Social Media (Influence) Marketing by Martin Walsh

Editor's Notes

1. Identifying connected communities and observing the themes and culture of each provide entrée into the personification necessary to foster a genuine and equal ecosystem for dialogue.It’s about bringing information and solutions to people where they congregate before attempting to host their attention on our terms.
2. Mobile devices will evolve as remote controls for ever expanding types of real-time cloud-based services, including emerging category of location-based services, creating opportunities + dislocations, empowering consumers in unprecedented + transformative ways.
3. Time and time again we hear agencies advising clients that they need to have a Facebook page, establish a Twitter account and develop a social networking application as part of the social media program or marketing campaign.But, if you don’t understand the fundamental attributes of why consumers participate in SM, for example meeting others, keeping up friendships or being entertained, then you are simply wasting time and money and in some cases being counter productive to your marketing efforts.If you don’t develop a strategy, presence or application which addresses some, or all of the attributes of your intended audience then you shouldn’t bother.
4. Meet people - 78% join to communicate with existing colleagues or develop new acquaintancesBe entertained - 47% join in order to find entertaining content such as photos, music or videosLearn something - 38% join to get information from other people about topics that hold particular interest to themInfluence others - 23% join to express their opinions in a forum where their ideas can be discussed or acted upon
5. Meet people - 78% join to communicate with existing colleagues or develop new acquaintancesBe entertained - 47% join in order to find entertaining content such as photos, music or videosLearn something - 38% join to get information from other people about topics that hold particular interest to themInfluence others - 23% join to express their opinions in a forum where their ideas can be discussed or acted upon
6. Meet people - 78% join to communicate with existing colleagues or develop new acquaintancesBe entertained - 47% join in order to find entertaining content such as photos, music or videosLearn something - 38% join to get information from other people about topics that hold particular interest to themInfluence others - 23% join to express their opinions in a forum where their ideas can be discussed or acted upon
7. Meet people - 78% join to communicate with existing colleagues or develop new acquaintancesBe entertained - 47% join in order to find entertaining content such as photos, music or videosLearn something - 38% join to get information from other people about topics that hold particular interest to themInfluence others - 23% join to express their opinions in a forum where their ideas can be discussed or acted upon
8. In the USA this figure is 72% and I put the lower rate for Australians down to our natural built-in bull shit meter!
9. There is a real distinction between merely hearing the words and reallylistening for the message. When we listen effectively we understand what the person is thinking and/or feeling from the other person’s own perspective. It is as if we were standing in the other person’s shoes, seeing through his/her eyes and listening through the person's ears. Our own viewpoint may be different and we may not necessarily agree with the person, but as we listen, we understand from the other's perspective. To listen effectively, we must be actively involved in the communication process, and not just listening passively.Consumers using social technologies threaten traditional marketing institutions like brands and ad campaigns. For the most part, marketers understand that there's no choice but to dive in and use some of those technologies — blogs, communities, wikis, widgets, social networks, and all the rest — to their own advantage. We get questions all the time about how to implement these technologies. But marketers are often asking the wrong question first.Don't ask what technology to use. Ask first who you're trying to reach, what you're trying to accomplish, and how you plan to change your relationships with your customers. Then, and only then, can you decide what technologies to use.We outline below a systematic method for social strategy formation:Review The Social Technographics Profile Why do social strategies fizzle? As often as not, it's because they misjudge their customers. Forrester has developed a tool called the Social Technographics Profile for analyzing groups of vcustomers and their social tendencies. For example, L.L. Bean should review the Social Technographics Profile of its customers before forming a strategy. Based on this profile, online consumers who shop at L.L. Bean:Are more socially active online than average Americans. Starting at the bottom of the profile, you can see that nearly half of all online Americans are Inactive, untouched by social technologies, but only 36% of L.L. Bean shoppers are Inactive. This creates urgency for L.L. Bean to work on its social strategy, as most of its online customers are already participating.Would accept Critic activities like reviews. Thirty-four percent of online L.L. Bean shoppers are Critics: people who contribute to discussion forums or write ratings and reviews. Based on this profile, many of L.L. Bean's customers would participate in ratings and reviews if they were available on its site.Are highly likely to be Collectors. L.L. Bean shoppers are more than twice as likely to be Collectors as other online consumers. RSS feeds, a major Collector activity, are missing from the L.L. Bean Web site.Are also well above average in Creator and Joiner activities. One in four online L.L. Bean shoppers are Creators: people who write blogs, maintain Web sites, and upload videos. A similar proportion are Joiners: members of social networks. This gives a green light to strategies based on any of these activities.Pick An Objective By itself, the profile only tells a marketer what's possible. Next you should decide what you want to accomplish. Based on our experience with companies building social strategy, there are five main objectives of social strategies for connecting with consumers. To get started, pick the one that's best suited to your company's overall goals:Listening. Use social technologies for research to better understand your customers. For example, Del Monte used a private community to understand the desires of pet owners. In social strategy, listening typically involves private communities or brand monitoring. Talking. Use social technologies to spread messages about your company. Executive blogs like GM's FastLane are a quick way to talk to, and with, your customer base.(see endnote 4) Interactive marketers can also extend the brand through social marketing activities like videos on YouTube, as Dove did with its Dove Evolution video, or with brand widgets like Discovery Channel's Shark Week widget. Energizing. Find your most enthusiastic customers and use social technologies to supercharge the power of their word of mouth. This works well for retail companies, which can use ratings and reviews from some customers to influence others. Other energizing strategies include designating brand ambassadors, as Fiskars Brands did with its Fiskateers scrapbooking community, or leveraging social networks as Victoria's Secret did for its VSPink brand. Supporting. Set up social tools like forums and wikis to help your customers support each other. Supporting can save costs, as in the support forums run by companies like Dell and Intuit. Supporting customers with a community can also increase their comfort level and increase sales.Embracing. Integrate your customers into the way your business works, including using their help to design your products and improve your processes. This is the most challenging of the five goals, and is best suited to companies that have succeeded in one of the other four goals already. Salesforce.com'sIdeaExchange is a powerful example of how customers' suggestions can help improve products. L.L. Bean's key objective initially is likely to be energizing its most loyal customers. For L.L. Bean, giving a voice to its enthusiastic customer base with the right social strategy has the potential to increase sales.Choose A Strategy Your objective determines what business goal you want to accomplish. Having decided on the objective, you can move on to strategy: how will you accomplish the goal? In particular, social strategy revolves around answering this question: How do I want to change my relationship with my customers? While activities like social marketing campaigns can have a short-term impact, the long-term value of activity in the social world is the ability to change relationships with customers. By focusing on the relationships, not the technologies, marketers can keep their eye on long-term change that matters. To flesh out this type of strategy, companies like L.L. Bean should take the following steps: Describe the new relationship. L.L. Bean's current relationship with its customers is as a trusted supplier with a large inventory and excellent service reputation. In energizing its customers, L.L. Bean will extend the relationship, giving its satisfied customers opportunities to discuss their experiences on the L.L. Bean site, and by doing so, motivate other customers to buy.Measure the impact of the change. It's crucial that companies have metrics in place to measure progress towards the objective. For example, in energizing strategies like the one we laid out for L.L. Bean, you should measure to what extent visitors to social elements of the site are more likely to actually buy something. If your objective is talking with customers, measure awareness, impressions, or online buzz. If it's supporting, look for declines in support costs related to site visits. Regardless of the objective, your strategy is not complete without a success metric. Identify barriers to the strategy. Change created by social strategies is often difficult for companies to swallow. For example, L.L. Bean now has a direct relationship with all of its customers. By featuring customers' opinions on its site, the company will be admitting that those consumers influence buying decisions as much as the company itself, a transition some L.L. Bean executives might find difficult to make.Select And Deploy Appropriate Technologies — And Measure Results By this point, you've determined your customers' profile, you know what technologies they will accept, and at what rate. Since you know your objective and have nailed down a strategy, now you can evaluate technologies. This is why it makes sense to evaluate technologies only after you've finished the other three steps. In this case, Forrester recommends that L.L. Bean consider three social technologies: Ratings and reviews. Because L.L. Bean's online customers are likely to be Critics, the best energizing technology would be to deploy ratings and reviews on the L.L. Bean Web site and encourage customers to post their own evaluations of products. Studies by companies like Bazaarvoice have proven that ratings and reviews can significantly increase sales, and Forrester's own research shows that 80% of customer-supplied reviews are positive. User-generated content. L.L. Bean might also enable customers to energize others by allowing them to upload pictures of their outdoor experiences, as Dick's Sporting Goods does on its "bragging boards." Given the relatively high number of Creators among L.L. Bean shoppers, encouraging them to upload photos or videos is likely to succeed.List making. With a quarter of L.L. Bean customers in the Collector category, the site can tap into their organizing skills and ask them to assemble their favorite collections for different activities, ranging from family road biking to ocean kayaking. Integrating these lists into product descriptions and search results, as Amazon.com does with its Listmania tool, will encourage cross-sell and upsell.
10. Consumers using social technologies threaten traditional marketing institutions like brands and ad campaigns. For the most part, marketers understand that there's no choice but to dive in and use some of those technologies — blogs, communities, wikis, widgets, social networks, and all the rest — to their own advantage. We get questions all the time about how to implement these technologies. But marketers are often asking the wrong question first.Don't ask what technology to use. Ask first who you're trying to reach, what you're trying to accomplish, and how you plan to change your relationships with your customers. Then, and only then, can you decide what technologies to use.We outline below a systematic method for social strategy formation:Review The Social Technographics Profile Why do social strategies fizzle? As often as not, it's because they misjudge their customers. Forrester has developed a tool called the Social Technographics Profile for analyzing groups of vcustomers and their social tendencies. For example, L.L. Bean should review the Social Technographics Profile of its customers before forming a strategy. Based on this profile, online consumers who shop at L.L. Bean:Are more socially active online than average Americans. Starting at the bottom of the profile, you can see that nearly half of all online Americans are Inactive, untouched by social technologies, but only 36% of L.L. Bean shoppers are Inactive. This creates urgency for L.L. Bean to work on its social strategy, as most of its online customers are already participating.Would accept Critic activities like reviews. Thirty-four percent of online L.L. Bean shoppers are Critics: people who contribute to discussion forums or write ratings and reviews. Based on this profile, many of L.L. Bean's customers would participate in ratings and reviews if they were available on its site.Are highly likely to be Collectors. L.L. Bean shoppers are more than twice as likely to be Collectors as other online consumers. RSS feeds, a major Collector activity, are missing from the L.L. Bean Web site.Are also well above average in Creator and Joiner activities. One in four online L.L. Bean shoppers are Creators: people who write blogs, maintain Web sites, and upload videos. A similar proportion are Joiners: members of social networks. This gives a green light to strategies based on any of these activities.Pick An Objective By itself, the profile only tells a marketer what's possible. Next you should decide what you want to accomplish. Based on our experience with companies building social strategy, there are five main objectives of social strategies for connecting with consumers. To get started, pick the one that's best suited to your company's overall goals:Listening. Use social technologies for research to better understand your customers. For example, Del Monte used a private community to understand the desires of pet owners. In social strategy, listening typically involves private communities or brand monitoring. Talking. Use social technologies to spread messages about your company. Executive blogs like GM's FastLane are a quick way to talk to, and with, your customer base.(see endnote 4) Interactive marketers can also extend the brand through social marketing activities like videos on YouTube, as Dove did with its Dove Evolution video, or with brand widgets like Discovery Channel's Shark Week widget. Energizing. Find your most enthusiastic customers and use social technologies to supercharge the power of their word of mouth. This works well for retail companies, which can use ratings and reviews from some customers to influence others. Other energizing strategies include designating brand ambassadors, as Fiskars Brands did with its Fiskateers scrapbooking community, or leveraging social networks as Victoria's Secret did for its VSPink brand. Supporting. Set up social tools like forums and wikis to help your customers support each other. Supporting can save costs, as in the support forums run by companies like Dell and Intuit. Supporting customers with a community can also increase their comfort level and increase sales.Embracing. Integrate your customers into the way your business works, including using their help to design your products and improve your processes. This is the most challenging of the five goals, and is best suited to companies that have succeeded in one of the other four goals already. Salesforce.com'sIdeaExchange is a powerful example of how customers' suggestions can help improve products. L.L. Bean's key objective initially is likely to be energizing its most loyal customers. For L.L. Bean, giving a voice to its enthusiastic customer base with the right social strategy has the potential to increase sales.Choose A Strategy Your objective determines what business goal you want to accomplish. Having decided on the objective, you can move on to strategy: how will you accomplish the goal? In particular, social strategy revolves around answering this question: How do I want to change my relationship with my customers? While activities like social marketing campaigns can have a short-term impact, the long-term value of activity in the social world is the ability to change relationships with customers. By focusing on the relationships, not the technologies, marketers can keep their eye on long-term change that matters. To flesh out this type of strategy, companies like L.L. Bean should take the following steps: Describe the new relationship. L.L. Bean's current relationship with its customers is as a trusted supplier with a large inventory and excellent service reputation. In energizing its customers, L.L. Bean will extend the relationship, giving its satisfied customers opportunities to discuss their experiences on the L.L. Bean site, and by doing so, motivate other customers to buy.Measure the impact of the change. It's crucial that companies have metrics in place to measure progress towards the objective. For example, in energizing strategies like the one we laid out for L.L. Bean, you should measure to what extent visitors to social elements of the site are more likely to actually buy something. If your objective is talking with customers, measure awareness, impressions, or online buzz. If it's supporting, look for declines in support costs related to site visits. Regardless of the objective, your strategy is not complete without a success metric. Identify barriers to the strategy. Change created by social strategies is often difficult for companies to swallow. For example, L.L. Bean now has a direct relationship with all of its customers. By featuring customers' opinions on its site, the company will be admitting that those consumers influence buying decisions as much as the company itself, a transition some L.L. Bean executives might find difficult to make.Select And Deploy Appropriate Technologies — And Measure Results By this point, you've determined your customers' profile, you know what technologies they will accept, and at what rate. Since you know your objective and have nailed down a strategy, now you can evaluate technologies. This is why it makes sense to evaluate technologies only after you've finished the other three steps. In this case, Forrester recommends that L.L. Bean consider three social technologies: Ratings and reviews. Because L.L. Bean's online customers are likely to be Critics, the best energizing technology would be to deploy ratings and reviews on the L.L. Bean Web site and encourage customers to post their own evaluations of products. Studies by companies like Bazaarvoice have proven that ratings and reviews can significantly increase sales, and Forrester's own research shows that 80% of customer-supplied reviews are positive. User-generated content. L.L. Bean might also enable customers to energize others by allowing them to upload pictures of their outdoor experiences, as Dick's Sporting Goods does on its "bragging boards." Given the relatively high number of Creators among L.L. Bean shoppers, encouraging them to upload photos or videos is likely to succeed.List making. With a quarter of L.L. Bean customers in the Collector category, the site can tap into their organizing skills and ask them to assemble their favorite collections for different activities, ranging from family road biking to ocean kayaking. Integrating these lists into product descriptions and search results, as Amazon.com does with its Listmania tool, will encourage cross-sell and upsell.
11. Consumers using social technologies threaten traditional marketing institutions like brands and ad campaigns. For the most part, marketers understand that there's no choice but to dive in and use some of those technologies — blogs, communities, wikis, widgets, social networks, and all the rest — to their own advantage. We get questions all the time about how to implement these technologies. But marketers are often asking the wrong question first.Don't ask what technology to use. Ask first who you're trying to reach, what you're trying to accomplish, and how you plan to change your relationships with your customers. Then, and only then, can you decide what technologies to use.We outline below a systematic method for social strategy formation:Review The Social Technographics Profile Why do social strategies fizzle? As often as not, it's because they misjudge their customers. Forrester has developed a tool called the Social Technographics Profile for analyzing groups of vcustomers and their social tendencies. For example, L.L. Bean should review the Social Technographics Profile of its customers before forming a strategy. Based on this profile, online consumers who shop at L.L. Bean:Are more socially active online than average Americans. Starting at the bottom of the profile, you can see that nearly half of all online Americans are Inactive, untouched by social technologies, but only 36% of L.L. Bean shoppers are Inactive. This creates urgency for L.L. Bean to work on its social strategy, as most of its online customers are already participating.Would accept Critic activities like reviews. Thirty-four percent of online L.L. Bean shoppers are Critics: people who contribute to discussion forums or write ratings and reviews. Based on this profile, many of L.L. Bean's customers would participate in ratings and reviews if they were available on its site.Are highly likely to be Collectors. L.L. Bean shoppers are more than twice as likely to be Collectors as other online consumers. RSS feeds, a major Collector activity, are missing from the L.L. Bean Web site.Are also well above average in Creator and Joiner activities. One in four online L.L. Bean shoppers are Creators: people who write blogs, maintain Web sites, and upload videos. A similar proportion are Joiners: members of social networks. This gives a green light to strategies based on any of these activities.Pick An Objective By itself, the profile only tells a marketer what's possible. Next you should decide what you want to accomplish. Based on our experience with companies building social strategy, there are five main objectives of social strategies for connecting with consumers. To get started, pick the one that's best suited to your company's overall goals:Listening. Use social technologies for research to better understand your customers. For example, Del Monte used a private community to understand the desires of pet owners. In social strategy, listening typically involves private communities or brand monitoring. Talking. Use social technologies to spread messages about your company. Executive blogs like GM's FastLane are a quick way to talk to, and with, your customer base.(see endnote 4) Interactive marketers can also extend the brand through social marketing activities like videos on YouTube, as Dove did with its Dove Evolution video, or with brand widgets like Discovery Channel's Shark Week widget. Energizing. Find your most enthusiastic customers and use social technologies to supercharge the power of their word of mouth. This works well for retail companies, which can use ratings and reviews from some customers to influence others. Other energizing strategies include designating brand ambassadors, as Fiskars Brands did with its Fiskateers scrapbooking community, or leveraging social networks as Victoria's Secret did for its VSPink brand. Supporting. Set up social tools like forums and wikis to help your customers support each other. Supporting can save costs, as in the support forums run by companies like Dell and Intuit. Supporting customers with a community can also increase their comfort level and increase sales.Embracing. Integrate your customers into the way your business works, including using their help to design your products and improve your processes. This is the most challenging of the five goals, and is best suited to companies that have succeeded in one of the other four goals already. Salesforce.com'sIdeaExchange is a powerful example of how customers' suggestions can help improve products. L.L. Bean's key objective initially is likely to be energizing its most loyal customers. For L.L. Bean, giving a voice to its enthusiastic customer base with the right social strategy has the potential to increase sales.Choose A Strategy Your objective determines what business goal you want to accomplish. Having decided on the objective, you can move on to strategy: how will you accomplish the goal? In particular, social strategy revolves around answering this question: How do I want to change my relationship with my customers? While activities like social marketing campaigns can have a short-term impact, the long-term value of activity in the social world is the ability to change relationships with customers. By focusing on the relationships, not the technologies, marketers can keep their eye on long-term change that matters. To flesh out this type of strategy, companies like L.L. Bean should take the following steps: Describe the new relationship. L.L. Bean's current relationship with its customers is as a trusted supplier with a large inventory and excellent service reputation. In energizing its customers, L.L. Bean will extend the relationship, giving its satisfied customers opportunities to discuss their experiences on the L.L. Bean site, and by doing so, motivate other customers to buy.Measure the impact of the change. It's crucial that companies have metrics in place to measure progress towards the objective. For example, in energizing strategies like the one we laid out for L.L. Bean, you should measure to what extent visitors to social elements of the site are more likely to actually buy something. If your objective is talking with customers, measure awareness, impressions, or online buzz. If it's supporting, look for declines in support costs related to site visits. Regardless of the objective, your strategy is not complete without a success metric. Identify barriers to the strategy. Change created by social strategies is often difficult for companies to swallow. For example, L.L. Bean now has a direct relationship with all of its customers. By featuring customers' opinions on its site, the company will be admitting that those consumers influence buying decisions as much as the company itself, a transition some L.L. Bean executives might find difficult to make.Select And Deploy Appropriate Technologies — And Measure Results By this point, you've determined your customers' profile, you know what technologies they will accept, and at what rate. Since you know your objective and have nailed down a strategy, now you can evaluate technologies. This is why it makes sense to evaluate technologies only after you've finished the other three steps. In this case, Forrester recommends that L.L. Bean consider three social technologies: Ratings and reviews. Because L.L. Bean's online customers are likely to be Critics, the best energizing technology would be to deploy ratings and reviews on the L.L. Bean Web site and encourage customers to post their own evaluations of products. Studies by companies like Bazaarvoice have proven that ratings and reviews can significantly increase sales, and Forrester's own research shows that 80% of customer-supplied reviews are positive. User-generated content. L.L. Bean might also enable customers to energize others by allowing them to upload pictures of their outdoor experiences, as Dick's Sporting Goods does on its "bragging boards." Given the relatively high number of Creators among L.L. Bean shoppers, encouraging them to upload photos or videos is likely to succeed.List making. With a quarter of L.L. Bean customers in the Collector category, the site can tap into their organizing skills and ask them to assemble their favorite collections for different activities, ranging from family road biking to ocean kayaking. Integrating these lists into product descriptions and search results, as Amazon.com does with its Listmania tool, will encourage cross-sell and upsell.
12. Consumers using social technologies threaten traditional marketing institutions like brands and ad campaigns. For the most part, marketers understand that there's no choice but to dive in and use some of those technologies — blogs, communities, wikis, widgets, social networks, and all the rest — to their own advantage. We get questions all the time about how to implement these technologies. But marketers are often asking the wrong question first.Don't ask what technology to use. Ask first who you're trying to reach, what you're trying to accomplish, and how you plan to change your relationships with your customers. Then, and only then, can you decide what technologies to use.We outline below a systematic method for social strategy formation:Review The Social Technographics Profile Why do social strategies fizzle? As often as not, it's because they misjudge their customers. Forrester has developed a tool called the Social Technographics Profile for analyzing groups of vcustomers and their social tendencies. For example, L.L. Bean should review the Social Technographics Profile of its customers before forming a strategy. Based on this profile, online consumers who shop at L.L. Bean:Are more socially active online than average Americans. Starting at the bottom of the profile, you can see that nearly half of all online Americans are Inactive, untouched by social technologies, but only 36% of L.L. Bean shoppers are Inactive. This creates urgency for L.L. Bean to work on its social strategy, as most of its online customers are already participating.Would accept Critic activities like reviews. Thirty-four percent of online L.L. Bean shoppers are Critics: people who contribute to discussion forums or write ratings and reviews. Based on this profile, many of L.L. Bean's customers would participate in ratings and reviews if they were available on its site.Are highly likely to be Collectors. L.L. Bean shoppers are more than twice as likely to be Collectors as other online consumers. RSS feeds, a major Collector activity, are missing from the L.L. Bean Web site.Are also well above average in Creator and Joiner activities. One in four online L.L. Bean shoppers are Creators: people who write blogs, maintain Web sites, and upload videos. A similar proportion are Joiners: members of social networks. This gives a green light to strategies based on any of these activities.Pick An Objective By itself, the profile only tells a marketer what's possible. Next you should decide what you want to accomplish. Based on our experience with companies building social strategy, there are five main objectives of social strategies for connecting with consumers. To get started, pick the one that's best suited to your company's overall goals:Listening. Use social technologies for research to better understand your customers. For example, Del Monte used a private community to understand the desires of pet owners. In social strategy, listening typically involves private communities or brand monitoring. Talking. Use social technologies to spread messages about your company. Executive blogs like GM's FastLane are a quick way to talk to, and with, your customer base.(see endnote 4) Interactive marketers can also extend the brand through social marketing activities like videos on YouTube, as Dove did with its Dove Evolution video, or with brand widgets like Discovery Channel's Shark Week widget. Energizing. Find your most enthusiastic customers and use social technologies to supercharge the power of their word of mouth. This works well for retail companies, which can use ratings and reviews from some customers to influence others. Other energizing strategies include designating brand ambassadors, as Fiskars Brands did with its Fiskateers scrapbooking community, or leveraging social networks as Victoria's Secret did for its VSPink brand. Supporting. Set up social tools like forums and wikis to help your customers support each other. Supporting can save costs, as in the support forums run by companies like Dell and Intuit. Supporting customers with a community can also increase their comfort level and increase sales.Embracing. Integrate your customers into the way your business works, including using their help to design your products and improve your processes. This is the most challenging of the five goals, and is best suited to companies that have succeeded in one of the other four goals already. Salesforce.com'sIdeaExchange is a powerful example of how customers' suggestions can help improve products. L.L. Bean's key objective initially is likely to be energizing its most loyal customers. For L.L. Bean, giving a voice to its enthusiastic customer base with the right social strategy has the potential to increase sales.Choose A Strategy Your objective determines what business goal you want to accomplish. Having decided on the objective, you can move on to strategy: how will you accomplish the goal? In particular, social strategy revolves around answering this question: How do I want to change my relationship with my customers? While activities like social marketing campaigns can have a short-term impact, the long-term value of activity in the social world is the ability to change relationships with customers. By focusing on the relationships, not the technologies, marketers can keep their eye on long-term change that matters. To flesh out this type of strategy, companies like L.L. Bean should take the following steps: Describe the new relationship. L.L. Bean's current relationship with its customers is as a trusted supplier with a large inventory and excellent service reputation. In energizing its customers, L.L. Bean will extend the relationship, giving its satisfied customers opportunities to discuss their experiences on the L.L. Bean site, and by doing so, motivate other customers to buy.Measure the impact of the change. It's crucial that companies have metrics in place to measure progress towards the objective. For example, in energizing strategies like the one we laid out for L.L. Bean, you should measure to what extent visitors to social elements of the site are more likely to actually buy something. If your objective is talking with customers, measure awareness, impressions, or online buzz. If it's supporting, look for declines in support costs related to site visits. Regardless of the objective, your strategy is not complete without a success metric. Identify barriers to the strategy. Change created by social strategies is often difficult for companies to swallow. For example, L.L. Bean now has a direct relationship with all of its customers. By featuring customers' opinions on its site, the company will be admitting that those consumers influence buying decisions as much as the company itself, a transition some L.L. Bean executives might find difficult to make.Select And Deploy Appropriate Technologies — And Measure Results By this point, you've determined your customers' profile, you know what technologies they will accept, and at what rate. Since you know your objective and have nailed down a strategy, now you can evaluate technologies. This is why it makes sense to evaluate technologies only after you've finished the other three steps. In this case, Forrester recommends that L.L. Bean consider three social technologies: Ratings and reviews. Because L.L. Bean's online customers are likely to be Critics, the best energizing technology would be to deploy ratings and reviews on the L.L. Bean Web site and encourage customers to post their own evaluations of products. Studies by companies like Bazaarvoice have proven that ratings and reviews can significantly increase sales, and Forrester's own research shows that 80% of customer-supplied reviews are positive. User-generated content. L.L. Bean might also enable customers to energize others by allowing them to upload pictures of their outdoor experiences, as Dick's Sporting Goods does on its "bragging boards." Given the relatively high number of Creators among L.L. Bean shoppers, encouraging them to upload photos or videos is likely to succeed.List making. With a quarter of L.L. Bean customers in the Collector category, the site can tap into their organizing skills and ask them to assemble their favorite collections for different activities, ranging from family road biking to ocean kayaking. Integrating these lists into product descriptions and search results, as Amazon.com does with its Listmania tool, will encourage cross-sell and upsell.
13. Consumers using social technologies threaten traditional marketing institutions like brands and ad campaigns. For the most part, marketers understand that there's no choice but to dive in and use some of those technologies — blogs, communities, wikis, widgets, social networks, and all the rest — to their own advantage. We get questions all the time about how to implement these technologies. But marketers are often asking the wrong question first.Don't ask what technology to use. Ask first who you're trying to reach, what you're trying to accomplish, and how you plan to change your relationships with your customers. Then, and only then, can you decide what technologies to use.We outline below a systematic method for social strategy formation:Review The Social Technographics Profile Why do social strategies fizzle? As often as not, it's because they misjudge their customers. Forrester has developed a tool called the Social Technographics Profile for analyzing groups of vcustomers and their social tendencies. For example, L.L. Bean should review the Social Technographics Profile of its customers before forming a strategy. Based on this profile, online consumers who shop at L.L. Bean:Are more socially active online than average Americans. Starting at the bottom of the profile, you can see that nearly half of all online Americans are Inactive, untouched by social technologies, but only 36% of L.L. Bean shoppers are Inactive. This creates urgency for L.L. Bean to work on its social strategy, as most of its online customers are already participating.Would accept Critic activities like reviews. Thirty-four percent of online L.L. Bean shoppers are Critics: people who contribute to discussion forums or write ratings and reviews. Based on this profile, many of L.L. Bean's customers would participate in ratings and reviews if they were available on its site.Are highly likely to be Collectors. L.L. Bean shoppers are more than twice as likely to be Collectors as other online consumers. RSS feeds, a major Collector activity, are missing from the L.L. Bean Web site.Are also well above average in Creator and Joiner activities. One in four online L.L. Bean shoppers are Creators: people who write blogs, maintain Web sites, and upload videos. A similar proportion are Joiners: members of social networks. This gives a green light to strategies based on any of these activities.Pick An Objective By itself, the profile only tells a marketer what's possible. Next you should decide what you want to accomplish. Based on our experience with companies building social strategy, there are five main objectives of social strategies for connecting with consumers. To get started, pick the one that's best suited to your company's overall goals:Listening. Use social technologies for research to better understand your customers. For example, Del Monte used a private community to understand the desires of pet owners. In social strategy, listening typically involves private communities or brand monitoring. Talking. Use social technologies to spread messages about your company. Executive blogs like GM's FastLane are a quick way to talk to, and with, your customer base.(see endnote 4) Interactive marketers can also extend the brand through social marketing activities like videos on YouTube, as Dove did with its Dove Evolution video, or with brand widgets like Discovery Channel's Shark Week widget. Energizing. Find your most enthusiastic customers and use social technologies to supercharge the power of their word of mouth. This works well for retail companies, which can use ratings and reviews from some customers to influence others. Other energizing strategies include designating brand ambassadors, as Fiskars Brands did with its Fiskateers scrapbooking community, or leveraging social networks as Victoria's Secret did for its VSPink brand. Supporting. Set up social tools like forums and wikis to help your customers support each other. Supporting can save costs, as in the support forums run by companies like Dell and Intuit. Supporting customers with a community can also increase their comfort level and increase sales.Embracing. Integrate your customers into the way your business works, including using their help to design your products and improve your processes. This is the most challenging of the five goals, and is best suited to companies that have succeeded in one of the other four goals already. Salesforce.com'sIdeaExchange is a powerful example of how customers' suggestions can help improve products. L.L. Bean's key objective initially is likely to be energizing its most loyal customers. For L.L. Bean, giving a voice to its enthusiastic customer base with the right social strategy has the potential to increase sales.Choose A Strategy Your objective determines what business goal you want to accomplish. Having decided on the objective, you can move on to strategy: how will you accomplish the goal? In particular, social strategy revolves around answering this question: How do I want to change my relationship with my customers? While activities like social marketing campaigns can have a short-term impact, the long-term value of activity in the social world is the ability to change relationships with customers. By focusing on the relationships, not the technologies, marketers can keep their eye on long-term change that matters. To flesh out this type of strategy, companies like L.L. Bean should take the following steps: Describe the new relationship. L.L. Bean's current relationship with its customers is as a trusted supplier with a large inventory and excellent service reputation. In energizing its customers, L.L. Bean will extend the relationship, giving its satisfied customers opportunities to discuss their experiences on the L.L. Bean site, and by doing so, motivate other customers to buy.Measure the impact of the change. It's crucial that companies have metrics in place to measure progress towards the objective. For example, in energizing strategies like the one we laid out for L.L. Bean, you should measure to what extent visitors to social elements of the site are more likely to actually buy something. If your objective is talking with customers, measure awareness, impressions, or online buzz. If it's supporting, look for declines in support costs related to site visits. Regardless of the objective, your strategy is not complete without a success metric. Identify barriers to the strategy. Change created by social strategies is often difficult for companies to swallow. For example, L.L. Bean now has a direct relationship with all of its customers. By featuring customers' opinions on its site, the company will be admitting that those consumers influence buying decisions as much as the company itself, a transition some L.L. Bean executives might find difficult to make.Select And Deploy Appropriate Technologies — And Measure Results By this point, you've determined your customers' profile, you know what technologies they will accept, and at what rate. Since you know your objective and have nailed down a strategy, now you can evaluate technologies. This is why it makes sense to evaluate technologies only after you've finished the other three steps. In this case, Forrester recommends that L.L. Bean consider three social technologies: Ratings and reviews. Because L.L. Bean's online customers are likely to be Critics, the best energizing technology would be to deploy ratings and reviews on the L.L. Bean Web site and encourage customers to post their own evaluations of products. Studies by companies like Bazaarvoice have proven that ratings and reviews can significantly increase sales, and Forrester's own research shows that 80% of customer-supplied reviews are positive. User-generated content. L.L. Bean might also enable customers to energize others by allowing them to upload pictures of their outdoor experiences, as Dick's Sporting Goods does on its "bragging boards." Given the relatively high number of Creators among L.L. Bean shoppers, encouraging them to upload photos or videos is likely to succeed.List making. With a quarter of L.L. Bean customers in the Collector category, the site can tap into their organizing skills and ask them to assemble their favorite collections for different activities, ranging from family road biking to ocean kayaking. Integrating these lists into product descriptions and search results, as Amazon.com does with its Listmania tool, will encourage cross-sell and upsell.
14. Consumers using social technologies threaten traditional marketing institutions like brands and ad campaigns. For the most part, marketers understand that there's no choice but to dive in and use some of those technologies — blogs, communities, wikis, widgets, social networks, and all the rest — to their own advantage. We get questions all the time about how to implement these technologies. But marketers are often asking the wrong question first.Don't ask what technology to use. Ask first who you're trying to reach, what you're trying to accomplish, and how you plan to change your relationships with your customers. Then, and only then, can you decide what technologies to use.We outline below a systematic method for social strategy formation:Review The Social Technographics Profile Why do social strategies fizzle? As often as not, it's because they misjudge their customers. Forrester has developed a tool called the Social Technographics Profile for analyzing groups of vcustomers and their social tendencies. For example, L.L. Bean should review the Social Technographics Profile of its customers before forming a strategy. Based on this profile, online consumers who shop at L.L. Bean:Are more socially active online than average Americans. Starting at the bottom of the profile, you can see that nearly half of all online Americans are Inactive, untouched by social technologies, but only 36% of L.L. Bean shoppers are Inactive. This creates urgency for L.L. Bean to work on its social strategy, as most of its online customers are already participating.Would accept Critic activities like reviews. Thirty-four percent of online L.L. Bean shoppers are Critics: people who contribute to discussion forums or write ratings and reviews. Based on this profile, many of L.L. Bean's customers would participate in ratings and reviews if they were available on its site.Are highly likely to be Collectors. L.L. Bean shoppers are more than twice as likely to be Collectors as other online consumers. RSS feeds, a major Collector activity, are missing from the L.L. Bean Web site.Are also well above average in Creator and Joiner activities. One in four online L.L. Bean shoppers are Creators: people who write blogs, maintain Web sites, and upload videos. A similar proportion are Joiners: members of social networks. This gives a green light to strategies based on any of these activities.Pick An Objective By itself, the profile only tells a marketer what's possible. Next you should decide what you want to accomplish. Based on our experience with companies building social strategy, there are five main objectives of social strategies for connecting with consumers. To get started, pick the one that's best suited to your company's overall goals:Listening. Use social technologies for research to better understand your customers. For example, Del Monte used a private community to understand the desires of pet owners. In social strategy, listening typically involves private communities or brand monitoring. Talking. Use social technologies to spread messages about your company. Executive blogs like GM's FastLane are a quick way to talk to, and with, your customer base.(see endnote 4) Interactive marketers can also extend the brand through social marketing activities like videos on YouTube, as Dove did with its Dove Evolution video, or with brand widgets like Discovery Channel's Shark Week widget. Energizing. Find your most enthusiastic customers and use social technologies to supercharge the power of their word of mouth. This works well for retail companies, which can use ratings and reviews from some customers to influence others. Other energizing strategies include designating brand ambassadors, as Fiskars Brands did with its Fiskateers scrapbooking community, or leveraging social networks as Victoria's Secret did for its VSPink brand. Supporting. Set up social tools like forums and wikis to help your customers support each other. Supporting can save costs, as in the support forums run by companies like Dell and Intuit. Supporting customers with a community can also increase their comfort level and increase sales.Embracing. Integrate your customers into the way your business works, including using their help to design your products and improve your processes. This is the most challenging of the five goals, and is best suited to companies that have succeeded in one of the other four goals already. Salesforce.com'sIdeaExchange is a powerful example of how customers' suggestions can help improve products. L.L. Bean's key objective initially is likely to be energizing its most loyal customers. For L.L. Bean, giving a voice to its enthusiastic customer base with the right social strategy has the potential to increase sales.Choose A Strategy Your objective determines what business goal you want to accomplish. Having decided on the objective, you can move on to strategy: how will you accomplish the goal? In particular, social strategy revolves around answering this question: How do I want to change my relationship with my customers? While activities like social marketing campaigns can have a short-term impact, the long-term value of activity in the social world is the ability to change relationships with customers. By focusing on the relationships, not the technologies, marketers can keep their eye on long-term change that matters. To flesh out this type of strategy, companies like L.L. Bean should take the following steps: Describe the new relationship. L.L. Bean's current relationship with its customers is as a trusted supplier with a large inventory and excellent service reputation. In energizing its customers, L.L. Bean will extend the relationship, giving its satisfied customers opportunities to discuss their experiences on the L.L. Bean site, and by doing so, motivate other customers to buy.Measure the impact of the change. It's crucial that companies have metrics in place to measure progress towards the objective. For example, in energizing strategies like the one we laid out for L.L. Bean, you should measure to what extent visitors to social elements of the site are more likely to actually buy something. If your objective is talking with customers, measure awareness, impressions, or online buzz. If it's supporting, look for declines in support costs related to site visits. Regardless of the objective, your strategy is not complete without a success metric. Identify barriers to the strategy. Change created by social strategies is often difficult for companies to swallow. For example, L.L. Bean now has a direct relationship with all of its customers. By featuring customers' opinions on its site, the company will be admitting that those consumers influence buying decisions as much as the company itself, a transition some L.L. Bean executives might find difficult to make.Select And Deploy Appropriate Technologies — And Measure Results By this point, you've determined your customers' profile, you know what technologies they will accept, and at what rate. Since you know your objective and have nailed down a strategy, now you can evaluate technologies. This is why it makes sense to evaluate technologies only after you've finished the other three steps. In this case, Forrester recommends that L.L. Bean consider three social technologies: Ratings and reviews. Because L.L. Bean's online customers are likely to be Critics, the best energizing technology would be to deploy ratings and reviews on the L.L. Bean Web site and encourage customers to post their own evaluations of products. Studies by companies like Bazaarvoice have proven that ratings and reviews can significantly increase sales, and Forrester's own research shows that 80% of customer-supplied reviews are positive. User-generated content. L.L. Bean might also enable customers to energize others by allowing them to upload pictures of their outdoor experiences, as Dick's Sporting Goods does on its "bragging boards." Given the relatively high number of Creators among L.L. Bean shoppers, encouraging them to upload photos or videos is likely to succeed.List making. With a quarter of L.L. Bean customers in the Collector category, the site can tap into their organizing skills and ask them to assemble their favorite collections for different activities, ranging from family road biking to ocean kayaking. Integrating these lists into product descriptions and search results, as Amazon.com does with its Listmania tool, will encourage cross-sell and upsell.
15. Consumers using social technologies threaten traditional marketing institutions like brands and ad campaigns. For the most part, marketers understand that there's no choice but to dive in and use some of those technologies — blogs, communities, wikis, widgets, social networks, and all the rest — to their own advantage. We get questions all the time about how to implement these technologies. But marketers are often asking the wrong question first.Don't ask what technology to use. Ask first who you're trying to reach, what you're trying to accomplish, and how you plan to change your relationships with your customers. Then, and only then, can you decide what technologies to use.We outline below a systematic method for social strategy formation:Review The Social Technographics Profile Why do social strategies fizzle? As often as not, it's because they misjudge their customers. Forrester has developed a tool called the Social Technographics Profile for analyzing groups of vcustomers and their social tendencies. For example, L.L. Bean should review the Social Technographics Profile of its customers before forming a strategy. Based on this profile, online consumers who shop at L.L. Bean:Are more socially active online than average Americans. Starting at the bottom of the profile, you can see that nearly half of all online Americans are Inactive, untouched by social technologies, but only 36% of L.L. Bean shoppers are Inactive. This creates urgency for L.L. Bean to work on its social strategy, as most of its online customers are already participating.Would accept Critic activities like reviews. Thirty-four percent of online L.L. Bean shoppers are Critics: people who contribute to discussion forums or write ratings and reviews. Based on this profile, many of L.L. Bean's customers would participate in ratings and reviews if they were available on its site.Are highly likely to be Collectors. L.L. Bean shoppers are more than twice as likely to be Collectors as other online consumers. RSS feeds, a major Collector activity, are missing from the L.L. Bean Web site.Are also well above average in Creator and Joiner activities. One in four online L.L. Bean shoppers are Creators: people who write blogs, maintain Web sites, and upload videos. A similar proportion are Joiners: members of social networks. This gives a green light to strategies based on any of these activities.Pick An Objective By itself, the profile only tells a marketer what's possible. Next you should decide what you want to accomplish. Based on our experience with companies building social strategy, there are five main objectives of social strategies for connecting with consumers. To get started, pick the one that's best suited to your company's overall goals:Listening. Use social technologies for research to better understand your customers. For example, Del Monte used a private community to understand the desires of pet owners. In social strategy, listening typically involves private communities or brand monitoring. Talking. Use social technologies to spread messages about your company. Executive blogs like GM's FastLane are a quick way to talk to, and with, your customer base.(see endnote 4) Interactive marketers can also extend the brand through social marketing activities like videos on YouTube, as Dove did with its Dove Evolution video, or with brand widgets like Discovery Channel's Shark Week widget. Energizing. Find your most enthusiastic customers and use social technologies to supercharge the power of their word of mouth. This works well for retail companies, which can use ratings and reviews from some customers to influence others. Other energizing strategies include designating brand ambassadors, as Fiskars Brands did with its Fiskateers scrapbooking community, or leveraging social networks as Victoria's Secret did for its VSPink brand. Supporting. Set up social tools like forums and wikis to help your customers support each other. Supporting can save costs, as in the support forums run by companies like Dell and Intuit. Supporting customers with a community can also increase their comfort level and increase sales.Embracing. Integrate your customers into the way your business works, including using their help to design your products and improve your processes. This is the most challenging of the five goals, and is best suited to companies that have succeeded in one of the other four goals already. Salesforce.com'sIdeaExchange is a powerful example of how customers' suggestions can help improve products. L.L. Bean's key objective initially is likely to be energizing its most loyal customers. For L.L. Bean, giving a voice to its enthusiastic customer base with the right social strategy has the potential to increase sales.Choose A Strategy Your objective determines what business goal you want to accomplish. Having decided on the objective, you can move on to strategy: how will you accomplish the goal? In particular, social strategy revolves around answering this question: How do I want to change my relationship with my customers? While activities like social marketing campaigns can have a short-term impact, the long-term value of activity in the social world is the ability to change relationships with customers. By focusing on the relationships, not the technologies, marketers can keep their eye on long-term change that matters. To flesh out this type of strategy, companies like L.L. Bean should take the following steps: Describe the new relationship. L.L. Bean's current relationship with its customers is as a trusted supplier with a large inventory and excellent service reputation. In energizing its customers, L.L. Bean will extend the relationship, giving its satisfied customers opportunities to discuss their experiences on the L.L. Bean site, and by doing so, motivate other customers to buy.Measure the impact of the change. It's crucial that companies have metrics in place to measure progress towards the objective. For example, in energizing strategies like the one we laid out for L.L. Bean, you should measure to what extent visitors to social elements of the site are more likely to actually buy something. If your objective is talking with customers, measure awareness, impressions, or online buzz. If it's supporting, look for declines in support costs related to site visits. Regardless of the objective, your strategy is not complete without a success metric. Identify barriers to the strategy. Change created by social strategies is often difficult for companies to swallow. For example, L.L. Bean now has a direct relationship with all of its customers. By featuring customers' opinions on its site, the company will be admitting that those consumers influence buying decisions as much as the company itself, a transition some L.L. Bean executives might find difficult to make.Select And Deploy Appropriate Technologies — And Measure Results By this point, you've determined your customers' profile, you know what technologies they will accept, and at what rate. Since you know your objective and have nailed down a strategy, now you can evaluate technologies. This is why it makes sense to evaluate technologies only after you've finished the other three steps. In this case, Forrester recommends that L.L. Bean consider three social technologies: Ratings and reviews. Because L.L. Bean's online customers are likely to be Critics, the best energizing technology would be to deploy ratings and reviews on the L.L. Bean Web site and encourage customers to post their own evaluations of products. Studies by companies like Bazaarvoice have proven that ratings and reviews can significantly increase sales, and Forrester's own research shows that 80% of customer-supplied reviews are positive. User-generated content. L.L. Bean might also enable customers to energize others by allowing them to upload pictures of their outdoor experiences, as Dick's Sporting Goods does on its "bragging boards." Given the relatively high number of Creators among L.L. Bean shoppers, encouraging them to upload photos or videos is likely to succeed.List making. With a quarter of L.L. Bean customers in the Collector category, the site can tap into their organizing skills and ask them to assemble their favorite collections for different activities, ranging from family road biking to ocean kayaking. Integrating these lists into product descriptions and search results, as Amazon.com does with its Listmania tool, will encourage cross-sell and upsell.
16. Consumers using social technologies threaten traditional marketing institutions like brands and ad campaigns. For the most part, marketers understand that there's no choice but to dive in and use some of those technologies — blogs, communities, wikis, widgets, social networks, and all the rest — to their own advantage. We get questions all the time about how to implement these technologies. But marketers are often asking the wrong question first.Don't ask what technology to use. Ask first who you're trying to reach, what you're trying to accomplish, and how you plan to change your relationships with your customers. Then, and only then, can you decide what technologies to use.We outline below a systematic method for social strategy formation:Review The Social Technographics Profile Why do social strategies fizzle? As often as not, it's because they misjudge their customers. Forrester has developed a tool called the Social Technographics Profile for analyzing groups of vcustomers and their social tendencies. For example, L.L. Bean should review the Social Technographics Profile of its customers before forming a strategy. Based on this profile, online consumers who shop at L.L. Bean:Are more socially active online than average Americans. Starting at the bottom of the profile, you can see that nearly half of all online Americans are Inactive, untouched by social technologies, but only 36% of L.L. Bean shoppers are Inactive. This creates urgency for L.L. Bean to work on its social strategy, as most of its online customers are already participating.Would accept Critic activities like reviews. Thirty-four percent of online L.L. Bean shoppers are Critics: people who contribute to discussion forums or write ratings and reviews. Based on this profile, many of L.L. Bean's customers would participate in ratings and reviews if they were available on its site.Are highly likely to be Collectors. L.L. Bean shoppers are more than twice as likely to be Collectors as other online consumers. RSS feeds, a major Collector activity, are missing from the L.L. Bean Web site.Are also well above average in Creator and Joiner activities. One in four online L.L. Bean shoppers are Creators: people who write blogs, maintain Web sites, and upload videos. A similar proportion are Joiners: members of social networks. This gives a green light to strategies based on any of these activities.Pick An Objective By itself, the profile only tells a marketer what's possible. Next you should decide what you want to accomplish. Based on our experience with companies building social strategy, there are five main objectives of social strategies for connecting with consumers. To get started, pick the one that's best suited to your company's overall goals:Listening. Use social technologies for research to better understand your customers. For example, Del Monte used a private community to understand the desires of pet owners. In social strategy, listening typically involves private communities or brand monitoring. Talking. Use social technologies to spread messages about your company. Executive blogs like GM's FastLane are a quick way to talk to, and with, your customer base.(see endnote 4) Interactive marketers can also extend the brand through social marketing activities like videos on YouTube, as Dove did with its Dove Evolution video, or with brand widgets like Discovery Channel's Shark Week widget. Energizing. Find your most enthusiastic customers and use social technologies to supercharge the power of their word of mouth. This works well for retail companies, which can use ratings and reviews from some customers to influence others. Other energizing strategies include designating brand ambassadors, as Fiskars Brands did with its Fiskateers scrapbooking community, or leveraging social networks as Victoria's Secret did for its VSPink brand. Supporting. Set up social tools like forums and wikis to help your customers support each other. Supporting can save costs, as in the support forums run by companies like Dell and Intuit. Supporting customers with a community can also increase their comfort level and increase sales.Embracing. Integrate your customers into the way your business works, including using their help to design your products and improve your processes. This is the most challenging of the five goals, and is best suited to companies that have succeeded in one of the other four goals already. Salesforce.com'sIdeaExchange is a powerful example of how customers' suggestions can help improve products. L.L. Bean's key objective initially is likely to be energizing its most loyal customers. For L.L. Bean, giving a voice to its enthusiastic customer base with the right social strategy has the potential to increase sales.Choose A Strategy Your objective determines what business goal you want to accomplish. Having decided on the objective, you can move on to strategy: how will you accomplish the goal? In particular, social strategy revolves around answering this question: How do I want to change my relationship with my customers? While activities like social marketing campaigns can have a short-term impact, the long-term value of activity in the social world is the ability to change relationships with customers. By focusing on the relationships, not the technologies, marketers can keep their eye on long-term change that matters. To flesh out this type of strategy, companies like L.L. Bean should take the following steps: Describe the new relationship. L.L. Bean's current relationship with its customers is as a trusted supplier with a large inventory and excellent service reputation. In energizing its customers, L.L. Bean will extend the relationship, giving its satisfied customers opportunities to discuss their experiences on the L.L. Bean site, and by doing so, motivate other customers to buy.Measure the impact of the change. It's crucial that companies have metrics in place to measure progress towards the objective. For example, in energizing strategies like the one we laid out for L.L. Bean, you should measure to what extent visitors to social elements of the site are more likely to actually buy something. If your objective is talking with customers, measure awareness, impressions, or online buzz. If it's supporting, look for declines in support costs related to site visits. Regardless of the objective, your strategy is not complete without a success metric. Identify barriers to the strategy. Change created by social strategies is often difficult for companies to swallow. For example, L.L. Bean now has a direct relationship with all of its customers. By featuring customers' opinions on its site, the company will be admitting that those consumers influence buying decisions as much as the company itself, a transition some L.L. Bean executives might find difficult to make.Select And Deploy Appropriate Technologies — And Measure Results By this point, you've determined your customers' profile, you know what technologies they will accept, and at what rate. Since you know your objective and have nailed down a strategy, now you can evaluate technologies. This is why it makes sense to evaluate technologies only after you've finished the other three steps. In this case, Forrester recommends that L.L. Bean consider three social technologies: Ratings and reviews. Because L.L. Bean's online customers are likely to be Critics, the best energizing technology would be to deploy ratings and reviews on the L.L. Bean Web site and encourage customers to post their own evaluations of products. Studies by companies like Bazaarvoice have proven that ratings and reviews can significantly increase sales, and Forrester's own research shows that 80% of customer-supplied reviews are positive. User-generated content. L.L. Bean might also enable customers to energize others by allowing them to upload pictures of their outdoor experiences, as Dick's Sporting Goods does on its "bragging boards." Given the relatively high number of Creators among L.L. Bean shoppers, encouraging them to upload photos or videos is likely to succeed.List making. With a quarter of L.L. Bean customers in the Collector category, the site can tap into their organizing skills and ask them to assemble their favorite collections for different activities, ranging from family road biking to ocean kayaking. Integrating these lists into product descriptions and search results, as Amazon.com does with its Listmania tool, will encourage cross-sell and upsell.
17. Consumers using social technologies threaten traditional marketing institutions like brands and ad campaigns. For the most part, marketers understand that there's no choice but to dive in and use some of those technologies — blogs, communities, wikis, widgets, social networks, and all the rest — to their own advantage. We get questions all the time about how to implement these technologies. But marketers are often asking the wrong question first.Don't ask what technology to use. Ask first who you're trying to reach, what you're trying to accomplish, and how you plan to change your relationships with your customers. Then, and only then, can you decide what technologies to use.We outline below a systematic method for social strategy formation:Review The Social Technographics Profile Why do social strategies fizzle? As often as not, it's because they misjudge their customers. Forrester has developed a tool called the Social Technographics Profile for analyzing groups of vcustomers and their social tendencies. For example, L.L. Bean should review the Social Technographics Profile of its customers before forming a strategy. Based on this profile, online consumers who shop at L.L. Bean:Are more socially active online than average Americans. Starting at the bottom of the profile, you can see that nearly half of all online Americans are Inactive, untouched by social technologies, but only 36% of L.L. Bean shoppers are Inactive. This creates urgency for L.L. Bean to work on its social strategy, as most of its online customers are already participating.Would accept Critic activities like reviews. Thirty-four percent of online L.L. Bean shoppers are Critics: people who contribute to discussion forums or write ratings and reviews. Based on this profile, many of L.L. Bean's customers would participate in ratings and reviews if they were available on its site.Are highly likely to be Collectors. L.L. Bean shoppers are more than twice as likely to be Collectors as other online consumers. RSS feeds, a major Collector activity, are missing from the L.L. Bean Web site.Are also well above average in Creator and Joiner activities. One in four online L.L. Bean shoppers are Creators: people who write blogs, maintain Web sites, and upload videos. A similar proportion are Joiners: members of social networks. This gives a green light to strategies based on any of these activities.Pick An Objective By itself, the profile only tells a marketer what's possible. Next you should decide what you want to accomplish. Based on our experience with companies building social strategy, there are five main objectives of social strategies for connecting with consumers. To get started, pick the one that's best suited to your company's overall goals:Listening. Use social technologies for research to better understand your customers. For example, Del Monte used a private community to understand the desires of pet owners. In social strategy, listening typically involves private communities or brand monitoring. Talking. Use social technologies to spread messages about your company. Executive blogs like GM's FastLane are a quick way to talk to, and with, your customer base.(see endnote 4) Interactive marketers can also extend the brand through social marketing activities like videos on YouTube, as Dove did with its Dove Evolution video, or with brand widgets like Discovery Channel's Shark Week widget. Energizing. Find your most enthusiastic customers and use social technologies to supercharge the power of their word of mouth. This works well for retail companies, which can use ratings and reviews from some customers to influence others. Other energizing strategies include designating brand ambassadors, as Fiskars Brands did with its Fiskateers scrapbooking community, or leveraging social networks as Victoria's Secret did for its VSPink brand. Supporting. Set up social tools like forums and wikis to help your customers support each other. Supporting can save costs, as in the support forums run by companies like Dell and Intuit. Supporting customers with a community can also increase their comfort level and increase sales.Embracing. Integrate your customers into the way your business works, including using their help to design your products and improve your processes. This is the most challenging of the five goals, and is best suited to companies that have succeeded in one of the other four goals already. Salesforce.com'sIdeaExchange is a powerful example of how customers' suggestions can help improve products. L.L. Bean's key objective initially is likely to be energizing its most loyal customers. For L.L. Bean, giving a voice to its enthusiastic customer base with the right social strategy has the potential to increase sales.Choose A Strategy Your objective determines what business goal you want to accomplish. Having decided on the objective, you can move on to strategy: how will you accomplish the goal? In particular, social strategy revolves around answering this question: How do I want to change my relationship with my customers? While activities like social marketing campaigns can have a short-term impact, the long-term value of activity in the social world is the ability to change relationships with customers. By focusing on the relationships, not the technologies, marketers can keep their eye on long-term change that matters. To flesh out this type of strategy, companies like L.L. Bean should take the following steps: Describe the new relationship. L.L. Bean's current relationship with its customers is as a trusted supplier with a large inventory and excellent service reputation. In energizing its customers, L.L. Bean will extend the relationship, giving its satisfied customers opportunities to discuss their experiences on the L.L. Bean site, and by doing so, motivate other customers to buy.Measure the impact of the change. It's crucial that companies have metrics in place to measure progress towards the objective. For example, in energizing strategies like the one we laid out for L.L. Bean, you should measure to what extent visitors to social elements of the site are more likely to actually buy something. If your objective is talking with customers, measure awareness, impressions, or online buzz. If it's supporting, look for declines in support costs related to site visits. Regardless of the objective, your strategy is not complete without a success metric. Identify barriers to the strategy. Change created by social strategies is often difficult for companies to swallow. For example, L.L. Bean now has a direct relationship with all of its customers. By featuring customers' opinions on its site, the company will be admitting that those consumers influence buying decisions as much as the company itself, a transition some L.L. Bean executives might find difficult to make.Select And Deploy Appropriate Technologies — And Measure Results By this point, you've determined your customers' profile, you know what technologies they will accept, and at what rate. Since you know your objective and have nailed down a strategy, now you can evaluate technologies. This is why it makes sense to evaluate technologies only after you've finished the other three steps. In this case, Forrester recommends that L.L. Bean consider three social technologies: Ratings and reviews. Because L.L. Bean's online customers are likely to be Critics, the best energizing technology would be to deploy ratings and reviews on the L.L. Bean Web site and encourage customers to post their own evaluations of products. Studies by companies like Bazaarvoice have proven that ratings and reviews can significantly increase sales, and Forrester's own research shows that 80% of customer-supplied reviews are positive. User-generated content. L.L. Bean might also enable customers to energize others by allowing them to upload pictures of their outdoor experiences, as Dick's Sporting Goods does on its "bragging boards." Given the relatively high number of Creators among L.L. Bean shoppers, encouraging them to upload photos or videos is likely to succeed.List making. With a quarter of L.L. Bean customers in the Collector category, the site can tap into their organizing skills and ask them to assemble their favorite collections for different activities, ranging from family road biking to ocean kayaking. Integrating these lists into product descriptions and search results, as Amazon.com does with its Listmania tool, will encourage cross-sell and upsell.
18. This was a complete eye opener for all the marketers at Microsoft and completely changed the future focus and approach to marketing. Even though Microsoft enjoyed a 96% share of desktop operating systems and Hotmail and Windows Messenger were the number one products in their category, conversations around Windows in the 5 scenarios was only 11% with mainly negative sentiment.Even though Microsoft enjoys 96% market share of the desktop operating system market and is the largest Internet email provider and Instant Messenger provider, the 11% share of voice speaks for itself.In addition, the overall sentiment towards Windows across the five scenarios was overwhelmingly negative whereas it was neutral (a good thing) to positive for Google and Apple.The insights also uncovered formal advocacy programs run by both Apple and Google.Additional research also determined that Apple and Google customers / users were very vocal and active in terms of advocacy whereas the mainstream Microsoft / Windows customers / users were very passive and less likely to be vocal or an advocate for Microsoft / Windows products, brands and services.
19. For example - if your key objective initially is energizing your most loyal customers then executing against this objective allows you to give a voice to your enthusiastic customer base and with the right social strategy this has the potential to increase sales.
20. These 3 strategies combine together to make a community program where we monitor the conversations and participates through passionate users. Each strategy by itself will accomplish some measure of success but the strategies combined allow us to participate, evaluate messages and course-correct where need be. Without SMM we will not know which messages are having the most success, if our advocates are making progress and if the brand platform is reaching into the consumer influence. Without the advocacy program the voice will be ours only and won’t allow for relationship building and customer feedback. Without the brand platform we will not be able to leverage the CRM system, the content will live somewhere outside our network and customers won’t be having a 1st run experience with our brands and products.Advocacy is 3rd party.
21. These 3 strategies combine together to make a community program where we monitor the conversations and participates through passionate influencers / users. Each strategy by itself will accomplish some measure of success but the strategies combined allow us to participate, evaluate messages and course-correct where need be. Without SMM we will not know which messages are having the most success, if our advocates are making progress and if our platform is reaching into the consumer influence. Without the advocacy program the voice will be our brand only and won’t allow for relationship building and customer feedback. Without the brand platform we will not be able to leverage the CRM system, the content will live somewhere outside our network and customers won’t be having a 1st run experience with us.Remember, advocacy is 3rd party.
22. These 3 strategies combine together to make a community program where IBM monitors the conversations and participates through passionate users. Each strategy by itself will accomplish some measure of success but the strategies combined allow IBM to participate, evaluate messages and course-correct where need be. Without SMM we will not know which messages are having the most success, if our advocates are making progress and if the MSFT platform is reaching into the audience influence. Without the advocacy program the voice will be MSFT only and won’t allow for relationship building and customer feedback. Without the MSFT platform we will not be able to leverage the CRM system, the content will live somewhere outside our network and customers won’t be having a 1st run experience with MSFT.Advocacy is 3rd party.
23. Six Tactics To Successfully Engage With UGCInteracting with customers at a more intimate level requires a different way of thinking. While the loss of control and exposure created though the necessary openness can be troubling at first, there are some key tactics companies can use to stay on top of the situation. Knowing where communities currently congregate and what is being said is critical before you attempt to enable your own UGC. To begin with UGC, follow these six steps:1. Monitor consumers generating content about your brand. The first step begins with observing what content people are creating about your brand. For a more formal method, look to brand monitoring firms like Nielsen BuzzMetrics or Cymfony to collect and analyze data. On the less formal side, maintain a team focused on locating and tracking blogs and other media about your brand. This doesn't have to be the team's full-time job, but you need some of its time dedicated to this effort to properly identify and track UGC activity. Try using simple tactics such as Google Alerts or other automated content notification tools to track online activity as it emerges. 2. Leverage your UGC community. Consider selecting one or two popular individuals commenting on your brand to contribute to your marketing efforts. When Vespa initiated its blog, it tapped its owner base for volunteers to write the content. Reward participation, even if they say things you don't like — let contributors know that you're listening and that you are open to their suggestions and ideas. Continuously analyze what people are saying and respond with appropriate product and service changes — and thank them for the advice.3. Participate in existing consumer-driven communities. Identify the most highly used destinations of UGC for your brand — then join in and become a member. Don't hide your relationship to the brand; be open about who you are and why you're there. Listen to what people have to say, respond, and be honest with your commitments. Consider sponsoring or advertising on the site as a show of support. If possible, contribute content of your own that matches the content being generated in the community — think like a content-provider, not an advertiser. 4. Respond to negative commentary. Start off by establishing clear guidelines about what is allowed and what is not — both for your staff and for customers on your branded UGC sites. Don't block negative content, but have a plan in place to respond. If you see a consistent type of feedback, make a blanket response addressing those issues. For individual cases, respond back to resolve the issue, just like you would for a customer service call. Most importantly, be clear about how you will respond, and don't block content because it's in disagreement with your point of view — leaving that content demonstrates transparency and builds authenticity for your brand. Over time, you'll see other people on the site writing back to each other in defense of your brand — General Motors' FastLane blog frequently sees its users carrying on a discussion about a post within the comments.5. Select the right technology to engage your customers. The existing technologies being used by your customers will give you a good indication of what people are looking for. Try blogging if you have something to say and enable comments. Deploy a wiki if you have large quantities of content that are impossible for your staff to maintain because content changes so quickly. Consider social networking if you have an active audience that can benefit from the ability to engage and connect with one another. Allow photos or videos from your customers if it enhances their existing experience or provides additional value to each other — especially if creating that content is so dynamic that you can't possibly keep up or provide enough information to satisfy the need.6. Enable your audience to create content on your behalf. One key point to consider — is your audience ready and interested in creating content by themselves on your site? And also, are you, as an organization, ready to do this? Open your mind to what you normally would allow or disallow on your site — and don't be overly controlling. Evaluate your audience, as well as your products and services, to determine whether enabling them to create content is the right move. Look to vendors that provide platforms for accepting UGC — and just as importantly, seek those with the ability to review and remove content before it is published on your site if that is a key requirement.
24. Six Tactics To Successfully Engage With UGCInteracting with customers at a more intimate level requires a different way of thinking. While the loss of control and exposure created though the necessary openness can be troubling at first, there are some key tactics companies can use to stay on top of the situation. Knowing where communities currently congregate and what is being said is critical before you attempt to enable your own UGC. To begin with UGC, follow these six steps:1. Monitor consumers generating content about your brand. The first step begins with observing what content people are creating about your brand. For a more formal method, look to brand monitoring firms like Nielsen BuzzMetrics or Cymfony to collect and analyze data. On the less formal side, maintain a team focused on locating and tracking blogs and other media about your brand. This doesn't have to be the team's full-time job, but you need some of its time dedicated to this effort to properly identify and track UGC activity. Try using simple tactics such as Google Alerts or other automated content notification tools to track online activity as it emerges. 2. Leverage your UGC community. Consider selecting one or two popular individuals commenting on your brand to contribute to your marketing efforts. When Vespa initiated its blog, it tapped its owner base for volunteers to write the content. Reward participation, even if they say things you don't like — let contributors know that you're listening and that you are open to their suggestions and ideas. Continuously analyze what people are saying and respond with appropriate product and service changes — and thank them for the advice.3. Participate in existing consumer-driven communities. Identify the most highly used destinations of UGC for your brand — then join in and become a member. Don't hide your relationship to the brand; be open about who you are and why you're there. Listen to what people have to say, respond, and be honest with your commitments. Consider sponsoring or advertising on the site as a show of support. If possible, contribute content of your own that matches the content being generated in the community — think like a content-provider, not an advertiser. 4. Respond to negative commentary. Start off by establishing clear guidelines about what is allowed and what is not — both for your staff and for customers on your branded UGC sites. Don't block negative content, but have a plan in place to respond. If you see a consistent type of feedback, make a blanket response addressing those issues. For individual cases, respond back to resolve the issue, just like you would for a customer service call. Most importantly, be clear about how you will respond, and don't block content because it's in disagreement with your point of view — leaving that content demonstrates transparency and builds authenticity for your brand. Over time, you'll see other people on the site writing back to each other in defense of your brand — General Motors' FastLane blog frequently sees its users carrying on a discussion about a post within the comments.5. Select the right technology to engage your customers. The existing technologies being used by your customers will give you a good indication of what people are looking for. Try blogging if you have something to say and enable comments. Deploy a wiki if you have large quantities of content that are impossible for your staff to maintain because content changes so quickly. Consider social networking if you have an active audience that can benefit from the ability to engage and connect with one another. Allow photos or videos from your customers if it enhances their existing experience or provides additional value to each other — especially if creating that content is so dynamic that you can't possibly keep up or provide enough information to satisfy the need.6. Enable your audience to create content on your behalf. One key point to consider — is your audience ready and interested in creating content by themselves on your site? And also, are you, as an organization, ready to do this? Open your mind to what you normally would allow or disallow on your site — and don't be overly controlling. Evaluate your audience, as well as your products and services, to determine whether enabling them to create content is the right move. Look to vendors that provide platforms for accepting UGC — and just as importantly, seek those with the ability to review and remove content before it is published on your site if that is a key requirement.
25. These 3 strategies combine together to make a community program where we monitor the conversations and participates through passionate influencers / users. Each strategy by itself will accomplish some measure of success but the strategies combined allow us to participate, evaluate messages and course-correct where need be. Without SMM we will not know which messages are having the most success, if our advocates are making progress and if our platform is reaching into the consumer influence. Without the advocacy program the voice will be our brand only and won’t allow for relationship building and customer feedback. Without the brand platform we will not be able to leverage the CRM system, the content will live somewhere outside our network and customers won’t be having a 1st run experience with us.Remember, advocacy is 3rd party.
26. By creating communities we add our message to the consumer influence. The SMM program will allow us to monitor and engage in all channels of consumer influence, including our own. We will know what channels resonate, what messages work and what doesn’t. The advocacy program will provide an enthusiastic, authentic voice to the conversations.
27. Search engine results aren't realized simply from optimizing your website anymore. Gaining an understanding of the multi-channel nature of the Internet is key to successful online marketing campaigns.
28. A common misperception about search marketing is that it consists only of on-page optimization. In reality, SEM touches countless online channels with the ultimate goal of bringing targeted traffic to a web site. This infographic illustrates the number of channels that search marketing taps into - in addition to search engines - to deliver the right people to your content.
29. There are many aspects of the blogosphere that make it attractive to search marketers: the sharing and distribution of content, the potential for viral marketing and link bait, and the associated linking opportunities. But, so much more goes into the relationship we have with blog communities. This infographic describes both the tangible and intangible benefits of engaging with the blogosphere.
30. What is this graphic?The Topic Ecosystem is a summary of volume and sentiment in this space. The diameter of the spheres show relative post volume, while the color indicates the sentiment of the discussions. Due to the nature of Consumer Generated Media (CGM), posts often relate to multiple topics and are scored as such within the data collection system. The lines connecting topics show overlapping discussion; the thickness of each line indicates the frequency of shared conversations.Topic DevelopmentIn collaboration with your team, we’ll define the most relevant topics and keyword structures and start SM data collection. We approach this point in account set-up as an iterative stage. Refinement helps to establish topics that are relevant to each of the business needs we define together. We set out to pull in, score and make available to you the cleanest and most actionable collection of data for each topic established. Keep in mind that data analysis and engagement takes place within TruCast at the topic level. To do this, we leverage keyphrases to help pull in data for each intended topic. A topic may consist of a single keyphrase like the specific name of one of your products or may consist of multiple keyphrases, each with a distinct set of keywords. In a multi-keyphrase topic, each of the keyphrases would pull in data that would then be collectively featured under one topic – for example, a topic that includes conversations referencing your three biggest competitors, versus a single competitor. So it’s imperative we structure topics in such a way that you will be able to fully leverage the data for your business needs.What is a topic?A topic is a specific theme for your business – could be as granular as a single feature of a product or as wide as the general perception of your corporate brand.  In TruCast we track and collect all relevant consumer generated media (CGM) posts – and couple them as conversation threads – that reference each of your specific topics.  Topics should be structured to answer a unique question of interest: what the public thinks about you, about your service, about your top competitor, about your current TV campaign, etc. The topic description summarizes what each particular topic structure is intended and set up to capture.                                                                                                 What is a keyphrase?A keyphrase (or keywords) is a set of search word combinations that will enable the TruCast application to ingest CGM content (original posts and comments) relevant to a topic.  Data is often collected for a topic from multiple keyphrases. Keyphrases are not sub-topics, and thus TruCast does not allow you to parcel and analyze data (with our business intelligence Dashboards) or engage/monitor posts (Engagement Manager) per keyphrase.   Once the content is ingested by keyword matches, those posts are then scored and earmarked to any and all matching topics and are assigned sentiment (Good, Bad, Neutral, or Mixed) per topic. Thus, a post may reference multiple topics, with each topic receiving a different sentiment score.  Topic example: Lenovo IdeaPad Associated keyphrase: Include all – Lenovo, IdeaPadInclude one secondary term - Y510, Y710, U110, Y410, novo, one touch, game zone, XP, Vista, facial recognition, veriface, partition, consumer This keyphrase will collect all posts associated with Lenovo conversations around Lenovo IdeaPad that includes at least one of the secondary terms.  With this topic in TruCast, we will not be able to parcel sentiment and volume per associated keyword. For example, we will not be able to analyze and report on Y510 independent of other posts highlighting Y710, U110, Y410, etc.
31. Different marketing channels and tactics will drive very different results. Ultimately we want to be able to see what efforts and which media, channels, creative units, publisher/websites and even keywords drive the highest number of Engagements and End Actions at the lowest cost. But, not only do we want to see if the media is performing or not performing we must also determine whether the website itself is succeeding in converting a landed visitor to Engagements and End Actions.
32. Impact of Social Media on Search ResultsA search engine marketing campaign isn't complete without including some elements of social media. While engaging in social media alone can provide impressive results, this week's infographic illustrates how properly planned tactics can have a positive impact on your search results.
33. Impact of Social Media on Search ResultsA search engine marketing campaign isn't complete without including some elements of social media. While engaging in social media alone can provide impressive results, this week's infographic illustrates how properly planned tactics can have a positive impact on your search results.
34. [1] http://www.engagementdb.com/Report
35. Resist push marketing. Australians seek out tools that allow them to block marketing messages. When the Australian government launched its Do Not Call Register in May 2007, it took less than a month for the first 1 million Australians to sign up to block a wide range of telemarketing calls.1 Likewise, 10,000 Australian households now use the IceTV electronic program guide (EPG), allowing them to easily skip virtually all TV advertising. The company’s subscriber base is growing at 5% to 10% per month despite a legal battle that has discouraged personal video recorder (PVR) manufacturers from including IceTV with their products.Favour new interactive channels. Australian use of digital media has surged on the back of a national swing toward broadband Internet access. The number of households with non-dial-up Internet access rose from 1.8 million to 5.2 million in the period from March 2005 to December 2007.3 The number of Australians using broadband at work also increased dramatically. With fast access at their fingertips, Australian online adults now spend more time with interactive channels than with any other form of media.Prefer peer recommendations. Online consumers increasingly rely on each other — rather than on companies and brands — to inform their purchasing decisions. When online Australians research financial products, 47% prefer to obtain information from family and friends. This is ahead of financial company Web sites at 28% and financial company advertising at 20%.
36. With their preference for peer recommendations, their faster Internet access, and their ability to block push marketing, Australians have become very active users of social technologies like blogs, podcasting, forums, and social networks. Forrester analysed the social behaviour of Australian online adults using Social Technographics® and found that:Three-quarters of Australian online adults now use social technologies. Only one-quarter of all online adults are Inactives, meaning they are untouched by social content. And nearly two thirds are Spectators, meaning they read blogs, listen to podcasts, read reviews, or consume other social content. For example, Australian and international users download more than 5 million podcasts and vodcasts per month from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Web site. The use of social media is now mainstream in Australia.One-quarter of Australian online adults create their own content. Twenty-six percent of online Australians fall into the Creator category, meaning they regularly create blog posts, photos, audio, videos, or other content that they upload to the Internet. This level of Creator activity is slightly higher than in the US. For example, 21% of US online adults are Creators. Countless Australians have earned a global profile through publishing their content online. For example, Melbournian Darren Rowse is recognized worldwide as the leading source of content about how to make a living as a blogger.Almost half of Australian online adults are members of social networks. For example, more than 17.7% (4.3 million) of Australians have Facebook accounts. While they’re not social networks, forums are another popular online gathering place in Australia. The forum on Essential Baby, a Web site managed by Australia’s Fairfax Digital, has more than 7 million posts. Whirlpool, the Australian broadband discussion forum, has topped 16.5 million posts. InTheMix.com.au, the Australian dance music Web site, has exceeded 5.7 million posts in its forum. In total, one third of Australian online adults are Critics, a group that contributes to online forums, posts ratings or reviews, comments on blogs, or contribute to wikis.
37. With such a fundamental shift in how Australians use media, marketers must rethink their strategies. Examine the Social Technographics profile of your target market, and then select your approach. For example:To engage well-heeled professionals, harvest their insights. Australian online adults who use social media are more likely to be university educated, well paid, and working full time than Inactives. In other words, Australian professionals are regular social participants. The Powerhouse Museum listened to the knowledgeable users of its Web site by watching how they viewed and tagged the items in its online collection. The museum more than doubled online traffic to this resource in seven months. Through listening, it also learned to create more relevant exhibitions and marketing collateral.To persuade Boomers, create meaningful content. Older adults do not create as much content as the members of Gen X (29- to 42-year-olds) and Gen Y (18- to 28-year-olds), but they still consume social content. In particular, 48% of Younger Boomers (43- to 52-yearolds) are Spectators, as are 46% of Older Boomers and Seniors (53 years of age and older). Telstra mobilized “mum and dad” investors with content about how industry regulation in Australia was affecting the value of their shares. As a result, more than 14,000 became Telstra Active Supporters, campaigning to put regulatory issues on the national agenda.To sell to geeks, support the latest technologies. Collectors — the group that use advanced technologies like RSS and social bookmarking to keep themselves organized — are more likely than average online Australians to own smartphones, high-definition TVs, and most other consumer electronics devices. They are more likely to use Internet auctions and to research and buy products, travel, and most financial services online. They have mastered the Internet, so let them control your world a little using these technologies. REMO General Store provides Digg, Delicious, and Reddit buttons for every product.To inspire women, focus on content and connections. Online women are less likely than their male counterparts to use social technologies, with one exception — 44% of online Australian women are Joiners, which is essentially on par with online men. Likewise, 32% of females are Critics — a group that includes people who contribute to forums. Meanwhile, the most common activity among online women is consuming social content — 58% are Spectators. More than 530,000 people —most of them mothers — have joined the Huggies Forum on a multifaceted Web site that also exposes them to Huggies branded content and marketing messages.To excite Gen Y, provide constant entertainment. In Australia, 62% of Gen Yers regularly enjoy watching online video from other users, while 58% regularly visit social networking sites. Both activities reflect Gen Y’s search for constant connections and entertainment. The advertising agency GPY&R harnessed this behaviour with Big Ad, a captivating online video for Carlton Draft, a Fosters Group beer brand. Even before Fosters released this ad on TV, users were sharing this video on the Internet, helping it to achieve 1 million views in its first week. In the period of the campaign, Fosters exceeded its volume growth target for Carlton Draft by 5%.