Know What Successful Social Media Looks Like

I am really astounded at much of the conversation that the Facebook IPO has ignited. It appears that most people are equating Facebook and their valuation to a barometer for all of social media marketing success. This is ludicrous. Facebook’s valuation is simply speculation on Facebook’s revenue and profitability. Facebook’s revenue (at least so far) has been a measure of their ad revenue. Let’s be clear … Facebook ad revenue is simply a “digital display” offering. Display, although an important element of a holistic digital marketing plan, is not social media. So in the face of all the Facebook misconceptions, I want to set the record straight on social media success … you need to understand what it looks like before you can make sure you have a strategy to get it!

As I have defined in the past, social media is the combination of social + media or seeking or enjoying the companionship of others by the means of digital communication. I am a marketing executive and thus I look at social media from a marketing perspective. (Yes, there are other uses of social media beyond marketing.) As a marketer, we look to change consumer behavior and drive transactions. That is what successful marketers do.

Thus, as a social media strategist and marketing executive, I look at social media as one piece on an integrated marketing plan to change behavior and drive transactions. So it is those actual social media activities we need to concentrate on to change behaviors and drive transactions.

In the past, I have used the social media marketing funnel to describe the progression of changing behaviors and driving transactions. While the funnel shows a “typical” progression of the customer journey, the emergence of the digital world has turned typical to atypical. The funnel shows a linear sequence, even with its cyclic nature where advocacy re-feeds awareness. My experience examining customer behavior for the brands I work with reveals some slight variations. Yes, the funnel states are still there, and individual consumers can traverse the funnel states in a linear fashion, but we see more and more variations away from a linear movement as shown in the diagram below.

As we examine the new construct of social media relationships to change behavior and drive transactions, notice “conversion” is not part of the social media activities. Awareness, Consideration, and Loyalty states “tee up” a conversion. Social media is not a strong channel to promote a sale. (Yes, there are some examples where companies have done this successfully, but 95% of the time, social media should not be for direct conversion.) Think of forming a social media strategy to increases Awareness, Consideration, Loyalty, and Advocacy. Social media provokes these behaviors and these behavior changes drive transactions.

Awareness promotes consideration. Awareness can also drive a transaction. Consideration yields conversions and has a higher probability of doing so than simple awareness. After a purchase is made (conversion), social media activities can help to generate loyalty. Loyalty can result in repeat purchases as pictorially shown with a double arrow in the diagram above. Loyal customers can become advocates as well. You should think about post-sale follow up content and engagement to move your customers to a loyalty and advocacy state. And once you produce advocates you have a most powerful outcome. Advocates inspire awareness, consideration and loyalty. They work as the most trusted source of marketing your brand.

So when I say “Know What Successful Social Media Looks Like,” it means that you have a strategy and plan that consciously addresses how you are going to use social media to measurably increase awareness, consideration, loyalty, and advocacy. Not only do you need the plan, but you must measure results of your plan. Only in the rarest of rare situations does a social media plan hit perfection out of the gates. You modify your social tactics based on empirical results.

And how would you measure social media results? At MediaWhiz (the marketing agency where I head the social media practice), we have something called the Social Media BrandAction™ Index. This index is a complicated algorithm that has four sub-index variables that are measure – Awareness, Consideration, Loyalty, and Advocacy. Here are the inputs to the Social BrandAction™ Index.

Even if you have not derived a social media index equation, you should measure these parameters in the groupings as above and have a sense of your social media performance.

So hopefully now you have an idea what successful social media looks like. It is an ongoing effort that changes behavior and drives transactions. It is a continuous program that produces measurable results in awareness, consideration, loyalty, and advocacy. All of these elements contribute to the ultimate goal of conversion. But they not only contribute to conversion, they work to continue the relationship with the customers and strengthen brand reputation, loyalty, commitment and on going word of mouth marketing. Concentrate on your brand’s appropriate social activities that increase measured awareness, consideration, loyalty, and advocacy.

Make It Happen!
Social Steve

A Real Look at Social Media Influence

We talk about influence as if it is something new. Actually the definition has not changed in the past 1000 years or so, but tactics for influence engagement certainly have changed due to the digital revolution. And while many might consider my use of the term “digital revolution” trite, I think it deserves the entire superfluous connotation as I intended it to be. The fact is that the digital world, and even more importantly, the related behavior changes that have transpired are extremely important. Thus, we must look at “influence” as it relates to digital behaviors.

Let’s start with a couple basic definitions to ground us on the same plane …

Influence is “the capacity or power of persons or things to be a compelling force on or produce effects on the actions, behavior, opinions, etc., of others.” For marketers, influence is only valuable if it produces actions or changes behavior or opinions of others. This distinctive point is often missed. So as marketers, we want to focus on those individuals that do something to cause an action or behavior change in a significant number of people that favors the brand we represent. “Influence marketing focus on specific key individuals (or types of individual) rather than the target market as a whole.”

So before we have the “Klout (popular social influence scoring platform) should we care debate”, let’s make sure we understand why influence is important to brands. And second to that, let’s make sure we understand the types of influencers that are valuable to brands. I break this down in three groups:

1) Traditional influencers – these are the individuals that traditional PR agencies court. They are pinnacle media establishments (Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post) and celebrity-like figures (Mario Batali, Roger Ebert, Tim Gunn) in a specific area of subject expertise.
2) Emerging (digital) influencers – bloggers that have established a large audience following and drive thought leadership in a specific space. The poster child of emerging digital influencers is Robert Scoble. Scoble is a tech blogger whose rise to vast influence started from strong participation and guidance in Microsoft’s NetMeeting support newsgroups, and for maintaining a NetMeeting information website. Another example of an influential blogger emergence from nowhere is Tavi Gevinson who commanded quite a following for her fashion blog. At the prime age of 13, she was a special guest at New York Fashion week. (It still astounds me how she came up in conversations at ELLE Magazine when I worked with them.) Emerging digital influencers could also be blogs (PitchFork, Mashable, Gizmodo) rather than individuals by name.
3) Influencers by connection – here we have your everyday “Max” and “Maya.” People who have hundreds of friends … no let me correct that … hundreds of Fac book friends and Twitter followers. These people make posts and tweets and their connected friends react. “Saw a great movie.” “New sports drink was killer.” Their posts create response and action. If you represent a brand, you want to court these people to produce brand action.

Now we are ready to talk about social media influence and break through all the nonsense being thrown about. Start by answering these questions. What do you want to accomplish? (Actually, this question should be the start of every social media and marketing endeavor.) Are you looking for earned media (mentions of your brand on an influential blog) or people to share your brand with all their friends/connections? Is the influencer expecting or will they be motivated by receiving something in return? These are the sort of things you should determine first.

And before we get into the influence tool and platform discussion, let me say this right off the bat (to set the record straight, maybe raise some controversy) … a Klout score, by itself, is meaningless. Giving Mari Smith a free test drive on a new Chevy because she has a Klout score of 78 (very high) is down right stupid. Mari is a strong social media and relationship marketing thought leader. She is not an automotive influencer. If awarding her a free test drive for a week would even lead to a tweet like “Love the new Chevy,” I think her followers could smell something fishy.

Once you have YOUR influence marketing plan defined, then you are ready to talk about tools and platforms to assist you. Think about the types of influencers you want to work with as defined above. Probably you want a mix of the different types, but think about how you are going to connect with each to build a relationship. Think about the action you want to motivate them to do. Think about the bandwidth you are willing to allocate for each.

Now a bit about the influence tools. First off, it is important to remember that digital influence is new and emerging so I am certain that we will see much greater advancements over the next 18 months. The minds behind influencer platforms realize that it is not just about accurately scoring influence, but more importantly to allow brands to determine the influencer in their market space AND to make it easier to connect with these people. When both of these functions become easier for brand marketers to execute, then we will see the true value of digital influence tools come to fruition.

Let’s start with Klout since it is probably the best known influence tool. It is good to see Klout moving from a generic influence score and starting to score on topics. After all, if you are a wine and spirits company and you are about to launch a new line, do you really care about Mashable’s high influence score or are you more likely to want to identify nightlife and alcoholic beverage influencers. Personally, I do think there is too much focus on one’s Klout score for making important decisions. I do not think it tells enough of a story and individual’s specific influence capabilities to spawn brand action. At least not yet.

Kred is an emerging influence platform that is grounded in technical innovation from PeopleBrowser. They provide an influence index much like Klout, but they also produce an Outreach score. So not only is it important to score influence from a reach and subject matter expert perspective, but it is also valuable to understand a scoring for the degree of outbound engagement the individual performs. Kred also has “community” or topical social scoring. One of Kred’s differentiators is that they are transparent with regards to their scoring attributes. They literally show you how points are accumulated.

Appinions takes a slightly different approach. Appinions is a query based influence tool. If I want to understand who the influencers are of automotive or any other area, you can form a specific query to do so. Appinions does contextual scoring versus individual scoring. Contextual scoring measures the degree of action taken by others (quote you/blog about you, link to you, retweet you) based on what you say.

Klout, Kred, and Appinions pretty much provide you a list of emerging digital influencers. If you want to know who are the people talking about your brand and having strong influence on their connections, you can use a social media monitoring tool such as Radian6, Sysomos, and others to 1) find who mentions your brand, and then 2) evaluate their influence or authority level. Having used both Radian6 and Sysomos, I can tell you this approach is very labor intensive. I am looking for a better solution. I do not think anyone is there yet, but SocialChorus is in the right direction. They offer a way to identify “influencer by connections” and reach out to them to attempt to create brand ambassadors. This is often done on a rewards basis, so I throw some caution there. Sometimes your actions might be perceived a “bought influence” and if that is the perception, your influence marketing can backfire on you.

Moving forward, all of these platforms are opening up their APIs. This means that one company can do the influence scoring and provide another platform the data. I think what we will see going forward is integrated solutions among platform providers such that some will do the scoring and other will handle the engagement activities. This will be a power combined solution.

One of the things that none of these tools do well, is to cross correlate an individual on all the channels. For instance, the blogging I do here has no contribution to an influence score. If you are reading my post (or anyone else’s) there is a chance that I have some influence due to my social media guidance. But there is no correlation between the SocialSteve Blog, the @SocialSteve twitter account, and my quotes as Steve Goldner that show up in some marketing industry online trade blogs and news sites. This does not play into the algorithm of the influence tool.
There are a handful of key points you should consider in making influence marketing part of your strategy:

1) From a marketer’s perspective, not everyone is equal. Those that have a strong reach and following AND can drive brand action deserve greater attention and TLC (tender, loving care) from brand marketers as opposed to the general public.
2) There are different types of influencers that you want to engage with and build strong relationships with.
3) A platform or tool should not determine how you go about influence marketing. You should determine who you want to reach, how you plan to engage and go about building a relationship, and then determine the platform(s) to help you get there.

Make It Happen!
Social Steve

Revisiting the Importance of Owned-Earned-Paid Media Integration

If you are not approaching owned, earned and paid media holistically as a one set integrated strategy and execution, you are not producing optimal results. No doubt!

Well over one year ago, I wrote a piece “Integrating Owned Media, Earned Media, and Paid Media.” I emphasized that a well coordinated plan weaves strategy and execution across owned, earned and paid media at three time intervals: pre-reveal, reveal, and post reveal.

As we now look at how social media practice and platforms are evolving, the lines between these media are becoming more blurred. Take Facebook for instance. As a brand, when you post some content, that is owned media working for your brand, right? But if you look at the actual Facebook rules and user behavior, maybe not – or at least maybe you should have incorporated some paid media to really maximize results. Confused? Let me explain.

Up until Feb. 29, 2012 (Facebook’s fMC) most brands thought that you post something on your Facebook wall and it will show up on your “likes’” newsfeed. Thus, simply placing “owned media” to reach your audience. Well actually, that is not what happens. It turns out that Facebook revealed that on average only 16% of your likes see your posts. This is due to their edge ranking – a Facebook algorithm that decides which stories appear in each user’s newsfeed. The edge ranking algorithm is based upon a) the degree of affinity between the person or brand posting and their “likes”, b) the post content type (picture, text, URL, etc.) , and c) the timeliness (or freshness) of the post. If you want to up your deliverability percentage, you can do two things: 1) work on the your factors that influence your edge ranking in relationship to your users such as number of responses and engagements as well as the three edge ranking criteria just mentioned, and 2) use Facebook newly announced reach generator to guarantee delivery to at least 70% of your likes. By the way, reach generator is a paid service offered by Facebook. So now your “owned media” effort can turn better results with some “paid media.”

I’ll give you another example relating earned media and paid media. In the social practice I head up at my agency (MediaWhiz LLC, a Hyper Marketing Inc. company) we have a social offering we deliver to clients called “digital influence and outreach.” Essentially digital influence and outreach is finding influencers within the brands vertical and pitching them content relevant to the brand. But it is more complicated than that. No influencer wants to be pitched brand content, understandably so. In order to be successful capturing earned media from influencers, you need to understand their wants, their needs. They want to be successful with their audience. Thus you must be sensitive to how the influencer appeals to their audience. You must produce content that works for the influencer. You must assess the intersection of what they want to accomplish and what you want to accomplish for your brand and NOT sell.

So where does the paid media come in? If some influential blogger is going to carry some content that references your brand in a story, it is beneficial for their reader to see other reinforcements of your brand via paid ads. Not to mention that the blogger is likely to favor your content if you support their blog with some paid media. I am not suggesting that you explicitly pay them off for support of your brand. But I am suggesting that you consider some paid placements where your brand will be highlighted to create some synergy. Think of this as added brand reminders for the influencers’ readers.

When you look at combining and integrating owned, earned and paid media consider these benefits for each media contribution to the overall big picture:
Owned media – should be used to constantly reinforce who you are and what you stand for. Your owned media is not an advertisement for your brand, but rather well thought out content that crafts the story of your brand and the expertise and value you deliver.

Earned media – here you should actively follow, engage and interact with topical influencers to build strong relationships, and work to stimulate content from others. I often call this associated marketing … it associates your brand with independent credible sources. The sources are viewed as authentic (no brand subjectivity) and they are trusted.

Paid media – is important. Social media (both owned and earned media as well as sharing) does not replace paid media. Social media provides an opportunity to make paid media work better. Paid media not only creates awareness, but also supports owned and earned media in that it reminds people of the brand.
While consumers do not draw lines between these media, each type does invoke a different consumer feeling or emotion. Think about how you react or value the different types from a brand. How do you feel about great brand content; an “authority” mentioning a brand; and seeing an ad from a brand? They hit different chords. Each plays a different, non-equal value. But as a brand, if you plan a coordinated media effort with different touch points of owned, earned and paid media, you have an opportunity to resonate on multiple emotions. And the impact on the consumer is stronger when they are orchestrated together.

So where do you begin? That is really dependent upon many factors and I could never recommend something here that works for all. But I will give you a few general pointers. Start by considering the points outlined above for each media type. Stay committed to owned media … constantly produce material that keeps your audience engaged and wanting to come back for more information and/or entertainment. Stay active building relationships with influencers. This takes time but “earning” the coverage and mention is quite valuable. And with regards to paid media, determine appropriate spend levels and periods focused around compelling events related to your brand … a release of a product, seasonal change that has direct ramifications to your offering, etc.

So many people say think big. I agree. But thinking big means thinking across all your media platforms to integrate your big creative ideas.

Make It Happen,
Social Steve

Got Social Culture?

I work with a number of clients that look to leverage social media to produce business results. I can help them with their strategy, planning and execution. I can tell them about all the ins and outs, tactics, and nuances of a number of social platforms. But if you or your brand are not committed to listening, collaborating, engaging and reacting to your target audience, you will never be social and never be successful with social media. If you want to leverage social media to drive business success, breed a social culture.

What does it mean to have a social culture? It means that the flow of information is consistent. That you are willing and active to talk about your brand when both positive and negative things are said. It means that internal silos are broken down and there is a collaborative movement, a relationship between people, teams, and yes sellers and buyers.

Having a social culture is not about Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Tumblr, or any other social media platform. It is about a commitment to sharing, engaging, and delivering. Social media success is based on a long term commitment. Yes you can have a quick promotional success that goes viral. I don’t mean to undermine that value. Those wins are extremely important. They represent an increased OPPORTUNITY to build many strong relationships. But once you have accomplished viral exposure, don’t you want to turn that heightened awareness into something stronger?

Using my A-Path methodology, I put that viral awareness in the Attention and Attraction category. It means that the marketing effort was so genuinely compelling, that a great many in your target segment wanted to share the content with their social connections. But if you want to build a strong relationship, it cannot stop there. You’ve just exposed your brand to so many. Now is your opportunity to continue to engage to produce Affinity for your brand. Affinity that leads someone to consciously act and opt-in to be part of the brand Audience. And once that action is taken, remember engaging with your Audience produces Advocates.

Think about relationships in your personal life. What would you consider your best and strongest relationships? I’ll bet the more significant ones have been established over the years and, in most cases, are not something that happened immediately. Why would we expect anything else in business?

Being social and having a social culture is a long term commitment. Not a one time event. Yes a number of one time events build the momentum. Reminds me of Ram Charan’s message in his book, Profitable Growth Is Everyone’s Business: 10 Tools You Can Use Monday Morning. Ram emphasizes the importance of hitting many singles to score and produce runs. It is not just about hitting home runs.

While it is important to have social media expertise in your organization, that does not mean you have a social culture. If your culture is collaborative amongst divisions and your brand has strong engagement both internally and externally then you have a social culture. I emphasize the importance of an internal social culture because it is likely that the way people treat one and another within your company is parlayed to how the company acts towards in existing and potential customers. You cannot fake it … social media unveils who you really are (whether you participate or not) … you cannot hide from the transparency that social media has created.

The reality is that social media has changed how customers engage with brands, even if the brand does not have an active social media presence. Consumers define brand reputation, not the company behind the brand. This is why having a social media presence is imperative. Brands have an opportunity to influence their reputation. And having social media expertise is not enough. Social needs to be part of the company as a whole. I realize this is a new thing for many companies. I see it day in and day out. But companies must be committed to evolving to a social culture.

Social media creates the opportunity for increased business success. It has to be part of a brands business, marketing, and customer service mix. And to be successful with social media, social media expertise is not enough. You must evolve to a social culture as well.

Make It Happen!
Social Steve

Making Facebook Work for Your Brand

Last week, I explained the new Facebook and its importance (challenges and opportunities) for brands. This week, I would like to take this one step further.

The question to ask is “how will people appreciate, engage, and interact with your brand’s Facebook page?” If you have a brand Facebook page, are you going to be happy with building the “Field of Dreams?” Build it and they will come? Or is the answer that you need to understand your target audience and their behaviors?

A while back, I wrote an article “The Most Important Word for Marketing.” I stated that empathy was imperative because nothing topped having the knowledge of your target audience. Empathy makes it much easier to define your product/service, story, position, and message for your potential customers.

I will add one more important factor as it relates to having a successful Facebook brand page and interactivity. That would be understanding your potential and existing audience’s behavior. As marketers, we want to change behavior to our brand’s benefit and ultimately drive transactions. To best understand your audience’s behavior, simple – talk to them. Next step, collect data and evaluate. What types of posts do the best? What day and time of day works best for reaction and correspondence? The information is there, it is just that so many do not bother to look at it.

Recognize that digital behavior varies by people (demographic and psycho-demographic groupings) and vertical industries. A good source for understanding digital behavior is Forrester’s Social Technographics. Check out both Forrester’s post and Forrester’s slides.

When planning your strategy and communication plan on Facebook, think about engagement and interactions. Nothing could be more important. Do you know why? Why your CEO might think this is important? Because “engaged customers spend 30% more” (according to a Bain and Company report). Pretty powerful!

Now let’s talk about Facebook engagement for a minute. So many people are transfixed on the number of likes for their brand. Well you know what? I can get you one million likes, no problem. We’ll just give away a brand new iPad to every new fan. Yeah – I know this sounds crazy. But it’s just as crazy for so many brands to worry about the number of likes they have and not pay equal or more attention to how they are going to get those fans to interact.

So I always tell all my clients that the number of fans is important, but not the end all. It represents the magnitude of people that “could” engage with the brand. So pay attention to building up that number. But let’s pay equal, if not more, attention to getting our fans (or “likes”) engaged. And now Facebook puts this number out front and center for us.

It is called “talking about this.” So in the example above, Starbucks has almost 30 million likes, and about 300K talking about them. This is about one percent of their likes. I suggest brands work to get at least five percent.

The “Talking About This” number is the unique users that have interacted with the brand on Facebook. This includes:

• liking a page
• posting on the page wall
• liking a post
• commenting on a post
• sharing a post
• answering a question
• RSVPing to a page’s event
• mentioning the page in a post
• tagging the page in a photo
• checking in at a place
• sharing a check-in deal
• liking a check-in deal
• writing a recommendation

All of these activities are very important. When a Facebook user “talks about this” (the brand), the action shows up as a post on their friends’ news feed. Thus the action and exposure of the brand is shared … the brand is shared with a larger audience. In the article I wrote last week, I talked about the mere exposure brands got on users’ Facebook page. Just 16 percent. The new Facebook (paid) reach generator increases likelihood the posts will be seen on fans’ news feed.

Yes, getting your post viewed is extremely important. But you should also be building a plan to increase the value Facebook plays for your brand and your audience. Anyone can put up a Facebook page. Be the brand that designs a Facebook page AND interaction strategy and plan that yields measurable results.

If I were to give one suggestion how to go about a winning Facebook mentality it would be to think like the producers of “American Idol.” Why is American Idol so appealing? I think it really comes down to three factors:

1) To begin with, American Idol has really good, compelling owned media. The contestants they present are talented and provide something that most people enjoy.
2) They make the audience part or their product. You, as a viewer have an active and important role in their product offering.
3) Even if you are not one that votes on contestants (review Forrester’s Social Technodemographics for participation levels), the fact that so many do interact adds validity and value to the product. The American Idol is selected by the target audience. Not some executives that are removed from pop culture.

Think about what it means to proactively give your audience some important function, aspect, or voice for your brand. Don’t be afraid … it is likely to happen without your involvement. So given this is the reality of the social world we live in, influence that participation to your benefit.

Make It Happen!
Social Steve

New Facebook – Interpretation for Brands

Do you know how to use Facebook to optimize your INTEGRATED social media/marketing strategy and plan? Are your driving MEASURABLE results? I have some recommendations.

There was no shortage of coverage on Facebook’s changes for brands as of February 29, 2012. I won’t go through the announcements (as so many have done already), but I’ll give you the highlights before I explain “why you should care” and “what you should think about.”
First here is a summary of Facebook changes:
• By default, both fans and non-fans will be directed to a brand’s timeline tab when visiting their Facebook page. Timeline also means that there are new or changing features and navigation:
- New cover photo (at the top of the page) in addition to the small existing profile picture,
- Fan engagement is separated and not integrated in with brand’s postings as shown on timeline,
- Splash pages and “like gates” are no longer an optional landing page, and
- More admin control on look and display of posts
• Page administrators have the ability to “pin” content at the top of their page for one week such that it does not scroll down as new content is posted.
• Reach Generator – guarantees brand posts will be viewed on more fans’ news feeds (more detail below)
• New premium ad formats (sponsored stories, page posts) – Photo, Video, Question, Status, Event, and Link
• Offers – postings of a discount or promotion from brands to their fans

And just one more thing before we get into the new Facebook and its social media marketing ramifications. Let’s not forget about the objective of social media and how success is measured. Social media is about building relationships. Social media success is about being able to measure an objective.

Building relationships in social media is defined in the A-Path model I have presented numerous times. The A-Path of relationships as a brand to your target segment’s individuals is Attention > Attraction > Affinity > Audience > Advocacy. The way we measure social media success is to measure Awareness, Consideration, Loyalty, and Advocacy. The intersection of social media relationship building and social media measurement is described in the article “Social Media Model that Defines the End of the World as we Know It.”

Got the foundation? OK, let’s talk Facebook. Go through the next few sections and stop to think about how Facebook can (now) be used for your marketing efforts. Based on the new features and information Facebook unveiled at the 2/29/12 fMC, we all need to start to think about Facebook marketing differently – for better and worse.

Facebook Brand Page – A Destination Site
Facebook timeline is impressive. The new look is aesthetically pleasing. This is a positive move by Facebook. Yes, there will be those that rant and rave because people do not accept change so well, but in the long run (and maybe not so long) I think most will come to accept and appreciate the new look for brand pages. I like the new feature set – especially the ability to “pin” content or a promotion at the top of a brand page for a week and keeps it from scrolling below as you place new posts on your brand timeline.

Let’s be clear here. Facebook is working to make your Facebook brand page a destination site where dynamic content resides. Think of this from two perspectives. 1) How do you leverage the Facebook brand page changes and is that destination now more compelling than your static website. 2) Prior to timeline, most people’s Facebook brand experience was on their news feed as opposed to specifically going to the brands’ Facebook page – just think of your own experience as a user rather than your role as marketer.

Facebook is NOT a Brand’s Community
Facebook is a great place to build attraction and affinity for your brand once you have gotten someone’s attention. It is NOT your community and there are better platforms where you should build your audience. One of the biggest issues with thinking Facebook is YOUR community is that you do not have access to or own the data of your “Facebook likes.” Thus, if you do not have these users’ data, they are not your true audience. Rather the people that like you on Facebook are just potential passers in the night. Having customer data is key for any and all marketing efforts.

This is not to say that Facebook serves no value – hardly the case. It is a starting point; not an ending point. You want to use Facebook for attraction and build affinity with your target segment. And as you do this and the individual feels a stronger relationship with your brand, you want to collect their data. Point them to content in your OWN community and invite them to join YOUR community. I always ask my clients a rhetorical question … Would you rather have 25K Facebook likes or 25K members of your community? Where do you think you can monetize better?

Facebook Freeium Model
The next point is that in essence, Facebook is not free. It really is a freeium model for brands. You get some functionality for free, but if you really want the key benefits, you need to pay. Up until the fMC on February 29, 2012, brands were led to believe that they collect likes for their Facebook presence and their posts would be directed to the news feeds of the people that liked them. In reality, this is NOT really the case. The reality that Facebook unveiled is that, on average, only 16% of fans saw brands’ posts. (This is due to their edge ranking algorithm that determines which post shows up on an individual’s news feed.) Facebook now offers “reach generator” to up the view percentage on news feed to a guaranteed 75% and as high as 95% for delivered posts. So now brands have to assess whether their Facebook strategy makes sense without “paid media” or if they are willing to foot the bill ($0.30 per like for a 3 month period). What are the measured results a brand is likely to get with and without reach generator – work your metrics.

Additional Paid Facebook Features
Facebook did announce new premium ads (in addition to their existing non-premium Marketplace ads). One of the biggest change users will see is that premium ads will appear in brands’ timeline and users’ news feeds if the user or one of their friends liked or interacted with the brand’s Facebook page. The ads will look like status updates. Facebook hopes this will generate more user interest.

Now what happens if brands want to reach other people with their advertisement – not just their fans? These premium ads have the opportunity to be displayed in non-fan news feeds if the user’s friend has liked the ad. The premium ad can also be displayed on the right side of the page for users that have not liked the brand and there is no interaction with the brand from their friends. These “stories” are really premium advertisements targeted to non-likes based on brand-selected demographics and other data people share on the social network.

One other change for these premium ads … Facebook looks to change the digital advertising model. These premium ads will not be priced like other typical CTR (click through rate) ads. Click-through rates for Facebook ads have been very low and Facebook’s position is that CTRs are a poor measure ad performance. Thus Facebook has partnered with Nielsen to implement a gross rating point (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_rating_point) model.

Facebook Position for Brands
Facebook is positioning brands to be more true to the intended use of a Facebook user experience. Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO said, “People do not expect to be talked at – they want to be a full part of the conversation.” The new premium ads (“sponsored stories”) are meant to be delivered like other “normal” Facebook status posts. This means that brands must be creative and provide valuable information or entertainment in their paid premium ad and sponsored story posts. No user is going to want to see a blatant ad in their news feed from a brand. This could disenchant users and backfire on brands. Be careful how you craft your premium paid posts. Facebook is putting some spin on their new premium ad position. They are careful to call these posts “stories” – not ”ads.” Brands must follow suit and execute these “stories” as well, stories – not ads.

One Additional Facebook Payoff
As Facebook prepares for their IPO, one of the significant hurdles that they faced was not having a mobile ad play. They did not have this functionality in their mobile app. Everyone questioned their ability to generate revenue from mobile users. This segment represents a substantial portion of Facebook use … approximately 50 % of Facebook use is via mobile. Now the problem is solved. Facebook is now simply delivering “ads” in the news feed. Tell the investors it is “ads” in the news feed; tell the rest of the world it is a brand story in the news feed. I think this is called poetic justice based on the crowd you are playing to.

Summary – Facebook Part of an INTEGRATED Social Media Strategy
It remains to be seen how users react to seeing brand stories/ads in their news feed. Now don’t get me wrong. Social implementations must have an integration of both organic social and paid social. But given the reality that brand posts only reach 16% of the intended audience without the fee-based reach generator, Facebook is now primarily a paid media channel. Yes, you can use their new timeline feature set to build a beautiful, dynamic destination site, but Facebook’s new position should definitely make you rethink your brand’s Facebook use.

There are great opportunities to use Facebook in the early parts of you’re A-Path relationship building, but all brands should make strategic decisions with regards to where they want to shape and build their audience. My recommendation is that Facebook is NOT a place to build audience. Think about the behavior you want to change in your target segment. Think about the steps and channels used to build strong relationships. This will lead to the appropriate use of Facebook in your integrated plan and this is likely not the same way you thought about Facebook yesterday.

Make It Happen,
Social Steve

Understanding the New Marketing Landscape via STDs

The (successful) marketing landscape is changing because the consumer and their behavior are changing. No longer does a person see a commercial on television, in print, or hear one on the radio and act. Intrusion marketing has seen its day.

Now the STDs that I am talking about are likely not the ones that first came to your mind. I am talking about Social, Timing, and Data. Let me put it to you this way. Remember the commercial for Trident gum that stated “4 out of 5 dentists recommend Trident for their patients that chew gum?” What if a brand could plant in your mind, “4 out of 5 of my friends prefer ?” Which is more compelling? Which is more worthy of having influence on your purchase decision?

Point number 2 … what if you were shopping in a store and you received a promotion that was based on your shopping history. The example I love to give is as follows … Say you were shopping at the Gap. You get a text message (or promo delivered by an app) that offers you 20% off of underwear. Now that offer will either make you happy or weird you out – simply based on purchase history. Do you buy underwear at the Gap? Totally relevant store promotion if you have purchased underwear there, and on the flipside, the promotion might give you the shivers if you never thought of the Gap as a place to purchase underwear.

So the new marketing landscape is a combination of getting referrals and word of mouth marketing from your trusted network, and getting timely, relevant information based on accurate and well interpreted data. STDs – social, timely, and data. Let’s work STDs in reverse order.

First data … companies need to collect important data such as customer preferences and purchase history. Most people have strong and understandable privacy concerns. But it is up to each company to prove to their target audience that they are going to use customer data in a fashion that is protective and beneficial to their customers. There is a point where brands can build the reputation of “you provide the right feedback and information to us and we will make it worth your while.” Collect data in a non-corporate way and explain your brand’s use. Don’t put this use information in “Terms and Conditions” that no one bothers to read. As you collect information (including purchases) give immediate feedback on how the data will and will not be used and reinforce that customer data is protected and not shared.

Once you start to collect appropriate, relevant information, you are now in the position to provide individualized, timely information and promotions. This helps to make your consumer feel like they are the brand focused customer. Not some speck in a mass of marketing advertisement. This will help to further the relationship between your brand and your audience. I cannot emphasize enough how important this aspect is to the new marketing landscape. Timeliness and relevance spawn brand action and brand action should be the marketing objective.

We’ve addressed “data” and “timely” … now on to “social.” As you provide timely relevant information, keep the conversation going. Stay social. It will build a deeper relationship with your audience. Identify your power users, participants, and communicators. Build one-to-one conversations and relationships with them. This is the start to acquiring advocates and strengthening your word of mouth marketing.

When you put social, timely, and data (STDs) all together, you will find that 4 out of 5 friends recommend your brand not only to those that ask, but unprompted in forums, platforms and networks. And that is the power of STDs in the new marketing landscape. Don’t be afraid of STDs. Embrace them.

Make It Happen!
Social Steve

Social Media Reviews – Value, Morals, and Ethics

No hidden agenda. One of the primary objectives of social media is to produce advocacy and word of mouth marketing such that real customers promote your product/service to their family, friends, and colleagues. There is no denying the power of having “trusted agents’ stand behind a brand. Are you more likely to value a recommendation of a friend telling you where to go for a great latte or are you more likely to believe the neon sign on the diner window, “World’s Best Coffee” (as Will Farrell did in the movie Elf)?

So it is no surprise that the use of reviews plays a strong role in marketing and customers’ buying decisions. As a brand, you want to give people incentive to take action and write a review on your behalf. The question is, how far can you go before your practices and tactics are considered unethical?

This past week there was an article in the New York Times, “For $2 a Star, an Online Retailer Gets 5-Star Product Reviews.” In that article, Bing Liu, a computer science professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, stated “More people are depending on reviews for what to buy and where to go, so the incentives for faking are getting bigger.” And Mary K. Engle, the Federal Trade Commission’s associate director for advertising practices said that “Advertising disguised as editorial is an old problem, but it’s now presenting itself in different ways … We’re very concerned.”

Yes – bogus and deceitful reviews are immoral, unethical and downright wrong. But there is nothing wrong with giving your customers an incentive to post a review so long as you are not manipulating what they say. You want to know how a brand can drive a positive review. Pretty simple. Deliver an awesome product or service. This is the most important factor for success and likely to produce winning reviews. And if you are really doing that why not put some incentive in place? Let me give you two real scenarios…

A number of years ago, I headed up a mainframe product line. We sold high-end computers (7 figure price tag) to corporate enterprises. A B2B play. When it came to final negotiations, the client would always beat us up on price. As they would whittle us down, the final agreement was usually, “OK, we’ll give you x% discount if you agree to do a press release with us.” In other words, the final price was agreed to with the addition of advocacy. The client would agree to state something like “we selected ___ because of their stellar product.”

My second example highlights a word of mouth play by Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos. Now we all know that Zappos is the poster child for customer support. This is because Tony has the greatest appreciation for customer interfacing to the benefit of both the customer and his brand. When Tony released his book, “Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose” he offered the book for free to anyone that had an active blog, some traffic to their site, and were willing to write a review. No influence on what they said about the book, just a gentlemen’s agreement to write a review. (You can read my review at “Delivering Happiness – The Key to a Great Company.”)

So why shouldn’t a company offer their customer a discount or rebate to write a review after purchase? It is going a step too far if you ask them to write something specifically, but a simple request to write their objective review makes much sense.

In a world where buyers are looking for input and according to Hubspot, people are 71% likely to purchase when referred by social media, “marketing reviews” is a win-win for the consumer and the brand (assuming the brand really has something compelling and valuable to offer). This should turn into regular concept and regular practice.

So I have no problem working with brands to put in place a strategy that is aimed at production of product/service reviews and increasing word of mouth marketing. Any reason why you would not do the same?

Make It Happen!
Social Steve

Successful Social Media – Start Off the Year Right

It is the beginning of the year and just about everyone has either provided their year-end wrap up and/or predictions for 2012. And yes, I provided the Social Steve “Lessons Learned in Social Media” (2011 wrap up) as I wanted to share with you the key information I’ve gained from my experience in the past year. But with regards to predictions for the coming year, I take a little different approach.

Here is the one thing you should think about … everyone is getting in the game. Everyone is going to do social media in 2012. If you thought there were too many channels on your cable TV package and a majority of them are junk, think about what the social space will look like between all the brands fighting for impressions and mindshare. How are you going to win over your targeted consumer/business? You better not just wing it!

Just this morning I was reading Mark Schaefer’s {grow} blog and he had a post “Your 2012 Marketing Plan: Tell Me What to Do.” Mark was referring to an article by Mitch Joel where Joel took the position that there would be a number of new social trends flying in the face of the consumer. Schaefer’s position was that the consumers actually need less. My take is that there will be a plethora of messages, social engagement attempts and digital interactions as a whole, bombarding consumers. And while it might be best to have less, dream on. If you manage a brand, the reality is that you are in a dog fight for mindshare and attention. It is harder than ever to capture awareness, consideration, loyalty, and advocates for your brand – unless you play it right and do the pre-design work (not play it to chance).

So my suggestion is that 2012 should be the year of ring in the old and ring in the new … a combination of getting back to marketing basics AND embracing the new digital marketing frontier.

But it has got to start with marketing basics. Having worked on the client side of marketing for a number of years and most recently on the agency side, I see two different, but similar approaches to the marketing basics. The first question from both client and agency perspective is how do brands win awareness, interest, mindshare, purchase decision, loyalty, and word of mouth referrals? If you are not thinking marketing stages and planning before you start social media, I guarantee you will be another example of failed social media. And there will be more cases of failures than successes. Still want to just do it?

The client side approach usually starts with a marketing plan. I wrote about this methodology three years ago when I started blogging, and it bares greater importance today. At a high-level here are your steps:

1) Define your target segmentation – who your product/service is aimed at serving and the demographics and psycho-demographics of each segment.
2) State the brand value proposition – the “compelling reason to buy” for the defined target market segments sought.
3) Articulate a position statement (for internal use only).

For ………………. [target customer]
Who ………………. [key qualifier - form]
Our product is a …… [product category]
That provides ……… [key benefit]
Unlike ……………. [main competitor]
Our product ……….. [key point of differentiation]

4) Set goals – what are you attempting to accomplish through the initiative?
5) Define the target audience you want to talk to. This is likely a subset of the target segmentation. Focus on influencers.
6) State the target audience perceptions honestly – whether they are positive, negative, and/or unaware of the brand.
7) Describe want the marketing offering is (promotion, awareness, lead generation, advocacy program, etc.)
8) Have a call to action – what is the next step you want your audience to do – be careful not to sell too quickly and rather do something appropriately in line with the relationship level established.
9) Define message strategy and channels to be used.

The agency side approach is to form a “Creative Brief.” A creative brief is a document used to develop visual design, copy, advertising, web sites, and yes – social media. The creative brief, consists of a series of simple questions asked and answered to yield the guiding post for the development of the creative deliverable. (source – wikipedia.org) Your social media strategy, plan, and implementation must be creative. Otherwise, you are the equivalent of another lame channel on the cable TV package that no one is going to tune in to.
There are numerous examples of creative brief templates available on the Internet (One example is here.) At MediaWhiz, we use our own proprietary template, but the main gist is:

- To understand the business problem or value proposition
- State objectives of the marketing program
- Define the target audience and psycho-demographics
- Articulate the perceptions of the target audience
- State and understand the competition’s approach
- Define a message strategy (what is the one thing to tell the audience)
- State mandatory elements and deliverables
- Establish timeline, budget, and approvals

As you can see, the two approaches are very similar. But the most important thing is to recognize that there is much pre-work to be done. This prerequisite effort is likely to define the difference between failure and success … The difference between grabbing attention or being yet another organization that simply has a Facebook page and Twitter account up and wonders what the value of social media is.

Social media is an EXTENSION of your marketing. Social media is an EXTENSION of your customer service. Social media is an EXTENSION of your business. So plan and implement accordingly.

Make It Happen!
Social Steve

Lessons Learned in Social Media

There is no shortage of trending lists, reviews, and top 10 lists looking back at 2011. I know many are cynical and think they have seen enough of them, but frankly I like them. They give me an opportunity to learn some things I missed. The problem is that anyone can produce these lists and get them out in the public … the “power” of social media. Yes, there is some good stuff out there, and there is some garbage.

When I look back on 2011 and think about the social media takeaways from my perspective, it is simple … just look at what I have written about. OK – I spared you the pain of going through all of them and did it myself. Funny enough, I pulled the best of the best together and grouped them together and what happened? You get the summary of important social media themes and learnings for 2011. Here is what you may have missed:

Understanding Social Media

The Simple Explanation of Social Media provides an easy to understand explanation of what social media is, what success might look like, and important considerations.

Integrating Owned Media, Earned Media, and Paid Media explains how the three different types of media should be planned to produce synergy and great results. (This was my most popular and top rated article)

Content

Content is the core of social media. Content must be awesome … would you ever share something that was just okay?

4 Ingredients to a Winning Content Strategy calls it like it is.

There actually is something more important than content. Find out what it is in Content is Super Important !!! (But Not King).

Social Media in Your Company

Social Media at Your Company – Policies prepares you and your company to leverage the power of your employees while putting some best practice rules and regulations in place.

It is easy to be impressed by someone that appears to know much about social media, but are they going to produce results for you? Before you get underwhelming results see 3 Helpful Tips when Hiring for Social Media.

Why Most CEOs and Top Execs Don’t Get Social Media explains some key issues from the C-Level Suite perspective.

Planning and Understanding Your Audience

Why is “empathy” The Most Important Word for Marketing. You better understand your audience through and through. How else are you going to appeal to them?

7 Things You Need to do to Turn Social Media Successful Results provides some common sense that is often forgotten when social media planning takes place.

Marketing Demographics and the Ramifications of Social Media:
Introduction to Psycho-Demographics explains marketing beyond traditional demographics.

Ever wonder Where is the WOW in Social Media? Take a look at what might be missing in your social media approach.

ROI and Measurement

Social Media ROI – Don’t Be So Short Sighted – Think Longer Term is probably the biggest mistake people make when it comes to social media. Get a reality dose here.

The Social Media ROI Conundrum is a solid examination at the challenge of forming a defined social media ROI and what to do about it.

Social Media Models

Measuring the Stages of the Cyclic Social Media Marketing Funnel takes a look at the traditional marketing model and how social media is applied complete with metrics.

Digital PR and Outreach for Important Social Media Conversations goes beyond your Facebook and Twitter implementation and explains an equal, if not more important aspect of social media strategy and implementation.

Unifying Loyalty, Rewards, and Social Media is an explanation of yet another integration point for your existing marketing and social media activities.

Social Media Model that Defines the End of the World as We Know It brings it all together and provides the balanced formula and approach for the winning social media program.

Wrap-Up
So we actually covered a ton this year and made some great advancements in social media. Social media is no longer that thing people are thinking about doing. It is part of just about every company’s, every brand’s plans. 2012 will show greater success and more defined best practices. And I plan to be there with you every stride of the way. I am looking forward to providing greater help and guidance and connecting with more of you. Thanks for being an extremely important part of my little social world. Let’s make an effort to engage more in 2012 and help each other out.

Make It Happen!
Social Steve