In the case of Snooki, a brand sending competitors' merchandise to her in an effort to associate her with those brands is innocuous enough.  However, how far does this go?  What happens when Snooki goes from being a luxury "Poser" to an actual "X-fluent" - who can afford the brands she previously coveted?  Luxury brands would be wise to tread carefully on this subject, or risk backlash much like the racially tinged battle between Cristal and mega rapper/trend setter Jay-Z.

How do luxury brands, who pride themselves on exclusivity and refined culture, separate themselves from the luxury "posers" who gravitate towards their designer products because of the aspirational lifestyle that they represent?  This problem has been amplified of late in the luxury goods space thanks to the omnipresence of social media, particularity via Twitter and Facebook.  The open nature of the social web presents a problem to luxury brands, to whom brand image and perception are tantamount to their success.

Instead of the idea of entering the social landscape instilling fear among luxury brand managers, they should embrace this unique opportunity.

Luxury brands will never be able to stop "posers" from identifying with their brand.  In fact these consumers are already on social networks flaunting their love of a the luxury brand and creating conversation and rich media about it regardless of the brand's presence on social media platforms. Maintaining an "official" social presence, with a targeted content and engagement strategy geared toward reinforcing the brand's identity, allows a luxury brand to guide the conversation.  Instead of the consumers forming their own opinions without interaction from the brand, the luxury brand can create an authoritative, educational, engaging voice that enhances rather than cheapens the brand, thus countering any potential "Snooki effect".

(Burberry's Art of The Trench microsite is a wonderful example of this strategy.  Burberry capitalized on the trend of their consumers' love of their iconic trench coats as well as the social media trend to post photos wearing designer goods and fashion as a means of self-expression.  The result is a sleek and interactive site that reflects the brand's message in a young and fresh way, reflecting the changing landscape of how both "X-fluent" and aspirational consumers connect with a brand.)

Then Facebook announced they were eliminating the FBML application.  From the internal rumblings of the Affinitive development team, this presents huge opportunities.  However, there is at least one major consequence.

The elimination of both boxes and FBML apps means no more content on the left-hand column of the Wall tab (save for the native field below the profile image.)  Before this announcement, many brands used the left-hand column to place their moderation policies, guidelines, rules of the road and required legal language.  For some brands (a few of our clients included), that copy is required by their legal and compliance teams.

This content must now be pared down to the 255 character limit of the native field if you hope to keep it in the profile column.  That might work if it’s one line of legal, but a 200 word policy?  Think again.

For now, the easiest option is to place the content on the Info tab, which allows for significantly more text. Linked from the native field under the profile photo, the policy or legal language can still be referenced on the Wall tab.  If that's not an option, try creating an additional “Our Policy” or “Legal” tab with an application so there's a persistent navigation item referencing the required language.

Either way, if you’re a brand with a policy or legal language in the left-hand column of your Facebook page, you should discuss your options with your legal or compliance teams and find a way to adapt quickly.  Facebook is notoriously fickle, and the last thing you need is to get yourself caught in some social media red tape.

I refer to these concepts as Social Referrals and Social SEO - two related, but very different concepts that any social marketer needs to understand:

Social Referrals:

Traffic to your site via content and/or links posted on social outposts such as Facebook and Twitter by yourself and others.

Social Referrals are driven by a combination of brand-driven referrals (posting a link to your Twitter/Facebook accounts), amplified sharing (consumer retweets), and via built-in sharing tools tied to content on your site.

For many companies (especially those with constantly fresh/dynamic content such as news sites and blogs), social referral traffic has risen to probably the #2 or #3 source of referral traffic (behind organic search and any online advertising).

Types of Social Referral Content:

• Breaking News (people share this quickly because they want to be the first to 'break' this to their friends)
• Viral Content, such as a funny video or photo (sharing this via Facebook/Twitter is considered ok/non-intrusive versus through email)
• Online Coupons/Sales/Offers (what can I say, people love free/discounted stuff!)
• Interesting/Informative Stories/Blog Posts (again, this content acts as social currency for the person sharing it, making them look good/in-the-know - the reality is, many people share this sort of content without even fully-reading the article! I'm as guilty as anyone else)

Social referrals tend to have a very short shelf life, and while true, some of the major search engines are starting to index them, their "relevancy" value in the eyes of search engines diminishes quickly.

Social SEO:

Traffic to your site via search engines, based on consumer-generated content relevancy to keywords.

Social SEO is a side benefit of facilitating user-generated content on your company's website. For example, consumers aren't necessarily seeking out information on, let's say, a bottle of Redwood Creek wine. But, what if the brand has a thriving consumer community of outdoor enthusiasts who love to post/share BBQ and campfire recipes? Over time, the relevancy of that content trickles up the search engine ranks, and eventually can work it's way to the top! We refer to this valuable, relevant, organic, indexable content as "Google Juice".

Next, you've connected with this consumer based on their interest, while introducing your brand to them in the context of that interest. Not only will they find the user-generated content they discovered as relevant and informative, but they may in turn go on to become a part of your community to connect with other like-minded folks.

(note: Social SEO only truly works if you have also implemented proper search engine optimization techniques into your website, i.e., title, meta tags, <h1>/<h2> html tags, etc.)

Types of Social SEO Content

• User-Submitted reviews, recipes, photos/videos (with proper meta info)
• Forum Posts/Discussions/Knowledge Bases
• Comments
• User Profiles

The value of Social SEO builds over time, since this content acts as a permanent archive/repository. It also creates a "long-tail" of relevant content, as each piece of UGC becomes in itself an SEO landing page. This makes it easy to measure/learn  what types of content drive the most search engine referral traffic.

Measuring the Impact of Social Referrals and Social SEO

If you are not measuring (both quantitatively and qualitatively) the impact of Social Referrals and Social SEO , you are leaving out a large component of the Social ROI equation! Some examples include:

• Short term traffic bumps (Social Referrals), long term traffic growth trend (Social SEO)
• Increase in engagement metrics, time on site, etc.
• Community registrations, email signups, fan/follower acquisition
• Coupon redemption/conversion to sales/transactions
• CRM insights (do social referrals result in larger/more frequent purchases? Are community members who joined via Social SEO more active/engaged than others?)
• Insights into consumer interests/needs and where your brand is resonating/standing out (i.e., wine + campfire/BBQ recipes = brand positioning)
• Customer support savings (consumers solving own problems via locating answers provided by other consumers on your community/knowledge base)

Let's me finish by asking you a question - how did you come across this blog post? Was it via a link someone tweeted or a Google search result? Drop me a line or leave a comment below if you'd like to discuss/debate further!

In its purest form media is simply communication. In years past this included primarily newspapers, magazines and vinyl.  When the barrier to entry for media was at its highest—when you had to buy a printing press in order to spread the word—media moguls saw this as an opportunity to control the hearts and minds of the public.  At least that’s how Gail Wynad thought in Ayn Rand’s classic novel, The Fountainhead.  But look at ole Gail Wynad against our real life media baron, Rupert Murdock, it seems to be an accurate depiction.  It has been widely known for ages that “the pen is mightier than the sword”.

Now in the age of the Internet, there has been a philosophical jail-break of ideas and opinions through the ever-widening channels of social media.  Suddenly the hearts and minds are not forced into reading the daily newspaper and watching the evening news where the adage “if it bleeds it leads” is still painfully true.

Looking at the cause and effect nature of media, a massive shift also occurred.  Back in the day of printing presses, it would take many hours to broadcast the news from that day, no matter how gigantic.  That all changed with the advent of social media.  As documented by Dan Gilmor in We the Media, the day that it changed was on March 26, 2002 when Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio was answering questions during a press conference when someone in the audience, keeping track of the social stream on their mobile device, noticed that Mr. Nacchio had just sold $200 Million in shares in the company.  Contradicting what Joe was saying to the conference, this reporter raised his hand and called Joe on the carpet and asked him about the nefarious stock trade.

Media ceased to simply report events, and began to actually affect events.

Now we see that every day as Facebook brings together old friends—friends that would not have reconnected without the friend recommendation.  So, what is next?  Where is the media industry going now?  We’re like a snow globe all shook up.

Philosophically if News Corp loses its grip on us, and we are no longer force-fed the worst news the pundits can dig up, maybe we’ll start to see that the glass is half full.  If the public doesn’t have to take the incessant bad news, maybe this is a way to make the world a better place.  I have personally gone on a news fast and I feel great ever since.

I’m optimistic that although all this havoc is making it very difficult to make money in the media industry, there are many good things to come.  We don’t pick up the paper any more for front page headlines about murder, rape, political turmoil, religious warfare, cultural intolerance and greed—all because all of us have the power to generate content.  And if the concept of mind-over-matter has any glimmer of truth, just the avoidance of horrible headlines will bring more positivity to our world.  Time to stop and smell the virtual roses.

Talk about trending up!

(click to enlarge)

]]> http://www.socialmediaplayground.com/social-media/the-science-of-word-of-mouth-infographic/2010/05/14/feed/ 8 http://www.socialmediaplayground.com/social-media/is-diversity-the-key-to-influence-on-twitter/2010/04/16/ http://www.socialmediaplayground.com/social-media/is-diversity-the-key-to-influence-on-twitter/2010/04/16/#comments Fri, 16 Apr 2010 18:03:02 +0000 Erica Hall http://www.socialmediaplayground.com/?p=935 The Million Follower Fallacy: Audience Size Doesn't Prove Influence on Twitter by Sarah Perez reviews a study by Meeyoung Cha, Hamed Haddadi, Fabricio Benevenuto, and Krishna P. Gummadi* that gives the research data to back up what most social media pros already know - follower counts on Twitter are  "somewhat of a meaningless metric when it comes to determining influence."

One of the most interesting points of Perez's analysis is that the most influential Twitter accounts "hold significant influence over a variety of topics, as opposed to being experts in just one area."  While many brands on Twitter speak to a particular demographic or topic area; based on this study and the popularity of celebrity Twitter users like Sean "P Diffy" Combs (who tweets everything from concert dates to bible quotes), Twitter influencers seem to be seen as experts on a wide variety of topics.  In fact the study shows that "retweeted users tended to be content aggregation services."

This information is particularity interesting when we as social media pros think about audience development on Twitter. As we look to develop audiences on Twitter when our clients are in a niche area, gaming, sports, retail etc., is it important to make sure that a brand's voice offers (or even re-tweets) authoritative information on a wide variety of subjects? Perhaps it is important that a brand's Twitter voice speaks to what is popular in and around their niche.  For instance, it could make sense for a sports blog to begins discussing a less than popular sport, or maybe they comment on the antics of celebrity athletes, or even the health care debate?

The difficulties in this theory are that it could be hard to reign in "diversifying." How much is enough? What sorts of topics should a brand discuss? How often should a brand jump on a Twitter trend?  No matter what strategy employed it is my opinion that it is always vitally important that the tweets of any particular brand always reflect back not only to the brand's core values but to the goals of that brand's Twitter outreach.  After all, the content aggregation Twitter accounts and news channels are not only speaking on a wide variety of topics but these topics are targeted to speak to a particular niche (current events, politics, sports, etc) and stay on brand message (CNN is the "news leader").

Do you think this study brings up a good point about diversifying content strategies or are niche approaches more effective? I'd love to hear your thoughts below.

Read more on the study here.

*(Study institutions included: Max Planck Institute for Software Systems (MPI-SWS), Germany †Royal Veterinary College, University of London, United Kingdom ‡CS Dept., Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil)

In this post, Haque discusses the relationships that are created through all of these social mediums, medias, platforms, networks, and spheres. Are they all super-thin and riddled with layers of doubt? Are they sustainable as long term connections?

His hypothesis:

I'd like to advance a hypothesis: Despite all the excitement surrounding social media, the Internet isn't connecting us as much as we think it is. It's largely home to weak, artificial connections, what I call thin relationships.

Interesting.

He continues on through his "thin relationship" rationale (some I agree with, some I don't) and then closes with:

The social isn't about beauty contests and popularity contests. They're a distortion, a caricature of the real thing. It's about trust, connection, and community. That's what there's too little of in today's mediascape, despite all the hoopla surrounding social tools. The promise of the Internet wasn't merely to inflate relationships, without adding depth, resonance, and meaning. It was to fundamentally rewire people, communities, civil society, business, and the state — through thicker, stronger, more meaningful relationships. That's where the future of media lies.

While his argument is seemingly about personal relationships forged in the social sphere and not the relationships between brands and consumers in the social space, I think the same rules of engagement and long term evolutionary objectives could apply. In fact, I believe it applies even MORE SO to brands than to people. To me, people connect online socially for varying reasons. To find other people who like to play soccer. To learn how to properly curl their hair. To find a French tutor via Craigslist. Some of these manifest themselves into deep relationships but most are thin just like they would be in real life. These types of relationships simply have a backbone in a "shared interest" or an immediate "need" which usually is more superficial and immediate than not.

However, by nature brands NEED to retain connections. They need loyalty. They need longevity. They need "thick" relationships. The future of media (and of communication) does lie (in my humble opinion) in "thick, strong, more meaningful" relationships.

They need... well... in three letters? C-R-M.

Rather than offer up any analysis or insight, I'd like to point you to the 213 (at press time) and counting comments on his blog post that I spent a good hour digging through. If you have a moment, take a peek at them. Very interesting, indeed.

[image via Wendy Bailey's blog here.]

Recently, Chris Brogan's article "Attention as Currency and Noise" briefly delves in to the concept of attention budgeting, as he explores the value of attention.  As social marketing "pros",  we are attempting to catch the attention of our target audience in a manner that conveys trust and reaffirms our clients' brand reputation.  For a busy social media professional it can sometimes be difficult to decide how to effectively manage all of the  "one-to-many" conversations you are having online, which Brogan describes as "where the real value of social media kicks in."

As with most marketing functions, the first question to ask yourself is "what are my goals?"  Are you trying to grow fans, trying to influence key tastemakers, or trying to drive traffic to your brand's website? Once you know your goals, you can begin to plan a strategy.  Every brand and every industry will have a different set of problems and solutions.  Since social media affects different industry verticals in different ways, you need to determine an overall social media strategy that works best for each client.

Within that framework you then must decide on a client-by-client basis how much time you should spend on audience development, and on which social platforms to focus your efforts.  Mark Tosczak offers some great ideas on how to determine this for your clients, including focusing on how much content you have, how much time you have to create content, and the importance of taking time to listen, read and interact.  He offers that you should concentrate most of your attention on the "20 percent of tools/sites/strategies that are going to yield 80 percent of your results."

Once this has been done for each brand I recommend plotting out all your brands and categorizing them by: category/vertical (retail/brick and mortar, CPG, celebrity), goals (brand awareness, fan acquisition, generate UGC), social network (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, etc.) and then assign the amount of time per week associated with accomplishing each goal.  By placing everything in one place you can determine how much of your day and week you allow yourself to be sucked in to the world of social (which for some of us can border on addiction).

Of course, this is just one method of determining how to budget your attention.  I'd love to hear what's worked for you? Let me know in the comments below.

Here are a few recent nuggets of measurement metal you might find helpful or interesting:

1.     Radian6’s Practical Social Media Measurement & Analysis – In the March issue of their Community eBook, Radian6 puts together a concise and insightful guide to measuring and analyzing the primary objectives of social marketing including Cost Savings, Leads, Conversions and Sales, and Awareness, Attention and Reach.   Each section explains the process and includes example metrics you can use to analyze the performance of your programs and generate clear and visible results.

2.    Dag Holmboe’s Social Media ROI App – Dag has posted a series of Social Media ROI explanations on his blog, and his most recent post demos his Social Media ROI Application, which plugs in specific metrics of your program and spits out some interesting insights into its ROI.  You can demo the lite version of his app here.

3.    Google Analytics on Facebook Pages – This helpful how-to made the rounds late last week, and piqued my interest as I have made it known my disappointment in the current iteration of Facebook Insights.  I highly recommend this read and testing out Google Analytics on your Facebook page for further insights into referrals, visitor statistics, and more.

4.    Omniture Partners with Facebook – AdWeek announced last week that Omniture will be adding Facebook advertising data to its dashboard, allowing for greater insights and comparisons against campaigns running on other networks like Google.  This is great news; however, I tend to agree with KD Paine’s view that data may be incomplete.  Some of the most successful ad campaigns on Facebook direct users to a Facebook fan page, or the CTA is not a click-through but to fan the page from the ad itself.  Since the action is often not of direct sales, one must measure true success through the relationships developed by way of these conversions such as conversation volume, changes in sentiment, etc. which Omniture will not have.  I’m interested to see where this goes.

If you have additional stories regarding social media measurement and analysis please leave them in the comments!

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?