Digital Influence Mapping Project

6 Truths about Social Media and Social Business

I still use an RSS reader (in fact I use our version of NetVibes - TheDailyInfluence). I read lots of people who write about their experience in digital marketing and social media. I routinely check in on Olivier Blanchard who blogs/tweets under the brandbuilder handle and has a sharp POV. 

Recently, Olivier wrote a post titled "10 Truths about Social Media & Social Business you need to know." I have a bone to pick with him. Of his ten points, I disagree with 3 and agree with 3. The other 4 are indisputable. Okay, truth be told, Olivier has given us all a good list which I am merely using as foil to make my own points. You can see his full post here to understand his points. But here they are in headline form:

• “Social” is something you are, not something you do
• You cannot outsource customer relationships to an agency
• A blog is just a blog. It isn’t a magical trust and influence publishing converter for the web
• Marketing on social media channels isn’t “social.” It is just marketing
• Transparency isn’t just a word. If you don’t intend to practice it, don’t preach it
• Change management, not social media tools and platforms, is at the crux of social media program development
• People are more important than technology. Hire people who care about other people
• Social media should not be managed by Marketing anymore than your phones should be managed by Sales
• Shut up and listen
• Any consultant, “thought leader,” agency or partner who doesn’t tell you these things isn’t fit to be consulted on the subject

 

3 "Truths" I Disagree With
 

Social is a way to behave - Many companies do have cultures and ways of doing business that are conducive to "being social." And, in fact, there may be many companies who are not very customer-centric in their practices and find it difficult to embrace all of the marketing and communications behaviors that fall under the broad umbrella of social media (not every company can be Zappos). But social media marketing and communications and the broader category of social business are all about ways of behaving. Never before have organizations been judged so relentlessly on their behavior and actions as they are now in the vast bright light of the Internet. Many companies are trying to change and using social media as the catalyst. They are each doing this through new behaviors. Last week at our social business event at PivotCon, Christine Cea shared about her stewardship of the Unilever Social Engagement Playbook. That is a great example of a marketer with a particular culture changing with and because of the pressures of social media. 

Organizations must align all partners to build strong customer relationships - brands outsource services all of the time. This biggest example is customer service - the front line of customer relationships. We manage tons of customer relationships for brands via Facebook walls and Twitter handles and more. We can do this because we live and breathe 'customer-centricity." At our best, we become fully integrated partners with clients where our brand knowledge and understanding of the business is indistinguishable from a brand staffer. The notion that a partner like an agency consultant is driven by different priorities is over-played and just plain wrong. We will when we accelerate our client's business, period. That being said, I do believe that our work on the front lines of conversation management is a training wheels moment for brands. We give clients the chance to quickly implement community management programs such that they can then budget for staff in year 2 or 3. 

Transparency isn't black and white - we all wave the flag of transparency around a bit too indiscriminately. Transparency in business is a strategic choice and there a thousand choices to make about when to be transparent, somewhat transparent and purposely opaque. We tend to confuse the simple principle that "transparency is good" with the practices of business which gets messy. Most folks are "for" transparency. Smart business people must make decisions about employee privacy, intellectual property protection, liability and risk, competitive advantage and more. All of these things can limit a company's ability to act transparently and should. Alternatively, proponents of transparency say the company's supply chain should be transparent, for example, and reveal poor practices like hiring suppliers who exploit workers. Supply chain transparency is inevitable. Anyone can discover almost anything with enough digging. I would prefer if companies focused more on their commitment to character which would eradicate choosing suppliers who behave unethically then worry about how transparent they ought to be.  

3 "Truths" I Agree With

Marketing on social media platforms isn't inherently 'social' - I call it the practice of just "being there" - being on Facebook, being on YouTube. Just launching a cool application on Facebook or series of videos on YouTube isn't inherently social in that it is not designed to build a two-way relationship over the long haul. To this day, there are heated debates about what defines social media - what is its true nature. That is a false argument (IMHO). I believe brands can reap the biggest benefit from social media when they design programs to earn the attention, advocacy and action from their customers, influencers and stakeholders.  That doesn't mean that programs that stop short of this are bad. they are simply something else....marketing. 

Social media is changing organizations - few companies talk in terms of "change management" around their marketing teams or partners. But, whether they are conscious of it or not, the practice of trying to master the benefits of social media is driving big FMCGs and mainframe companies to really change how they are organized, how they do business, how they treat employees and how they measure success. If that isn't change management then I don't know what is. Look at IBM. They launched an internal and external focus on "social business" where they productize what they have found valuable to their own organization. Big consumer goods companies like P&G, Unilever and Nestle are changing how they market and how they manage customer relationships. Unlike the Deming principles of Top Quality Management or other models to guide change management which often champion starting at the top, social media has been provoking change form the middle or even the bottom but certainly around the edges.  

Social media should not be managed by marketing nor any other single discipline - we have spent a ton of time building a social media expertise that spans all of Ogilvy's disciplines from marketing to CRM to communications to customer care. Social media is as much about new  behaviors as tools and platforms and it certainly isn't as simple as a new channel. No one group within the marcom mix can take full responsibility for it. Olivier makes a point that the most complete use of social media can best happen in the consumer/customer relations discipline. They do play a key and under-represented role. But every part of the business needs to embrace social media. Not just marketing and communications but product development, legal affairs, HR and more.  

"10 Truths..." is a good post and Olivier makes important points we must all keep in mind, challenge and add our take to. 

How Game Dynamics Can Drive Social Behavior

Game mechanics or 'gamification' are kind of buzzy terms right now. Still, they represent very powerful ways to motivate behavior. Rajat Paharia, the founder and Chief Product Officer of Bunchball – a developer of a technology platform that incorporates “game mechanics” into digital work, gave a great lecture at Stanford - “Driving User Behavior with Game Dynamics and Behavioral Economics.”

He's a great fast-talker who clearly understands this space well. It's a great watch as he covers some of the basic concepts including those we already use in our social strategy planning. 

What is The Future of Facebook (Project)?

What is it and does it matter? More on the second question in a minute.  

I just funded a small part of the Kickstarter The Future of Facebook Project. A series of 6 videos from Venessa Miemis and 3 colleagues, they are well on their way to achieving the $5K they need to start the project.

I love crowdsourced and crowdfunded projects. I funded Have Money Will Vlog back in 2006. A very similar concept except the videos were about social issues (I funded a Colombian documentary). 
They are using social media smartly. They are sparking ideas via Quora and then soliciting videos of some of the more interesting ideas. There is a nice sampler of people in their teaser video including Doc Searls, Om Malik and David Kirkpatrick - author, The Facebook Effect. David's book is one of the best and most insightful about Facebook - the company and the man. And it's his comment in the teaser that provokes my second question, does the project matter?

David Kirkpatrick reports that Mark Zuckerberg has a clear view of the development path far into the future. So if the future of Facebook is in his head, does all this outsider speculation matter?  I am sure he does have a clear picture of what features he will develop. But even with this controlling vision, the development gestalt of Facebook is try and try often. Even Mark doesn't know what will work. He certainly cannot predict how this scale of social networking may change us. The video is less about what features the platform will have but what future it may fashion for us all. 

It appears thoughtful. I like where its going.They use social media to create an fund the projectThey allow people who care to participate and show that participation  

This project does matter. Go ahead, give a little, get a lot.  

Weak Ties are Better for Awareness Than Persuasion

One of the things we have learned in designing programs to inspire word of mouth is there is a difference between how weak ties or strong ties move us. The classic concept of weak ties is captured in Mark Granovetter's paper, The Strength of Weak Ties. People I have spent more time with, have a level of emotional intensity and intimacy with and some reciprocal activity will qualify as strong ties. Think about your 5000 Twitter followers or 500+ Facebook friends and you quickly recognize that most of those qualify as weak ties. 

Weak ties are not as helpful in driving behavior change. They are pretty good at introducing us to new ideas. In fact they are probably better at turning us on to new things that we might not discover by sticking with our regular crowd of close ties. 

Mombo.com delivers movie rankings based upon Tweets. They sift through overall Twitter traffic for mentions of Tron, rank sentiment and score movies based upon the volume and sentiment. Signing in then allows me to see movie mentions from followers and a view called "Recommendations for You." I don't care what a Twitter follower of mine says, I am not going to see HP7. I doubt I will ever select a movie to see this way.

Strong at weak ties

Twitter is about weak ties - which is great. I can actually discover a lot from the tweets and links of folks I follow. But Hollywood has multi-million dollar marketing budgets, and I hardly need to follow Twitter to discover a new movie. New foreign film or a gem from the Criterion Collection perhaps. 

The movie reviews won't help me decide which film to go to. I need strong ties or review sources that I have learned I have some affinity for (Rotten Tomatoes and Roger Ebert are good sources - Ebert I often agree with; RT favors movie enthusiasts and is always worth a quick qualitative scan). No matter how good Mombo makes its service, it will never rise above premiere-night relevance (getting a whiff of whether Tron is a stinker or not). I suppose if it reported out on a Twitter-list I maintain of strong tie movie-philes, it could start to bridge over to stronger relevance. 

Think about how strong and weak ties work and how different platforms may support either as you develop social media marketing programs. The science of influence and persuasion is key to using social media effectively. 

What determines influence? Why should marketers care?

There is a long thread of opinion being thrown out in Quora to answer a user question - "What Determines influence?" The neat thing about Quora right now is that a lot of digitally influential folks (by my intuitive measure) are answering questions. I am pretty sure this is experimental behavior and it is anyone's guess whether more than the professional pundits (paid to write, essentially) will stick with it. But I digress. 

There are lots of thoughts in there from smart people. Many are interesting. Most don't really help today's marketer beyond giving him/her something to wonder.

Why we should care about influence

Everyone is trying to make use of commonly understood phenomena:

• Consumers in many markets around the world trust in friends, family and people's opinions online for purchase decision and opinion on issues(not equally). 
• With the explosive growth of Facebook more and more people get information via their news feed - i.e. from the weak and strong ties of the people they have friended
• 51% of searchers are looking for other people's recommendations. (from Global Web Index 2009) That means Google connects us to both brand-sourced content and third party opinion and that people actively seek out the later
• Network and influencer "influence" seems to be challenging the accepted effects of reach and frequency-based advertising

With all this going on, its no wonder marketers want to tap into personal influence. 

A model for influence & relevance

Many of the answers in Quora catch many great points:

• Influence is contextual - the nature of the publisher, the topic and the relationship of the reader are not static states. I listen to some people on car advice, others on music. They are rarely the same people or sources. 
• The many "scores" out there including Klout are insufficient yet still some do serve a purpose. The discussion gets academic pretty fast and I am not talking Harvard-academic
• In the online space, we are all just learning how to actually apply our understanding of influence to actual marketing and communications programs.

We have a model for gauging the influence of individuals. It varies depending on the person's main platforms (e.g. I blog, tweet, publish via other blogs, and now have published in Quora, etc....). But here's the model for a blog-centric individual:

We have gone through the painstaking process of defining simple but useful formulas for each of these KPIs that we feel really define how influential a source can be. But how relevant? To assess how important that influence might be for a vehicle recommendation vs. a hotel, we also map relevance. the key criteria  for that are as follows:

Yet practically-speaking, this precision needs to be simplified for us to use on a daily basis as marketers. The scores for these simple criteria allow us to map individual sources on a simple XY axis. Now we have something to work with. But notice a few things:

 


We don't specifically call out qualitative assessments about a person's affiliation or credibility. That doesn't mean we don't value someone's affiliation with a top university, for example. That should show up in the data. Still there are always anomalies. Celebrity is one. The question in Quora related to an article in Ad Age on paid celebrity tweets. Many people in the Quora stream have commented on how influential they feel a tweet from Justin Bieber's stream might be.  A celebrity tweet can raise awareness about a product or service. I have no doubt that core fans may even be driven to behavior simply because Justin's stream suggested a product. But in general, it is not realistic to think that any one source can be predicted as the "persuader" or cause of a purchase.

The complexity of influence and compound effects

Marketing has long been struggling with attribution. Which communication actually drove the person into the store? Traditional online marketers try and track the 'last click' but even that is deceiving. The influence of individuals and networks is no less complex. 

Weak ties vs. strong ties - this is not a new concept. There is a difference between the impact people close to me may have on my opinions or decisions and those that span out far into my social graph.

Network effects can challenge the impact of influencers. From how clusters work to broad networks, researchers like Duncan Watts have demonstrated that a broad network can have greater influence on a behavior than any single, highly influential individual.

People form clusters that can have great influence on behavior. Online and offline we tend to flock with folks that we share some affinity with. Sometimes this is referred to as homophily. The importance of homophily is likely overblown in my humble opinion. (here is a neat opinion in support of its importance) Still marketers need to be mindful that it takes special effort to communicate and engage with groups across clusters to avoid being trapped in an influence-chamber that does not extend beyond that affinity cluster.    

Owned, earned and paid media have a complex effect. We are all experiencing a tremendous number of messages and interactions each day related to products and services. many of those are advertisements, may are  third party opinions.  They also have a compound effect. For instance, some studies point out the increased effectiveness of paid media in proximity to earned media.  

A practical approach to influence for marketers
Tons of sources influence a purchase decision. Social media, advertising, brand reputation, offline relationships and much more. If for a moment, we say what can we as marketers do via social media to affect influence towards our ends, we need to understand:

• What is likely to make a source more influential on a subject with a particular audience
• Understand how networks 'work' and have a reasonable understanding of how people make decisions
• Then build a program that both engages influencers and networks such that each generate authentic and useful word of mouth

It will never be as simple as identifying the top 10 "influencers" for a given topic and then convincing them to chatter positively about a brand.   

Are Paid Tweets Effective?

Celebrity tweets have been for sale for a while. Services like ad.ly and others sell one-time tweets from celebs like Kim Kardashian and Snoop Dog for $1K-10K. BusinessWeek even covered the practice in this weeks issue. (here's a link to a related article in the online BusinessWeek)There are few new services cropping up. PayWithATweet.com is s recent example. Clearly a nascent service cooked up by a couple of agency guys trying to help bands or small business get the word out, this premise is similar. You can receive compensation in the form of product or payment for tweeting out a promotional message. 
Is this an effective paid strategy? Are there any hidden ethical challenges with this approach to marketing?

EFFICACY 

The value of social media is the real “earned media" it generates and propels. When any one of us retweets something, comments, "likes" and so forth, we are in some small way endorsing or recommending that content. Conceptually, that content must provide some value and relevance to you for you to bother passing it along. I follow people who share their POV about the things that matter to them.

Paid placements may sound appealing in terms of scale or reach but the quality and efficacy of such a strategy is really questionable. I realize why the promise is attractive - messages get passed via people you know or feel you have an affinity for, Twitter has a really high click-through rate and it smells like social media. Social media begs for a better understanding of influence and the different roles that strong ties and weak ties play in decision-making. Most of the research tells us that strong ties - people I know and trust - have stronger influence on behavior. Weak ties are better at getting us new ideas. Celebrities? Matthew Creamer at AdAge puts it this way: 

"It's hard to imagine that Justin Bieber, with his 6.4 million followers, is driving much behavior other than getting people to talk about Justin Bieber, frenetically retweet him, and possibly buy a record. Is that influence?"

Whether paid tweets come from celebrities or from regular folks, I would argue that this type of use of social media will weaken its overall value to us as consumers and as marketers. People will become confused and perhaps resentful at the unqualified recommendations that start filling their social media dashboards. They may not be so blase about learning that their favorite celebrity has rented out their personal stream to some marketer who works hard to get the 140 character cadence of the celeb just right. 


ETHICS

I was pretty surprised that that BusinessWeek article  documented the practice of paid tweets pretty matter-of-factly even revealing that the promotional messages are written and sent by copywriters not the celebs, themselves. That may be obvious to you and I but why else would those copywriters try so hard to speak like the celebs if not to fool people. In the case of ad.ly, they do label the tweets with (ad) and in doing so 'disclose'. (see WOMMA's Disclosure Guidelines) There is no clear sense in the examples they cited as to whether the celebrities have tried the products, though.

‘PayWithATweet’ does not automatically disclose. That means that a user will send out a tweet promoting a product without revealing they were compensated. Their model seems to be based upon sending a tweet then receiving product/compensation which implies that the user has not used the product before promoting or endorsing it. That may be against many countries consumer protection guidelines. Using such a service could put brands at risk. 

As governing members of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, we are keenly aware of the dangers of the practice of any type of pay per post model where full disclosure to the end consumer is not enforced. In fact, in the US, our consumer protection laws from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), aim to enforce full disclosure of any ‘material connection’ like receiving product, services or cash.    

BOTTOM LINE

Are paid tweets a good tactic for some brands? Based upon short term measures like retweets and click-throughs, they may serve a purpose. In the long term, I doubt they will do much but weaken the overall value of social media which relies on trust first not reach.  As it stands today, it certainly isn't word of mouth.    

(Here's a related article from BNET on one man's view of the value of paid tweets)

The Five Social Media Platform Brand Strategy

We held a great panel discussion at our Ogilvy event in NYC last week with Mashable, Facebook, Unilever and Buddy Media. The topic was 'How Facebook Changes the Game for Brands." Great session.

Three things that came out of it:

1. Facebook warrants a strategy: while our own team often argues for brands to start with strategy before jumping to platforms, Facebook has reached such a critical mass and there is so much pressure to be there that brands - especially B2C - need to developa strategy to use it and use it well. 

2. Don't count Twitter or FourSquare out: Adam Ostrow from Mashable made it clear that these platforms had their strengths and marketers shoudl not assume that Facebook would eat their lunch. Some discussion went back and forth about how imminent it may be for Facebook to release game-like qualities to Facebook Places to rival FourSquare more clearly (Adam from Facebook remained silent on this). Adam O.'s point was that these platforms not only have compelling qualities but that they are getting sharper about providing useful advertising solutions like promoted tweets. , 

3. Brand marketers use The Five Social Media Platform Brand Strategy: While Facebook is important, many brands are executing programs across multiple social platforms. These may all change depending on the business and the market ( e.g. Coke (cl) includes MySpace in their strategy; brands in Brazil include Orkut). Even though the exact platforms may vary, brands are often using Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Flickr (or, again, some variation on these) in tandem. They see the value in each. They understand they need to be where their customers are and balance that with content publishing and search optimization goals (e.g. its important to be in YouTube, the #2 search engine, so let's post our video there and embed in our other properties even our Facebook page). This drives brands to adopt a conversation and content management strategy that plans which content to distribute where and how to drive the best engagement on each platform. 

While most of the social CMS systems are focused on a few platforms, most will adopt extra capabilities to publish across the "Five Social Media Platforms" of choice for a brand and do so across language markets. 

Events: Like Minds Conference in Exeter UK Oct 28-29

At the beginning of the year, I established some key guidelines for selecting which events I would speak at or attend. The Like Minds event fit the bill. Truth-be-told, it was a bit of a wildcard and I did not know if it would turn out well until I actually went. Turns out it was a great experience. Here's why:

• I met a lot of UK-based social media experts from all walks of life - non-profits, brands, entrepreneurs, proam bloggers. 
• The sessions were provocative an caused me to think about my own view of social media
• It was in a great setting with a true sense fo community. I have stayed in touch with many of teh folks I met there. 

October 28-29

The gang at Like Minds is at it again. The event is happening in late October in Exeter. I recommend it. Not sure I can make it across this time but if I could I would. The setting is terrific as Essex is a neat little town. The organizers - Scott Gould and Drew Ellis - are good guys and earnestly want a great event. 

Find out more and register here >

Sir Martin Sorrell School In-Session

Sir Martin Sorrell is the global CEO of the WPP group, the company that owns Ogilvy and quite a few other agencies. I have had the chance to meet him in the course of business and have always been captivated by his view of business. I came across a series of videos of a session he held at the Berlin Creative School. He explains quite a bit of his view of agencies and the emerging and growth markets in the future. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Design Thinking Has Answers for Enterprise Social Media

I am a fan of Roger Martin - Dean, Rotman School of Management. His POV on Design Thinking captured in his book The Design of Business explains a lot of how business approaches innovation (or does not). 

His presentation at Parsons is a great version of that POV. It explains so much of the tension inside organizations to adopt social media. If you are charged with changing your organization or driving productive adoption of social media marcom, this video will likely inform your own effort.