Digital Influence Mapping Project

The Quality of the Conversation on Facebook Matters

Last September Michael Scissons, president-CEO of Syncapse, used data to reveal that “Engagement on the Facebook walls of leading brands is down 22%.” He plotted engagement metrics on the top 300 brand pages. His hypothesis is that brands are not delivering long term value in favor of quick bumps from overuse of coupons and offers.

More recently the Facebook Timeline innovations seemed to improve overall engagement. According to Simply Measured, the change brought a 14% Increase in Fan Engagement. The format and the much industry-discussed launch called for lots more pictures and video content which saw a 65% increase in engagement (people interactive with multimedia content).

Are we good or are we in trouble? Are brands delivering the best quality interaction and value via their page content or is it all devolving? Are learning the hard lessons of the difference between a Facebook relationship and a broadcast channel?

Quality matters
My hypothesis is that many brands are not doing all they can to create a sustained and valuable relationship with their fans, followers, customers via these still new channels (facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc…). They too often fall into a habit of just broadcasting out content. Since the metrics say pictures and video do well, they try and create as much of that as possible. Sometimes they fly by the numbers alone without context. Rohit Bharagava has a new compelling book out now called Likenomics. It is not about Facebook. He makes a great point about marketers who steer completely by data without regard for context in the section, “Why Context Matters (And Your Sticky Website Actually Stinks.” He cites John Hayes from American Express with a thoughtful quote – “We tend to overvalue the things we can measure and undervalue the things we cannot.”  I would add one word in there - “We tend to overvalue the things we can measure easily and undervalue the things we cannot.”

Marketers are looking at readily available data on what drives the most interactions. They are not always weighing the benefits of a varied and enduring relationship with fans. I hope everyone knows that a small number of fans in any fanbase routinely do most of the interacting with content. That is a standard quality of many communities. Keeping that loyal core involved is valuable and just good business. And, yes, when asked, consumers cite coupons or offers as the number one reason they follow a brand. Again, let’s not over simplify and make every interaction a “10% off coupon.” That flies in the face of everything we know about building valuable brands.

The data should guide us. Not rule us.

Relevance too

AdAge recently needlessly took a jab at the social media specialists who champion a more conversational approach to wall content.

“Among the weirdness Facebook's existence has loosed upon the world is the idea that it's OK, and perhaps even good business, for brands to sidle up and give you verbal balm for your case of the Mondays, ask for predictions on the big game and offer random thoughts on things that have not a whit to do with their product or service.

The touchy-feely strategy is meant to be conversational -- human, even. But new data from Facebook itself tell us that what looks good on the social-media guru's presentation deck isn't the best approach for making Facebook work for the brand.”

Their true point and the point of the Facebook study is that content that relates to the brand – the reason people liked the page in the first place – matters. Users engage more with content relevant to the page topic which just happens to be the brand.

Clearly, relevant content is key, yet a conversational tone true to the brand can help as well.

Create the right mix
Different wall content drives different fan action. Likes, Shares, Comments all have value but not equal value. Object Likes (liking a piece of content vs. a page, also called “fanning”) are often devalued by brands. I had a spirits client who dropped them from KPI metrics since he felt, rightly so, that it was too thoughtless a gesture and was not indicative of any serious engagement. ‘Shares’ show up in your wall and therefore take bigger advantage of the network effect available in Facebook.

As Matt Creamer put it in the recent AdAge article, “Facebook to Brands: You're Posting Stuff Wrong”,

“Another important finding was that asking people to like a post indeed yielded more likes, but it didn't do much for the other forms of engagement, including the all-important share action that sends a brand's post into a users' timelines for all of their followers to see. Compared with likes, shares represent a bigger investment from the consumer and occur less frequently. Thus, shares are often going to be more meaningful from a marketing perspective. After all, they suggest the brand is tapping into that friend-of-fan network that's central to Facebook's viral proposition.”

We have found 7 simple types of content that each drive different types of user engagement. (See 7 Types of Facebook posts here.) Our Community Managers use them creatively and responsively with communities to drive long term and immediate actions. We listen and respond. If we drove simply by the data without context or a long term commitment then we would simply post remarkable picture after remarkable video – multimedia driving the most ‘shares’ in the Facebook study.

Quality of the relationship matters. Quality of the content, too. Brands can embrace a more fine-tuned and, yes, conversational but not irrelevant, cadence to their communications. Just using the Facebook wall as a broadcast channel will never justify the huge valuation in the Facebook IPO nor  the substantial bets that brands have made in their multi-million dollar ‘partnerships’ with Facebook.

The Quality of the Conversation on Facebook Matters

Last September Michael Scissons, president-CEO of Syncapse, used data to reveal that “Engagement on the Facebook walls of leading brands is down 22%.” He plotted engagement metrics on the top 300 brand pages. His hypothesis is that brands are not delivering long term value in favor of quick bumps from overuse of coupons and offers.

More recently the Facebook Timeline innovations seemed to improve overall engagement. According to Simply Measured, the change brought a 14% Increase in Fan Engagement. The format and the much industry-discussed launch called for lots more pictures and video content which saw a 65% increase in engagement (people interactive with multimedia content).

Are we good or are we in trouble? Are brands delivering the best quality interaction and value via their page content or is it all devolving? Are learning the hard lessons of the difference between a Facebook relationship and a broadcast channel?

Quality matters
My hypothesis is that many brands are not doing all they can to create a sustained and valuable relationship with their fans, followers, customers via these still new channels (facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc…). They too often fall into a habit of just broadcasting out content. Since the metrics say pictures and video do well, they try and create as much of that as possible. Sometimes they fly by the numbers alone without context. Rohit Bharagava has a new compelling book out now called Likenomics. It is not about Facebook. He makes a great point about marketers who steer completely by data without regard for context in the section, “Why Context Matters (And Your Sticky Website Actually Stinks.” He cites John Hayes from American Express with a thoughtful quote – “We tend to overvalue the things we can measure and undervalue the things we cannot.”  I would add one word in there - “We tend to overvalue the things we can measure easily and undervalue the things we cannot.”

Marketers are looking at readily available data on what drives the most interactions. They are not always weighing the benefits of a varied and enduring relationship with fans. I hope everyone knows that a small number of fans in any fanbase routinely do most of the interacting with content. That is a standard quality of many communities. Keeping that loyal core involved is valuable and just good business. And, yes, when asked, consumers cite coupons or offers as the number one reason they follow a brand. Again, let’s not over simplify and make every interaction a “10% off coupon.” That flies in the face of everything we know about building valuable brands.

The data should guide us. Not rule us.

Relevance too

AdAge recently needlessly took a jab at the social media specialists who champion a more conversational approach to wall content.

“Among the weirdness Facebook's existence has loosed upon the world is the idea that it's OK, and perhaps even good business, for brands to sidle up and give you verbal balm for your case of the Mondays, ask for predictions on the big game and offer random thoughts on things that have not a whit to do with their product or service.

The touchy-feely strategy is meant to be conversational -- human, even. But new data from Facebook itself tell us that what looks good on the social-media guru's presentation deck isn't the best approach for making Facebook work for the brand.”

Their true point and the point of the Facebook study is that content that relates to the brand – the reason people liked the page in the first place – matters. Users engage more with content relevant to the page topic which just happens to be the brand.

Clearly, relevant content is key, yet a conversational tone true to the brand can help as well.

Create the right mix
Different wall content drives different fan action. Likes, Shares, Comments all have value but not equal value. Object Likes (liking a piece of content vs. a page, also called “fanning”) are often devalued by brands. I had a spirits client who dropped them from KPI metrics since he felt, rightly so, that it was too thoughtless a gesture and was not indicative of any serious engagement. ‘Shares’ show up in your wall and therefore take bigger advantage of the network effect available in Facebook.

As Matt Creamer put it in the recent AdAge article, “Facebook to Brands: You're Posting Stuff Wrong”,

“Another important finding was that asking people to like a post indeed yielded more likes, but it didn't do much for the other forms of engagement, including the all-important share action that sends a brand's post into a users' timelines for all of their followers to see. Compared with likes, shares represent a bigger investment from the consumer and occur less frequently. Thus, shares are often going to be more meaningful from a marketing perspective. After all, they suggest the brand is tapping into that friend-of-fan network that's central to Facebook's viral proposition.”

We have found 7 simple types of content that each drive different types of user engagement. (See 7 Types of Facebook posts here.) Our Community Managers use them creatively and responsively with communities to drive long term and immediate actions. We listen and respond. If we drove simply by the data without context or a long term commitment then we would simply post remarkable picture after remarkable video – multimedia driving the most ‘shares’ in the Facebook study.

Quality of the relationship matters. Quality of the content, too. Brands can embrace a more fine-tuned and, yes, conversational but not irrelevant, cadence to their communications. Just using the Facebook wall as a broadcast channel will never justify the huge valuation in the Facebook IPO nor  the substantial bets that brands have made in their multi-million dollar ‘partnerships’ with Facebook.

Does Facebook Timeline Drive Up Engagement?

According to Simply Measured the answer is a clear “yes”. Their report shows strong Engagement-per-post gains for fifteen of the first-movers since the new feature set launched. Pages like Toyota, Red Bull, Macy’s, Ben & Jerry’s were amongst the top 10 or so in their limited review that gained anywhere from 38% to 156%. A small number of first-movers did not show gains. 

Pinned Posts and Multimedia

I am going to go out on a limb here and suggest that the two most impactful changes within the Timeline feature-set are pinned posts and the design demand for multimedia content. A third, the new ability for sponsored stories to appear in the wall (vs. the sidebar) will likely prove a big winner not just on acquisition but on engagement (people liking, commenting, clicking through to content). 

Pinned posts are great. They can keep more valuable content at the top of the page for those who visit. Facebook would like to increase the value of the brand page and the actual “visit.” This does a pretty good job. Community Managers can tell when a pinned post is starting to lose steam by the fall off of interactions.  Toyota kept their post on the Women in the World Summit sponsorship up for at least 10 days. That might be an easy choice on a corporate page where the CSR and CSR-like efforts of the company are one of the biggest draws (Toyota has model-specific brand pages which is the norm in that category). 

Clearly it is no news that pictures and video earn more attention and interaction. It took a “Timeline” design change that just begs for big pictures and embedded videos for brands to put the effort (and resources) behind it. 

Social Media Influence summarized the performance of multimedia: 

“Examining the figures in more detail, the study shows that, while engagement with status updates is down, Timeline has yielded a 65 percent increase in multimedia engagement (through videos and photos) and overall fan engagement is up by 14 percent.”

Timeline was a decent investment by the early-adopters. They had to pay for more images and video. They require expanded storytelling capabilities. Brands hungry to get the largest word of mouth impact (people sharing their content or “Talking about” in Facebook vernacular) will staff their pages with editors/community managers equipped to tell these more visual stories.   The Timeline changes are inevitable. That they actually seem to deliver some better levels of engagement when leveraged well, is encouraging. Brands are leaping in right and left and learning the level of investment necessary to make the most of these new features. You can get more here: 

The Hidden Implications of Facebook Timeline for Brands

Facebook Timeline Goes Live For All Brands — Are You Ready?

The Pay Scale of the Community Manager Just Went Up

Many of us participated in Facebook’s Marketing Summit last week. We shared some of our early view of the implications here. One of the byproducts of the integration of the new set of advertising offerings with page management is a more complex job and set of skills for the person managing that page. Chances are, you are not paying them enough.

History of Community Management

At the risk of sounding like the doddering old man, I remember when community managers lived on message boards. They got to know the members – the outspoken few and the culture of the many. Their “job” – sometimes a volunteer position – was to steward the community. They helped maintain a healthy environment but in many ways, their job was to stay out of the way of those drawn there to talk about their shared interests and affinities.

We’re talking AOL forums, the WELL or, in my case, the forums we had on Discovery.com back when we rediscovered the wreck of the Titanic.

It’s Just Conversation, Right?

With the dawn of the social network era, we began to launch a new wave of brand and affinity communities on Facebook, MySpace (wait for the comeback), Orkut and more. Forums still mattered. We debated whether services like Twitter and YouTube really represented communities. For branded Facebook pages, we saw the challenge differently than stewarding a community brought together based upon their love for crafting, snowboarding or Lykke Li because people were “joining” brand pages.

They wanted something from the brand not just interactions with others publishing on the page. We even called it “conversation management” to try and distinguish from the seemingly old-school images of message board mavens asking members to be more civil as they debated the merits of different quilting techniques. Managing a Facebook page seemed so simple. If anything, you needed to hire someone who “got it” (i.e. think “young person”) and was willing to talk back and forth with the vocal minority. I even heard of brands delegating the job to the interns.

Protecting Your Investment

Fast forward to last week. As more and more brands invest in social media and in their Facebook commitments alone, the job of Community Manager becomes increasingly important. We are starting to see the benefits to business from community and ‘social relationship management.’ Cultivating millions of addressable customers on a Facebook page and letting them know that a new flavor just launched or that they and they alone could get a special deal became very appealing from a business perspective. The ‘measurability’ of all this remains a work in progress. But only the most stick-in-the-mud, ROI-first stalwart question the likelihood that this would significantly change business. If you are going to invest conservatively 10’s of millions of dollars in Facebook advertising as many big consumer brands are doing (I would guess that today’s FMCGs are ‘playing’ with budgets for Facebook alone that are 2-4% of total marcom spend), then you ought not leave the hub of that experience in the hands of anyone less than a race car driver.

Community Business Director

The community manager needs to be able to control the content of ads and the deployment of the units. In Facebook terms, they are emphasizing “story” over “ads” and suggesting that all ads be some form of valuable and relevant content. It is not just a semantic distinction. As ads can now be delivered to the Facebook wall vs. just the ad “gutter,’ it is critical that this content live up the same demands we put on our best Facebook wall content. It must genuinely earn people’s attention and action. You can browse through Facebook’s new ad “Offers” here and it will paint a clear picture.

“Community Manager” is a title that comes with too much baggage. The job is important enough that we ought to at least amp it up to “Community Business Director.” Here are the key responsibilities and skills:

• Define a strategy that connects business objectives to community and business outcomes
• Create content of all sorts from hands-on responsibilities to the capacity to direct a network of content specialists (e.g. spec the right video by the right production company)
• Plan, create and deploy advertising as part of a paid, owned, earned strategy
• Manage customer, fan, stakeholder dialogue
• Connect across the business with experts who can answer community members and solve issues
• Have strong technical and tools expertise (get the most out of systems like Buddy Media, SpredFast and more)
• Analyze data to find insight and define business performance
• Apply an understanding of key public affairs issues and legal positions to sensitive conversations online

The job requires new skills. Just adding the advertising or media planning and buying integration requires a new set of skills that used to be outsourced to a media planning function. Add on top of that the business maturity to get the most out of the community investment and you have a more important job.

It may require more than tuning up the right individual. It will likely require an organizational solution like a “director” who directs the activities of many managers towards a business outcome. I feel lucky in that our organization already has these skills integrated. What will happen to the PR firms out there who have no integrated media planning function or the small social media boutiques who cannot leverage buying power or are missing some other critical element.

No doubt that the image of the community manager spawned from Facebook’s announcement may be a bit aspirational. Still, we are heading to a much more sophisticated model and the time to put that person or team in place is now. We have.

 

(thanks to insites consulting for the image of their great cake)

Social Shopping: Make My Philly Design Store, Please

Who really cares about fCommerce anyway? Social Shopping, sure. eCommerce, in general, of course. But all I am hearing about are storefronts that maybe connect to our social networks. Most ecommerce offerings have sharing functions or even Facebook open graph to allow buyers to broadcast their purchases or browsed products to their friends. I want something more.

There are some cool innovations. Even some innovative business models like Warby Parker’s disruptive approach to eyeglasses. But I was in Philly for the weekend and I wanted to buy local designers t-shirts, jewelry, messenger bags, unusual flotsam and/or prints. I love designers. Always have. When I travel, I like to find small design-focused businesses. I like to buy local and support the economy (great, high-minded view of shopping, don’t you think?)

So why don’t I have an app that collects designers in local markets wherever I travel? I am on to Vevey, Switzerland on business this week. I would love to just punch a button like I do on my weather app and collect a listing of local designers ready to connect with a sympathetic buyer. Why do I have to work so hard browsing dozens of Web sites to try and find my unknown friends out there? 

Make it Authentic

With Love from Brooklyn (thanks Springwise!)  kinda does it. While they curate mostly food products developed in Brooklyn, it is all for sale online. If I am in Brooklyn visiting, there is no storefront where I can go to stock up on Brooklyn authenticity. I guess I could go visit the various businesses individually but as you saw, food isn’t my thing. Philly has a few neighborhoods like any city but designers don’t clump up so nicely. So even though I can view all of these businesses in Old City on one web site, it’s about the neighborhood not about designers.  

I would have hoped that Design Philadelphia would have filled much of the role. Sadly, that remains more of an event website that gets relevant once a year and then goes stale (see all the content about the Design Week last October). Kind of a missed opportunity there. Etsy could also do this although it wouldn’t support their business model. They would need to adopt an affiliate marketing model if they started to give me my Philly Design map to let me visit artisans directly when I hit town. They could do it. They just won’t cause it’s not an important revenue stream for them. 

I have a set of persistent interests. Amazon knows this in a way. The recommendations I get fed are robotic suggestions derived from my shopping behavior. Clearly, they are not going to point me to storefronts in Philly even if they did sell what I am after in design. 

Reverse the Marketplace

I want a reverse marketplace model. I have some enduring interests - in this case local designer-made goods. I am a digital omnivore so, I want access on my mobile phone as I walk the streets, via my tablet as I sit on the couch and plot my trip and via my laptop as I take a “shopping mindful moment” at work. I should be able to express my interests (imagine me clicking on 20-30 Pinterest “pins” to teach my shopping agent what I like).  I need all ways to buy – online and when I am on the ground. I need every advocacy utility to post on Facebook, Twitter , FourSquare, etc… And I want to connect with designers who are keen to meet a potentially enthusiastic fan. 

Too much to ask? Perhaps, but its time to innovate.

Pinterest: Essential or Beguiling?

Almost everything you need to know about Pinterest is conveniently wedged into this infographic from lemon.ly. It reaches women like no other social platform. It delivers more traffic than YouTube, Google+ and LInkedIN combined (kind of like saying a country is bigger than Iran, Turkey and Pakistan combined – sounds like a lot but less than Russia, Australia and Brazil combined). Pinterest is growing very fast. 

Many brands are jumping on board. This raises the obvious question as to whether Pinterest is worth the energy and effort now or whether brands should wait. Is it essential to your business? Or is it an innovative platform for you and therefore worth some resources? Or is it simply beguiling – waiting to charm or enchant you and divert you from more meaningful programs? This last risk is a big one.

In Altimeter’s latest report on Content: The New Marketing Equation, Rebecca Lieb cautions,

“Bright, shiny objects, i.e. a fixation on newer channels and technologies, can distract from foundational channels, e.g. search, written content, such as blogs, and educational content.”  

Certainly many marketers are skeptical and even disgusted with the amount of attention Pinterest has earned. As a marketer, I don’t worry about that. None of us really know whether Pinterest will become a significant platform or become the next Empire Avenue (hey, even MySpace is making a comeback!)It’s more important to evaluate this platform and the others vying for attention and resources based upon how it can help your business today.

It’s Essential

If you are an ecommerce offering catering to women, you should jump on board now. Many retailers are doing just that. The number one ecommerce retailer in this space is Etsy. The haystack nature of that marketplace seems ideally suited for the visual curation that Pinterest delivers. The most remarkable Pinterest quality is really the women. While Instagram is also big with women, it doesn’t have the same referral traffic as Pinterest. If you have a product collection well-suited to this curation, have a storefront/product page to point people to and sell to women, then Pinterest is an easier choice. While you are figuring out the value of the “engagement” metrics (pin-ing and sharing, essentially), you can still look to count the referral traffic which is already a valuable KPI for online stores. 

A Worthy Innovation   

I certainly know plenty of big brands who are going all in on Facebook. Anything else – even Twitter – is a distraction. That may be a dangerous single-mindedness. We are all pushing our organization’s ability to adapt to new customer and stakeholder behaviors. We need to learn. We need to learn how to cope with the flood of choices available to people out there. Should you be on Google+? I think that one is a good bet. It may take another six months to understand its business impact but experimentation via limited investment is the only way to figure it out. 

If you want to specifically engage women who are energized by fashion, food, home design, graphic design or hobby, then it may be worth some effort and investment. These categories do seem to dominate and you can see it in the most followed users.

If you have a collection of visual images to share that are of natural interest to people or if your brand intersects with a theme/meme already gaining traction, then that gives you one more good reason to engage. It doesn’t make sense to take this platform on if you don’t already have the picture content or the theme that lends itself to pinning (bookmarking) images.

Give yourself a time constraint like 2-3 hours a week. Pick out the likely KPIs that might show progress from click-throughs to followers and likes. Benchmark yourself against other similar brands or against ones you aspire to being compared to. Every brand should have some tolerance for innovating on new platforms. With a logical decision tree and quarterly evaluations, it’s possible to keep the level of effort reasonable. 

Just Plain Beguiling

The simplest filter is women. If you are trying to engage C-suite decision makers (let’s face it - predominantly men) you are pretty far off your target. If you have no picture assets (e.g. catalogs) or objects that capture people’s interest, then the level of effort to create them and hope they are of intrinsic interest to people just isn’t worth it. The reason we are intrigued by Pinterest is the natural growth of the platform. Our job must be to understand it and make use of it, not try and game it.

SEO Blogger is skeptical of Pinterest's value today. He outlines a scenario to evaluate its potential based upon a crude ROI model. As a solo-practitioner, his criteria makes sense. For brands considering the platform, we are way off any ROI that matters. Simply know the platform, judge whether it is essential, innovative or merely beguiling and go from there. 

Great Pinterest pages:

• Etsy - probabaly the top page, how else can you find these must-have rings 
• West Elm - I love their collections. If I was currently shopping for furniture, thsi woudl definitely make it easier and more enjoyable
• Michael's Stores - how else can you make sense of all the craft supplies these guys sell? 

Welcome to Social@Ogilvy!

(this post is also found in s similar form on our new Social@Ogilvy site)

The Social Imperative

Brands will spend between 17-18% of their total marcom spend on social media within 4 years. They will spend more on social business solutions. They are seeing value and expecting more every year. 

The key reason? 90% of us look to friends and family for the most trusted recommendations on products, service and issues. 70% of us count on consumer opinions online above traditional media. And it’s only going to grow. Millennials are three times more likely than Boomers to look for a social opinion on choices they make. 

The future is brand advocacy. And it cannot be faked, gamed, or outright ‘bought.’

There are only three ways to connect with and build a strong relationship with customers and stakeholders these days. 

1. Deliver highly relevant content or service. This could be advertising, media relations or what we call ‘owned’ content (including valuable services). Now it’s all highly targeted and tailored. No more 360 degree ‘onslaughts’ of interruptive advertising. Now our messages must be deemed highly relevant to our targets to earn their attention. Lets use the ‘10 degrees’ that matter. Useful content to run a sustainable business from DuPont. Better ways to use member ‘points’ from American Express. 
2. Be discoverable in search. When people search Google, Baidu or Yandex, brands need to be there for all the topics that intersect between a person’s intent and where the brand can add some value. Ford on fuel efficiency. Hellmann’s on Real Food recipes. 
3. Earn our way into their ‘social graph.’  To succeed in social media, we must become genuinely valuable to the people we serve and earn their attention, their advocacy and their business.   Inviting people as VIPs into the launch of the new Ford Explorer in Facebook. Sparking a social conversation about the dreams of the next generation of Chinese from Johnnie Walker. Helping Hong Kong parents celebrate their baby pictures in a much bigger way from Huggies.

How we form opinions about products, services and issues is constantly changing. It’s imperative that we make social a new way we do everything.

What is Social@Ogilvy? 

Social@Ogilvy is the global, cross-discipline team of social experts from across all of Ogilvy’s businesses delivering social solutions to all parts of our clients’ business. This is new. This is bigger than before. We have been designing and executing social media marketing and communications programs for 7+ years as 360 Digital Influence – a specialty practice born out of Ogilvy Public Relations. We quickly grew to deliver social solutions for all sorts of marketing and communications clients. 

Now we have grown into Social@Ogilvy. We are a true global network with a common approach. 

Integrated Social Media Matters More 

The whole PR vs. marketing battle is moot. Social media will inform every discipline and deliver business value for the foreseeable future. Social media as a standalone specialty doesn’t make sense. All the power and potential in social based solutions comes to life when you integrate it into marcom and other functions. 

We design integrated social solutions that combine deep disciplines like crm, public relations and shopper marketing and rooted in what drives behavior.  We plan around owned, earned and paid media working together for a compound effect and at its heart our work is ‘social by design’ – phrase used now by Facebook but that captures what we do quite well. 

A Global Shift

We do believe there’s a new customer and stakeholder journey defined by the increasing impact our networks have on purchase decision and our behaviors. How we buy, vote, and form opinions has changed. We tap into our 130 friends (the Facebook average) to discover, consider, compare, decide and rave about products, services and issues.

This shift is happening in one way or another all over the world. Growth markets like China, Indonesia, Brazil and Turkey will define the next episode of social media use. They are all growing their social network use and outpacing western markets including the US. That’s why we have grown the world’s largest global team delivering solutions relevant in each local market.  

And it’s more than just marketing, we design social business solutions that use the collaboration and advocacy strengths of social media to drive value internally and in customer relationships while at the same time managing risk. 

 

Join Us

We will be participating or hosting 23 events in and outside of Social Media Week this week in NYC, London and Hong Kong not to mention a dozen other markets. Join us as we launch this new ambitious business. It's been a wild ride to get to this point and we would love to see you. You can find out more at our new Social@Ogilvy site.

Social Media Fatigue or Just Fatigue?

Attending LeWeb a couple of weeks ago, many of us saw Forrester CEO George Colony, as Mark Evans from Sysomos put it, “…he threw a bucket of cold water on social media by suggesting people have no more time for social media and, in particular social media services.”

The quote from George Colony read, “We believe social is running out of hours. Forrester believes we are reaching the limit of hours that people can give to social.” 

I am certain he is onto something. Even the Global Web Index report on US social media behavior reveals that social users are lightening up on the content creation,

“One consequence of real-time social is a move from creating content to sharing other peoples content. We call this the rise of the “transmitter ecosystem”….We also see that there is a continual fall in most activities and forms of contribution on social networks. This indicates a growing passivity and a realization that social networks will not become the one stop shop for the total internet experience that they have often been hyped as delivering.”

Narrow definitions are confusing

Will people commit more time to the social distractions of reading and updating Facebook-like social networks? Probably not. Time is our premium resource. But that’s a narrow definition of “social.” Most digital experiences will be social in one way or another whether they be utilities like my Jetsetter iPad app, information tools like my new Flipboard iPhone app or entertainment experiences like some of the best YouTube videos (I love the Criminal Minds cast video “Wheels Up”). People will continue to shift time to those things that deliver perceived value.

While I would assume that some media buckets like TV watching are here to stay and are unlikely to be completely cannibalized by new digital activities, the fact that my son watches most of the little TV he likes on his PC may deliver bigger behavior changes down the road than even Forrester can predict. 

For brands considering how much to commit to social media as a platform for customer engagement, I would just say two things:

• Most brands are woefully behind the behaviors of their customers in digital and social. While some behaviors may be topping out or slowing growth are you using social media at the same level and with the same time commitment as your customer? Probably plenty of room for growth there. 
• If anything, the Forrester POV and The Global Web Index findings tell a story of consumer fatigue on those things that don’t provide enough value. The pressure is on every brand to work hard to deliver content and experiences to their customers that they would find valuable. Relevance will get harder going into 2012. 

 

Two Trends in US Social Media – Saturation and Segmentation

Social Media usage is getting more complex. While social platforms continue to expand in markets like India, Brazil and Russia, certain parts of the social Web may be cresting in the US. If you take a look at Global Web Index data (GWI) for October 2011 in the US there are two important insights that immediately pop out:

Saturation and the Importance of Content

Twitter and blog publishing seems to be staying flat and niche. The complexion of Twitter users, while niche, do represent influencers from journalists to marketers. Expecting to significantly expand consumer conversations (beyond customer service triage) may not be realistic. Brands will get more by providing content worth sharing via Twitter. GWI  puts it, “Future engagement on micro-blogging will be less about conversations and more about content”  

As for Facebook, membership in the US seems to be reaching saturation point, and people are dropping some of their more involved behaviors like creating content in favor of sharing existing content

“Social Networking is saturated in the US and behaviour is shifting into a more passive usage. Visitation remains high, but users are doing less”

The big exceptions seem to be an increase in posting images and even video to profiles. Historically creating and publishing video even in the era of Flip Video camera (sadly, the era continues without that particular camera) has been a niche activity with a high barrier to entry. Is that changing?

Even a year ago, 30 billion pieces of content (links, notes, photos, etc.) were shared on Facebook per month. With people less likely to create all of that, they are on the lookout for great stuff to pass along.

“One consequence of real-time social is a move from creating content to sharing other peoples content. We call this the rise of the “transmitter ecosystem””

The opportunity for brands as creators of remarkable and relevant content will grow. How many brands will embrace a content marketing strategy as their way to engage customers and stakeholders? 

 

Creating a Segmented Strategy

Age, income, region, interests and more are showing up as differentiators in terms of how people are using social media. US social network users lag behind the globe in terms of using Facebook to express themselves or networking for work. My Space continues to serve a predominantly less educated audience with less income. And Twitter grew the greatest amongst a younger user base – 16-24 year olds during this last period while still catering to a smaller influencer crowd. 

Combine these distinctions with what people seem to be doing on platforms and differences per country and it is more important than ever to create a social strategy that is segmented and informed by this research.  Looking to use Facebook globally and with a single approach across 30 or 50 markets as a new, “one-strategy,” channel may not be realistic. Marketers will have to pay close attention as they roll out acquisition and engagement programs in diverse markets like the US, South Africa, Indonesia or Mexico. 

Think in Terms of Addressable Customers, Prospects and Influencers

Managing Relationships

The divide between public relations and customer relationship management (CRM) is shrinking. I have literally been in meetings with multidisciplinary teams (brand advertising + public relations + CRM) where PR and CRM will face off about whether managing the conversation in a Facebook wall is more about communications (PR's other name) or more about customer relationship management. This is the annoying beauty of social media. It forces integration or at least discussion within established marketing and communications organizations. 

Postive Effect of the Disciplines

Looking at CRM and PR alone for a moment, each is in the process of teaching the other a thing or two about managing profitable relationships. The CRM discipline is used to managing data to understand the profitability of customers. As a very data-heavy discipline, CRM generally has a more rigorous performance measurement model than most public relations professionals. It's hard to diagnose where the lack of measurement discipline in some PR circles comes from. Conversely, some of the smartest measurement people I know are in PR, there just aren't as many of them amidst all of the other  sub-specialties like media relations, event marketing, public affairs, etc...CRM ninjas are bringing more data-driven measurement practices to the PR folks as each play a role in social media-based relationship marketing. 

The PR discipline knows about the value of advocacy. Getting people - customers and influencers - talking positively about products and services is probably the most powerful sales-related communication goal one can have. The CRM folks are only used to 'optimizing the spend' of customers. Often that leads to annoying "stimulation" tactics like email blasts intended to drive purchase or re-purchase. The PR pros are teaching the CRM folks of the value of advocacy and just how to earn that action. 

If humility can prevail within the ranks of both groups, this should be a win-win situation - more disciplined metrics within PR and a greater proficiency at 'earning' people's attention, advocacy and spend among CRM experts. It is likely that through the influence of CRM marketers, social media marketers will get closer to ROI marketing modeling sooner.  


Addressable Channels

Authors can now, address personal messages to readers via the channel established with ebooks. Kindlegraph now lets authors do just that. This is another form of addressable channel where authors (literary brands?) can interact with their customer directly and can use data to try and get the most relevant message to the right person.

Add this to all of the other addressable channels we are all working with on behalf of ourselves and other brands:

• Facebook fans
• Twitter followers
• LinkedIn group members
• Instagram followers
• Google+ Circles
• Vkontakte fans (Russia)
• Orkut followers (Brazil)
• Email lists (yes, let's not throw the baby out with the bath water)

Each allows us to maintain a direct, ongoing relationship with customers, prospects and influencers. Each has different ways to use data to better target our message or deliver value and earn people's attention, advocacy and 'spend.'

Addressable Customers, Prospects and Influencers

With so many channels or platforms where we can now talk directly to groups of (or individuals) customers, prospects and influencers (our 'publics?'),  it would seem that brands must start to structure their realtionship-building activities around segments of their stakeholder groups that transcend specific platforms. Rather than have a view of different levels of fan types on Facebook* and a different model for their email subscriber base, can a brand create one framework of their customers, prospects and influencers who choose to have a relationship with a brand by one or more of these channels?  

*fan segmentation models

• RadicalTrust's simple three tier model - enthusiasts, advocates, and influencers
• Scott Meldrum's three-tier model - causal, casual and  committed fans