The Socializers | brands and social media

A process for translating insights from social media data into innovative and emotional experiences

admin January 14, 2013 No Comments

“Facebook enables brands to find consumers in a place where they’re already spending a great deal of time. It is also highly precise: I can target users by location, language, education, employment, age, gender, marital status, their likes and interests and the size and profile of their list of friends,” says Sarah Blackman, digital planning and innovation director at Young & Rubicam in Berlin. (SOURCE: http://www.momentumreview.com/uk/how-facebook-stole-our-brands)

“At the end of the day everyone has the same amount of data because data is just people doing stuff. Converting that into insight is the point; that’s where it turns to magic,” Unilever CMO Keith Weed highlights the importance of having minds on the team who are looking for actionable points of departure within the data. (SOURCE: http://www.digiday.com/brands/brands-at-ces-say-dont-be-seduced-by-data/)

THE CLIMATE INTO WHICH SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYSTS ENTER: A host of technology companies and techno-geeks are actively engaged in developing applications for segmenting the mass of data flowing in from social networks. Advanced agencies within the WPP network, such as Ogilvy, JWT and Kantar are increasing their analysis staffing. But the staff they are looking for are not just scientists. The social analyst has spent time in the networks and is merging an emotional sensibility with solid critical thinking skills. He believes the Internet is a real living organism and goes to work every day excited to put on his diving gear and encounter the denizens of the deep. She has an awareness that the most subtle shifts in one area of the Internet can cause a flood of awareness and action in unexpected communities, forums and in the minds of critical key influencers.

THE IDENTITY OF THE SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYST WITHIN THE CORPORATION: Major corporations and agencies must develop teams to leverage masses of social data and turn that data into stories, communities and new products/services. These teams will be filled with individuals who have learned age-old analysis techniques, as outlined in The Handbook of Market Intelligence from the Global Intelligence Alliance – http://www.globalintelligence.com/insights-analysis/handbook-on-market-intelligence. The teams will also be filled with individuals who know a new world is possible and do not bow to old-school oligarchs. I’m talking here about a Pirate Bay http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUHmE5nD3W0 and Hacker mentality. Finally, these are going to be teams with a yen for weaving the digital and the material realms together, such as the GoPro crew http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3PDXmYoF5U and Timothy Ferriss of 4 Hour Work Week fame http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/. Big agencies and corporations need individuals who can lead them out of stagnant forms of pride and into more “experiential” dives into the data.

A PROCESS FOR TRANSLATING INSIGHTS FROM SOCIAL MEDIA DATA INTO EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE: Below is an exact process for translating insights from social media data into innovative and emotional experiences by hand. When we know how to do something by hand, we can begin to implement the machine where possible. In the end, the human is the last mile in effective communication. In the end, one-to-one is the way to transfer messages into the “right” ears.

1. Who do you know that has the most knowledge of a particular market niche? Ask him/her which trade publications, conferences, individuals and companies are the leaders. Make a note of these on a piece of paper with a pen or on a text document on your computer.

2. Get one copy of each mentioned trade publication.

3. Note the websites of each conference, individual and company mentioned.

4. Thoroughly study this initial list from your personal contact. Note down vendors, service providers, advertisers, authors, journalists, products related to these trade publications, conferences, individuals and companies.

5. Look within these same publications and websites for a “Top list” of companies, individuals and products/services.

6. Create an Excel spreadsheet of these trade publications and “Top lists”.

7. Discover the Twitter accounts of these Top list entities and other thought-leaders discovered in the trade publications and websites. An easy way to do this is to type the name of the influencer + Twitter into Google. Or search in the Twitter search field. You can also go the websites of these entities and see if there is a Twitter link at the website.

8. Use a solution that delivers a spreadsheet of all followers of a specific Twitter user, such as Simply Measured or Social Bro. Download the followers of every influencer you have identified in your initial offline research. http://www.simplymeasured.com or http://www.socialbro.com

9. Use the Sort function in Excel to sort the list of followers by Klout, Kred, Peer Index or another influence metric. In the paid version of Simply Measured you will receive the Klout score for every account. http://www.klout.com

10. Create a 2nd copy and sort by Listed (the number of lists an entity is on within Twitter).

11. Use the Filter function in Excel to further narrow these sheets by specific industry-related keywords within the Description (Bio) column.

12. Use the Filter function in Excel to narrow by Location.

13. Combine the filtered results from whatever setting is important to your research question from each sheet into one “Master” workbook.

14. Rank the entities in this workbook by your chosen Influence metric (e.g.- Klout, Kred, Peer Index) or Listed to indicate global awareness and influence scoring.

15. Ideally, you will narrow this massive Master list to 1000 core influencers. Now download the Simply Measured Klout Audience Analysis for every single one of these influencers (thought-leaders). Go through the exact same Sorting and Filtering process and combine into a second Master list (this will be much larger). Now you have two concentric rings of influence you are able to connect into through content-marketing, direct-marketing or other selling strategies.

16. Take this work further by creating a book called “The Core List” in which you reveal core information for each of the 1000 core influencers: their bio from LinkedIn, all of their social links (find these through their Klout profile and further research, their top 100 influential followers within that specific market niche and their contact info (phone, email, address).

17. Now you are ready to study this core list and know who is leading the conversation in your market niche. Take the time you need to listen to each person and jot down observations on what they are saying and working on. Use a leading social monitoring tool, such as Brandwatch, Radian6 or Sysomos to augment your listening. http://www.brandwatch.com OR http://www.radian6.com OR http://www.sysomos.com

18. Create a list of 10-20 questions for the top 100 influencers in “The Core List” and send this to them via email. This is your focus group/survey for the market niche and will give you invaluable insight.

19. Create observations on the content produced by members of your core list. Add, as an appendix, all of the data organized by location, relevant social links discovered via listening, and metrics/statistics for the industry. This report, if concisely written and properly documented using best-practice research techniques, will be THE most comprehensive ever done for that market niche.

20. Create an Editorial Calendar with channel-specific ideas related to the industry. This Editorial Calendar ought to include specific marketing actions, online & offline channels for marketing and industry-specific publications in which to publish material. More on editorial calendars and a sample editorial calendar here: http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2010/08/content-marketing-editorial-calendar/

21. In addition, create a Media Plan that reveals regions, online channels and audience sizes. This plan will inform an advertising spend. Use SEMRush, a keyword tool for deciding where to spend advertising dollars. http://www.semrush.com/

The New PR – How to become a Brand among Friends

admin October 15, 2012 No Comments

The New PR – How to become a Brand among Friends
Eleftherios Hatziioannou and Nathaniel Hansen
Nov 7th, 2012. Rebirth of PR Conference in Portoroz, Slovenia.

What we know from our very short history of living online is that community precedes commerce; there’s no commerce without community. ~Kevin Kelley

THE NEW PR PROFESSIONAL: Employees in PR departments and agencies worldwide should be interested in people and relationships. The excellent PR leader possesses a high social and emotional intelligence. He/she is aware of the needs within a community, including complaints, desires, trends, overall sentiment. Today, we have deep access to communities – because people interact publicly in the rapidly expanding online eco-systems. The new PR pro understands the power of communities and is actively engaged within these settings. PR has traditionally been in charge of letting the world know the corporate view on any given issue. Nothing has changed in this respect – except that we use a new means of communication – namely, the social networks. The New PR pro is ideally suited to nurture and guide the communities forming around brands in social networks. The core activitiy in this process is LISTENING.

The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention…. A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words. ~Rachel Naomi Remen

SOCIAL BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE: The value of Social Business Intelligence is primarily related to strategic planning and action steps based on sophisticated listening technologies. When a “Chief Listening Officer“ sees a pool of friends chatting about product-related interests, he reports this to leadership (along with possible conversations and content-marketing tactics). Marketing, Sales and PR are called in and the pool of friends is discussed. Every division can learn from the resulting insights of these cross-division collaborations.

INSIGHTS & ACTIONS: In business, we can save a lot of time and money when we are listening. For example: We can be much more precise and targeted with our brand messages. And we can add real value by approaching our prospects and existing customers with helpful answers, solutions and relationship-building actions. A strategy built upon intelligence is much more effective than one built upon leadership’s assumptions and gut feeling. Certainly experience is vital. But matching experience WITH observable behavior in the market is an even more effective way of developing strategy. In terms of PR planning, we have an excellent map showing how the US Army listens and responds to blog visitors: https://thesocializers.com/pr_algorithm.html At each stage of this PR chart, we listen, plan respond and then act.

INTERESTS & INFLUENCERS: To understand the value and function of an influencer in social networks, one must understand the nature of Communities of Interest. A community of interest is a community of people who share a common interest or passion. These people exchange ideas and thoughts about a specific passion, making their connection primarily Interest-Based. Twitter is an excellent example of an Interest-Based network. Participants return frequently and remain for extended periods in Communities of Interest, due to compelling conversations and sticky content.

An influencer within a social network is someone who leads a community of interest. When an influencer sends a message into his community, many members of the community take action and re-send this message to one another. An influencer can turn the tide of opinion within an interest group very quickly to one side or another. The value of gaining an influencer’s attention for a brand, a governmental agency, a publication or a service is HUGE!! The reason for this is that, typically, an influencer has a significant following of other influencers who are interested in a specific topic.

There are many ways to ascertain influence in social networks. The most basic of these is to use Google Ad Planner and Google Analytics to measure the unique visitors to a website associated with a particular influencer. One may also look at the “Talking About This” metric within Facebook Insights, the number of lists a specific Twitter user is on, the number of comments made in YouTube on a specific channel, the job title one holds/company one works for in LinkedIn, the number of re-pins in Pinterest, etc…

There are also a growing number of solutions for taking all of this information and scoring a person’s influence in particular social networks and topics. Klout, Kred, PeerIndex and Empire Avenue are all examples of such Influence Scoring Solutions.

INLUENCERS AS YOUR FRIENDS:
When you find out who the most influential people in your industry are and when you listen to them and study who they are and what they do – you will be well prepared to reach out to them. Your main goal must be to build relationships with them and make them part of your network – just like you did with journalists at press events. But you have to careful about how you do it. You cannot gain their trust and credibility without investing time and efforts first. But once you have established these relationships and “made new friends“ it will help you spread your message much faster and further than ever before.

CONCLUSION: In PR, we want our community to know we care and that we have heard their needs — just like good friends do. In the ideal PR department/agency, we have already assigned listening to a specific staff member (Chief Listening Officer).The rebirth of PR means, we have ideally integrated what we’ve learned through listening solutions into our day-to-day operations. We have ideally distributed our findings to the management and all divisions with the goal of creating a tighter corporate team, focused on the customer as a friend. Through listening, PR has the ability to nurture communities in social networks by feeding them with precise and relevant answers and engaging in conversations. The New PR delivers real value to the customer, the stakeholder and the market as a freind would. And of course it’s about associating yourself with the right people (influencers) who can help you spread your message much faster and further.

If you are interested in learning how the New PR can be integrated in your daily efforts and how you can get the most out of it for your own brand/corportation – come and join our lecture on Nov 7th, 2012 at the Rebirth of PR Conference in Portoroz, Slovenia. There we will share our experiences with international clients from various industries and we will together take a look at the strategies, practical tools and methods we have developed in the past years.

Of course, we are also looking forward to making new friends.

Four Courses every Corporate Leader Needs in Social Business

admin April 1, 2012 No Comments

The following are four ideal courses that the C-Suite needs as related to Social Business and Social Media Marketing.

TRAINING ONE: Is social media a fad?
Many corporate leaders wonder if social networks are a temporary fad. At the moment, social networks are THE primary means for global brand communication. Independent studies tell us that this will be true for another 5-7 years at the least. We should take advantage of this as corporate leaders and brand evangelists. This training session focuses on training corporate leadership in the nitty-gritty of social business set-up, risk assessment, how the various silos can integrate action in social networks and what role the C-Suite has in guiding the entrance of a brand into social networks. Particular focus is on roles within the corporate structure and best-practice related to risk-assessment in social business.

Additional focus will be placed on the role of the Compliance Department in working with the various silos of a brand entering social networks for the first time. Important questions related to compliance include: What are the risks if I engage my company in social networks? What are the risks if I do not engage with my customers in social networks? What are the legal ramifications of entering social networks? How will the Compliance Department interact efficiently with the various silos as each department enters social networks?

TRAINING TWO: What is the future of social business and related social business software?
The future is centered around mobile access to information and communication. We should be thinking about our mobile customer and how the mobile user will connect with our work in the social web. This training session identifies how a brand can easily transition browser-based communication assets into mobile assets. In addition, valuable resources related to mobile marketing and mobile social marketing will be discussed.

TRAINING THREE: What are the costs and resources needed to do this?
In this training, a step-by-step analysis of a social business proposal from top to bottom will be presented. Typical budgets for social business, social marketing campaigns and social business software licensing will be covered. Examples of real proposals will be shown and dissected by participants. This training is an excellent precursor to the RFP (Request for Proposal) process at a major corporation or brand. Guidance on questions to ask potential vendors will be given.

TRAINING FOUR: Does every employee need to participate?
Each department ought to have 1-2 representative employees that will be active and trained in the social networks. In this training, we will go over the titles and roles that these individuals will have, along with best-practice chronologies of action. We will cover how social business and social marketing can be integrated seamlessly into the everyday duties of current employees. A particular focus will be given to how social business and social business software can actually help corporate leadership save money. This training emphasizes the value brought to a corporation through using social networks and related software. Case studies and real examples will be shared along with suggested steps to take in integrating social business into a brand’s current activities.

Internal and External Data: The Nexus Point

admin February 5, 2012 No Comments

“If Social CRM deliverables can yield measurable lift in sales for businesses, then we are beginning to provide real value.” JP Lind, SVP of Giveo.

Humans are very excited to share personal thoughts & inspirations on social networks. Brands with personality and a living spirit can do this too. And the nexus point of this excitement is where a relationship between brand and individual takes off. Identifying possible nexus points of connection and “spark” between brand and individual is a core function of social business intelligence.

How to do this? Themos Kalafatis accurately points out that “the answer to true Social Media Intelligence is the use of Predictive Analytics (Data & Text Mining) applied to Social Data.” (SOURCE) Mr. Kalafatis is a global pioneer in this work, applying his data-mining expertise in such countries as Serbia and Greece, two very difficult languages in which to apply text-mining methods. The lessons he has learned through this work are fascinating and available at his blog.

The corporate conversation: Ed Fullman, CEO of Reunify (formerly Incentica), says, “At the end of the day it gets down to who is asking about who.” Reunify is focused on scoring traditional CRM using, in part, social data (amongst other identifiers). Business strategist Dion Hinchcliffe writes, “Having the big picture today means connecting internal business data to external information streams, live & without delay.” Connecting the internal conversation at brand/agency HQ with the external conversations in a market niche continues to be a very valuable action, yielding challenging questions to company leaders and agency strategists. Additionally, connecting conversations in social networks WITH actual buying behavior visible in the back-end CRM is a core action by social business intelligence practitioners.

Real-time observation affirms archetypal truth: Conversations and communities in social networks flesh out the “archetypal” pillars of customers that have always congregated around specific phenomena. The particular ways in which this consumer behavior is cloaked is defined by the times one lives in. And it is this flavor that marketers are after in their research. Social data gives us this flavor and data from CRM confirms campaign efforts. While the CFO says, “I would rather pay for qualified leads derived from a social CRM process than insights & trends from ongoing social monitoring,” the CMO says, “We’d like to see those insights and trends available via social business intelligence.” Both are important.

Different types of customers orient around specific archetypes, which we can associate with specific brands. Click here to see the image in a larger format. (Image: Mapping the Organizational Psyche by John G. Corlett & Carol S. Pearson, CAPT Publishers, Gainsville, FL. 2003)

Different types of customers are at various stages of considering a product/service. These stages can be associated with specific content. Click here to see the image above in a larger format. (Image: The Content Grid 2 by Jess3 and Eloqua Agencies.)

A parting question for brands and agencies: Have you matched your CRM with content-pieces organized by type of buyer? Imagine matching content within THE CONTENT GRID 2 CHART (above) with your CRM (customer database). That’s an essential and powerful action of social business intelligence.