Everything you wanted to know about Social Media but were afraid to ask

Part II April 2009

Why you keep hearing about social media ?

Because social media is the destination for everyone online with over 190

million users every month

So why has social media grown so fast in relevance and traffic?

Consumer Frustration & anger

Need to beheard

Mobile devices makeit easy to stay in touch

People want to stay networkedwith friends

What led to social media growth?

When did it start?

Well it started with….

If consumers wanted it they bought it..

And why not? After all didn’t we earn it ?

I worked hard all my life and I want to be able to enjoy some of the pleasures of

my work…

My kids are either out of college or on

their own now

We have a lot of equity in our homes

And our 401K’s were doing well

So in between I want my BMW and iPhone !

I’ve always wanted a BMW

Then came the perfect storm…

Decline in home pricesWhat happened to my equity?

The stock market lost valueWhat happened to my 401K?

And of course business responded with layoffs

Consumers learned their jobs were not secure anymore

Unemployment started climbing and we were notso secure in our jobs

And on top of all this households lost $12.9 trillion in net worth

Stories in the media fueled consumer anger and fear

Which led to even more

Then came the ….

Which in turn got consumers angrier

As a result consumers stopped spending

It was bad circle for the economy

But consumers wanted a voice!

As a result of their voicea new administration was elected

Then they turned to social media as an additional voice to be heard

Consumers used social media to laugh at advertising

Even Microsoft was not immune to the power of social media

Microsoft runs a supposed “reality” commercial with “Lauren” trying to buy a laptop computer for under $1000.

Lauren finds out that she can’t purchase an Apple laptop for under $1000 and winds up purchasing an HP laptop.

However..social media users chime in and we learn:

Lauren is actually a member of the screen actors guild.

That a random person passing by the Apple store when Lauren walks in is in a eerily comparable position when she walks out, which lead them to question whether the whole event was staged or if she even walked into the store at all.

The final blow is when we hear about the multitude of negative reviews on the particular HP Pavilion laptop Lauren purchased and how that particular setup delivered what could best be described as a poor Vista experience.

Social media users dissected the Lauren commercial from

Microsoft

In today's social-media-centric world it's imperative that you're transparent, honest and authentic.

Social Media shifted the power to consumers even more

Which caught a lot of marketers off guard

So how do most marketers respond?

They try and use social media to interrupt us with irrelevant advertising

They’re still selling but we’re not buying and don’t want to hear it

Which gets consumers even more upset

Never underestimate the power of an

extremely pissed off consumer

Time to admit itThe love affair with old advertising is over

Marketers need to change brains Stop thinking about selling and start thinking about

engagement and conversation

As social media has given millions a voice to vent their anger & frustration

with brands and products

Marketers should be

Listening Conversing&

OK..so a lot of people are using social media. What

does this mean for marketers and brands?

Part IThe Marketplace

Consumers are saving moreThey have less money to spend

But we still lag behind other industrialized countries

The way consumers shop may have changed forever

Fundamental shift from wants to needs

Private label sales are increasing

Brands have to redefine the value equation

Traditional branding is dead

And marketing people are being asked to impact the bottom line results

Realities of the current marketing environment

Consumer trust in business, products, and brands has been badly damaged and as a result they are more skeptical of advertising claims.

Unless you are honest, transparent and authentic consumers will take your brand apart by using social media to laugh at your advertising.

Most brands have failed to move from product to conversation.

Organizations are ill prepared to use social media because they don’t understand how to use it to meet business objectives without pissing off consumers.

Old marketing cannot be applied to new media.

As private label sales increase at the expense of brands marketers need to redefine the value equation to their advantage.

Marketers are being held accountable for bottom line results now more than ever.

So as consumers have less money to spend on “wants”

and spend more time at home using the Internet

more.

What does the Internet & social media landscape look

like?

Demographics of the Internet(US By Segment)

Source: Pew Internet Feb 2009

How demographic segments use the Internet

Understand where consumers are in the social media landscape

The fastest growth is coming from older demographics

And that growth of social media is increasing

Twitter has been an amazing social media success story

Now 14 million users

Older demographics continue to growTwitter Demographics

45-54 year olds are 36 percent more likely than average to visit Twitter, making them the highest indexing age group, followed by 25-34 year olds, who are 30

percent more likely.

Facebook Demographics

2009 Facebook Demographics and Statistics Report: 276% Growth in 35-54 Year Old Users*

* From June 2008 thru January 2009

Facebook now has 200 million usersBut how many are unique and access every day, week or

month?

So should we increase social media spending ?

But where & how?

Before you decide to increase spending read

Myths and Legends of Social Media

Myths of Social MediaMyth #1: We need a social media program now

Reality:

You need first to clearly communicate your objectives and strategy of any social media program and ensure that there is a consensus within the organization that a social media program can help you meet and measure business objectives.

Don’t get so drunk on the idea of social media that you ignore the other problems of your marketing strategy. Social media is not a cure-all; it’s just another in a long list of tools you should be using.

Before you launch a social media programensure that expectations for success are

clearly communicated with influentialpeople within the company

Myths of Social MediaMyth #2: Our agency can implement a social media

program for usReality:

Agencies can set up your social media platform but how do you expect to communicate honestly and authentically with your audience through an agency? You need to be transparent and that means that you need to establish trust via the conversation.

Social media gives you the chance to be face to face online with your target audience and ask question that you want answers to not your agency.

Consumers want to talk to you not your agency

Myths of Social MediaMyth #3: If we get a lot of followers on a social media site

then our program is a huge success

Reality:

This is the biggest misconception of social media. You can give away free things or applications but it you can’t track back to a positive ROI against business objectives then the program is a failure.

Just because you’re connected with thousands of users, doesn’t mean you’ll build a strong connection with everyone. Remember, quality trumps quantity every time. Coke has over 3 million followers

on Facebook but have brand salesIncreased?

Myths of Social MediaMyth #4: It’s easy and inexpensive to implement a social

media marketing program

Reality:

Social media marketing programs can be expensive in people and dollars depending on the program. In addition don’t forget to add analytics to measure your social media programs.

Setting the objectives and how they are going to be measured can be a time consuming process

Myths of Social MediaMyth #5: There is no way to measure ROI of social media

Reality:

Social media has shown huge ROI through increased search engine optimization which can result in a quantifiable number of new business leads.

You can use a variety of methods, including mentions on blogs and in media; comments on the content; real-time blog advertising results, and click-throughs to your company Web site. You can get very precise statistics from a variety of sites, including Google Trends, Twitter search, Google Analytics, BackType, and Compete.

Social Media Resources

Social Media Resources

Brand Overviews

HowSociable? - A simple, free, tool that can measure the visibility of your brand on the web across 22 metricsAddict-o-matic - A nice search engine that aggregates rss feeds, allowing you to quickly see the areas where a brand is lacking in presencesocialmention - A social media search engine offering searches across individual platforms (eg blogs, microblogs) or all, together with a 'social rank' score. Whether or not the score is transparent enough to be meaningful is open to debate.

Blog Search Tools

TECHNORATI Search - Technorati's new search interface. Use it to find top blogs based upon inbound links only.TECHNORATI Advanced - Technorati’s advanced search page allows you to search for blogs (rather than posts) based on tags.Google Blog Search - Google's index of blog posts. The advanced search tab allows you to search based on additional criteria. Very good for searching between specific dates.IceRocket - Blog search tool that also graph-ifies!BlogPulse - Search for blog posts by keyword. Developed by Nielsen BuzzMetrics.

Buzz Tracking

Serph - Track buzz in real timeGoogle Trends - shows amount of searches and google news storiesTrendpedia - Create charts showing the volume of discussion around multiple topics. Generates cool graphs.BlogPulse Trends - Compare the mentions of specific keywords and phrases in blog posts (LEFT vs. RIGHT)Omgili Charts - Omgili Buzz Graphs let you measure and compare the Buzz of any term. Mostly from review sites/forums.eKstreme - blog data is obtained from Technorati and the social bookmarks come from del.icio.us

Social Media Resources

Message Board Search Tools

BoardTracker - tracks words in forumsBoardReader - Search multiple message boards and forums.Omgili - Omgili is a specialized search engine that focuses on "many to many" user generated content platforms, such as, forums, discussion groups, mailing lists, answer boards and others. Omgili finds consumer opinions, debates, discussions, personal experiences, answers and solutions.Google Groups - Searches usenet groups.Yahoo! Groups - Searches all Yahoo! Groups.

Twitter Search Tools

Twitter Search - Search keywords on Twitter which "self-refreshes". See what's happening — 'right now'.Twitstat - Twitter Tweitgeist - Tag cloud for last 500 TweetsTweetScan - search for words on TwitterTwit(url)y - see what people are talking about on TwitterHashtags - Realtime Tracking of Twitter HashtagsTweetBeep - Track mentions of your brand on Twitter in real time.Twitrratr - Rates mentions of your search term on Twitter as positive/neutral/negativeTweetMeme - View the most popular Twitter threads occurring now.TwitScoop – Through an automated algorithm, twitscoop crawls hundreds of tweets every minute and extracts the words which are mentioned more often than usual and creates a tag cloud.Twilert - Twitter application that lets you receive regular email updates of tweets containing your brand, product, services

Web Site Traffic

Compete - Competitor site traffic reports. Estimates only of monthly visitor data. Best used on large high-traffic Web sites.Quantcast - Use this on large high-traffic Websites. It allows you to compare multiple web sites in one handy chart. Estimates only of monthly visitor data.Alexa - Comparative site traffic reports. Includes estimated reach, rank and page views.BlogFlux Page Rank - Tells you Google Page Rank for a web page. Use this to compare different websites.

Search Data

Google Trends - Search trends and see search volume by country and region.Google Insights - Compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, and time frames.Wordtracker Keywords - Displays average daily search volume of a given keyword or phrase.Yahoo! Keyword Tool - Displays search volumes for specific keywords and phrases for previous month’s search data.FACEBOOK LEXICON - Displays volume of wall postings for specific term(s). Similar to Google Trends. Not great with obscure terms.Google Keyword Tool – Generate keyword ideas for related keywords and search volumes.

Social Media Resources

Who is Richard Meyer?Results-driven senior marketing executive offering a strong balance between business savvy and creative capabilities. Possess a proven track record of 20+ years of experience contributing to the advanced performance, growth and profitability of leading marketing organizations and product brands. Core competencies include:

Strategic brand planningBrand strategyNew product planning and launchInternet marketingWeb AnalyticseCommerce

Brand positioningCompetitive analysisSearch Engine marketingVendor and agency managementTeam leadershipSocial media strategy, implementation and measurement.

Brands I’ve worked for:

Finally…..

I am passionate about marketing on the Internet and marketing in general.

Please contact me for job opportunities

richardameyer@me.com

http://www.richsblog.com