Digital Influence Mapping Project

Should marketers care about social media fan counts?

Like any brand marketer, I went through the 3 phases of Facebook algorithm grief in 2014: outrage, sadness, and finally, sanguinity. The changes to the Facebook algorithm that may ultimately limit the organic exposure to 1-2% of your fan base at first seemed like a betrayal to advertisers thinly veiled in “what’s-good-for-the-users” logic.

The potential situation is that with a follower base of 50K only about 125 or so of those fans will be exposed to the post.  Had we all not experienced strong 20-30% exposures in the early days, we might not care. Still, it seemed to suggest that the fan base of a brand didn't matter all that much. If you were a brand that spent a chunk of money acquiring fans in the previous period, you might be a bit miffed. 

But it's really not that big a deal. 

Efficiency and organic followers 

Efficiency of Facebook is what matters. Is it the right medium to engage prospects, customers and in a sales-channel business like ours, agents in a way that will lead to a sales-related result (some type of “assist” earlier in the customer journey)? You could ask the same question about Twitter and LinkedIn. Even while those platforms don’t have the same algorithm-limiting exposures, no brand gets in front of as many of its followers as it would hope.  The Twitter feed keeps on streaming by. LinkedIn users are just beginning to look for content on the platform (although that behavior gets stronger every day).

Efficiency requires us all to be precise about what actions we value and what it costs to drive those actions via other means. In some cases, social media is highly unique and cannot be really compared. The best example is sharing content. Our best content gets shared a lot. That extends the reach of our content by one of the most trusted channels – word of mouth marketing. It’s not really comparable to other channels that deliver straight from the brand. Reaching 2% of a follower base at no cost can be a valuable. Alternatively, you might value click-throughs to a Web site where you can either re-target people or capture their information for a highly instrumented email marketing program.  

Social network organic reach can be a useful piece of the puzzle.

Here’s how Liz Gross puts it:

“I already have a realistic perspective of Facebook reach, which allows me to act calmly and rationally in response to the recent news. Here’s what I expect from our Facebook page, which has over 60,000 likes:

About 60% of the time, I’ll reach less than 2% of my audience with any particular post. There are a handful of highly engaged followers that see every single post we publish in their Newsfeed—I know this because they like and/or share them all. They’ve demonstrated to Facebook that every post matters.

Another 30-35% of the time, I’ll reach 3-5% of our followers with a single piece of content.

About 5% of the time, a post will reach 15-20% of our users organically, and we’ll consider that a “greatest hit.”

But over the course of a month, more than half of our fans will see at least one piece of content that’s relevant to them. They probably don’t want to hear from us any more than that.

We augment this strategy with promoted posts…and I’m continually collecting data so when I promote a post I know exactly how many people I can reach, how fast, and at what cost. I can quantify what Facebook reach costs my organization, and make an educated decision on whether or not I want to pay for it.”

Here’s how Jon Loomer summarizes:

“Ultimately, quality is what’s most important. Let’s assume that your highest quality fans are the top 2%. The most important thing is that you reach as many of those 2% (understanding many won’t be online when you post) as possible.

If 70% of your fans are casual and rarely take action, how important is it that you reach all of those 70% with each post? It’s a question you should ask yourself.”

Bigger is not better

Organic fans are a part of the puzzle. But bigger is not better. If you are a mass market brand like most consumer product goods (think Nestle, Unilever, Coke), having millions of fans may make sense. Although all of these brands chased fans when the exposure rates were much, much higher. Now they pay to reach more of them.

Most brands don’t need big fan or follower bases. The targeted paid content solutions in each platform is very good and getting better every day. If you want to reach a particular segment, you will do it with a thoughtful 3-step dance:

1. Grow a relevant follower base interested in your content and brand in a way that does not dilute engagement. Usually, when marketers aim to attract new followers, they employ tactics that bring in many people, some are the wrong sort. Engagement numbers drop. Only attract followers to the point that your engagement stays positive. Post organically to reach the few. Target paid posts to reach a few more.
2. Build custom audiences and use paid media to reach the right people. Not only can you increasingly microtarget the right people, some will convert to become followers on the strength of your content (this presumes that you are mainly using content in your sponsored posts/updates/tweets.)
3. Strategically promote posts based upon data and goals. One could put a little bit of money behind every post to gain additional reach. If you looked at every post as the equivalent of an ad, you might do that. A better approach might be to select the posts that are performing strongest or are more central to your business and carefully promote them.

Now if only industry indices that try to compare how competitors are doing in social media would drop ‘fans, followers, connections’ as the one magic KPI, we could all get on with marketing that matters.

 

Content Marketing Designed to Help Behavior Change

Brands who want to get the most out of a content marketing program ought to embrace a user-centered approach to developing and delivering that content. The content and the channels that deliver that content should be designed around prospect and customer intent. What do people want to get done, what decisions do they have to make towards an end, what questions do they have.

Design around that not around what you want them to know about you. Good user-based design will always communicate the latter by “showing” not “telling.”

The ultimate utility and the hardest to deliver against is helping to foster behavior change. Helping people stop smoking, get exercise, manage their money, and so forth. In the property and casualty business, we want to help people lead safer lives. So much of that job is in people’s hands. It is the actions big and small they can take to reduce hazards around the house or risks related to driving.

 

Content to Drive Change: Aetna

Aetna recently released the 11 Initiative by Aetna. To inspire people to reduce or stop smoking (and therefore improve health and health premiums), they created an experience and a content aggregator on Tumblr. The experience (concepted with Ogilvy) revolves around a publicly placed machine that will dispense a rich 11-minute experience for every cigarette surrendered. The core pretense is:

“A recent study found every cigarette you don’t smoke could add 11 minutes to your life. So let’s talk about how you can make the most of them.”

The experiential rewards include petting dogs, a private magic show, seeing acrobats up close and personal. These are essentially the plot lines for online videos to drive relevant awareness of the program.

Users at the Tumblr site are encouraged to post what they would do with 11 extra minutes. For anything displayed on the Aetna site a clear moderation layer helps select the constructive suggestions vs those that may crop up off site.

The 11 Initiative is well integrated into their social channels and has taken over the cover photo on Facebook and Twitter.  The one place it falls down is their Web site. It is completely absent. I suspect that has more to do with how hard it is for companies to make easy-to-update web sites rather that a strategic preference to keep it off the site.

Practically speaking, this content initiative will not reduce smoking. Aetna knows this. But it may inspire people to take that step that will help them stop. It also telegraphs what Aetna is about – wellness. And it gives them a platform to communicate other important topics like key concepts in health insurance coverage. They have taken a big health problem and built a well-integrated program to raise their voice and the voices of customers around it.

 

 

 Content to Drive Change: Prudential

A year or so ago, Prudential launched The Challenge Lab. There are 5 challenges from “I Might Live How Long?: Uncovering why we have trouble imagining a longer life and how that can affect our financial future.” to “I Want it Now: Discovering why we want things now and how that behavior affects our finances later”

It’s all about making us more aware or mindful of our own behavioral economics. What makes us tick or, more accurately, what keeps us from saving for retirement.

This is a terrific site, if a bit cerebral for the average insured. There is a section on risk entitled, “It Won’t Happen to Me: Exploring our tendency to be overly optimistic and how it affects our long-term financial plans.” In each case, professor Dan Gilbert unpacks the issue in about :50 of video. The content is fairly light and leads you down the page to product/service calls-to-action. This is about helping people get smarter, possibly inspired to change and taking an action by connecting with Prudential on retirement planning or other services.  

They remain committed to this platform. I am working hard not to call it a ‘campaign.’ That word seems so inextricably linked to ‘ad campaign.’  “Bring Your Challenges” is a creative platform that adds meaning to the brand and gives them permission to talk more regularly with people about financial decisions that are too often “one and done.”

The extend the program into Facebook and YouTube amongst other platforms. 

In this case their TV ads do extend the BYC creative concept reinforcing Prudential’s role to help people do what they can – even if that means overcoming some of their most basic human tendencies – in order to save and watch out for their future.

 

Two user-driven approaches. Two “big platforms” that say as much about the brand as deliver tangible value to prospects and customers. Two programs helping people do what they need to get done and make the decisions they need to make.

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Collaborating with SME Influencers in Social Content Marketing

I have always been a fan of collaborating with emerging or non-traditional subject matter experts who may have influence on buying customers or other recommenders. Often these are people who have earned an audience over time because they consistently delivered valuable content on a subject that mattered to someone.

• Mom bloggers like those at BlogHer shared about the true stories of mommyhood
• Dad bloggers like OneDad3Girls shared content that distinguished them from moms and was ‘of-use’ to other dads
• Home stylists like my sister, CBellfurnishings, delivered a POV on designing an interior worth living in
• Writers like those at Copyblogger, shred useful ideas on creating compelling content and just being a writer in the age of digital

They are not attached to the usual institutions – big media companies or consultancies. They earned their audience by working social and creating worthwhile and share-worthy content.

CB2 Taps Influencers to Collaborate with Communities

I am a fan of Crate and Barrel. My still, relatively new living room would attest to that. The alternate brand CB2 “is affordable modern for apartment, loft, home.” They recently ran a great program - CB2 Apt - featured in Google Think! that invited influencers and celebrities to design a 5-room apartment via Pinterest and social media, in general.

Dubbed “The first apartment that Pinterest built”, the actual activity ran for a week in May. Five stylist/designers/Pinterest ‘pros’ were assigned a room. They researched looks they felt appropriate and pinned them in Pinterest boards. Followers voted. Ultimately, the stylists constructed their rooms in one 12 hour burst each, an activity that is entertainingly captured in time lapse on the site.

The Value of Influencers

Athena Calderone, a stylist who publishes at Eye Swoon tackled the bedroom. You can see the Pinterest board here. She, like the other influencers, recorded and shared the experience on their own blogs and social platforms. This is one of the three key benefits to CB2:

• Access to a specific and relevant audience (the followers of our 5 stylists)
• The third party credibility that CB2 furnishings meet a certain mark
• The content created before, during and after the actual “styling” event

Applying an ‘Event Activation’ Model

We do a lot of events and are getting better about extending those experiences before, during and after the event via online content marketing. CB2 Apt made the exercise a live event by scheduling the room ‘builds’ all in one week on a compressed schedule. This happens in ‘design house’ events across the country where local stylist/designers are invited to design one room in a house or apartment that will then open to the public as a showcase for a period of time.

• Before: the stylist amassed Pinterest pins of different directions, the crowd contributed, voted
• During: the rooms were built using winning pins as the inspiration. The build was recorded in time-lapse.
• After: the stylists posted about their experience on their own blogs and social platforms and extended the reach of the original content while also personalizing it

Three or four years ago, there was a lot of talk about whether mommybloggers had jumped the shark or more likely that they had become so in-demand that their inevitable professionalization might spoil the earned trust with their followers.

Smart subject matter experts won’t sell out. That doesn’t mean they won’t get paid. It simply means they are mindful of the trust they have built, the value of their reputation and the need to retain their independent POV. While it is not explicitly called out in an obvious way, I am certain that the CB2 Apt stylists were paid for their professional services. Athena Calderone does frame it in her post as being ‘commissioned.’

 

The CB2 Apt content experience is terrific. Their use of ‘subject matter experts w/audience’ demonstrates their appreciation for a new type of industry influencer.

Here's the trailer that kicked it all off:

 

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Re-intermediation At The Hands of Social Networks

We could have seen it coming. Build a million brand fans on Facebook and then watch as Facebook turns off your access to those very fans. That’s what people are talking about when they mention Facebook Zero. As Marshall Manson from social@Ogilvy summarized in a recent post,

“Organic reach of the content brands publish in Facebook is destined to hit zero. It’s only a matter of time. In 2012, Facebook famously restricted organic reach of content published from brand pages to about 16 percent. In December 2013, another round of changes reduced it even more.”

Re-mediators

Where brands once flocked to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and more to establish a direct relationship with their customers, a kind of hip and casual CRM system for the social set, now these same brands are finding the platforms themselves are becoming mediators between them and their fans.

Increasingly brands must buy Facebook advertising to get their content seen even by their subscribing fans. While Twitter and LinkedIn still support a meritocracy where good content is rewarded with earned engagement, paid media remains key to extending the reach of even the best content. Is it just a matter of time before those platforms throttle down access to a brand’s subscribing followers?

No brand expects to use Facebook at scale for free. On the other hand, those folks who have liked Coca-Cola, REI, or Ford expect access to the brand. And no one understands the black box algorithm that determines what we actually see in our newsfeeds.

Building brands and business via digital marketing is no longer in its infancy. Still, the discipline is young and certainly the impact of social networks on buyer habits remains contentious. It is too early for platforms to hold a brands fanbase hostage. But it’s all about degrees. Facebook seems to be pushing pretty hard. The other platforms seem much more reasonable for now.

 

It’s Only CRM, But I like It
There is no reason why strategic ad buys across social networks cannot be a part of smart digital marketing. We just need to keep brands motivated to put resources into social networks to prove out the viability of driving actually sales and not just brand metrics. That means not making it too expensive or undoing all of the earned benefits of these platforms.  Brands who really want a direct, dis-intermediated relationship with customers may have to get back to CRM basics. Still, to reach customers via their preferred social channels - even those customers  whose data sits in a core CRM database -will require brands to play ball with social networks. 

As James McQuiveysays in AdAge,

“Recognition that it's time to build a direct digital relationship will land on most marketers at about the same time that they realize that the aforementioned digital platforms -- Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft -- are in a much better position to have a deeper, more persistent relationship with the customer. And these marketers won't know what to do about it. Because these digital giants, while enablers of digital disruption for even the smallest developers, are also the replacement for the old media model.”

 

(thanks to Skyscrapers Forum for image)

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What’s App Acquisition Brings More Trust to Advertising

Loads of analysts are taking a look at the $19 billion ($16b in cash & stock; $3bn in restricted stock) acquisition of the 55-person messaging company, What’s App. It’s a lot of money. And despite the stories of a deal brokered over chocolate-covered strawberries at Mark Zuckerberg’s kitchen table, no one expects such a purchase decision was made lightly. 

Some of the most valuable analysis I have found are here:

Knowledge@Wharton - Quick Take: What’s Up with Facebook’s WhatsApp Deal

“Knowledge@Wharton asked two Wharton experts — Kartik Hosanagar, professor of operations and information management, and Lawrence G. Hrebiniak, emeritus professor of management — whether they believe the move ultimately will pay off.”

HBR Blogs, Jeff Stibel -  The Logic Behind Facebook’s Recent Moves

“Similarly, the size of a virtual network is dictated by its carrying capacity, only that capacity is measured by utility instead of physical resources. An online social network can only grow as big as it remains useful, and the usefulness of a social network can be measured as the ease with which users can connect and share with friends and (sometimes) potential friends.”

NYTimes, David Gelles - For Facebook, It’s Users First and Profits Later

“When Facebook acquired Instagram for $1 billion in 2012, it, too, was assailed for a supposedly bad investment. But today, with Instagram thriving and beginning to sell advertising, that deal looks like a bargain.”

 

Some key points most are touching on:

• What’s App is growing faster than Facebook and doing so internationally. Fast growth is always good for public companies. Also, Facebook may face increasing competition from services anchored elsewhere. The explosive growth of China’s WeChat being a great example.
• Daily use of monthly actives is higher on What’s App (70%) than on Facebook (61%). Messaging services are that much more essential to their users than even Facebook with a greater frequency of use.
• Facebook seems to have learned that their future may be as a “house of brands” vs. a single monolithic service provider under the Facebook “app.” Their launch of Paper, their cultivation of Instagram and now their purchase of What’s App seem to indicate that they do not expect every service they own to be rolled up under the Facebook name and interface. This clearly is a “hedge” against phenomena like the 11 million young users who have allegedly moved off Facebook since 2011.
• At $1 a year in fee, What’s App has a different business model and source of revenue. As Knowledge@Wharton reported: “Despite the strong revenue numbers, Saikat Chaudhuri, executive director of the Mack Institute for Innovation Management at Wharton, warns that Facebook has to be careful that its growing ad load doesn’t alienate customers. “Ultimately, Facebook will need to find more subtle ways of engaging beyond News Feed ads,” he says.”
• Between What’s App, South Korea’s Line, China’s WeChat, the trending growth of messaging services is clear. Facebook simply would not want such a service to become Google’s (the other recent suitor for What’s App).

There’s another factor to consider that supports What’s App as a good hedge or investment in the future and it has to do with the importance of trust in advertising.

 

What it may mean to advertisers: leveraging trust

Remember the research around close ties and weak ties? This explains the dynamic happening between users in social networks and how it maps to some enduring characteristics of what we all get from our closely held relationships (the 5 or so people closest to us) and those that are more casual and extended (think 300+ friends on Facebook.)

All friends are not created equal. We trust our close ties and the recommendations they make more than our weak ties. That makes sense. Our family and closest friends know us better. When they tell us we might like the Ford Fusion or the service experience at Lowe’s or the quality of the independent insurance agent in our town, it means more than a comment by our 290^th friend on Facebook. Conversely, weak ties are great for exposing us to more new things. That’s how many of us break out of the rut of homophily (only being exposed to the narrow set of similar things that our closest friends will provide)

Facebook is a lot more about weak ties. What’s App is more about close ties.  

The marketing world continues to try and learn how to drive authentic customer advocacy. How do you get customers sharing meaningfully about their positive experience with a brand? How do you get more people to share valuable content via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and more? How do you trigger people to share about a brand via their trusted social graph?

Meanwhile, brands are often abusing the same social network channels by publishing un-engaging content (clutter & spam) or reducing everything to a promotional offer (cultivating deal-hungry, here-today-gone-tomorrow customers). There are limits to how much advertising can be pumped into social networks before we poison the well as what happened early on with email marketing (spam). And even then, our, on average, 300+ friends are not the most trusted network. Our close ties hold stronger trust. 

The challenge for a network like Facebook is farmed up by Jeff Stibel, Chairman and CEO of Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp., in HBR Blogs,

“The most important element is clutter in the form of a sloppy interface, advertisements, and unwanted connections. The site’s utility goes down every time a user gets annoyed, and that annoyance is the biggest threat to Facebook’s survival. Too many users equals too much clutter. Think of the ant colony: if you threw some Candy Crush invites into the nest, or subjected the ants to the chatter of members of other colonies, they’d probably go postal… right before the colony completely collapsed.”

What’s App connects a smaller group of people who know each other more closely. When a brand delivers a relevant offer to one user and she passes it along to her messaging address book, it will perform better. It will be more instantly relevant. It is more trusted coming through a close tie. It will drive action at a higher rate.  

I spent some time with the folks from LINE, a What’s App competitor late last year when I was in Asia. They were very bullish about their advertising prospects in comparison to Facebook. They owned the bottom of the funnel and can measurably drive people to retail or ecommerce in ways that Facebook could only dream of (this is them talking). Brands connecting with users via LINE send out a relevant offer to a customer/follower and that person goes into store at a much higher rate.  I am sure Facebook sees the value of close ties and the possibility to drive real commerce not just engagement via What’s App.

As Jeff Stibel summarized when discussing the premature reports of Facebook’s demise,

“Determining what users find most relevant, and providing that and only that, is both Facebook’s greatest challenge and its greatest opportunity for making it through the breakpoint. If it succeeds, Facebook’s network curve won’t look like what happened to MySpace or polio, rather it will stabilize like other successful networks.”

(thanks to Mobile Brain Bank for the terrific image from their study)

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Why I Don't Believe the "Smart Money is Leaving Facebook"

Nate Elliot, Forrester analyst in the social media track, published a report with the headline and subhead, “Why Facebook Is Failing Marketers: The Leading Social Network Has Abandoned Social Marketing.”

His position is that Facebook has devolved into a “push” media company and thus abandoned its early claims to be a new kind of “social media marketer.” Essentially, Nate says that the smart advertiser money is leaving Facebook. The report synthesizes interviews with 395 US, Canadian and UK business executives.

In short, Nate’s argument doesn’t hold water. He may be hearing some cooling of enthusiasm from marketers in favor of spreading their investments across digital and social. But the headline prematurely signals the demise of Facebook, which remains a strong platform for many brands.

What the study really says

POINT 1: Two charts make it clear that 395 business executives are unsure of the measured value of all digital and social media from Facebook to LinkedIn to even banner advertising. When asked of all the options out there whether they were very dissatisfied to very satisfied, all responses averaged between 3.54 to 3.84. All of the choices are in the middle. This is hardly the wholesale critique of Facebook that Nate makes it out to be.  This simply restates what we all know – industry-standard measurement isn’t there yet.

 

 

 

 

POINT 2: Facebook can be hard to work with. If you are not spending significantly in annual ad spend and if you have not cultivated a good relationship with a Facebook “rep”, brands have a hard time getting the attention of those at Facebook capable of doing interesting things.  They have a small staff (4600+) compared with Google’s 45,000. They simply cannot service marketers (clients) as brands would like. This sometimes breeds “dissatisfaction.

 

Connecting and activating fans with affinity for the brand

POINT 3: Facebook isn’t for every brand. It certainly isn’t the only play in social media for most brands. Still it remains a very valuable platform for many as it allows brands to establish addressable relationships with customers and people who have an affinity for a brand. Many brands have not had an efficient way to connect directly with customers. The relationships are held by retailers, brokers or some other sales channel. Facebook can help change that.

 

Helping small business have an “addressable” relationship with their customers and prospects

POINT 4: Facebook can work well for small to medium business. That means it can become a valuable platform for brands who maintain a sales channel or agent-based model. Brands can help their agents master digital and social media, including Facebook, to build their business.  

 

Continuous innovation and better targeting (including mobile)

POINT 5: Facebook continues to innovate and invent new advertising opportunities. Some feel more “push” than “pull.” We should expect that they will continue to release improvements on targeting. We should not judge yesterday’s ad choices too harshly as more is on the way.  Look-a-likes, email list targeting, friends-of-fans are all strong innovations. And Facebook has made great improvements in their mobile ad solution such that only last week they announced, “the company noted that mobile ads accounted for 49 percent of its advertising revenue, up from 41 percent in the second quarter”

POINT 6: At the same time, they are operationalizing their ad sales operation to make it more efficient. This makes them feel like a traditional media company where every question is met with a stock ad sales answer. All one has to do is work in China with Sina Weibo and experience their exuberant “let’s try stuff” approach to advertisers to see how institutionalized Facebook is becoming.  If you want more bespoke solutions, brands must invest money on the platform. That’s what many major brands have done.

 

The “smart money” isn’t leaving Facebook

Point 7: Brands continue to invest in Facebook believing in the value while also spending in other platforms. Big FMCG’s have been operationalizing their use of the platform and the way they measure value. Facebook provides a strong global platform for many of these brands. It helps the global center at a FMCG stimulate change by having a world’s worth of their brand marketers mastering a single platform.

As reported in the NY Times, Q3 financials for Facebook stated that the marketplace of brands continues investing in the platform, “The company’s revenue rose 60 percent, to $2.02 billion, compared with last year’s third quarter. Most of that, about $1.8 billion, came from advertising”

Of course, other platforms matter as much or more. For B2B, LinkedIn can be a tremendous platform. Twitter is hungrily releasing new features that appeal to advertisers. Pinterest will have formal ad offerings any day.

 

No brand should put all of their eggs in one basket yet some of those eggs belong on Facebook.

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Marketers Should Buy Twitter Now

As usual, the media has begun its see-sawing articles about the IPO intentions of Twitter. Either it is an ascending giant or a floundering service whose potential is as stalled as its user growth.

I realize this type of coverage just is to be expected but, still, its kind of tiresome. Investors will bet on the leadership or just plain bet. As for marketers, it’s time to operationalize your Facebook investment (we know how it works now “scale”) and go into a hefty ‘try and learn’ phase with Twitter.

 

A Response to the Challenges

Challenge: Ironically, Twitter is well-designed for mobile yet suffers from a dearth of mobile advertising options and inventory

Response: Really? Praise and condemn Twitter simultaneously for being too ‘mobile?’ No marketing platform can be too mobile in 2013. Twitter’s mobile-friendly format is a huge plus. Just look at the mad growth of WeChat and LINE in Asia (and now Europe). Both are platforms specifically designed for mobile.

Certainly, Twitter needs better mobile advertising formats. That is true of the entire mobile space. Just look at Mary Meeker’s comments on the stage that mobile advertising finds itself. She remains confident that we are in early days and that mobile ad monetization will happen. Betting against mobile advertising seems unwise to me.

 

Challenge: It’s just a PR platform

Response: More irony that on the day of the day of the IPO announcement, the New York Times ran an article about world leaders relying on Twitter to connect with constituents and to deliver more transparency and access to government via the United Nations. World leaders on Twitter. That’s powerful.

But critics would say that substantiates Twitter’s role as a PR platform. That’s kind of like saying PR is just PR. The communications disciplines are all meshing together. None work separately anymore. Advertising works with PR, direct marketing needs mid-funnel marketing, ecommerce flourishes because of social and so on. PR, itself ,is valuable as the earned voice for brands. Combined with other marketing, it drives business and should not be undervalued.

Sure, Twitter needs a rich set of advertising options to run a viable business. Those will come. These advertising options will be richer still because of who is on Twitter (influencers) and the interconnectedness of Twitter to other marketing functions like …customer care, for example.

 

Challenge: Twitter will need to massively grow beyond its 218+million users to become relevant to advertisers

Response: I doubt Twitter will reach 1 billion users anytime soon. They could reach 500M. Their growth has measurably slowed. Still assuming that Twitter, or any platform, must reach massive scale to be a strong marketing platform is overly simplistic.

Twitter has a lot of influencers: government leaders, celebrities, business leaders, sports figures, journalists. It’s a pretty good crowd. They tweet to their thousands of followers and often sending these updates automatically into Facebook. Followers retweet and also funnel messages into the broader reaching Facebook.  Journalists routinely trawl for story ideas through their follower feed.

Twitter should and will grow. At the same time, they should embrace their influencer-rich nature and put more energy into researching the role that Twitter plays in the customer journey. Brands need evidence that Twitter can “sell” in the broadest sense.

 

Challenge: With its limited 140 characters, Twitter cannot compete with image-rich services that are all the rage.

Response: Twitter’ simplicity is it beauty. In many ways, the limited feature set of Twitter has driven adoption by marketers who can easily “get” what Twitter can basically do. Compare that to the mysterious feature set and purpose of Google+. I guarantee most brands are stumbling through their use of G+ based upon a rather blind belief that it will help their search rankings…in Google.

I tweet pics all of the time. It may not be as elegant as the Instagram app but it could be. And Twitter Cards are a great innovation and one that will build their advertising base. These information panels allow us to use visuals to advertise and even sell direct.

 

Twitter plays a valuable role in the marcom mix. I cannot speak to valuations - most are a bit frothy - but we shouldn't simply evaluate Twitter's value based upon today's stories. 

 

(image from: http://www.pillowfightsj.blogspot.com/ )

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Brands at Social Media Matters in Hong Kong

Next week is our second annual Social Media Matters conference in Hong Kong. Last year, Thomas Crampton and our Social@Ogilvy team worked with event organizers from All That Matters to create a regional event designed specifically around the interests of brands in digital and social media.

I have the good fortune of introducing our Global Brand Advocacy Study (supported by CIC, Salesforce, Visible)  and provoking a great panel of brands including IHG, Shangri-La International and IMAX. The study looked at what people share and care most about from brands in China, Brazil, the UK and the US.  Since I am a fan of all three brands, I look forward to hearing how each goes beyond simple social network engagement to cultivate their best advocates.

• This year’s highlights at Social Media Matters are brand and platforms. Coca-Cola, Ford, Philips, Nestlé, American Express and Unilever, among others will all be in the house.
• Platforms including RenRen, Sina, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook among others will also be there.
• And, of course, great partners like CIC, SocialBakers, and Visual.ly and more.

If you can make it to Hong Kong on September 10^th, do join us. All of the information is here. I and my colleagues will be publishing great content via social.ogilvy.com and ogilvydo.com.

The Principles of Social Design Unpacked #1

More and more, our jobs as marketers are to drive behavior. Sometimes that’s getting folks to buy something or more of something. Sometimes its to spend more time or interact with a brand in the hopes that will lead to them thinking about the brand in a moment of need. And more and more often, the behavior we all want is to drive people to advocate.

The best of marketing has always been about behavioral economics and those proven strategies that ‘nudge’ people to buy or take an action. Recently, behavioral science has been popularized and, even advanced, by some pretty smart people.

Robert Cialdini has the six drivers of persuasion (neat compressed summary here). The Heath Brothers have the “Rider” and the “Elephant.” Jonah Berger has his own six principles (“STEPPS”). Dan Ariely has his stuff. Paul Adams from Facebook has his own synthesis of what drives people to action.

There are great concepts born from research across many of these works. In fact, sometimes there is just too much in the behavioral canon to practically apply to a business problem today. In my article for FastCo Create last week outlining The Principles of Social Design, I made a point,

“Many of them, like ”loss aversion”--the tendency for people to move more quickly to avoid losing something rather than to gain something of value--are more like a bolt of fine, durable cloth than a ready-made suit of clothes. You need to know which ones to stitch together to tackle a particular problem.”



Practical Principles of Social Design

I am well aware that the Facebook sales and marketing team popularized the phrase “social by design.” This was used to package up the best practice approach to using the Facebook platform to drive engagement and advocacy KPIs from consumers.

Early on, Facebook found themselves having to educate traditional marketers on brand and agency sides about how Facebook was different than interruptive advertising. I find it ironic that that same group at Facebook has latched onto the mnemonic that Facebook is “the new print” to describe the popularization of clever graphics in use by brand after brand to generate object “likes.” It’s an old-school concept that any art director can understand. It just may not advance the people-centricity of the platform like ‘social by design’ did.

Facebook did not invent word of mouth behaviors. They merely built a platform that takes advantage of a some of them.

We (my team at Social@Ogilvy) have learned from 8 years of social media marketing and communications and a ton more time in related disciplines before that. We are sharp students of academics in this field. In fact, our original work was based upon Robert Cialdini’s six drivers of persuasion.

We needed a more practical synthesis of the best research-based ideas that predict why people will advocate (all forms of word of mouth including sharing content).  Here is how we updated our original drivers into a new, highly useful “Principles of Social Design”

There are two parts to the principles. The first defines the messenger and outlines the various networks we might engage with to stimulate sharing or advocacy.  These networks influence us all in new ways. Some are more influential because the network is made of family, friends or people with shared interests.  The second part are the word of mouth drivers. These are the ways we design communications such that thye authentically capture the attention of people and networks of people and drive advocacy and, even, actions like sales.

Networks of Influence: The messenger matters. Trust in institutions and traditional media goes up and down (mostly down).  And while there are new potentially influential voices in many markets and within certain contexts, sometimes what our friends, family and social connections say matters more. 

Community Networks: How can we use communities to drive social behaviors? People come together around different affinities and interests. Sometimes that can be a brand. More often it’s a topic that matters to them – think about Maker communities; people who love the Outer Banks of North Carolina; or first time moms. If we can be of-use and deliver against the drivers of word of mouth, we can expect ideas and content to spread across the community.

 Influencers: Who are the professional and amateur (and in-between) voices who may have some authority and potential influence on this subject? These may be popular bloggers, celebrities, popular Twitter users. Their subject matter expertise may be narrow like gadgets or raising adopted kids. If we deliver on the drivers of word of mouth, we can encourage influencers to share across their social graph. Sometimes this is akin to a mom reading about new family wellness techniques from a CNN Health editor, and sometimes it is a little closer to them like a tip from a mom you may not know yet who seems similar to you. 

Content Network: How can we use our owned and controlled online and offline properties to extend the model? If for no other reason than to be found via Google, we need to use our own content network to publish relevant content such that when someone needs to know

 

Combine  a thoughtful strategy around using the right Networks of Influence with The Drivers of Word of Mouth (see FastCo: The Principles of Social Design) and you are now designing with the Principles of Social Design. That’s what it takes to reliably spark sharing, advocacy, word of mouth and more.

Next post: An Inside View of The Drivers of Word of Mouth

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Why I Love the New MySpace

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

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

 

Beta Beta

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

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

Music Fans First

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

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

 

Pandora and YouTube and, someday, Tumblr?

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

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

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

We’ll See

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

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

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

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