Digital Influence Mapping Project

Great Measurement Event in Dublin Now

I met Damien Mulley (@damienmulley) a few years back when I first visited Ireland to work with our team here. He is one of the earliest folks to get serious about social and has been sharing that with brands and organization since. He took a bunch of us to a wonderful dinner last night at Chapter One - a worthwhile WOM story, in and of itself. 

He also runs two great events in Ireland and today is one of them - Measurement.ie. I will be keynoting later on and am looking forward to a lot of sessions including the next one from Matt Morrison (@mediaczar) from Starvest. I saw that he actually has an homage slide to Robert Cialdini in his deck. 

Measurement Kevlar: The Master Markleter's Armor for 2013

We'll see how my session is received (just gave it this am to a closed group of brands who were very engaged). I wanted to share what i see as the big measurement jobs to be done for major brands this year. Some of it is advanced thinking yet still, it's time. Here's the section titles:

Cultivated Brand Advocacy - Time to proactively design, execute and measure organized brand advocacy programs

Integrated Social Media Impact - The customer journey is complex. We buy based on lot of influences from word of mouth (often via social media) to advertising to media relations. Its time to measure the impact of social media within intergrated programs to understand its effect/contribution to brand metrics and actual sales. 

Everyday Social Media Measurement - We can measure the performance and efficacy of social-centered programs today. We have a model. You have a model. It's harder work than most established measurement model but time for us to get limber and get busy. 

Anyhow, I will share the story/presentation later on.

Now, back to the conference which you can follow via teh sponsor Hashtag #DoneDealSocial

I Need a Rockstar – VP of Business Dev and Content

Social@Ogilvy grows. I need an exceptional “social/digital strategist on-the-rise” to work directly with me at our global center as the VP of Content and Business Development.  As we enable a world’s worth of social and digital strategists and specialists to do awesome work for Ford, IBM, Nestlé, Caterpillar and more, I need a skilled marketer who understands how to create great social and digital programs and who knows how to create great content that scales what we do. This is the content that we use globally to design and deliver great work. From helping document our 3^rd generation planning framework to drafting our latest POV on Google+ to creating award-winning case studies, content is king and this person knows how to write it and produce it.

It’s a mix of brand-facing work and team-facing enablement with a common goal of expanding what we do for our clients and our next clients.   As we evolve an 8-year young practice, this magical person will work very closely with me and other Social@Ogilvy leaders to guide the next phase of growth. You will be creating and guiding the creation of content that we use ourselves. 

If you want to grow a start-upy business within a great brand (Ogilvy), know how to tell great stories and write super-well, love building business and inventing what’s next and know how to roll up your own sleeves and get stuff done, you should send me an email. Include your LinkedIn url and answer three questions ever so briefly:

1. One social program you admire but didn’t create
2. What is your best piece of content that you created over the last 12 months
3. How are you and I connected in some way

 

Send me your stuff: john.bell@ogilvy.com

Include “Rockstar” in the subject line. I'm serious. 

We Need Big Data People (More Than the Data, Itself)

For all of the hullabaloo about BIG DATA (so BIG it requires capital letters), the tangible examples remain ghost-like and hard to grip. Yes, I am sure that all the wonderful data-crunching recommendations I receive when logged into Amazon are valid examples. I even believe the data collection, mashing and outputs that drive Progressive’s Snapshot (collects data on how you and 1mm other people drive to build a personalized insurance rate) is a decent example of BIG DATA applied.

Still, we need more examples to better understand its potential and what are the best practices of applying BIG DATA to business.HBR has a section online dedicated to just this. It features stories on predicting movie blockbusters via data and...well, not too many more examples actually.  

A story in the NY Times this past weekend highlighted the use of data to derive insights from literature.

A study from the University of Nebraska used technology to crunch 3600 19^th century literary novels to reveal that, among other things, Jane Austen and Sir Walter Scott are the proverbial ‘trail head’ of influence on other writers.

“The study, which involved statistical parsing and aggregation of thousands of novels, made other striking observations. For example, Austen’s works cluster tightly together in style and theme, while those of George Eliot (a k a Mary Ann Evans) range more broadly, and more closely resemble the patterns of male writers. Using similar criteria, Harriet Beecher Stowe was 20 years ahead of her time, said Mr. Jockers, whose research will soon be published in a book, “Macroanalysis: Digital Methods and Literary History” (University of Illinois Press).”

 

Big Data People

My vision of BIG DATA applied is not some automated process where if you simply combine the right massive feeds of data, even crunching them via some mind-bending algorithm, that actionable meaning shoots out the other side. If I simply look at my own world of digital intelligence derived form behavior and content online, it is all about the human analysis that converts it into meaning.

“Quantitative tools in the humanities and the social sciences, as in other fields, are most powerful when they are controlled by an intelligent human. Experts with deep knowledge of a subject are needed to ask the right questions and to recognize the shortcomings of statistical models.

“You’ll always need both,” says Mr. Jockers, the literary quant. “But we’re at a moment now when there is much greater acceptance of these methods than in the past. There will come a time when this kind of analysis is just part of the tool kit in the humanities, as in every other discipline.””

 We need to be growing new hybrid professionals who understand data analysis but understand other things as well.  Just look at assistant professor Matthew Jockers.  His qualifications span two unlikely worlds.

“Mr. Jockers, 46, personifies the digital advance in the humanities. He received a Ph.D. in English literature from Southern Illinois University, but was also fascinated by computing and became a self-taught programmer. Before he moved to the University of Nebraska last year, he spent more than a decade at Stanford, where he was a founder of the Stanford Literary Lab, which is dedicated to the digital exploration of books.“   

These guys and gals won’t graduate out of some “BIG DATA meets marketing” program, to focus on my industry as an example. We need to train and grow these experts now by investing, in my industry’s case, in “Digital Intelligence Teams” who are working with data sources everyday and applying them to real work. This applied innovation is where new, valuable capabilities will be born. It is also where the BIG DATA People will come from.

(image: thank you Brett Shollenberger for the perfect pic)

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Why I Love the New MySpace

Yup, they’re back (The Constellations, above, are a great band in the service). Many in the trades will get snarky about the rising from the ashes of the flameout social network that lost its way. In the apparent triumph of Facebook as the primary social plumbing of our lives, they might be right. Many more will criticize the celebrity backing of Justin Timberlake as a hail-mary pass of brand beyond hope.

I don’t think MySpace should be mistaken for Twinkies. That product brand is part of our history but hopelessly out of step with our healthful present. The New MySpace (I shall call it the “New MySpace” for about a year and then we can go back to just saying “MySpace”) is trying to be something new while at the same time getting back to its knitting – music.

 

Beta Beta

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot that’s messed up here. While wonderfully visual (I love the big type in the search function), the interface is a messy work-in-progress. Still, I give them credit for trying to mesh the big picture-swipes of the tablet world with an almost simple dashboard design.

Building a playlist that is a mix of songs, videos and full albums is do-able. The significance of what are “Connections” is not clear. That is the primary activity like Facebook’s “Like” or Twitter’s “Follow.” I can Connect with another user by also with any type of media. I got tired connecting to all the Nick Cave songs displayed. Unfortunately, no matter what or who I connected to, nothing ever appeared in my stream. Then I realized the interesting user experience twist – it’s all based upon a horizontal scroll. Clearly a way to distinguish from Facebook but also connect to the horizontal scroll/swipe of iTunes and many tablet functions including our own Web site at Social@Ogilvy.

Music Fans First

Upon registering, you will be asked to self-identify to a stack of creative titles (or the ubiquitous “fan” category). Even though they hint at serving visual artists, too, the actual content and experience appears to be all music focus now. Again, that’s the territory that “old” MySpace staked out at one time.

As a music fan, I hate being force fed a ‘top-of-the-charts’ experience. That’s what we have today in the service. I respect Beyonce, Adele, and even Justin Timberlake. That’s just not my turf. I suspect this is simply how the service launches. It took me only a few minutes to find J Roddy Walston tracks and a simply awesome Social Distortion video.

 

Pandora and YouTube and, someday, Tumblr?

Forget Facebook. That’s not the territory for the New MySpace. They seem to have staked out some interesting white space wedged between Pandora and YouTube. I love being able to build a playlist that is a mix of songs, albums and videos. It plays in the background. Once in a while, I will watch the video. Of course, Pandora’s magic sauce is the recommendations from their wonderful human-powered DNA analysis. Hard to beat that for music discovery. Currently, there is no real way to discover new music short of browsing endless pages of album art and photo thumbnails or selecting a handful of “related” links. I like recommendations pushed to me.

I have a confession. I love music videos. As corny as they can be, I grew up when MTV was born (“old” MTV) and worked on some of the first music videos seen on the channel. There just isn’t a great experience to find and watch music videos. I know YouTube has everything, but I like a bit of quality curation. I imagine that is what I get in the New MySpace.

Clearly, New MySpace starts with music and music fans. The ambition seems to be a space for all types of creators/creatives. In that regard they may be aiming for some of the territory currently blowing up in Tumblr where we are all asked to “Follow the World’s Creators.” Interestingly, it may just be the user experience that keeps those services apart. Tumblr is the epitome of simple (I love my Tumblr – Smoldering Embers). My Space requires more investment.  Tumblr is also great as it holds wonderful content – often visual – that the world can access and link to. I tried for 10 minutes to send a link to my wife to the Social Distortion video and gave up.

We’ll See

I don’t know if the New MySpace will flourish and survive. I don’t think anyone knows. It feels fresh to me. I hope that it evolves to allow more connections outside the service (e.g. Facebook Connect, Tweets).

I suppose part of their success depends on their ability to lure artists back into MySpace to interact (The Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds page is empty). I don’t think Top40 or even Top500 radio artists can carry the service. Lastly, many services have tried to navigate the licensing and legal quagmire of music rights and ownership and died trying. I hope they know what they are doing.

If you are a music fan, you have to try it.

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Designers' Views of What Happens at CES 2013

This video captures the POVs of several noteworthy designers on how interaction design changes as we move towards the "Internet of things." I find this a refreshing conversation about what I sense is being revealed/wrestled with on the floor of CES 2013

 

Filtering CES 2013: This Marketer’s Guide to What Matters

This week 156,000 people and 3000 companies will form a virtual mosh pit at CES 2013 in Las Vegas. What was once all about devices – TVs, audio, phones, computers – is broadening every year to include new technologies that don’t look like the traditional devices. Software in all its many forms will play a huge role.

CES is evolving to include all sorts of more embedded & connected technology (e.g. cars, home automation), key “human verticals” like health and fitness, and everywhere access (mobile TV). All of this offers glimpses of potential new human behaviors. But at such a scale, it begs thoughtful review and analysis even to find the most interesting bets. 

A marketers lens

Much of the show will remain focused on introducing devices with incremental feature enhancements. Ultra 3D is a good example, Any tablet that may be revealed is another. I respect that someone may be interested in those devices and each may represent potential big business for someone. I am much more interested in specialty areas.  I am not attending this year, but several people from the Ogilvy and the Social@Ogilvy teams will be. And while I believe that ‘being there’ will be the best experience, I am convinced that many of us can stay connected to select coverage of the show and learn more about what matters to us thanks to those brave souls trekking through the record 1.9 million square feet of exhibit space, endless presentations, interminable social events and more.

Best ways to follow the event

To plan out how you can tap into Ogilvy’s feed from the show and the most relevant coverage, check out our post – Suit Up For CES 2013: Your Coverage Guide.

 

Seven Topics to Watch at this Year's CES 2013 

More Social TV and the Second Screen Experience

77% of the time we are watching TV, we are simultaneously on another device.  22% of that time is “complimentary usage” meaning that whatever you are doing on the PC, tablet or smartphone has something to do with the TV (vs multitasking like checking email).

How will technology continue to shape this complimentary behavior? Twitter made some wise moves by really courting television media companies to integrate Twitter handles and/or hashtags to inspire a two screen experience. Services like GetGlue helped people build community around programs they love (i.e. “check-ins” to Walking Dead).

What will emerge at CES that further enables a SocialTV or complimentary second screen experience? One reason I am keen to see innovations here is because people have already changed their behavior and demonstrated demand. There are plenty of other technology innovations that did not catch on. Will 3D TV, now Ultra 3D, really go mass? Check out the focus on 2nd Screen Experience. 

 

More Connected Automotive

We all spend so much time in our cars. Smart connectivity and/or new behaviors that enhance that experience via utility or entertainment without introducing additional safety concerns are a big deal. We work with Ford. I own 2 Ford vehicles. I love what Sync and My Ford Touch have made possible. Sync plus Siri is pretty great. Finding a restaurant and calling for a reservation via voice commands and with 1 initiated step and 1-2 voice reactions is a bonafide improvement on tasks.

What’s next? I am productivity geek. I think in terms of time chunks. An hour long drive to me could easily be 20 minutes of voice-accessed email, 20 minutes of Mashable headlines and stories and 20 minutes of the new Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds recording (due next month).

Google’s great Multiscreen World research preso (get it here), points out how we initiate an activity on one device and continue on another.  How will the “buyer journey” change as I seamlessly continue a shopper activity started on a PC and moved to my drive to store/pick up/purchase location? (e.g. “hey Best Buy, I will be there in 20 minutes and can a TV sales specialist just show me three of the 60” 4K TVs that I tagged online?”)

Check out the automotive focus here. 

 

Next Gen Entertainment Content

Content marketing is the new “social media”. It is capturing the interest of marketers and will only be eclipsed when we actually know what to do with “big data” on an everyday basis. In its hugeness, CES 2013 has sections dedicated to content and specifically, they have a track called Entertainment Matters. If you want to get a sampling of what Hollywood-centered content creators are doing and thinking in terms of creating, delivering and monetizing new forms of content, check some of these sessions.

Our own Doug Scott, President of Ogilvy Entertainment,  will be driving a session Brands: This Is How You Work With Content Creators.

 

Attentive Computing

Computers/devices that can understand what I want to do by deciphering where my attention is, where my eyes are looking, where my hand points will change how we interact and rely on technology. (Check out an MIT view of Attentive Visual Interfaces here).

A neat example of this is Tobii Technologies “gaze interaction peripheral” which essentially will add eye gaze to the ways in which we control our devices. Freeing computer control from our hands driving some type of interface could lead to many unanticipated behaviors well beyond controlling Master Chief in Halo.

 

Connected and Enabled Healthcare and Fitness

Nike Fuelband adorns the wrists of at least half of my colleagues, or so it seems. Devices like the Fuelband or the Basis Band which launched at least year’s CES, are the tip of the iceberg in terms of how we will get healthier.  I also believe we have yet to see the fullest integration of game mechanics into everyday behaviors. What about a family healthy eating scorecard displayed on the refrigerator door (remember the screens that were integrated in high-end refrigerators?). Or community billboards of Basis Band data to pit neighbor against neighbor, so-to-speak.

The Digital Health Summit within CES 2013 will feature sessions that cover these devices but also how big data can be used to affect health behaviors, whether sharing can affect outcomes and how pervasive wireless devices can connect those with chronic health issues to health care maintenance that makes sense.

 

Appy Hour

If toaster ovens and VCRs answered what will we do with this great OS called ‘electricity’, then applications answer the question of what do we do with this great platform called pervasive computing.

At CES 2013, the Appy Hour will pit 25 teams against each other to develop a winning app and win the $25k prize. You can watch and hear CEA President Gary Shapiro @garyshapiro discuss the upcoming show with Mashable here. 

 

Eureka Park

It’s just as interesting who is forgoing their big exhibitor floor presence. No Microsoft. No HP. No Dell. No Apple. But clearly there are many more there including this year’s Eureka Park – a space dedicated to small startups. If part of the purpose of attending CES 2013 is to gauge possible trends, you are juts as likely to glimpse the seeds of one in Eureka Park as with the established companies still banging out size variations on tablets.

 

Celebrities

Clearly the most impressive draw (serious draw) is Vinton Cerf.  Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist. While I would love to see Lemmy from Motorhead who is there on behalf of Krussel (cases for electronics), I could pass on Snooki and some of the other celebs there just for booth draw.

(IMAGES respectfully taken from the CES Instagram feed)

Becoming Social Leaders at the European Committee of the Regions in Brussels

This past year, I had the good fortune to speak at the EuroPCom Conference on Public Communication held adjacent to the European Parliament in Brussels. This happened concurrent with a EU leaders session and immediately after the Nobel Prize announced that the EU would be presented with the Nobel Peace Prize for 2012. One thrill was not only meeting great leaders like Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission, but inspiring her to take photos of my presentation from my return monitor.

 

My POV - Government communicators can learn a tremendous amount from the brands, agile non-profits and scrappy start-ups all innovating in digital and social media.  Too often, government communicators feel their circumstance is ‘terminally unique,’ that nothing can be learned from the Nestle’s and Ford’s of the world.

Brands are spending billions to figure our how to engage people via social media. Investment firms invest billions in start-ups attempting to build businesses and disrupt the way we get things done via digital. It would be a shame if public communicators and leaders turned a blind eye to all the learnings from these efforts.

The result? Well, hopefully a good session overall. But more importantly, I walked away with a fresh understanding and appreciation for the innovations and efforts of the folks working for the European Commission, the European Council, and the European Parliament.

Learning is a two-way street.  Who will you learn from this year?  

The Public Leader’s Dilemma - How to Become a Social Organization from Social@Ogilvy

Facebook, Amazon and Others Push Socially Enabled Gifts

My sister’s birthday is on December 27^th – every year. Since childhood, she has been shortchanged with relatives doubling up her holiday gifts as her birthday gifts. Sometimes people even forget in the post-holiday stupor. The net takeaway for all these years is clearly fewer gifts than for those of us with neatly spaced August birthdays.

This year, thanks to Facebook’s new gift-giving functionality, I made sure my sister got something nice and on time.

Facebook, Amazon and a few third party services like Giftivo, are connecting gift-buying and sending to social data in our graph to make it easier than ever to buy a terrestrial gift (or digital gift like music or books) and get it to those celebrating their birthday. All services leverage your Facebook friend database and are therefore built on a common premise.

Three Key Improvements

 Mail order gift-giving and even digital ordering of such have existed for years.  I have been reading about disruptive business innovations in this month’s HBR. I am not sure this new gift-giving functionality by itself has risen to ‘disruptive status’. But there are three qualities to it that make it compelling.

 

1. Managing the stream of birthdays:   I can barely track my family birthdays. Every year, remembering my mom or dad’s birthday becomes “a thing.” Forget about the next concentric ring of close friends. Now, Facebook alerts me on my page, sends me an email, and publishes those birthdays on my Mac calendar function. That last innovation – the connection to my core calendar has been a godsend. Diabolically, I am now emotionally tied to Facebook as I reap the benefits of being a good birthday-wisher.

The second most important management function? When I gift, it pings my sister for her address which she then inputs to get the gift sent to her. Like birthdays, I cannot seem to track people’s terrestrial addresses. Yes, I could get my hands on it if push-came-to-shove, but it would entail awkward steps like writing the address down on a piece of paper to move it from one database to a web form. 

 

2. Amazon/Facebook-like simplicity: I always associated simple ecommerce functions with Amazon. They are the touchstone of all things wonderful in ecommerce. Now, Facebook is catching up in simplicity. Clearly their years of interface design, trial and error and commitment to a “facebook-standards” model where use cases are handled with common interface procedures is paying off. The whole transaction was short and painless. 

 

3. Amplification: While Facebook asked permission, I did choose to publish the fact that I got sis a gift via her wall. First off, she is notified immediately by whatever Facebook alerts she has enabled that I got her something. So, the mere fact that I bought her something is no spoiler. The post did not, of course, pull a “Beacon” and reveal what I bought her. But now, others in my family know that I acknowledged her birthday and perhaps they ought to get off their duffs and do the same.

Ideally, the system would ask her for her feedback on the gift and prompt her to post that mini-review on her wall. Once that functionality is there, brands will so love this part of the social commerce virtuous circle.

 

The Devil is in the Details

Social Commerce made the point of wondering why Facebook allows others like Amazon and Giftivo to deliver the same basic functionality. I suppose that it is possible that Facebook might shut them down from doing this but since apps have been using our Facebook friend lists for years, I am not sure how feasible this is.

The spoils may go to those who get it right or get it best. And while Amazon is a clear favorite, I got lost in their interface to make this happen. Here’s a few things anyone delivering this type of socially connected commerce ought to get right:

Simple interface and process – This is new territory. No one wants to wonder halfway through whether the gift they just bought will end up shipping to themselves vs. the recipient (That was my Amazon confusion).

Great gift selection – Facebook admittedly has a limited selection of typical giftees in their collection. Amazon has the power of the endless store (as long and wide as the Amazon) and they have the power of the Wish lists that members have established. That should give them a clear advantage.

Relevant gift selection – Giftivo sorts through a user’s Facebook interests to assemble a set of gift recommendations. It’s the right idea but all services suffer from a lack of transparency on what exactly is driving their recommendations. Until we get used to these systems, we could use all benefit from some better translation of what drive a recommendation. Pandora tells me why they are playing an artist by connecting the dots to one of my selected artists. Amazon tells you, generally, why they put certain recommendations forward.

Social feedback – Most times, I just want to know that whomever I got a gift for received it. I want to know they loved it but I know pushing for that type of outcome can be dangerous (because we might have blown it and gotten something they don’t want). Still, it only makes sense that this type of gift-oriented buying become more and more socially enabled. My sister should be able to post a quick ‘thanks for the gift’ or a product review or even add me to her list of future gift-recipients.

 

What’s in it for Brands

• Sponsoring holiday gift giving: Victoria’s Secret brings you Valentines Day (better than the amorphous MasterCard sponsorship of the current function)
• Special gift collections: The Godiva chocolate store for Mom’s Day
• Personalized stores: The John Bell Store from Amazon featuring the eclectic collection of independent films, Todd McFarlane-like action figures, classic punk and more…
• Targeted post/ads reminding individuals of upcoming birthdays (and the product prompts that match)
• Apply gift model to spontaneous, for-me buying: When Hugo Boss finally has teh black jeans I live in for sale, they should ping me and give the chance to stock up from wherever I am including Facebook 

A Simple Way to Think About ‘Social Business’ in 2013

Last week, I published a ‘white paper’ capturing what I feel is a useful executive-level way to think about making a business or organization more social. My main point is that few executives really care abut the abstract idea of making an enterprise ‘social.’ They care about business health and profitability.

I do not think of myself as a ‘social media expert.’ I am a marketing and communications professional experienced at changing how we market and communicate for better results. It just so happens that digital and social media are big parts of my toolbox.

The more we frame up what digital and social can do to achieve valuable business results or conditions, the more executive adoption we will see.

Check out Page 7: Building Belief

It’s about building belief in how social and digital practices and technologies can improve valuable business outcomes – outcomes that any business leader would say, “yeah, I gotta get me some of that…”

Check out Page 9: Where to Start

This is a place any business can start with our without an outside consultant who has experience. Beware the complex frameworks and exploratory consulting gigs. Consultants can help but lets not convert this into a laborious planning model divorced from action. 

Time to Trade Up to A Social Business Strategy from Social@Ogilvy

Three Social Business Mega-trends for Brand Marketers in 2013

There are some big, significant changes happening at some of the biggest consumer and b2b marketers. We are all seeing them and participating in making them happen. There are four that may be slow-moving but unmistakable in their path forward.

 

All hail the Content Factory

Marketers like Intel, IBM, Coca Cola, Nissan and Ford are all aggressively expanding their capacity to create, distribute and optimize content as an integral part of their marketing and communications programs. We have all been talking about it for a while. But the complexity comes in the doing it. Some will call it a content factory some may approach it slightly differently and call it a brand newsroom. Strangely, I often hear marketers calling it a ‘newsroom’ as if they have just discovered applying editorial principles to marketing (I think most communications departments walk in with this understanding).

Intel has their IQ model (see comments on their model). Ford, Nissan (see Nissan's Content Factory) and Coca Cola (see Coke's Content Factory) have something called a “content factory.” Common elements often include:

• Conscious story planning against brand and sales goals
• True multimedia content creation from videos to images to infographics
• Hiring brand journalists to mine for stories within the organization
• Inventing a data-driven approach
• Thoughtful publishing of content to drive up engagement scores in social platforms like Facebook and Twitter

In 2013, we will see more brands declaring a content factory approach and those that have been doing it for a while we start to codify the measureable advantage. That means they will prove out the investment in dollars and cents and in the process start winning awards. Once the associations and award organizations adopt and elevate “content marketing” awards a virtuous cycle sets in and more marketers will jump on board.

 

The Community Manager as a Business Leader

We talk about the next generation of Community Managers (CM 3.0) having responsibility for Facebook ad spend. That is just one responsibility that is coming. But just that one elevates the role significantly as the premium offerings in Facebook and Twitter are increasingly becoming a hybrid of art and science (see my thoughts on the CM payscale). At the end of the day, these ad platforms are about delivering valuable content to more people. The CM 3.0, responsible for story content in social channels, will want to control that.

At the same time, brands are struggling with the tension of wanting a consistent voice and behavior in their Facebook wall or Twitter handle and the need to map the type of interactions back to the way they are organized. We see brands distinguishing between “lightweight” content created by the Community Manager, higher-investment content (“heavyweight”) created by agencies and brand marketers and service-oriented interactions managed by customer service.

If the value of a brand community is measured by engagement and brand preference (favorability) wins times reach (acquired fans or social advertising) divided by service dissatisfaction, then perhaps the resources to optimize all of that ought to be in the hands of one responsible party. That doesn’t mean that multiple parties don’t publish into a Facebook page. It does mean that we put the business responsibility of the community into one CM 3.0.

Facebook Studio already gives out awards and ‘nods’ to brands using the platform well. We see a rising trend in the distinction of quality interaction and content in social networks versus just being active. This will put a premium on strong community management. (see this post on 'best and worst' in CM job descriptions)

 

Common elements of this trend include:

• Formal community management training (we see this in our own training curriculum and in associations like WOMMA’s community managers training program)
• Social Playbooks and eLearning programs to scale best practices and compliance
• Clearer RACI (responsible, accountable, consulted, informed) mapping around community management
• Discretionary Facebook ad budgets in the hands of the CM
• Increased investments in infrastructure technology from Spredfast to Salesforce.com Marketing Cloud
• Establishing the CM “community of practice” to develop defensible expertise (if Unilever, Coke and Nestle all have defensible IP around brand building – e.g. Brand Building the Nestle Way – how soon before they add chapters on community building that reflect their learnings and best practices bespoke to their brand(s)?)

 

More Social Data & Community Regional Centers

Building on the publicity behind the Dell and Gatorade “Command Center/Mission Control” of the past couple of years, more consumer brands will establish regional  centers responsible for listening and responding to communities and multiple responsibilities around converting digital  and social data into actionable insights.

The reason the examples already in the marketplace have not triggered a flood of brands establishing these centers yet is the complexity of organizations. Social listening and data analysis serves several established departments from marketing, communications, customer service and product development. That means multiple budget holders and business “owners” of the resource. Without a leadership mandate from above or a particularly charismatic leader in one discipline, it’s tough to get these centers off the ground.

But as business interest shifts from the desire to listen and learn from customers to driving advantage from “big data”, business leaders will find a renewed interest in making these social centers work.

Brands are struggling with formalizing the best way to get insights out of listening. After investing in technology like Radian6 and Sysomos, they discovered that turning data into useful information and/or insights remained elusive. The other big challenge is figuring out the division of labor on community engagement (see previous business megatrend).

 

Common elements of this trend include:

• Building out physical listening “studios” in key markets across the world
• Investing in training to develop aptitude to analyze digital and social data
• Partnering with benchmarking partners like Socialbakers, Unmetric and SimplyMeasured
• Visualizing data to make it "yummier" for executives

 

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