When marketers decide to use any marketing channel, they should always ladder back to the brand's objectives. This is hardly a novel concept and is part of any strategic process, such as the famed Forrester POST methodology, that many use to determine a Social Marketing plan of action.

When it comes to Social Marketing specifically, those objectives can often range from increasing brand site engagement and traffic to Public Relations and everything in between. Just like any other channel, it can be used as a funnel for a variety of types of messaging that is targeted at a varying set of objectives.

Enter an interesting little chart (embedded here).

Like many other marketers, I subscribe to Marketing Sherpa's Chart of the Week.  These handy charts often give a snapshot on one element going on in the world of marketing that they've done a broader research initiative surrounding.

I thought this week's was particularly interesting. It measures the objectives, targeted and measured, by marketers within the social sphere. The big "aha" finding in this is that 3/4 of marketers claim that site traffic increase is one of their key objectives for deploying social tactics.

Marketing Sherpa's conclusion is the same one that I would come to - while an increase in time on site, overall site traffic, SEO optimization and other objectives within that zone are great secondary benefits of Social, there is a larger opportunity to leverage social in a scalable way to provide self service tools and information to consumers that can then, in turn, reduce overall brand cost that can be very heavy when dealing with and addressing customer needs.

There are several brands who actively leverage social platforms to reduce these customer support costs including:

• JetBlue and Virgin America - who actively tweet and provide information about flight delays, schedule changes, weather alerts, and responses to specific customer inquiries
• Best Buy's "Twelpforce" - integrated from Twitter all the way to in-store Point-of-Sale (POS), this massive program helps answer customer questions, provide product information, support, etc in a scalable way
• Comcast's service guru Frank Eliason, who has been deemed the "most famous customer service manager in the US" by Brandweek for his work primarily in the social space (major points for early adoption)

Have you seen any other examples of brands leveraging Social Marketing to help create a supportive consumer environment?

I definitely don’t underestimate the older demographics. I’m getting used to commenting on my cousin’s status on Facebook, then seeing my uncle’s comment under mine a few hours later. I’m getting used to seeing my best friend and her mom’s conversation on my homepage. I’m getting to the shrug-off point.

I know and I certainly see the older demographics not only adopting and adjusting, but integrating all this technology and weaving it into their daily lives... so what does surprise me is a recently released study conducted by The Barna Group that explored how technology is shaping different experiences and expectations among generations. Although the study does point out that "many of the bloggers, music downloaders and users of social networking websites are from the Boomer and Buster cohorts" because "Boomers and Busters represent about two-thirds of the adult population", the study seems to undermine their technical savvy. AdAge.com also recently pointed out this generation’s dominance on the big two, "As of January, more than 50% of Facebook users and 44% of MySpace users in the U.S. were over 35 years old, according to ComScore estimates."

The study breaks users down into four generations – Mosaics (18 - 24), Busters (25 - 43), Boomers (44 - 62) and Elders (63+) then categorizes each generation’s use of technology into Mainstream (technologies used by at least one out of every two computers users (50%+)), Emerging (Those used by at least one out of five but less than hald computer users (20%-49%)) and Limited (Technologies used by fewer than one-fifth of computer users (19% or less)).
So, what sticks out from this chart that doesn’t fit right with my personal observations as well as other recently released research surveys? These are the points that I question:

• Busters, Boomers and Elders fall into the "Limited" category for both having "posted a comment on another blog" and "maintain personal blog".
• Busters are only in the "Emerging" category for "watched a video online".

These are surprising to me because Forrester Research just released a report that show more than 60% of those in the Baby Boomers generational group actively consume socially created content like blogs, videos, podcasts and forums. It's true that they might not be heavily involved with content creation but as far as commenting and watching videos go, Baby Boomers are there and on the rise, "In 2007, the percentage of Boomers consuming social media was 46% for younger Boomers (ages 43 to 52) and 39% for older Boomers (ages 53 to 63). By 2008, those number increased to 67% and 62%, respectively."
In short, there is no doubt that the 35+ demographics makes up for many of the profiles and accounts created on social media sites but credit must be also given to them on their ability and usage of the functionalities of the sites.

Affinitive is happy to announce that we have submitted an entry for our work with E.&J. Gallo Winery and their Redwood Creek brand in the "Talking" category.

We're not exactly sure how the judging criteria works, but they are allowing the general public to rate and review each entry. Please check out our submission, and post a review/rating! And if you would like to learn more about how Affinitive is helping E.&J. Gallo "blaze the trail", drop us a line!

The engagement model is based on Discovery, Evaluation, Use and Affinity for products and can be used offline and online to measure the interaction that consumers have with brands. It's based on a study Forrester released back in August:

Executive Summary: The marketing funnel is a broken metaphor that overlooks the complexity social media introduces into the buying process. As consumers' trust in traditional media diminishes, marketers need a new approach. We propose a new metric, engagement, that includes four components: involvement, interaction, intimacy, and influence. Each of these is built from data collected from online and offline data sources. Using engagement, you get a more holistic appreciation of your customers' actions, recognizing that value comes not just from transactions but also from actions people take to influence others. Once engagement takes hold of marketing, marketing messages will become conversations, and dollars will shift from media buying to customer understanding.

Their framework outlines four "I" concepts:

• Involvement tracks site visitors, time spent, page views and more (old-school stuff)
• Interaction measures the contributions to blogs, photo and video creation and uploads, and purchases
• Intimacy tries to understand consumer attitudes, perception, and feelings about a brand through surveys or monitoring technology as well as applications providing an interactive environment between brand and consumers
• Influence measures the likelihood that consumers will recommend or advocate products or brands

What's interesting is that we have been using "engagement" as a primary metric used to measure the success our programs since back in 2003 - while our methodologies have evolved, the principles remain the same. Nice to see our friends at Forrester finally pick up on and validate it (just kidding, we love you Forrester folks! )

via MediaPost

Most everyone we talk to understands the need and importance for word of mouth but since it’s still a relatively new marketing tactic there is a learning curve to tackle. Some of the first issues a marketer is faced with are:

• Should it be a long-term or short-term strategy?
• Should it involve influencers or average consumers from an internal database?
• Should the execution occur online, offline or both?
• How should success be measured? (Sales, conversations, conversation reach, change in Net Promoter Score?)

A recent Forrester report does a good job in helping brands understand what tactics and metrics are best utilized by individual departments (marketing, sales, research, etc.). Approaching it from the brand’s point of view makes it much easier to digest and see the opportunities.

In the same vein I wanted to share my view of the WOM industry, specific to the agencies segment. WOM agencies typically follow one of the following models:

• WOM Agency - Media Model: Brand leases access to the agency’s network of influencers, delivers quick hit, typically short term duration.
• WOM Agency - Influencer Model: Agency specializes in identifying and sourcing influencers, typically short term duration.
• WOM Agency - CRM Model: Agency specializes in sourcing participants from client database, delivers more organic word of mouth, typically long term duration.

One of the tenets of facilitating WOM with consumers is to ‘make it easy’; we in the industry should take that same principal in helping brands understand the various options available within WOM marketing.