Social Media - Servant of Chaos

The Social Marketer – Feeling the Social Media Love

There is one big difference between what I would consider “traditional marketing” and “social media marketing”. It’s love. Or perhaps more precisely, it’s passion. Mixed in with a bit of love. And as there are a bunch of posts on the love theme this Valentines Day week, I thought I’d climb aboard the love bus.

Now, if you are a brand marketer, you might love what you are doing, and love what you are creating through your brand, but that’s not the sort of love I am talking about. When you pour your professional creativity into a new product or service and stake your professional reputation on its success, your interest in the brand/offering you are building can consume you. And while this takes a huge personal commitment from you, there is no one else who will love what you are doing quite like you do. I know, and I’ve been there.

And even if you are tweeting from the dark side of the focus group mirror, or blogging on the behind-the-scenes tour, this is not being a “social marketer”. It’s sharing your passion. Sharing your love. Sharing your work. But ultimately, it’s sharing your brand. It is good brand marketing practice.

The social marketer, however, starts from a different place. As Michael Brenner suggests, it’s about feeling the love.

For the social marketer:

The brand is a means to an end. The brand exists, the people exist – we don’t need messaging, but a tune to dance to.
Marketing is about bringing the brand to the people, not bringing the people to the brand
The glare of the logo is a distraction and a barrier to forming relationships. What we need is a name and a face, not a 12pt white space exclusion

Sure, the social marketer cares about (and is probably even MEASURED on) brand awareness, recall and yes – sales. But they are by-products of the main game.

The social marketer is in the process of transforming the way that we all do business. You probably have one in the ranks of your company. There may be more. How do you find them? How do you join them?

I call it “The Social Way”.

There’s more to come.

Where Are You on the Trust Barometer?

Age of Conversation, Corporate Social Responsibility, Digital Strategy, Facts & Figures, Influence, Media, Social Media

Whenever the social media conversation shifts to “influence” – who has it, how you can get it and what it’s worth, you know we’re talking trust. After all, what we perceive as “influence” is simply a combination of trust and relevance – a heady mix of the right audience, a trusted shepherd and a call to action.

Don’t believe me?

Nicholas Christakis has an interesting post on the power of twitter and its ability to influence a large following. As he explains, Alyssa Milano with her celebrity and her 1.3 million strong Twitter following would normally be considered “influential”. But when she tweeted out a link to the Amazon page of a book called Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks & How They Shape Our Lives, the roar of social media silence was deafening. There was not ONE clickthrough. Not one sale.

It seems – finally – that we are seeing the reality of trust and the power of relevance. That’s why I am particularly interested in this report from Edelman Australia – the 2011 Australian Edelman Trust Barometer.

Launched today (see the Tweetstream), this is the third survey to be carried out in Australia, but we are already seeing some interesting trending:

Coming out of the GFC, we saw an upswing in trust in government (54%) and businesses (52%)
Trust in NGOs (65%) is the highest of any Australian institution, with the Media well down at 32%

The full report is embedded below and can be downloaded from Slideshare. It makes for interesting reading.

2011 Australian Edelman Trust Barometer

View more presentations from Matthew Gain.

But what does this mean for brands and marketers?

As one of the launch panellists, Vanessa Hall, pointed out, trust is created through the interplay of the message or story the brand wants to tell, the expectations of your customers/stakeholders and the promise that exists between the two (my interpretation here). This is where the challenge comes – after all, our customers are rarely interested in the brand story, and their interpretation of your brand promise is often different from where you (on the client or agency side) tend to see it.

And with social media, individuals are now well equipped to engage with brands in a public (and searchable) sphere. Positive and negative brand experiences can be published, shared and amplified around the world in minutes – and this makes “trust” all the more important. As the report points out, “Trust is a protective agent …”. And yes, it can lead to tangible sales.

But, we need to consider the following trends:

Aligning our business purpose with a greater good (CSR is a good start)
Strong support for NGOs (consider partnering with an NGO to build your trust profile)
Multiple voices in multiple channels (while CEOs have increased level of trust and respect, use expert voices across your business and in multiple channels to build a network of influence)

Perhaps, most importantly, you need to think about all this in relation to YOUR business. Where do you sit on the trust barometer? And how are you going to improve?

Some Events in Sydney February/March 2011

Conferences, Social Media

Late last year I was asked to speak on social media and innovation as part of the GE Global Leadership Education program. It was fascinating (and challenging) to be face-to-face with 50 of GE’s hand-picked future leaders – with a focus on one topic: digital strategy. But not all organisations have the ability to bring their leaders together in one room. For many of us, the closest we get are industry conferences.

Over the next month or two we’re heading into conference season here in Sydney – and there is plenty to see and do – especially for those interested in marketing, advertising and social media.

I am particularly excited to be participating in a some of these events:

Social Media Marketing: The Way Forward – Feb 28 and Mar 1. I’m the “distinguished chair” for this two day conference. There’s a great client-side lineup including Chris Smith from NAB, Rupinder Toor from Dell, Vanessa Paech from Lonely Planet and Andrew Giles from Canon, backed up with Hannah Law from Switched On Media and Tiphereth Gloria from George Patterson Y & R on the agency side. This is an AMSRS and Communications Council accredited event. Come along!
Circus – The Festival of Commercial Creativity – Feb 22 to Feb 25. The Communications Council is working to transform this annual event from an awards focus into a feature event for the advertising industry. They are shipping in some great keynote speakers such as Rob Campbell (W+K), Jess Greenwood (Contagious Magazine) and Josh Spear (Undercurrent). This year I am serving on the judging panel for digital AWARDs. Should be interesting!
Vibewire Fastbreak – Feb 25. One of the best innovation and entrepreneurship events around. This month’s event asks “are we headed back to basics?” A great way to start your Friday.
Ad:Tech Sydney – Mar 9 Mar 10. It’s a veritable feast of technology, advertising and gaming, with Brad Jakeman (Activision), Daniel Alegre (Google), Iain McDonald (Amnesia Razorfish) and Steve Patrizi (LinkedIn). I hear the two days of Ad:Tech will link in with other events to create a week of Digital Sydney Events. Sounds like fun.

But what about you? Are you attending events this year? Have you got budget/time? What’s important?

And don’t forget, you can contact me here about speaking.

Act Like You Care

Influence, Performing Social Media, Social Media, Storytelling

I’ve always been interested in people. At university I would spend hours in the coffee shop watching people. I would notice the small gestures. I would see the forced smile of an unhappy coincidence. Or the joyous embrace of a true surprise. And as I watched – and drank coffee – I realised that our bodies betray us before the words ever do. Indeed, our actions speak louder than words – with some suggesting that over 90% of our communication is non-verbal.

But if this is the case, how do we go about establishing credibility and trust online?

This is where social networks are coming to play an important role. While we may not know or trust a brand or a company (or the brand manager working there), we may well know others who do. And the level of trust and respect that we hold for that other person will impact our actions – whether to research, engage and purchase – or not.

Why is this distinction important?

Most business people drink their own kool aid (which is, perhaps, as it should be). But your customers (in general) don’t work for you. They don’t spend hours of every day thinking about your business. They are thinking about their lives – the problems, the joys, the relationships. They are wondering about interest rates, mortgages and what to cook for dinner. You are probably the same – as Robyn McMaster explains, we perform many different roles each day depending on our responsibilities.

Despite this (and of course, we know this deep down), many corporate blogs, websites and social media outposts are designed and populated with content which aims to influence customers.

As I have said before, it’s not about influence, it’s about trust. If you really want to transform the relationship you have with your customers, it’s time to stop thinking short term sale. It’s time to stop dating and get real about commitment. And in a way, that means sharing the needs, interests and concerns of your customers.

It’s time to watch HOW you say something rather than WHAT you say. Julia Hanna over at the HBS Working Knowledge blog suggests that “People often are more influenced by how they feel about you than by what you're saying. It's not about the content of the message, but how you're communicating it.” And online, that’s determined by your actions within the network.

It’s time to act like you care – or find someone who does.

The Value of Conversion

Blogging, Social Media, Web 2.0, Web/Tech

I can remember way back in the early days of the web that we used to count hits. This basically meant that we would count every element on the web page as a single item and each time it was displayed, we would get a “hit”. So a page with ten items would rate as ten hits. This would get people very excited! “My page got 1000 hits” could translate to as little as one visitor if you have 1000 items on your page.

Of course, to the web novice, 1000 hits sounded great.

As we got savvier – and as the number of web users grew – we started counting visitors. And then unique visitors. And then repeat visitors. We started to think of our websites as destinations – as homes for our content, our ideas, products and services.

But, inevitably, someone asks about ROI. What is the value of the transactions that come in when measured against the money spent in creating, maintaining and improving your web presence? In the early days of the web, the cost of implementing a payment gateway was astronomical, so very few businesses could afford it. (These days, you can implement a PayPal gateway with a few clicks and a couple of hours!)

But those businesses that got involved in online commerce early were able to learn valuable lessons. The value to their business was not in the transactions that came through the web (as a channel). What they gained was an understanding of the web AS a business. They learned how to translate business models into the online space – focusing on the hard metrics (ie revenue) rather then hits, visitors etc.

In the online world – where attention is scarce – your challenge is to convert your website visitor’s attention, interest and trust into something more tangible for your business. Sometimes that is not transactional – perhaps you want to grow a community or position yourself as a thought leader (if so, think through the appropriate metrics such as subscriber numbers, inbound links, community membership).

Now – make the hard decision.

Divide those numbers by your traffic figures. What is the conversion percentage (ie how many “visitors” sign up or subscribe)?

Relentlessly focusing on that per-visitor statistic will help you improve your efforts and achieve your objectives. Just take a look at the graph above from the Silicon Alley Insider (via the Measurement Standard). Amazon drives conversion at every opportunity – and the results show. Make just one change to your site and see what impact it has. Keep refining it until you see improvement. And once your site is more relevant to your audience – and is easier for them to use – watch as your conversion rates improve.

Oh, and on that subject, be sure to subscribe here to my blog. Then there’ll be more branding, marketing and social media goodness coming your way.

How Much Does Social Media Cost?

Smart Bloggers, Social Media, Strategy

There are plenty of articles around that talk about what it takes to get started with social media. Heck, I’ve probably even written a few myself. After all, anyone – with the exception perhaps of Gerry Harvey – knows that the barriers to entry to social media are very low. You need a computer and a connection to the internet. Oh, and maybe an hour or so.

In that hour you will be able to create a blog, a number of profiles, fan pages, accounts and maybe even link them together. But then what?

Well, normally I’d say:

STOP

right

there

Do your research, think through and align your strategy and then proceed. But presuming you’ve jumped in feet first …

That’s when you either start spending some time (and yes, time is money) or you hire a consultant or an agency to help you out. But what are the ballpark figures you need to budget for? Think about:

The profile of your business customers – where they shop (yes, online), where they get their information, how they qualify their decisions and where they rate, compare and review products. In short, what is their digital footprint
What resources/time/people do you have in-house that can “own” your social media project
Decide your level of commitment -are you testing the waters, piloting a concept, building on previous efforts, building a platform for business growth
Write down your top three objectives

Once you have this basic information, Mack Collier has written an excellent article disclosing the type of prices charged for various social media related services. I have summarised the prices here, but added in my view of what you are likely to see here in Australia. These prices are not LARGE AGENCY prices – and are more likely to be found amongst the boutique agencies and individual consultants. Also, the quality and amount of creative design will impact these costs – good design costs good money.

Remember, you get what you pay for (generally) – and be sure to ask for details or references regarding the last three social media projects your consultant/agency has worked on. Be sure to go through and read Mack’s whole article and subscribe to his excellent blog.

Blogging	Range	My view
Full service – launch, content creation, comment moderation management and response	1000-12,000	10,000-25,000
Launch – content creation and launch	1000-8000	5000-10,000
Ghost writing (per article)	$50-$500	$100-$500
Twitter
Full service – launch, content creation and customer interaction	1000-7500	2500-5000
Facebook
Full service – launch, content creation and customer interaction	2000-9000	5000-10,000
Strategy
Comprehensive strategy and content creation	3000-20,000	10,000-30,000
Social media strategy audit of existing approach	2000-10,000	10,000-25,000
Consulting (hourly)	50-500	50-500
Training
1-2 hours	500-5000	500-5000
4 hours	1000-10000	1000-10000
Full day	2000-50,000	2000-50,000