Digital Influence Mapping Project

What is Social Shopping Becoming?

   

Shopping can be one of the most social activities. Then again, I often shop alone. It really depends on what I am going for. On the more social side you have:

• asking friends what they think of a particular Victorinox rolly bag

• reviewing ratings or reviews by strangers or friends
• group buying which is really a form of crowd-buying - still quite social
• finding endorsements from friends or 'strangers with expertise'
• Wish lists and registries
• Affiliate sales networks (e.g. Amazon)
• Relevant recommendations (e.g. iTunes Genius function)

As word of mouth is one of the most influential purchase drivers across many product categories, it only makes sense that we will all continue to push the intersection of social media and shopping.From product reviews like the robust ones found in Amazon, YELP and TripAdvisor to the offshoots like Trusted Opinion, review have been around since the dawn of time. For any brand that sells a product or service, I would rank reviews as the most underleveraged social strategy just behind search engine optimization. If you don't have one, get a product review strategy especially if you are a retailer or sell a retail product of some kind.

If product reviews are fundamental, then what is next? Three things I can see emerging fast:

• Real-time Recommendations via Facebook, Twitter and other social networks
• A new wave of Affiliate Marketing
• Event Shopping

Real-time Recommendations

While reviews may have defined social shopping over the past 10 years, now it is about "real-time recommendations" - a phrase I first heard from Sean Muzzy at Neo@Ogilvy. When I am shopping - that search, assess, decide and purchase activity - how can I tap into my own social graph to get an opinion or some type of feedback?

Some retailers are doing this by integrating Facebook Connect like the backpack manufacturer Jansport. By embeding the Facebook login in the ecommerce pages, I can share my interest in the 22" Purple Sunflower via facebook. I can see what my friends may have said or if they have "liked" it. This will become standard practice for many of us on those products where we value a second opinion. As a business traveler, luggage is one of tehose categories (and I would hope as a Facebook friend you would wave me off the purple sunflower motif for my own good).

Many of us in digital marketing especially on the social media side of life have been creating and stewarding programs for brands that pay off in the middle or top of the funnel - Engagement up to Awareness. Or our approach to driving action or conversion has been a click-through or coupon download or similar action. Now we really can apply "social" to not just shopping but to conversion or sales.

Affiliate Marketing
While the power of building authentic positive word of mouth and even recommendation for a product will drive product preference (see our Conversation Impact measurement model), using social to drive sales will become a new focus for many of us.

As a blogger, would I raise my hand to become an affiliate marketer for the brands, I myself, use and appreciate? Yes. As marketers continue to over-do influencer outreach - trying to capture the attention of influentials like mombloggers and food bloggers such that they authentically talk about products - we will see some simpler and more direct solutions to transparently engage those influencers as affiliate marketers. The benefit back to them is a percentage of sales - all very transparent, of course. Clearly that works best for retail brands vs. manufacturers. I could easily imagine having a Hugo Boss store widget on my site ads the ultimate storefront for black jeans (hell, just my clickthroughs alone would move the needle).

Curated Event Shopping
Remember the Amazon "Gold Box"? It was a collection of time-sensitive specials on Amazon that you could browse through. I never bought anything and I guess others didn't fare much better as the feature is gone.

Now I subscribe to ideeli.com. They send me emails of sales events on great stuff - mostly for women. I have bought some great jewelry there for my wife. If I knew anything about bags, I am certain I could score some gems there as the always seem to have some great ones. The pricess are advantageous - but like the Home Shopping Network, sales are timed so you need to act promptly. The goods are curated and high quality. The combination of timeliness and quality curation makes it sweet. I have told many people about ideeli.com which is another way the "social" quality of the service works. (Essentially, it gives me a little bit of 'social capital' to spend with people I know.)  

There are a lot more innovations on social shopping happening than just these three trends. In fact, the social shopping space is exploding with innovation.

The Lesson Beneath "PR in Silicon Valley"

The NYTimes.com ran a story over the weekend (that finally ended up in the print edition Business section) about the social nature of public relations efforts on behalf of Web 2.0 startups in Silicon Valley called "Spinning the Web - PR in Silicon Valley." They mean old school "social" as their example is a PR pro in the Valley who makes hay of who she knows and her ability to get clients mentioned by those who's who of tech.

Is this back-to-the-future? Hasn't Silicon Valley always been a club of sorts? Now that some of those influencers run popular media properties like Digg and social networks like Twitter that have the 'reach' previously reserved for older more established media properties, now that every business analyst worth her salt gets "news" via an eclectic RSS collection complete with new influencer blogs and Twitter search results (see our TheDailyInfluence.com), this evolution is now complete. I have visions of Pam Alexander and her notorious networking social events that helped her rise to mythical status.

But underneath the story of one publicist/PR person who manages a network of influencers vs. pumping out press releases, is the true story of change.

Public Relations is quickly adapting to the practice of identifying new influencers who have their own public platform and following and can do more to raise awareness and engagement with relevant companies and brands than traditional media relations. This is not new. And for as many examples of old school PR shops who rely on press releases to gain "coverage", there are 5 more sophisticated "new communications" firms who not only understand the phenomena of word of mouth marketing via new influencers and networks of interest groups. Many, like ours, have gotten pretty sophisticated with the process of connecting with vast, new collections of third parties. 

The Silicon Valley tribes (Tech companies, VC, Web 2.0 startups, popular bloggers/twitters) is but one microcosm.

Influencer Segmentation
Turning 'working a crowd' into an effective and scaleable approach to engaging relevant third parties such that they will authentically want to share about a new product, an intriguing service or just cause is about seeing the millions of affinity "groups" online, gauging inlfuence amongst their "members" and then taking the care to provide them a true exchange of value.

For a recent automotive project, we purposely went beyond the car bloggers and even the social media echo-chamber (top bloggers in social media) to identify 6 additional segments. Each is relevant to the brand from parent bloggers (don't forget the dads in your mad-dash to court the mom bloggers!), to design geeks to eco-dabblers (regular folks who care about being 'green' and are willing to make some decisions to be more so).

For a financial services project, we have identified 16 interest groups - things that draw people together online - passions. Within each are different influencers defined by data and qualitative analysis. While Silicon Valley relies on influencers within the tech and social media circles we all know; the rest of the broad universe has its own influencers who you might not instantly recognize.

The article captures the relationship-driven nature of Silicon Valley public relations now dominated by new media properties and individuals. What it's really pointing out is the explosion of new influencers that we identify, build relationships and rely on to reach relevant people on behalf of companies and brands. The Silicon Valley tribes are but one small slice. 

Where is the Perfect Social Media Conference (for Marketers)?

There are too many social media conferences.

We are in a recession. Budgets on discretionary spending like travel and training are tight. And yet there are more social media conferences per square conference facility than before the crisis. This abundance of events speaks to a few trends in the marketplace:

• Marketers are taking social media seriously and want desperately to get a handle on how to do it well.

• An entire consulting industry - a bit of cottage industry - has sprung up over the years around social media and these folks bake in conference commitments in their "business plans". They must attend to drive awareness and business.
• Professional conference planners see the urgency around social media inside the enterprise and have shifted gears away from less popular subjects.

Many of these events are just no good.

The trends don't inherently deliver a great experience. I have been to a few this year, some that I would consider very valuable, some that were engaging or otherwise worthwhile and some that were just plain a waste of time. Now I seek the Perfect Social Media Conference.

Problems

• Same speakers: The trends I described force the same speakers out in front of folks again and again. Two problems with that. The first is obvious in that you hear the same key points - usually intended for newcomers - over and over again.

• Designed around speakers: The second problem - most conferences are designed around speakers - their needs, their credentials, their willingness to travel for free to speak. In today's economy, conferences should be designed around the learning experience they deliver for the paying attendee not around the speakers. This makes it difficult for the professional conference business with no skin in the subject matter to pull off any type of event that delivers significant value. All they can do is assemble speakers - usually the same ones - and hope that enough of them are informative, entertaining or inspiring.

• Over narrowing of the niche: One of the reasons I got a lot out of 140 characters, WOMM U. and even We Media was the diversity of the program and the participants. It wasn't all marketers. While I generally benefit from a marketing focus, marketing does not live in a vacuum. Too many conferences have an uneducated view of a profession. They believe that so long as all of the speakers come from the "marketing" organzation, or that all of them claim to be "bloggers" that they have created a focused event. I look at conferences as learning events. I learn from storytellers, media entrepeneurs, artists, non-profit advocates and more.

The Perfect Recipe for a Social Media Conference
There is no "perfect," but here are the ingredients for an event that is worth this brand marketer's investment of time and money:

• A program that is designed around learning not around speakers: if you start by outlining what your attendees will "know" and be able to "do" upon leaving, you stand a better chance of creating a compelling experience filled with great discussion leaders, engaging formats and tangible deliverables.

• Rigorous case studies with results: nothing teaches professionals better that really great stories of how others have done it. Many conferences include cases but take no care to ensure that rigor. We need business and marcom problems, insights that drive a program, creativity and real results. Too many people dress up a collection of social media tactics with no clear impact as a case study. That approach serves no one, not even the novice. As for results, I would argue we need good and bad. As someone reminded me, "what do we learn from success? Nothing."  I need case studies where we are not afraid to talk about failures and where we learned valuable lessons.

• Practical training from, get this, practitioners that is clearly distinguished between beginner and advanced: how many events have you gone to where the content and delivery was too basic to be of use. You tell yourself, "well, I guess that was designed for those new to social media marketing."  There is nothing wrong with social media 101, although if ever there was too well-trod territory, it is the introduction to social media and word of mouth marketing. identifying whether a session is intended for those just starting out or those with years of experience can only help set and meet the expectations of all those involved. 

• I need to hear practical lessons from those who actually do the work. If you are listening to someone tell you how social media marketing works and they have spoken at more than 6 events in one year, look a little closer. Chances are they are really a professional pundit with a shallow set of real experiences to pull from. Social media marketing is a new discipline that can best be learned from doing vs. observing. Look for those really doing the work for insight.

• Surprising inspiration: Conference organizers need to think long and hard about who will surprise participants espcially when those attendees are jaded marketers. Getting the CMO of brand X to speak is all well and good but often the real inspiration comes out of left field. Ray Bradbury once keynoted an unusual conference staged by Silicon Graphics way back when. I never would have expected such an inspiring talk about creativity and marketing.

• A social platform for discussion: conferences are as much about networking and being "social" in the service of business as they are about content delivery. Too many conferences don't plan for social interaction either by jamming in too many content delivery sessions (that "speaker-driven" mentality, again) or they rely on big meals as enough of a social platform. How can a conference plan around networking and even facilitate it? When I was with Discovery Channel some years back, we participated in a 'digital day' at MIT Media Lab (we were sponsors of the Lab). We broke down into groups of 12 or so and my group which also included Walt Mossberg participated in an hour-long exercise with a professor and his grad students studying filtering as it relates to email and messaging. That joint activity brought us together and gave us instant common ground for discussion. Not everything needs to be so structured nor does it need to just be the usual lunch hour here everyone spins off to address email business.

 
There are plenty of other things that can contribute to a worthwhile experience. Some things that help:

• I like smaller gatherings. Once you break the 500 person mark, I get a little numb.
• Focused sponsor exhibits where as much care has gone into curating the sponsors as teh sessions, themselves
• Diverse group of participants
• Easy to get to location (relatively inexpensive and a near airport)

These are the key ingredients I will look for in the events through the end of the year.  If you know of one, please let me know. Thanks.

A Photography Brand Gets More Experiential

I always loved the Kodak photo moments I once saw - brand yellow dots on the ground in a public park or sightseeing stop."Kodak Moments" has since earned its way into our vernacular as anything worth photographing.

Now another brand is taking that experience concept farther. Canon is running what looks like a pretty routine photography contest online called, Canon Photography in the Parks, between now and September.  What's supercool is the Workshops they are running in Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Yellowstone and Acadia throughout the summer. Travelers can shoot with Canon cameras and lenses and even rub shoulders with some expert photographers like Darrell Gulin.

Ultimately this is not new. This is the 4th year Canon has done this. We often overlook some great solid brand experiences trying to find the next new thing. I merely loved it because of a brand providing a useful and real-world experience for its fans. Not sure how many people will show up for the 60 or so workshops throughout the summer but given a good experience they could all turn into word of mouth ambassadors worth their weight in gold....

Thanks to Springwise....

6 Directions on Social Media Measurement: How Will We Come Together?

There are lots of interesting efforts to make sense of Social Media Marketing which I often refer to as Word of Mouth Marketing since that is the outcome of most social media-based efforts. We are somewhere in the second third of our journey towards meaningful, shared measurement. We are in that part where we wrestle with credible yet cimbersome models and pine fo rthe simplicity that came before. Don't we all wish we had "reach and frequency" goals? Doesn't it seem like social media marketing is being held to ahigher standard than the disciplines that came before?

Recently, I have been drawn into or tracking at least 6 different efforts to make sense of soaicl media marketing measurement. It's useful to become aware of them all. Still, the question remains - are we better off with this English-garden growth of discussions, forums, white-paper symposiums, or do we need "one ring to bind them all?"

IAB Social Media Measurement
The IAB recently releasedtheir social media metrics guidelines. These tackle the space from an "advertisers" POV. They are also trying to develop meaningful KPIs that acknowledge what the space does well - foster conversations - and what marketers want - a way to place their brand in the conversation. Here is a snapshot from the Guidelines:

"Ad campaigns can target a single blog or multiple blogs by category using traditional
interactive reach and audience metrics. However, additional targeting value can also be
derived by mapping campaigns to blogs engaged in common “conversations” through the
form of shared links, referencing each-other’s content. The social connection of publisher-to-publisher relationships through these content links aggregates engaged consumers into a
desirable and topic-engaged audience.

The ability to aggregate audiences by topic is dynamic, following the dialogue consumers are having. Following these “conversations”, an advertiser or brand evangelist is able to tailor creative to incorporate the messages, language, and tone audiences are using at the current moment and effectively speak directly to them, rather than building creative which is solely based on statistical reach and audience metrics."

Their general social media  metrics are nothing new. It is the list of KPIs that we have all been tracking: unique visitors, page views, visits, interaction rate, time spent, etc.. The new territory (for IAB) is their method for assessing the conversation space.

• Conversation Size means they are now looking across the social Web for relevant mentions of an advertisers campaign language. This is the equivalent of Ogilvy's Conversation Criteria which I would argue is a more relevant approach than:

"Number of Conversation Relevant Sites: The count of sites in the conversation whose content contains conversation phrases from the client’s Request for Proposal (RFP) or Insertion Order (IO)."

• Site relevance - are their a lot of relevant mentions of topics that intersect with the brand

• Author Credibility - we have been doing this for years in our Influencer Maps and includes metrics from inbound links to earliest and latest relevant posts.

• Content Freshness and relevance - IAB is suggesting that beyond earliest and latest post that the delta in between or "Mean-time Between Posts" on a subject is important.

If your primary goal is to determine which social sites to advertise on, these all seem like useful metrics. The power of social media lies in between the advertising, however. It lies within the conversation itself. It's hard to see how the  IAB approach will account for the power of earned media.

Word of Mouth Marketing Association Metrics Best Practice Guidebook
Last week, WOMMA (discl:board member) released a draft of what hopes to be a very useful book for brand marketers on the fundamental building blocks of word of mouth marketing measurement. The draft will be revised between now and November. Still, it serves as a useful guidebook even now.

The WOMMA Metrics Guidebook covers the fundamentals of Conversation Volume and Share, Influencer Value and offers up examples of some of the ways companies are fashioning measurement models to guide perfomance metrics, advocacy valuation and even the ever-elusive "value of a conversation."

This will help marketers understand and share a vocabulary about what matters in measurement. There remains at least two extra steps to tackle to make this Guidebook all that it can be:

• A closer connection to the real ways marketers want to use social media. If you accept, as I do, that word of mouth marketing is a bigger tent yet inclusive of social media marketing, you must also agree that the main ring in that circus is social media. The Guidebook will be stringer if it ackoedges that marketers want to know now how to measure social media and make more direct mention of how they are doing that.

• Cast a broader net to capture more ways that more marketers are measuring social media. Our model, Conversation Impact, is not covered here and I assume that many others are not as well. Perhaps I am pining for more of a complete index than a "guidebook" but still, there is a lot of good thinking on measurement out there beyond what is currently captured in the Guidebook.  

Social Media Advertising Consortium
The new kid on the block, SMAC has developed in a small corner of the social media "in-crowd" as a non-profit association determined to make sense of the value and impact of paid evertising in social media. What they will accomplish beyond what IAB sets out to do remains unclear. Looking at the membership with nary an ad agency in sight, I am guessing that they will focus on the combined impact for marketers of paid and earned media in this landscape.  Here's what they say about themselves:

"In 2009, social network advertising revenues will hit an estimated $1.825 billion.* Yet the industry is still fuzzy on the details – what they’re selling, what they’re buying, and how to measure success. As a result, players, big and small, are eager to unite to find solutions for social media’s challenges.

SMAC fosters collaboration throughout the entire social media ecosystem, diving deep into critical issues and staying ahead of this constantly evolving industry. By bringing together buy side, sell side, and research professionals to develop relevant standards, comprehensive research and definitive measurement tools, our goal is to grow revenues and increase engagement."

Advertising Research Foundation
The forum for paid media modeling, ARF has been scartching in the dirt trying to find meaning behind the concept of "engagement" for a few years. There efforts led to this slightly etherial gem of a definition for engagement: "Turning on a prospect to a brand idea enhanced by the surrounding context."

They are a good forum for those of us who really care about meaningful masurement. their Audience Measurement 4.0 conference is on June 23 + 24 in NYC.

Most of the tracks in AM4.0 are not about WOM or social media. At least two of the tracks - The World of Social Media & Search Measurement & The Value of Cross-Media, Engagement & Influencer Marketing - deal directly with what we are most concerned with. Of all of the 'too many' social media conferences on the horizon, this is one that I consider essential and is likely to remain so for the next few years.

i-COM
Based in Europe, these folks are trying to bind all of the relevant Web associations internationally to come together via a series of events. They want to drive collaboration on standards and ways to measure. Their field of vision is greater than social media and includes all of what we consider "digital." They are a forum for conversation and debate not a binding body, per se. It is still early yet to know whether this will lead to more generally accepted social media marketing metrics but the intent is good - invite everyone to the table.

Conversation Impact
We have been planning and deploying social media programs for 5 years. we started by simply reporting relevant metrics. Sometimes this was like public relations "output" reporting (how many blog posts, comments, videos-posted, etc...). We graduated to a more menaingful "impact-based" model that we call Conversation Impact. We will discuss this model at the upcoming ARF Audience Measurement 4.0 summit in NYC.

We are jumping ahead to a credible and simple model that makes sense to brand marketers and can be implemented for most campaigns without requiring federal bailout dollars to underwrite the measurement plan. Using a mix of traditoinal Web metrics and new Listening Post methodology, we combine web behavior reporting and social media-based word of mouth to report against three big (and meaningful) categories: Reach, Preference and Action.

We purposely move beyond the trap of trying to quantify or value "engagement" and jump to what matters more to marketers - did we increase product preference?

Our model is open. Anyone can use it. the formulas are all revealed. we shall see how much traction it gains in the marketplace going forward.  

______

Lots going on from across different organizations. That seems as it should be for now. We need as many brains thinking this through as possible. Eventually, we need some 'coming together' around how to measure both the earned and paid side of using social media and, most importantly, the combineed effect of both. Will that be some combination of WOMMA and IAB working together? Will groups like SMAC step up to fill a legitimate void? Too early to tell.

Social Media Marketing Measurement: Are We More Than 33% There Yet?

  Nothing has been more important than developing a credible, workable measurement model for our social media-based programs at Ogilvy. Having participated in many of the forums where masrement geeks come together to test-drive their models, it became clear last year that we were all still in the first third of the process. If you think of the inevitable arc of standards development, the first third is floating meaningful measures - no matter how convluted the model - marketers want to know that there are valuable metrics that even exist to justify spending in word of mouth-based social media.

First Third of the Social Media Marketing Measurement Life Cycle
Everyone starts with KPIs (key perfomance indicators) they find compelling. We have 100,000 video views (over 1 month? 6 months? 1 year?). Our Facebook page has accumulated almost 30,000 fans/friends. Our blog mentions add up to a fat 2m UMVs (unique monthly views). KPIs are often without a lot of context. It is safe to say that we are passing through this phase.

Second Third of the Social Media Marketing Measurement Life Cycle
As critics punch holes - rightly so - in the pure KPI model, academic braniacs develop rigorous models in response. Walter Carl's work at ChatThreads (previously at Northeastern) seem to fit here. An extremely smart guy, all you have to do is spend a half hour with Walter and you will be convinced about the strength of his process for matchbacks and other techniques that really do ratify the spread of WOM. You will of course need to hire his company to actually apply the principles.These methods are persuasive, rigorous yet like the Eniac computer, they may require more effort and shelf space than most marketing programs can afford. So, we simplify. I am certian Walter is doing the same. That is the driving pressure behind our modelling at Ogilvy. Conversation Impact was developed to provide a credible and implementable measurement model that could be applied to most projects without a separate budget allocation. We needed a simple model that made sense to brand marketers. These simpler models are still in the early stages. It will be at least a year before 2-3 of them emerge as "leading" contenders. Ours is open to anyone to use and we will see if it gains velocity (presenting next month at ARF).

Meanwhile, brands that explore the more complex and more meaningful measurement models inevitably backslide into KPIs. You can hear it now from your most senior brand marketers, "Can't we just reduce all this complex modeling to 2-3 numbers we care about most? Numbers that reflect how much reach or how much time people are spending with the brand. What if we just count video views and Tweets?"    

Final Third of the Social Media Marketing Measurement Life Cycle
This remains a glimmer in my eye. Once we have the solid and simple modeling out of the second third, we need to ramp up quickly for the inevitable: complexity. The real power of social media marketing is when it becomes integrated into all sorts of communications and marketing - ALL sorts. What is the impact of social media mentions on the performance of adjacent advertising - does it make the ads perform 3x, 10x, 30x better? When frequency of ad impressions fades away as a lynchpin metric, what is the most effective forumla of organic conversation with a brand and the paid media that drives action? As brands explore beyond their microsite-based online marketing to include their presence in Facebook, Linked In or Orkut, what formula will explain how that online footrpint adds up to meaningful action and/or intent to purchase?

Miles to go before we sleep. Lots going on in measurement of social media right now. Still, I wonder some days if we have even made it through the first third of our journey.  

3 Priorities to Understand the Value of Friends and Followers

As we try to put a number on the value of word of mouth online, we need to try and do three things:

1. Figure out how to market to someone's social graph
If I buy a Neuton Lawnmower (I did) are my friends on facebook more likely to click on advertising for Neuton? Business Week covers this in their article on "What's A Friend Worth." Amongst other things they cover research from a couple of years back where the people in someone's chat list who clicked on an ad were 3 times more likely to click on the ad. Isn't this part of the promise of social network advertising? Clearly, Facebook, MySpace and the other social nets are hard at work trying to make these connections for marketers  Which brings us to the second point. 

2. Understand the effectiveness of advertising in proximity to true earned media
When I blog about how great the Neuton is (my wife says it's a much better mower than our previous electric) and someone sees that post and sees some advertising either on my blog, Facebook page or somewhere else on their online journey, are they more likely to click on that ad? The simple answer is yes. What I cannot say is whether it would be a simple 3x, 10x or 20x improvement. Stephen Baker who wrote the BW article, tells about Cameron Marlow's research for Facebook that dissects the degrees of friendship - essentially saying that for a typical user with 500 friends they are likely to only proactively communicate with 20 of them and keep in close touch with 10. We are working on understanding this better and I know others are as well. Here's a great chart from Cameron's blog that breaksdown this idea of maintained relationships:

Now, I used to think this focus on advertising amidst the "earned" world of social media was kind of beside the point. I believe that the true power of social media is the amplification of word of mouth - authentic positive opinion. Lately, I am getting a little discouraged at the over-use of bloggers by marketers. Influential bloggers are growing weary of outreach that leaves them with a case of herbal tea to try and chat about. Marketers are looking at ways to scale their outreach adn some are crossing the line to paying bloggers or offering such consistent rewards that they are producing paid media not WOM. Problem is that even with full disclosure how can a consumer distinguish? It's going to be up to us as marcom professionals to know when a brand is really likely to inspire a groundswell of WOM and when it's just not. Which brings me to point three:

3. Distinguish between those products/services that lend themselves to true, organic word of mouth and those that need a more integrated approach (WOM + Advertising)

We're going to have to dial back on the blogger outreach. It's like traffic in Sao Paulo (there this week for digital influence training, client meetings and talks) - in a few years traffic planners fear there will be so many cars that the thruways will literally come to a frozen stop one day. In the case of blogger outreach, overuse will lead to a meltdown of trust, one of the things that puts socila media above traditional paid marketing. We will need to trun our attention to complex integrated programs that perserve the authenticity of social media-delivered opinion by combining it with clearly distinguishable and highly-relevant advertising.

Social media marketing will continue to get more complex.It's future is in integrated programs that mix the enthusiasm of happy, even delighted, customers and the reach and relevance of targeted marketing.

Practical Steps for Marketers to Use Social Media in This Recession

The recession will endure for some time. Global concerns about pandemic flu will not improve things.The recession is driving most of our clients to continue to innovate around social media and other new marketing and communications approaches. No one is shrinking back to the tried and true simply because the "tried and true" isn't so true any more. The effectiveness of traditional marketing and communications is shifting if not receding.

How can marketers innovate at a time when only the most effective marketing makes the budget cut? How can you expand use of social media when none of your colleagues agree on a measurement standard to judge the ROI of the effort?

I tried to put some simple ideas down in a little guidebook for marketers and communication pros. I wanted to offer practical tips and practices that marcom experts could use internally to succeed with a higher level of social media work. I basically told people what we do.

You can get Expanding the Impact of Communications Through Digital Influence on the Ogilvy On Recession site.

Here's the set up in the Guide:

"A Guide to Social Media and Word of Mouth Marketing
Social media-driven word of mouth is a more efficient form of marketing producing both sales and advocacy with long term brand and reputation gains. Digital platforms have empowered the average consumer to both share and find opinion. They have also turbo-charged the phenomena of influencer marketing. Social media makes new influencers everyday and it amplifies and carries their voices farther than was ever possible before.

This recession will reveal the selling and brand-building strength of social media-driven word of mouth marketing programs. It will also positively transform marketing for the foreseeable future. The power and efficiency comes from three big truths:

• Influencer and network marketing targets more effectively than all mass marketing
• Word of mouth scales outward to reach more people with more relevance over time especially when fueled by engaging advertising
• The deeper engagement of most WOM programs builds brand affinity at the same time as driving action

A Useful Guide
One way to be engaging is to provide something people can use in their lives - to be of-use. This guide delivers not just a point of view on communications and marketing in a recession but concrete steps you can take today.
 
How can brands use social media-based word of mouth marketing effectively? What are the 12 things that every marketer can do today to start applying this innovation to their business? How will you measure performance?"

The Ogilvy on Recession site has some other great resources- relevant to the entire world -  meant to help marketing and communications professionals do some great work now. I want to thank my co-author, Christopher Graves - Presdient of Ogilvy PR in Asia. Chris wrote another great article specific to Asia that you can also find on the site - The New PR - Leveraging Digital Influence to Drive Sales and Reputation.

How to Scale Social Media Marketing #1

There are two big questions in relation to using social media on the minds of most experienced marketers: scale and measurement. This is about achieving scale.

Scale

Most marketers believe in the superior persuasive ability of word of mouth marketing. They recognize social media as a digital platform that expands the impact of WOM and also makes it measureable and, therefore, "budget-able." Still, everyone wants to know how you can significantly expand the reach and impact of your efforts and how you can operationalize enough of your effort to hope to get the ROI in the neighborhood of rational. So there is scale to impact and scale of operation. At the same time you are trying to achieve scale, you have to avoid underming the principles of word of mouth marketing that make teh discipline relevant in the first place - authenticity of opinion and the personality of the communications The last thing you want to do is to turn your social media effort into a email CRM program where you are trying to hit your target with enough frequency that a small percentage act but before you piss a majority off with a flood of email newlsetters.

Three Steps to Scale

We have been planning and deploying social media programs for over 4 years on top of another decade of digital marketing. The problem of scale became clear quite early. Here is one of our models for expanding the reach, enagement and impact of a social media-based word of mouth program.

1. Operationalize Influencer Outreach Without Losing the Personal Touch

Identifying and engaging relevant bloggers is a time-consuming practice. There are some rules of the road that just cannot be bent. There is no shortcut to thinking long and hard about why they should care about whatever your brand may want to talk about or involve them in. Still, you can go from reaching out to a handful of influencers to connecting with a hundred by adding some infrastructure to your effort: blogger CRM management, internal best practices for WOM marketers to follow (vs. rediscovering them again and again), and the sincere cultivation of long term relationships with a broad group of influencers. In short, you can sacle how you organize and execute your efforts. That will get you to a hundred.

2. Add a "Pull" Syndication Layer for Influencers & Fans

What if you could invite a few hundred to a few thousand influencers to stay connected with the brand over a sustained period of time? What if you could routinely send them content and offers that they found valuable enough to share and talk about because they were authentically "remarkable?" We have our own platform - Backstage Pass - which allows us to connect with a growing number of influencers online and continually give them a brand experience they find valuable. However you do it, establishing a network of brand fans that you routinely reach out to can help. They will choose to "pull" content or offers from you or engage in periodic conversations and that scales both for reach and for operations. (yes, you can use Facebook for this). This will get you to a few hundred at the G-zero layer.

3. Amplify Via Content-Driven Advertising

Word of Mouth and advertising work well together. Each enhances the perfomance of the other. For WOM programs, you can raise 'relevant awareness' quickly about some online conversation or experience by designing a media plan that delivers content and conversation through the ad units not traditional display or search advertising. If you are having a conversation in a popular women's social network on summer vacation travel for a automotive brand, ad units that pull RSS feeds of the latest posts from bloggers on the subject and drive to the hub of conversation help. This lets a strategic (read: cheap) ad buy amplify the conversation without spoiling the experience with unrelated brand advertising. Conversly, you will find that those ads perform better than average when placed in proximity to the "earned" conversation in the social web. Now you are reaching thousands directly and even more via the pass-along of your initial G-zero layer.

Other Information on scaling social media:

• Scaling social media programs  - Beeline Labs

• Does Social Media Scale? - Servant of Chaos

• Social media marketing's scalability problem - Being Peter Kim

Helping Me Get Green Simply & Socially

A lot of brands are jumping on the bandwagon by embracing issues surrounding green, sustainability, and good-fo-the-environment. Agencies (including Ogilvy with the Greenery ) are setting up prcatices to better communicate 'greenness'. Some brands are sincere and have changed business practices to provide a more "green" approach and impact. Others just want the credit.

One thing many could explore is to help all of us citizens improve our personal impact on the environment. That means giving us tools or information that we can use. I doubt anyone believes this is anyone's job but rather will succed when we all do our part. Together we can win. And that is good news for most brands who want to build stronger bonds with their customers. By being of-use to us (customers) in terms of helping us to reduce our carbon footprint, for example, brands help us achieve something we find valuable. That's a brand-bonding opportunity.

Climate Culture Makes it Easy

Climate Culture is a Web2.0 social network-enhanced tool to help me reduce my family carbon footprint. It was developed by a group of Ivy League-plus grads and it's board of advisores is dominated by Yalie profs (oh, and Ed Begley - who apparently dropped the "Jr." from hsi name a while back).

On the surface, Climate Culture's main attraction appears to be a virtual representation of your world as an island. That's not the best thing it has going for it. In fact, that "virtual space" visual was one reason I was sure that I would hate it. 3D interfaces that mimic the space we breathe in are not good interfaces for most utility computing. When we were developing some of the earliest interactive TV shopping mall interfaces in 1991, we tried these 3D replicas of malls that were just horrible user experiences. Imagine if Amazon required you to walk down a hallway, open a door, "talk" to an avatar....you get the picture.

But Climate Culture's virtual island makes sense and, more importantly, doesn't suck. That's mostly because it's not the main interface. They use very simple and smart Web 2.0 menus. As you calculate your initial carbon footprint, you get to walk through a terrific list of tactics to reduce it. This list is magic. They are helping me think of ways to take actions - from big to small - and then giving me an idea of the impact. I earn points for answering questions and can reduce my footprint by acknowledging those things I already do or are willing to commit to doing.  (Not sure I can realistically 'reduce my Internet use' but that's only good for 51 lbs of CO2 a year whereas using a solar-powered lawnmower is good for 63).

What else could they do:

• Make the list more portable. I want to access in Facebook and on my Blackberry.

• Give me a way to challenge someone within the community or, more importantly, someone from the social Web to meet goals (e.g. "I bet I can earn 100o points by Friday...")
• Let me advocate for Climate Culture. Give me badges or apps to embed in my blogs et al.
• Create a sponsorable application for brands. Allow Brand X to show their support for Climate Culture and the mission of helping us all reduce our footprint while highlighting what they or their product contributes.