This is the detailed Social Media (Influence) Marketing Framework I developed a few years ago but which I constantly update based on practical experience implementing it in my roles at Microsoft and IBM. I have shared this strategic framework with many other organisations and provided advice on how to define, implement, operationalise and execute this tactic, particularly in context of a 360 degree integrated program and or campaign.
Digital Transformation in the PLM domain - distrib.pdf
Social Media (Influence) Marketing by Martin Walsh
1. Conversational Marketing: Creating,
Operationalising and Executing a Structured
Social Media Influence Marketing Framework.
Created: January 2008
Minor update: Sep 2012
Martin Walsh
General Manager – Marketing
2. Table of Contents
• Contextual Issues Slide 3
• Why are Social Media Marketing Programs Failing? Slide 6
• What is Social Media Influence Marketing? Slide 12
• A Structured Approach to Social Influence Marketing Slide 90
• Listen Slide 107
• People Slide 140
• Goals & Objectives Slide 153
• Strategy Slide 161
• Content Slide 171
• Technology Slide 185
• Engagement Slide 189
• Engagement Management Slide 233
• Digital PR / Online Reputation Management Slide 261
• Search and Social media Slide 285
• Measurement Slide 298
• Social CRM Slide 311
• Social Influence Marketing Principles Slide 345
• Case Studies Slide 361
• The Australian Digital Landscape (research) Slide 409
3. Contextual Issues
One of the key reasons I developed this PowerPoint is to reboot the significant
misunderstandings and ignorance around Social Media Marketing or what myself
and many of my global peers have called Social Influence Marketing (SIM) since
we began working with this discipline back in 2006/2007.
• Many agencies, commentators and marketers have been misled on this topic
or simply just don’t know what they don’t know.
• Key issues:
– Social Networking is not Social Media Marketing.
– Social Media Marketing is a commitment, not a campaign.
– Social Media Marketing is a foundational element of this era of Conversational Marketing. Yet,
many organisations simply use these new channels to continue to broadcast a monologue of
messages. They don’t engage, converse and interact with their customers properly, or at all.
– Most Social Media Marketing efforts aren’t integrated into the overall Above-The-Line (ATL)
and Below-The-Line (BTL) strategy / campaign. The most effective and successful campaigns
have been 360 degree, integrated campaigns. Ads & content inspire (and can energise) the
conversations.
– 78% of marketers are using Social Media but less than 41% actually have a strategy! And 83%
of Social Media Marketing efforts over the past few years have failed because they have no
strategy and because what they do isn’t really integrated with the rest of the marketing mix.
4. Contextual Issues
• There are many companies, marketers and a few agencies who successfully execute Social
Influence Marketing programs. They understand the discipline; they understand the
underlying social consumer behaviour, they listen first, they have a strategy, they understand
that it is not about the tools and technology, they understand that a Facebook page is not a
strategy and finally they don’t fall for the latest bright shiny objects.
• One of my frustrations is around the social media commentators who simply don’t have
experience in this discipline either at the micro or macro level. This is characterised by;
– Comments like “Social media is best implemented / managed by an agency” (Social Media Marketing
is a commitment, not a campaign and the enterprises and organisations doing it well, do it internally.
But, they do have support and assistance from their various agencies as it touches both MARCOM
and PR and in some cases like launches, additional resources and monitoring need to be added).
– Comments like “PR / Corporate Comm’s should lead and manage social media” (social media
marketing is a single tactic which needs to be integrated with the overall marketing mix (depending
on your goals and objectives) and this means it needs broader marketing and or executive
leadership and management.
– Too much or all of their emphasis is on reputation and crisis management (this is only one, very small
part of this discipline).
– An inability to offer insights and practical advice on how to measure Social Media Marketing and its
ROI or measurement is defined as the number of Twitter followers, retweets or Facebook Likes. My
colleagues, peers and I have been measuring this tactic / discipline reasonably well since we started
in late 2006/2007. Yes, these measurement principles have continued to evolve, but it has got
simpler to understand what to measure and why, not more complex.
– An inability to distinguish and articulate that popularity does not equal influence.
5. Questions to ask ‘Experts’
• These are the questions you should ask any so called ‘expert’,
whether they are an individual or an agency, before you engage
them:
1. What is their definition and understanding of the differences
between Social Media Marketing, Social Media and Social
Networking? If they can’t articulate the differences, they are a
fake.
2. Have they ever defined or developed a ‘Point of View’ or ‘Manifesto’ document on
Social Media Marketing for their clients? (ie. how does SIM fit into the context of the
individual organisation and their existing marketing principles / methods? Each
company is unique and each industry is unique. You must tailor a perspective for your
organisation, its structure, products, industry, culture and principles and what social
media marketing means and how you will address it).
3. How will your ‘expert’ measure progress?
4. Ask them to articulate what a strategy is and what key elements make up a strategy.
5. What real, practical experience do they have? Do they have case studies with specific
results? Experience is not knowing how to use Twitter and Facebook and experience
isn’t gained by reading books and blogs!
6. Have they ever developed, implemented and operationalised a Social Influence
Marketing program across or within an organisation?
6. Why Are Social Media Programs/Campaigns Failing?
Based on my own experience, conversations with many of my peers and a number of recent
studies, these are the reasons why social media marketing programs, efforts and campaigns are
failing:
1. Organisations don’t have a strategy! A strategy is not setting up a Facebook page or simply
creating a project timeline with a list of tactics. How will you accomplish your goals and
objectives? In particular, social strategy revolves around answering this question: How do you
want to change your relationship with your customers?
2. Little or no integrated planning and Agencies not helping CMO's make right trade-offs between
traditional & digital. In fact this is the biggest imperative and challenge facing all CMO’s today.
Get this great Boston Consulting Report: ‘The CMO’s Imperative – Tackling New Digital Realities’.
Nov 2010 (1Mb .PDF).
AdAge article about report: “It's Time to Put Communications Planning Back on Agencies'
To-Do List” Feb 9, 2011
3. Not committing an appropriate level of resources, budget and broader MARCOM experience. A
digital native intern or a junior marketer who simply knows how to use social media but has no
broader marketing experience is not an expert or an appropriate resource to lead this.
4. Social Media Marketing is not about the technology. There is a misguided focus on bright shiny
objects instead of understanding the social behavioural attributes of customers and the specific
social attributes of the various social tools & technologies.
5. Receiving poor advice about Social Media Marketing from agencies and ‘experts’.
6. Applying old marketing rules to social media. This is not a passive medium and simply using it as
a new channel to continue to broadcast a monologue of messages and not engaging in the
conversations will ensure your efforts fail.
7. Why Social Media Programs / Campaigns Fail
These are just two of the studies which have looked deeper into why Social
Media Programs are failing at high rates.
February 2011, The CMO Survey, American Marketing Association DUKE School of Business. View the full CMO
Survey highlights here on SlideShare:
• 6% of CMO’s say social media marketing is being well integrated into their companies overall business
strategy
• 10.5% say social media marketing is being effectively integrated into their marketing strategy
August 2010, Brand Science Institute (BSI). View the full report here on SlideShare:
• 81% of companies surveyed lacked a clear social media strategy
• 73% of social media projects had to demonstrate their financial return after 12 months
• 72% thought social media must be viral
• 68% had never heard of the 90-9-1 principle, which states that most people online are viewers, vs.
participants: 1% of people create content, 9% edit or modify that content, and 90% view the content
without contributing
• 84% compare social media performance with standard media measures
• 37% think that social media is a media buy
• Only 11% have social media guidelines
12. The Rise of Information
Democracy
Social Influence Marketing
13. What is Social Media?
SOCIAL MEDIA IS AN UMBRELLA TERM
THAT DEFINES THE VARIOUS ACTIVITIES
THAT INTEGRATE TECHNOLOGY, SOCIAL
INTERACTION, AND THE CONSTRUCTION
OF WORDS, PICTURES, VIDEOS AND
AUDIO.
14. Putting it more simply:
“Social media is people
having conversations
online.”
15. The world has shifted from Passive consumption
to Active participation
35. The Return of the Conversation in the Social
Order
LinkedIn
Twitter
36. The conversations are powered by:
• Blogs
• Micro blogs (Twitter)
Social Networks are only one • Online chat (Messenger)
type of social technology! • RSS
• Widgets
• Social Networks (Facebook, LinkedIn)
• Social Bookmarks (Digg)
• Message boards
• Forums
• Podcasts
• Video sharing sites (YouTube, Vimeo)
• Photo sharing sites (Flickr)
• Virtual worlds
• Wikis
(…just to name a few)
37. Social media – The conversation prism
It is important that you
understand the dynamics of
conversations and how and
where they transpire.
38. Social Media’s Growing Importance
Total minutes consumed by Top 100 websites
*On Demand Media explodes; ComScore Networks and Piper Jaffray & Co.
39.
40. The Next Big Thing: Social Networking & Mobile
Improvements in social networking and mobile computing are
fundamentally changing ways people communicate with each
other and the ways developers / advertisers / vendors reach
consumers.
41.
42. The Social Media Stack
In order to leverage the Social media opportunity you must first understand the Social Media Stack. It is not a traditional publishing medium where
you simply serve a banner ad and expect a response. All you can do is try to inspire conversations through some sort of creative and communication,
then enable and facilitate conversations through applications which allows you to connect to the users:
1. Platforms give you access to reach and connections
2. Applications enable the interactions
3. Ads can inspire the conversations
45. Lester Wunderman’s Nine Points For The
Future Of Advertising:
1 Digital marketing is a strategy, not a tactic
2 The customer, not the product, must be the hero
3 Communicate with each customer or prospect as an audience of one
4 Create relationships
5 Know and invest in each customers Lifetime Value
6 Media / Advertising is now a contact strategy
7 Be accessible to your customer
8 Acquire customers with the intention of loyalising them
9 You are what you know
46. Media / Advertising is now a contact strategy to get people to
environments where you can engage with them using great
content and hopefully influence their views, perceptions,
advocacy and or purchasing behaviour…..it is also an
amplification tool for your earned and owned media….
Image: jeremiah_owyang
50. But, Digital Marketing has shifted away from
Outside In marketing…
Radio
Search
Internet Television
Search Dealer
Website
Direct Mail
Out Of Home Newspaper
51. ….to Inside Out marketing
Listen Utility
Relevant Entertainment
52. The optimal integrated marketing campaign*
*As long as it has content good enough to share
Image: jeremiah_owyang
53. However, it’s not just Social Media Marketing or just
Online Advertising. Success = an integrated marketing
campaign….
Traditional media PLUS Digital Marketing / Social
Media Marketing = a better result!
1+1+1=4
54. Traditional media PLUS Digital Marketing / Social
Media Marketing = a better result!
Search queries increase with
significant investment into TV
Branded Search Sales
Outdoor (small formats)
Outdoor (large formats)
TV
Generic Search
Base
0
02-Jul
16-Jul
30-Jul
04-Jun
18-Jun
13-Aug
27-Aug
10-Sep
23-Apr
07-May
21-May
24-Sep
09-Apr
01-Jan
15-Jan
29-Jan
08-Jan
22-Jan
12-Mar
26-Mar
12-Feb
26-Feb
TV’s Influence on Brand Search Sales
55. Social Behaviour & Digital Channels has
dramatically changed Marketing
Coke drops campaign sites in favour of social media
14 January 2010
Coca-Cola and Unilever are shifting their digital focus away from traditional campaign
sites and towards community platforms, such as Facebook and YouTube, as social
media begins to dictate their marketing activity in 2010.
Pepsi Pulls Out Of Super Bowl, Decides To Spend Money Online
18 December 2009
Ads for the drinks won't appear in next year's Super Bowl on CBS. Instead, the
company plans to shift ad dollars to a new marketing effort that's mostly online.
57. Resulting in New & Emerging Digital Channels &
Platforms
2m of Xbox Live's 30m active monthly members
are already Netflix members and they have
watched more than 17m videos, mostly movies
(1.9b minutes of content) through the Xbox
console directly into the home.
In October 2009, SKY TV UK begins broadcasting
via the Xbox removing the need for a Satellite dish.
Hulu served more than 1 billion movies & TV
In November 2010, Australians with an Xbox Live
Gold membership will be able to watch FOXTEL via
shows in June 2010 watched by more than 48.7m
their Xbox for $20 per month. unique users making it the second-largest video
site (behind YouTube) in the U.S., according to
Netflix has more than 90,000 titles and more than Comscore.
10 million paying subscribers.
58. But, Social Networking is not Social Media
Marketing....
1. Social Media are simply the tools*
2. Social Networking is what you do in the communities*
3. Social Media Marketing is the strategy, plans and tactics you
use to achieve your business and or marketing goals and
objectives
*You can use one to enhance the other, but they are not the same.
59. And, Social Media Marketing is Not.....
A mandatory checklist of technology and social media
profiles to roll out:
Website with links to social media sites
Facebook page
MySpace page
Twitter account
YouTube Channel
Flickr Channel
60. Social Media Marketing.....
• Social Media is not about the tools; it’s about your
audience, the relationship you establish with them
and how you want to influence them.
• Your objectives and the social behavioural /
technographic profile of your audience will decide
what tools to use; not the other way around.
61. Why users participate in Social Networking
Many marketers are forgetting the fundamental principles of marketing which
is to understand who your customers are, and how they behave. Digital
Marketing is no different.
You wouldn’t automatically buy TV advertising without it being part of a
strategy and an integrated campaign simply because it boasts big audience
numbers and perceived broad reach – your intended audience might not be
there and without an overarching strategy it will most likely fail.
The same common sense discipline applies to social media marketing. As an
example; Yes, Twitter has huge numbers but:
• 21% of registered users have never posted a Tweet
• 85.3% of all Twitter users post less than one update per day
• 5% of Twitter users account for 75% of all activity
• 93.6% of users have less than 100 followers, while 92.4% follow less than 100
people
• Only 0.94% of Twitter users follow more than 1,000 people
62. Why users participate in Social Networking
In fact, many marketers, agencies and commentators simply don’t
understand why people participate in Social Networking.
It is much more important for you to understand the social behavioural
attributes of your audiences before you move forward and not focus
on the latest ‘bright shiny object’:
o Why they use it
o What they use
o How they use it
o When they use it
67. Why users participate in Social Networking
More broadly:
• Keeping up friendships – Facebook is about connecting with people you know.
• Making new friends – We’ve all heard stories of people hooking up on social
networks.
• Succumbing to social pressure from existing friends – People in the groundswell
want their friends there too.
• Paying it forward – Having seen that a site is useful, you may be moved to
contribute.
• The altruistic impulse – People give blood because they think they should.
• The prurient impulse – People are fascinating. Some are sexy, some are
entertaining, and some, frankly, are stupid.
• The creative impulse – Not everybody is a photographer, a writer, or a
videographer, but for thow who are the web is perfect to show off their work.
• The validation principle – People who post information on Yahoo! Answers or
Intuit’s tax wiki would like to be seen as knowledgeable experts.
• The affinity impulse – If your soccer team, your PTA, or your fellow Swans fans
have connected online then you can join and connect with people who share your
interests and concerns.
68. This is not a fad.
It’s a fundamental shift in
the way we behave &
communicate.
To understand these changes and
changes to advertising and media more
fully click this image to access a great
presentation (on SlideShare) outlining
the evolution of marketing in the digital
era.
69. The Many Benefits of Social Influence
Marketing
Build Reach Drive Revenue Cement Leadership
• Improved search • New sales leads • Feedback from real
engine presence and • Higher rate of people
rankings conversions • Stay ahead of
• Broader awareness • Faster progression competitors
at a lower cost through the buying • Community driven
• Pinpointed influencer cycle support
targeting • Repeat business from • New idea generation
• Energised customers existing customers • Validate product
become powerful roadmap
evangelists
Enables all of the above at lower costs (but not free) vs traditional media
79. We have seen the rise of information democracy
From information asymmetry...
• Information was scarce
• Customers were ill-informed
• Exchanges were monologues
• Marketing was “command-and-control”
… To information democracy
• Information is ubiquitous
• Customers are well-informed
• Exchanges are conversations
• Marketing is “connect-and-collaborate”
89. Social Media – Health Warning!
Build it and They Will Come is Broken
• Communications in this new-fangled Social Interweb era
is all about inspiring & creating conversations and
building followings and putting your content in the places
it’s most likely to be seen.
• Nine times out of ten this won’t be in and around your
own web site. The trick is to extend the value of what
you’re doing to other people’s platforms, networks and
services but you must also have a demand generation
strategy / tactic to make people aware of your content /
presence.
91. A Social Enterprise Change Framework
Digital Readiness & Training
Build understanding & capacity, accredit expertise and Continuous Learning
Organisation
Collaboration, Social Media Centre of Excellence, Staff vs Agency vs SME Resources
Customer Service
Internal
Communications
Action Marcom
Applying Social Media to the Enterprise Engagement
Sales
Product & Service
Development
92. Social Media Marketing Excellence
Why are some companies excelling and not others?
In addition to the reasons outlined on Slides 3,4, 6 & 7 at the
beginning of this deck, Advanced companies spend more on:
• Staffing vs tools
• Rely heavily on boutique, experienced Social Media Agencies
• Customise their listening & engagement solutions with existing
infrastructure.
Companies like Dell, Comcast, Wal-Mart, Adobe, HP, Microsoft,
Wells Fargo and Ford, have characteristics of advanced
corporations. What makes them advanced? They have
formalized programs and charter, dedicated teams, line item
budgets, and have likely been involved in Social Media Marketing
for over 2.5 years.
93. Social Media Marketing Excellence
How the Advanced Corporations
Spend on Social Marketing /
Social Business:
These advanced companies (light blue)
exhibit a few trends that the average
companies (dark blue), don’t. In fact they
outspend in all cases except spending on
traditional agencies. In total, these
advanced corporations are spending
$1,857,000 per year. Read more.
Read this great Altimeter report ‘How
Corporations Should Prioritise their
Social Business Budgets’ 24 March
2011.
94. A Structured Approach to Social Influence
Marketing
1. Ecosystem Mapping 2. Strategic Plan
• What is the baseline level of activity and 1. • What are most effective ways to reach audience with
sentiment occurring in the ecosystem? content and brand artifacts?
• What are the affinity groups centered Ecosystem • Who and where can we begin the process and leverage
around identified relevant topics? Mapping network effects?
• Who are the subject matter experts • How can we use intelligence to improve search and
and influencers in these affinity groups? keyword strategy?
Brand Messages
4. & Consumer
Generated Media
2.
Evaluate (CGM) Strategic Plan
Effectiveness
4. Evaluate Effectiveness 3.
• What is the update and adoption rate and how are 3. Active Engagement
my artifacts being spread? Active
• How can I leverage the network to amplify the Engagement • What affinity groups are evident and how do they
impact? self-organize?
• How can we take this insight and optimize • Which individuals represent the proper sentiment
• Future marcomm initiatives for our metrics and goals?
• Feedback loop • How has message and proliferation changed over
time?
95. Example: SIM Management Framework, Key Activities
Month 1 Month 2 Month 3 Month 4 Month 5
Stakeholder
Key Program Program Program
Program training on
Stakeholders Review Review Review
Kickoff program &
Identified Meetings Meetings Meetings
tools
Inbound Post Scoring “Sentiment”
Topic & Keyword
Refinement
Relevant Post / Article / Comments Collection, Monitoring, Review, Analysis
SEM Program
Baseline Social Media Monitoring & Research Baseline
Topic & keyword “Benchmark”
discovery & definition
Report
Monthly Audience “Sentiment” Reports
Reporting &
Weekly“Topic” Reports
Insights
Daily “Alerts”
Marketing
Engagement Resourcing & Engagement Marketing Strategy, Audience Engagement
Strategy & Workflow Defined Campaign Planning and Recommendations
Planning
96. Social Media – Operationalising the Program
Improving Visibility, Strategy, Capabilities Across the Marketing Spectrum
Ignore Watch React Engage Leverage Drive
Benchmark
Report
Strategic and Tactical Input for
Audience Engagement Marketing
Weekly Topic Campaigns
Reports
Monthly
Audience Blogging & messaging strategies, input,
Sentiment topic guidance
Reports
More Rapid, Focused PR & Communications Guidance and
Messages specifically targeted at audience Support of Online
Customer
Engagement
Marketing
Response Posting by appropriate person, Campaigns
when and where relevant
97. A Systematic Approach to a Social Strategy
1. Listen
1
2. People Listen & Benchmark
Benchmark and then monitor the conversations
around your own and competitors brands,
products, services, technologies and
3. Objectives
importantly your customers needs.
Also, Hearing is not Listening - there is a real
distinction between merely hearing the
words and really listening for the message
Map the ecosystem of influencers &
4. Strategy
conversations.
9. Measurement
98. A Systematic Approach to a Social Strategy
1. Listen
2
2. People People
Review the Social Technographics
profile of your target audiences.
Understanding the social behavioural
3. Objectives
profile of your intended audience will
help you develop a strategy and
therefore determine the most relevant
social technologies to adopt /
implement. Different audiences use
4. Strategy
social technologies differently.
9. Measurement
99. A Systematic Approach to a Social Strategy
1. Listen
3
2. People Objectives
Decide what your goals &
objectives are – what do you want
to accomplish? It is important
3. Objectives
that your objectives are
measureable so you can
determine what is working and
ultimately what your ROI is.
4. Strategy
9. Measurement
100. A Systematic Approach to a Social Strategy
1. Listen
4
2. People Strategy
Determine how your objectives
will change your relationship with
your audiences – how will you
3. Objectives
accomplish your objectives?
(A timeline with tactics and
activities is not a strategy)
4. Strategy
9. Measurement
101. A Systematic Approach to a Social Strategy
1. Listen
5
2. People Content
Content is king but it’s critical to
map out a content strategy across
all the channels and create
3. Objectives
content suited to the technology,
tools & platform and social
behaviour. You must also tell a
story (over time) through multiple
engagements, channels and
4. Strategy
different content artifacts.
9. Measurement
102. A Systematic Approach to a Social Strategy
1. Listen
6
2. People Technology
Choose the appropriate
technologies, tools & platforms to
deploy based upon the social
3. Objectives
behaviour of your intended
audience as well as your business
/ marketing goals and objectives.
4. Strategy
9. Measurement
103. A Systematic Approach to a Social Strategy
1. Listen
7
2. People Engagement
Social Media is not a passive
medium and doesn’t follow
traditional marketing rules – what
3. Objectives
are your engagement models,
resourcing models, decision
response tree, rules, roles &
responsibilities and workflows?
4. Strategy
9. Measurement
104. A Systematic Approach to a Social Strategy
1. Listen
8
2. People Search & Social Media
Successful digital marketing
programs actually coordinate
their meta data, learn about what
3. Objectives
customers are saying and the
keywords being used and
therefore integrate their SEM and
social media efforts.
4. Strategy
9. Measurement
105. A Systematic Approach to a Social Strategy
1. Listen
9
2. People Measurement
You must develop a plan which
allows you to monitor, measure
and optimise activity, influence
3. Objectives
and behaviour across social media
and the KPI’s must be insightful
and actionable. There are 3 types
of Social metrics; Exposure,
Engagement, Outcomes.
4. Strategy
9. Measurement
108. First of all, hearing is not
listening!
There is a real distinction between merely hearing the
words and really listening for the message.
109. Program Management - Listening
Most marketers, agencies and commentators kind of have the first step
right, Listening but fail to realise there’s a difference between hearing and
listening and that there are actually more components to a successful
Listening Program:
1. Benchmark Report* (One to begin with and then usually every 6 months)
2. Influencer and Affinity Group Ecosystem Mapping
3. Conversational Analysis
4. Daily Alerts (largely for Digital PR / Online Reputation Management)
5. Active Monitoring of Assigned Topics (2-3 Times per Week) by SME’s / Marketers /
Agency**
6. Weekly Topic Reports
7. Monthly Audience Sentiment Reports
*If you have no benchmark report then how can you determine your goals, objectives and KPI’s and importantly measure the impact and
ROI of your investment in social media? It is also important to evaluate this information in context of your other offline research and
customer satisfaction data.
**Only required as part of an Engagement Program.
110. Mainstreaming Listening / Monitoring as a Utility
Mainstream your listening capabilities and provide scalable access:
Listen
• Listen and learn what customers are saying, input these insights into marketing initiatives and messaging
– Find audiences who are discussing our brand and products
– Brings the full conversation with analysis of the blog posts and comments (~70% of the blogosphere is comments).
100M total sites.
– Understand customer attitudes toward our offerings
Measure
• Assess the conversation and identify brand advocates, influencers, instrument for ROI measurement against KPI’s
– Locate passionate and authentic brand Influencers and activists
– Contextual influence allows you to look at and map authority
– View an on-the-fly ecosystem based on the topics you select
– See conversation volume and sentiment changes over time
Participate
• Influence perception or drive response in intimate customer dialogues
– Centrally manage customer engagements and responses through the SIM tool / application
– Assign social media conversations to subject experts for participation
Plan & Optimise
• Drive marketing programs and media campaign success
– Utilize data to plan messaging on marketing collateral and advertising materials
– Plan and optimize media plans by refining keyword lists and targeting ads where relevant conversation is happening
111. Program Management – Listening Utility Structure
Drive KPI’s
Monthly Audience
Benchmarking Weekly Topic Reports
Sentiment Reports
Analyse & Optimise
Analyse Data
Topic Management, Sentiment Scoring, Basic Reporting
Leverage data collection to inform campaign and engagement activities
Turn It On
Data Collection
Always-on data capture – centrally funded
112. 1. Listening - Benchmark
Find and Analyze Relevant
Content, Conversations, and
Communities
Understand and Measure Existing Online
Conversations: Participate, Increase
Awareness, and Connect with
Track, Measure and Monitor
Activity and Sentiment
Your Customers
A Benchmark report allows you to answer questions like;
how many people are talking, what are they saying, and Create/Modify Strategies and
Develop Action Plans
whether consumers are frustrated or satisfied with your
products and services and many others.
It allows you to understand the entire social media landscape in relationship to
your brand, products, services and important issues for example your Share of
Voice (SOV), where the conversations are taking place, sentiment and who the key
influencers are.
It should include a highly comprehensive executive analysis to produce actionable
intelligence that goes far beyond simple online "buzz" analysis. The Benchmark
should provide detailed topic and sentiment analysis as well as authority
information about the key sites, authors, posts and comments that comprise the
"conversation ecosystem" around your brand.
113. 2. Listening – Ongoing Reports
Find and Analyze Relevant
Content, Conversations, and
Communities
Minimum Report Requirements:
Participate, Increase
Track, Measure and Monitor
Awareness, and Connect with
Activity and Sentiment
Your Customers
• Analysis with key findings & recommended actions
• Topic Share of Voice
• Topic Overlaps Create/Modify Strategies and
Develop Action Plans
• Sentiment
• Competitor Insights
• Conversations Over Time with Event Drivers
• Post Volume
• Author Volume
• Domain Volume
• Who’s Talking the Most
• Where are People Talking the Most
• Most Connected Sites
• Conversational Analysis
• Brand Map
• Keyword Search Terms
115. Social Marketing – Windows Case Study
In 2008 Microsoft faced a number of challenges around the Windows brand:
• Fragmentation across the Windows O/S, Windows Mobile and Windows Live (Hotmail / Messenger etc) brands &
products
• Launching a new operating system (Windows 7) against the backdrop of overwhelming negative sentiment around
Windows caused mainly by perception issues with Windows Vista.
Microsoft determined that it needed to consolidate the brand architecture for Windows by combining the O/S,
Mobile and Internet Services under the Windows brand as this convergence is where the products were
headed anyway.
Microsoft had already understood the underlying changes brought about by digital channels and social media
and that the channels and consumer behaviour had changed many of the rules around marketing. It therefore
decided to conduct a benchmark report to find out where it and it’s primary competitors fared across 5
common scenarios which Microsoft, Apple & Google all competed in.
This benchmark report demonstrated how significant the problems (and opportunities) around sentiment,
perception, favourability and importantly the low share-of-voice were in comparison to it’s two primary
competitors Apple & Google. As the rules of marketing had changed, Microsoft understood that virtually no
amount of traditional above-the-line (ATL) advertising and marketing would shift the negative sentiment and
perception issues.
Microsoft used this comprehensive insight to determine a marketing strategy to launch the new Windows 7
O/S, new Windows Live services and address many of the issues discovered through the benchmark report and
Global Research Satisfaction (GRS) studies.
116. Brand "Share of Voice" within Social Media
The following information is more than 24 months old and is publicly available through any social media monitoring tool. In addition, the author and
other Microsoft Marketers have previously shared much of the data and results through various public speaking engagements.
• Windows' "Share of Voice": (unweighted by reach or sentiment – i.e. volume only)
• ~11%
• Apple "Share of Voice":
• ~32%
• Google "Share of Voice":
• ~16%
117. Social Media Benchmark Report - Windows
"Share of Voice" (unweighted) –
Major Brands, 5 Key Scenarios
118. Social Media Benchmark Report - Windows
Sentiment Chart
Windows Email in One Place
Windows More Media More Places
Windows Work From Anywhere
Windows Sharing Memories
Windows Keep Children Safe
125. Windows - Key Takeaways
The following information is an example only to demonstrate how important it is to have an
executive analysis within a benchmark report.
Summary / Overall:
• Apple's share-of-voice is dominant among the consumer media conversations in the social
media web today
• Particularly in conversations about video media sharing and consumption “on the go”
• As volume of scenario-focused conversations specific to Windows brand / products
increases, average sentiment / regard decreases
• Certain consumer use cases / scenarios which may not have sufficient online conversation
volume to merit an education & engagement strategy
• Keeping Kids Safe Online
• Certain consumer use cases / scenarios which have established robust communities of
online consumers already sharing information
• More Media, More Places
• Sharing Memories
126. Windows - Key Takeaways (continued)
"Owned" and Enthusiast Centers of Gravity:
For the leading software / online services solution providers, their "owned
assets" + enthusiast community domains represent a significant portion of
the relevant conversations for particular scenarios their products enable:
» Flickr
» Forums.mac.com
» Macrumors.com
For use cases / scenarios where there isn't a clear marketplace leader, or
several potential solutions must co-exist, a much more disparate social
conversation environment exists
» Numerous aggregation points across the web where people share
problems, issues, recommendations for how to resolve
127. Windows - Key Takeaways (continued)
Problem solving and "how do I?” Conversations:
Inadequate "how do I?" resources around scenarios that require BOTH
hardware and online services
Because of the diverse / dispersed nature of the consumer conversation
online around scenarios such as these, direct outreach and engagement is
only likely to yield benefits for upper few domains / communities (in terms of
volume and "reach")
Better to create a "center of gravity" on Microsoft's owned domain(s) where
consumers can find information / community and congregate + share with
each other
» Solutions / issue resolution that are use case / scenario focused (vs.
products)
» Super-simple “how-to’s” and scenario enablement resources with sharing
/ bookmarking / tagging tools built in
128. Windows - Where We Go from Here
[Implications for Marketing and Consumer Outreach]
• Scenarios with Unique Opportunities for Windows:
– More Media, More Places
Move some share of consumer video conversation OFF the Apple
forums
Help consumers get the videos from capture to sharing… no matter
how they do either “end” of the scenario, the middle remains the most
problematic / confusing for them
Sharing Memories As They Happen
An opportunity for Windows + Windows Live to become the "digital
photo sharing solution for the older set"?
Keeping Kids Safe Online
Turn the OS (specifically Windows) into the "first line of defense" for
parents concerned about kids Web surfing
129. Windows - Where We Go from Here
[Implications for Marketing and Consumer Outreach]
• Possible Campaigns / Engagement Strategies:
– Better Resources, Easier Community Support:
Development of "owned" / managed forums with related educational content and a
friendly consumer "front end" focused on the needs of particular consumer
scenarios in which Windows plays a key role
Direct Engagement and Outreach, Where it Matters Most
Windows SMEs could interact with influencers in specific areas and forums, and
feature CGM authors on their blogs
Windows SMEs can use TruCast® to interact with authors, and track topics and
developments in the online conversation
"Offline" outreach by SME's to specific domain editors/managers or top Authors
within particular Scenario areas, to inform and increase awareness about Windows
services and software enablement of that use case
+
Use Mass / Mainstream Media Marketing to Enlighten, Inform, Engage Consumers
Mainstream consumer marketing campaign messaging: Unified Email; Windows as
simple multi-media platform; Windows as memory-sharing solution platform where
it "all just works", etc.
130. The Windows 7 Launch Strategy (high level summary)
No traditional marketing / advertising campaign would address the significant negative
sentiment & perception issues caused by Windows Vista and fuelled by Apple,
particularly as the Windows share of voice (SOV) was so low. This low SOV meant there
was no base to energise a social influence marketing program around, let alone try to
shift sentiment. So, Microsoft developed the following integrated and phased strategy:
• Phase 1 – Jerry Seinfeld Ads / Videos (ironically these ads were about nothing, they
were designed to simply inspire & energise conversations around Windows)
– Microsoft had to first raise the share of voice around Windows before it could
try and shift sentiment, let alone drive demand / sales.
– Success = share of voice increased from 11% to more than 50%**.
• Phase 2 – I’m a PC and Rookies Ads – activate, facilitate and amplify the generally
passive base of mainstream consumers and energise them to say it’s OK to be a PC
• Phase 3 – Laptop Hunters Ads (Focusing on value vs Mac’s)
• Phase 4 – Apple Tax (Value for Money – Energise PR, Digital PR, Conversations)
• Phase 5 – Windows 7 was my Idea and I’m a PC (building, amplifying & energising
advocacy)
• Phase 6 – Focusing on scenarios (entertainment, personalisation, ease of
ownership) – driving specific demand
** To protect confidentiality this number has been capped at 50% but it was higher.
131. Windows – Social Media Outposts
Social Media underpinned much of
the strategy and addressed many of
the problems & opportunities
outlined in the benchmark report.
135. Social Media Monitoring – Monthly Sentiment Report
Current Sentiment (fig.1) Metrics Summary (fig.2)
04/08/ – 04/22/ –
Description 04/21/ 05/04/
Change
Total posts scored as
Post
relevant to the topic 3,330 3,428 +2.94%
Volume and date range.
Total number of unique
Author
authors for relevant 2,859 2,886 +0.94%
Volume posts.
Domain Unique domains that
1,001 1,073 +7.19%
Volume hosted relevant posts.
Topic Comparison (fig.3)
Key Findings to Date
Of sentimented data, 63.89% trend positively, 18.06% are mixed, and
18.06% trend negatively (fig.1). Positive sentiment has decreased by
8.38 percentage points, and negative sentiment has increased by 4
percentage points since the last reporting period.
Of all posts relevant to the Windows topic, 16.8% contain some sort of
sentiment. This proportion of sentiment is high in comparison to other
technical topics.
Post volume has remained quite steady since the last reporting period,
with minor increases in volume.
When compared to other topics within the DPE account, Windows 7
remains the most highly discussed topic.
136. Social Media Monitoring – Monthly Sentiment Report
Key Findings to Date
There are seven new authors since the last reporting period. An author
named News is the #1 top author this period. News posts primarily on
windows7forums.com and is predominantly neutral in sentiment.
Although this report is for the USA, we are including other English-speaking
domains as they can be important influencers. The top domain this period is
an Australian site which aggregates content and sparks unique
conversations. We would be artificially excluding relevant conversation from
the analysis if we left them out just because they are not managed from
within the U.S.
We are observing several of the same top domains this period as we did last
period. This suggests there is a strong base for potential media placement
where people are already discussing Windows.
Author/Domain previously on the Top lists,
moving up in the ranks
Author/Domain previously on the Top lists,
moving down in the ranks
New Top Author
Unchanged since last reporting period
137. Social Media Monitoring – Monthly Sentiment Report
Post Examples
“But I also believe that Windows 7 is the “When are they going to build that into
single Windows OS that can improve the windows and no require 3rd party
consumer’s experience. But after using
software? I am by no means bashing 7, I
Windows 7 and comparing it to a clean install
of Vista, I found that Windows 7 booted love it, just simply wondering…”
faster than Vista. There are countless other Mixed
areas where Windows 7 provides an ~Jratzo, 05.02, hardforum.com
improved experience over Windows Vista.”
~Stephen Pate, 04.22, njnnetwork.com
Positive
“As I write this I am downloading
Windows 7 RC on torrent. So just in “I am not going to spend the money to
case Windows 7 won’t run specific buy a Windows 7 license when I just
stuff I need I can go back to XP. This bought a Vista Home Premium license
particular applies to the video editing at the first of the year.”
I do. I have no idea if the editors I use Negative
will work in 7.” ~Kevin Flippo, 04.29, gizmodo.com
~Rich, 05.01, menga.net
Neutral
138. Social Media – Conversational Analysis: Campbell’s Example
Situation:
Campbell’s was looking to understand all
online conversations about their recently
launched Salsa product with respect to
terms and attributes used in online
discussions about the product.
Action:
Aggregate all conversations and dissect
which words and phrases were being used
in addition to measuring the sentiment of
conversations as well as competitor
conversations for similar products.
Results:
Campbell’s recognized a number of key
messages were and were not resonating
with many consumers and adjusted
marketing messages and competitive
differentiation based on findings.
139. Social Influence Marketing Reports
Here are two full sample reports (using real data) of what I consider best of
breed ‘Social Influence Marketing’ reports (both are from Visible Technologies
– Trucast):
(.PDF 3.4MB) (.PDF 4.2MB)
Click on images to download
Once again, data without analysis, insights and recommendations is practically
useless. You could use a myriad of tools and technologies but if you don’t have
the expertise and skills to transpose the data into actionable insights then you
are wasting your time.
140. “Businesses hoping to foster closer customer connections
through social media conversations may be mistakenly
projecting their own desires for intimacy onto customers’
motivations for interacting. Interactions with businesses are
not the same as interactions with friends.”
2.
People.
142. People - Social Technographics Profile
One of the most critical components of developing your social influence
marketing strategy is understanding the social behavioural profile of your
intended audience.
Unfortunately most companies and agencies often approach Social Media
Marketing as a list of technologies to be deployed as needed — a blog here,
a Facebook account there, a Twitter account here, a community there — to
achieve a marketing goal.
• A more coherent and appropriate approach is to start with your target
audience and determine what kind of relationship you want to build with
them, based on what they are ready for, where they are and what & how
they use social technology.
• By determining how your intended audience is represented in any
subgroup on the Social Technographics Ladder, strategists / marketers
can determine which sorts of strategies and technologies make sense to
reach and engage with them.
143. Australian Social Media Participation Ladder
Forrester Social Technographic Tool -
http://www.forrester.com/Groundswell/profile_tool.html
Creators: make social content
go. They write blogs or upload
video, music or text.
Critics: respond to content from
others. They post reviews,
comment on blogs, participate in
forums, and edit wiki articles.
Collectors: organise content for
themselves or others using RSS
feeds, tags and voting sites like
Digg.com.
Joiners: connect in social
networks like Facebook and
MySpace.
Spectators: consumer social
content including blogs, user
generated video, podcasts, forums
or reviews.
Inactives: neither create nor
consume social content of any kind
144. Social Media Participation Ladder – a new rung
Two and a half years ago, Forrester introduced
Social Technographics, a way to analyze your
market's social technology behaviour.
Social Technographics was carefully constructed,
not as a segmentation, but as a profile (that is,
the groups overlap). That's because the actual
data told me that people participate in multiple
behaviors, and not everyone at a higher level on
the ladder actually does everything in the lower
rungs.
Well, it worked. Despite the rapid pace of
technology adoption, the rungs on the ladder
have shown steady growth, with some (like
Joiners) growing faster than others (like
Creators). Forrester have analyzed data for 13
countries, for business buyers, and even for
voters. Forrester has also done profiles for over a
hundred clients, profiling Walmart shoppers,
Microsoft IT Professionals, non-profit donors,
and doctors.
In all that time, only one thing has been bugging
me: there was no place for Twitter.
They fixed that on 19 January 2010 and added a
rung to the ladder called ‘Conversationalists’.
145. B2B (Tech) Social Media Participation Ladder
Creators: make social content
go. They write blogs or upload
video, music or text.
Critics: respond to content from
others. They post reviews,
comment on blogs, participate in
forums, and edit wiki articles.
Collectors: organise content for
themselves or others using RSS
feeds, tags and voting sites like
Digg.com.
Joiners: connect in social
networks like Facebook and
MySpace.
Spectators: consumer social
content including blogs, user
generated video, podcasts, forums
or reviews.
Inactives: neither create nor
consume social content of any kind
146. The Old Way of reaching an audience? Carpet
Bombing
• A company who sells ‘snackums’ is trying to reach moms.
• Brands would normally find out who has the biggest number of
moms; ie. HGTV, Food Network etc.
• They would then apply traditional demographics, and execute
broadcast marketing
• Yet brands would miss out on the specific behaviors of
consumers –and their intricate relationships online.
147. Socialgraphics asks key questions
1. Where are your customers online?
2. What are your customers’ social behaviors online?
3. Why are your customers using certain social tools and
technologies?
4. What social information or people do your customers
rely on?
5. What is your customers’ social influence? Who trusts
them?
6. How do your customers use social technologies in the
context of your products.
148. 90-9-1 Principle
“In social groups, some people actively participate more than others… Social
participation tends to follow a 90-9-1 rule where:”
149. The Perception Gap In Social
“Customers do not want a relationship with your business,
they want the benefits a relationship can offer to them.”
Consumers are far more interested in obtaining tangible
value, suggesting businesses may be confusing their own
desire for customer intimacy with consumers’ motivations for
engaging.
Research shows that consumers have strong opinions about
their social media interactions and, despite their embrace of
social media, their willingness to engage with companies
should not be assumed or taken for granted.
150. The Perception Gap In Social
• Consumers all over the world, across all generations, are swarming to social media, but
most interact only occasionally. Despite the astounding escalation of social media
adoption, only a very small percentage of consumers engages regularly by responding to
posts and authoring their own content.
• It’s about friends and family – not brands. More than half of consumers don’t even
consider engaging with businesses via social sites. For them, social media and social
networking are about personal connections with friends and family.
• Perception versus reality – what consumers really want. We discovered significant gaps
between what businesses think consumers care about and what consumers say they want
from their social media interactions with companies. In exchange for their time,
endorsement and personal data, consumers expect something tangible. But businesses
rank getting discounts and purchasing as the least likely reasons consumers interact with
them.
• The advocacy paradox – Is it the chicken or the egg? Most businesses believe social
media will increase advocacy, but only 38 percent of consumers agree, and more than 60
percent believe passion for a business or brand is a prerequisite for social media
engagement. Companies need to find creative ways to tap the power of the trusted social
community.
151. The Perception Gap In Social
Companies have some misperceptions regarding why consumers interact with them via
social sites.
152. The Perception Gap In Social
Less than a quarter surveyed use social media to interact with brands.
154. Objectives: Determine your Social Media
Marketing objectives
By itself, the social behavioural profile of your target customers only tells you what's possible. Next
you should decide what you want to accomplish based upon your business / marketing goals and
objectives and the problems / opportunities you’ve discovered through your benchmark reports and
ecosystem mapping.
FYI – a Social Media Marketing objective is not ‘establish a Twitter profile.’
90% of the failures in digital analytics, the reasons companies are data rich and information poor, is
because they don't have D.U.M.B. objectives.
Or, they simply have just one (DUMB) Macro Conversion defined and completely ignore the Micro
Conversions and Economic Value.
D.U.M.B. objectives:
• Doable.
• Understandable.
• Manageable.
• Beneficial.
155. Objectives: Determine your social media objectives
There are generally eight main objectives of social strategies for connecting with customers. To get
started, you should pick the one that's best suited to your company's overall business and marketing
goals:
• Listening. Find out what customers are really saying in order to understand them better.
• Talking. Spread messages about a company.
• Energizing. Get a companies best customers to evangelise it’s products.
• Spreading. Get customers or users within a company to encourage others to adopt a product or
service. (B2B only)
• Supporting. Help customers support each other to solve each other’s problems.
• Embracing. Integrate customers into the way the business works, including using their help to
design products and improve processes.
• Managing. Empower employees and managers within an organisation.
• Social Impact. Improve society with non commercial applications.
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.
156. Objectives – Example Only
We define 8 possible objectives for Social Media Marketing. In FY09 the Windows Social Media plan focused on:
1. Listening; research and gain customer insight on marketing messages and product development
2. Talking; spread messages about the company through a more interactive channel
3. Energizing; find the most enthusiastic customers and super charge the power of Word of Mouth
Actions Outcomes
• Gain customer insight relevant to target
• Track, monitor, analyze, and report on consumer-oriented
scenarios and audiences through advocate
social media (blogs, social networks, forums, etc.) activities and community
Listening sentiment • Identify key
• Solicit feedback from community members on product domains/locations/conversations which
features, benefits, and marketing messages present opportunities for MSFT to engage
• Engage with influential blog, forum, and community conversation
• Increase SOV in key conversations
threads by initiating comment posts and on-site contributions
• Drive thought leadership through
designed to promote FTP messages and highlight more content
Talking available
consumer engagement in Social Media
• Viral conversations from advocate
• Spread key messages through community members UGC community
and WoM
• Offer ‘megaphone’ for advocates to share their UGC and passion
• Vibrant Windows and WL community that
for Windows and Windows Live reaches 3rd party conversations
• Through passionate customer evidence generate excitement • Increase (+) sentiment for Windows
Energizing and inspire new users to explore and create with Windows brand in key scenarios
and Windows Live • Increase believability of Windows
• Personalize Windows brand with real people, real stories message through real customer stories
157. Ford Example: Ford Social Media Goals
• It was Ford’s goal to be the #1 social automotive brand
within three years.
• Now, the goal is to be the world’s leading social brand.
Period.
• It will happen through leadership. This is not about
technology; it’s about cultural change and leading an
organization. Ford has senior support across the
organisation. Ford’s CEO, CMO and even it’s General Counsel
are rooting for the marketing team and want to get
involved.
158. Ford became the #1 social automotive brand within 6
months…..
159. Example: Vista ‘The Facts’ Social Media monitor/engagement program
Situation: Ignorance of the performance and value of Windows Vista relative to Windows XP is the primary driver of reluctance to upgrade
to Vista and interest in abandoning Windows for a Mac. Resistance to Vista can be broken down to;
1. Many people are satisfied with XP. Moving to Vista might seem unnecessary
2. Some people are dissatisfied with Windows and the Mac appears to be a better alternative to a new Windows PC.
PR as been running a perception vs reality campaign driving customers to www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/facts.com
Objectives: Goals: Marketing Spend:
1. Correct misperceptions of Vista 1. +10% MSFT Share of Voice •Technology license
2. Drive awareness to The Facts campaign 2. +5% positive sentiment for Vista $120K
page 3. Drive traffic to •Tracking/monitoring
3. Show engagement with customers, give http://www.microsoft.com/windows/pr $60K
MSFT a voice in the community oducts/windowsvista/facts.mspx •Engagement outreach
conversation – humanize $70K
Description: Track Report Engage
1. Track, monitor, analyze, and report on consumer-oriented social media (blogs, social
networks, forums, etc.) activity and sentiment relevant to Windows Vista “The Facts” June 15
focus features and campaign messaging;
2. Identify key domains/locations/conversations which present opportunities for July 15
Microsoft to highlight key “The Facts” message awareness across social media
properties
Aug 15
3. Engage with influential blog, forum, and community conversation threads by initiating
comment posts and on-site contributions designed to promote the “The Facts”
messages and highlight more content available on the “The Facts” web assets Sept 15
(http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/facts.mspx)
160. Another Example of Key Program Objectives
• Insights
– Current and future state of brand and sub-brands in social media
– Quantity and quality of customer conversations related to key technology-
enabled use-case scenarios
– Company vs Competitors - competitive brand and customer regard (+ other
key competitive offerings, by Scenario)
– Define Social Media Equity metrics and track
• Guide Customer Engagement via Social Media Channels
– Identify & monitor key sites, authors, influencers and conversations
– Define optimal method and tactics to reach audiences
– Support roll-out of customer social media engagement efforts online
• Inform Larger Customer Engagement Sales & Marketing Campaigns
– Harvest customer opinions, feed into marketing planning
– Identify strategies to influence customers via online and offline channels
161. “All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer,
but what none can see is the strategy out of which
victory is evolved.” – Sun Tzu in The Art of War.
4.
Strategy.
162. Strategy: Determine how your objectives will change relationships
with your customers
Your objectives determine 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 we want to change our relationship with our customers?
While activities like social marketing campaigns can sometimes 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, we should take the following steps:
• Describe the new relationship. Our current relationship with most of our customers is as a trusted supplier of
software which just works. In energizing our core customers, we will extend this relationship, giving our
satisfied customers opportunities to discuss their experiences on our website, and by doing so, motivate other
customers to buy and help establish a better perception of our products.
• Measure the impact of the change. It's crucial that we have metrics in place to measure progress towards the
objective. For example, in energizing strategies we should measure to what extent visitors to social elements
of the site are more likely to actually buy something. If our objective is talking with customers, we should
measure awareness, impressions, or online buzz. If it's supporting, we should look for declines in support costs
related to site visits. Regardless of the objective, our 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, we are starting to have more direct relationship with all of our customers. By featuring
customers' opinions on its site, we will be admitting that those consumers influence buying decisions as much
as we do, a transition some marketers might find difficult to make.
163. Strategy: Social Engagement Framework
Active Listening
Listening to Consumer Generated Media (CGM), Sharing Internally & Responding
OWNED EARNED PAID
Social Social IRM Word of Mouth
Content Influencer
Relationship
Acceleration
Strategy Management Program
Brand Community
Cultivating and Interacting with a network of customers or advocates
Measurement
Integrated performance and ROI social media measurement
165. Example: A Social Media / Social Influence Strategy Overview
Strategy 1: Social Media Program Management
• Objectives
• Strategy & Tactics
• Monitoring, tracking, analysis
Strategy 2: Engagement Programs
Strategy 2a: Audience Advocacy Programs Strategy 2b: Digital PR / Influencer Outreach
Identify and engage various audience Advocate groups to become a Identify and engage key writers, bloggers and mainstream influencers
word-of-mouth channel that will facilitate learning and trial of that will facilitate through a formal proactive outreach program.
multiple IBM products and services among their families, friends and Develop a Crisis Management Plan.
peers.
Search Engine Marketing
On Network Off Network
Strategy 3: Online Experiences
Build and facilitate online experiences where customers can come together and showcase inspiring product stories, compelling examples and
‘how to’s’ delivered through the voice of our brands, partners and passionate customers.
On Network Off Network
User Generated Content
Wiki’s Ratings
Blogs Reviews
Forums Video casts
Communities Audio casts
Comments Photos
Feedback RSS
Social bookmarking Tagging
166. Strategy: Example Only
Strategy 1: Social Media Management
• Develop a baseline / benchmark of relevant sentiment and share of voice and map the
ecosystem
• Monitor, engage and track relevant Social Media conversations
• Build engagement programs specific to individual scenarios focusing on most influential
conversations
• Monitor engagement strategies against SOV/sentiment Strategy
Strategy 2: Advocate Community and Energise UGC
• Launch a Windows Advocate Community on MSCOM
• Test and learn best practices for ‘onboarding’ advocates
• Grow advocate community
• Showcase User Generated Content (UGC) across the Windows network
Strategy 3: Online Peer to Peer Discussions – Forums
• Develop "owned" / managed forums with a friendly consumer "front end" focused on the
needs of consumer scenarios where Windows plays a key role
• Facilitating peer to peer conversation on Windows properties will increase Windows SOV in
online conversations currently being dominated by Google, Apple and Yahoo.
Strategy 4: Digital PR and Social Media Newsroom
• Identify and consistently engage key influencers; bloggers and the media, to drive more
favourable conversations & Share of Voice (SOV) and minimise negative sentiment.
• Establish a Social Media Newsroom on MSCOM
Editor's Notes
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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
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
In the USA this figure is 72% and I put the lower rate for Australians down to our natural built-in bull shit meter!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[1] http://www.engagementdb.com/Report
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%.
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.
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%.