications Research and featured on the homepage of Inc. magazine.

On a recent trip out to Boston, I managed to squeeze in an extra day and meet a few of the podcast interviewees from my 1,000 podcast interview project (Jenerous) in person for the first time.

One of them, Jared Spool of User Interface Engineering, fed me some great blueberry pancakes at his local diner (the only way to recover from a red-eye flight IMHO) then turned the tables on me and interviewed me for his podcast.

Like everything Jared does, it is worth checking out!

Nora and I have just released the next major installment of our research into social media usage by organizations. Here’s the intro:

For the approximately 2,000 four-year accredited colleges and universities in the US, the name of the game is recruiting the best students. It is a highly competitive process often influenced by factors that are more subjective than objective and more emotional than logical. In this challenging environment, social media (in the form of blogs, podcasts, message boards, social networking, videos and wikis) has become an important new marketing tool.

Following up on our popular study of the Inc. 500s social media habits, this new study examines the familiarity with, usage of, and attitude towards social media by the Admission Offices of 453 US colleges and universities. The results are fascinating and drive our statistically-based knowledge of organizational social media habits even farther forward.

Generally, the marketing teams of academic institutions are more familiar with and adopting social media faster (especially blogs) than even the innovative companies of the Inc. 500. Even more importantly, they are using social media and search engines to research potential students. No longer can applicants behave irresponsibly online without potential consequences to their futures (and their parents’ sanity).

A detailed executive summary can be found here in PDF and MSWord formats.

It was always our intention to follow up on the high-level executive summary of our research into social media adoption by the Inc. 500 with several academic papers exploring the data in deeper detail. I’m please to announced that the first of those papers was recently published in the Journal of New Communications Research spring/summer 2007 issue.

The paper, The Inc. 500 and Social Media: Are They Paying Attention?, explores the social media monitoring practices of the Inc. 500 and the factors that drive such a habit. A second paper exploring the Inc. 500’s adoption of blogs has been submitted to a different journal and will hopefully be public soon.

One of the interesting things about being a consultant is that one’s life lacks the structure that comes with things like performance reviews, bosses that pat you on the back, and what not. And every so often, that sort of thing is kind of nice.

A current client of mine wrote recently this about my services and so I thought I hide the humble pie for a few minutes and toot my own horn a little:

“In my 20+ years working in marketing and new product development, I can only think of one other occasion where I’ve worked with someone as talented as Eric Mattson, and that guy went on to absolutely revolutionize Starbucks’s point-of-sale experience. Not only is Eric unbelievably creative, he has the remarkable ability to focus on the critical path to getting a project accomplished. The combination of big thinking and dogged determination is what makes his contribution so valuable and unique. He has literally jump-started my 12-year-old business in the past six months by relaunching and re-purposing our content in blog format. We had the best quarter in seven years thanks to his efforts.”

If you’re interested in some help with your marketing or social media, drop me a line.