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.