Interview: KGB's Director of Social Media Thomas Falconer

By now anyone with a television or a radio (or anyone who watched their Superbowl ad) knows that the acronym KGB no longer represents the defunct Russian intelligence agency. These days KGB stands for "Knowledge Generation Bureau", the new "ask anything" mobile texting service that has been doing the traditional media marketing equivalent of carpet bombing. KGB ads are everywhere - television, radio, major sporting events, billboards, and just about any other place you can think of.

While the traditional media blitz is impressive, and no doubt critical, no modern marketing plan would be complete without a sound strategy for making use of social media tools and systems like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, etc. But how can these tools be employed in conjunction with traditional mass marketing techniques to expand reach and increase a company's customer base?

Our long-time client and friend of Accession Media, Thomas Falconer, just happens to be the man behind KGB's social media marketing and outreach strategy. A while back Thomas agreed to chat with us about how his company is making use of tools across media and technologies to help drive adoption of both the KGB brand, and use of its text messaging service.

Josh Katinger: Thomas, thanks for taking the time to speak with us. Can you start with a quick overview of the overall goals of KGB's social media efforts?

Thomas Falconer: There are two sides of the social media coin at KGB. The one side is the work at home crowd, an established and hardworking community that we rely on as our experts or "Agents" as we call them. Prior to launch, we formulated this work at home community. They are literally part of the product and the development of the entire concept that is KGB.

I found a lot of people who were already doing this type of work in places like OrganizedWisdom.com or ChaCha.com. These folks, for one reason or another, were not happy working for these firms. Quite quickly I was able to garner a critical mass of "Agents" that were interested in our product and in working for KGB. That community of 4,000 is now 14,000 active agents. It's a pretty wonderful group of experienced people.

Once the community was formed (with a little help from our friends at Accession Media) I wanted to build our own "neighborhood" for our agents, specifically for KGB-based work. So after building the community, we concentrated on the other side of the coin - Facebook, and Twitter. We had our critical mass of agents become "fans" of our Facebook page and "follow" us on Twitter. This was an easy way to quickly gain a large following on both of these large social networks.

JK: How is KGB using these tools to support its traditional marketing campaigns? It's certainly logical to post the company's humorous TV commercials on YouTube, but how do tools like Twitter and Facebook help drive usage of KGB's service?

TF: We are now starting to promote the FB presence as part of our traditional advertising. Now that KGB is on FB, we are using our traditional media budgets to drive traffic to the social media networks.

The Facebook fan page has close to 15,000 fans. Who are those other fans? Those are our customers - people who are fans of the product - people who are interested in the whole sort of ecology of KGB. KGB consists of people who ask questions, and people who answer them. We are not Google…we are different. This is not mobile search, this is mobile find.

JK: So how do you figure the return on getting all these fans on Facebook?

TF: If the Facebook fan page has 10,000 fans, every time I post something I receive something like 100 comments rather quickly. What does that mean? If each of those 100 people comment or like my post and each of those people have 100 friends, I now have 10,000 postings on profile pages across Facebook. This is purely viral, with no money being spent. As a result we're getting an average of 500 new fans a week…and the cycle repeats.

JK: And what do you do to keep these folks interacting after their initial exposure to the brand?

TF: To drive usage, we focus on conversational content. We ask questions; topical questions, political questions, etc. We also use a value strategy, if one of our fans brings in 5 more fans, they get a free t-shirt.

JK: What is your take on how large ad agencies are taking to social media and their ability to help clients make the best use of these new tools?

TF: Ad agencies don't know the first thing about social media. Forrester did a research report on this about 6 months ago. Ad agencies are so far behind the social web, the semantic web and engagement design. They just don't understand it. Most agencies are still trying to implement big flash sites, and that doesn't work. That's not engagement. A company that relies on an agency to handle their social media is destined for failure.

JK: Part of the beauty and the curse of social media for a big brand is that people can say whatever they want about you…good or bad. Do you have a set approach for dealing with negative feedback and criticism online?

TF: Anytime we have a customer voice a negative opinion on FB, the community jumps on it. My job is to "feed the beast" and keep everyone happy.

Look at Intel's social media policy (where they dictate what their employees can and can't do on the social web), as opposed to say GE's – they are encouraging them to talk to EVERYONE about their products and invite discussion, with one caveat - just don't do anything stupid. Encourage participation rather than discourage. Most companies are so afraid of what people are going to say about them they simply can't do this.

JK: OK, what about the reverse? How can social media be used to encourage and increase positive brand feedback? How do you build brand advocates using these tools?

TF: Where I see fan pages failing is where there is inconsistent and erratic presence by the brand. I post something at LEAST two times a day. And not only do I post things, I go through the comments, and RESPOND to people. The brand has to be a consistent part of the conversation. What works even better is when that brand has a personality. Tony Hsieh did this with huge success at Zappos.com. He added personality to his brand and posted constantly.

JK: Thanks so much for taking the time to speak with us today Thomas. I'm sure our readers will appreciate your insights. We wish KGB continued success and we look forward to keeping up with you and KGB on Twitter and Facebook.