The Achieve Market Leadership blog is sponsored by Crimson Consulting Group for marketing executives. We share our insights on opportunity analysis; strategy and planning; and operations and execution. In addition, we talk a lot about what's happening in Interactive marketing (Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0). Join in, we want to hear from you.
With the world’s attention on Vancouver, one thing is certain: people are posting, updating, tweeting, and blogging about it like no other Olympics before. NBC recently launched a pretty interesting way to take a snapshot of that real-time conversation. The Olympic Tracker aggregates tweets about live sporting events and Olympians and then overlays these conversations with images. Click on an image, and tweets clearly targeted by keyword are displayed to share live comments and links. The site even allows users to post directly to Twitter without ever leaving the site.
The tracker is a fun new way to experience the Olympics and NBC has utilized it to set up a hub and spoke approach to their social media strategy. The NBCOlympics.com page serves as a social hub, aggregating tweets from Olympians to provide unique perspectives on the games, using the Tracker to create a fun participatory experience, and linking to a number of blogs to provide in depth information. NBC also maintains a Facebook page, a Twitter handle, and offers widgets and a mobile app, each of which serve as another touch point to tap into the ‘pulse’ of the Olympic games online.
The notion of a social hub has become increasingly important as media broadcasters and marketers look to extend their social media presence beyond the often mundane Facebook fan page. Often it is these unique sites that use open API technology to tap into the social fabric of the web that are truly eye catching and engaging.
Channels like Twitter and Facebook are quickly becoming utilities that are directly integrated into every website experience. The challenge for marketers then is figure out how to utilize multiple communication channels to achieve their marketing objectives. Each social tool should be used to its own strengths, but all touch points must ultimately find continuity. The hub and spoke approach to social media allows the marketer to do just that. By integrating social interaction and popular social network channels into a centralized site, companies or broadcasters can maintain a focus in their communication without spreading themselves too thin. Social hubs also have the potential of creating a community beyond the Facebook fan or Twitter follower. Soon we may see Facebook or Twitter serving as just a gateway to an even more vibrant and close nit online community found within a branded social hub. It may be these more niche online communities that make social media even more impactful than today.
Back in June 2008 when I wrote my blog and presentation titled The Mobile Internet Revolution is Here, there were some detractors who said that others had predicted that for years with little results to show. In that presentation, I applied the principles outlined in Malcom Gladwell’s The Tipping Point.
The latest data indicates explosive growth over the past year. The Fierce Mobile article about a Quantcast report points to 148% growth in the mobile web usage in 2009. According to this source, mobile page views represent 1.3% of all web page views for North America. And the report seems to focus just on page views from browsers, so misses all the other mobile internet traffic generated by client software on mobile devices that receives and sends email or Twitter messages, pushes of news stories, etc., meaning that the true number is doubtless higher.
The Mobile Internet Revolution is, indeed, already here. Are you ready?
The rapid adoption of the social web, especially around social networks, has given marketers a unique opportunity to build vibrant online communities around a product, service, brand, or organization. The process of turning that community into a self-sustaining and growing business asset remains the key challenge. To meet this challenge, marketers must learn to strike a balance between so-called ‘Engineered’ vs. ‘Organic’ community development. It is essential that a community have a clearly defined purpose and a number of goals to set the tone for the overall content strategy and member discussion. Community managers must also work to enforce rules within the community to ensure that user generated content, discussions, and posts all meet an agreed upon terms of use. The delicate balance exists when a community manager or marketing strategist begins to see the community take on a life of its own. If all goes accordingly, the ‘engineered’ strategy may lead members of the community to interact and contribute as planned, but may only lead to slow and steady adoption. Community managers must then question whether there is a enough ‘organic’ growth within the community to really achieve critical mass. Creating a community that lacks a defined structure and purpose can lead to rapid adoption and growth. This type of community platform has a lot potential (Twitter for example), but if an organization were to try and brand this sort of community, they would surely lose control.
Organizations and brands considering creating an online community need to understand how to orient the tools, content, and purpose of a community to establish both ‘engineered’ and ‘organic’ growth. Most organizations choose to establish communities on easy-to-manage social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, MySpace etc. Using these tools, organizations can achieve solid organic growth with already existing user bases, a number of unique features/functionalities, and limited financial commitment. So how does one implement some sort of ‘engineered’ growth mechanism into these already established networks? One way would be to integrate Open ID technology within a branded URL. This allows a brand or an organization to utilize the existing user base of social networks, such as Facebook, while also allowing the business to form the community around a centralized purpose.
As an example I will use an interesting travel site, whereivebeen.com. This is an excellent social travel site giving users the ability to pin-point places they’ve traveled on a map, share those experiences with friends, read reviews of destinations, and much more. The site is completely integrated with Facebook Connect allowing users to share via the existing social network. As the site continues to gain momentum, something interesting has occurred within the community. Much of the user generated content on whereivebeen.com generally serves as a travel log or diary for individuals, citing interesting things that happened to them in a location or with people they met along the way. The site organizes these thoughts as travel reviews, but most of the time the comments do not actually review the location. So why does this disconnect exist between their ‘engineered’ community strategy and the ‘organic’ growth its sustaining?
Users generally consider Facebook as a personal network of friends providing infomation on personal experiences. Clearly this association and integration with Facebook has caused the user base to utilize whereivebeen.com as a part of their very personal social network experience. This is a good example of a community which has really taken on a life of its own. It also serves as an important lesson for marketers considering building a community. Marketers need to consider how people use networks such as Facebook or Twitter in their every day lives. They must also consider the existing user base of networks like Linkedin, MySpace, and Facebook. Building communities that embrace their intended use and audience, will most likely lead to rapid adoption. The ‘If you build it, they will come’ mentality is quickly fading as more online communities continue to take shape and users begin to expect certain features/functionalities. It will be those businesses who understand how to successfully engineer and organically grow their online communities that will be able to deliver on the true value of online community.
While Twitter can’t take all the credit for Avaya’s recent sales story, I’m impressed with its role in making the sale happen. Many kudos to Avaya for listening! (see more on Social Media Listening).
As we rapidly approach 2010, it’s hard not to consider the implications of social media’s banner year: 2009. Brands continue to adopt social media marketing practices just as fast as populations join social networks and utilizes social media sites. It has become fairly clear that the rapid adoption of this technology over the last year will certainly give rise to a number of trends in the coming years. Recently, David Armano wrote a very interesting blog post on the Harvard Business Blog outlining six social media trends for 2010. Here is a quick snapshot of the trends:
Social media begins to looks less social
Corporations look to scale
Social business becomes serious play
Your company will have a social media policy (and it might actually be enforced)
Mobile becomes a social media lifeline
Sharing no longer means e-mail
Already we can see many of these trends taking shape from the number of sites incorporating sharing tools into their web pages to the rise of mobile applications. One trend, which I hope will result in more discussion, is the idea of social media becoming less social. David argues that with the advent of Twitter lists, the rise of niche social networks, and the clutter of web communication, people will begin to block out a majority of the social communication on the web. While in some ways this may be true, I believe that the social web will in fact be more personal (and therefore more relevant) rather than less social. For example, Twitter lists function on the same social principle as the platform yet they allow users to break groups of people into lists with a focus on relevant and valuable information. Niche social networks function on the same principle: a strong focus on relevant information for a certain type of contacts. Individuals are now taking on personal branding, and as every digital marketer knows - your customers are now their own publishers, and they have their own personal networks - and they are syndicated.
The important thing to focus on is the personalized nature of each of these components of the social web. People continue to find value in the web as a social communication platform, but users continually looking for a much more personalized experience. The implication of this trend is huge for marketers. In the past traditional marketing methods have generally been based around the one-to-many principle. Marketers worked hard to create a message that would have universal appeal to a mass target audience. This type of marketing worked well when the media was in fact one-to-many i.e. television, outdoor, print etc. Today, individuals use the web as an information source to research and maybe even connect with relevant products and services. Therefore, marketers must keep in mind that the browser is also a very one-to-one medium, capable of delivering a highly personalized experience for the user. Online audiences are already seeking out personalization with customized home-pages, Twitter lists, bookmarked and tagged websites, RSS readers etc. to filter out the clutter of the web. The social web will continue it’s trend to becoming a more open communication platform, but tandem communications will need to become more personalized so that users will continue to see value in leveraging it. I predict in 2010 we will see more groundbreaking approaches with organizations utilizing social media to establish a valuable personalized relationship with the individual - on a mass scale.
As the web continues to become more open and collaborative, we inch our way towards Web 3.0. One component of the next-era web, has become more prevalent across the Internet over the past year: the so-called media-stream. The popularity of micro-blogging sites like Twitter and the integration of status updates on social networks like Facebook and MySpace, have created a constant stream of content throughout the web. The stream is the Internet in real-time, made up of active conversations, thoughts, and information shared by individuals throughout the social web. The stream has spawned an entirely new way to publish content on the web and many people have taken advantage of this trend.
Thanks to use of open API’s, web developers have creatively integrated streams on their own websites for various purposes. What once was limited to widgets and feed readers, can now be directly integrated into a websites design. Some good examples of this integration can be seen in Crispin, Porter + Bogusky’s innovative social web “fishing net”, Tweetmygaming.com’s tracking of real-time game conversations, Guitar Hero Smash Hit’s Facebook stream, and HP’s use of Twitter during a product revealing.
The adoption of the stream has many implications for marketers, advertisers and even the consumer. Sites like Tweetmygaming.com have created an entirely new way to analyze online conversational trends and have made it important for game developers to find their title as the top trending game. Easy-to-use API’s have allowed for the wide spread adoption of the micro-blogging sites like Twitter and have become commonplace on sites like Facebook, making it almost a necessity of any social network. The dispersion and reach of content via the stream may increase the speed, use, and effectiveness of viral marketing techniques. Even advertisers may find use in the stream by identifying URL’s trending up in the stream and evaluating impressions and media buys through real-time data. As web marketers salivate of the endless opportunities, we must also consider the implications of the stream on us as consumers. As Nova Spivack stated in his excellent blog posting on the stream:
“Human attention is a tremendous bottleneck in the world of the Stream. We can only attend to one thing, or at most a few things, at once. As information comes at us from various sources, we have to jump from one item to the next. We cannot absorb it all at once. This fundamental barrier may be overcome with technology in the future, but for the next decade at least it will still be a key obstacle.”
How as consumers will we adopt the stream? Will real-time streams become as abundant as blogs? Do consumers even pay attention to the stream? How do we make sense of such fleeting information?
Analyzing data is important in every aspect of marketing in order to fine tune programs and enhance market penetration. In the world of social media, this is a bit of a struggle. We’ve been using Radian6 as a Social Media Analytics tool for some time with our clients and I wanted to share the differentiators in their tool that our clients seem to like so much.
Time to discovery - results are FAST! Usually real-time or max 30 min for a really broad query.
Ability to drill down in queries. In other words you can do a search within a search. This is really valuable in being able to drill down into very specific things you want to know.
Ability to pull top results in different ways. Those of you who have pulled down a mass of comments in an analytics tool can appreciate how valuable it is to be able to bubble to the top and prioritize results… by Top 10 or by Twitter users, etc.
Radian6 put out this video to announce that they have some new product features coming out - you gotta love a company where the VP of Marketing does a decent Johnny Cash imitation! Looking forward to seeing the new features guys!
You may have suffered personally during this downturn. You may suffer more because it’s not going to be over soon. However, things are different in this downturn – different from the last one we experienced in 2001 – 2003. Because of these differences, we can take advantage of at least opportunities we now have that we didn’t have before.
Opportunity #1 – Better data and data analysis tools
We have the opportunity to really, deeply understand our customers and target markets in ways that simply weren’t available to us before:
Incredible, insightful web analytics to direct our web marketing efforts,
Access to micromarket data (See my post on microsegment promotions for more detail), enabling companies to be highly detailed in their understanding of not just countries, but counties, cities and (in the U.S.) zip codes. This data can be very interesting when looking at key geo-specific issues such as housing prices.
Overall improvements in data analysis technologies enabling more users to have better access to sophisticated methods of analysis.
Opportunity #2 – More ways to reach the prospect
We can get access to influencers and buyers in ways that weren’t available to us in the recent past:
Social networking sites. Millions and millions of users now spend considerable time in places that didn’t exist before, and you can get access to them in ways you could never get access before.
Social media. Now, you can participate in all types of online communications (blogs, product-focused sites, user-focused sites, twitter communications, etc.)
Mobile devices. Most of us are mostly always connected. It’s now possible to reach your audience more times during the day in more ways than before.
I’m confident there are other opportunities as well. I’d love to hear which ones you see that I’ve missed.
There was an interesting story recently in Business Week on heads of companies and their take on Twitter. Given the amount of information overload and the pressure on CEO’s to be efficient with time, use of Twitter makes a lot of sense given its 140 character limit and ability to give/ get instant feedback.
Feed reader: I monitor Twitter several times/ day to see whats happening. I know many people who no longer read news sites and gain most of their daily information from Twitter alone!
Brand Building: abilty to communicate your company culture, brand and personality. Ability to raise visibility of the CEO and your brand.
Focus Group: quickly reach people with news or questions - get instant feedback - 24 hrs/ day open feedback without filters. I frequently put questions out to my Twitter network and am always amazed at the generous response I get on everything from requests for stats to opinions on issues.
Networking Tool: connect directly with others in a effective way. I have personally connected with journalists and executives on Twitter that way that would have been difficult to do otherwise. I frequently see CEO’s Twittering about where they are and inviting people to join them for coffee or discussion.
Monitoring: spot trending or buzz around a topic or technology - FAST! If I want to know where the buzz is on a specific topic, I usually turn to Twitter first. Many social analytics tools now include Twitter in their monitoring of conversations.
Drive traffic: to your website - Twitter community is ACTIVE! Post a popular post on Twitter with a link to your website and you will see a huge spike in traffic and usually an increase in your network of followers.
Humanizing your communications: there are some who don’t like mixing the personal chatter with business on Twitter - while others believe that some element of this contributes to us seeing the human side of a business or CEO.
Over the past year I have been following the number of large enterprises and media companies that are using Twitter in their communications, as well as advising several of Crimson’s clients in their use of Twitter as an effective social media marketing tool. I find the most compelling posts from CEO’s to be those that expose their everyday activities as people. I hope to see more CEO’s embracing Twitter and I personally welcome more of this “human element.”
I have been Tweeting on Twitter for awhile and I really enjoyed a recent session on Microblogging and Twitter: who’s using Twitter and for what purpose? What is the business value of use cases?
Drive Traffic to other web content - such as blogs, announcements, articles, etc. Promotion - PR - push out/ broadcast announcements, events, etc.
News, breaking news, awareness
Social Filtering - getting your news via Twitter now - some rely on Twitter now to get general news.
Communication efficiency - the nature of the brief and frequent posts, its efficient and effective
Brand Cachet - for those who are currently on Twitter
Work streaming - updates, status,
Reports from the field, live messaging
Member support
Conversation monitoring/ brand tracking
Twitter etiquette - “Twitiquette” Things to think about…
Tweet Formats: A lot of discussion about “is it acceptable to have multiple persona’s on Twitter?” General consensus was yes, similar to having multiple emails.
Do you Twitter professionally vs. personally? Public persona’s - some people are experimenting with multiple identities in Twitter (personal vs. private). There are examples at companies like Zappos where there are many employees with Zappos in the Twitter name alias.
What happens when a “fan” takes over your brand name on Twitter?
When do you use Twitter to broadcast only vs. get into dialog?
Signal to Noise: What makes a good tweet? Consensus: Succinct, pithy, poetic posts
However: * If your reply isn’t pithy - then maybe it should be a direct message instead * If your reply is relevant to others (not just the receiver) its ok to broadcast it to everyone * Frequency of Tweets - what is too much? 7x per hr
Does anything go on your personal account? general consensus is yes.
How do you decide who to follow? General consensus is that you can easily reach overload so you need to be selective about who you follow. Jeremiah Owyang uses Friend Feed.
Is it fair expectation that if someone follows me when I am following them? Consensus was yes. Some people are weirded out with “branded persona’s” who follow them out of nowhere.
Some people are experimenting with Twitter around events. Experimenting with importing participant lists and doing follow up on Twitter post event.
Where is this going? When Twitter grows up…
Support needed for different persona’s/ roles in your life (personal, private, hobbies). Its possibly a matter of both privacy and managing the data.
More uptime? Reliability badly needed.
Monetization? What about advertising within Twitter clients? Would people pay for premium services? The general consensus was yes, especially if it included improved uptime.
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