lecture jan 13 2010

Insights and opportunities in social media

Class 2

Questions or thoughts from last class?

What I heard from last week

Internal/external processes

Various business applications: Non-profit, guest relations, pr, entrepreneurial, database/crm, B2B, education, sales, media, promos

Selling in social media

Internal ownership, process development, legal implications

Once established, how to continue momentum

Resources (cases, sites, access)

Measurement

SMO checklist

What we’re covering today

Overview of SMO (social media optimization) process

Trends in consumer behavior

“Distributing” the paper

Discuss the assignment

The paper

What we do as marketers to drive the social space

Listen

Engage

Rally

Embrace

Listen

Find out what your brand stands for and track it

Understand how market perceptions shift

Understand how people use social technology

Find and cultivate influencers

Generate new product and service ideas

Brand Measurement Dashboard

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Free listening tools

Listen

Engage

Publish viral content and functionality

Engage people in social communities and networks where they are

Initiate the conversation

Follow through with conversations

Engaging at all can be positive

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“What do you believe brands do when you engage with them in the social space?”

47% say ‘the brand does nothing’ = ‘The brand doesn’t care’

Source: Dartmouth, 2008

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•Without direction people will talk about

what they think is most relevant TO

THEM

• Popularity

• Activity

• Connectivity

• Engagement

• Pervasiveness

• Drivers

• Credibility04/07/2023 13

Listen

Engage

Embrace

Build and support community

Reach out to brand activists

Plan to encourage and incent

participation to get started

Continuously improve the

community from Day 1 with people

outside the organization

leading

Embracing people is more art than science

• Appreciate feedback

• Collaborate

• Add value

• Be authentic

• Don’t be a doormat04/07/2023 15

17

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•“If you simply ban trolls… you nurture their sense of being an oppressed truth-seeker”

•Clive Thompson, Wired Magazine, April 2009

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Crowdsourcing

Selective invisibility

Disemvoweling

Listen

Engage

Rally

Embrace

Harness and focus social momentum

Give people a sense that their

community is doing something

Share openly – the brand, each

other

“Modern brands have become movements within a cultural and social environment that doesn’t focus on selling. Rather, modern brands share their passion towards a bigger cause.”

The Conversation Agency, 2008

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79% of consumers would switch brands to the one that is associated with a good cause (assuming product price and quality is the same)

People spent longer reading cause marketing related ads, and after being exposed to cause marketing ads sales went up anywhere from 5% to 74%

Brandweek, 2008

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Listen

Engage

Rally

Embrace

Plan

Ensure clients are prepared to enter the social space

properly

Align social strategy with

marketing objectives

Continually provide clients with updates to technology and

application

✔ Will the brand get credit/credibility?

✔ Is it about information/explanation OR conversation?

✔ What is the investment in time, money, and effort required?

✔ What is the tolerance level for transparency and openness?

✔ Is the target well defined as it relates to their participation in the social space?

✔ Are we clear in what we want people to do?

✔ What is the value we are bringing to the conversation?

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Use social media when you can actually be social

Trends in social media

Banner Blindnesswhat it is

We embrace banners as part of a digital marketing mix, but they’re just the beginning. And, studies show, readers completely ignore them.

DRIVEN BY:• Consumers experience same creative on many sites, believe there’s no “news” in banners.• Standardized placement can render banners irrelevant to page content and easy to look past in favor of

desired content.• Low industry average click-thru and interaction rates may prevent bigger spend necessary for more

compelling, rich-media display media

Banner Blindnesshow it’s manifested

Eye-tracking ‘heat map’ of (l to r) quick scanning, partial reading and thorough reading. Banner placements are indicated by green outline.

Stronger creative plus a smart media buy remain a crucial part of digital marketing activity.

Digital marketers will need to move beyond pure bulk impressions, clout and quantity to a more measured, quality ROI approach. (“Smart banners”)

Banner Blindnessthe implications

Social Is Personalwhat it is

Connecting through social media is becoming more and more about personal expression.

DRIVEN BY:• People’s need to connect at a deeper level• Desire for immediacy and tangibility• Brands’ ability to listen and respond to people’s concerns more proactively• The high adoption rate of shared social spaces, across a growing variety of consumer

segments

“Ambient intimacy is being able to keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have access to, because time and space conspire to make it impossible.”

Leisa Reichelt

Social Is Personalhow it’s manifested

Social Is Personalhow it’s manifested

The most successful brand profiles are attributed to a person, not a product, service or logo.

Social Is Personalhow it’s manifested

Millennials are migrating back to MySpace as Facebook becomes inundated with adults (their parents).

Millennials

Boomers “So this is what my kids have been up to…”

“Uh-oh, Mom and Dad are here…”

Social is Personalthe implications

Customer care and PR become one in the same as consumers increasingly use social media to demand better service, more accountability.

Companies — both large and small — are adapting their business practices to respond in real-time, and without rehearsal, to consumers’ concerns.

Many companies are exploring ways to channel and guide individual employees to become “social figureheads” who help improve personal brand experiences.

Life Dataficationwhat it is

The democratization of data meets a vast universe of personal metrics to capture, examine and showcase – ultimately telling us more about ourselves and the way

we live.

DRIVEN BY:• An increased appreciation for monitoring our own wellness, consumption and other behaviors• Digital environments are predicated on the democratization of data• The gratification of seeing your most mundane activities considered important enough for a

chart, graph or other visualization

Life Dataficationhow it’s manifested

“Nike has discovered that once a user uploads five runs to its web site, they’ve gotten hooked on what their data tells them about themselves.”

– Wired Magazine

“Self-knowledge through numbers? Sounds absurd, but the newest tools open up our lives like never before.”

– Wired Magazine

Life Dataficationhow it’s manifested

TweetPsych uses two algorithms to build a psychological profile based on the content of your last 100 tweets.

Brands providing the utilities and tools that allow us to capture the vast universe of personal metrics will ingratiate themselves with digital-era audiences.

A little transparency goes a long way. Marketers who share data about themselves demonstrate an understanding of what is important to influencers and the broader audiences they inform.

Tracking every facet of life leads not just to personal gratification, but can uncover new opportunities and under-served audiences or unmet needs.

Life Dataficationthe implications

New Collaborationswhat it is

The flexibility and openness of Web 2.0 is translating into how people conduct business, get ideas, and even socialize outside of the web.

DRIVEN BY:• An increased appreciation for “the wisdom of crowds”• Businesses outsourcing and cutting budgets• The erosion of tangible media, the blending of news and information sources, the blurring of

digital and real spaces, and the rise of search and aggregation technologies

New Collaborationshow it’s manifested

Predictify lets people predict results of news stories AND earn credibility (and in some cases, even money) in the process.

It’s not just about hearing the news, it’s about being an active participant in its development.

New Collaborationshow it’s manifested

We are increasingly relying on the crowd to help with our own individual thinking.

Ideablob gives people a forum to solicit and contribute ideas.

New Collaborationshow it’s manifested

Bands, filmmakers, Obama, and other entrepreneurs are looking to the masses to financially support ideas and initiatives.

Sites like CrowdFunding facilitate the collective cooperation, attention and trust of people who pool their money, usually through online micro-payments, for any variety of purposes.

New Collaborationshow it’s manifested

Kickstarter is “a funding platform for artists, designers, filmmakers, musicians, journalists, inventors” and more.

It is crowd-funding for the creative class, who may lack the business acumen necessary for bringing their ideas to life.

New Collaborationshow it’s manifested

The ‘messiness’ and social creation aspects of the web are increasingly influencing the way people choose to behave offline.

The ‘unconference’ movement is about having meetings with no preset agenda – the agenda forms itself at the meeting / conference.

Media will need to be treated more holistically and flexibly.

Brands with marketing, PR and customer support working in tandem to harness social media will better meet needs of consumers (who see all three as the same).

Taking advantage of connections made online in the offline space will create unique opportunities to more fully engage people – and will build a better foundation for long-term relationships.

New Collaborationsthe implications

Utility Marketingwhat it is

Value is no longer about just dollars and cents, people demand that brands provide something useful beyond the service

model… and are increasingly looking to communication for this value.

DRIVEN BY:• Recessionary shift in priorities• Changing role of media in consumers’ lives• Ubiquitous computing and access to information and entertainment• People’s desire to explore and uncover new experiences

Utility Marketinghow it’s manifested

Utility Marketinghow it’s manifested

Brand communication must play the role of “enricher” for consumers to take heed, with promises activated and delivered across multiple touchpoints.

Entertainment still plays a critical role for consumers, but now must work even harder for them to pay attention and to act against messages.

Utility does not imply less aesthetic. Design is still part of the experience and the usability. Utility brings a layer of usefulness, derived from the brand’s core promise. Consumers depend on brands to give them the right tools for the job.

Utility Marketingthe implications

Perpetual Betawhat it is

To stay innovative, continually release new features and updates that may not be fully tested. Treat users as co-developers to harness collective intelligence and leverage customer self-

service.

DRIVEN BY:• The need to compete at the level of utility marketing, being first to market with a new service

even if it isn’t perfected yet.• Open source dictum “release early and release often”• Draw audience in to process, create greater, more meaningful sense of partnership and affinity with

brand, product or service

Perpetual Betahow it’s manifested

Google’s Gmail was in beta for five years. In that time, the service grew from invitation-only to more than 100 million users. Google kept it in beta to signal that the company would be making “constant feature refinement” to the service.

Perpetual Betahow it’s manifested

August 25, 2009: Sears announces Manage My Home official launch – after two full years in public beta.

This early-stage consumer testing of core features helped ensure that the destination site could “easily integrate into everyday life”, and “help homeowners get more done at home”.

Perpetual Betahow it’s manifested

The notion of perpetual beta is so pervasive, it inspired an independent documentary film about the “ways in which technology has/is/will change the ways in which we thinking about ourselves as individuals and a society.

It is exploring the cultural shift that technology creates as it enables people to live less planned and more passionate lives.”

Do not be afraid to launch, then learn. Constant refinement and optimization are crucial to the development of innovative, useful and relevant services and tools.

Including consumers in testing and development not only leverages the wisdom of your primary audience, it also gives them a stake in the product and creates affinity for the brand.

As technology shifts, it enables people to live less planned, more passionate lives – lives in which brands will need to remain relevant.

Perpetual Betathe implications