the socializers

Falling volumes and budget cuts. What is the role of marketing during a recession?

Question by Dimitris Mavros of PRC GROUP Athens: Falling volumes and budget cuts. What is the role of marketing during a recession?

Nathaniel Hansen, CEO, The Socializers answer: Motivation, Customer Service, Education, Culture-change, Leadership. But most of all, to be Heretics vs. Fundamentalists.

Step 1: Evaluate typical local messaging and methods of communication around recession. Gain Insights through Social Intelligence Projects and on-going social media monitoring.

Step 2: Compose “culture-changing” messaging, campaign strategy and brand orientation. A good heretic and thought-leader will be able to pump out vast material around this within a solid 7-10 days. Focused creative project.

Step 3: Segment your market and “culture-change” packages and start selling. Informed by insights and data analysis.

Step 4: Identify critics ahead of time and chart how their critiques may fuel the fire of your creatives. Give your creatives license to be on-fire Heretics through culture-changing activities. Study the Eleftherians in Greek myth, like the god Eros for basic archetypal material to inform the ethos here.

Step 5: See PR as a vacuum-cleaner. Uphold Assange-types (Wikileaks) as internal cleaners, preparing the enterprise to go social. Have a plan regarding external gossip and internal junk.

Step 6: Crowdsource the entire economic and political landscape. Big and great project! The customer will decide next year’s (a) product line and design (b) distribution channels (c) campaign style.

Social Fishing Rods: The W’s of Social Intelligence Gathering

The W’s of journalism can be a great starting point for asking questions in social intelligence projects. See below expansion of the W’s for social intel, business intel and general social media monitoring work.

Note that the trend in 2011 will be towards integrating “action buttons” WITHIN social intel panels so that community managers can take meaningful and potent action on real-time intelligence.

Another take on this is that actionable tools like BuddyMedia will integrate increasingly powerful business-related intelligence within their already robust metrics panels, informing pre-campaign strategic process and whole-campaign adjustments. Research.ly is an example of a tool where one receives real-time intelligence from social networks and can act on that intelligence using a Twitter posting field.

Punchy insights from real-time data will inform strategic thinking AND the functionality of “social action” buttons used by non-analytical/non-technical Community Managers. Social Intel Tools will merge with Social Management Tools.

▪ WHO:
•Who are your current followers? Who follows them? (GIST)
• How can I take all of my connections established using social media + my contact database, and visually map out a path from my organization to those individuals/companies that will be beneficial to our initiatives?  How can I clearly identify the connection paths, labeling what type of connection it is, and the role of the individuals? (PeopleMaps)
•Who is talking about your brand/product/services/employees? (Social Listening Tools)
•Would any of these individuals make good brand ambassadors, community managers, or customer advocates?
(WeFollow, PeerIndex, Klout, Listorious, Research.ly)
•Which of your current followers are already key influencers in your niche or a related vertical?
(WeFollow, PeerIndex, Klout, Listorious, TwitterGrader, Research.ly)
•Who influences them? And who influences those influencers?
(WeFollow, PeerIndex, Klout, Listorious)
•What Twitter lists are these influencers on or following?
(Listorious)
•How influential are those people in your niche?
(Klout)
•Which of these influencers receive tons of comments?
(ConvoTrack, Technorati, Listorious, CoComment, Backtype)
•Which have tons of followers?
(Listorious)
•Who are the top influencers for your niche?
(WeFollow, PeerIndex, Klout, Listorious)

▪ WHAT:
•What are your stakeholders/fans/allies saying about you?
•What questions are they asking? (Quora)
•What are customers feeling about your brand/product/services/employees?
(One of the world’s greatest experts in the field of discovering sentiment and feeling – Life Analytics)
•What reactions do these stakeholders/fans/allies have about your brand/product/services/employees?
•How can you engage your followers/key influencers beyond a passing mention of the brand/product/services/employees? (Consume Brian Solis and Seth Godin material).
• How can you engage your employees/team members in more effective collaboration and gain insight based on collaborative feedback? (Spigit, 37 Signals)
•What percentage of the conversations are positive, negative or neutral?
•What are the actions of “peers” or the circle of customers around the brand/product/service in social  networks?
•Are your customers/typical purchasers active in social networks? What is the ethos of their online culture?
•What are useful resources to research your brand/product/services/employees/vertical/niche? (Social Tools, Twitter Tools, The Journalist’s ToolBox, TwentyFeet, SproutSocial, Research.ly)
• What apps might provide access to my ideal followers/customers/fans/influencers? (AppData)

▪ WHERE:
•Where are your stakeholders/fans/allies located in social networks? (Flowtown, IntroMojo, GIST)
• Where do I stand in relation to my competitors in terms of traffic, share of voice, engagement? (Compete, Alexa, Klout)
•In which of the following are the conversations happening about your brand/product/services/employees?:
-Twitter (Listorious, Twitter Search, Twazzup, Topsy Search)
-Facebook page-threads, Facebook groups, Facebook Key Influencer wall-threads (Facebook Insights, All Facebook Page Leaderboards, Booshaka
-blog threads (Social Tools, CoComment, Backtype)
-forum threads (Social Tools, CoComment, Backtype, Board Reader)
-web communities (Joongel)
-top-of-mind comment threads (Board Reader, Social Tools, CoComment, Backtype)
-video comments/shares (YouTube Keyword Tool)
-photo comments/shares (Flickr Advanced Search)
-presentation comments/shares (Slideshare search window, Scribd search window)
-LinkedIn groups/comment-threads
-location-based networks (4sqSearch)
•Consider the relative merits/benefits of joining a well-followed conversation vs. creating one.

▪ WHEN:
•What time of day are people talking about you?
•What time of the week/month/year?
•Are the conversations event-driven?
•Are the conversations cyclical/seasonal?
•How do you keep the conversation going during the off-season/non-event times?

▪ WHY: (beware of analysis paralysis on this category!!)
•Why are there spikes in conversation around your brand/product/services/employees?
•What events occurred, what specific words were said, what personalities were involved?
•The answers to the above questions can inform the broader WHY question.
•Create the BIG picture with a Montage (FuseLabs Montage) or hashtag/@-sourced/RSS-sourced real-time publication like Paper.li. Publish all of your findings as a report. (How to Write and Publish an eBook).
• Leave where you are and begin something new. Learn how at Startup School, at Seth Godin and through Tim Ferriss.
• Stay where you are and make a change. Same as above + read Charlene Li’s Open Leadership book + Jeremiah Owyang’s Web Strategist blog.

Scenarios for using information from social monitoring tools

Growth means change and change involves risk, stepping from the known to unknown.

In all fields of business, there are varying levels of sophistication. The small business owner juggles bookkeeping, rent, vendors and customers and, if he is lucky, has time left over to take his original business plan one step further via Marketing and Sales activities. The medium and enterprise level businesses have a responsibility to analyze their markets through best-practice business intelligence and innovate. Growth means change and change involves risk, stepping from the known to unknown. The open seas that enterprise-level businesses chart require captains and admirals who can judge when and how to take such risk.

New technologies aid such leaders in their future plans. The most important members of the team in this respect are the SCOUTS. In the world of social media marketing, the scouts are social intelligence providers. It is the responsibility of these scouts to discover the VERY BEST sources of intelligence in a specific vertical or world region. It is important to note that social media monitoring tools come in all shapes and sizes with varying angles on what is and is not important.

The least sophisticated customer of social intelligence signs up for one or two free or low-priced tools and develops guidance straight from data posted within these tools. Trusting the charts, sentiment ratings and influence scoring, he heads out into the social fabric of the Internet and connects with his customer through a specific social graph. Within two weeks, due to this intelligence, his Facebook company page has gathered upwards of 1500 followers due to a targeted ad campaign and he has sold 500 units of his product. One or two major influencers (a national Magazine or a large regional newspaper) picks up on the product, reviews it and he makes even more sales. Within two months of listening to his customer, he has set up a booth at no less than two major trade shows and is now being wooed to a B2B relationship by a large retail chain. Twelve months later, he has sold his product concept, designs and plans to a global brand for seven million dollars and takes some time off on the coast of Italy to reflect.

The medium and enterprise-level customer goes much further in their requirement. This customer of social monitoring intelligence wants his provider to develop insights and recommendations from the masses of data that come through a WOMMA-ethics-level tool…that is, a tool that has total, or near, access to firehoses from “walled-gardens” like Facebook or the giant Amazonian rivers of Twitter. He then wants that provider to write up a brand booklet complete with a few neat charts and a storyline of how the brand may utilize the current climate for maximum growth.

To go further, the Business Unit Manager of the marketing agency working with this enterprise-level customer wants the intelligence provider to produce a few infographics, even featuring Montage style real-time feeds for the Brand Manager to witness the immense flow of data that has been analyzed. But not too many feeds, maybe two or three.

Along with this infographic, the Business Unit Manager from the agency provides the Brand Manager with a comprehensive business plan that charts the growth of the brand over the coming year, its relative competitive weaknesses and advantages (SWOT style or another scenario planner) and a few preliminary creative mock-ups of the customer-facing solution. For internal business solutions, the Business Unit Manager recommends a few choice third-party vendors to come alongside the team for sCRM, a possible re-vamping of how collaboration takes place in the organization and re-vitalized, efficient HR.

The happy Brand Manager gets to go to her Marketing Manager and GM and show off a plan for her brand(s) that will elevate business by a nice percentage, decrease overall internal costs, address any outstanding PR and Customer-Service related issues and foster a glowing relationship with the community in her region through a customer-centric ad/marketing campaign. And, due to the entire solution being driven through social business, she has decreased the ad spend by 60%, saving money in the process. Time for a Google-style raise, boss?

For an important new study on Customer Intelligence Trends 2011, see the following Forrester Report: ‎”At the same time, the demand for insight — not just data — in real time creates a challenge but also a huge opportunity to extend the value of Customer Intelligence throughout the enterprise. Leading CI professionals who evolve and adapt to these trends will quickly find themselves at the nexus of the business.” ~from Customer Intelligence Trends To Watch In 2011 (http://bit.ly/customer_intelligence_trends_2011)

What is real-time social business intelligence?

What is real-time social business intelligence?

Real-time social business intelligence provides, amongst other things, (a) the right vantage point(s) to observe the “river of news” from; (b) a scuba-suit to dive INTO the river and scour its depths; (c) an informed assessment/report of volume, content AND context over time; and (d) targeted frequent alerts on specific findings for the sake of staff who have other things to do.

A superior social intelligence report includes, amongst other options, the following sections:

1. FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS (Should be accompanied by data-rich infographics that distill findings into a digestible format). Here is a PERFECT example of what the a final product would be: http://jess3.com/go-green-go-public/ Includes the classic 5 W’s of Journalism plus a few more, as outlined here:

• WHO? Who was, is and will be involved? We are able to see a vast amount of material in the social properties based on our current CRM databases.

• WHAT? What happened in the past, present and future? Yes, the future! With tools like Recorded Future, we can refine our knowledge of what is coming up around any vertical or entity.

• WHERE? Where did it take place in the past, Where is it taking place now and where will it take place in the future?

• WHEN? When did it take place in the past, when is taking place NOW, and when will it take place in the future? We can map this very precisely now.

• WHY? Why did it happen? Why is it happening NOW and Why COULD it happen in the future? This has A LOT to do with accurate contextual and sentiment analysis. Temporal Analytics play a part in future analysis. We also get to prove our campaign idea(s) BASED upon both quantitative AND qualitative measures here.

• HOW? How did it happen in the past, how is happening now, and how will it happen in the future?

• Is it WORTHWHILE intelligence? There’s a LOT of junk out there. Filtering out the wheat from the chaff is an essential aspect of our work. Does the content fit in the context we expected or would like to know about.

• What’s the WOW! factor? How much buzz is this keyword or that entity gaining.

• Develop ACTIONABLE items from the intelligence. Single, punchy commands about what, where, when, why and to whom one MUST message.

• GET SOCIAL! Foster AND WEAVE community with the intelligence.

• ON-GOING: Outline a plan for responsible and consistent follow-up and on-going intelligence gathering that dynamically moves WITH the brand, product/service.

2. IDENTIFY YOUR SOURCES AND METHODOLOGYfor the report as a best practice.

3. PROVIDE RANKED KEYWORD DATA SETS Be sure to include data from Google and Alexa here, as well as other important historical and current data from social property insight/analytic panels.

4. IDENTIFY INFLUENCERS WITH REACH + AMBASSADOR ARCHETYPES (These are suggestions of candidates that represent ideal Community Managers or Brand Ambassadors for a brand/product/service).

5. SHOW SEASONALITY OF PRODUCT/SERVICE (When is the BEST time of year for the various messagings about your product/service?).

6. SHOW TIME OF DAY PRODUCT IS DISCUSSED IN GENERAL IN THE SOCIAL PROPERTIES (When is the BEST time of day for the various messagings about your product/service?)

7. ASSEMBLE REAL TIME BUZZ PANELS (Your view into the “river of news”) One format would be like THIS: http://bit.ly/real_time_buzz

8. CREATE A COMPARISON of size of clusters/categories of conversations around specific product/service features.

Body, Heart and Mind divide the lead, developing Context and Content

Everyone has destinations AND concepts of journeys to those destinations in Body, Heart and Mind. Body, Heart and Mind divide the lead, developing Context and Content. ~Nathaniel Hansen

With useage of social networks surging and relationship connections occuring at the speed of firing brain neurons, individuals face the freedom of search windows and countless rabbit holes of discovery. We are all in study hall these days, analyzing and synthesizing conversations, images, videos, music and ideas. The individual AND group mind is evolving at light-speed, particularly for those tapped into the global mind called THE SOCIAL FABRIC OF THE INTERNET.

Humanity now needs the power of ancient wisdom to inform the WHY of its collective and individual search. The phenomenon of quotes, scriptures, fables, wise sayings, anecdotes and fantastic new theories circulating at the speed of light from one mind to another EVIDENCES that this is, in fact, occuring. Humanity IS weaving ancient wisdom into this tapestry we are all weaving together. And there is no doubt that this is affecting the quality of our interaction with one another.

Is it possible humans are actually becoming better, wiser and more benevolent THROUGH the rapid dissemination of ancient wisdom through social networks. As our bodies, hearts and minds divide the experience of this truly etheric environment, a tactile spiritual sensibility MUST be growing among its participants. We are all interacting with intangible, highly subjective environments, driven by emotion, thought and image. And this REQUIRES the development of skills like “felt-sense”, intuition and discernment. Again, the social fabric of the internet becomes tactile as one develops narrative and nurtures its growth through a succession of writing, photos and video.

How do you experience social networking: physically, emotionally, intellectually….which dominates for you?