Affinitive’s Social Media Playground

Welcome to Social Media Playground, a place to discuss all things related to word of mouth (WOM) and social media marketing. Brought to you by Affinitive, a word of mouth and social media marketing, technology and strategic solutions firm located in New York City and San Francisco.

Affinitive’s Social Media Playground

Correlating Word of Mouth Conversations With Net Promoter Score

October 31st, 2008 · View Comments

Here at Affinitive we strive to find and improve upon metrics for measuring offline conversations about our clients’ brands and products.  Online is easier to quantify with the tracking technologies available, but offline has always been a complex process and often difficult to measure accurately. One of our current methodologies involves a survey distributed to [...]

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Tags: Research

Future Thoughts: Brands in the Groundswell

October 29th, 2008 · View Comments

I started working on our Forrester Groundswell Award entry a while back and re-discovered a topic I had been thinking about a few months ago – “holistic” versus “siloed” approaches towards social media initiatives. The Groundswell authors break down the opportunities within social media to mirror corporate structures, providing an easy way for people in [...]

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Tags: Marketing · Social Media

An Introduction to Social Capital and Social Currency

October 28th, 2008 · View Comments

Two related, but equally-important concepts related to word of mouth are “social capital” and “social currency.” Social capital can be best defined as an “investment in social relations with expected returns in marketplace.” It deals with the value of an individual’s social network/connections. For example, let’s say you have a great new product that you’d [...]

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Tags: Marketing · Social Media

Look Who’s Talking (The Art of Joining the Conversation)

October 20th, 2008 · View Comments

A recent backlash to the phrase ‘join the conversation’ has erupted from the social media crowd (see here, here, and here). Regarding the last article, I agree a community is a highly effective way to show consumers you care.  But the technique of “joining the conversation” isn’t a bad one, and considering our company, Affinitive, [...]

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Tags: Marketing · Research · Social Media

Cleaning Up a Social Media “Mess”

October 17th, 2008 · View Comments

This post was inspired by some events that transpired over the past week.  In a nutshell, the teenage daughter of a well-respected and all around nice guy in the WOM industry recently went missing. When word got out, it spread like wildfire and spurred a flurry of good samaritanism among others in the industry who [...]

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Tags: Marketing · PR · Social Media

3 Steps to Influence Purchase Decisions Online

September 29th, 2008 · View Comments

A new report from MarketTools reveals that nearly 70% of Americans visit blogs, communities or social networks.  Of all respondents in the study, nearly half have been influenced in their purchase decisions by social media. Your product is being talked about everywhere by everyone.  A single product review can be seen by millions.  This realization [...]

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Tags: Marketing · Research · Social Media