People are checked in.. Now what.

Many people see check in data as some what of a commodity. I agree. The check in is merely the indicator of a persons presence the new "log in" if you will.. In days past if we could get registered users on our site we would be able to tailor the site experience based any number of attributes.

Just like planning how to tailor a web experience a brand has to determine what to do when a person checks in to a location. Do you want to tally the number of times a person has visited and reward. How about about offering some unique piece of content or incentive. What ever the case people must see the value if you want them to use it more than once.

At the moment each location platform has its own check in data. Having to manage data for each location increases overhead and reduces chances of timeliness and relevance of location based content. This is an opportunity where open data standards would make it easier to manage a digital overlay to physical locations.

Even with open data standards "Check In" data needs to be combined with more than just geo location in order to increase relevance. Enter Facebook and their open graph. Connecting the check in with your profile adds a whole new dimension to location based relevance. Assuming part of your location based strategy is to deliver content of any type using profile data gives you the ability to segment people and increase relevance.

As you begin to plan for location based interaction make sure to clearly define the value exchange and understand how to couple profile or behavioral data with the check in to increase relevance.  

Do you see FaceBook places as a help or hindrance to having better location based data?

In Store: The other side of Location Based Services

Much of the conversation about location based services cover the landscape of GPS based solutions. GPS is great when you are in proximity to a location but misses the opportunity to pin point once you are in a physical location like the check out isle.

The flip side to the GPS location based platforms is the “In store” LBS, which uses things like wifi triangulation or other proprietary technology to pinpoint a customer. These solutions allow you to essentially tag locations in your store and when people walk by you can serve content based on their interest.

Shopkick is a good example of an in store app. If you have not seen ShopKick here is a great video from TechCrunch of a live demo walking around Best Buy.



Another interesting platform is a service called Zulutime which enables a store with small wifi nodes. These nodes can be placed thru out the store or on shopping carts and managed thru a cloud service. Once the nodes are in place a retailer can then overlay digital content thru out the shopping experience.

Enabling a location can create new opportunities for in store advertising and a value added to those companies who supply products to the store. Think of it as the digital end cap of this isle brought to you by Sony.. Where I see some real power with in store LBS is building custom apps that connect with a traditional rewards program and other historical customer databases.

Using a in store solution with a custom app might also allow brands to figure out a way to allow redemption from a phone. This is one of the issues that has yet to be resolved and will be a key tipping point for real time redemption.

Getting Closer: Future Check in

TechCrunch published a preview of an Iphone app called future check in. This app runs in the background of an Iphone with iOS4 installed. This is the first limitation. But lets stay with what is working.

A point of friction in the process for users is that they must explicitly check in to a location. Future Check in allows you to store your favorites and be checked in automatically. This is a great feature but also runs the risk of checking you into a favorite place that may be next door. A current limitation with GPS based solutions is the accuracy of your location.

What's still missing for me is the ability to set your preferences for the types of specials you receive and an interface for managing your rewards. This is a great step in the right direction to eliminate the need to pull you phone out and physically check in..

Have your employees “Checked in” to your location marketing program

Many large brands are experimenting with location based marketing tactics to increase sales and customer loyalty. Lets skip the technology conversation for a minute and discuss the communication and training.

If you are a corporate marketing person with a large network of physical locations the temptation to add these to a location database with special offers for locals is all to tempting.

One key to any successful promotional campaign is making sure your employees understand the rules for redemption. Most established brands have training and communications processes in place. In many cases you can simply piggyback on these process but when rolling out something in a new medium like Foursquare, Twitter etc some additional training on the technology may be required.

According the recent Forrester reporting on location based social networks 84% of the Internet population is unaware of location-based services. It is very likely 99% of your employees fall into the 84%. While your front line employees do not need to be experts with the technology they should at a minimum understand the terminology.

In a large national chain some ways to train employees on the cheap could be videos on the corporate intranet or assigning a regional new media person. What ever path you take for training if you want these marketing tactics to work you need to think global but act local. Without proper awareness on the front lines even the most well conceived plans will fall short.

Its all about location. But will there be a winner?

Since everyone is talking about location let’s extend the conversation Sophia started in her post “Geo-Location Is Truly Everywhere“.

It seems we are at an interesting point in location based content. On one hand you have the early pioneers of this new land Foursquare and Gowalla (I will leave Mytown on its own because of the amazing gaming experience) who are consistently gaining new users. But what happens to Foursquare and the likes when people start tapping into the API for Twitters geo location data and when Facebook checkin gains critical mass ?

The openness of API’s means all platforms can technically benefit because there is more geo tagged content. For example if Foursquare pulled in places data which was actually tagged via a tweet it would only enhance the experience consumers have while trying to oust their others as the “Mayor”.

The flip side is that the critical mass of Twitter and Facebook could mean doom for the little guys. Kind of like when the big box retailer moves into to small town America.

The advantage I see Facebook having in this space is the amount of behavioral data it collects both implicit and explicitly. This could translate into highly targeted content and very relevant offers. If there was a way to opt in for specials or useful content delivered to my mobile device from my favorite brands I would do it. The challenge with the current models is that they are only location based and not preference. This may feel like spam to some.

Assuming the start ups can extend their platforms and keep a fun gaming experience with a proper balance of rewards extending beyond a badge there is plenty of shelf space available.

Only time will tell how this will shake out but either way location based content and marketing has made great progress. It is proving to be a unique way for brands to engage and reward their most loyal customers with special offers based on frequency or prospective customers who happen to be “nearby”.

How do you think this will play out? Will there be a “winner” or Will everyone win because of broader adoption?

3 ways to get started with branded location based content

People are broadcasting their whereabouts thru a variety of location-based platforms. With the emergence of any new consumer behavior brands quickly follow and seek news ways to engage. We are seeing brands and media companies tagging locations within Foursquare and serving up nuggets of information for their followers.

If you are thinking about integrating location-based interactions into a customer engagement strategy here are three options for getting started.

1. Leave content that can be discovered via location platforms:
This simplest way to get started is by partnering with one of the location-based platforms to create branded messages at specific locations. A good example is The History Channel. They will use foursquare to promote America the Story of Us. Foursquare users who check in at select locations across the United States that are associated with American history will receive "Fun Fact Pop Up" messages with historical information about that location.

2. Create a custom layer on Augmented Reality browser:
Layar is an Augmented reality browser that allows people to point their phone's camera toward location and it can tell you the latest check-in's who is the mayor and any display branded content. The good thing about a layer is that you are able to overlay images as well as text. Recently Walt Disney launched the augmented reality outdoor campaign for the new ‘Prince of Persia’ movie. As you get closer to one of the ‘Prince of Persia’ outdoor posters and open the layer, the movie-character Tamina speaks to you and explains that you should watch the trailer and enter the augmented reality game to answer 3 questions.

3. Build a custom app on top of location platform:
Brands can take advantage of the location platform API’s opening up by creating a branded experience. Dick’s Sporting Goods launched RunnersUnite which lets you find popular running spots in your area, and see where people are running near you right now.

Each of these options has varying degrees complexity but before picking any path here are a few things to consider.

• Does your audience even engage in this activity?


• What portion will be brand generated content versus CGM?


• What is the purpose of the app? (Entertainment, Utility)


• Why will people keep using it?

Panel Discussion: Traditional, PR and Digital Playing Together

This morning I had the pleasure of speaking on a panel with some great folks from various agencies. The topic was on integration of channels and the role digital plays to compliment traditional marketing, advertising and PR. There were several excellent questions asked by our moderator Andrea Ehresman from The Coca-Cola Company. Here are a few that stuck out for me.

The first one was: “How are ‘traditional’ channels digitizing?” the example I shared is the introduction of QR codes into physical space to augment reality. QR codes consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on white background. The information encoded can be text, links or rich media. We are seeing QR codes and augmented reality popping up all over the place. A great example of this was when Calvin Klein was forced to remove an edgy billboard. They replaced it with a large QR code where people could access additional content.

Another question that yielded a great deal of discussion was. “What are some ways to augment a mostly traditional marketing program with digital initiatives? “ One thing I think we all as a panel agreed on is that just because of hype over a marketing tactic it does not mean you should jump in heads first. Getting back to the fundamentals of marketing and understanding who your customers are, where are they and how do they want to engage with you should inform your digital initiatives.

This topic of understanding customer preference spawned another discussion on the importance of experience planning when scripting multi-channel interactions. The example of not scripting an experience was mentioned by an attendee who worked for a large retailer. He described a situation where employees in their retail stores were totally unaware of a Foursquare promotion they were running, similar to the Starbucks incident. These experience scripts need to take into consideration the points in time your employees interact as well.

And finally no discussion these days would be complete without a question on location-based marketing. A question from crowd was “What is the future of location based marketing”. This question had everyone on the panel itching to answer. The gist was that when you combine the power of Facebook’s open graph for behavioral data, with location, push messaging overlaid with an opt in from the consumer you have reached a marketing Nirvana. We are still a little ways from this but are inching our way there one check in at a time.

Thanks to my friends @RedDoor interactive for hosting me this morning it was a great discussion.

Making content move across the web

Content strategy has long been the corner stone to effectively delivering “The right content at the right time to the right person.” While this sounds a bit cliché brands will have a hard time achieving this simple premise with out a plan that is guided by consumer intent. Knowing what people are looking for, where they are looking for it and how well they find it is at the heart of understanding consumer intent.

Lets start with a simple definition of what content strategy is.

Content Strategy is an actionable plan for creating, managing & optimizing content align consumer intent with business goals. The important part of this statement is the alignment of what the consumer wants, with what the brand hopes to get in return.

Developing a content strategy is not as simple as it used to be in the early days of digital marketing. We now face an ever-growing landscape of places where consumers interact with content and a variety of new devices it is consumed on. Think about the last time you were researching for something new to buy. It is likely you started by searching Google, watched a video on Youtube, read a consumer review and did a quick poll of your friends on Facebook.

It’s also likely your customer will not be accessing content in a browser at their desk. Instead they will be using GPS enabled devices that deliver content based on their location. This can be game changing for a number of reasons.

The first use of location-based content we think of is the ability to deliver offers and promotions based on proximity to a person’s location. This has long been a dream of marketers. What I find much more interesting is when location based thinking goes beyond a simple direct response model to placing content in context of activities and interest.

Imagine if an outdoor store provided a mobile app allowing people to leave photos and suggestions along hiking trails across the country. Add the capability to log in with a Facebook account and now suddenly you can share your experience with friends in your network. The opportunity for the outdoor store to engage would be by providing useful tips for cooking on the trail, food to pack with promotions for products that will make future trips even better.

As our content becomes more distributed so do the tools for measuring effectiveness. Measuring consumption, favorability and sharing across channels is essential to make decisions on how to optimize the mix of places content goes and what content is developed.

As you can see there are a number of moving parts that must be considered when developing a content strategy. As you begin to develop your plan ask your self a few questions: Are consumer’s goals and business goals aligning? Does the content your creating have a purpose? How will you know if you content is working for you.

Integrating digital with offline events

Live events play a critical role to engage consumers with a brand or product thru out the life of a campaign. The challenge with events is they are usually bound by geography, size of venue and of course cost. Many brands use social media to extend the reach of events with roving reporters who are live tweeting, creating hashtags for people to follow and posting twitpics.

All of these are great ways to extend the event but why not take coverage to the next level with a live broadcast? Creating a live show from an event is a great way to engage consumers and maximize your reach.

Solutions from Livestream and Ustream allow mobile broadcast stations to be set up from virtually anywhere with an Internet connection. No Internet access? No problem. The Livepack from Livestream is a turnkey hardware solution for wireless live streaming at HD quality. This makes man on street coverage much easier as you can literally point the camera and go.

Recently we live broadcasted from an event. The concept was a behind the scenes sneak peak of a show with exclusive interviews from campaign spokes people and attendees. Our goal was to create new ways to extend reach of the event, engage with consumers not able to attend and drive action by getting people to tune in.

The results were excellent by comparison. The brand micro-site saw its single largest traffic day since it launched in November of 2009. Visitors tuned in for an average of 10 minutes, which is five times longer than an average day.

Not only did people tune into the broadcast from over 20 countries, 70% of them explored at least three additional pages within the site. The live coverage of the event coupled with active monitoring and engagement on twitter proved to be a great recipe for extending the event experience.

Before plugging your camera in and going live here are some tips for a successful live broadcast.

• Create a “Show” not a stream: Fully develop the story you want to tell with a mixture of live coverage and pre-recorded video. This requires more up front planning, pre recording of videos and more tightly incorporating segways to pre-recorded video.
• Promote across channels to build awareness of the show: Using email, social channels and engaging with online influencers played a huge role in the success of this online event.
• Encourage viewer participation by bringing them into the “show”: Another way to engage viewers in the live broadcast is to in create points of interaction with event goers and online viewers via twitter, Facebook or chat. A simple example of this would be a Q&A with attendees.
• No wifi – No show: In situations where you rely on a wifi connection it is essential to test each physical location the broadcast will air from. This will ensure there are no dead spots. For venues that do no provide wifi/wired capabilities you can also have lines dropped or secure a rental of the LiveStream Livepack.
• Poor lighting and sound can ruin a great effort: Having the right equipment can make or break the experience for your viewers. Plan ahead and be prepared to bring additional lighting especially if you are broadcasting indoors. The use of microphones will also significantly increase the audio quality for those tuning in.

Live broadcast are certainly not for every situation but can be a great way to maximize the investment in offline events.

This was originally posted at http://blog.ogilvypr.com/ .

Influencers are not a broadcast channel

A corner stone to most social marketing programs is an influencer outreach and engagement. Successful programs are built on the premise that you are entering a relationship and as with any relationship it is a two way street. You give a little and you get a little.

Engagement plans hinging on providing exclusive content or a sneak peak with the hopes these people will share within their network is flawed. This might work once or twice but will not create a sustainable program and fatigue will set in. Think about a person you know is always asking for things but never has anything to offer in return.

Building a successful program requires time and a commitment to the long term just like any other relationship. To keep your contacts organized use something as simple as a spreadsheet or more elaborate like a lightweight CRM. This will all depend on how many people are seen as influencers in your market. Whatever solution used for managing these relationships its important to keep track of their attitude towards your brand, what have been the value exchanges and its relative impact on your business goals.

So, as your planning influencer outreach make to sure to listen first, keep the long term in mind and make it collaborative.

Convert check-in's into loyal customers

Last year I wrote a post "Hyper local. Thats where I'm at" which focused on the value of location based social networks to the user. With tools like Foursquare gaining traction the inevitable question is how do brands engage in real time and build loyal customers.

Pepsi used of Foursquare to build awareness to support its Refresh Everything community-giving push. For every point earned in New York, Pepsi donated 4 cents to inner-city youth center Camp Interactive. After one week, New Yorkers on Foursquare earned 225,000 points, and nearly $10,000 for the organization.

Another great example is what Intel did at CES. They created a branded Foursquare page, featuring locations where Intel had activity and tips for Las Vegas visitors. Intel also rewarded check-in’s to key events with branded badges, paired with the chance to win an Intel-powered netbook for all badge recipients.

As these platforms mature and brands have spent more time experimenting the next wave of opportunity is to convert "Check-ins" to loyal customers and create targeted offers based on location.

Converting check-ins into loyal customers can begin with aggregating influencers who check-in to any location into your Social CRM system. Ideally you would be able to leverage the API in order to help automate this process. Once you have the consumer data in system you can then set flags based on frequency of "Check-ins" or sentiment of their shout out.

For example, if you see a person has been designated a "Local" you could reach out via their preferred channel and make a discounted offer or simply thank them. Real time engagement based on location has always been the holy grail for marketers. But it does not come with out challenges.

Assuming there is critical mass on the social network and platforms are extensible, getting data into systems and changing business processes will be an initial barrier.The flip side to this that brands will also have to balance engagement and offers with consumers feeling like they are being spammed.

Target earned media based on user intent

Just finished Edelmans 10 idea for the new decade which was full of great ideas as you would imagine. The one I found most interesting was "The Data Decade". Steve Rubel describes browse and search paradigms are flawed because most people don't often know what they want.

But not to fear, Google is looking to help us surface high-value information before we even ask for it. They are building huge data warehouses based on what people are searching for, tweeting about and buying. Their goal is simple, to recognize patterns to increase information relevance.

Why wait for Google when there are several solutions available today for surfacing high value information based on patterns. Baynote and Loomia are a few that come to mind. These solutions are not mining the entire web but they do a great job at understanding visitor behavior on your site(s).

Using their own algorithms they surface recommendations and related information based on usage patterns such as as clicks, time spent on page and even hover activity of the mouse pointer. Baynote for example continues to learn from over 20 patterns to predict what a visitors intent is and make recommendations to drive deeper levels of engagement.

So how does social media fit into this?

These solutions treat every object regardless of type as a piece of information. This allows brands to move beyond simply serving content recommendations ala Amazon.com to targeting earned media based on users intent.

Aggregation and Content Curation
First you must aggregate mentions and put some rules in place to ensure they appear in proper context. A good practice for aggregating these mentions is to store them in your CMS and use the work-flow tools for the curation process. In the post "Provide context when aggregating brand conversations" I describe in more detail the value of adding more context to aggregated mentions.

Another reason for aggregating mentions into your own CMS is to ensure continuity of the site experience in the likely event a third-part API like Twitter goes down. To see the status of the most popular API's check out API-Status.com.

Surfacing social connections
Loomia has built a nice Facebook connect widget showing who in your social graph has viewed a piece of information. The Wall street journal has done this implementation, if no one in your network has read it you will see a list of "everyone". A twitter integration would be a nice option.

Once these are placed on the site you will be able to rely on the reporting interfaces from your analytic solutions to understand which pieces of earned media are driving the most value.

Add social media.But don’t forget to mix..

Last year we saw lots of activity from brands in the social web, dozens of new products were developed to better engage with customers and everyone was trying figure out how to measure their investments in social media. The traditional way of marketing seemed to have been hung out to dry.

We learned a tremendous amount about the pivotal role social media plays to support business objectives and to connect with customers. The most important lesson I learned is that social is a part of the overall marketing/communication mix and when planning a campaign or building a digital strategy it is essential think about an integrated approach.

The risk of going strictly social is missing the opportunity to connect with profitable and influential customers. This sounds completely remedial but I will say it anyways. It is essential to understand where your customers are, what methods of interaction they prefer and how will each of touch point work with and inform one another.

Recently I was working with a luxury auto brand whose customers preferred live events but would engage on mobile devices. Social media was a great place to support their goal of increasing awareness of the new cars and shaping perception of the brand. But when it came to what actually attributed to selling a car it was a high touch experience.

The opposite held true for a University client looking to increase alumni participation. They did very little segmentation and used the same methods of communicating to recent grads as they did with their oldest alumni and yet they wondered why they were having a difficult time reaching the “Facebook” crowd.

In the post “Social media is A tactic, not THE tactic” I wrote how brands can improve the basics to create a more “personal” experience. For example, simply using what you know about an audience can help shape messaging, offers and the tactics you choose to engage. The same holds true when thinking about an integrated campaign, don't forget about what has worked in the past. Evolve it.

Use real time insights from active listening to refine what you are saying and where. While using traditional broadcast channels to drive people to places where they can interact. But keep in mind the audience you are trying to reach before deciding on the tactics on how to engage with them.

Guerilla Marketing or Performance?

Either way you look at this pop up event it is visually awesome! It is also a great demonstration of the opportunity to create branded entertainment and catch people on their way.

What brands should note about an event like this is that within a couple of minutes there are literally dozens of people who have stopped to see what is going on. We are seeing many clients starting to redefine what an event is. In this case the event is the ad-hoc formation of a group of people to experience something unique that was a totally unplanned, yet delightful.

JUMP | media facade | urban screening from urbanscreen on Vimeo.

Tweetup + Testdrive = Visits to dealers?

Cadillac has launched its new SRX crossover and is attempting to create a mashup of a tweetup and test drive event for its new vehicle.

Almost every car dealer will tell you a customers likelihood of purchasing goes up when you can get the proverbial "butt in a seat". For many dealer events simply getting people to take test drive is the ultimate goal.

Not sure if he has any involvement in this meetup but Chris Brogan has tweeted this event mentioning his possible attendance. Not sure he can influence a purchase decision but engaging with online influencers is a great way to get people into a dealer and to reach people who are not in the existing customer database.

Currently there are only 2 confirmed attendees, one is GM. Time will tell how well this idea worked but I suspect we will see a lot more of these popping up.

Slideshare: 3 ways to organize social media for results

Move beyond social media metrics

View more presentations from Dirk Shaw.

New Noise Santa Barbara engages event participants via mobile

One of the biggest challenges in attending larger events is figuring out how to make the most of your time. Usually this consists of some up front planning then carrying around the conference guide to figure out where to go. New Noise Santa Barbara is a music conference and festival who's iphone app from Mobile Roadie is a step in the right direction to enhance the experience for conference attendees.

Audi's configurator integrates digital experience with a live event

Audi's A4 car configuration is an excellent example of using digital media to engage event participants with a product. The ability to customize the vehicle and add accessories like a bike rack allow people to visualize themselves in this car.

What is did not see was a capability to schedule a test drive. If this was part of the solution it would be interesting to know how many people requested one. The video alone made me want to head to the dealer and drive the new A4 wagon.

Audi Car Configurator on Surface @ IAA 2009 from Neue Digitale / Razorfish on Vimeo.

Lego's in-store augmented reality

We are exploring new ways to integrate augmented reality applications with live events. Mobile augmented reality has lots of promise but a stand alone application like this would work great as a guide to find venue information, friends and schedules all by using your event ticket.

Segment twitter streams to increase relevance and reduce noise

Should we create one or multiple branded twitter accounts? What is the role of each?

This is a challenge many brands face with a large and diverse set of products. In a recent audit of a company’s stream that has dozens of products, catering to an extremely diverse customer base with minimal overlap the single account approach was very noisy.

For example. Lets put this in context of a brand like Nike. Nike has products that serve segments in a market – cycling, golf, tennis, footballs amongst a host of others. If Nike were to have a single stream where they engaged in dialog and shared content for about all segments they run the risk of being tuned out by those only interested in cycling or football.

If this sounds like your situation you may want to consider segmenting twitter streams to increase relevance and eliminate noise. Here are a few different ideas for segmenting streams.

@corporate: General company information across product portfolio and serves as the twitter equivalent to the 800 number for customer support and product information.

@market_served: In the Nike example they could create an account focused on one of the sports they design and sell products for like cycling. A market based approach lends itself to a group twitter account where you have product managers, athletes and others from the team sharing insights. This would also work well in a consultancy who has a particular vertical they serve like health care.

@products: Get the latest updates and have inside access to the person/team who can help solve problems specific to this product.

@events: Twitter is a great way to extend reach to people not able to attend an event and to connect those who are physically present. For brands who sponsor events or host their own creating a unique account is a great way to get people engaged.

@people these are the passionate brand advocates who enjoy engaging with customers and solving problems. @people are usually the most trusted because they are real people who have become part of the community on their own with no corporate agenda.

The flip side to simply segmenting in order to create a highly filtered stream is that each approach creates a very focused dialog. The micro market focus allows brands to gain tremendous insight and build relationships on very narrow topics.

Do you think there is value in segmenting streams? Or is this just me hoping companies will take notice to eliminate the noise in my stream.

5 things I’ve learned leading social media initiatives

Recently Opentext acquired my former company Vignette. The role of social media strategy is one many companies talk about but have a difficult time justifying.

It was a pleasant surprise to hear the commitment to formalize social media as way of doing business. This can be attributed to all of the people from Opentext who have been out there promoting the brand and laying the foundation for change.

Part of my transition into the new organization is to share lessons learned over the last year. Here are the key lessons learned while integrating social media into our business processes.

Activity alone does not yield results. You get what your measure.
When trying to prove the value of the social media things like retweets, followers and fans don’t mean much to executive management. When demonstrating value make to sure to show how you had an impact on business goals that were around long before social media.

Think of social media as part of the marketing mix. It is not a silo
When planning product launches or outreach programs don’t “bolt on” social media to a traditional approach. Plan an integrated cross channel experience and know the role of each touch with the customer and how they work together. Each tactic in the mix can move people thru the infamous funnel. But they must work together.

It’s not the job of one person.
For large brands simply assigning a single person to “own” social media is not scalable. This is akin to saying one person can sell, market, support and build new products. Social media cuts across the organization and in many cases interactions started on social networks may require internal collaboration to act on. Brands need to formalize processes for responding, collecting insights and measuring.

The power of the influencer.
Social media allows word to spread farther and faster to an even greater number of people than ever before. It is essential to first identify who is influencing the purchases and then nurturing these relationships thru interactions and sharing of company direction. What I learned was how little many of the influential’s actually knew about what we were doing, simply because we had never reached out and shared it.

The need for an attribution model to assign value social media.
This is one of the tougher lessons as it implies a certain level of sophistication measuring digital marketing activities. In the more complex sale such as enterprise software it is not as easy to simply track a click from a tweet thru purchase. There are several steps that happen in between ranging from viewing website, product demos and on site meetings. But supposing the initiation of the lead came from a social channel how does it get “credit”. Creating an attribution model for social activity will help when justifying additional investments.

Hopefully these insights will help you avoid some of the mistakes we made over the last year.

How do you report social media success?

Thanks to everyone who shared comments on the last post about measurement. As I mentioned a key learning to increase executive commitment to social media was the need to move beyond reporting just social media metrics. We need to show how our activity is impacting business outcomes that matter to executives.

The chart below is an overview to show the tools we will use, types of activities we perform and ultimately why this all matters to the business.



For the monthly report I show dashboards for each business outcome. On these dashboards I track key metrics, insights and next steps. Some business outcomes like “Increase Brand Awareness” will have their own dashboard as we track awareness within key solution markets.

Example Dashboard “Increase Brand Awareness”


How do you report social media success to executives and how often?

Earn, Aggregate And Re-Use

Marketers are being challenged to leverage existing social networks to effectively reach audiences. The question many ask is, "How do we make the most of word of mouth marketing, especially when it resides on third-party sites in the form of tweets, comments and status updates?" One way is to aggregate this earned media and re-use it in the context of a purchase path.

First, I want to note that earned media is not always positive. Customer sentiment is shaped as a result of experiences with your products and services, and this is an essential part of the evolution of the corporate website. Simply creating a broadcast of product information with nothing but glowing reviews does not build the trust and credibility that is required to succeed in a world where transparency has become expected.

This is important to keep in mind as you begin to aggregate and re-use this media in a new context. A natural tendency would be to filter out negative comments and only display the positive ones. However, social media has created levels of transparency and immediacy that we have not had in the past. Within seconds of a customer experience, they can share it across hundreds of places with thousands of people.

For many brands, this negative feedback is a huge sticking point when considering how and where to integrate customer created content. A common fear is that a sales deal will be lost if a customer reads something other than a glowing review. Let's face it, the reviews are out there and everything can be found via search.

Instead of fearing negative comments, embrace them. Brands have the opportunity to build credibility by interacting with customers on tough issues and helping to solve problems. Establishing trust can begin by creating a blended experience of sponsored communities with what is happening on social networks. Rather than filtering the conversation, the goal is to facilitate conversations with your customers and the market as a whole.

Showing that you care goes a long way, and can even help increase the quantity and quality of earned media. Then, as if earning media is not challenging enough, the task of aggregating it can be just as difficult. Social media has created a proliferation of places where earned media resides. Literally dozens of formats have emerged, ranging from tweets, comments, status updates and reviews.

But there are solutions to help you manage this dispersed content. Emerging standards like Facebook Connect, OpenId and open programming interfaces are making it possible. Also, most companies already have invested in a content management system (CMS) to create and publish corporate content, and these tools usually have the capability to consume content from third party sources via RSS and XML. If you are tagging favorite tweets or bookmarking earned media, hooking this feed to your CMS is a good way to centralize comments while allowing marketers to re-purpose this media across several touch points.

However, simply aggregating and re-purposing earned media is not enough. Brands should go the extra step and become facilitators of conversations. Consider the placement of earned media that support learning or buying so that, when a customer is ready to engage, you have provided the opportunity for them to interact with the people who made these mentions.

There are several places it makes sense to repurpose earned media. If you are wondering where, think of the paths a customer takes on your site. Is a customer looking to learn about the experiences of others, seeking answers on a product they own or simply wanting to become part of a community?

If you have not clearly defined the various scenarios on your site, look at your web analytics application. This data will not only give you insight into click streams, but it will also indicate which pages are less sticky. Placing earned media on these pages can be a good way to keep them engaged.

The end result of this process is that you will have taken the first steps toward turning earned media into a managed asset that you can re-use and re-brand in many contexts. The inclusion of user-generated content into your corporate Web site harnesses the activities taking place all over the Web, creating a much more dynamic site for your visitors. In turn, your corporate Web site will be a more effective tool to help your organization serve its customers and build brand awareness in new markets.

This post was originally submitted as a guest contribution for Mediapost and is republished here.

Spam has never been good

Chris Brogan wrote a post this morning that struck a chord, " Twitter MUST Stop the Spam Use of APIs Now". I could not agree more. Spam has never been good, not in a can, not in an email, not in a direct mail and certainly not in twitter.

Perhaps when spammers arrive means that Twitter has reached critical mass. Whatever the case this pollutes the experience. The variety of spammers that come into my stream range from those who can help you makes millions to someone who is lonley.

Twitter is ultimately a communications service provider and should follow suit of the email providers and work to eliminate the spam.

While we are on the topic of Spam, I will also lump all you people who seek to get 2k followers in a minute as part of the spamming problem. Earn your followers.

How much is sentiment analysis “Worth”?

In a recent post I asked the question “How much sentiment analysis is good enough?”.This sparked a great dialog with an insightful question from Adam Cohen “What is sentiment analysis “worth” and do companies gain more value if they tag 100% of mentions versus 80%.

The worth or value question is a really good one. Here are some ideas for thinking about its worth and how sentiment analysis should evolve.

The current model of tagging mentions with some attribute of sentiment is great for gaining insight across a variety of customer segments. Historically this might have been done thru a series of focus groups or surveys. You could potentially realize a cost savings from not have to conduct these as often.

Looking forward these tools need to open up and allow curated brand mentions to be pushed out into new context. Creating a two way pipe would give brands the opportunity to target mentions thru the entire purchase process.

According to the recent “Fluent” report published by Razorfish, close friends and family have heavy influence at each stage of the buying lifecycle. Brands should take a step beyond simple placement of a brand mention in the purchase path to using the social graph as a filter. This makes recommendations much more influential as they are coming from a trusted source which will increase the likely hood of purchase.

Tagging any less than 100% of brand mentions once the social graph is connected might result in a missing the linkage between a brand mention and an influencer. These missed connections could leave money on the table.

In summary I think today's sentiment analysis can save money by replacing traditional methods of research. The larger opportunity exists when the results from sentiment analysis can be used to influence a consumer’s decision to buy.

How do you place a value on sentiment analysis?

What’s the “I” in social media ROI

This week I was on a great panel hosted by Red Door Interactive. The topic, you guessed it social media. As with most discussion the conversations it started with what tools are being used.

However the most interesting part of the conversation happened when the topic of ROI came up. A person in the audience asked the question “If social media is free then what is the I in the ROI”. My response was that social media is not free. While many of tools are “free” it requires a person(s) to actively monitor and engage. Cost will grow once brands start integrating content from social web with corporate site and building application to engage in social networks.

The “R” or return of social media is dependent upon how it supports your business goals. This will vary brand to brand. What will be similar across brand’s is the “I” or investment. The table below is a snapshot of ways companies will have to invest when building a social media capability or using it to support campaigns.

This is not meant to be an exhaustive list of all the cost associated with social media, rather it is meant to get you thinking about various components that will require investment. As you can see there is no such thing as “free” when it comes to integrating social media.

















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What are some additional areas of investment brands need to make to be successful with social media?

Sentiment analysis, How much is good enough?

There is tremendous value knowing if mentions of your brand are positive or negative and how many there are of each.

The Conversation Impact(TM) measurement model by OgilvyPR uses a sentiment index (% positive - % negative) as a measure of brand preference. However understanding sentiment is not just a matter of selecting a listening platform.

The social media monitoring tools I've used fall into 2 camps for sentiment analysis. Manual sentiment analysis, where you view each mention and apply the appropriate sentiment tag. This is the approach that Radian6 currently uses. Automated sentiment analysis, which uses a semantic processing engine to assign some level of sentiment based on key words. TechrigySM2 automates sentiment analysis.

Each approach has their pro’s and cons. The argument against automated sentiment analysis is the lack of accuracy while manually tagging ensures 100% accuracy but it subjective and requires a significant amount of time.

At the moment both approaches require a person(s) to review each mention and either tag or verify the automated tags for accuracy. I can tell you from my own experience manual tagging can take a significant amount of time to initially setup and then requires ongoing tuning to keep reports up to date. The time it takes to manually classify or refine automated tags should be factored in to understand the total cost for a corporate listening program.

To get an idea of the time required for sentiment analysis. Assuming each mention is reviewed and you have 5k mentions over a 30 day period. If it takes you an average of 30 seconds per record then you will need to factor in about 42 hours to tag each mention.

Given where technology is today and the lack of resources companies have to assign full time people as curators of brand sentiment. Is there a certain number of mentions that can be tagged to be statistically sound representation of brand sentiment? Or is there value in weeding thru and tagging every mention?

Social media is A tactic, not THE tactic.

As with anything new, much of conversation about social media has been focused on "how do I use it" more than "why do I need it". Brands have been flocking to social media in an effort to figure out how they can engage with and influence customers.

There is always a learning curve with new techniques but has this curve made us loose focus on what worked? And, if you did not execute and measure "traditional" marketing well then why would social media be different. It is not the proverbial silver bullet.

A recent Forrester report said that CMO’s were Cutting Ad Budgets: 67% Reduce Traditional while Increasing Social Media Spend by 47%. Does this imply that everything we have been doing up to this point has not worked?

What about simply doing some of the basics better.

Better targeting of offers based on behavior. The last three years as a season pass holder to a certain resort company I have received emails that are completely irrelevant to any of my patterns. It gets worse when you actually log in to the site, there nothing relevant.The lack of targeting creates a missed opportunity to drive incremental revenue from an existing customer.

Answering questions in a timely manner. A broadcast mentality can easily carry over to social media outlets. Another business I get useless emails from takes the same approach with Twitter. They tweeted a new product that "Just Arrived". Just so happens I had the previous model and needed some spare part for it. I replied to their tweet over a week ago and still nothing. There is nothing new about customer service. If you set up an account on Twitter be prepared to reply to customers questions.

Another interesting stat from this research was of those who responded, 51% said marketing has a key role in enhancing revenue while 41% agreed that marketing’s efforts are being watched at all levels of the company. This implies marketing spend must show measurable results. The irony is many organizations are still figuring out exactly how does social media impact revenue.

Does this mean CMO's feel more confident social media's ability to impact the top and bottom line or simply jumping on the bandwagon.

One positive sign is that we are finally getting around to asking the harder questions besides how do I use twitter or should I have a blog. The emphasis is now about how these places and tools can deliver measurable results. Brands are looking to do more than just experiment; they want results from their efforts.

It is great to see an increased investment in Social media, I do believe that when done well it can drive positive business outcomes. But it is only part of the overall marketing mix and before you ditch "traditional" tactics take a look at how well you are executing.

Provide context when aggregating conversations

There was a great discussion on how brands should effectively aggregate conversations from the social web and placing it on a corporate website. The recent launch of Crispin Porter’s Beta.cpggroup.com is a good example of purely aggregating conversations around a topic.

Aggregating conversations or mentions is a great first step towards evolving corporate websites however it can quickly become a stream of irrelevant content. Bryan Person made an excellent point when he said “Aggregating and displaying content that mentions your brand is the first step; giving some context to it and discussing/highlighting that content on the corporate website also needs to happen” I could not agree more.

Crispin Porter has taken a great step to aggregate conversations about their clients brands while demonstrating a new type of experience. However I am not sure how an experience like this help’s to simplify a customer experience to make a decision (Assuming this is a goal). The risk of aggregating without providing context is that is can be overwhelming. People who don't spend their time "in the stream" might not get what is going on and see this as a bunch of useless content. This is where content curation can help.

Curating does not mean only displaying positive mentions, rather as Bryan states curating means to provide better context about the conversation. If you have designed your site around certain key scenarios like checkout, share this or register now you might consider how to place a relevant twitter stream on that page. Planning how and where curated conversations are placed can help increase the usefulness to your customers.

Aggregation does not improve relevance but curating conversations and thinking about placement can.

photo credit:Eric Shiner, the first Milton Fine Curator of Art at The Andy Warhol Museum, stands in front of Warhol's "Skulls" at the museum. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm"

Don’t tell my boss but appointing a strategist to create a “social” company is not a sustainable model. It takes the entire community. Henrik Ibsen says "A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm"

The social media maturity model proposed by Destination CRM does a great job at showing all the customer touches companies have. But the way the chart is visualized reinforces organizational silos – the very principle that social media combats. Instead, as Michael Idinopulos asserted, I believe that businesses will begin to organize around capabilities like thought leadership, technical expertise and relationship management.

In order for this to happen, businesses must rely on organization-wide teams and skills to own and support these functions. This is the community that promotes social media maturity. From my own experience in trying to make social media a capability not a campaign, I can tell you that this is not easy.

Social media maturity happens when we no longer need a social media specialist, when social media becomes a part of everyone’s DNA – not just a job owned by appointed individuals.

Here are some lessons learned from my journey in trying to build a “social” business to generate new leads, manage reputation, support customers and build brand awareness’ in new markets.

• Listening To The Conversation Is As Important As Participating
• It’s More Than Just Launching A Page
• A Participation strategy should be informed by what you learn from listening
• Only Success That Can Be Repeated Is Really Success

Social media has only accelerated the idea that companies need to shift behavior to be more transparent, communicative and responsive. This is not the job of one person, it is the responsibility of everyone. We will know when organizations have matured when being “social” becomes part of everyone’s job and a way companies do business. It is not the job of a specialist.

Optimize earned media in branded experiences

In some previous post I explored concepts on ways marketers can aggregate earned media and re-use in the context of a purchase path or branded experience. The question this brings up for me is which pieces of earned media are the most effective.

Everyone talks about the power of word of mouth and there is plenty of research to prove positive comments or reviews affect people’s purchase. However there's not much research showing how blog post, tweets or user generated content from third party sites influence user behavior when integrated into a purchase path.

One way to test the impact earned media can have on behavior is to use it a test element in a multivariate or A/B test. Assuming you have enough content from different social sources (tweets, flickr, facebook connections etc) you could begin to asses which source(s) of earned media influence behavior by customer segment. This would help you answer questions like "Will people who don’t use twitter be influenced by tweets?" If not then you can make sure to filter their experience.

Knowing which sources of social media are the most influential to customers is also tremendous insight for refining how and where you engage in social media.



Is anyone doing this? If so what kinds of results if any are you seeing.

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