Canadian Marketing Blog

Channel Surfing for Influencers: Social Media

In my third of four posts about which channels work best to reach and engage influencers, I take a look at the new kid on the block: social media.

Marketers are sometimes torn between doing what has worked most effectively in the past and testing out new technologies and channels that have the potential to be real game-changers in the future.

The bright shiny object of the last few years is, of course, social media, a channel that’s still not completely understood but that has, in theory, the potential to radically change the way we market.

Why? Well, to start with, based on our research, influencers are spending 7 hours per week in the US and 9 in Canada on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and blogs. That’s already impressive but when you add to that the finding that influencers are connected, on average, to 108 (US) and 137 (Canada) people in their own social media network, that’s something that gets the attention of marketers – as it should.

While social media shares ease of use with the email channel, it’s this community or network that may hold the key to the channel’s true potential. These individuals have chosen to be connected based on an affinity for a particular community, and are actively engaged with others in it and outside that community too.

Bill McCloskey at ClickZ offers some fascinating examples about the potential power of social media, including this one:

“…look at Marvel Comics, which is one of the top performing ‘advertisers’ in the Twitter space. As of right now, Marvel has around 44,000 followers [63,000+ as I write this post]. But over the last few weeks, it sent out 151 Twitter offers. But more than that: 246 ‘influencers’ have directly rebroadcast that message to their followers. Add it all up and Marvel has exposed its offer to over 66 million eyeballs over the past few weeks!”

Those are some impressive numbers and just a hint of the potential opportunities social media offers marketers. However we do need to distinguish the difference between influencers: some will talk; others will pass along information (as per above) and of utmost value are those that truly influence others – by eliciting action. So whether on social media sites or via email or on the phone, you must understand what you are trying to achieve and ensure that you have designed appropriately.

One more thing bares repeating from my last two posts: even if some channels are better than others to reach particular consumers in particular ways, the fact is these channels work best for marketers when they work together.

For instance, email messages that offer a social-sharing option (like Twitter and Facebook) generate a 30% higher click-through rate than emails without it, according to a new study by email marketing company Get Response. And if the email includes three or more social-sharing options, that click-through rate jumps to 55%.

The bottom line? Social media offers a unique and advantageous opportunity to find, reach, engage and have a continuous dialogue with individuals – both within their social media communities and in their network at large. Just needs to be done right!

In the fourth and final part of this series, I’ll blog about the true answer to the question – which channel is most effective at finding, reaching, engaging and motivating influencers?

Gillian MacPherson

The Intersection Between Mobile and Social Just Became Much Blurrier

Facebook announced “Places”, a tool that allows Facebook subscribers to essentially “check in” to locations and serendipitously discover friends who happen to be nearby. Momentum continues to build in location-based services, Geo-fencing, mobile social media etc.

Why this will work.
Facebook is the all-powerful Borg (for those non Trekkies out there – they assimilate, adapt and propagate). With 500 million subscribers (and reports that 150 million of these are mobile), sheer size makes Facebook the clear favourite. In my opinion, Foursquare, Gowalla, My Town, etc. are officially the underdogs (if they weren’t before). Naturally, Facebook is faced with the issue of privacy, and provided they allow users to self-provision and dictate terms, then chances of success are high. Reaching eyeballs via Facebook Places substantially increases the efficiency of ad dollars and brings us another step closer to the perfect delivery of WHEN and WHERE.

What does this mean from a marketer’s point of view?
The ecosystem has added a slew of new terms that strategists, planners, brand managers, and CMOs,must be aware of for water cooler chats. This announcement could mark the dawn of Facebook mobile monetization where ad products and services will emerge. I suspect Places may be the final straw that pushes those brands that don’t have a mobile friendly destination to get one, as those brands can leverage the open graph API to ensure their brand communities can enjoy a seamless mobile experience. Who knows? Facebook could be the first organization to really marry mobile commerce and social platforms – they have a great Trojan horse model to explore with other products and services. In the near-term, Vortex is anxious to socialize mobile properties and mobilize brand communities. New DIY tools and APIs will strengthen the value proposition for our partners, some simple use cases include:
• Consider a beer or spirit company that uses experiential marketing. Imagine a promotion where X number of people that check in win, or 1 in X who check in to a restaurant/bar are entered to win a trip. Participants earn bonus ballots for socializing their whereabouts via Places and ta-da, we have next generation swarming. Amplify this experience by posting user generated content (such as pictures and video) and let your Twitter followers and Facebook friends see your world on demand.. When boiled down, many marketing fundamentals still apply: LOCATION, EMOTIONS, LTO(limited time offers)/SENSE of URGENCY, SHARED CONNECTIONS and WORD OF MOUTH.

Carriers (and OEMs) could be X-factors in mobile/social media
There is no doubt that carriers and handset manufacturers want in on the action. Geo-fences and location-based alerts are on their radar, as they battle the perception that their place within the mobile ecosystem is simply as dump pipes and dummy terminals. Arguably carriers and manufacturers have some tricks up their sleeve. A Canadian trial called OneAPI could allow carriers to get in the game by providing client-side information all accessed through a web API. OneAPI has the potential to be a total game changer as it offers SMS+ MMS aggregation, billing services, and targeting, and with the right partnerships, could offer a location-based experience that is as seamless and accessible, if not more so, then one offered by Facebook. (Click HERE for more details about ONE API.) http://www.gsmworld.com/oneapi/

Brady Murphy

Spicy Success

So unless you have been completely off the grid (which is possible) you have probably seen the Old Spice advertising campaign. Yes, the cheeky one which features former NFL football player Isaiah Mustafa playing the role of "Old Spice Guy."

A conservative guess is that Procter & Gamble (owners of the Old Spice brand) spent tens upon tens of millions of dollars on a massive advertising campaign according to an agency side friend of mine. The campaign was a recipient of the 2010 Cannes Lions Film Grand Prix and received an Emmy nomination for outstanding commercial. Yes, this is the very same brand that I previously associated with my beloved grandfather.

If that wasn't enough this campaign was then taken to the next level. What was done exactly? The agency responsible for Old Spice (Wieden & Kennedy) launched a terrific social media campaign that built on the previous campaign momentum.

For a limited time period, fans could interact with Old Spice guy via Twitter, Facebook and/or YouTube and ask questions. The Old Spice Guy then replied in personal manner to those blessed enough via a 30 second YouTube spot. The social media campaign is brilliant from a creative perspective and didn’t cost a lot (compared to prior media expenses) to engage with fans besides the cost of employing the actor, writers who scripted the responses, production expenses and other ancillary costs.

Here is an example of one answer by the Old Spice Guy to a question posed by the Chicago Blackhawks hockey team via Twitter.

You may not like hockey. You may not like Old Spice. But you must admit this is a brilliant concept. An agency team responded to roughly 200 questions in a personalized manner within a 48 hour timeframe. We’re talking real-time answers that were hilarious, in character and in keeping with the desired brand positioning and creative goals. As Leigh Himel points out, it would be pretty cool to see what the agency creative brief looked like. Especially when having to sell a typically conservative organization like P&G.

From personalized answers to celebrities to marriage proposals the whole gamut was covered. The agency also wisely leveraged momentum built up by previous mass media advertising and media coverage that created the persona of Old Spice Guy. They also did little things like leverage the promoted trending topic on Twitter. I don't suspect it cost that much and the agency probably didn't have to do it as the campaign became an organic trending topic all on its own but it's still a good type of marketing insurance to have.

There has been some debate as to whether this social media campaign was successful. The digital results according to P&G speak for themselves. Nearly 105 Million YouTube views, 1.2 Billion media impressions, 2700% increase in Twitter followers, 800% increase in Facebook fan interaction, 300% increase in traffic to the Old Spice website. Not to mention the countless sharing, promotion and mashups created by fans. In my view you have clearly hit a nerve when consumers start creating their own derivations of a commercial. (*Warning about the language contained in the aforementioned link as typically happens lately when Mel Gibson is involved.)

My friend Tamera is firmly of the belief that this social media campaign was a success. Other detractors take the view that digital metrics are window-dressing and the creative was very juvenile. Everyone has an opinion and rightly so.

So it really all comes down to sales, right? Show me the money! That's what P&G shareholders and executives ultimately care about. According to Neilsen, sales of Old Spice Body Wash rose significantly since they launched the campaign. Kind of tough to argue with those numbers even if they are projections. Ultimately the folks at P&G will know the truth.

But I think there are bigger questions in all this. For the agency folks, is your shop capable of pumping out this kind of quality content in a very short time frame for a digital campaign? We’re not talking about days or weeks but minutes and hours to engage with potential customers. We’re talking about your creative directors & content writers working closely with the social media marketers, talent and production team in a truly integrated manner. Do you have the creative juices that leverage previous marketing efforts and support them? Do you truly understand the philosophy of engagement and conversation with customers? Because that is exactly why the Old Spice social media campaign was successful.

And those of us on the client side need to face the music also. As Dave Stubbs aptly notes in a terrific post, P&G put a lot of trust in their agency to pull this off. To react with the speed required means there wasn’t time for 4 different layers of approvals. There wasn't time for a full financial audit about costs on a line by line basis. There wasn't time for every pixel and prop to be mercilessly scrutinized by the brand police. So here is the rub. Can you do that in your company? Do you empower your agency to make bold decisions without fear? Have you built up enough trust with agency partner(s) where you are willing to put your neck on the line when executives start asking pointed questions in the boardroom?

Those are the spicy questions we must all (including myself) ask ourselves. And no amount of Old Spice will cover that up.

Sulemaan Ahmed

Branding to Gen Y – Part II

Referring back to our previous post, we received some interesting comments on what your experiences were like in marketing to Gen Y. With this blog posting, we delve further into the subject and offer some insight as to which events we think have helped to define this generation.

There is a tendency for Gen Y to actively seek out unique businesses, particularly those who produce hand-made items or market themselves as an ethical practice. Think of local boutiques or businesses like Lululemon and the Body Shop. This generation is willing to pay a premium for their products. Why? Perhaps it is that Gen Y is very aware of socially responsible activities and they want to hold companies responsible...by voting with their dollars.

We also stated in our previous post that Gen Y is socially connected all the time - simply because technology enables them to do so. With that social connectedness comes a greater interest in word of mouth peer reviews and viral trends. This generation is exposed to more ads and brands at an ever increasing rate. As a result, Gen Y is extremely media savvy and out of necessity, they have quickly learned to filter out to the content that THEY want to see. This in turn has led to websites focused on content which is customized to what Gen Y wants. Think of personal Facebook newsfeeds where you can control what kinds of stories show up, Twitter streams where you can choose to follow who you want, or blogs that you can decide to subscribe to. As we move to customizable content, the greater the expectations to cater to the individual.

What are your own ideas as to what has helped form the unique characteristics of this generation?

Patricia McQuillan

The Quest for Community

There is a lot of discussion among marketers about the importance of community in today's networked world. The "quest for community", as Robert Nisbet, American sociologist and Vice-Chancellor at the University of California puts it, is "a nostalgia for a compassable and integral living unit". It has to do with changes in the way we interact and communicate.

The critical question is not whether community is important but how the definition of community has evolved and whether our lives have become more jangled and fragmented which has led to a desire for new connections with strangers. A lot has been written about the trend. But the trend isn’t just restricted to online communities.

The success of Starbucks has been built on the desire of consumers for a "third place”- away from work and home. Ray Oldenburg talked about it in “The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community”.

The success of Credit Unions is also built on this concept. In a recent interview, Ms. Christine Zalzal, AVP, Sales and Marketing, FirstOntario Credit Union, said that the grassroots strategy of a Credit Union is about being part of the community and staying for the long run in those communities.

What does this mean for marketers? They should look at the "quest for community" as an integral part of their marketing plans – at a strategic level. Different age groups and consumer segments have very different definitions of community. Often, “community” is quickly translated into a tactic- a presence on Facebook, Twitter and Myspace in a marketing plan. It is really more about understanding what defines a sense of community for your most profitable consumers and leveraging this insight for a deeper connection with them. The question to ask is what is the "third place" for your brand?

A tapestry segmentation system can help. It combines the “who” of lifestyle demography with the “where” of local neighborhood geography to create a model of various lifestyle classifications or segments of actual neighborhoods with addresses—distinct behavioral market segments. Adding the layer of a deeper understanding of the context of their "quest for community" can open up new opportunities to create a more meaningful dialogue with your brand with or without the constraint of geography.

Merril Mascarenhas

Putting the M in Social Media

There are over 400MM Facebook users, Forrester estimating social media marketing spend to surpass email by 2013 and Nike Football has 11MM views on the their youtube video, so far. There is no lack of examples of how prevalent social media has become yet we need to remember that it is no different than any other media; we’re investing hard dollars and we need to understand how it is contributing to our bottom line and establish formal benchmarks of measurement like we have for all other media.

However, social media is new, and like anything new (think email or the web 10 years ago) we have to experiment and figure out how to properly measure it, what the agreed upon metrics and benchmarks are and how it drive sales.

But one thing is certain; we have more data, not less, and this data tracks the impact social media has on our behaviour as we interact with content, media, advertising and each other. It can track our awareness of brands, how we have conversations and about what, how we feel, give information, on how we connect you to each other, not to mention how much time we spend on various social networks. All of these behaviours are measured in the social media world, quickly and effectively, without the use of expensive market research. The new data streams created allow us to see far deeper into consumer behaviour than ever before; further before and after the actual transaction. While measuring social media has quickly become highly complex, there is a wealth of data we can leverage. We have data on pre-transactions such as sentiment analysis and assessing brand conversations, we have data on post-transaction behaviour such as word of mouth, good or bad. We can see how many people are talking about our brand (on Facebook), how many like to follow what we talk about (on Twitter) or how many are advocating us (with share tools).

There has been a lot of discussion of ROI of social media, it’s important to remember that ROI is a financial measurement, not a media measurement. Our focus needs to be on using the data being created more, understanding industry benchmarks, understanding the relation ship between these new data points and the financial impact they have by driving purchase and loyalty. Remember, we can now hear the conversations consumers are having about our brands, let’s listen and understand how that helps us do better business.

Chris Osborne

Influencers: They Work For Social Media Too!

A bit of news and a blog post I recently read re-confirmed the power influencers have across all mediums -- and how successful some companies have become at harnessing them to create word of mouth.

According to a new report from Forrester, last year 145 million Internet users in the US generated 500 billion online impressions, with 6% generating 80% of these peer-to-peer influencing impressions. (That’s a lot of social media potential.) For those of you who read The Tipping Point, sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

And then there’s Seth Godin’s analysis of the iPad launch – 300,000 sold on the first day without a ton of advertising dollars spent – underscoring just how successful Apple has been at cultivating influencers and using its ‘tribe’ to get the word out whenever it needs to.

All this to say that a lot has changed since we began our work in word of mouth marketing. Marketers have caught on – some like Apple, long ago – that it’s not simply about harnessing influencers for the purpose of driving sales or building awareness – although that’s the ultimate aim of course. The bigger immediate interest is in how to enlist and leverage them and their networks via Facebook, Twitter, blogs and the like – then how to get them to talk about you and what you offer.

In my last post I discussed how influencers don’t necessarily participate in the social media realm any differently than the random population. What they do better is to stay more closely connected with friends and family through a variety of means, including social media.

Findings showed influencers spend approximately 8 hours/week on Social Media Sites with over 100 connections – that's pretty substantial!

But its important to remember – and I know I probably sound like a broken record – that despite all the hoopla, influencers actually still do the majority of their talking in person. That means it’s vital that any information marketers send to influencers – be it via email, mail or your social media presence – should be in a format that can be easily passed along to friends and family.

The bottom line? Just as we heard years ago about the importance of tailoring communications to off- or online channels and audiences, marketing to influencers today means first of all finding and understanding these individuals, then developing authentic and honest conversational communications that speak to them and what’s important to them – and then motivating them to act.

Hey do you have a good example of a company using influencer marketing well – I would love to hear about it!

MARK YOUR CALENDAR AND GET SOCIAL – Join me and the rest of the organizing committee on June 22nd in Toronto at the CMA Social Media Conference: ‘The Science and Art of Social Business.’. It’ll be an eye-opening afternoon with 9 different case studies on how companies are surviving and striving in the brave new world of social media.

P.S. Ran a successful webcast, The Influencer: A Consumer Voice With Legs, last week in which we shared a lot of the research I've mentioned in this blog - you can access the live recording by clicking here.

Gillian MacPhersen
Join the dialogue on Twitter - @icomwom - we would love to hear your thoughts, opinions and experiences with WOM!

The Emergence of Influencer Relations in B-to-B

With the rapid rise of social media, buyers are placing growing trust in the opinions of new sources that use blogs, online forums, and sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook to spread their message; by doing so, they have morphed AR into a broader category we call influencer relations (IR). Today’s influencers come in all shapes and sizes; they live both outside of an organization’s walls as well as within them, when evaluated as a whole, they fall into four categories, including:

1. Traditional. Just because buyers are placing weight on new groups of influencers doesn’t mean they are ignoring analysts, journalists and associations, particularly when it comes to their most important purchases. The well-respected analyst firms typically carry more weight than individual analysts that have set out on their own; rosters within both categories must be tightly maintained. Gathering feedback from sales will help in understanding when in their processes that buyers are relying on traditional influencers, as well as tracking any changes in behavior. Understanding how traditional sources of influence are using social media means to expand their reach will help ensure your organization is properly monitoring all of the ways that these influencers are talking about your organization and its offerings.

2. Social media pundits. From influential bloggers to Twitter personalities, new groups of pundits regularly come and go, and exert different degrees of influence over buyers that must be monitored. Create a list of criteria that will help set the level of engagement that particular influencers require, using the quality of content, their relevance to your business, search engine ranking data and buyer surveys to understand the degree of influence they exert. It’s not enough to look at quantitative measures to rank influencers; there may be bloggers that gain notoriety simply by being negative all the time; thus, no amount of engagement is likely to change their opinions. When your list is complete, consider how this group wishes to engage; some may only want to be dealt with electronically, while others may be willing to attend live events. Work with local representatives and communications agencies to identify any regional social media influencers under your online radar, as well as how these influencers prefer to be engaged.

3. Customers. Existing customers can have a significant effect on shaping the opinions of prospects in the late stages of the buying process. While traditional case studies and other reference components are certainly valuable, nothing will have as much weight as a happy customer who goes public in forums such as live events, online events and social media vehicles from blogs to communities. The rise of social media means that buyers can now have a network to leverage throughout the buying process to ask specific questions about a vendor. Pay attention to the sentiment and tone of customer postings, and don’t neglect the value of a customer community. Buyers want to engage with other buyers; give them platforms for discussion.

4. Employees. Particularly from a support standpoint, employees who are engaged and forthright have the opportunity to promote positive interactions with a wide range of customers and influencers through social media. Organizations should promote employee use of social media to encourage their potential impact on other influencers. By having a centralized policy to govern the use of social media, organizations can support employee involvement with customers while maintaining policies and procedures on the types of information and content that can be shared publicly. Not only does this strategy act as an early warning system for identifying potential issues, it also heightens the possibility that a company can impact influencer views by engaging quickly and leaving positive impressions in the public space.

While it may be easier to maintain a simple checklist of the usual analysts and journalists to interact with, having a wider influencer universe can help get your message out to a larger range of prospects. The evolution from AR to IR, however, means that communications executives must be more proactive in identifying and engaging new categories of influencers on their turf, and on their terms. Due to the nature of social media, the credibility and influence of individuals can change rapidly; the better you understand your customers’ habits and requirements, the more you’ll know who to engage with and how.

Why It's Still Cool To Be a Marketer

As social media continues its assault onto the mainstream audience, one of the side-effects has been the emergence of the view that marketing isn't allowed in the space. Conversations on blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn and elsewhere are vocal in the opinion that marketing is dead; we choose who we buy from and whose reputation we ruin; what gets our eyeballs and what doesn't. Simply put, old school is dead; long live the King (of new media school). And, to a degree, it's correct - old school is dead. But let's not get too carried away by our new best friend social media, either.

Any time a new marketing platform comes out means that the "old school" is dead as it was; but now you use it in conjunction with the new. The view that we (as consumers) have all the power and that brands now need to listen to us is nothing new. Sure, we have a soapbox on which we can stand now that allows us to share our likes, dislikes and outright hatred of a brand, product or service, and to a worldwide audience looking for the next fix of brand assassination on YouTube. But at the same time, is this really new? Haven't we always had the power over brands? It doesn't matter how great advertising, marketing or PR messages are -if we don't like something, we vote with our wallets. This has been happening since the dawn of the first trade agreement. Just because Coca-Cola runs a great Christmas advertising campaign doesn't mean I'm going to suddenly buy Coca-Cola. I don't like the stuff, so their marketing and advertising is lost on me.

The view that social media has allowed us to force marketers to think differently isn't completely true either. Good marketers have always planned with their audience in mind - it's one of the key tenets to marketing in the first place. We don't just come up with an idea and hope it works - like a duck on water, there's a lot more going on that you can't see, while the pretty stuff on public view looks effortless.

Additionally, good marketers have always known when a message is right, if the timing is there, and reacted as a campaign has progressed, using analytics and feedback. Kind of like Twitter does now, or blog posts - the main difference is now you have instantaneous feedback to work from, as opposed to waiting on figures coming in from print or TV/radio media.

There's no doubt that social media is one of the biggest changes in the marketing (and business in general) landscape when it comes to tracking, measurement and engagement prior to, and after, the launch of a product or service. But to say that it means marketing is no longer needed is missing the boat slightly. Like any sound business, the good marketing tactics will work and the lesser ones won't. But isn't that how it's always been?

Danny Brown

Can Charities Fundraise on Facebook?

One of our clients, Lupus Canada, has found a way to raise both awareness and cash on Facebook.

They’ve accomplished this by partnering with Jergens Canada on a campaign called ‘SHED LIGHT ON LUPUS ‘. It’s an online campaign that saw Lupus Canada receive $1.00 for the first 5,000 people who became fans of Jergens Canada on Facebook and wrote “Shed Light on Lupus”.

This ongoing campaign is geared to drive people to the Jergens Canada Facebook page and from there includes a link to the Skintervention Campaign site where there is more detailed information about lupus, the campaign and where you’ll find the videos shot by the charity’s celebrity ambassadors Colin Mochrie and Debra McGrath. You can also follow along on Twitter@Skintervention.

Even though the funds raised are small (if you visit the site, you’ll see they’ve already received their 5,000 visitor goal), they have found a way to generate revenue and in addition, receive much needed public awareness for a charity that has a tough time competing in a space with much larger and more recognized health charities.

What about [other] examples of successful Facebook campaigns involving charities?

Angie Mackie

Measuring Social Media

Measuring media has been a challenge of business for a long time. I even wrote a controversial blog entry here on
The Fallacy of Return On Investment in Marketing.

Now with internet, social media and web 2.0, the challenge is even greater. This new media has "democratized" the press and proliferation is huge. Tracking this new media and combining it with "old media" measurement is the new goal.

Let's first remember how much the media world has changed. Media was formally shout box from Brands to Consumers: TV, Radio, and Print: that was about it. Then technology and the Internet came along with a major curveball.

The world went online. All the news, weather, sports - everything went online. The sources of information increased dramatically. Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin etc became easily accessible to all. Plus, these medias had influence. But their influence varied based on the number and character of each site. They are not all of equal value. It depends on the quantity and quality of the readership. Measuring the sentiment and changes in sentiment became a challenge.

Listen carefully. The noise on the internet is your customers. Your place is determined by your competitors. You need to see where you stand. Measuring it is the new challenge. Twitter, Blogs and Web sites can make and break companies. And there is no professional editor checking facts. But the media value still impacts. Measuring social media is not like measuring the news. These are your very customers, the most passionate of the bunch, talking about the very products you
are trying to sell. Listen to nuances, the qualitative component of discussion. Discover the context, associated topics and sentiment-laden words. And then check for volume, exposure, and statistical relevance. Your focus groups are
fine, but this is better.

The world has shifted from a few huge media sources to a multitude of small ones. The tough challenge is - how do you measure all this new media? What is the value of it. The new term is Media value. Measuring it is the new challenge.

Marketing Impact Measurement - Whether it's a product launch, public relations push, or advertising campaign, you need a yardstick to measure the reaction. In today's world, Media is leveraged such that you may pay for your first set
of eyeballs, but the rest come as word-of-mouth. Media Value is a new way of attributing impact and measuring the success or failure of marketing initiatives. Your tracking studies can work, but this is better (and cheaper).

Brand awareness is the key. Where does your brand stand? Where do you stand compared to the competition? And importantly, is the perception changing positively or negatively? Knowing what people feel about brands is important. Or trying to get a brand onto the radar. Not only awareness, perception, sentiment. All these are key components.

It is good to have an early warning system. Something that can tell you if sentiment is changing for or against you or for or against a trend. It is also great to know and understand the value of that media.

Measuring marketing impact is the key. Social media can give valuable feedback on the success (or failure) of a media campaign. Having the public comments and weighing them can provide critical decision making data.

Marketers are turning to things like media value reports by General Sentiment to try to figure out the value of various social media mentions and to determine the trending - whether it is positive or negative.

Social Media: Don’t Mistake The Journey For The Destination

Over the past few years, you’ve probably heard stories about drivers so focused on their GPS directions, they end up in a river. Whether true or made-up, like the one about lemmings following each other en masse off a cliff, I wonder if – in response to social media’s red hot popularity -- marketers may be headed somewhere they don’t intend.

Don’t get me wrong. Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and other sites may be effective communication channels to help reach your marketing objectives. I just wonder whether marketers are treating social media as an objective – “quick let’s get a Facebook fan page up!” – rather than understanding its usefulness and role as a tool.

Put another way, it’s important not to think of social media as the destination itself, but rather a tool to get us to our destination – in this case achieving our objectives. And, as with any potentially powerful tool, we need to learn more about how social media works, who’s using it and why before we’ll really know if it can help us get where we want to go.

Take how social media relates to the work I’m doing on WOM. Some hypothesize that influencers – because they like to talk – may be more active in the social media space. In fact, the research doesn’t bare that out:

 Influencers don’t have more accounts than the regular Joe
 They don’t spend more time on Facebook, MySpace or Twitter
 They still prefer to share information – which they may gather from email or social media sites – the old fashioned way, face to face

Charlene Li, formally an analyst at Forrester, and the co-author of Groundswell offers some other learnings and insights into the minds of social media participants and how they actually differ, dividing them into the following segments:

 Creators: create or upload content
 Critics: respond to content from others
 Collectors: organize content for themselves, others
 Joiners: connect in social networks like Facebook
 Spectators: read, listen but do not participate
 Inactives: neither create nor consume

These two quick snapshots alone, I think, demonstrate that developing a successful social media presence first requires understanding who it works for and why. Then you can figure out how best to use the new medium to promote, engage and dialogue with consumers so you can meet your marketing objectives – without getting all wet.

Do you agree marketers are jumping a little too quickly on the social media bandwagon?

EXTRA! EXTRA! We’ll be holding an information-packed webcast on May 19th to present key findings from our recent white paper on influencers, plus other research and case studies. Click to learn more or to register. You won’t want to miss it! P.S You can also follow us on Twitter - we'll be tweeting before, during and after the event - @icomwom - hope you can join us!

Can we talk WOM?

Our industry is excited – about Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, blogs and a whole host of new and evolving social media tools. But it’s important to remember that they’re just that – tools. And in the end, as marketers, we still have to first clearly understand what we’re trying to accomplish and who we’re talking to before we can determine the best way to achieve the results we want --results that admittedly seem more and more challenging to attain.

Which brings me to my main subject. It’s been three years since I first immersed myself in word-of-mouth marketing. My goal was to learn everything I could about influencers. I started out with many assumptions about how and why people talk about the products they love or hate, but interestingly many were disproved through research and discussions with other industry experts.

Like how influencers pass along information to others. Despite how they get it (email, websites, newsletters, social media sites) influencers do most of their recommending face to face – almost 90% of the time they pass it along to friends or family in person or by phone.

And how influencers don’t talk about everything. They talk about a few categories – likely because of interest or perhaps because of where they are in life. Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?

Take diapers, for instance. If you’d talked to me a couple of years ago, you’d have walked away thinking I had a degree in baby undies – I could tell you which were more absorbent, which were softer, which were cuter and which were the best value. And if we were trapped in an elevator, you’d have no choice but to listen to Gillian’s 101 fun facts about diapers. A marketer could have gained a lot of free advertising from me at the time, but today my interest in diapers has – perhaps unsurprisingly – waned.

My husband, for his part, can talk your ear off about natural remedies and will do so at every opportunity and proactively, but, unlike a lot of other guys his age, will only discuss electronics when prompted.

Little nuggets like these – anecdotal as they may be – confirm a growing body of in-depth research that suggests targeting influencers to spread the word and drive traffic or
sales is more complex than choosing a few demographic or psychographic variables and sending out direct mail or an email – or a tweet for that matter. Understanding who these
brand advocates are, what motivates them and how they behave is an exercise that must be handled with care – especially when you consider that, while they’re a small group, influencers can have a dramatic effect on brand building and sales.

I have a lot more to come on this topic and I can’t wait to share it with you in coming posts. Hope you’ll join me.

In the meantime if you would like a copy of a paper we just prepared detailing much of our new research, email me – I’d be happy to send it along.

BTW, what has been your biggest eye opener in WOM marketing?

NEXT TIME: Do marketers have a clear roadmap for social media marketing or are they simply following the crowd?

Gillian MacPhersen

Where Have all the Brands Gone?

…To the wolves.

In our world of cheaper and further-reaching technology, consumers are being given greater and greater amounts of power. Our world has evolved to the point where the relationship is no longer advertiser – consumer; instead it is more like consumer – consumer. This is the notion of brand democratization, and it is here, folks. What surprises me most about this though, is that most companies are ignorant of this phenomena, or are choosing to ignore it. In either of these instances, the company is bound to fail totally and completely.

How do you think Toyota’s problems became so exasperated? Many auto companies and other companies in general have had similar blunders (Ford and Maple Leaf come to mind). However, what was the difference with these two and Toyota?

Ford’s problem was in the early ‘90s, before the advent of the Internet as we know it today. Maple Leaf’s problems, on the other hand, happened recently. They tackled their problems head-on in a relatively quick fashion by having a finely tuned public relations campaign, but also by monitoring the social media world and using these platforms to interact with their customers. Maple Leaf understood that, by allowing and fostering open and honest communication between brand and consumer, the consumer becomes part of the brand and subsequently, becomes brand ambassador. For many companies, this is a foreign notion – customers controlling their brand. However, this is exactly what is happening with Toyota.

Frustrated consumers, who have been brushed aside by their car manufacturer, are turning instead to blogs, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to voice their concerns. It is with this that Toyota’s brand has ceased being theirs in the sense that it has become democratized; every person who is online and who interacts with others becomes brand ambassador. Can companies really afford to ignore this? Probably not, so take note.

By Philip Lewis, a student at St. Lawrence College in Kingston ON.

Early Adopters and the Mass Market

A well-established principle of marketing says that a small group of early adopters can spur mass-market acceptance of a new product. But how do early adopters react when its brand is accepted by the mass market? And do mass markets react the same way that early adopters do to the same brand? Marketers assume that dominating the first market (early adopters) will also help them dominate the second market (mass market).

Wharton marketing professors David Reibstein and John Zhang have explored the topic and say that a company could experience a backlash as early adopters move on to other new products. An example is Porsche, a successful brand for sports car enthusiasts. The brand saw a decline in sports car sales after it entered the SUV mass market. The backlash was significant.

In fact, as The New York Times points out, teenagers would rather text their friends a message rather than post it on Twitter. Instead, Twitter has been embraced by an older demographic. Twitter’s success has shattered a widely held belief that young people lead the way to popularizing innovations. The brand has proved that an offering can take off in a different demographic than you expect and become very popular. Twitter is defying the traditional model.

So why do marketers assume that success with early adopters will lead to quick adoption by the mass market? The "early adopter" concept is flawed because they aren’t always a good indicator of the growth potential of a brand nor do they have an extended Customer Lifetime Value. Most early adopters move on to the next big thing and may not be loyal to brands.

What is more important is to identify your most profitable potential customers. These profitable customers will eventually be the core of your growth strategy and profitability. The important indicator is the rate of adoption - the relative speed with which the most profitable consumers adopt an innovation. Success depends on an organization's ability to build and maintain loyal and valued customer relationships. Therefore, it is essential to build refined strategies for customers based on their value to the organization. The best marketing strategies pursue long-term relationships with profitable customers.

Two questions for you: (1) Who is your most profitable customer? (2) What is their lifetime value to your organization?

Please email me for our "View from the Top" series on best practices in customer satisfaction strategies.

Social Media in B-to-B Survey

Our most recent b-to-b social media survey examined a wide range of issues, including strategy, budget, tactics and measurement. While social media appears to have moved past the “shiny new toy” phase, clear goals are still evolving. Companies must understand opportunities and limitations as they move beyond trials to integrate social media with more established marketing functions

During the past 24 months, SiriusDecisions has collected data and insight about the evolution of social media in b-to-b as related to awareness, adoption, measurement and much more. In this post, we review a few findings from our 2009 Social Media in Business survey.

A cross-section of b-to-b organizations that sell complex, enterprise b-to-b products and services participated in the quantitative portion of the survey, which was co-sponsored by social media vendor Visible Technologies. Appropriate data and insight from SiriusDecisions benchmarking activities, consulting engagements and client inquiries were added to the sample as appropriate. As observed in prior surveys, all phases of marketing – including reputation initiatives – are now being more closely evaluated to determine return on investment. While there is a general understanding that social media is not necessarily the most efficient direct demand creation engine (especially in the short term), leading-edge organizations are increasingly testing new ways of integrating social media initiatives with other key marketing activities. Once organizations have gained working knowledge of how various social media activities can impact their prospects and customers at which particular points in the buying cycle, they can better align social media content to demand creation and sales enablement.

Our survey tracked the behaviors of b-to-b organizations around a number of social media activities. Specific observations in two areas include:

One: Usage and Objectives. We asked organizations to rank order how they are using social media, with the most important objectives listed first. While there was no dominant consensus, generating awareness ranked highest (26% of respondents) followed by engaging with customers to promote loyalty and retention (18%), and interfacing with analysts and other influencers (16%). Marketing specific products finished fourth in the rankings (15%). Each of the top four responses points to active, information-to-the-market type activities; monitoring and responding to customer support issues finished immediately behind the group. Perhaps this information feedback use is assumed to be part of all social media initiatives; however, the value of social media to constantly take the pulse of the market and its perception of your organization’s reputation should not be underestimated. Without a formal process or dedicated resources to monitor market perception, a company can be easily overwhelmed by misunderstandings or misinformation, hindering its ability to make any headway in the social media space at all.

Two: Demand Generation Support and Alignment. Studies by SiriusDecisions of broader reputation activities during the past 24 months have revealed a growing trend toward integrating reputation and demand creation. In our last survey, 33% of organizations reported that more than half the time, they linked their reputation with demand creation activities. In our social media survey, only 15% of respondents reported that more than half the time, they use social media to support their demand creation efforts. More than two-thirds of respondents reported that 25% of the time or less, they align social media with their demand creation activities. Clearly, organizations are still in need of a strategy to best leverage social media within the demand creation process. Organizations must begin to consider the ways that social media tactics can be applied beyond the top of the demand waterfall, such as for pipeline acceleration efforts and more comprehensive, just-in-time sales readiness.

Slowly but surely, social media technologies and systems are emerging from their initial perception as just a shiny new toy to be played with, then discarded. As organizations identify and recognize the risks and rewards of social media, they have begun to clarify best usages and objectives for specific initiatives, as well as to learn both the nuances and positioning of various social media properties such as Twitter and Facebook. Knowing which watering holes are frequented by which audiences – and what types of content can best influence them – can help marketing and sales organizations better customize messages. All of this guidance and information helps organizations understand the optimal role of social media for supporting broader demand creation and sales initiatives.

The 3 Links of Selling

Sales is all about links.

In order to sell, it helps to get to know people. It helps to stay in touch with them. It helps to connect with them. People like to buy from friends. More friends - more sales.

In the old days, one of the ways to do this was by playing golf or hitting the links. So at one time (some people would still say that time has not passed and insist this is the only way even now) golf links were very important.

Then came the era of LinkedIn. LinkedIn is an awesome tool for staying in touch with people. Mostly because many people are increasingly changing jobs and it's tough to keep in touch with everybody. LinkedIn has your friends maintain their contact information rather than you having to keep current.

Essentially it allows you to stay in touch whenever you want to. LinkedIn also allows you to send updates, similar to Twitter of Facebook, which are a good, soft way of staying in touch with people.

LinkedIn is also a great tool for connecting to people whom you don't yet know because you can see who is connected to and ask for a warm introduction.

The third link is about links to your website and blog. Increasingly people are finding business partners and suppliers on the Internet and the most common way to do this is through Internet searching. In order to rank high on the Internet searches (you really want to be on the first page), you need to have what's called a high PageRank. PageRank is determined by the number of quality inbound links coming to your page.

As you can see, it's all about the links.

Digital Wild West

I’ve had the fortune of blogging here since the inception of this blog and deliberately never wrote anything marketing-related with regards to my current employer. Today is one exception I hope you will grant me.

So I’m not accused of 'ambush shilling' or taking 5 minutes of your time that you will never get back - I’m warning you now. You can close this browser and get out of Dodge. I won’t take offense. I promise.

Still here? Thank you. So let’s saddle up ‘pardner’ and we’ll mosey on out for a little ride!

Some may know I have the fortune of working at Harlequin Enterprises. Yes, that Harlequin. The Harlequin that is one of the leading publishers of women's romance and fiction around the globe.

Recently we launched a new campaign promoting our HQN imprint series ‘The McKettricks’ by author Linda Lael Miller. So what's so special about this online marketing campaign?

Last fall our Creative Director Margie Miller teamed up with our Director of Digital Content & Social Media Malle Vallik to create a unique behind-the-scenes video that shows the making of a Harlequin cover. We had never done anything like this before. Take a look.

Now I’ll admit I’m not a big cowboy fan but I appreciate good content. And although I’m biased, I think this documentary is terrific. As Malle points out in her blog, it gives you a greater appreciation of the work that creative directors and photographers do on a regular basis.

How has the campaign done? We’re very pleased with the response so far. We took some excellent content and promoted it via various online marketing and social media channels by directing people to Take A Cowboy Home which features the video content, sample editorial, cool contest and (most importantly) where to buy the books.

We also got some great support from the fine folks over at MSN who created a unique section promoting this campaign. Not to mention many friends/fans/authors/bloggers who spread the word via various social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook.

So everything is perfect and we ride off into the sunset, right? Not so fast. There were a few things I learned from this campaign. Call them the '3 Cowboys' like the McKettrick brothers:

1. Many companies work in silos. Often campaigns are created and other teams such as Social Media, PR, IT and/or Legal are left out until the end and then added like a check-box. Do not make that mistake. Involve key groups from cradle (so they become stakeholders) to the grave (so they share in the successes and learnings).

2. It will not always be utopia. There will be hiccups. The issue is not ‘if’ they happen but ‘when’ they happen. And how your team reacts to quickly address them and ensure they don’t happen in future. We started creating a ‘list of oops’ so we include them in our campaign post-mortem report.

3. This is my biggest takeaway. Regardless if you sell books, lotion, laptops or luggage - it's my view you must have a good combination of strong content and promotion for your digital campaigns. They are not mutually exclusive and together make them all the more stronger. Especially in the digital wild west.

Social Media Pollution

Consider the following scenario: Your plumber approaches you after completing a repair in your home. He seems like a nice enough guy, so you give him a chance when he begins speaking to you. He asks if you’d be interested in receiving his weekly newsletter. You are confused and a little bit uncomfortable. You decide to play along, though, and ask him what the aforementioned newsletter would touch on. He responds, “Oh, various items on plumbing and how you can get the best out of it. I have different tips on how to maximize the effectiveness of your toilet-water… I also review new fixtures and pipes that are hitting the market.”

At this point, you awkwardly decline, allow him to leave, and lock the door. Why did this happen? It’s simple; there is no need for an exterior relationship between the service (our weird, hypothetical plumber) and the consumer (you). When my water pipes are busted, I require the service. Beyond that, it’s not really part of my world – and I’m okay with that. So why do so many marketers try to force the same kind of irrelevant content down the public’s throat on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook? As these sites continue to grow in popularity and international reach, uninformed marketers are latching onto their coattails and, consequently, making a fool of themselves.

When done right, many brands have been quite successful utilizing this young medium. Clothing company H&M posts photos of their new seasonal collections and other interesting materials that their close to1.5 million fans on Facebook legitimately care about. As marketers, we are obligated to understand and properly take advantage of the trends that affect our consumers. There is no doubt that social media provides an opportunity for branding. However, that opportunity isn’t open to every business out there. You must have something unique to offer the consumer - beyond a price listing or link to your website. If there is no demand for additional material, don’t provide it. You’ll just be polluting an emerging media that consumers are still interested in.

So before you hop on the social media bandwagon, please take a minute to consider if anyone wants you going along for the ride. After all, it’s already pretty crowded out there.

Brook Johnston @marketingman.ca

Maintaining a Network

"It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations."

Sir Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965)

One axiom I have in networking with people is to try to add value (to the people I network with - not me) 98% of the time. This builds a "goodwill" account and gets the stuff I send read. It also helps to build a following.

One principle in networking is to "gently" stay in touch with people. What I mean by this, is being respectful of their time and mind space.

This meshed with the concept of having many people in my network. Of course I would prefer to meet with everyone in my network daily for an hour but that would limit how large my network could be. And it would no doubt violate the time and space of people I was networking with.

Marketing is what we do when we have limited time to interact.

So I decided to start sending out daily quotations from famous people. I know that email is an "interrupting medium" so I chose to only send them by twitter, linkedin, facebook and post them to a Tumblr page and to a section on my blog. That way if people "chose" to look, they would see them.

Of course being a time management guy, I largely automated the process by using Ping.fm to post to all sources at the same time and using Hootsuite to send them at preset times. So right now I have my quotes set to go out for the next 90 days and even without me logging in, they go out. I often read books that are rich in quotes so can add 10 or more at a time in a short sitting (or even more efficient, have my trusty assistant, Elliot, do that for me)

Once I started to send out the quotes, people said "Jim likes quotes" so would send me quotes that all I needed to do was to cut and paste. Only once did this get me in trouble when I posted a quote that was not said by the person who I attributed it. And I had just moved to the US at the time so did not understand the political nature of the quote (Making rich people poor does not make poor people rich - I attributed to Abe Lincoln but he never said it).

And by attributing quotations to other people, they often seem to have greater weight than my own words. In a way I get their brain/power attributed to me.

And for that matter, if I could not find a quote, I could always make one up and attribute it to the great Anon.

Of course not all people like quotes:

"I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)

I guess that is why Emerson is not connected to me on Linkedin.

Green Marketing and Brand Strategy

The latest research indicates that uncertain economic conditions have resulted in a decline in the core group of “Green Involved” consumers who would pay a premium for green products (17% in 2008 to 15% in 2009). The study (nationally representative sample of 2,465 adults, ages 18+) indicates that 2.7% of shoppers account for 70% of “informed and conscious green” purchases. Moreover, only 1 in 10 “green” shoppers is an “organic” shopper. Grocery transactions tend to be larger when green products are in the cart. In addition, 38% (45% in 2008) of Canadian consumers feel "highly concerned" about environmental issues. Even though consumers who feel “highly knowledgeable” about these issues increased to 29% (26% in 2008).

Transition to the mainstream

The transition has been driven by mainstream brands. Today, green has become another product attribute in a matrix of good-better-best benefit hierarchies. Tide has "biodegradable" ingredients. Others are labelled concentrates and cold water detergents. These are add-on benefits and enhance the core value proposition of the brand. They do not replace that core value proposition (superior product performance).

Today's customers are more demanding. They don’t believe all the claims being made by marketers- a fall out of greenwashing. Consumer scepticism has led marketers to include eco labels in their communication strategies. North America has over 350 eco-labels offered by trusted third parties. Marketers have laucnhed blogs and social networks with "fans" who contribute new product ideas. Method has its own Facebook page complete with a wall of comments from many of their 7,415 "fans" and a Twitter following of 3,284 users. Tide has 104,235 Facebook fans.

Please email me for additional insights from Arcus Consulting Group's studies on changing market drivers & successful strategic responses.

Marketing Through Customer Engagement

Over a last 6 months I’ve been hearing a lot of companies talk about changes in marketing, changes in the way we target and communicate with our customers. Recently, I attended a conference where the focus was on Customer Engagement Agency Model. The conference included good representation, with recognized industry leaders and speakers, both on the marketing service provider (MSP) and client side.

Several years ago marketers were ahead of technology, coming up with ideas and strategies that couldn’t be executed as the technology that existed then did not support most of their initiatives. Today, most if not all marketers, in order to be competitive, need to catch-up with ever-growing technology. With online marketing, especially social media, customers have more channels to share their comments and feedback more quickly, reaching millions of potential viewers instantly. New marketing models allow companies to integrate online and offline channels and, through social medial listening tools, marketers will be able to react quicker to consumers’ needs and feedback. Twitter, Facebook, My Space and other channels provide consumers with many ways to get feedback from other consumers (not from product companies directly) and to read reviews of products they are about to buy. People trust their friends and colleagues more than marketers.

The end goal is for consumers to become brand advocates and help companies market and sell their products. Online analytics coupled with technology and marketing strategies will help marketers reach out to the right people at the right time with the right offer.

Is your marketing strategy changing in order to stay ahead your competitors?

Jacob Ciesielski, Partner at FSA Datalytics, is a member of CMA’s Marketing Technology and Database Intelligence Council

5 Free Fantastic Social Media Monitoring Tools

Working in the social space is about more than just connecting, networking and broadcasting. You also have to listen so that you know where and how you can improve your brand's reputation. Conversations will inevitably happen with or without your involvement, so even if you’re not active in the social space, it doesn’t mean that you aren’t being talked about.

The good news is you don’t have to rush out and purchase an expensive software package to manage your social monitoring for you.

You can do it yourself… FOR FREE!

There are a number of tools available on the web to help marketers with their social media monitoring.

Check out some of these tools to help you with your listening objectives:

www.search.twitter.com
Perhaps obvious, but you’d be surprised at how many people DON’T know about the Twitter search tool. Twitter search allows you to search by keyword and monitor recent tweets.

The search tool also has a “reply” option as well as a “view tweet” option, which is great for presentations and social media monitoring reports.

www.backtype.com/
Backtype is a conversation-monitoring tool that allows you to search conversations on blogs, social networks and various other social media sites so you can find out what people are saying.

The great thing about Backtype is that it extensively monitors comments on blogs, which a lot of listening tools do not.

http://boardtracker.com/
Boardtracker is a tool that allows you to monitor conversations happening on forums. I like how specific it is, especially because a lot of important conversations happen on forums. It’s an important medium that should not be overlooked.

Boardtracker recently released a 2.0 beta version, however, I would recommend using the original version FIRST, as the results may not be the same.

www.socialmention.com
Social Mention is a tool that allows you to monitor conversations happening online in virtually any social web property. It searches blogs, microblogs, forums, comments, video and more.

While I like to use this tool a lot, I don’t recommend using it as your ONLY source of monitoring. You should use it in conjunction with others. It also tends to be slow at times.

http://blogsearch.google.ca/ (or .com if you’re from the US)
Google Blog Search is a staple. It helps you find relevant blog posts and blog authors who discuss your brand and have influence on the web. It’s important to know who these people are, so that you can engage in conversation with them or at the very least, know what they are publishing about you.

So these are just a few of my favourite tools. Of course there are search tools available on practically every social site as well. I routinely scour Digg, BlogCatalog, YouTube, and Facebook during my monitoring programs, in addition to the ones mentioned above. It's all about using the tools that you are comfortable with, that give you the best results.

Have fun out there!

Brand Management Doesn’t Stop at the Ad Campaign

As manager of a number of CMA’s Marketing Councils, I am surprised when I am asked – more frequently than you’d think, “Why does the CMA have a Contact Centre Council? What do contact centres have to do with marketing?” I can tell you that members of the Contact Centre Council see themselves as marketers – and this mindset likely correlates to an organization’s bottom line.

The Contact Centre Council collaborated on an article in the most recent edition of Contact Management, and in the magazine’s editorial, Ron Glen quotes a speech by Diane Francis that I thought was bang on. She said “The industry can have the smartest advertising campaign the world has ever known, but if the people answering the phone turn the public off and cost you customers it is all for not. To think that brand management stops with billboards, newspaper ad, TV commercials... is crazy.”

I’m not sure why contact centres are often overlooked as marketing tools. How many Twitter posts have you seen complaining about a call centre experience ending with a declaration that they are switching suppliers or will never do business with that company again? On the flip side, have you ever upgraded your spend as a result of a great call centre experience? I certainly have.

I wonder how people question that a corporate function with implications to brand, customer service and relationship building, and up-selling and cross selling, does not have to do with marketing. If marketing departments are embracing the use of social media tools, why is there question as to the marketing value of a live, relationship building touch point with consumers? Am I wrong?

Perhaps you can help me: where does your contact centre fit within your organizational structure – in the marketing department, or is it an operational function? Does this affect how your organization sees call centres as marketing tools?

Avoiding the Dark Side of Social Media

An unfavorable negative comment on your blog. Reports of service disruption by your customers on Twitter. Too aggressive of a demand creation positioning in a community. All of these missteps can cost you big-time in the social media environment if you are ill-prepared to handle them. In this post, I will discuss four potential pitfalls that face organizations using social media and how to avoid them.

1. Adherence to company policies and procedures. As more people engage in sites such as Twitter and Facebook, an organization’s reputation grows increasingly distributed; a general first impression of a particular company may be connected to a specific employee’s interactions on a social site. Add to this the time and productivity that can be lost by employees spending time on these sites and the benefits of social media begin to dim in the eyes of some. It’s becoming increasingly unrealistic to simply block access to these sites; however, you can build policies for how employees represent themselves as a company agent or expand the scope of existing media guidelines. These guidelines should be part of the employee handbook and clearly outline the areas that are off-limits online, including financial information, competitors and specific customers.

2. Outsourcing content development. The point of using social media is to engage with a market rather than to broadcast to it. This engagement typically comes at a high cost, not necessarily in dollars but in the time and resources it takes to write blogs, monitor and deal with issues that arise in online communities, or respond to posts from users and other participants. Faced with these daunting tasks, a growing number of organizations have looked to outsource some of their social media efforts to either a public relations agency or a boutique firm specifically in the business of driving social media participation. This is a strategy we believe is both risky and unsustainable. If you pay someone to write positive comments in response to blog posts or engage in discussions on your behalf, strict oversight will be required to make sure these participants stay on message and don’t engage in spamming community sites. Realize also that by outsourcing these activities you not only can paint a false picture of the company, but run the risk of alienating at least a portion of your community if they discover your social media efforts have been underwritten or ghostwritten.

3. Dealing with negative content. It’s as inevitable as taxes; create any social media presence and rest assured that some of the first comments directed at your organization will be negative in nature. In some ways this is to be expected as dissatisfied customers are often the most vocal and now have another outlet to express their views, particularly if they have issues that have not been resolved through other mechanisms. As a result, before making any social media splash, check with your support organization to make sure you understand the extent to which technical issues are an issue with customers. Use negative responses and issues as an opportunity to publicly engage with your stakeholders; the lengths you go to solve individual issues and the time it takes to resolve them will go a long way in demonstrating how you deal with (and feel about) your customers. At the same time, there will be detractors that often use these social media channels to attack you for no discernible reason. The best advice we can give is that if warranted, respond to criticisms once, then let them lie; if you have an engaged user base your best defenders against such negativity will be your own customers.

4. Demand creation comes last. An effective social media strategy targets customer engagement and loyalty first, awareness second and demand creation third. While high-profile brands understand this approach, many organizations will not embark on using social media if they can’t prove it generates more leads. The same rules that apply for outbound marketing regarding the ability to opt in or out of your communications are even more important in the social media world. Over time, once your organization has become a trusted member of a community, the tolerance level for soft selling grows, specifically the ability to point out solutions and success stories when appropriate. As long as you do an effective job in the loyalty and awareness departments when engaging in social media, demand creation opportunities have the best potential to follow.

The potential benefits of social media are significant, but all too often these advantages can be undermined by reactionary missteps. While outside expertise can be beneficial in implementing a sound social strategy, external execution has pitfalls that may be hard to overcome. The most effective way to avoid the dark side of social media is to have a holistic strategy built on three principles: frequency, consistency and transparency. This strategy offers an approach for not only leveraging social media but also participating regularly on a consistent and open basis with your customers, prospects and partners.

Sales - It is all about Relationships

I have lots of friends. I have lots of acquaintances. I have lots of people I know and lots of people know me. Friendship has various degrees. Some friends I can stop in on with no notice. Some I can call at 2 in the morning. Most though are more distant than that. We just know each other.

People buy from people they know. The better they know the person, the more they are apt to buy from them. The degree of closeness has to do with the volume and frequency of interactions and how "personal" those interactions were. And memories fade in time.

For example, if I am having lunch with someone who sells insurance, and I am in the market for insurance, I am likely to engage with that person. Six months from now, I may not remember or I have had lots of time to come in contact with other insurance people.

If I played squash every week for a year with that same insurance person, I would be more likely to call him/her - even 6 months after we stopped playing squash.

Or if I really hit it off with the person, I would also call. Usually this quality has to do with sharing personal things - the real you. That's the quality of the interaction.

And the closeness tends to be reinforced through different interactions over time. The lunch, the tea, the phone call, the meeting, the note, the email etc. Different types of touches over time.

Selling often has to do with the degree of closeness. And degree of closeness has to do with the quantity and quality of the time and contact. So to sell more, just spend more quality time with all your prospects. Simple - not really. We all have limited time.

One way to solve this is through marketing. One to many. One message goes to hundreds or thousands of people. And one of the best ways to "make marketing personal" is social media. Blogging, Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter etc are all ways people connect and stay in touch. And in most social media, it is appropriate to share part of you - the real you.

Social media can also be the least expensive ways to stay connected. It does not beat personal 1:1 time but it can be an efficient way to stay in touch and stay top of mind.

5 Rules on Marketing to the ADD Consumers

The first rule of marketing is to know your customers. Customers have changed over the past 10 years. Partly as a result of technology and partly as a result of economic pressures and the need for efficiency.

Customers are ADD. They have no attention span. Good marketer know this and cater to this. We cannot change the consumer, we can change the message.

1 – Grab their attention. Consumers need to be “woken up” and shook in order to even look at your marketing. This is why unique, outrageous and highly creative things can break through. EG – send someone a toothbrush and say smile with XYZ, make a bold promise – We will double your sales or you do not pay etc.

2 – Keep it short. People use the length of the message as a screening mechanism. If the message is short they read it. If it is long, they do not. It is no surprise that instant messaging and twitter are hot. The messages are short. Cut the length of the message and increase the impact.

3 – Allow prospects to take action quickly. Have an obvious “order now” button. Have the phone numbers obvious. And good old fashioned call to action – tell the customer what to do.

4 – Keep it simple and intuitive. Customers will not stay long enough to figure out how to do things or to find where things are. Avoid redundancy. Redundancy is the main cause of excess verbiage.

5 – Deliver quickly once you get the order. This is an instant world. People expect it immediately. The standards you compete with are high and expected. Perfect service is now the expected norm.

The new ADD world demands simplicity, brevity and ease of use. Marketers have the challenge of getting through to these ADD consumers. These 5 rules should help.

In Praise of Brevity

I think it all started with email. It became easy, fast and cheap to send a message. So the inevitable happened - information and the number of messages people are sent exploded (note that I did not say the number they received).

As a marketer, your job is to make your message, regardless of the medium, be one of the many that actually gets through.

I have noticed an interesting screening mechanism that people use - the length of the message. If the message is short they read it. If it is long, they do not.

Look at business books. The length has dropped to about 200-250 pages in order to be saleable. People no longer think they get more value if a book is a 1000 page tome.

Instant messaging is a hot phenomenon, especially with younger people who have grown up in the age of uber technology and information overload.

And Twitter's rampant success with a maximum of 140 characters is remarkable. We can all learn from Twitter; it can teach us to keep it short. I advocate that every marketer should sign up for Twitter and try sending 20-30 Tweets. It is good training on how to get a message across in less words.

Cut the message length and increase the impact. Less is more.

Using Social Media to Promote a Newsletter

My niece, Jessalyn, works for a company who do a newsletter. She asked me how to use social media to promote it. My response.....

What I would do with the newsletter and social media:

1. Make sure it is emailed.

2. Put it up on the web

3. Link to it a few times from the blog with context so hotlink something like "Hugh pontificates on greed and green" with the part in quotes hotlinked.

4. Use hootsuite and ping.fm (that way you hit twitter, linkedin, facebook. I would even set up a blog to ping to (this one is separate and even call it "Green Tweets - Our Twitters about Green Business and Advertising" and any other sites that you have profiles on) to post short (you only have 140 characters and really only 120 characters if you want someone to RT(ReTweet) you messages with the link to the newsletter. I would link to it perhaps 10 times in a one month period.

Possible posts

...We just posted our newsletter jkldffdjkl.com
...Hugh pontificates on Green vs Greed at fdsjklfjk.com
....Is Green really the opposite of Greed? dsfhjk.com
....Does the state of wall street reflect our environment? dfjksdj.com
....etc.

To set up 10-15 Hootsuites should be a 10 minute job. Then it is all on autopilot from there. You can even reuse a few of them 6 months from now.

5. Tweetdeck search greed or another term that is relevant. Then when appropriate RT or @someone "we think greed is impacting the environment dhjkdfh.com" etc. The problem with this step is it can take time and you always need to figure a return on the time you spend.

6. In all interactions try to add value. Be interesting, Be funny, Be informative, Help someone save or make $ etc.

7. Slightly rewrite one of the articles and submit it to the free article sites like articlesbase.com, isnare.com and ezine.com (if you do just these 3, that is all you need to do). Note - do not submit identical content to what your site has or you will be rated as duplicate content by Google.

8. Think SEO (Search Engine Optimization). What strings might people type that you want to get hit on? Incorporate some of these strings in your articles. EG to Hugh's article add "I was thinking: How does green advertising and green promotion fit in?". Then of course tie it in a bit. You might be able to own "green advertising" and "green promotion" and "green social media"

The tools I am talking about here (Ping.fm, Hootsuite etc) are all free and easy to use. Using social media can take time but it can often yield excellent results. The only cost is the time.

From Pop Culture to Peep Culture

What does the behavioural trend mean for marketing strategies?

We are moving from a pop culture to a peep culture. In pop culture, we turn on the TV and watch our celebrities entertain us with their performances. In peep culture, we turn on the computer, we move through people’s lives on blogs, face book and Youtube. Instead of getting our entertainment from scripted performances, we get our entertainment from unscripted, supposedly spontaneous peeping into other people’s lives. It can be friends and family. It’s just as likely to be people we have never met around the world.

Susan Boyle became an overnight celebrity because of peep culture. The entire world was staring at her after her transformation from a resident of a small town Scottish town to a global celebrity. We like the story and the peep into her life. In many ways, the breakdown and her struggle will keep her story going.

We have entered the age of "peep culture": a tell-all, show-all, know-all digital phenomenon that is dramatically altering notions of privacy, individuality, security, and even humanity. Peep culture is reality TV, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, chat rooms, amateur porn, surveillance technology, cell phone and more. Can Facebook and Myspace be a cure for loneliness? It’s not the ultimate solution. That’s the irony. We are trying to look for community by moving in solitude into these technologies. You are more likely to see people in a social environment immersed in their PDAs instead of communicating with people in the room. The name of the game is the number of followers. It becomes a narcissistic obsession.

As a society we have become incredibly fast paced without really being aware of these seismic changes in our lives. Today’s generation is the most photographed generation. We are moving into a time where our virtual personality is going to be more important than our actual physical presence. It’s going to be more important what we have online vs. what we do offline. We are going to be judged by our virtual portfolios, socially and professionally. We are not having a substantive debate about this trend in society. What we need to think about is what privacy means to each individual - politically, ethically and socially. We are a highly atomized and fairly lonely society.

In the age of peep, core values and rights we once took for granted are rapidly being renegotiated, often without our even noticing. Author Hal Niedzviecki on his new project, the Peep Diaries says the more we reveal about ourselves, the more attention we seem to get. So what happens next? Does privacy matter anymore? Can we be too connected? Is there anything we won’t put out there? Suddenly we’re spending all of our time tracking other people. And we’re inviting them to watch us! People reveal themselves to get attention and to feel like they are part of a community.

Peep culture is intersecting with pop culture and is evolving it and coming to replace it. For example, we see reality TV as the primary entertainment mode on TV. The phenomenon continues to grow. Game shows from the 1950 are more like pop culture. Peep culture is more like Trading Spouses, John and Kate plus 8 which had 10 Million people watch the debut episode in North America. US Weekly had 5 covers in a row of John and Kate plus 8. That is peep culture.

This has never happened before, where we have turned the spot light on random regular people. It’s an ongoing fascination. It’s really about how underground cultures are changing people’s lives. The biggest problem is what happens when we turn our lives reflexively, without thinking about it, into entertainment product. We are seeing a clash of values of people who are facebooking, blogging, youtubing and being encouraged to do so by an overall entertainment culture that says more attention is better. In contrast, we see a traditional society that says that a very active online persona may not be a good fit with a job or university.

People are being turned into celebrity product. Popular culture is encouraging people to move forward with even less scrutiny with what they are doing. There aren’t any secrets anymore. The notion of private life has changed. First of all, people want private moments to reflect. But they have redefined the meaning of privacy. The problem is we are alone most of the time- in our houses, in front of our computers, in our cars, at work in our cubicles or offices. The fact is human beings are hard wired to be social. We are descendents of apes who spend 80% of their day picking nits out of each others hair.

There are two issues. We have moved in the spectrum of community all the way to the end of gated fences, SUVs and tinted windows, into the belief that the fantasy celebrity lifestyle of having your own limo, private island, bodyguard, and having every appointment vetted by your people is the way to live. That is the fantasy that we have, we think we want. But for most of us, the further we get along that spectrum the more alone we are. So then we move to the other spectrum which is constant flow of details about your life, your blog, and your status updates. That’s what community used to be. There is this flow of information from other human beings that connects us together, which makes us feel more intrinsically human and less like we need to constantly be proving ourselves.

Facebook URLS Are Here. Let The Trampling Begin

Admit it, it’s frustrating when you’re adding your social profiles to new websites. You can remember your Twitter URL, your Stumble Upon page, LinkedIn, Flickr…But what about Facebook? Well prior to today it was a randomly assigned nine digit ID number like 098768594.

Who can remember that?

Now when someone asks you if you’re on Facebook you don’t have to say “yes just look me up”. That might be fine for someone like me who doesn’t have a common name, but if you’re a John Smith or someone with an equally common name, good luck!

Tonight at 12:01 ET Facebook will be opening the flood gates and allowing it’s 200 million users to select a unique URL to identify their profile on a first come first serve basis.

This move by Facebook will keep them in line with other social media tools (as mentioned above) who already allow custom URLS, as well as being more SEO friendly. Blogs have been doing this with blog posts for years, so it’s nothing new or groundbreaking, but a nice tweak on Facebook’s part.

Users and businesses must choose their URL carefully, however, as they are not changeable once selected. So names like “boozeymcdrunk” or “bongmeister” might not be the best of ideas, so choose wisely kids.

Have fun out there!

One way or two?

I was forwarded an article today from the BBC detailing some Harvard research titled Twitter hype punctured by study.

As detailed in the article, the Harvard data says very, very few people tweet and very, very few people listen consistently.

The research concludes that despite the hype, Twitter resembles more of a one-way, one-to-many publishing service more than a two-way, peer-to-peer communication network. That Twitter is a broadcast medium rather than an intimate conversation with friends.

The BBC posted a question I thought would be interesting to discuss here: Do you think that micro-blogging will play a big part in the future of the web? If so, are marketers going to use and allocate budget to this in the future? Is it happening now?

June 16, 2009 – One more certainty to boot…

“…In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.”

Benjamin Franklin’s famous words are timeless and universal in their truth. I propose though that we as marketers consider one more certainty – the brand.

The issue du jour is social media. How do we do it? What do we do? Is it facebook, is it twitter, how about a blog? Is it all? Is it some? is it nothing? The list of questions goes on and on. And this is the beauty of our craft – the dynamism of marketing, especially today.

The point though is that all issues du jour are just that – the hot topic of the day. Every hot topic from the past, for example media, engagement, ROI or ROMI and every hot topic in the future will always undeniably be tied to the brand.

This is why I believe that the CMA’s Brand Insight Conference is a must attend event for all Marketers.
Here is a snapshot of what you can expect on June 16 2009 at the Hilton Toronto:

-Mitch Markson will talk about goodpurpose – a fantastic global initiative that builds “mutual social responsibility” between brands and consumers.

-Gerry Frascione, the CEO of BBDO North America will share some amazing examples of how his clients have been able to tell compelling brand stories that have resonated in today’s environment.

-George Pneumaticos, the Global Brand Architecture Director for Nokia promises to deliver a compelling lunch keynote on how the world’s number one phone brand innovates through the brand.

-Tony Matta, Vice President of Marketing for Frito Lay will discuss the highly successful recent play of letting the Consumer name the newest Dorito flavor. The winner receives $25k and 1% of the flavour’s sales…

Yes Ben, in life 2 things are for certain but in marketing only 1 thing really matters – the brand.

In the spirit of authenticity, the author of this post wishes to disclose that he will be attending the conference on June 16.

Reputation and the B-to-B Buying Cycle

Communications executives often view reputation management as a set of consistent efforts to maintain awareness and a positive impression of their organization. Get this right, they think, and buyers will be convinced to engage. Trouble is, connecting A with B has been nearly impossible, leaving these executives exposed when it’s time to cut both budget and headcount. While it’s true that communications functions have historically had a higher-level charter, this is rapidly changing as organizations learn that materials created for awareness, branding and even crisis management can be retooled for use throughout prospect buying processes. In this post, I will share some ideas for doing so, and in turn bring communications to more closely align with key goals of demand creation, sales enablement and revenue generation.

A Buying Cycle Primer
If an organization does not understand the way prospects buy what it sells, it will never be able to use marketing to facilitate these decisions. This is due to the fact that as prospects move toward a purchase, the tone, message, offer and even communicator for a specific marketing effort should be altered. Buyers don’t go through a straight-line process of getting information through the Web and other sources, weighing one solution against another and finally making a decision. Instead, a b-to-b buying process typically comprises a series of smaller decisions involving a variety of audiences that move into and out of the buying process. SiriusDecisions has created a model that describes six macro stages that b-to-b organizations typically go through. These six macro stages can be rolled up into three higher-level phases: education, active buying, and closing.

Buying Cycle Impact
Given the importance of buying cycles – and the role of the entire marketing organization to facilitate (rather than fight) them – better alignment of key reputation-building efforts with these cycles will result in more targeted, measurable communications.

Education. Many communications functions spend an inordinate amount of time blindly flooding the market with awareness messaging through public relations (PR) and analyst relations (AR), using both traditional and social media outlets. While a broadcast strategy can generate general awareness, taking a more surgical approach will generate incremental leverage. As an example, the work that goes into securing quotes for press releases and testimonials can be used to reinforce the connection between a specific offering and core business issues within a vertical market, then repurposed into content made available in a central repository for reuse. Multimedia content can be encapsulated into Web-based podcasts that both marketing and sales can distribute and track for effectiveness. These efforts should also be tracked to determine possible impact on organic search, a key element of prospect activities early in buying processes.

Active buying. The active buying stage finds buyers looking for solutions to problems they have decided are a priority, matching solution types to their specific needs and uncovering vendors that offer their solution of choice. An organization’s communications activities can be used to drive focused awareness not around brand, but around specific decisions made by current customers that drove them to choose the solution you offer, and subsequently your organization in particular. Reuse quotes, testimonials and case studies in a variety of deliverables (including social media outlets such as blogs and microblogging sites such as Twitter) that are cooperatively created with product marketing and subject matter experts, and provided to field marketing and sales. For deals that move into the opportunity phase but then stall, specific pipeline acceleration efforts sponsored by marketing in conjunction with sales can be effective in helping these deals to get moving again. Communications functions can help even further by tracking key issues being discussed in online communities that are sponsored by their organization or outside entities; emerging or changing issues can be quickly identified and converted into deliverables as warranted.

Closing. The closing phase includes activities such as negotiations and terms/conditions creation required to seal a deal. While there may be less traditional communications content reuse potential here because prospects have much of the information they need, a key leverage point is the communications function’s ability to act as a liaison to the executive branch for their participation in critical deals. Directly addressing any issues that a prospect may have about your organization by facilitating prospect interaction with marquee references also could help tip a decision in your favor, as can repurposing any ROI-related content into tools. Communications also should stand ready as a liaison to deal teams working feverishly to close deals in order to potentially create (or adapt) content as needed.

The more the communications function links its reputation activities to demand creation goals, the more reach and value can be demonstrated to the overall organization. While traditional communications activities in the branding, PR and AR arenas will still occur, the leverage available to other marketing functions is often minimal if these activities remain general in nature and myopic in execution. Instead of merely releasing your communications content to become available to other marketing roles, proactively match your deliverables to specific stages in the buying cycle; not only will you gain additional mileage out of your initiatives, you will raise the visibility and impact of your function to the business.

Is Twitter a Fad?

Approximately 60 percent of current Twitter users fail to return the next month, according to data from Nielsen Online. In other words, Twitter's audience retention rate is about 40 percent. Moreover, it was below 30 percent in the 12-month period before Oprah joined Twitter bandwagon. The above conclusions were arrived at by Nielsen Online by analyzing Twitter.com and other websites and applications that feed into Twitter community blog post. For comparison, Facebook and Myspace users’ retention rates were twice as high in the early stage and are about 70 percent currently.

By definition, fads enter the market quickly, are adopted with great zeal, peak early and decline fast. Fads do not survive long because either they do not satisfy an existing market need or fail to develop a desire (want). There are several products, line extensions and ideas that could not develop an ongoing market demand and proved to be fads. The Atkins diet, Wacky wall walkers, acid-washed denim jeans and Rubik’s cube were a few of such fads. On the other hand innovative products like iPods successfully met and increased an existing market need and Blackberry smart phones created demand for convenience and mobility to be hugely successful.

Is there an identifiable need for Twitting that could translate into a critical mass? Can twitter help expand the initial use by Innovators to Early Adopters? Answers to these questions will determine whether Twitter is a fad, a trend or will be a successful brand.

Celebrities like Oprah and George Stroumboulopoulos use Twitter to inform TV audience about the guests in their forthcoming shows and generate interest and buzz about it. So there is a possible need / niche market for it. Twitter would have to expand this need (niche) into an appeal for bigger groups. For example, I use Twitter to stay in touch with friends and colleagues who I am also connected with on LinkedIn and Facebook. Thus LinkedIn and Facebook drive first-mover advantage here as I have been using these platforms for a while, few times a week, as a habit. I use Twitter mostly for fun than as a utility or a need.

Twitter’s growth coincided with the economic slowdown, with people working more hours to sustain their lifestyle and getting less time to try out innovative ideas. LinkedIn and Facebook were launched during economic growth and feel-good times, an environment conducive for new products. Thus Twitter faces an uphill task to maintain the initial momentum compared to other such applications. Future success for Twitter will depend on its ability to use the technology and perhaps business collaborations to correspond with current lifestyles, values and demographics in order to move from a nice-to-have to a feel-good, must-have brand.

Writer's Block Cured by Twitter

They say that confession is good for the soul. So I’ll admit something. I’ve had writer’s block for a while. I just couldn’t think of something interesting to write. Until Twitter helped me. I’m sure you’ve heard all about Twitter as it’s the latest and greatest social media sensation. Oprah’s on it. Ashton Kutcher is on it. Even Borat is on it.

So recently I read a terrific article in the Toronto Star (full disclosure: my employer is owned by Torstar which also owns the Toronto Star) by Ellen Grossman. She wrote about a situation where Aeroplan charged the widow of an Aeroplan member to transfer his accumulated Aeroplan points to her account as she wanted to take her grandchildren to Disney World. You read correctly. They wanted to charge the widow almost $2k to transfer her deceased husband’s Aeroplan points to her account. When the Toronto Star asked Aeroplan about it they had no comment.

I was so stunned I tweeted (posted) about the article in Twitter. The next thing I knew my tweet (post) got re-tweeted (re-posted) by at least ten other people. All of them very smart and talented people. Some of whom I’ve never met before. In fact a few of them are respected journalists for the Globe & Mail and La Presse respectively. None of my previous Twitter meanderings generated such a ‘viral’ effect. I now had something interesting to write about for my next post. And so here we are.

I’m an Aeroplan fanboy and I’ll admit it. The credit cards I use are because of it. The gas I buy at Esso is because of it. I buy Tropica orange juice because of it. I fly on Air Canada because of it. I have friends who work at Aeroplan and at agencies who represent them. A couple of years ago my wife’s Aeroplan account was de-activated because she hadn’t used it within the required amount of time and she was at risk of losing thousands of points. She missed the deadline by a matter of days so I emailed the President of Aeroplan, Rupert Duchesne, and he graciously re-instated her points without penalty. So as you can see, I’ve had a good relationship with Aeroplan over the years.

Which is why I’m torn by the article by Ellen Grossman. It really bothered me and based on the re-tweeting it bothered many others as well. I just don’t get why such a respected brand would act that way. The optics in this situation look nothing short of ridiculous from a marketing or branding perspective. As Mathew Ingram succintly tweeted “Stay classy Aeroplan – soak those widowers for all you can get.”

So is the morale of the story that spouses should tell their partners their Aeroplan account information? So in the event of an untimely demise their spouse/partner can still book reward tickets otherwise they will have to pay penalties to re-acquire Aeroplan points? (Naturally I would never do or advise such a thing as that would be a contravention of Aeroplan’s rules that members must agree to when they sign-up.)

It just doesn’t seem right Aeroplan. Even to a fanboy like me. Even if you did help me cure my writer’s block.

Lessons of a Recovering ROI-aholic

I admit it. I used to think ROI was the be all and end all of analytics. If it couldn’t be measured, it wasn’t worth doing. I brushed off measures of awareness and “eyeballs” as relatively useless terms that were thrown out to prove the success of a campaign or initiative when nothing of substance really existed beyond the printed page or website. Then, something changed - the broader marketing industry became gripped in this cycle of having to prove everything and show ROI on all marketing activities. I expected to be happy when that day arrived, but I’ve realized that we created a monster. We are starting to get crippled by ROI paralysis. You can’t measure everything – or, better said – you are limited to the extent to which you can measure some things.

Take the ascendance of Social Media. There are now huge streams of data at our disposal but none of it can easily be tied to a sale, making it really hard to measure in terms of a return. My colleagues and I have argued over how to measure this thing, how to prove an ROI. Truth is, you can’t. Get an ROI that is.

Oops...did I say that out loud?

Even beyond whether you can calculate an ROI, the first question you should ask is, do I really need to? What other measures are good enough?

Every business has to engage in advertising, marketing, promotion, public relations and sales. They are all part of the mix, but only a few can be tied directly to a sale in a meaningful way. Does that mean you should stop advertising because all you can measure is GRPs or number of views or capture awareness through a research study? Of course not - unless staying in business isn’t one of your objectives. Awareness is the first step in closing a sale, so it has to be done.

Back to Social Media. Ultimately, it is a promotional and public relations tool as well as an engagement mechanism. At the moment, there is a lot of activity that can be measured around interest, buzz and the adherence to blogs and tweets. That’s a pretty good starting point to gauge interest and awareness of whether customers and prospects are circulating in your universe.

Once they are in your universe, then you can start to do some things that can prove an ROI. Increasingly, there are companies out there that are offering capabilities to deploy offers via Twitter using a Tinyurl. Companies that created Facebook pages are targeting offers with campaign codes attached so they can start to track and measure ROI out of this environment. Now that they have prospects and customers in their sphere of influence, they are using more traditional, measurable tools to generate provable ROI.

It may be time to wean-off from the ROI Kool-aid and consider a well rounded measurement plan that incorporates elements that are appropriate to the objective. ROI can be measured on many things, but trying to apply it to everything under the sun is folly.

In the meantime, I’ve got a few extra cases of Kool-aid in my basement if anyone wants them.

Rising Above the Downturn

Succeed by focusing on what you can control and what won’t demand big-dollar investments: Process, readiness and a few new tricks.

There’s an old saying about technology that goes something like “analysts invariably overestimate the short term and underestimate the long term.” It’s fair to say that with recent economic developments staring them in the face, more marketing and sales leaders have begun to make decisions about resources and strategies based on what they’re hearing now rather than what they know will drive success over time. In this post, I will focus on five key activities that will help get you past today’s hype and maintain your focus on systematic, predictable revenue growth.

ONE: COMPLETE A BENCHMARK
Companies that focus on continued excellence have long understood the power of benchmarking, but also know it’s not enough to simply measure what and how you spend money, or how your demand funnel performs in a vacuum. You must understand how a group of peers that look like you – with size or industry not the only comparatives – as well as a group of companies that you aspire to be like are spending and performing. These comparitives are a fantastic tool to protect budgets, to justify spending and to set realistic goals for performance improvement. It’s easy to start cutting when times get difficult, a strategy that is penny wise and pound foolish for most. The best organizations, on the other hand, embrace what is difficult and keep distancing themselves from the pack as a result.

TWO: ENABLE SALES
Marketing is legendary – or better yet, infamous – for prioritizing its efforts on the top of the demand waterfall, primarily in the form of sourcing leads. In fact, we estimate that the typical b-to-b field marketing function spends nearly 92% of its budget at the funnel top, leaving the remaining 8% to support sales in its efforts to take good-quality leads and bring them to opportunity and close. This balance should change in any economy, especially one where sales cycles elongate and “no decision” becomes your strongest competition. Depending on the demand scenario, spend ratios should range anywhere between 80/20 and 65/35 between the waterfall top (sourcing, nurturing) and the bottom (sales enablement). Marketers that continue to endorse the imbalances are not only jeopardizing their sales forces, they are jeopardizing the chance that leads they source will propagate into the waterfall and truly make an impact on the business.

THREE: FOCUS ON PROCESS
One of the most underrated routes to better results is process improvement, something that often doesn’t require a budget line item at all. Every company employs sales and marketing processes that don’t work well, those that employees spend the most time creating excuses for or workarounds to avoid. Think about your lead flow process (or lack thereof), your linking of reputation activities to demand creation (or lack thereof) or the formal ways in which sales tries to apply tools and content to the buying processes it finds itself trying to shepherd (or why it doesn’t, or can’t). Taking on just one of these areas to improve the process that surrounds it may be an investment in time, but is one that is low in dollars and significant in potential return. An additional positive outcome of fixing the processes that are most broken is freeing up wasted personnel time, something that is almost certainly no longer a luxury for organizations.

FOUR: MAXIMIZE VENDOR INVESTMENT
It’s a natural inclination of companies when they struggle to try to turn to a third-party vendor – be it for technology or services – for some “instant” help. Often, they wind up disappointed because they sought to automate a process that didn’t exist, or to simply outsource a job in the hopes that results would follow. In these times, b-to-b organizations must choose their partners with a newfound care, and realize that they may have to live with these choices for a lot longer than normal. I often counsel clients to make sure they have sound, collaborative processes in place before they attempt to select or deploy technology, no matter how reputable the vendor, or at the least understand that they will have to work with the vendor’s services function (or another vendor) to create these processes. If your organization does not understand what it needs, how what it is buying meets those needs and what will need to be done on your end to prepare for a purchase, the chances are that you’ll waste funds that are way too precious to waste.

FIVE: EXPLORE COST-EFFECTIVE TACTICS
One budget bright spot for b-to-b organizations is the emergence of social media tools, from blogs to Twitter to LinkedIn. These tools often require a greater amount of effort and consistency to make them work than they do money, perfect for tighter budget times. Finding the right social media outlets and testing them – or at a minimum monitoring the buzz on your company – is a requirement you can meet without draining significant dollars from other projects. An example of where social media may help reduce cost is testing feedback via social media in place of traditional mechanisms, or trying an online event rather than a live one. Depending on your market and where they turn for knowledge, you may find trying new ways of influencing the conversation is the best bet you make this year.

I can’t tell you what the stock market will look like in six months; heck, I can’t even figure out what things might look like six days from now. What I do know is that the success of sales and marketing over the long term lies in the ways they choose to work together, or better yet, choose not to. These are words to live by in the best of times; they certainly hit home even harder during the worst.

Branding 101

I was speaking at an event the other day delivering a session called “Brand Stand – Delivering What Matters Most.” Many of the attendees were start-up companies (an increasing phenomena due to corporate downsizing). Start-up can be challenging in the best of times and even more so in our current economy. They were looking for ideas on how to fast track growing their business. There really is no silver bullet but there is a sequenced approach that yields outstanding results whether we’re in a good economic climate or today's less than optimal one. It’s a back to basics approach that answers three key questions:

What do you do better than anyone else?
In North America we are in a mature, commoditised market with plenty of “me too” products and services so why should I buy from you vs. your competitor? This is where you need to dig deep and think like a customer. Are you delivering what your customers tell you they want or what they really need? Focus groups and surveys have their place but when you get right down to it most great products fulfill a need people didn’t even know they had. Take the iPod as an example. MP3 players were introduced by Diamond Multi-Media long before Apple hit the shelves but there was a problem – downloading music was a challenge and becoming a hot topic with legal ramifications. Enter Apple with a solution – download a song for a buck a tune. Sales went through the roof and are still growing. Prior to MP3’s and the iPod people were contented with portable CD players. They never would have articulated in a focus group or a survey something they never imagined could exist.

Who values what you deliver and has the resources to buy it?
It’s simple people buy solutions to problems and in a nano second evaluate the risk/reward of your product or service. We’re creatures of habit, we don’t like change; if something isn’t broke we don’t fix it. If you’re going to connect with your customers you need to get crystal clear as to what problem you’re solving for them. Here’s a guideline. Typically solutions fall into one of four (or a combination of any or all of the four) categories. As consumers we buy:

· Enhanced wealth or well-being
· Saving time
· Improving our skills
· Access to information

Having figured out what problem your product/service is solving, it’s now time to access the associated risk/reward. If I don’t buy your product/service what is the risk? If I do buy your product what is the reward? Primary purchase motivators are hope of gain and fear of loss – know which one rings true for your customers.

What is the message your touch points are communicating?
Today’s savvy consumer has been burnt a time or two and is not willing to be fooled again. Inconsistency set alarm bells ringing in their head “red alert, red alert” here’s a company that can’t be trusted. Combine that with the transparency of social media and the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Plaxo and your customer experience can spread like wild fire – the good, the bad and the ugly. Conduct a touch point audit to make sure all of your touch points deliver on your customer value proposition. If you’re not walking the talk you can guarantee your customers are going to be walking – out the door!

Delivering what matter most is a common sense approach and as you and I both know common sense isn’t all that common. Back to the risk/reward scenario – get it right and you’ll be rewarded with loyal, engaged customers that deliver a 23% premium resulting in profitable growth – something we could all use more of these days.

Twitter IDs are the New Domain Names

It's 2009, so I would hope by now that any marketer reading this article online understands the importance of securing your company's brands as domain names. In other words, Acme Furniture should own and control the domain name acmefurniture.com (and, if it's a Canadian company, acmefurniture.ca as well) even if you don't yet have a Web site.

My question for you today is, "Have you done the same for Twitter?"

Twitter is a micro-blogging platform that is growing in popularity at an astonishing rate. The purpose of this article is not to explain or promote the benefits of Twitter; that topic has been covered by others: you can read all of the various articles about Twitter on the CMA blog here.

What I want you to understand today is that Twitter IDs (or "user names" or "handles") are the equivalent of domain names.

For instance, the Twitter ID for my personal brand, Bill Sweetman, is @billsweetman (which corresponds with the URL http://www.twitter.com/billsweetman) and for my corporate brand, YummyNames, it is @yummynames.

Even if you don't understand Twitter or don't think it has a role to play in your company's marketing efforts today, I strongly urge you to still secure your Twitter ID now.

In my case, I do all my Tweeting (as its called) as @billsweetman but I made sure that I registered all my other professional brands as Twitter IDs so that when and if I want to use Twitter for those other brands I already have the most intuitive Twitter ID.

I predict that over the next few years, millions of dollars will be spent by companies buying, selling, and fighting over Twitter IDs. I have already seen a number of nasty legal spats develop, and I have personally brokered the sale of several Twitter IDs already. And this is only the very beginning...

If you are Acme Furniture, you should make sure you get your hands on @acmefurniture right away. Since there is no fee to register a Twitter ID, you have no excuse not to do this. Simply head on over to http://www.twitter.com and sign up for a free account.

Don't be the person who in a year or two is having to explain to their company President why you didn't secure the company name as a Twitter ID. Take two minutes and do it today.

One final tip: Twitter will eventually suspend an account if it has not been used for six months, so make sure you post something once a month just to keep your account active and not risk losing your valuable Twitter ID.

Dell looks for next $1 million on Twitter with Canada channel

Earlier this month I had the opportunity to talk to Richard Binhammer, who acts as the social media face for Dell, on how the computer manufacturer has used Twitter to generate over $1 million in sales. You can read more about that story at One Degree.

During that conversation I learned that Dell Canada had recently followed in the footsteps of their US counterpart, launching a Twitter channel @DellHomeSalesCA. I was curious to learn more – examples of American companies using Twitter are prevalent, but I hadn’t come across many Canadian case studies. So I thought I would dig in and find out how Dell Canada was using and growing their new Twitter channel.

@DellHomeSalesCA officially launched on Monday, February 9. Its official Twitter bio: Discounts and Deals from Dell Canada Home & Home Office.

There have been 29 updates to date, with 18 pushing Twitter Exclusive promotions. Some of the most recent offers include “no interest for six months on all XPS systems” and “New Inspirion 15 @ $649 w/ coupon.”

@DellHomeSalesCA has already gathered more than 140 followers. Each of those tweeters has their own followers, which in turn are potential followers for Dell’s latest Twitter venture. The potential? @DellOutlet has won more than 30,000 followers since June 2007.

Polling for Success

One of the strategies Dell has used to keep a pulse on the Twitter community is polls. @DellHomeSalesCA recently launched a Twitter poll to determine what kinds of offers and information its followers are most interested in. Dell launched its survey through twtpoll, a free service from twtapps.

Dell Canada’s twtpoll offers six options users can select to express their desires for information: (1) news about product launches, (2) Twitter only offers, (3) Hot offers on desktops and laptops, (4) Hot offers on electronics and accessories, (5) Tips and tricks, and (6) Heads up on upcoming offers.

Not surprisingly, “Twitter only offers” was the winner with 37 percent of participants selecting this option. “Hot offers on desktops and laptops” came in a close second with 30 percent of the votes. Seventeen percent of respondents voted for “Heads up on upcoming offers.” None of the respondents are following @DellHomeSalesCA for news about product launches or tips and tricks, at least not yet.

Growing its Followers

The results are telling, and they help Dell determine what types of information to push though its tweets. By offering the types of information followers are looking for, Dell figures it will grow its follower base more quickly. It’s a customer service-focused approach to marketing on Twitter.

Dell Canada isn’t content with 140-plus followers. It wants to replicate the success of @DellOutlet with its tens of thousands. That’s why Dell Canada is also promoting the Twitter channel through its website and e-mail marketing campaigns and has set up a Twitter Landing page for “Twitter Only offers.”

As it works to build a long list of loyal followers, Dell Canada is also looking to keep the followers it has. It does that by using Twitter as a customer service forum. Dell Canada actively responds to follower questions and comments through Direct Response and @Replies, two Twitter features that keep the conversation going between tweets.

Dell is also actively tracking the links it posts for special offers on Twitter. Although Dell Canada sees Twitter first and foremost as a customer service tool, tracking the links is vital to determining the effectiveness of its Twitter only exclusives.

Dell Canada measures conversion rates and RUM metrics so it can be sure to tell the world when it reaches the $1 million revenue bar @DellOutlet set for Twitter ROI in just 18 months.

Using Social Networking Tools in the Non Profit World

More and more nonprofits are experimenting with social-networking tools such as Twitter and Facebook. In some cases, these tools are helping them raise funds. In most cases, it seems awareness and integration with other fundraising activities are the main goals. These tools do offer organizations an opportunity to build connections with their supporters and donors.

When you think of the Salvation Army, you may think of a very traditional organization likely more focused on established offline communication methods like direct mail. While they are still very focused in the mail, they are also ahead of the game in the online world dedicating resources to this pursuit. You’ll find the Salvation Army using Twitter and Facebook on a daily basis. Their Facebook page is active with links about donating, volunteering and connecting with the organization and is a fantastic example of how to take control of these tools and their content. Here’s the kind of information they provide on the page:

The Salvation Army in Canada
Global
Basic Info
Type: Organizations - Non-Profit Organizations

Description: The international Salvation Army gives hope and support to vulnerable people in 111 countries around the world, offering service in 175 different languages. As one of the largest social service agencies in the world, and through its role in the global community, The Salvation Army seeks to alleviate poverty, suffering and oppression by helping people build secure, sustainable and productive communities.
Contact Info

Website: http://SalvationArmy.ca

Recent News
Become a Salvation Army Fan!

http://www.new.facebook.com/home.php#/pages/The-Salvation-Army-in-Canada

Happiness is Contagious

A recent study written up in the Globe and Mail supports what we probably intuitively knew all along: happiness is contagious.

“... they found that when an individual becomes happy, a friend who lives nearby experiences a 25-per-cent increased chance of becoming happy. And the more centrally located you are in your social cluster of happy people, the more likely you are to become happy.” Further, researchers found that “happiness is a collective phenomenon that spreads like a virus through social networks – affecting even strangers three times removed from each other.”

Fortunately, misery does not, contrary to popular belief, love company. Negative emotions do not seem to spread as intensely as giddiness.

The research, published last week in the British Medical Journal, relied on pretty solid methodology – tracking data among 4, 739 individuals over time since 1948, accounting for 50,000 social and family ties.

A couple of questions arise from this.

1. Could it be that social networks supported by social platforms like Facebook, twitter, and flickr, can support the spread of happiness? Aren’t we drawn to wall postings that are light-hearted, fun, and positive? Personally, when I read Negative Nelly postings, I quickly empathize and then move right along, eyes peeled for lighter, happier fare. Boing Boing seems to be aware of this too – when they have a post that is disturbing or disgusting, they offer up a Unicorn Moment, a link to pictures and poems of “unicorns, rainbows, happy flowers forever.” Sort of an antidote to whatever grossness that they had just foisted on their readers.

2. How can brands participate, if at all, in this propagation of happiness? When I first saw the Free Hugs campaign, I thought wouldn’t it have been so awesome if a brand had thought of this. (Or maybe not – that might be another post/conversation altogether). Suffice to say, it was a movement which started small, turned global, got on Oprah (now name me a brand that DOESN’T want to be on Oprah), incited controversy, but generally, did well by others. In the same vein, I wish more brands thought about sparking movements. I wish more brands obsessed about their world view, rather than their shelf space. I wish more brands thought about connecting with folks, rather than interrogating respondents behind a one-way glass.

Insight: Like a virus, happiness can spread. Like a virus, it can be created, propagated, supported, facilitated. The tools are there. On the fringes, proponents act. There exists this wide gaping void for brands to play in. Now more than ever, brands can step up and kickstart a much-needed joy-fest.

Charting a course for digital marketing leadership: What we’ll explore at CMA's Oct 2 roundtable

As you may be aware, the CMA Digital Leadership Roundtable is later this week, first thing Thursday morning, Oct. 2 at the Harbour Castle. Your panel – a frankly great group, consisting of Doug Checkeris, CEO, MediaCom USA –back home in T.O. from his New York base for the day, Goodwin (Goody) Gibson, President, MacLaren MRM and Tammy Scott, Vice-President, Marketing, Telus – got together over lunch lat last week to hash out our strategy for the presentation. Trust me, based on my notes – as many as I was able to take amid the rapid fire conversation - there’s going to be no shortage of smart insight on the question at hand.

To paraphrase, the core of the subject of the morning: what does the industry and individual companies need to do to reorient themselves to succeeding in the digital marketing reality of the near future if not now - and who should lead that charge and how?

We thought we’d share with you most of the questions we’re planning to try to speak to. The idea is two fold:

• One we hope they’ll interest you and incite you to come out.

• But also, we want to invite you to send along any other questions you’d like to see addressed on Thursday. You can post your questions here in the comments section, or email me at sesutter@cogeco.ca

So here are the questions/themes we’ve got so far (and warning: actual verbiage and order may vary based on the panel’s interaction, new insights and whims:

1) Let’s get some thoughts on the core premise of this roundtable: digital spending is apparently going to continue to accelerate exponentially at the expense of traditional communications channels, and yet a good 25% - a full quarter of marketer - admit they don’t know how to proceed (and I’m sure there are those who won’t admit it, and those who don’t know what they don’t know yet). From your perspective, does this ring true? How bad is it? How big a challenge or opportunity is this?

2) What’s got to happen? What do organizations need to do, structurally and culturally to get on top of the digital sea change?

3) What are you doing – whether structurally, culturally, process-wise, or in terms of staffing and training – to adapt to the digital environment?

4) Who do you think most “gets” the digital future, aside from yourself of course… your competitors, your clients, others? And what they doing that we should all emulate?

5) My perception is that the general consumer is way ahead of most businesses – and most senior and mid-level management in most businesses - in adapting to and embracing the digital world… that they really are owning the whole experience, and a lot of companies with their legacy systems and mind-sets don’t even know it. Do you agree? Disagree?

6) Related to above question: Are your people digital savvy enough? Does your CEO have a Facebook page or a blog? Does your team know of to Twitter? Should they? Should there be a bare minimum of what people in marketing communications need to know to work in a digital future? What is that?

7) How is branding, vs. tactical marketing, changed by the new digital paradigm?

8) Who should be taking the lead on interactive or digital ideas and programs? … digital agency, media agency, client? Within clients, should it be marketing depart, CEO, IT?

9) Want to open up the measurement can of worms. We seem to have both not enough data and maybe too much at the same time?

With all things digital seems to be this double-edged sword. At one level, you are able to track people’s connections and interactions with most digital communications with unprecedented precision. And yet there’s lots of complaints that there’s no common definitions, things are confusing, and the data doesn’t tell you enough – and in a way it seems these new mediums and tools, by the very fact that they are potentially more accurately track-able, are held to a higher standard than other media, especially in their emerging phases.

What’s your take on the uses and abuses of measurement in the digital age?

10) Let’s talk money. Part 1: Where is the money going to be within media and content creation spending (and research spending)? Where should it be going? How should content be funded in the future?

And related to this: There are a couple of competing views out there. One is, compared to mass media productions and media buys, digital is cheap. Another is, this new technology stuff is pretty expensive, and there’s always something new to invest in just around the corner. What’s the reality?

11) Money Part 2: How the heck should marketing companies/agencies be compensated now that the old commission and fee models seem to be obsolete?

12) What’s the “next” big thing that’s going to turn the communications world on its head?
What do you think? What else should we talk about here?

Hope to see you Thursday.

-Stan Sutter, CMA Digital Leadership Roundtable moderator

Network not Net Worth

It's been a while since my last post. I was working at a fruit company and because of the level of secrecy there I had to go into radio silence. So get comfortable, pour yourself your favorite beverage as this is going to be a long one.

I pondered what to write about. The glut of free advertising for the manufacturer of Governor Palin's glasses? (Too political.) The impact on the Maple Leaf Foods brand from the recent crisis? (Been sufficiently covered.) The coolest new product coming from Apple? (The NDA I signed prevents that unless I want Steve Jobs to own my house.)

So I figured my most recent experience was best. I recently and unexpectedly became a free-agent. Such is the nature of corporate restructurings. I’m not the first nor sadly will I be the last. So for the first time in my career I was on the outside looking in. What to do?

Well, my instinct was to reach out to key contacts in my network and start looking for a new gig immediately. The response from my network was nothing short of humbling. Candidly, in one private moment with a mentor I got so verklempt thinking about how others were willing to step up to the plate and help.

Which is why I can't for the love of me figure it out. Why don't people put more time and energy into their networks? I've noticed that many folks (both client-side and agency-side are culpable) who only reach out to others when they want or need something. To me that is rather short-sighted and selfish.

My view is that if you are in a position to help others then do it, whether they ask you or not, but especially if they do. To claim you are too busy is nonsense. And you should help without any expectations of quid pro quo. Just do something and pay it forward. A couple of good friends are a small example of the many I've been blessed to know who practice this philosophy and show that it will come back to you in spades.

We are in an era where time is a precious commodity but one must make the time for managing and maintaining relationships. So what if you have 500 connections on Linkedin, 700 friends on Facebook and 1000 people following you on Twitter? If you haven't connected with the majority of those people in a meaningful manner at least once in the past 6 months those numbers mean squat.

Ask yourself this question. "If I became unemployed today, who could I reach out to without it seeming awkward or an imposition?" If you can't count on more than one hand then you have some work to do. Starting right now, capiche?

You do not need to be a professional networker or marketer. All it takes is a quick email for a: "{Insert name} how is it going? Long time no speak. I thought we should touch base.” Rinse. Repeat. Rinse. Repeat. Please remember to remove the {insert name} tag.

Networking is like farming. It's painstaking work that requires honesty, sincerety, time and energy. I'm not going to sugar-coat it but if you put in the effort it will pay off when you need to draw upon your crops. And no, I'm not referring to my contacts as plants or vegetation.

Some people believe that their net worth is the key indicator of their self value or personal brand when their network is what they should really focus on. Take care of one and the other will come in due course. Question is: Which are you focused on?

Social Media Fatigue, Open Social/Data Portability, Facebook, Clan marketing

The question on many people’s minds is whether the users are getting tired – supporting their activity on multiple social web portals. And worse still – if they tire – will they turn away?

This chart from Compete , a web analytics/measurement company with a panel of 2Million US web users, highlights member overlap within 11 social networks. For example, looking down the MySpace user column we see that 64% of them also have a profile on Facebook, 32% on Linked In, etc. By adding the column percentages (and remembering to add 1 for the home site) we see that within this study the average My Space user avails themselves of 5.1* different social media, Facebook users are less proliferate – availing themselves of only 4 of the social media.
*(1.0+.64+.65+.49+..+.34+.27)

That’s still 4-5 sites that the average user will spend time creating, commenting or just reading. And if we go by the Forrester data (see link) that represents anywhere from 5-37% of users creating some level of input and 19-59% who are reading/watching social content. So it is not a big surprise that sooner or later we would see user fatigue – perhaps even now as these unofficial US market comScore numbers for Oct-Dec'07 would suggest.
View image

The industry has been mindful of the possibility of this development and have begun working out new shared open source standards that will make it easier for users and developers to continue to evolve and monetize the social web.

It all came to a higher profile boil when Google introduced Open Social (November’07). Throughout the year, Google watched Facebook go from 19 Million unique visitors per month to 33 Million – when Facebook opened its network to non-students, professionals and third party developers. These developers created new apps ‘enriching’ the experience for Facebook users and with it sought to generate some revenue for themselves. And the strategy worked - focusing the attention of the marketing/advertising world onto the Facebook platform which sought to lay the groundwork for an eventual/hopeful $15 Billion IPO perhaps as early as 2008.

Google strove to take the wind out of Facebook’s sails by becoming even more open. They wanted to outflank Facebook by making it even easier, quicker and less costly for developers to create open source app’s - which could be readily adopted across multiple participating social web sites. Their gambit paid off as one site after another came onto the chessboard – with the new growing collective now significantly outnumbering Facebook’s user base.

And so going forward application developers will ask themselves a simple question: where do I put my effort? Do I build something that has potential monetary value in a big multi-site pool and then rollout to Facebook if it’s a success? Or do I expend my resources initially on a smaller single pool?

Users/advertisers will ask themselves: if Facebook tends to get the second crack at new applications – what does that do to the innovation experience at Facebook? Will that erode the fickle youth that is the foundation of the site?
In one masterful move, Facebook saw its sails begin to luff.

An umbrella group was formed (DataPortability.org) to help seize on the Google and other open source initiatives already in motion (Open Id, Higgins Project, OSIS etc…) One of its more vocal evangelists:

“At Plaxo, we believe strongly that users should have ownership, control, and portability of their profiles and friends list. No service you use should claim your data as their own and keep it trapped in their "walled garden"… ....An important aspect of the open social graph is being able to declare the different sites you use and tie them together. That way, your friends can keep in touch with you across multiple services, and you won't have to tell each new site what other tools you're already using.”

Leaving the intrigue aside, lets get back to the poor tired user. A number of important developments are underway and some already implemented:

Going forward sites will begin to enable users to better define their “friends” list (Social Graph) into at least 3 categories: Family vs Friends Vs Business associates. Increasingly sites will also allow users to stitch together feeds from several sources and control how much of that information is pushed and pulled. For example – I will be able to turn off one friend’s Twitter feed while allowing another’s to continue – or turn on (off) selective or even all feeds at any time. I am in control of what comes through my filters - and my ‘friends’ can do the same to the feeds I choose to push out to them.

Plaxo Pulse is perhaps the most advanced enabler at this moment but others will be catching up soon.
What does any of this mean for marketers?

Part of the data portability initiative is giving users the ability to better manage their online identities. The enhanced “circle of friends” segmentation will likely lead to more widespread use of Word of Mouth as it becomes easier to send one’s inner circle ‘heads up’ notices on key brand experience events. And while this was happening before via email, phone conversations or over a few beers – the difference now is that everyone in the inner circle will be able to receive messages. (I am not including the outer circles in this because these notices will carry less weight without the deeper shared history between sender and receiver. Chances are user filter feeds will likely choke off these kinds of blasts.)

So welcome to the social media world - your brand experience has just been leveraged (again)– the good and the bad. As marketers – it places a greater premium on brand consistency but it also opens the door to clan marketing. I’m not talking about Beacon type programs – where the consumer’s selected brand activity is ‘shared with friends’- “Hey I just bought a Brand “X”, thought you would be interested” – but something more open and organic. This is about brand reinforcing programs designed from a clan-centric perspective such that if a traceable brand purchase is transacted – the clan gains access to additional benefits.

FI’s for example could increase stickiness with family/clan benefits not unlike the family 'points' pooling capability from the old GM Visa program. MMOG is a natural clan environment – Pepsi, Coke and other leading beverage brands can readily fold in their point schemes to create cumulative clan benefits in the game space. Retailers can benefit as well. Ditto for travel, entertainment, life insurance...

Once the clan has self identified itself via registration – you have the beginnings of your own ROI based group marketing platform that builds on the important inner circle of relationships to help the brand develop deeper shared roots.

How Tweet it is

At first I didn't like Twitter. I found nothing wrong with using IM so I thought, who needs it? I remember saying that about cell phones too... and email... and Facebook.

For me: I don't like it, I try it, I'm hooked.

If IM is the cocaine of internet communication, then Twitter is surely the crack.

Don't know what Twitter is? Some call it Micro-Blogging, Tumblelog, Thumbcast, Sideblog, and more. Last November, Robert McIntosh did a great post on it. Check out Wikipedia here, or Twitter's Twitter about page, or check out Gaping Void's take.

How do you use it? Let's get started.

A) Go to Twitter.com and get a profile going.

B) Now you have a platform, but you still need an audience for your "Tweets". Look for a friend. (Go ahead and pick me, http://twitter.com/collindouma, the first tweet's free kid). Find the button that says "Follow". Now you're following my Tweets.

C) For more people, return to my Twitter page (http://twitter.com/collindouma) and click on the word "following" (right nav bar, below Stats heading). Recognize anyone? Click "follow" for the ones you know too. They'll receive notification that you've subscribed to their tweets. If they know you, or are interested in you, they may reciprocate. That's how you build an audience. You have to listen to be heard. Strange how that works eh?

You can do the same over and over and over, but there is plenty of time for that. I suggest you stop for now, and start to tweet.

D) Click the Home button, and then start Twittering. Maybe start by saying "Hello", and pressing "update". Remember, you only get 136 characters, be brief.

That's it. Your first Tweet. Try a few more.

E) To target a specific person, try putting an @ sign in front of a name. Use me, I don't mind. Type

@collindouma : Saw your post on the CMA blog about Twitter. Trying it now.

Remember, even though it's addressed to me, it's still a public statement. I'll get a little nudge which lets me know you said it. And you'll know if anyone has said anything directly to you by clicking "Replies" on your home page. It's the tab, just below the update button.

Basically, that's all you need to know.

I'll leave you with one last tip for your new Twittering habit.

You might want to share a website on your Tweet but the URL is very long. Try using this site: http://tinyurl.com. It turns long URLs into short ones that still are clickable. By making the URL nice and short, you can better add a description or comment without maxing out the 136 character limit.

For example, here's a Tweet I sent recently about a YouTube video:

Too funny... David Lynch re: watching movies on iPhone : http://tinyurl.com/2xsk89

Here's another recent Tweet.

Join the new Facebook group "Petition to Get Sean Moffitt On Twitter" Today! http://tinyurl.com/26bnm3

You don't have to use tinyurl.com if the url is short.

hey world, check this out : http://www.radicaltrust.ca

There isn't much more to it. You just have to do it.

Welcome to the world of Micro-Blogging. Good Luck

http://twitter.com/collindouma

Is all the world a-Twitter?

...i'm hung over from the CMA's last night...(send)
... it’s warm in my bed...(send)
...i think i need new batteries for my camera...(send)
...I just paid my hydro bill. (send)
...is it ok to eat yoghurt after the sell by date?...(send)

No I haven't cut and pasted sentences from various emails into one incoherent paragraph, nor am I playing a thought association game. I'm demonstrating the art of Twitter. The New York Times calls it, "one of the fastest-growing phenomena on the Internet." TIME Magazine says, "Twitter is on its way to becoming the next killer app," and Newsweek noted that "Suddenly, it seems as though all the world's a-twitter."

Welcome to the art of Twitter - living in the moment and staying connected, Millennial style.

A new toy for the tech savvy Millennial.
Those of you following trends created by the current 'it' group of society, Millennials, you’ll know that when these guys do something en masse, marketing people tend to notice - even if it doesn’t amount to much. Millennials number around 90 million strong in North America, and include people born between 1980 and 1995. They’re also the most coddled, preened and fussed over generation in memory, raised by dotting parents who told them they were special every chance they could (or at least left them voice mails to that effect).

Millennials are also the most connected, tech savvy, gadget owning group in history, and have a strong emotional need to stay connected with friends and family. Twitter could only make sense to this generation.

Creating a running life narrative.
Twitter began as a research and development project inside Odeo, Inc. by Noah Glass and Jack Dorsey, and debuted in March 2006. Also called micro blogging, it’s based around a simple idea – what R U doing right now? In 140 characters or less, users send text messages or “Twitter” at regular intervals to a pre-screened list of friends about the events in their daily life, from the mundane to the magnificent.

“It’s like creating a running narrative about our lives,” says Evan Williams, co-founder of Twitter and Blogger. “In the beginning, bloggers were viewed with disdain (do they think their lives are so important to write about?), but as it moved mainstream, writing about oneself on My Space and Face Book became the norm. People are reacting in a similar way to Twitter, (do they think their lives are so important?) What we’re creating is an ambient intimacy with our network of friends that’s real, readable, and then gone.”

It’s the paradox of the Millennials’ need to feel close and connected to others, but at arm’s length that makes Twitter intriguing. It’s an easy, non committal way to keep tabs and staying emotionally close to our friends with low effort, risk and intrusion.

Next Steps.
Setting up a twitter account is easy and takes a few minutes - http://twitter.com
And there’s a handy Twitter guide that answers your questions.
The product team at Twitter is focussed on building a large following of users...with business models and revenue opportunities to follow. A Millennial said it best – “Some people may say that I think narrating my own life is crazy.... but for my own selfish reasons, it’s fairly natural to me.”

And said in 140 characters or less (136 to be exact).