Digital Influence Mapping Project

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. 

WOMMA: Geoff Donaker of Yelp Tells All at WOMM U.

Last week's WOMMA event for brand marketers - WOMM U. - featured the best of social media used strategically (that is 'word of mouth marketing'). One session featured Yelp founder, Geoff Donaker, sharing about the rocket ride that Yelp has been on lately.

There are 20 million folks who come to Yelp every month to hear what others are saying about brands, products and services. When I was in SF last month, I couldn't go by a store that didn't have the Yelp sticker in the window. And the woman at Giant Robot summed it up, "Yeah, this is a Yelp town..."

Geoff shared about his own personal experiences sourcing services - using reviews and submitting them. He shared about a carpet cleaning small business guy who shared that he had taken the logos off his truck as he didn't want someone he may have cut off in traffic to go on Yelp and write a negative review.

Big Question
Will reviews drive massive responsible behavior (not driving like an a**hole vs. hiding your logo). The carpet cleaner went on to change his behavior and deliver stellar service principally to drive great reviews. I am guessing that that approach is driving business via word of mouth -  beyond just the Yelp reviews.

They have just begun work with major national brands. Geoff shared an experience with a vehemently negative review of a nichtclub at a W Hotel. He offered a few lessons. I wanted to call out a couple here as the negativ potential of reviews is often a barrier to brands getting more involved.

Lesson 5: The temptation to spam is strong
A revealing video interview captured how a businessman "faked" email accounts to get what he felt were legitimate reviews back up. Yelp has a spam filter that tries to catch wrongful posts. The owner tried to trump the system to get filtered reviews back up there. The result was that he was coached by Yelp on how to earn legitimate great reviews vs. gaming the system.

Lesson6: The manufactured reputation tends to backfire
A business that incented reviews from customers got slammed by "vigilante justice" who called the reviews out as shilling. Did the business offer coupons  for reviews or 'good reviews'? This is a thorny issue and one at the heart of WOMMA's Ethics Guidelines. The purest form of word of mouth (reviews in this case) are those that are self-motivated. Yet brands incent influencers and customers to talk all of the time. Clearly incenting for a postive review is wrong-headed. But is incenting to write whatever review the person deems appropriate - positive, negative, neutral, nothing -  is that ok?

Geoff shared about new features that allow brands to respond to bad reviews. they got a lot of heat for not doing that originally. Reviewers can hijack the system to pursue a vendetta. More likely, negative reviews are opportunities for brands to listen, take action to fix something and then let their customers know that hey heard them and took corrective action. The review system at Yelp now allows for more of that overall positive behavior. 

Reviews and search are often everlooked as cornerstones of a social strategy. And of course for many brands reviews are connected with search. What's your Yelp strategy? What's your review strategy?

Why Brands Love Twitter (and don't understand Facebook)

The love affair with Twitter just keeps growing and growing. The fundamental benefits of Twitter for brands has not changed much since we published our workshop, Twitter for Business. We have seen a lot more brands experimenting and, of course, celebrities jumping on board. Last week, when @Oprah jumped in, I coudl feel the collective groan as the servers coped with the onslaught. And, of course, there was Ashton Kushter's 'million-follower-goal.' (see his Tweedeck demo here)

Ogilvy PR 360 DI Twitter Webinar

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Four Winning  Qualities of Twitter

There are four qualities to Twitter that make it appealing to brands to adopt in their social media mix. these same three qualities continue to postion Twitter against other platforms including Facebook:

It's simple - while there are many ways you can apply Twitter to your business from customer service to listening intelligence to extending offers to drive conversion, it is all built upon a dead simple model of followers, following and 140 character messages. You deliver something of value and you accrue followers. Followers retweet and act on messages.

It's open - Anyone can read my tweets. You only have to register or login to post your own or interact. Not only that but it is very easy to pump your feed anywhere you want. Many brands are now including their Twitter feed(s) as part of their Social Web presence in their corporate or brand "home" pages (there's a concept - "homepage" - that has been blown up over the past coupel of years). Also, the API of twitter is fairly available and many are creating some interesting visualizations and aggregations of data.

It's got a good ear to the ground - many brands have discovered the value of putting their brand in Tweetscan or just seraching Twitter, itself to find a lot of surprising mentions. Some clients are now using Twitter as a kind of proxy listening post, using it as a barometer of likely overall issues. All of our clients have added Twitter to their cgm listening posts. I knwo one client who did their social media ROI plan simply based on Twitter mentions alone. 

It's free - One could argue that you don't have to pay to use Facebook either yet clearly the value of facebook is only realized with some crafty and stategic use of advertising around brand pages or applications to make your needle stand out in the haystack. (Conspiracy theory #1: Does Facebook resist improving inside-Facebook search to increase teh importance of paid advertising to discover anything in there?). Twitter won't always be free but I suspect that whatever business model they adopt will make it easy for brands to pay 'X' to use such a simple system.

So What About Facebook?

It's complex - from Brand pages to Facebook Connect to applications to social ads, there's a lot you can do with Facebook. This complexity is a hurdle to some brands while it also promises more power for those who do get involved in really using Facebook.You can see that power - hopefully simplified - in our recentFacebook Bootcamp preso here.

Facebook Bootcamp for PR

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It's not so open - exporting data from Facebook is pretty much not possible. They want to control that. Imagine crafting a cool visualization of the biggest brand communities by using the Facebook API. I just don't think it could happen.

It's hard to detect what people are saying inside Facebook. At 200m users, everyone wants to extend their Listening Post into Facebook (yes, in a a way that is not eavesdroppy). What do we get? Facebook Lexicon which is like BlogPulse was years ago. I hope that someone inside Facebook is making listening tools a priority. One of the benefits of the type of critical mass and reach they have is the ability to knwo what's going on in there.

It ain't really free - the most impactful cases of brands using Facebook involes paid ad campaigns within Facebook. That's how they earn their revenue but it's also how you boost awareness fo whatever it is that you are doing in there. Still, to create eficient ad programs, you need to plan in a more complex way - what is your engagement and conversion model; how will you target? what is the balance of paid vs. "earned" WOM inside Facebook. Early advertisers inside teh social networks may have approached it as a simple channel and been disappointed with the results. Truth is - advertising helps social media scale - IF IT IS DONE IN SERVICE OF THE COMMUNITY AND CONVERSATION.

I am guessing that the most sophisticated marketers will continue to leverage Twitter while at the same time dive deeper into their use of Facebook with all it's complexity.

3 Compelling Twitter Visualizations

A lot of folks are mashing up Twitter to come up with interesting sub services and some neat visualizations.As more people join and more people are. And as more people spend more time on the service, it's becoming more and more useful for marketers to look for insight in what is said on just Twitter, itself.  You might expect marketers to discount the bias or inside-baseball quality of Twitter but not so. I know one marketer who made a very persuasive argument about revenue missed from just negative mentions on Twitter alone. New visualizations are springing up every day and offering intersting views of what people are talking about. Here's three:

TwitterThoughts is a cool interactive chart that not only plots topics over a period of time but will actually show you an animated timeline of keyword topics.

TweetVolume lets you input about 5 keywords to see overall volume of Tweet mentions. It's not clear over what period of time the data spans but it still is interesting in that simple Blogpulse kinda way.  

TwitterFountain mashes up tweets and Flickr images and is billed as a neat way to add dimension to event coverage. The next time you go to a conference - WOMM U 2009, let's say - participants upload and tag images and tweets are overlaid via hashtags.

Nice Twitter Data from SXSW

I am not at SXSW. I feel a bit like the kid who didn't go to Spring Break (I actually never went to the Spring Break in the drunk-swarmed Florida town - something about crowds). Realizing that there are a lot of great social  media-related things going on there including some interesting brands getting involved, I wanted to find different ways to tap into or, at least, observe the experience beyond just watching the #sxsw Twitter hashtag.

Pepsico did something smart (heads up: we do some work for brands at Pepsico but not this). They took some Twitter streams and fed them into a visual display - pepsicozeitgeist.com - against several categories like Swarm (location), Popular, Stream (just a stream of tweets), and Party Watch. The most fun and useful this Sunday morning is the Swarm funtion which overlays tweets on and Austin street map. You can quickly get a sense of who is heading over to Moonshine Grill (closed for breakfast apparently) or who is doing the Mellow ride from mellow Johnny's.

Brands Being Helpful

While other brands will spend their energy creating Flash-based games around their products, Pepsico tries to be of-service to those on the ground in Austin (Party Watch has no data right now but presuming it works when people are pushing parties, what a great tool. I hope there is an iPhone version). The next version could be a bit more interactive - I cannot click on the data to go that stream. Still - making use of the social Web to be helpful and build on a highly relevant platform - Twitter - for this venue is terrific.

A while back we created the guide to Twitter for Business. Using the data stream as they have done here needs to be a new chapter in that resource.

Idea Bar #13: Family Travel Match-up Service

I've been married for 18 years and missed the opportunity to use Internet dating services. From the sidelines, I am a big believer in the value of services that can match people's interests and affinities potentially leading towards meaningful relationships.

We need another service that essentially does the same thing for traveling families.Each year, we plan one or two vacations. Some are local-ish, driving vacations. Some involve flying. Historically, we have tried to go out of the country once and then maybe to the beach or a lake. Clearly, this year, we will be staying more local.

My kids are 11 and 14. We like to do certain things - as Popeye said, "I ams what I ams." or "we ares what we ares." When we take a week to go to the Outer Banks, let's say, how can we connect with a couple of families that we have enough affinity for who will be on the OBX at the same time? Or if we visit my dad on the Redneck Riviera, how do we find that family that wouldn't laugh at our Takoma Park values from the front seat of their Esplanade? We don't want to share a house so much as share a few experiences and most importantly, connect our kids with new friends and pals.

I realize that many families do group vacations - sharing houses and the full travel experience. We are quite a bit more independent than that. Our travel opportunities are precious and the excercise of matching affinities, budget, and vacation time with a neighbor or local friend is too daunting. Plus, I love meeting new people, and I want my kids to meet new people to.

Family Travel Matching
It's simple really. Let's take the best of affinity matching - we like science fiction movies, swimming both at the beach and in a pool, weird local activities (next time in LA, I want to visit the Museum of Death - probably not with 11, though.)

• And combine it with travel destination and timing: e.g. we will be in Assateague in the 3rd week of August

• Our children's ages and interests

• Some budget & taste information: we don't want to eat at McD's, abhor expensive brunches but kinda dig things like the Kill Devil Grill...

• and some ideas of what we would consider fun...

We should be able ot find folks both traveling and native to our destination who also want to meet new people for some low-commitment diversions. The New York Times Travel section featured a service today that starts to get there: Tripsay.com.

Tripsay.com
the new service seems more about aggregating traveler reviews and then allowing you to join groups - but it's a very high-level affinity like "passion on cultural nightlife" or "hiking." It's not family oriented and I am guessing matches more young people.

"What's your passion regarding travel? Join TripSay and create a group with others sharing that passion! TripSay groups are made up of people who share common interests or activities.

Build your traveler network using groups. You can share tips and places with your network and as the result you'll get their recommendations for your next trip!"

FamilyPosse.com

Time to start a Family travel matching Service. We could call it, FamilyPosse.com.

(thanks to Creativepro.com for the station wagon pic)
 

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. 

Idea Bar #12 Next Video on the Web: Threadless Meets Next New Networks

This post is part of a 5-part series. How can we all be successful with the next wave of video on the Web whether you are a show producer or a brand? Crowdsourcing topics is one of four important priorities and is technically one of my Idea Bar posts.  

This series started with this core idea. That's what makes it part of theIdea Bar series which is full of good ideas - each driven by expertise and naivete. Ultimately this simple idea led me to want to throw out my own model on how niche video programs can succeed online.

Threadless as you all likely know is the quintessential Cinderella story for crowdsourcing. T-shirt designers post designs, the crowd votes them up (or not) and the top designs are produced and sold.

Why not do this with your show? In the previous post on Focusing on Value to Niche Communities, I covered catering to the needs of a defined, lean-forward affinity group. Why not ask them for ideas and votes on what would make a compelling show for them? What would make them want to susbcribe? Just like Threadless has the "I'd Buy That" button, our show marketplace would have a "I'd Watch That"  and an "I'd Watch That Every Week" voting buttons. The principle is the same - prove there is an audience before going into costly production. What a great way to get marketers on board  before you have actually killed yourself bootstrapping production and building an audience.

Now lest you think I am slipping into the territory of the movie, The Player, where the studio exec decrys the need of writers by saying all we have to do is pick out a story from the paper and, "bam" there's our script, let me clarify. Let the crowd tell us what they would find compelling - what topics, what participants, what format - and then let the creative juices flow. We are not talking "exquisite corpse" here.

The biggest barrier to this model is likely to be "ego." Many show creators are trying to express an idea they are personally invested in. It's tough to become open to the audience. Beyond the poor quality of many videos, this issue - which can be called "control" - might be one of the larger barriers to success. Most filmmakers I know are passionate storytellers first. To win online, you must be passionate about your audience first. Diggnation seems to do a good job of this.

Next New Networks started with the promise of a hundred online shows for all sorts of audiences. They have quite a few today but more like 15 than a hundred. What would happen if married that ambition with a crowdsourced model? 

How to Create the Next Video on the Web: Niche, Affinity Communities

 

This post is part of a 5-part series. How can we all be successful with the next wave of video on the Web whether you are a show producer or a brand? Connecting with niche, affinity communities is one of four important priorities.  

The vast "interwebs" has been potent fertilizer on an English garden-growth of niche communities online. We all belong to multiple tribes some of which are more clearly distinuishable and formal than others. We may love a particular music artist, a passion like WarHammer, a craft like t-shirt design, travel to Indonesian islands, or whetever. Some are tighter communities than others. Star Trek fans waiting for the next JJ Abram's movie are a tight group yet they also belong to a broader 'tribe' of Sci-fi fans who are known for their engagement with shows and events. That tribe intersects with the comic fan tribe who may be watching the Next New Networks Pulp Secret. "Crafting" is another "lean-forward" community with lots of enthusiasts assembled from even smaller niche interests.

Building a show that will uniquely deliver value to a particular affinity community almost guarantees a passionate audience. That audience may not be large enough to satisfy the True Show Value (the cost of quality, value to the audience and advertising value formula ) but it creates that solid core who will work as your most vocal ambassadors. The user and brand value of niche video shows has always been about the level of engagement of the participants. Tomorrow I will talk about why we shouldn't call them "audiences" anymore as a passive viewing experience is not what the niche community will thrive on.

Identifying Niche Communities

Finding niche communities and identifying their members is relatively simple. We do it everyday with our Influencer Mapping for brands. Let's say your brand - Brand G -  makes some type of super energy efficient home appliance that is really designed to address current concerns about energy consumption, cost, and environmental impact. One niche community is the design and sustainability crew which includes all sorts of designers - product designers, graphic designers, architects, furniture designers (many designers are multidisciplinary). Many of them are concerned and focused on sustainability through design. Huge Ven diagram overlap. Brand G would focus on designing a show and the marketing behind it to appeal to the design and sustainability crew. Then they would broaden it - adjust the content slightly and expanded the marketing and outreach to grow the audience amongst design-concious consumers. As an avid, lifelong reader of Metropolis magazine, I guarantee this magazine which covers design and architecture and its impact is read by a ton of non-designers and non-architects.

Make a video show that they want and need. It might be a regular survey of new consumer products that satisfy our new green priorities. It may include interviews with designers, including audience members about their own experiences. It might be a episodic "How to Make Your Life More Green" with step-by-step instructions on transforming your life or household to reduce your carbon footprint, your costs, and more.

So, start with a core community and design your show around their needs. Then expand the focus to include the next ring of participants. You won't go so far as to dilute the show's value for the core and you will expand beyond a too narrow group fo participants.     

Next: Work the "Ladder of Engagement"

How to Create the Next Video on the Web: 4 Priorities for Brands

I love video on the web. The part I like best is not watching "Dollhouse" on every platform under the sun from Fox to Hulu to iPhone (actually, I don't know if you can watch it on the iPhone or not). I like the diversity of the programming coming from young entrepeneurs like Zadi Diaz, new net networks like Revison3, blip.tv and Next New Networks, more personal efforts from tradiitonal "stars" like Will Farrell. Brands have a great opportunity to connect and engage via video on the Web either through partnering with content programmers - like TerraTV on blip.tv -  or becoming their own programmers. Either way, we need to adopt a new discipline to be successful with video going forward.

I just met with a group of tremendously creative show "creators" in LA who will launch a program online over the next few months. They have all been enmeshed in the entertainment business and they know where the business has been and suspect where it is going.  I love their passion, their show concept, and their smartness about making the business side work. I have a lot of heart for their project. Still , succeeding is complicated.

While there are some breakout successes like Seth MacFarlane's channel, most video shows on the Web follow the reverse hockey stick approach where the highly promoted first episode draws a big crowd followed by depressing fall off in episodes 2,3,4. This freefall leaves many programs struggling in the long, long tail. Video production has a threshold level of effort and cost that it cannot routinely dip below. We all want "quality." And while we may be willing to accept Flipcam video interviews and an occaissional clever video thrown together in the backyard by two brothers and a dog, we generally want quality represented by the thinking, creativity, and even production value of the show.

True Show Value

Challenge is that the cost of quality, value to the audience and advertising value formula has not really been cracked yet or cracked consistently enough to spell out a path to success.That is the True Show Value and every producer should know their formula before trying the sell their program.  This is broader than TubeMogul's formula for success which focuses mainly on the creation and distribution of the video and the metadata associated with it. These things are important and I presume most video producers online get this. Too many programs either struggle to build an appreciable audience (size + composition) or to define the value to the advertiser. "Sponsoring" a show that may reach 10,000 uniques of which you know so little about may not translate into a perceived value to the advertiser. I am choosing my words carefully because I believe marketing integration with great content provides great value, I just don't think everyone is great at demonstrating that value.

Many brands want to suceed by reaching their customers or their influencers via video. Brands are learning that they can succeed by becoming content creators and building relationships via that content. Consumer marketers want to create their own episodics that draw moms in for 6-12 epsiodes. B2B marketers want to build a long term relationship with buyers and opinion-formers of their services. How can brands succeed where dedicated video entrepeneurs themselves struggle?

Four Strategic Priorities

There are four strategic priorities that will help. each day this week, I will drill down into one of the four. They represent the disciplined thinking that we need in this next chapter of video on the Web. I believe niche, special interest shows will flourish and I believe brands will reap great value from being a part of or even outright creating their own shows that consumers will increasingly spend time with. One of the keys may be in letting the crowd within a commlunity tell us what they want in terms of programming. Stay tuned as I drill down into each as the week unfolds:

• Focus on the Value to Niche, Affinity Communities

• Work the "Ladder of Engagement"
• Idea Bar #12: Threadless Meets Next New Networks
• Design Creative Marketing Models