Experience: The Blog

Google, Gmail, Relevance Filtering & the Future of Social Media

2010-02-08T23:31:00.001-06:00

[This blog post was cross-posted with my new blog on the Forrester Blog for Interactive Marketers: http://blogs.forrester.com/marketing/2010/02/google-gmail-relevance-filtering-the-future-of-social-media.html]

Is the Social Media world about to change on Tuesday? Probably not, but all eyes will be on Mountain View tomorrow when Google announces their latest venture into the social sphere, reportedly a social add-on to Gmail.

Let me begin by saying that I know absolutely nothing about what Google has up its sleeve, but let's speculate. Why? Because like Apple, Google is one of those rare companies that can still capture our imaginations and make us hope for a new product or service that will dazzle our eyes and change our lives.

At first glance, the addition of status updates to Gmail--if that is in fact what Google is announcing--seems to add nothing new. After all, Yahoo added "Status-Casting" to their mail and IM offerings six months ago. Moreover, it would seem to make little sense for Google to try to compete directly with Facebook and Twitter, the reigning kings of the status update realm.

But what if Google isn't aiming to compete with Twitter and Facebook but instead with Seesmic and Hootsuite? What if Google doesn't care about owning the stream so much as accessing the content and owning the place where consumers look (and where AdSense ads can be served)? For some, it would be a powerful combination to aggregate email and status feeds in one simple and powerful tool. And add Google's Android and Nexus One into the mix for mobile viewing, and you begin to see the makings for a dominant and portable tool for managing highly personalized real-time information.

Let's not stop our speculation there. Where else might Google take us once they gather and display our friends' tweets, emails and status updates? Well, what is the one thing at which Google excels, more than anything else? Relevance! Search for it, and chances are you will find just what you were seeking at the top of Google's first search engine results page.

How might Relevance Filtering change our ability to monitor what is pertinent and ignore what is not? Admit it--you find Facebook and Twitter noisy. Do you care about Farmville? Some of you do; most of you do not. How about your friends' FourSquare check-ins? Some of you care where your local friends are, but most of you likely couldn't care less where I'm dining when I'm thousands of miles away.

That's the trouble with today's Social Media tools--they are largely based on People Filtering (following everything posted by select individuals) rather than Relevance Filtering (seeing only what is relevant while ignoring what is not). To get a sense of the power of Relevance Filtering, see the chart below; based on this simple example, Relevance Filtering cuts down on the data received by 50% and more than doubles the relevance. Less time, less noise, more pertinence--where do I sign up?

The company that not only aggregates our friends' lifestreams but turns them from data into interesting and useful information would own the world, wouldn't they? Google was the hands-down winner of Web 1.0. Might they be about to repeat the feat in the Web 2.0 era?

I'm not expecting anything that earth shattering from Google's announcement tomorrow, but you have to think the folks in Mountain View have more on their minds than simply tweaking Gmail to compete with Facebook and Twitter. Time will tell, and I'll be watching where Google is heading, not just where they are.

My Thoughts on Forrester, Analysts, and Blogging

2010-02-07T11:39:00.000-06:00

[This blog post was cross posted with my blog on Forrester.com: http://blogs.forrester.com/marketing/2010/02/my-thoughts-on-forrester-analysts-and-blogging.html]

Image via CrunchBase

A minor tempest in the research industry teapot erupted today on Twitter and elsewhere. A SageCircle blog post entitled "Forrester tells analysts no more personal blogs with interesting implications for analyst relations" sparked a fair amount of dialog about Forrester and the rights and independence of analysts. SageCircle shared rumors that a change to Forrester blogging policies would prevent analysts from having personal blogs and would aggregate analysts’ posts into Forrester-branded role-based blogs.

I thought I’d share a few thoughts from my perspective as a newish Forresterite and a long-time blogger. First of all, the term “personal blogs” deserves a bit of definition. Forrester is not interested in limiting employees’ involvement in Social Media or their ability to blog on personal subjects. I can blog to my heart’s content about travels, cats, politics, music, movies or any other topic of a personal nature.

But there are changes coming to the ways analysts share information, ideas, and observations about the areas they cover. Forrester is still developing its policies, but it is in the process of rolling out a new blog platform and will ask analysts to share their industry-related thoughts within this new platform. So, there are elements of truth to SageCircle reports, but there’s more to the story. For example, SageCircle speculated that the aim of the policy was to “restrict analysts’ personal blogs works to reduce the possibility that the analysts will build a valuable personal brand leading to their departure.” This would be incorrect on a couple of different fronts.

First of all, Forrester analysts will all have their own blogs within the new platform, and this will continue to furnish a platform for sharing our insights and building our individual reputations. I will have my own Forrester blog, the contents of which will roll up into a blog focused on the needs and interests of Interactive Marketers.

More importantly, the hint that Forrester might want to restrict individual brand building is quite the opposite of my own experience during my first three months in the organization. If anything, Forrester demonstrates a strong and active desire to have analysts build their reputation and brand; for example, there are discussions about how analysts can best “build their franchises.” So strong is Forrester’s vision for its analysts that at times I can feel more like a self-employed specialist working within a loose collective than an employee; I like this feeling, and it one of the things I’ve enjoyed most about Forrester thus far.

Am I thrilled at the prospect of giving up Experience: The Blog, my personal/professional blog? Well no—it’s become part of my digital identity and represents thousands of hours of time and effort. But I also understand Forrester’s reasons for the changes. There are obvious benefits to the company of aggregating intellectual property on Forrester.com, including Search Engine relevance and creating a marketing platform that demonstrates the breadth and depth of analysts’ brainpower and coverage.

Furthermore, it would be silly to believe that readers will recognize and understand the distinction between Augie, the guy who shares thoughts about marketing on his personal blog, and Augie, the Forrester analyst who covers the marketing industry. There is only one Augie, and the thoughts I share on my blog are now based upon the research I do, the people I meet, and the information I am given access to thanks to my role at Forrester.

I’ll be sad to see Experience: The Blog go, but I’m also looking forward to digging into the new Forrester blog platform. There, I will continue to do what I’ve been doing for years on my personal blog: Sharing news, offering insights, connecting with others, asking for input, and—most importantly—continuing to build my reputation within my field.

Who is the MVP of the Marketing Bowl: Social Media or Super Bowl Ads?

2010-01-31T14:40:00.000-06:00

This blog post was cross-posted with my new blog on the Forrester blog at http://blogs.forrester.com/marketing/2010/01/who-is-the-qb-of-the-marketing-bowl-social-media-or-super-bowl-ads.html

Image by Michael Kwan (Freelancer) via Flickr

If you read this blog, you likely already care less about the Saints versus the Colts than you do about Super Bowl ads versus Social Media marketing. After all, the real money isn't earned from the battle on the field but in the battle that occurs during timeouts: Each player on last year's winning team earned a bonus of $83,000 while NBC earned around $213 million in ad revenue for the telecast.

A shift is occurring in the relative importance to marketers of Social Media and Super Bowl advertising. Of course, the 2010 Super Bowl isn't the first we've seen of the marriage of Social Media and Super Bowl ads. Last year, Doritos struck gold with a UGC (User-Generated Content) ad produced by two unemployed brothers, and the brand is back this year with more UGC ads competing for even greater prize money.

But this year, there's a difference: The first evidence that the world has changed between Super Bowl XLIII and XLIV came from Pepsi's news it would not advertise during the big game; instead the brand is opting to invest its marketing budget in a Social Media marketing program called Pepsi Refresh. Many of us in the Social Media business were a bit shocked by this, not because Pepsi saw the importance of Social Media marketing but because they saw it as an alternative rather than an adjunct to their Super Bowl ad campaign. As I said to 1to1 Media at the time, "There was a part of me that was a little surprised that (Pepsi) didn't think about layering a social media program on top of a Super Bowl ad."

While Pepsi is to be commended for using the "Social Media vs. Super Bowl ads" hype for terrific PR advantage, the fact is that advertising and Social Media go together like brats and beer. Advertising is great at raising awareness to a mass audience, while Social Media marketing is perfect for building deeper relationships and influence. The two are mutually beneficial, not mutually exclusive.

This paired benefit is not lost on other brands; in fact,the first sentence of the New York Times article says it all, "Coca-Cola is telling Pepsi-Cola that when it comes to Super Bowl advertising, you can walk and chew gum at the same time." Coke is one brand that will use its Super Bowl ad to promote its Facebook program, http://facebook.com/livepositively, where consumers can send virtual goods and earn Coca-Cola donations to the Boys and Girls Clubs of America. Audi is another Super Bowl advertiser that is using their valuable ad time to drive consumers into a Social Media venue; their "Green Police" ads direct consumers to the Audi YouTube channel where the humorous ads can be viewed, rated, and shared. On Twitter,Unilever will be engaging people who tweet about their Dove Men+Care ads in real-time during the game and E*Trade will be directing viewers to BabyMail, a site to send e-mail messages using voices that simulate baby talk.

And this is where the interesting shift in the recognition of Social Media marketing is evident: Last year, brands used Social Media marketing mostly to develop content for and promote their Super Bowl ads, but this year Super Bowl ads are being dedicated to the support of larger Social Media marketing strategies. The servant has become the master.

The reason for this shift is obvious: Consumer habits are changing. Back in 2007, Forrester's North American Social Technographics Online Survey found that only 25% were Joiners--people who maintained a profile on social networking sites. In 2009, that figure had risen to 59%. The shift in consumer media consumptions is continuing, and this year's Super Bowl will not be the end of the evolution of marketers' budgets and strategies toward Social Computing.

Risk Avoidance and the ROI of Social Media, Insurance, Guitars and Tires

2010-01-25T22:54:00.000-06:00

Image by kyz via Flickr

This blog post was cross posted with the Forrester Blog for Interactive Marketers.

There is a lot of buzz about Social Media ROI, and since the topic is complex, there will continue to be buzz about it for years to come. Brands want to know that Social Media works, what works, and how to invest their money.

Much of the results generated by Social Media can be measured quantitatively and qualitatively: transactions, decreased customer service costs, increased awareness, improved sentiment, etc. But some of the advantages from Social Media cannot be measured, because much like investments in insurance and tires, the benefits come from risk avoidance.

Let me ask you a personal question: In 2009, what was the ROI of your investment in life insurance? The vast majority of you paid your premiums and filed no claims (or you wouldn’t be reading this). You received a negative ROI, so clearly that means you’re suspending your life insurance in 2010, correct?

Perhaps you might argue that the benefit received from your payment of insurance premiums can only be measured over the long term, and you’d be right—to a point. Even over the long term, most of us will still experience a negative ROI from our insurance investment. This is because insurance companies need to generate a surplus from many people to cover the cataclysmic costs of the unfortunate few. Some of us will pay life insurance premiums for 70 years, while others will meet our demise after paying a single premium.

So, if a rational person knows with great confidence that his or her likely lifetime insurance ROI is negative, should they cancel their life policies immediately? The answer is still no, because one of the benefits we receive from insurance—in fact, the most significant benefit—isn’t financial but emotional. We pay for insurance because it gives us peace of mind that our families are protected in the unlikely event tragedy strikes.

Social Media is like corporate reputation insurance. You pay premiums in the form of building relationships, listening, responding, creating widgets, and building communities. And because you’ve done so, you’ve earned protection that can help should a PR disaster strike—you have an existing group of people who have affinity for your brand and an existing channel in which to reach them.

Speaking of disasters, what is the value of avoiding disasters that you can’t know would otherwise occur? Take the tires on your car. How many miles do you have on them? You could ride on them another six months, saving you cash. Alternatively, you could replace them now, but where’s the ROI of that?

Buying tires now versus later is always a negative ROI because you lose the time value of money, and the benefit of the new tires is completely unquantifiable. If you replace the tires, you cannot know if they would have been fine for six months (no cost), or if you would’ve walked out of work to find a flat tire (low cost), or if you might’ve had a high-speed blowout (high cost).

If you change your Social Media tires, how can you know and quantify the costs you’ve saved by preventing problems you don’t have to face? I recently had a problem with an air carrier and tweeted as much. I received a rapid response, was satisfied with the response, and tweeted my satisfaction.

This company was minding its Social Media tires and because of that, they cannot know the positive ROI they generated by avoiding the negative ROI of a Social Media flat tire. What possible outcomes might they have faced had they failed to listen and act? Maybe I would not have tweeted again. Or maybe I would’ve created a video a la United Breaks Guitars and sparked 7.4 million negative impressions. A news organization actually contacted me about the incident, and I declined to share my story because the company met my expectations; it’s likely the company’s quick Social Media response helped them to evade a negative online article that would’ve been seen by tens of thousands and lived for years in Google’s database.

What is the ROI of the road not taken? What disasters might your organization’s Social Media programs avoid? How do you calculate the cost of incidents you don’t experience and cannot imagine? I’m not suggesting much of Social Media ROI is not calculable, just that all of it isn’t. If you don’t approach Social Media with an eye toward the risks managed and avoided, then you really aren’t considering all the benefits Social Media ROI delivers.

Of course, while the ROI may not be fully and completely calculable, it can be fully estimated. Forrester has an approach known as Total Economic Impact, which incorporates costs, benefits, risks, likelihoods, and future opportunities into the evaluation. Watch for Forrester reports that use the TEI model to better define Social ROI in the future; in fact, I had the privilege of reviewing an upcoming report that explores TEI for B2B Social Media ROI from Laura Ramos today.

If marketers demand hard and demonstrable ROI from all of their Social Media efforts, then they will fail to invest properly and wisely. This same attitude might also cause them to stop paying insurance premiums or ride on bald tires, but I’m not expecting those are trends we’ll see in 2010.

Is Twitter Fading? For Marketers It’s not Twitter that Matters but Twitterers

2010-01-20T12:29:00.001-06:00

This blog post was cross-posted with the Forrester blog for Interactive Marketing Professionals.

Image via CrunchBase

If you saw the headlines yesterday, you might be excused for thinking Twitter was in decline: “Twitter's growth slows dramatically,” “Twitter popularity declines, growth slows down,” and “Is Twitter 'Traffic' Tanking?”

Twitter was the story of 2009, growing from less than 5 million monthly users to almost 30 million in the course of six months. People joined, brands rushed in, and words like “Tweet” entered our common vocabulary.

It was a heady year for Twitter, but has it had its day in the sun? What do the headlines mean?

First of all, Twitter isn’t going anywhere any time soon. It’s become ingrained into consumers’ and companies’ communication channels. And it’s just getting started—under development are more tools to help enterprise customers manage and learn from the billions of tweets produced globally.

Secondly, who said Twitter is for everyone? It serves a great purpose for many people, but it lacks Facebook’s wide range of applications (and thus wide appeal). It also lacks a great deal of the noise that many find makes Facebook a less than ideal business networking, news, and sharing environment.

Lastly (and most importantly) is what the headlines are not conveying. Yes, overall growth is slowing—how could it not after posting 1,000%-plus growth in such a short time?--but the key for marketers is not the number of Twitterers but the habits, Technographics and psychographics of Twitterers. As Sean Corcoran and Josh Bernoff demonstrated in their December 2009 report, “Who Flocks To Twitter?,” Twitters are the connected of the connected, overindexing at all Social Media habits. For example, Twitterers are three times more likely to be Creators (people who create and share content via blog posts and YouTube) as the general US population.

Twitter’s growth may slow (or perhaps it will see an @oprah-like bounce now that @billgates has joined and is generating PR), but its value to those who Twitter and to marketers is not in question into the very foreseeable future.

Social Media is the New Super Bowl: Pepsi Refresh and What It Means to Marketers

2009-12-31T12:13:00.001-06:00

[I just posted my second blog post since joining Forrester, this time on the Marketing Leadership Blog. You'll find this same blog post cross-posted at http://blogs.forrester.com/agencies/2009/12/social-media-is-the-new-super-bowl-pepsi-refresh-and-what-it-means-to-marketers.html]

If you track Social Media news, I'm sure you saw the eye-catching headline: "Pepsi's Big Gamble: Ditching Super Bowl for Social Media". For the first time in 23 years--23 years!--the brand will not be purchasing a Super Bowl spot. Instead, it is sinking $20M into a Social Media program called Pepsi Refresh. The Pepsi Refresh site will allow people to vote for worthwhile community projects, and Pepsi expects to sponsor thousands of local efforts via this program.

What does this news mean to marketers? Some potential ramifications (and non-ramifications) include:

No, this doesn't mean TV is going away, but it will be fighting for marketing dollars on an increasingly level playing field with Social and Interactive tactics. Despite the meltdown in traditional media, TV advertising will continue to be a big line item in the marketing budget for top consumer brands, but expect it to continue to shrink as a portion of the overall marketing budget. Shar VanBoskirk said it well: "Advertising budgets will decline. But marketing investments won't." Moreover, as Lisa Bradner points out in her report, Adaptive Brand Marketing, the era of annual TV budgets is ending. Expect more iterative budget setting based on "test and learn" cycles where the best and most successful ideas can quickly command more funding regardless of channel.
Social Media programs don't begin and end with Social Media: There can be a mistaken assumption that Social Media Marketing means brands being on Twitter and Facebook. As the Pepsi program demonstrates, Social Media is the means to an end, and not the end itself.

It doesn't matter that you have followers, fans, or a community; those are assets, not return. It is how you use those assets that matters. In Pepsi's case, they've clearly found a way to gain new followers and fans, but that's not the objective of the program; instead, the brand is putting Social Media to work for a higher goal--making the world a better place and associating the brand with that vision.
Social Media measurement = brand measurement: Do you think Pepsi is going to measure the effectiveness of this program merely by how many fans or page views they get? They may count retweets, but what are the chances the $20M investment will be evaluated based upon 140-character pass-alongs?

The success of this program won't be measured primarily with Social Media metrics (fans, followers, RTs, votes, etc.) but on traditional brand and marketing metrics. How much PR does Pepsi earn from the program and the funding of thousands of community projects? How many people hear about the program, and how does it affect their purchase intent for the brand? How many points increase does Pepsi see when it asks questions such as, "Pepsi is a brand that cares about me and my community?" and "Pepsi is a brand I'd recommend to friends?" Does the brand see a lift in sales? Those are the types of metrics that matter in this (or most every other) marketing program. My peer Nate Elliot points out that you must "choose metrics based on objectives rather than technologies."
Another nail in the coffin of merely likable advertising. Super Bowl advertising has become its own kind of sport. Shortly after the big game, the scoreboard goes up (USA Today's Ad Meter) and the winning team does an end zone victory dance (agency press releases bragging about the results). All this hullabaloo implies that ads are entertainment and likability is all that matters, but it is just one element--and hardly the most important--in effective advertising.

Pepsi's actions demonstrate a commitment to something deeper than jokey ads. Pepsi is betting the brand can win by making a deeper connection (consumer involvement versus seeing an ad) for a greater purpose (making the world a better place versus a laugh at the end of a 30-second spot.) As my online friend Brandon Sutton recently wrote on his blog, "Instead of trying to get clever with your messaging, why not try thinking smarter by understanding how humans think and behave and how your brand fits into the bigger picture of this dynamic?"
Social Media changes everything. Social Media alters the playing field for everyone within the enterprise; formerly successful strategies and tactics are being challenged, while old and tired methodologies are getting new legs. For example, Best Buy is using Social Media to improve its customer support in new ways; Starbucks is embracing consumers' ideas and driving innovation and loyalty; and, as we see, Pepsi is using Social Media to give new energy to cause marketing.

Cause marketing is hardly new, but Social Media gives brands the ability to power it in new ways. Previously, cause marketing tended to be about a company making a donation and leveraging that for PR, advertising and in-bound links. Today, cause marketing can be about embracing customers' values and ideas about how to spend charitable dollars and then energizing consumers and employees to get involved and make a difference. Social Media offers us new ways to breathe life into this old marketing idea!

Early next year we'll find out how Pepsi's decision to trade the Super Bowl for Social Media plays out, but it's already earned the brand enormous visibility. Articles about their decision can be found on ABC, CNN, NPR, Reuters, AP, Wall Street Journal, and others. Of course, the first brand to dump Super Bowl advertising in place of Social Media marketing will earn headlines; the fifth brand to do so will not.

So, how are you going to use Social Media to give old tactics and strategies new life in 2010?

2010: The Year Marketing Dies...

2009-12-16T22:24:00.001-06:00

Image by yewenyi via Flickr

...(Subtitled) Or at Least Marketing as We Know It!

[Please note this blog article was posted simultaneously with my new Forrester blog at http://blogs.forrester.com/marketing/
2009/12/2010-the-year-marketing-dies.html.]

It is that time of year when every blogger, reporter and analyst is publishing their 2010 Social Media and marketing predictions. (It's a rather odd phenomenon--aren't we interested in what's happening in the next twelve months other than in December?) Forrester's own Social Media prediction report will soon be released, but I'd like to make my own big prediction: 2010 will be the year marketing--as we know it--dies. Let's explore the trends and what they mean to marketers.

Marketing's been under attack for some time, but in 2009 we witnessed the most profound evolution the marketing world has seen in fifty years or more. The pace of change is not going to lessen in 2010. Core elements that have driven marketing practices for decades--such as messaging strategy, mass media, PR, advertising, and others--will continue to change rapidly.

The latest news from the print world is unsurprising: Average weekday circulation at 379 U.S. newspapers fell 10.6% during the six months ending in September--the steepest decline ever recorded by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. And although a recent study found that consumer spending on subscription media increased 7% in the past year, that didn't mean subscriptions in the traditional sense--the number of households subscribing to magazines dropped two percentage points while subscriptions for home video and smartphone services were both up.

On the television front, households with DVRs tripled in just three years, more consumers are avoiding ads, and a majority feels there is "too much advertising." One cannot help but feel sorry for networks and media companies worried about matching ad revenue to expenses, but their response is a bit hard to swallow. TiVo is showing ads to viewers as they are trying to skip other ads, and TNS Media Intelligence tells us that "marketing content represents 43 percent of a prime-time hour"--11:46 minutes per hour of in-show Brand Appearances (a 31% increase from a year ago) and 14:07 of network commercial messages.

Certainly, someone has to pay for Fringe, Glee, and The Office to be produced, but chasing down consumers and bludgeoning them with more advertising messages hardly feels like an effective strategy. (By the way, I selected those three shows for a reason: according to the latest Entertainment Weekly, almost one in five people viewing those programs is time shifting, and you can guess what that means for advertisers.)

The story on the Internet isn't much better. Hulu is striving mightily to avoid being forced to go the way of TV and load their content with more ads. Social Media sites like Facebook are so loaded with ads that a consumer spending ten minutes on the site might be exposed to as many as 90 easy-to-ignore ads. To improve low attention and meager clickthrough rates, advertisers hope to enhance their targeting of consumers based on their online behavior, but the long-threatened intervention of the government may be at hand. This year could finally be the year that the Feds change the way online advertising works; said FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz recently, "We're at another watershed moment in privacy, and the time is right for the commission ... to take a broader look at privacy."

Marketers have, of course, taken note of the power of Social Media, but they continue to struggle with what to do and how to measure it. In a recent study, 64% of CMOs said they plan to increase their social media budgets next year, but "at least half of respondents expressed uncertainty about ROI." It strikes me as quite concerning that the top metrics being utilized--mentioned by more than 80% of the CMOs--aren't deep measures of influence or attitude but shallow measures of presence, such as number of fans and page views.

Meanwhile, it's possible (although not likely) that the Social Media landscape could change yet again if Facebook stumbles in 2010. (Don't think it could happen? Remember that 13 months ago MySpace was drawing more visitors than Facebook; today Facebook draws 150% more than MySpace.) Facebook is facing potentially serious challenges. Some are predicting that young people could soon stream off the site to avoid status updates from mom and dad; by one report, just 50% of the 15-24 crowd is checking Facebook regularly, compared to 55% last year. More people are complaining (and suing) about being caught in scams from third-party developers on Facebook. And faced with the growing privacy concerns of its users, how did Facebook react? By implementing changes that many feel make it not just more difficult to protect their privacy, but actually remove privacy protections from some sorts of data.

Facebook seems unlikely to go the way of Friendster (if for no other reason than a serious competitor has yet to emerge), but even if Facebook finds itself being MySpaced in 2010, Social Media is here to stay. The influence of the masses will only continue to grow as Social Media tools improve and more and older consumers climb the Social Technographics Ladder, moving from Inactives, Spectators, and Joiners to Collectors, Critics, and Creators.

Social Media has just begun to change the way marketing and business operates. The coming year will see advertising put under the microscope by a connected, savvy, and critical consumer (just ask Motrin and Unilever). Consumers will use Social Media to exert more influence over marketing and business decisions (see Tropicana and EA). The best practices for brands in Social Media will continue to evolve (and woe be to brands caught violating consumer trust, as demonstrated by recent missteps by individuals at Honda and Belkin). And some multi-million-dollar marketing budgets will be challenged and undermined by simple consumer-generated videos (see the Domino's employee video--or better yet, don't!)

As we enter 2010, consumers have new partners that will help to expand the reach of Social Media dialog even further--the big three search sites. Bing, Yahoo and Google recently made changes to the way their search engines index the real-time web, and status updates and tweets are rapidly finding their way into top search results. This means that consumers searching for brands and campaigns are increasingly likely to see results that include blogged and tweeted criticisms as they are links to official brand sites.

The search engine changes mean that 2010 will be the year when brands can run but they cannot hide. Gone are the days when marketers could carefully craft messaging and then broadcast that message in a few channels to huge portions of their audiences. Oh, you can still spend money that way if you want to but in our transparent world, no marketing budget can possibly overcome the actual experience consumers have (and share with friends, followers and Google) with the product, service, or organization. It no longer matters what you say; in 2010, your brand will be more defined by what you do and who you are!

Of course, if marketing burns to the ground in 2010, a new and more powerful marketing will rise from the ashes. The role of the new marketer:

Won't be simply to focus on outbound messaging but to consult with sales, customer service, and human resources on how the brand must be communicated in every consumer interaction, every tweet, and every touchpoint,
Won't be merely to imagine creative messages but to fashion programs that are seamless with the actual product and service experience,
Won't be to plan bursts of communication on a yearlong calendar but to respond to and be part of the ever-changing dialog with consumers,
Won't be to count friends, page visits, eyeballs, readers, or viewers but to measure changes in consumer attitude and intent,
Won't be merely to talk at consumers but to listen and engage one to one,
Won't be to build campaigns but relationships,
Won't be to create impressions but experiences, and
Won't be buy media but to earn it.

To some of you, these changes sound easy, but they represent painful transitions for marketing organizations. In 2010 and the years that follow, everything will change: job expectations, skills, metrics, structure, budgets, agency demands and compensation, and the role of the marketing function within the organization. While the changes will be difficult, they will also be extraordinarily exciting. In the end, the marketing organization will be integral partners in everything the enterprise does, living up to Peter Drucker's famous quote:

"Business has only two basic functions -- marketing and innovation."

Marketing is dead. Long live marketing!

Passion: The Defining Success Factor in the 21st Century?

2009-11-29T22:41:00.002-06:00

The business world is changing. Where once people horded information in the belief (conscious or otherwise) doing so bestowed power, we are now seeing a Social Media revolution within the corporate world. The same tools that consumers use to tweet, share, network, rate, and friend each other are becoming commonplace inside organizations. This is more than just a change of tools and software; it is a revolution in the way people work, collaborate, and manage their careers.

Increasingly, it no longer pays to protect and manage information--knowledge withheld is no better than a lack of knowledge in the first place. Instead, employees are now promoting themselves and increasing their networks by sharing what they know, contributing where they can, and increasing their knowledge via interactions and experiences throughout the enterprise.

While the transparency of knowledge and information is increasing within organizations, we are also seeing transparency increase outside the organization. Employees are not employees only between 8 and 5--their actions on social networks are visible to peers, bosses, business leaders, competitors, and customers. The things people say and do "personally" are no longer just personal, and we've seen instances of employees helping and hindering both their own careers and their employers' objectives as a result of tweets, status updates, and other activities on social networks.

In an age of transparency--where information is more available and your personal and work selves are more intertwined than ever--what will define success for individuals in their careers?

Education? As the downturn and executive layoffs have demonstrated, a degree is no guarantee of success; employers want to know not just what degree you earned but how you've applied that education to deliver results.

Communication skills? Certainly folks who can express themselves, communicate effectively, and know their way around LinkedIn and other social networks are in demand, but these are not difficult skills to find nowadays. Within most organizations, communication skills are table stakes and not the differentiating factor for success.

I'd propose that the defining factor for success will become passion. Passionate people are committed not because they get a paycheck but because they believe in what they do; passionate people don't keep their skills up to date because they are told to but because standing still simply is not an option; and passionate people are driven by what they possess inside rather than what happens around them. Passionate people see things others do not, stretch to get the job done, are more willing to embrace risks, and are their own harshest critics.

Frank Eliason is a passionate guy. Eighteen months ago he had some free time during a weekend, and rather than watching football he instead checked his email and monitored Twitter for what was being said about his employer, Comcast. Eliason famously intercepted tweets from tech blogger Michael Arrington, and rather than wait until Monday or pass along the problem to someone working, Eliason instead picked up the phone, called Arrington, and resolved both an individual's technical problem and a potentially damaging PR problem for Comcast. His passion has earned him and his program, ComcastCares, wide media attention and his CEO notes that Eliason's work on Twitter has "changed the culture of our company". The brightest and most educated dispassionate clock puncher couldn't hope to achieve a fraction of what Frank has.

Another favorite example of mine is Mary Moss, a McDonald's drive-thru employee in Chandler, AZ. She considers working at McDonald's more than just a job, and when she takes vacation, she misses her customers-- "My children are grown and gone, and my customers have really become my family." She says when people come through her window, "it's my mission to make them smile." Passionate people have missions--not just jobs--and Mary's mission has made her famous (including a Facebook fan group and news reports about this lovely woman) and McDonald's "management loves the business she brings in."

The passion of people like Frank and Mary don't just result in a job well done; their contributions transcend their jobs. These two individuals have had a disproportionately positively impact upon their customers, business, and even the brand image of their employers. Imagine the effect an army of Frank's or Mary's could have upon your organization.

Are you a Frank or Mary? Are you passionate about your work, industry, employer, or career? Does it show? When potential employers visit your Twitter stream or Facebook page, will they see more passion for drinks on Saturday night, Mafia Wars, or a favorite sports team than they will for your profession? Or does your Social Media profile demonstrate you to be someone who can't leave his or her job at work, is always sharing links and news about their industry, and builds positive relationships with peers and friends?

Education grows stale. Skills come and go. Hard work is commonplace and expected. Passion is the only consistent and differentiating factor. And in a transparent world, one's passion (or lack thereof) cannot be hidden, faked (for very long), or manufactured.

What are you passionate about?

Chip Conley and Authenticity vs. Transparency : Which is More Important?

2009-11-06T18:01:00.000-06:00

Transparency and Authenticity are both important in Social Media and in our newly Social World, but what's the difference and which is more important? The two are often used interchangeably, but authenticity is not the same as transparency. Complete transparency may be thought of as revealing every private, confidential, or personal thought or experience; complete authenticity is more about being true to your ideals and never being fake or untruthful. Chip Conley, CEO of Joie de Vivre hotels, has provided us a lens through which we may evaluate the difference between--and the differing significance of--transparency and authenticity.

You can read about Conley's dilemma on BNET, but it boils down to this--he's a rock-and-roll CEO who lives large and believes in authenticity. Some of his employees objected when he posted shirtless photos of himself to the Facebook profile the company PR firm created for him. He believes his employees are wrong to be concerned and asks "What, exactly, does it take to damage the image of the company?"

It's a great question, and the fact he asked it publicly in a blog post teaming with slights to his employees and justifications for his actions may furnish the answer he seeks. I think a case may be made that Conley has damaged his company, but not because of his Facebook photos; it's his actions after his employees voiced their concerns--actions that prioritize transparency over authenticity--that may possibly prove troublesome for Joie de Vivre.

Conley's shirtless photos were clearly authentic. But so were the concerns of employees. The collision of two contrary but authentic beliefs provided Joie de Vivre with a golden opportunity for internal dialog about the brand, the organization's Social Media policies, and authenticity. But this is not what happened, because instead of engaging employees, Conley took his concerns public in a blog post in which he admits his first reaction was, “Screw that; people who don’t like it can go work at Marriott.”

In making the concerns of his employees and his own reaction public, Conley has opted for transparency over authenticity. Airing his grievances with employees was transparent, but it would have been more authentic to discuss the matter with his employees. Remember that authenticity means keeping true to ideals, and it is clear Conley has an ideal that employee opinions matter. He is proud to have implemented a "cultural ambassador" program in which employees vote for their own representatives on matters of organizational culture. In fact, it was some of these ambassadors who expressed concerns about Conley's Facebook shots!

Conley's desire for transparency ran headlong into his commitment to authenticity, and he opted to voice his opinions and seek support from outsiders rather than demonstrate care and respect for his ambassadors' feedback. I believe he was transparent, but violated his own ideals, which was inauthentic.

This isn't the first time we've seen transparency collide with authenticity, nor is it the first reminder that authenticity always wins. Cisco rescinded a job offer because the candidate tweeted she was weighing "a fatty paycheck against... hating the work"--transparent, but not authentic to her personal and professional goals, I suspect. A PR firm Social Media consultant found himself in a very public embarrassment after tweeting that he "would die" if he had to live in his client's hometown--completely transparent, and also completely inauthentic in terms of his professional ideals.

I sometimes think we stress transparency too much in Social Media; after all, in the real world we are all different people in different situations--we behave differently when interacting with our parents, our boss, and our friends. Does that make us liars? No, we sacrifice complete transparency in order to be authentic to our ideals in different ways within different relationships. (I've had friends point out that I have a fairly blue sense of humor that never comes through on Twitter, but I feel my tweets are authentic to my professional passions, even though my guarded approach on Twitter may be less than fully transparent.)

So, my answer to Conley's question--What, exactly, does it take to damage the image of the company?--is that his photos didn't cause harm, but his overly transparent way of dealing with an internal issue may have hurt his relationships inside the organization. He failed to honor his ideals that employees--particularly the ambassadors--have opinions that matter, and in doing so he made transparency more important than authenticity.

What do you think? Was Conley authentic by venting his feelings publicly? Do you think he'd be as accepting if one of his employees chose to post internal disagreements on a blog rather than address them directly within the organization? And in a Social World, is it possible to be transparent but inauthentic?

The Principle of Transparency: A Tale of Two Employers

2009-10-28T01:24:00.001-05:00

Social Media practitioners use the word “transparency” frequently, but it seems to mean different things to different people. To me, transparency isn’t something organizations bring to their Social Media efforts but instead is a fundamental change in corporate mindset being accelerated by Social Media’s growth and adoption. It isn’t a choice made on Twitter but the way an organization may choose to live. In short, transparency is a principle, not a strategy or tactic. Some recent experiences with Fullhouse and Forrester, my current and future employers, have helped me to recognize the meaning, value, and importance of transparency.

Over the past two months, I’ve had the very good fortune to be part of the intensive recruiting process of market research firm, Forrester. As readers of Experience: The Blog know, I will start with Forrester in the San Francisco Bay area in mid-November. I feel very lucky and excited to be joining a firm I hold in high regard.

There are many reasons that I respect Forrester, but one is quite personal: the smart and respectful way their analysts responded to a blog post in which I critiqued their guidance on Sponsored Conversations (AKA Paid Blog Posts). I noted that they support Sponsored Conversations on blogs, so I jokingly offered to pay Forrester for coverage on their own Groundswell blog. Of course, I knew Forrester would never accept such an offer, but I hoped my approach might spark dialog about one of the hottest topics in Social Computing.

It certainly would have been easy enough to consider me a nuisance and opt for an opaque or translucent response, such as ignoring the post, contacting me privately, dismissing me as incorrect or uninformed, or perhaps even firing off a “cease and desist” letter to demand I discontinue quoting material from the Groundswell blog. Instead, Josh Bernoff and Sean Corcoran responded both on my blog and on the Forrester blog, and they did so in a public way, inviting response and interaction from others and engaging in open dialog.

Josh and Sean lived the transparency they recommend to their clients; they treated all voices in the debate as equal and informative, discussed rather than defended, listened, and considered. Not only did my deliberately cheeky blog post not earn their animosity, it was among the reasons they included me as a candidate for the analyst opening.

Meanwhile, as the recruiting process with Forrester grew more serious, I made the decision to be transparent with my current employer, Fullhouse. I felt I could be open about my career opportunity because the agency is a caring and transparent place. Of course, my bosses were not excited about the possibility of losing an agency leader, but they opted for support and transparency over alternatives such as showing me the door or making it difficult to take the time I needed to meet with Forrester. In the words of my boss, “Had you told me you were interviewing with the agency across the street, I’d kick your ass, but I recognize why Forrester would be such a great fit for you.”

By making transparency a part of the culture at Fullhouse, its leaders gained quite a lot: They were aware of and could plan for my departure rather than finding it a surprise; they fostered an environment of trust and respect; they reinforced why Fullhouse is such an excellent place to work; and they made my decision more difficult. Fullhouse may have lost an employee, but they continue to have a raving fan.

For Forrester and Fullhouse, transparency is a part of the culture and is represented by their care for those inside and outside the organization, their willingness to meet stakeholders halfway, the respect they demonstrate for individuals and ideas, and a commitment to live by principles that consider others’ interests, not just their own.

Tim Williams of Ignition Consulting once shared his definition of a principle, and it is one that stuck with me: “A principle isn’t a principle unless it could potentially cost you money.” Transparency can certainly cost an organization money in the short run, but a commitment to transparency will bear benefits in the end.

In an increasingly social world, brands and companies cannot build networks, earn trust, create fans, or foster influence through defensiveness, self-interest, close-mindedness, or other opaque attitudes and actions. Transparency isn’t easy, but as demonstrated by Fullhouse and Forrester, transparency is a principle that is increasingly vital in a world of frictionless communication.

Marketing is NOT Changing; Just Ask Paul Revere

2009-10-27T00:15:00.001-05:00

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We Social Marketers love to tell others how marketing is fundamentally changing, but what if that is not only counterproductive but also inaccurate? This was the provocative hypothesis explored tonight during a 20-minute car ride I enjoyed with Jeremy Epstein of Never Stop Marketing. (Apparently, I should have driven slower in order to enjoy our fascinating conversation for longer.)

Clearly, something is happening in the marketing realm--traditional media is stagnating, media consumption habits are changing, individuals have access to tools that furnish mass-media-like power and reach, technology is permitting consumers to filter and limit marketing messages, trust in advertising is low, and peer-to-peer influence and communication is increasing. But what if all this isn't so much a change as a return to the norm?

Before studying the validity of that question, let's first explore why the words we use matter. Those of us who were early adopters of Social Computing platforms clearly love and embrace change--not only are we comfortable with it, we want and demand it--but there are those who don't welcome change as easily. (To be fair, even early adopters are famous for welcoming certain sorts of change and not others--just look at the "Big Blogger" hubbub that has erupted because of tiny changes in the FTC's guidance pertaining to sponsorship and disclosure).

In addition to the fact change is scary, takes time and effort, and involves risk, there's another problem with telling people they need to change--whether intended or not, a whiff of criticism is conveyed. People who are doing things right don't need to change; conversely, someone who needs to be told change is necessary is--by definition--doing something wrong. So, it should come as no surprise that marketing decision makers may not respond to the "world is changing" message that is often conveyed by bloggers, speakers, and social media professionals.

Of course, if the world really is changing, we shouldn't hesitate to say so simply because some don't appreciate the message. But what if the evolution occurring today isn't an advance to a bold new marketing future but instead is a correction that returns the marketing profession to something known and familiar? What if Social Computing isn't pushing marketing into the unknown but is merely giving a new twist to something very old? Might decision makers be more open to Social Media if it were packaged not as the latest fad but instead as a return to the fundamentals of relationship-based marketing?

During our discussion, Jeremy mentioned Paul Revere as an example of a successful Social Businessperson, albeit one who died 190 years before Twitter and Facebook became household words. As noted in the article, "Paul Revere the Businessman," there is far more to Revere than we learned (or perhaps remember) from history books. We remember him for a single urgent horse ride on one evening, but he lived 83 years and was a successful business owner, growing his silversmithing trade into a small empire encompassing engraving, a hardware store, a foundry, and a copper mill.

What was the secret to his success? The article notes that Revere became a Mason, actively participating as an officer and helping to open new lodges throughout Massachusetts. "His involvement in Freemasonry affected his business pursuits and livelihood" and "many of Revere’s customers during the late 1700s were Masons." Records indicate that Revere's involvement in freemasonry led to regular and ongoing business over a period of almost 40 years.

Joining a group, building a network, fostering relationships, contributing to the community, and receiving a return on that time and effort? How innovative, untested, and utterly radical!

Obviously, the point being made is that, while the tools may be different today, relationship-based marketing isn't new but as old as human commerce. In fact, if marketers want to identify the upstart medium in their field, that wouldn't be Social Media but Mass Media!

The term "Mass Media" is only 80 years old. Its growth into our popular language recognized that technology was putting brand new tools of communication scale into the hands only of those few who could afford it. In the past century, Mass Media had a profound change on the way products were developed, companies formed, brands marketed, and people lived.

Today, technology is again on the march, only now it is putting the tools of scale into the hands of Twitterers, bloggers, and Facebook fans. And, we again face profound changes in the way products are developed, companies formed, brands marketed, and people live.

Clearly, a substantial and profound metamorphosis is underway, but rather than framing this to marketing executives as a risk-filled journey of experimentation into the unknown, we Social Marketing practitioners may be well advised to take a different tact. Relationship-based, one-to-one marketing that creates influence and intimacy isn't the stuff of the future but of the past. The tools may be George Jetson, but the strategy was ancient by the time Paul Revere was networking with Mason lodge members.

Reach, Sentiment, and "Balloon Boy"

2009-10-25T21:02:00.010-05:00

Attaining reach in traditional media is easy--buy an ad. Attaining reach in Social Media can be more challenging--marketers can buy ads to guarantee impressions on Social Networks, but those impressions are far less impactful than the ones that occur when consumers praise, recommend, or share their enthusiasm for a product with others.

All impressions are not equal, so it is important that metrics-obsessed marketers take care to consider subjective sentiment along with objective measures of scale. The difference between reach and sentiment can be demonstrated by assessing the impressions and attitudes generated by two recent newsmakers--Balloon Boy and Jaycee Dugard.

There isn't much that connects the stories of Falcon Heene and Jaycee Dugard, other than the way their stories captivated the hearts and attention of the nation. Heene, known as "Balloon Boy," was thought to be trapped inside an experimental balloon that became untethered, resulting in a chase watched live on cable news nets by almost 5 million people--double the usual number of viewers. Dugard reentered the national consciousness for the miraculous story of her safe return, eighteen years after she was kidnapped at the age of eleven.

These two news stories received terrific attention in the media, generating high awareness via sustained and repeated impressions. They have been featured prominently on national TV news, hit the front page of newspapers, and set the blogosphere and Twitterverse on fire. As a result, Falcon and Jaycee both became household names.

But even though the reach of these two hot stories are similar, the popular sentiment about the two couldn't be more different. Richard Heene, Falcon's dad, reportedly staged the balloon stunt in an attempt to land a reality TV show deal; instead he faces jail time and the loss of his children, and his reputation has been vilified everywhere from Twitter to editorial pages. Meanwhile, an outpouring of interest and goodwill continue to shower Jaycee Dugard; her story has been called "an inspiration" and her recent People magazine cover story is expected to be one of the year's best-selling magazines.

The backlash against Heene is so great that it may impact the use of children in reality television programs; conversely, Dugard's recent People cover story has resulted in an increase in news stories about and interest in horse therapy. Public sentiment about Heene and his stunt is so bad that many are blaming the media for covering the story in the first place; public sentiment for Dugard is so positive that Oprah for the first time ever asked her producer to get on the story and arrange an interview.

This certainly is an extreme example, but it effectively demonstrates how scale, in and of itself, is a pretty ineffective way to evaluate results in Social Media (or any marketing, for that matter). Tallying blog mentions of a brand or counting the tweets of a branded hashtag is nowhere near the same thing as measuring the impact of Social Marketing programs on consumer perception or purchase intent.

Marketers must be careful not to become Richard Heenes, attempting to spark buzz in any way possible in the mistaken belief that impressions matter and the end justifies the means. As Mr. Heene found, any Social PR is not good Social PR.

My New Adventure with Forrester

2009-10-21T22:25:00.000-05:00

As some of you who follow my Tweet stream may know, I am leaving Fullhouse (a place I love full of bright people I respect) for an exciting new opportunity; I'll be joining Forrester's Foster City (Bay area) office as a Sr. Analyst of Social Computing.

You may have noticed that my blog production has been down a bit recently; that's because Forrester's recruiting process is thorough and time consuming, but also very fun and exciting. I got the chance to write my first Forrester report and then present it in their Cambridge, MA home office. (I hope to share more about this report--exploring the relationship between trust, influence, and scale in Social Media--in the future.)

I found the experience of researching and writing a report to be very similar to the process I've used on this blog, only with Forrester there are some tight (and very helpful) guidelines. Also, while blogging has been a solitary endeavour, the Forrester process is collaborative. I've always been conscious of the challenges and limitations of being a one-person research, writing, editing, and proofing team, so working on the Forrester report with another person's input was different and enjoyable.

I intend to continue to maintain this blog in the future, but the coming couple of weeks will be challenging ones as I finish up with Fullhouse, move 2,189 miles, and begin my new and exciting career at Forrester. Please continue to monitor this blog, where I hope to share observations about my transition to Forrester, explore report ideas, convey Social Media news and insights, and ask for input and guidance from my readers.

If any of you have thoughts on what you expect from a good analyst, topics that I should explore, contacts I ought to make, or even tips on the Bay Area (I'll be settling in San Mateo, 20 miles south of San Francisco), please feel free to email me (augie --at-- mkeray.com) or comment here. While ExperiencetheBlog.com may not get my full attention for a few weeks, I am committed to keeping it an exciting, informative, helpful, and interesting spot for Social Media, Social Marketing, and Social Computing commentary.

Thanks,
Augie
http://twitter.com/augieray

10 Simple Things to Know About the FTC's New Guidelines for Blogs & Brands

2009-10-05T17:51:00.029-05:00

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The long-awaited new guidelines from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) were published today, and they aren't much of a surprise. While addressing blogs, message boards, and other forms of new media, the FTC didn't stray from its traditional commitment to ensure that consumers know when they are seeing paid advertising.

What does today's FTC update mean to Social Marketers and bloggers? You may find it interesting what the FTC did--and didn't--say:

1. Sponsorship = Advertising:

Given marketers' and bloggers' use of the term "Sponsored Conversations" to refer to paid blog posts, it is probably no coincidence that the FTC uses the term "sponsorship" in the following statement: “The fundamental question is whether, viewed objectively, the relationship between the advertiser and the speaker is such that the speaker’s statement can be considered ‘sponsored’ by the advertiser and therefore an ‘advertising message.’”

A blogger who posts a product-based statement independently and without commercial arrangements with the brand is not making an endorsement by the FTC's definition and thus needs not be concerned about the rules governing advertising. But as we'll see, a blogger's post that is sponsored can become an advertising endorsement and may trigger legal requirements with respect to factual information and disclosure of commercial arrangements, under certain conditions.

2. The FTC is furnishing guidelines, not rules:

The FTC has the power of Federal law to enforce legal advertising standards, but today's document defines guidelines and not rules. The Commission recognizes that the marketing and communications world is changing and is too complex for hard and fast rules. The FTC notes that it will have to “consider each use of these new media on a case-by-case basis for purposes of law enforcement, as it does with all advertising.”

So, what factors will the FTC weigh in determining if a given relationship between brand and blogger meets the standard for an "endorsement"? Today's FTC document lists the following:

Whether the speaker is compensated by the advertiser or its agent;
Whether the product or service in question was provided for free by the advertiser;
The terms of any agreement;
The length of the relationship;
The previous receipt of products or services from the same or similar advertisers, or the likelihood of future receipt of such products or services; and
The value of the items or services received.

In other words, the FTC is not tightly defining the legal standards for bloggers and brands, but it is telling us enough to advise caution with respect to paid blog posts, endorsements, and disclosure.

3. Independent consumers are still free to share their praise of brands:

Some more histrionic observers felt the FTC's guidelines would limit consumers' ability to compliment and recommend products via ratings, on blogs, and in Social Networks. This is nowhere near the case; the FTC notes that “a consumer who purchases a product with his or her own money and praises it on a personal blog or on an electronic message board will not be deemed to be providing an endorsement.”

4. It is not necessarily an exchange of value between brand and blogger that triggers an endorsement but the existence of a material relationship.

The FTC furnishes three similar examples of a blogger writing about a brand to draw distinctions between what is and is not an endorsement.

The first example is a simple and obvious one--the consumer buys the product and then praises it; this is clearly a legitimate, unsponsored communication.

The second example involves a blogger who posts praise after receiving free product. The key in this example is that the blogger who praises the brand is not targeted by that brand but instead receives a coupon for free product generated by a store computer based upon the consumer's past purchase patterns. In this case, the FTC notes "given the absence of a relationship between the speaker and the manufacturer or other factors supporting the conclusion that she is acting on behalf of the manufacturer (i.e., that her statement is 'sponsored'), her review would not be deemed to be an endorsement."

The last example should be considered carefully by marketers who have established networks of consumers to whom product is regularly distributed. The example involves a consumer who joins "a network marketing program under which she periodically receives various products about which she can write reviews if she wants to do so." Says the FTC, "If she receives a free bag of the new dog food through this program, her positive review would be considered an endorsement." As we'll explore later, the Commission suggests that endorsements made via blog posts require disclosure and adherence to the legal requirements of paid advertising.

5. Giving product to bloggers for the purpose of posting reviews may or may not make the bloggers' recommendations an "endorsement" (but it probably does):

The FTC takes great pains to try to address the issue of brands that disseminate free product for the purpose of garnering positive product reviews in Social Media. The Commission states that a blogger who "receive(s) merchandise from a marketer with a request to review it, but with no compensation paid other than the value of the product itself" may be considered "endorsed" by the brand depending upon "among other things, the value of that product, and on whether the blogger routinely receives such requests."

The FTC clarifies that last portion of their statement in this way: "If that blogger frequently receives products from manufacturers because he or she is known to have wide readership within a particular demographic group that is the manufacturers’ target market, the blogger’s statements are likely to be deemed to be 'endorsements.'" In the view of the FTC, "Although the monetary value of any particular product might not be exorbitant, knowledge of the blogger’s receipt of a stream of free merchandise could affect the weight or credibility of his or her endorsement."

In other words, someone who maintains a review blog and regularly receives free product for the purpose of authoring and posting reviews is more likely to be considered an "endorser" than a blogger who only occasionally receives products to review. Some find this curious, because it seems contrary to established practices in traditional media. There are, of course, journalists--such as movie reviewers or food critics--who frequently receive free product, but their articles in newspapers and magazines are not considered "endorsements" per the FTC.

To those who want to make the case that bloggers are being treated differently than journalists in traditional media, the FTC has a response: "The Commission acknowledges that bloggers may be subject to different disclosure requirements than reviewers in traditional media." In other words, get over it!

Regardless of whether you find this guidance puzzling or not, this much is clear: The FTC is putting brands on notice. Giving free products to popular bloggers or recruiting networks of consumers into "word of mouth marketing programs" for the purpose of distributing free products for review will likely be considered and regulated as paid media.

6. The fact that compensated bloggers are free to say whatever they want does not prevent their posts from being considered legal endorsements:

It doesn't matter that a brand pays a blogger and then permits him or her to express anything s/he wants, without editorial control or rules. And it also doesn't matter that bloggers compensated by a brand feel they are expressing their true and honest opinions, unbiased by the commercial arrangement. The FTC notes that “an advertiser’s lack of control over the specific statement made via these new forms of consumer-generated media would not automatically disqualify that statement from being deemed an ‘endorsement’ within the meaning of the Guides.’”

7. The fact that compensated bloggers are free to say whatever they want does not protect the brand from the legal responsibilities that come with paid advertising:

The FTC understands that marketers may not have control over what bloggers say, but "if the advertiser initiated the process that led to endorsements being made – e.g., by providing products to well-known bloggers or to endorsers enrolled in word of mouth marketing programs – it potentially is liable for misleading statements made by those consumers."

The risks to brands also include the risk that a compensated blogger fails to disclose the material relationship. Notes the FTC, "In employing this means of marketing, the advertiser has assumed the risk that an endorser may fail to disclose a material connection or misrepresent a product, and the potential liability that accompanies that risk." The Commission promises, should legal action result from a blogger's failure to disclose, that it will "exercise its prosecutorial discretion" and "consider the advertiser’s efforts to advise these endorsers of their responsibilities and to monitor their online behavior."

In short, marketers must understand they are accepting certain legal risks by entering into Sponsored Conversations. These risks can be mitigated by carefully apprising bloggers of rules for disclosure and accuracy and then monitoring them for compliance, but this does not completely eliminate all risk.

8. Because Social Media is a vehicle for authentic peer-to-peer dialog, the presence of sponsored speech (i.e., advertising) is suggesting a greater need for disclosure than may be required in other media.

The FTC recognizes that the medium matters; consumers are more likely to recognize advertising as advertising in some media more than others. A TV ad is clearly "sponsored" and thus does not require any special disclosure on the part of advertisers or networks. But in Social Media, the distinction between earned and paid media is far less evident to consumers.

The nature of Social Media and the FTC's greater expectation for disclosure is evident in their revised example pertaining to a video game blogger who is sent a free game system by a manufacturer, along with a request that the blogger write about the system. Notes the Commission, "Because his review is disseminated via a form of consumer-generated media in which his relationship to the advertiser is not inherently obvious, readers are unlikely to know that he has received the video game system free of charge in exchange for his review of the product, and given the value of the video game system, this fact likely would materially affect the credibility they attach to his endorsement" (emphasis mine).

9. If your organization doesn't have Social Media guidelines in place, create and communicate them ASAP!

The FTC notes that employers are liable for the actions of their employees in Social Media. For example, if an employee participates in a Facebook forum or bulletin board by praising his or her employer's brands but fails to disclose his or her relationship to the brands, that could trigger prosecution.

The FTC notes that legitimate efforts to create and enforce rules that protect consumers from injury "would warrant consideration in its decision as to whether law enforcement action would be appropriate." Moreover, the FTC notes that "although the Commission has brought law enforcement actions against companies whose failure to establish or maintain appropriate internal procedures resulted in consumer injury, it is not aware of any instance in which an enforcement action was brought against a company for the actions of a single 'rogue' employee who violated established company policy."

So, get your Social Media policies in place and actively enforce them. Not only is this a good, common sense practice, it also helps to establish a defense in the event one of your employees strays into a legal minefield.

10. The FTC has outlined when material relationships must be disclosed, but it still hasn't said what constitutes "clear and conspicuous" disclosure on blogs, microblogs, or elsewhere in Social Media.

The FTC's approach to disclosure requirements is based on three primary questions:

Does a material relationship exist between endorser (i.e., blogger, consumer posting in Social Media, etc.) and brand?
If so, would the presence of this material relationship affect the weight or credibility given to the endorsement by consumers?
If so, is the endorsement likely to be recognized as paid advertising by consumers based on the circumstances, communications vehicle, and medium?

The FTC outlines a slew of diverse and subtle examples of when material arrangements relating to endorsements must be disclosed, both in Social and traditional media. For example:

A film star appears in a commercial endorsing a food product in exchange for a $1M fee or royalties on sales; no disclosure is required because such payments likely are ordinarily expected by viewers.
A well-known professional tennis player appears on a talk show and raves about the laser vision correction surgery at a clinic that she identifies by name. The athlete does not disclose that she has a contractual relationship to speak publicly about the clinic. Consumers might not realize that a celebrity discussing a medical procedure in a television interview has been paid for doing so, and knowledge of such payments would likely affect the weight or credibility consumers give to the endorsement. Thus, disclosure is legally required.
The same tennis player under the same contract endorses the clinic via a real-time Social Media site, and the same rules apply; consumers might not realize that she is a paid endorser and knowing this might affect the weight consumers give to her endorsement, so the relationship with the clinic should be disclosed.
A physician endorses an anti-snoring product. Consumers would expect the physician to be reasonably compensated for his appearance in the ad, so no special disclosure is required to alert consumers the physician was paid.
But the same physician in the same ad may require disclosure if he receives a percentage of gross product sales or he owns part of the company; either of these facts would likely materially affect the credibility that consumers attach to the endorsement. Accordingly, the advertisement should clearly and conspicuously disclose such a connection between the company and the physician.

So, assuming a brand does have a commercial arrangement with a blogger, the blogger endorses the brand's product, and this relationship requires disclosure in the blog post, what meets the legal definition of "Clear and Conspicuous" disclosure? The FTC doesn't attempt to address this question at all. In other FTC documents, it establishes standards as to how proximal and evident disclosures must be, but the new guidelines do not attempt to address acceptable disclosure in Social Media. It is left to brands to discern if its disclosure policies are sufficient under the laws and guidelines established by the Commission.

Marketers are advised to ensure sponsored bloggers write and construct their blog posts in a way that make the disclosure immediately apparent to even the most casual of readers. This means disclosure in the headline or in the first part of the blog post and not a brief mention at the end!

The FTC guidelines are purposely vague, but their direction is clear. The FTC is taking a conservative approach to whether compensation to bloggers and others in Social Media--be it cash or free product--must be disclosed to consumers. The Commission's guidance suggests that the sorts of arrangements that involve remunerating others to promote products via WOM make their blog posts and other comments in Social Media legal endorsements. Since these endorsements are not expected or recognized by consumers as paid media, the FTC believes that disclosure is most likely required.

Marketers and bloggers who engage in these sorts of commercial arrangements must understand their legal obligations and the risks of failing to adhere to FTC laws pertaining to advertising. Marketers must be prepared to ensure that bloggers disclose material relationships and do not make false or unsubstantiated claims; bloggers who are compensated are also potentially legally liable for their failure to disclose commercial arrangements or for incorrect claims communicated via their blog posts.

As noted, the FTC believes each situation is unique and must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. As enforcement actions occur in the future, we will be provided with further clarifications to how the Commission and courts interpret the legal issues of sponsorship, endorsement, and disclosure in our new and evolving Social Media channels.

Social Media Is and Will Be Ever More Placeless

2009-09-23T01:10:00.002-05:00

Image by jamesbt via Flickr

I am on vacation this week, so I hope you'll enjoy one of my favorite blog posts from last year--one which I believe is even more relevant today.

ReadWriteWeb shares an interesting report about how cell phone users are interacting with Social Media via their phones. The study, conducted by ABI Research, found that "nearly half (46%) of those who use social networks have also visited a social network through a mobile phone. Of these, nearly 70% have visited MySpace and another 67% had visited Facebook. No other social networking site reached 15% adoption mobile adoption."

The study concludes that, "consumers do not want to recreate entirely new and separate social networks for mobile, but rather want to tap into their existing social network and have it go with them via the mobile phone." This would seem intuitively obvious--why would consumers want to create duplicate lists of friends, manage duplicate profiles, and update multiple social sites based on whether they are sitting at a PC or using their mobile device?

Of course, there are reasons that consumers may desire different profiles and friends on different sites or services, but they have nothing to do with the device used or the manner in which the data is maintained. Instead, much like we all do in the real world, consumers may want to be different people to different audiences. You might be, for example, buttoned down at work (LinkedIn), loose and casual with friends (Facebook), and downright nerdy and enthusiastic when hanging with hobbyists who share your passion (at, for example, Disney Boards, Star Wars Forums, or a Scrapbooking network).

It really should come as no surprise that consumers aren't interested in separate mobile-only networks. Their need to connect with friends doesn't end when consumers shut down their PCs; if anything, the need to stay connected is greater when people are away from their computers and out in the world. These are the times people wish to report where they are (Brightkite andLoopt), learn about others' ratings and perceptions of restaurants (Yelp), share photos of funny and unique occurrences with their mobile cameras (Twitpic and Yahoo Flickr Mobile), and broadcast updates about their experiences (Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace).

The study's finding reinforces an important attribute of successful Social Media: It is placeless. As the power and features on mobile devices continue to improve and as more consumers adopt mobile services such as the wireless Web, Internet-connected mobile applications, GPS, SMS, and broadband speeds, we will see consumers begin to erase the lines between their real and virtual networks.

If you're planning Social Media tactics, ask yourself where consumers may be most interested in sharing, listening, or collaborating with other consumers. If you're a CPG company and your Social Media campaign extends only as far as a computer keyboard, what will this do for consumers when they're at the supermarket? If you're an alcoholic beverage brand and your Social Media plan requires a PC, how will this enhance the consumer's experience at a club late on Saturday night?

If you think it's farfetched consumers will whip out their cell phones in the soft drink aisle or while ordering a beer, you may be limiting your thinking in one or both of two ways. First of all, it may be that you underestimate the rapid advances that are occurring in cell phone technology or their adoption by consumers; for example, in the past year the number of U.S. subscribers with 3G devices has grown 80 percent.

The second and more important reason a marketer may not see a compelling need for a mobile Social Media program is that they just haven't hit upon the right idea. Too many marketers hear the word "mobile" and immediately think advertising. Instead, as Adam Brown, director of digital communications for Coca-Cola recently pointed out in a MediaPost article, "the proliferation of mobile devices will 'change the whole chemistry' of social media by providing Coke and other marketers with a 'brand in the hand' to reach consumers at the right time with the right message."

With a focus on value-added marketing to consumers (listening to and engaging versus talking to customers) and consideration for where and when consumers will want to engage (on both the second and third screens), Social Media can become placeless and very, very powerful for marketers.

Join a Discussion on Ethics (and Even More Vital Topics) in Blogging

2009-09-15T23:43:00.002-05:00

I've been invited to participate in a webinar about Ethics in Blogging, sponsored by SocialMediaToday.com and The Social Media Group. The event will occur Thursday, September 24th at 1 pm ET/10 am PT. You can register to listen and participate for free, and the event is a steal at that price!

If you're webinared out, perhaps this will entice you to listen in: I don't care that much about ethics in blogging.

Don't get me wrong, I believe ethics are vital on a personal and professional level, but a dialog about ethics interests me far less than a discussion about how brands and blogs combine to impact (either positively or negatively) brand perception and consumer actions. Ethics are merely the table stakes--just like in traditional media, ethics are essential but the real magic in delivering results via blogs depends far more on blogger reputation, consumer attitudes toward the brand and category, the offer, demographics, and psychographics.

The operative issue for brands isn't that a blog is run ethically but that the blog, the blogger, the content, the context, the form of compensation, the value of compensation, and the type of disclosure work in concert to enhance the brand as desired. In some respects, I believe all the attention given to "ethics"--which is actually a relatively black-and-white issue--is obscuring the more complex, subtle, and important questions of how marketers can best use Social PR, blogger outreach, blog advertising, and "sponsored conversations" (a/k/a "paid blog posts").

One reason why Ethics in Blogging doesn't excite me is that (according to Wikipedia), Ethics is "a branch of philosophy which seeks to address questions about morality." I'm not a philosopher and I wouldn't presume to lecture anyone on moral right and wrong--but legal and marketing strategy right and wrong are horses of a different color.

The legal implications of paying or bartering with a blogger in exchange for blog posts are a little in flux because the FTC has issued proposed changes to advertising practices but has yet to publish the final code. But even without the final rules change, smart and experienced observers have a strong sense of how the FTC will use its enforcement power to set standards for brands in Social Media.

There are two reasons why few people expect any surprises when the FTC publishes its final guidance. The first is that the agency has already signaled its direction with their preliminary document, furnishing three specific examples of advertiser liability and disclosure on blogs and message boards. (During the Ethics in Blogging webinar, we hope to touch on a few specifics contained in the FTC's proposed rule changes.)

The second reason is that the FTC has always governed advertising with a fairly simple golden rule: Consumers must know when they are being advertised to. In forms of media where advertising is clearly delineated and well recognized--such as TV ads and billboards--no special disclosures are necessary. But when any level of confusion may exist in the mind of consumers--such as an advertorial in print or a paid blog post--then the advertising disclosure must be clear and conspicuous.

The FTC doesn't explicitly define "clear and conspicuous," but one FTC publication challenges advertisers to ask four questions about their paid media:

Prominence: Is the fine print big enough for people to notice and read?
Presentation: Is the wording and format easy for people to understand?
Placement: Is the fine print where people will look?
Proximity: Is the fine print near the claim it qualifies?

On blogs, it isn't that hard to interpret these standards. The reader must know from the start (and not tucked into language at the end of a 1000-word blog post) that a commercial arrangement exists between a brand mentioned in a blog post and the blogger. About the only real issue of any disagreement with respect to blogging ethics and the law is what sort of disclosure meets the FTC's "clear and conspicuous" standard. Is it acceptable for the entire blog to have a single disclosure? Must the blog post headline contain an alert such as "Ad" or "Paid Post"? And what of paid tweets--how can adequate disclosure be given in 140-character tweets?

Total disclosure--clear and conspicuous--of commercial arrangements (be they cash, product, travel, or other forms of remuneration) is both ethical and legal, but this is just the tip of the iceberg for marketers wishing to gain attention in the blogosphere. For example, if a blog post begins "I was paid $1,000 to write about Jinkie's brand cereal," will consumers read the article, if so will they trust it, and if so how will the article alter their opinions or actions? What if the paid blog post appears on a blog that is nothing but paid blog posts--will this affect consumer trust and the impact of the sponsored conversation?

These are just a few of the questions marketers need to answer, which is why disclosure is child's play compared to discerning the attributes that separate a blog strategy that helps from one that hurts or does nothing for the brand.

So as a member of this webinar panel, I hope to share some insights and spark dialog not about what is right or wrong for the souls of bloggers but what is right or wrong for brands participating in the blogosphere. If you have specific questions, topics, or opinions you'd like to see addressed, please comment below so we can consider your input!

I hope you'll consider joining us for the free webinar, Ethics in Blogging. In addition to myself, webinar panelists include Maggie Fox, founder and CEO of Social Media Group; Daniel Tunkelang, Chief Scientist and co-founder of Endeca; and John Jantsch, author of Duct Tape Marketing: The World's Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide.

HR is the New Marketing and Employees are the New Media

2009-09-13T08:45:00.022-05:00

For too long, Marketers have been content to focus on messaging and media while considering activities like recruiting and training to be the concern of support or operations departments. In our newly social world, in which employees create or cause interactions that can impact the perceptions of many, Marketers cannot ignore how brands are altered by employee actions and communications. In 2009, brand management isn't about what you say you are, it's about who you are, and this is what makes HR the new Marketing.

We've already seen plenty of instances where the careless and irresponsible actions of individual employees have been shared with millions of consumers, harming the organization's reputation, moving the brand off message, distracting leadership, requiring urgent PR response, and forcing organizational reconsideration of management processes. Examples include Domino's kitchen workers soiling ingredients placed onto pizzas, an ill-advised kitchen sink bath by a Burger King employee, and a Honda product manager embarrassing his organization with a lack of transparency on a brand's Facebook page.

I sometimes get asked why my blog more frequently spotlights negative examples of Social Media rather than positive best-case examples. The problem is--not just for me as a Social Media observer but also for brands--that the damaging and shocking are much more likely to go viral than the helpful and constructive. An employee placing ingredients on a pizza in a hygienic and appropriate manner just doesn't grab attention like an employee transferring a slice of cheese from his nostril to a customer's pizza.

So, I am pleased to get an opportunity to present a positive example to contrast the headline-grabbing antics of dimwit employees. As reported on AZCentral.com, Mary Moss has worked at the drive-thru window at a McDonald's for four years, and over that time her upbeat attitude and desire to connect with her customers resulted in quite a fan base. She didn't even know what Facebook was until a customer told her she had her own fan page on the Social Network. Mary's fan page had 260 friends back when the article was published on August 11th, but it now has over 800 members.

I think this positive example demonstrates several important things of note:

Negative goes farther and faster than positive: Mr. Unstable gets 460,000 views on his video while Mary Moss earns just 260 friends (prior to the mainstream media attention). As noted, there is an innate human fascination with the gross, stupid, and humiliating, and this combined with Social Media's speed and reach present risks that brands must take seriously and manage.
Authentic Social Media success starts with positive consumer experiences: Brands can pay for tweets, reach out to bloggers for Social PR, and launch and moderate their own fan pages, but authentic, groundswell success is based on the experiences brands provide to their consumers. The brands that were Word of Mouth powerhouses before today's Social Media existed--such as Harley-Davidson, Disney, Apple, Google, Starbucks, and Honda--have known this all along.
Every employee is a marketer: A friend recently raved about the assistance he received from an employee in a Costco wine department (and he's eager to find time to blog about it). In his one-minute story about this employee, my friend impacted my awareness and perception of Costco more than all of the organization's marketing efforts. As Nielsen reported back in July, consumers place far greater trust in the opinions of people they know, and even have more trust in the opinions of strangers, than in official marketing communications. If HR is the new Marketing, than employees are the new media.

What does this mean to marketers? Focusing on advertising and PR while ignoring the ways in which employees are recruited, onboarded, trained, evaluated, and supported is like paddling a sail boat when you've yet to hoist the sails. Sure, you can get the boat moving with a lot of paddling effort, but why not create velocity by setting the conditions and exploiting natural circumstances?

How might marketers and others within organizations better influence and care for the power of human resources in Social Media?

Personality Testing for All New Employees: We all know that inconsistency kills brands; if brands are increasingly reliant upon employees communicating, networking, and sparking dialog in Social Media, how can a brand's personality arise from all those different voices?

In an age when authenticity matters and people are expected to reflect their personal as well as professional selves in Social Media, it is much easier to find employees whose personalities fit the brand than to expect employees to be something they're not. Many organizations already conduct personality testing as part of their hiring process; in how many of these organizations do you suppose Marketing professionals have contributed to or vetted these tests?
Selection Criteria for Key Social Communication Roles: Any employee can (inadvertently) become a viral media star, but those placed on the front lines of Social Media by their employers have a particularly important role in brand perception. For this reason, the criteria used to select Social communicators deserves special consideration.

Some organizations are selecting employees based on the fact they are already active in Social Media. Knowing Facebook doesn't seem like a particularly helpful criteria for critical and visible positions moderating discussion groups, listening and responding to criticism and praise on Social Networks, and offering customer service via Twitter. It's not that experience with Social Networks hurts, but there are more important communication and relationship-building skills to be considered. Twitter and Facebook processes can be easily taught; it is more difficult to instill listening skills, judgment, empathy, patience, time management, problem solving, and the other abilities necessary to succeed in Social Media.
Brand Training: Marketers spend a great deal of time crafting messages and broadcasting them to consumers, but how much time is spent ensuring employees know and can reflect the brand in their daily interactions with others?

Brands have personalities, a voice, points of differentiation, and other attributes that create the expectations and experiences that forge the brand in the minds of consumers. These attributes cannot be reflected by employees in their Social communications unless those employees are intimately familiar with the brand platform; furthermore, brand information cannot be conveyed to employees in the same manner marketers communicate to each other and to agencies, but must be shared in practical ways that help front-line employees understand how to communicate and act.
Setting Expectations of Employees: Every employee, no matter how self-motivated, wants to know what is expected and how their performance will be evaluated. Setting an employee loose to Tweet for the brand should be no different than assigning him or her to a call center job--the quantitative and qualitative expectations of the position must be clear.

Every brand and organization will have different expectations, so it's important to communicate rules and performance measures. In Social Media, this might include standards for the personal versus professional information conveyed, who to follow, topics appropriate for public dialog, criteria for alerting management of potential PR crises, and the like.
Monitoring and feedback: Monitoring employees' interactions with consumers has always been vital, but consider the increased urgency of doing so in a highly-networked world where a single incorrect or frustrated tweet or post can be shared with thousands of current and potential customers within minutes. Real-time monitoring may not be realistic for any but the largest of organizations, but implementing some form of periodic and ongoing monitoring is vital for performance evaluation, employee feedback, and brand management. Companies cannot afford to wait for a complaint or, worse yet, a viral crisis before recognizing the need to listen to employees as carefully as they listen to consumers.

Employees have always had an important role in managing brands, but Social Media has made this role even more vital. How else should organizations ensure they are proactively tapping their human resources and protecting their brands in our highly networked world? Your feedback and ideas would be appreciated--just click the "Comments" link below.

Nineteen Free Twitter Tools that Turn Tweets into Knowledge

2009-09-08T01:41:00.000-05:00

Image via CrunchBase

Twitter hosts approximately one million tweets per hour. In mid-September, the site will accept its 4 billionth tweet. Everyone knows there is wisdom in all that group thought--some even predict Twitter could be the next Google--but how can you tap the brainpower of Twitter's 6 million (give or take) users?

That's Twitter's $64,000 question (or, according to Scoble, the $5 billion question). The reason there's so much hype about a microblogging tool with almost no apparent means of revenue or profit is that everyone realizes the amazing value contained in all those 140-character status updates.

What does this mean to you as you conduct research to assist your clients, your small business, or other interests? How can you turn those billions of tweets into knowledge you can leverage?

There are plethora of paid services and tools available for monitoring sentiment and knowledge, but since the R&D budget for Experience: The Blog is somewhat south of $.01, I cannot share any insights about these offerings. It is a sign of the growth of Twitter and other Social Networks, as well as the explosion of awareness about the importance of Social Media to business, that the list of paid offerings seems to grow daily: Crimson Hexagon, radian6, Techrigy, Sysomos, J. D. Power, Visible Technologies, Tealium, dna13, Cymfony, BrandsEye, Trackur, Spiral16, BuzzLogic, ChartBeat, Attentio, Nielsen BuzzMetrics, Biz360, and on and on and on.

But you don't need deep pockets to derive insight from the Twitterverse. Those on a budget (or without a budget) who want to tap Twitter for wisdom can select from a number of tools that are available at no cost. Here are some of my favorites. If you have others to add to the list, please comment!

Track Tweet Volume

There are a lot of search engines and trend-tracking tools available, but in my opinion one stands out for the precision and amount of data it makes available. Although a bit buggy, Trendtistic is still worthwhile.

For terms and phrases with a reasonably high volume of tweets, Trendtistic furnishes custom graphs of Tweet volume over the past 180 days. The Y-axis represents the percentage of Tweets that mention the desired topic, and the X-axis is a timeline that can be set to specific time periods. Among the helpful features are the ability to enter and compare more than one term at a time and a method for embedding charts into sites and blogs.

Track Yourself on Twitter

I've always felt that the narcissistic aspects of Twitter were overstated, but it is interesting to note how many tools are available to help compare one's Twitter habits to others. A few to check out include:

Twitter Analyzer provides your volume of tweets, number of conversations, reach, common subjects, the apps you use, and other aspects of your Twitter habit.
Twitter Grader compares you to others and furnishes a score on a 1 to 100 scale where 50 represents an average Twitterer. You can easily compare your Twitter profile to others in your city or state. How the site computes the actual score is a deep, dark secret.
Twitterholic shares a list of the most followed Twitterers and also permits you to find where you sit on that list.
Tweeps.info is a bit like a stripped down Twitter Analyzer. Check out your average number of tweets per day, your frequency of hashtag use, your social ratio, and top terms contained in your tweets.
TweetPsych puts you and your tweets on the couch and evaluates your Cognitive, Primordial, Conceptual and Emotional Content.
TweetStats is yet another tool to graph your Twitter habits. This handy site presents the number of tweets you send per month, your tweet density by day of the week and time of day, and the top people you retweet or to whom you reply.

Track Sentiment on Twitter

There may be no hotter topic in social marketing circles (besides Social Media ROI) than how to track sentiment. To be honest, the free sentiment-measuring tools are more toys than they are business research applications, but they are not without merit.

TweetFeel allows for real-time sentiment tracking of Tweets based on the search term entered. The site labels tweets red or green based on an analysis of the sentiment in the Tweets. Half the fun is watching for instances when TweetFeel gets it wrong (such as when it labeled the tweet "It'll only be a matter of time before disney rules the world. Then we really are f***ed." as a positive one for Disney), but the site does a pretty remarkable job of getting sentiment right, albeit for a highly limited period of time and number of tweets.

A similar site for tracking sentiment in real-time is Twendz. As tweets stream down the page, Twendz not only monitors sentiment (positive, negative, and neutral), but also related subtopics and their sentiment. You might, for example, track "Disney" and also learn the sentiment on terms like "Gomez" (actress Selena), "World" (Walt Disney World resort), and "Channel" (the Disney cable net). (In my decidedly non-scientific evaluation of TweetFeel and Twendz, it seemed TweetFeel tended to gauge sentiment with a bit more accuracy.)

Track Tweets in Real Time

There are plenty of tools available to watch tweets scroll across your screen. Monitter permits users to enter up to three terms and observe tweets as they occur. TweetGrid is a similar tool that gives you control of how many windows and terms you wish to monitor--choose from grids such as 1x2 (for two real-time search windows) up to 3x3 (nine windows) and 2x5 (10 small, hyperactive windows).

Twazzup isn't technically real-time but does refresh often, combining the latest tweets along with news, photos, popular links, and the Twitterers who are most influential or most active at the moment.

And, of course, Twitter.com also presents search results in real-time--just use the "Search" box on the right side of your Twitter page, and watch for the "Refresh" message to appear at the top of the search results.

A fun tool for tracking tweets in real-time is Twistori. This site only tracks tweets that contain "I hate," "I love," "I think," "I believe," "I feel" and "I wish." It's like spying on the secret diaries of millions.

Track Who is Following You

Twitter does not furnish a good way to tell if someone in particular is following you. You could review your follower list page by page, or you might try sending someone a Direct Message to see if it goes through or is rejected, but there is an easier method: Just enter your and their Twitter handle into DoesFollow, and you can quickly find out if that person if following you.

Another handy site is FriendorFollow.com. This slow site will try your patience, but it is an effective way to discover the people you are following on Twitter who are not returning the favor ("Following"). You can also see a reverse list--people following you who you're not following back ("Fans.")

Track Tweeted Backlinks

Wonder who is tweeting links to your blog or site? BackTweets reverse engineers those link shortening tools to provide you with a list of recent tweets that include links to a specified URL. You can enter the root domain (such as nytimes.com) to view tweets that furnish a link to any page within that domain.

Primary Research via Twitter

All of the tools mentioned thus far are fine for secondary research, but what if you want specific information from your followers? You could just tweet a question, or you could use a tool to conduct a poll.

PollDaddy couldn't be simpler--just enter your question, up to 20 optional answers, and your Twitter username and password. The site tweets your question and a link, then tracks the responses. The only problem is that it can be easy to lose your poll, since there is no way to register and track the polls you created; the only way to track the results is to save the link Tweeted so you can access it a later date after the responses are received.

Vizu offers a free and powerful polling tool. You can access your past polls, export results, and see a map of your responders. Polls are easily posted to Social Bookmarking sites or embedded into blogs.

Those are a few of my favorite free Twitter tools. Did I miss yours? If so, please comment and share your favorite knowledge-gathering Twitter sites!

Ten Ways to Identify Trustworthy Social Media Communication Professionals

2009-09-03T00:30:00.008-05:00

"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things."

The time has come for business to put away childish Social Media notions. It was fun while it lasted, but Social Media is no longer a new toy or an experiment; it is serious business, integral to everything from customer service to marketing to recruiting. Of course, individuals can still tweet jokes, chat with friends, or post embarrassing videos to YouTube, but professionals and businesses must now set aside naive and harmful presumptions.

Social Media is not for kids; it's big business and getting bigger. More than one in five online display ads now appear on Social Media sites. More than 60 percent of Facebook users are over 26 years old, and the site's aging population has motivated Facebook to add "Widowed" as a Relationship Status. Three of the five most visited Web sites (and seven of the top 15) are Social Media destinations. In a recent survey of diverse professionals, 86 percent reported their organizations are currently using social technologies for business purposes. In a different survey, 60 percent of US marketing professionals reported already implementing Social Media as part of their marketing mix, and another 28% were planning on implementing it over the coming year.

Because of the growing importance of Social Media to business, it is disappointing to see the scattered and grasping way some consultants, agencies, and companies are promoting and talking about Social Media and themselves. On ClickZ, Rebecca Lieb, who was ClickZ's editor-in-chief for over seven years, complained about "social media carpetbaggers," "self-anointed pundits, swamis, and social media gurus (who) perform a sleight-of-hand that so confounds onlookers" but who haven't "walked the walk." Over on The Viral Garden blog, Mack Collier rails about "kool-aid drinkers" who push the idea that Social Media is easy to use and free or cheap.

Today I participated in a Twitter conversation about Social Media, and the topic turned to how to recruit for Social Media positions within organizations. Some "experts" actually suggested looking for people frequently and deeply engaged in Social Media, as if posting party pictures, playing Farmville, and tweeting about a favorite teen singer qualifies one for a Social Media career. That's like picking phone service professionals based on the fact candidates love to chat and share gossip with friends via the telephone.

Given that survey after survey after survey after survey demonstrate the biggest hurdle to Social Media adoption is a lack of knowledge, it may be that many organizations simply do not possess the experience needed to separate trustworthy communication professionals from the self-anointed Social Media "Gurus". I'd like to suggest some ways to tell the difference, and I hope you'll add comments with your suggestions!

Are they active and professional participants in Social Media? Do they have a blog, and if so, is it updated regularly? Are they on Twitter, and are their tweets enlightening or noisy? Do they participate in LinkedIn groups, and if so, do they engage in insightful discussions or are they merely promoting themselves? I am highly dubious of Social Media experts who are absent or infrequent participants in Social Media.
Do they brag about the size of their Twitter following? A widely-read and respected blog is brag-worthy--traffic, engagement, and authoritative links cannot be easily faked. But an enormous Twitter following is not necessarily a sign of Social Media expertise. Some folks built their following the old-fashioned way--they earned it by being smart people who others want to know and follow--but many others have amassed tens of thousands of followers by using auto-follow tools that collect and follow anyone, regardless of relevance. If a potential candidate brags about the size of their Twitter following and not the influence they have or the way they developed quality followers, proceed with caution.
How long have they been in the marketing, communications, or PR business? I have met many passionate and smart young people in the field of Social Media, but expertise is not amassed in six or twelve months. There is a definitely a place for young professionals on a Social Media team, but that place shouldn't be advising large companies or brands about the nuances, ethics, or measurement of Social Media. Professionals with an impressive background in digital, marketing, or public relations are able to ground their Social Media knowledge and recommendations in communication best practices and not simply their own personal experiences on Twitter.
What are their stands on the ethics and laws in Social Media? Social Media offers great opportunities but also substantial risks. We've seen many high-profile missteps, such as companies spamming Twitter hashtags and game developers caught posting fake positive ratings on their own games. Ask your prospective Social Media consultants what their stand is on paying bloggers (they ought to have an extremely cautious approach to cash compensation and instead recommend relevant blogger outreach) or their expectations of bloggers disclosing relationships and remuneration (total disclosure--period).
Do they start by asking about the audience and goals or by talking about Facebook, Twitter, and widgets? Facebook and Twitter are certainly the headline-grabbing Social Networks of the day, and they likely will be at the top of the Social Media heap for quite some time. Despite that (or perhaps because of that) any Social Media consultant worth your time will not start by reviewing opportunities on Facebook and Twitter. They should begin--as should any professional communications expert--with a thorough understanding of the target audience, their habits, and needs, as well as the goals of the program. For a high-level overview of a smart Social Media strategic process, check out Forrester's Groundswell POST approach.
Do they suggest Social Media is free, cheap, and/or easy? There is no cost to set up a Twitter account or a Facebook page; pretty much everything else has a price tag. Monitoring buzz, participating, listening, identifying audience habits, measuring success, designing and programming social applications, fostering relationships with bloggers, building thriving communities, and furnishing relevant content all require time and expense. Beware the Social Media expert who underestimates the investment and time required for a successful Social Media program.
Do they ground their recommendations and plans in a thorough understanding of your brand? Your brand has a point of view, a voice, a purpose, and points of differentiation from competitors. These brand attributes are no less (and very probably more) important in Social Media than traditional media. Your employees who participate must bring their personalities to their interactions with customers and partners, but they also have to represent the brand. Any Social Media plan not informed by the brand is a one-size-fits-all solution that fails to leverage and enhance consumer perception of the brand.
Do they prepare you and the organization for the ongoing commitment? Some Social Media strategies might be short-term in nature (such as User-Generated Content campaign or Social sweepstakes), but most involve a long-term commitment to listen and participate. Launching and then abandoning a Twitter account, Facebook page or community is almost never the right approach, so it's vital a Social Media plan consider not only the costs and time necessary to launch the program, but also the resources or investment required to maintain the engagement on an ongoing basis.
Does their plan include training, monitoring, and defined expectations for employees involved? Assigning an employee or group of employees to participate and manage Social Media profiles, groups, or communities without setting expectations and furnishing support is a recipe for disaster. Employees must be trained on the appropriate use of Social Media tools, told what is expected of them and how their performance will be measured, and monitored and coached on an ongoing basis.
What is their approach to measuring success? There are two ends of the spectrum to be avoided--Social Media experts who promise ROI and those who suggest or launch plans without any regard for measurement. On the one hand, computing actual financial Return on Investment on Social Media efforts is no less challenging than it is to compute ROI on a television campaign or a customer service program; on the other hand, every business effort should have established metrics (qualitative or quantitative) so that results can be evaluated and used to revise and enhance processes. An appropriate and sensible approach is to define a measurement plan based on the objectives and to execute the means to monitor and evaluate the program per that plan.

Social Media can be fun and games for consumers, but for business is must be considered a crucial and serious tool for cutting costs, enhancing loyalty, sparking action, building and protecting the brand, or increasing awareness. Choosing the right partners should be done with the same care and planning that is dedicated to finding and securing other professional services and resources.

If you have your own recommendations for ways to identify true Social Media professionals, please comment and share your thoughts.

Who Matters Most in Social Media? Not You!

2009-08-27T23:53:00.001-05:00

Please don't take this personally, but you are not the most important person in the world. (Nor am I.) If professionals and brands keep just one thing in mind as they develop strategies and engage in Social Media, it is this: "It's not about me."

In Social Media, you can and should have goals. Having goals helps to define how you establish profiles, who you follow, what you share, and how you measure success. Even for those who use Social Media purely for personal reasons, having goals and gauging qualitative success is vital; we live in a stressful world with many demands on our time, so we ought to be able to judge that our hours with Twitter and Facebook are worthwhile. But no matter your goal, it's vital to focus more on your listeners than on what you care to say.

Right now, Social Media seems like a bright, shiny new toy because it is new to a lot of people. Twitter's been around since March 2006, but as of the end of 2008, 70% of Twitter users had joined in just the past year. Facebook took almost all of 2004 to reach its first million users; thus far in 2009, the site has grown from 150 million to 250 million users.

As with any change in communication technology, Twitter is causing an upheaval in the norms and rules in communication and in this time of uncertainty, people and organizations are inserting their own rules of engagement. Businesses that would never dream of sending a spam email are encouraging their followers to blast valueless brand messages to their Twitter networks. Folks who would never send an email to their entire contact list in order to invite one friend to lunch are announcing their plans to every follower they have on Twitter.

How is one to know what is right and wrong when best practices in a new medium are still forming? That question sounds rhetorical, but it's not. The answer is easy--just think "It's not about me!"

This maxim isn't based on cutting-edge Social Media theory but on two truisms as old as mankind: "Technology changes; people don't" and "Communications is about the understanding, not the speaking."

Technology changes; people don't

Every time technology changes the way humans communicate, someone predicts it will alter the very nature of human behavior, and these predictions always prove wrong. In the 1930s, Philo T. Farnsworth thought his invention, the television, would be "a marvelous teaching tool," ending illiteracy and permitting people from different lands to settle differences "around conference tables, without going to war." Close, but no cigar.

The late 90s were full of financial speculation based on the idea the Internet had changed everything. High banner ad click rates convinced many that content would be free; Ecommerce was going to put stale old bricks-and-mortar enterprises out of business; and profits were derided as some sort of quaint concept like the buggy whip or waiting until marriage. Today, digital news is as much at risk as its printed counterpart because online ad revenues cannot cover costs; the list of top online retailers consists mainly of large offline retailers and manufacturers; and the financial markets made clear the importance of profits when the dot-com crash evaporated trillions of dollars of value, 500 dot-com companies, and half a million high-tech jobs.

Social Media will change much--the size of human networks, our ability to maintain soft relationships, the reach of the individual, and the transparency of organizations--but it won't change humans. We cannot argue that the things people are not interested in today--interruption advertising, spam, others' private conversations, narcissistic self interest, irrelevant babble--will suddenly become in vogue simply because Twitter exists. These types of "me"-focused messages create just as much noise in Social Media as in the real world.

Communications is about the understanding, not the speaking

George Bernard Shaw said "The problem with communication ... is the illusion that it has been accomplished." Twitter is filled with illusion--the illusion every tweet is read; the illusion others are interested in my every thought; the illusion that being followed means being heard; and the illusion that the larger the list, the greater the influence.

None of these statements is completely true, and none is completely false; their truthfulness varies from person to person based on the attention earned from the listeners. Communication doesn't occur because words are uttered or a status update is tweeted; it occurs when those messages reach another person who cares enough to pay attention and can translate the meaning.

Thoughts of caring and attention on Twitter came to mind as I read the comments to my last blog post, Eight Twitter Habits That May Get You Unfollowed or Semi-Followed. I was honored (and lucky) to be picked up by the SmartBrief on Social Media, which resulted in 30,000 views, 67 comments, and 1200 tweets on Social Media Today. The volume of dialog about this blog post permitted some interesting insights about following and listening.

The most contentious part of my blog post was my suggestion that people will tend to tune out Twitterers who publicly thank others for retweets (RT) and #followfriday recommendations. Many thought that a public expression of gratitude was more valuable than a Direct Message (DM). What I found interesting was that, out of all the comments, just one person approached the issue in terms of whether Twitterers like or value seeing others thank each other (which is "you"-focused). Everyone else commented how much they liked to publicly thank people or how much they wanted to be publicly thanked (which is "me"-focused).

My intent isn't to debate etiquette but to encourage people to think of what motivates followers to truly follow and not merely semi-follow; having people on your Twitter list is one thing, but having active listeners is another. Assuming you want to earn attention from those following you, then regularly tweeting a message pertinent to a tiny fraction of your followers seems likely to reduce your relevance and diminish the attention you earn.

Think of it another way: How often have you heard people complain of not having time to Twitter or of being overwhelmed by the microblogging service? Keep those people in mind when you consider these questions: How many of your status updates are of the type that others must scroll past to get to the interesting and pertinent tweets? And how many are perceived as valuable and worthwhile by almost all of your followers?

"It's not about me" doesn't mean you have to approach Social Media with a sense of altruism. It's okay to have objectives, but it's vital to keep in mind the people who earn influence are the ones who focus most on others.

Two comments I received really stood out as shining examples of the "It's not about me" school of thought. Deb Kolaras shared a rule of thumb that forces one to consider his or her status updates from the perspective of others: "Would I say this to a large room of people?" Think of a room full of people including family, peers, and future employers, and consider that they will only "hear" your tweet and not the entire conversation you're having. Will it make sense? Will it be relevant? Is it appropriate?

The second comment came from Christopher Sherrod who summarized this topic succinctly: "People love tweets that are useful. Be useful in your niche and people will follow you."

Who matters most in Social Media? Everyone else! Strive to live by this, and others will perceive your value, listen to you, and connect in a very real way.

Eight Twitter Habits That May Get You Unfollowed or Semi-Followed

2009-08-24T01:01:00.007-05:00

Best practices on Twitter are still developing, and everyone seems to have their own preferences and attitudes about right and wrong on the microblogging service. Standards vary widely depending upon whether one is using Twitter just to keep in touch with friends or is tweeting on behalf of their business or employer. Whatever your purpose, you may have some tweeting habits that encourage others to unfollow or semi-follow you.

Before delving into the list of attention-repelling habits, let's first explore the concept of the semi-follow. On Twitter, there are only two possible states for following--a person either follows another or they don't. But while most people still post updates via the Twitter Web site, many use third-party applications that help group and organize followers. People using software such as TweetDeck or sites like HootSuite can follow others with different levels of rigor--some people are followed closely, others are semi-followed, and still others are almost completely ignored.

For example, I follow over 2,000 people, and as my list grew beyond several hundred, I found I was missing tweets from the people I care most about. I could have opted to axe strangers with interesting things to share, but instead I opted (as do most people with large Twitter follow lists) to use a tool to group my Tweeple. I have HootSuite organized with groups that include friends, peers and clients from Fullhouse, local people of interest, marketing thought leaders, news feeds, and Social Media movers and shakers. This gives me the ability to track about 200 Twitter feeds more closely than the remainder of my follow list.

They key to being followed more closely is to say and share things that others care about. This requires a great deal of focus and an awareness of the subtle tendencies that can cause others to begin to tune out, consciously or not. Here are eight things Twitterers do that tend to diminish the attention they receive from others:

8. Constant Tweeting about your own business: I was just followed by a printing company in Raleigh, NC, and every single tweet was about their business--"lowest prices," "visit our site," "why everyone is switching to us," blah blah blah. According to TweetLater, the tool I use to vet followers, over 50% of those followed by this business chose to ignore this account, and it is a sure bet almost none of the remaining 50% will pay any attention to what this Twitterer has to say. Constant self-promotion isn't a stream of tweets, it's a stream of ads, and no one really wants to subscribe to that.

7. People who mistake public tweets for private messages: When you make lunch plans via email, you send a message only to the people you wish to invite and not to everyone in your contact list. This common sense approach isn't so common on Twitter, where some folks seem to believe every communication to anyone should be broadcast to everyone.

As the number of followers grows, the need to cut down on noise increases, so if you wish to encourage your followers to pay attention, keep private communications private and send a public Tweet only when the message may be of interest to many of your followers. The Direct Message (DM) is a powerful tool--don't fear the DM!

6. People who engage in partial and cryptic @replies: Twitter is intended to be conversational, but remember that people will begin to tune you out if they cannot understand or decode many of your status updates. For this reason, it's important when replying that you give context; for example, what is "@you Word," "@you I'm sorry to hear that," or "@you ROFLOL" supposed to mean to people unless they 1) follow both you and the person to whom you're responding, and 2) care enough and have the time to follow the dialog back and forth?

It's one thing to say "@you That Conan O'Brien video clip of Shatner reading Palin's speech was funny," but it's an altogether different and more annoying thing to tweet, "@You That was hilarious." The former gives context that invites attention and replies from others; the latter is just noise that will only have relevance to one person.

5. Just links: Sharing links is a great way to create value for your followers, but please don't share links with no explanation. What is on the other end of a link-shortened URL such as http://ow.ly/iyu8? Is this news, a video clip, spam, spyware? I don't know and I don't care--links with no context not only won't get clicked but may encourage others to dump you.

4. Excessive games, sweeps, & viral marketing: I'm a marketer and support the appropriate use of Twitter for participation in marketing promotions. But when a Twitterer becomes obsessed with a game or sweepstakes and litters their Twitter feed with promotional tweets, it isn't any different than spam. Sharing a cool branded video or a relevant sweepstakes is great; tweeting #moonfruit 20 times in 5 minutes because you want to win an Apple computer is just damn annoying.

Of course, smart marketers will find a way to create Twitter promotions that engage others rather than irritate them. For example, Marriott launched an annoying Moonfruit-like promotion at http://marriotthawaiitweets.com/. It's causing a minor flood of useless and repetitive tweets like "Trying my luck to win a Hawaiian getaway from @marriotthawaii." As my Twitter friend @RobertKCole pointed out, "This is spam without some form of community benefit, like naming a favorite activity in Hawaii." Marketers need to challenge themselves to get people sharing something of interest and not just spammy and irrelevant tweets, because what worked for Moonfruit once could well become a PR disaster for a brand running a Twitter sweepstakes in the future.

3. Automatic Direct Messages (DMs): Talk about getting a relationship off on the wrong foot--someone trusts a Twitterer enough to follow him or her and then is repaid with an impersonal and spammy Direct Message. Many is the time I've followed someone, received a generic Auto DM, and immediately unfollowed, beginning and ending a Twitter relationship in less than five minutes.

Using an Auto DM may seem like a good way to "welcome" new followers, but most people actually find it very unwelcoming. Also, Auto DMs can fill up peoples' lists of incoming Direct Messages, making it difficult to catch real, valuable, person-to-person DMs.

A move is afoot to shame those who send automatic DMs. The site StopAutoDM.com recently launched, encouraging Twitterers to send an @reply containing the hashtag #stopautodm to those who use Auto DMs; doing so causes the tweet to appear on the site's "Recent Offender Newswire."

2. Publicly thanking others for thinking you're terrific: It's very rewarding when new people follow, when you get cited by others with a #followfriday mention, or when you get retweeted. Each of these occurrences is an appropriate opportunity to thank someone--privately with a DM!

Sending a public tweet that thanks someone for following, for recommending you, or for retweeting your post isn't an expression of gratitude but a boast sent to everyone who follows you. It's a big, needy, self-serving way to make sure a wide group of people are aware that someone thinks you're terrific.

Think of it this way: When you receive a compliment from a boss or peer, do you express genuine gratitude in a private manner, or do you stand on a chair and bellow "Thank you for complimenting my work!" Public tweets that express appreciation for referrals and recommendations are the Twitter equivilent of a vain bellow.

1. Politics, Religion & Sex (unless that is your Twitter profile's purpose): If you create a Twitter profile to support gun rights, gay marriage, your church, or your adult film career, by all means talk politics, religion, or sex; that would be expected by people who follow you. But if your Twitter account is intended to be professional, then tweeting about politics, religion or sex is a good way to offend or annoy some portion of your followers.

Miss Manners' advice is as relevant on Twitter as it is at dinner parties: "Unless you are like-minded old friends, (do not talk to another) about sex, politics or religion. That is not a quaint prohibition. Such subjects as gay marriage, taxes and abortion have been known to explode otherwise pleasant dinner parties." Or Twitter relationships.

Some folks reject the idea of "rules" for Twitter and think anything goes. This attitude may be fine for those who don't really care whether they're followed or what others think, but that's a luxury not afforded most of us with a professional intent on Twitter. The microblogging service hasn't changed the essentials of communications and relationships: People listen to and connect with those who demonstrate concern about their relevance, comprehension, and value to others.

Poll: Social Media Convergence--Are You Using More or Fewer Social Networks?

2009-08-18T22:41:00.006-05:00

Today I ran across a couple of interesting studies--Universal McCann's "Power to the People: Social Media Tracker" and ShesConnected's "The Power of Social Networking For Women Research Study."

These two documents are crammed with terrific information, but one thing that caught my eye was some data that indicates a Social Media convergence may be underway. As noted by eMarketer:

Universal McCann also sees a “decline or stasis” in the use of separate sites for activities such as blogging and photo-sharing. Instead, users are looking to social networks that consolidate multiple social media in a single place.

Meanwhile, the ShesConnected report notes:

As the number of Social Network sites proliferate and people become overwhelmed with the number of choices and time required for upkeep, Social Networks with the greatest number of members will thrive. This consolidation will mean smaller networks will be unable to remain viable unless they offer a unique value proposition.

The term "consolidate" appears in both reports. In some ways, the consolidation noted in these reports parallels my own experience; at one point, I tried to keep up with multiple microblogging platforms, but I've long since abandoned Identica and Plurk to focus on (of course) Twitter.

But in other ways, I'm still expanding my Social Networks based on interest, uniqueness, and need. For example, I recently became a paying member of Flickr because uploading low-res images to Facebook sometimes does not satisfy my needs; sharing pictures in Facebook is easy, but doing so in Flickr is the better option when quality matters.

So, I'm curious about the experience of those that read this blog. Are you using more, fewer, or the same number of Social Networks as three months ago? Please answer below:

Online Surveys & Market Research

Twitter's 40.55% "Pointless Babble": The Insights Mainstream Media Missed

2009-08-14T02:46:00.001-05:00

FOX News led their "Click This" segment with a laugh and this assertion: "If you feel like you're missing out on this Twitter thing, don't worry, because 40% of the tweets are just pointless babble." Courtney Friel delivered the line in the sort of disparaging tone FOX usually reserves for Nancy Pelosi.

To that, I respond: If FOX News was only 40% pointless babble, it would be a huge improvement!

My gripe isn't only with FOX News; other news sources were quick to jump on the story. For example, V3 featured an article titled, "Twitter is no business tool, says research," which claimed the findings of a Twitter study, "pour(s) cold water on suggestions that Twitter can be used as an effective business tool and news source." That will come as a surprise to the millions of people effectively using Twitter as a news source or the thousands of businesses of all sizes that are already seeing benefits from using Twitter.

All of this Twitter twattle came as a result of a study conducted by Pear Analytics, which certainly got the PR value it desired from the report. Pear says they studied "2,000 tweets from the public timeline over a 2-week period" and categorized these tweets "into 6 buckets: News, Spam, Self-Promotion, Pointless Babble, Conversational and Pass-Along Value."

The study's results as reported on SFGate.com are:

40.55% "Pointless babble." Pear defined these as the "'I am eating a sandwich' tweets."
37.55% "Conversational." Questions, polls, back and forth dialog in an almost instant message fashion.
8.7% "Pass along value." Re-tweets passed along from other Twitter members.
5.85% "Self promotion." Tweets about members' products, services, shows, or companies.
3.75% Spam.
3.60% News from mainstream media sources like CNN.

Pear concludes with this question, "So there is a lot of 'Babble' – What Can We Do About It?" The firm has a helpful answer, "One of our favorite tools we are currently beta testing is called Philtro (http://philtro.com). Philtro will take your unruly Tweets and narrow them down to what you actually care about."

What is most interesting to me is how much of the news coverage missed several key points. News sources were awfully quick to repeat the "pointless babble" statistic, but how many dug deeper and drew out any insight? The way this study's "pointless babble" phrase was repeated time and again in headlines goes to show that, despite the fact some deride Social Media being an "echo chamber," this can occur in traditional media as easily as it can in the Social sphere.

Here are some key points that have been largely missed or at least given short shrift in all the media coverage:

Twitter isn't mostly Self Promotion: Pear Analytics conducted the study intending to prove that "Twitter was being used predominantly for self‐promotion." As it turns out, less than 6% of tweets are self-promotion, which hardly seems like a huge percentage given the nature of Twitter. It goes to show that at least one stereotype of the microblogging tool is incorrect, and it begs the question as to what other commonly-held perceptions may also be wrong.

The study was hardly scientific: Pear's White Paper says little about the methodology, and what it does reveal is awfully subjective. For instance, the "news" category only included tweets about topics "you might find on your national news stations such as CNN, Fox or others" and excluded "tech news or social media news." Considering Twitter's early adopters have tended to be tech and Social Media professionals, this seems an awfully arbitrary distinction on Pear's part.

Another questionable definition is that "Self Promotion" (a term that carries a judgmental hint of narcissism) includes "'Twitter only' promos," which some might consider "opt-in marketing." Also, the "Pass‐Along Value" category only counted "tweets with an 'RT' in it," thus omitting both the original tweet that contained the true "Pass‐Along Value," as well as other tweets that use "via..." as a means of conveying credit.

Finally, even the most casual of Twitterer will instantly recognize the inherent subjectivity of these categories. One person's news is another's babble; what is conversational to one person may easily be babble to another. This "study" involved a bunch of Pear Analytics employees eyeballing tweets and stamping them with one label or another, which is about as scientific a way to determine the innate quality of tweets as American Idol is a scientific way to ascertain the greatest singer in America.

For example, last night I tweeted, "Using Digsby? Buried in TOS is fine print allowing it to use your CPU, bandwidth, & electrical power when your PC's idle: http://ow.ly/k1G8." How would Pear have categorized this? It's news, but it's Social Media news, so it wouldn't qualify for Pear's "News" category. I was retweeted, but since my post wasn't a retweet, it wouldn't fit Pear's definition of "Pass along value." This tweet isn't spam, self promotion, or conversational, so I guess Pear would label this "pointless babble." I'd disagree, and I hope you would too.

Twitter is a Communications Medium! Twitter isn't merely a business tool, a marketing medium, or a news dissemination engine; it's a Communications Medium!

The fact that 40.55% of tweets are "pointless babble" is hardly newsworthy unless this statistic is put into some context. Given Twitter is a person-to-person communications medium, what percentage might we reasonably expect to be babble? Have you overheard the idle chatter in a food court lately? What percentage of that is babble? 80%? 90%? More?

How about the weather report in your local news program? All I want is to know is the temperature and precipitation forecast for the coming days, but I have to sit through jokes with the anchors, high pressure maps, the low temperature in International Falls, MN, and a photo of a sunset sent in by Edna Theirfelder of Oconomowoc, WI. If the weather portion of my nightly news was just 40.55% "pointless babble," it would make me ecstatically happy.

If Twitter is only 40.55% babble, that might make it the most information-rich medium in human history, a conclusion quite a bit different than the majority of news stories that covered Pear's study.

What's in it for Pear Analytics? As noted, the research firm published the report and recommended a course of action--use Philtro.com to filter your tweets. The report goes on to refer to Philtro as "they," conveying dissociation and increasing the objectivity of the recommendation. But is this as selfless and unbiased a recommendation as it appears?

You'd think news organizations that wanted to broadcast data from Pear's report to millions might have taken the time to ask a few questions about this recommendation. As it turns out, I found only one news source, The Register, that dug deep enough to uncover a potential (and potentially suspicious) motive behind Pear Analytics' recommendation: Philtro's Founder and CEO, Paul Singh, also happens to be Pear's on-staff Business Intelligence Expert.

I'm not suggesting this relationship colors the results (any more than the subjectivity of the study's categorization process), but Pear owed it to readers to disclose the relationship (some might even call it a conflict of interest) for the sake of professionalism and transparency. It seems evident that had the relationship been disclosed, it might have affected readers' perceptions of the recommendation and possibly even the study results.

With so many news outlets eager to promote this research and hardly any discovering the Singh connection, doesn't that make most of the news coverage nothing but "pointless babble"? I may be exaggerating a little, but the Pear Analytics coverage reinforces something I've observed over the past year: You can't really count on mainstream media to give objective and thorough coverage to topics of Social Media.

Social Media will continue to evolve and change the way humans communicate and brands are built, but you won't really find the interesting, perceptive, and important details conveyed by traditional news outlets. For that, digital and Social Media will remain the best source for those who want to see where Social Media is going.

Paid Blog Posts: Ways to Protect and Enhance Brands

2009-08-10T13:12:00.002-05:00

This is the second of a two-part post about the law, ethics, and risks of Paid Blog Posts and how marketers can protect their brands while participating in "sponsored conversations." Part One was "Paid Blog Posts: The Need for Total Disclosure But Only Partial Independence".

Tom Gray was right: Money Changes Everything. Start with a group of people with the desire to share experiences, observations, information, and knowledge; add a large number of subscribers; insert cash-rich brands struggling with the slow bleed of ad-supported channels; and what do you get? Bloggers extorting free product from brands; bloggers who rave about tourist destinations while failing to reveal the free trips they receive; brands offering payments for positive reviews; brands spamming blogs' comments to promote themselves; fake brand-sponsored blogs (or flogs) masquerading as legitimate consumer-generated content; and brands so desperate for attention in Social Media that they'll exploit global news and events in order to spam consumers.

How bad has it gotten already in the blogosphere? So bad that you can't even trust mom. (Next we'll be questioning the authenticity of apple pie.) CNN.com has a front page headline today asking, "Can you trust 'mommy bloggers'?" The answer is apparently not. "There has been a turn of goodwill [against mommy bloggers]," says Liz Gumbinner, the publisher and editor-in-chief of Cool Mom Picks. The influx of advertiser money has "created a new generation of bloggers who blogged to get free stuff."

It's a sad sign of maturity that the once (relatively) altruistic world of blogging is now struggling with the invasion of commerce. Some bemoan this, but it's always been inevitable that some bloggers with lots of readers would want to monetize and that brands would pay to reach those readers. The problem today is that there are no rules of the road for either bloggers or brands, and as noted in the list above, mistakes are both common and embarrassing.

The next year or two is going to see substantial changes coming to the blogosphere, with firms like Forrester offering guidance that will become de facto standards and the FTC jumping into Social Media with strong new rules. Even then, with the world of Social Media continuing to evolve, brands that aren't careful can stumble, and doing so in our ever more connected world can be costly and damaging.

In my last blog post, we explored how brands can pay for posts in a way that meets important ethical and legal standards for advertising. We focused on the concepts of Disclosure and Independence, but are these enough to protect brands? No, conducting business in a legal and ethical manner are table stakes, but brands will not enhance their reputations or protect themselves from all harm merely by being legal and ethical.

What else should marketers consider when planning and executing "sponsored conversations" in the blogosphere? Before we explore this question, it's important to remind ourselves why marketers are so eager for bloggers' attention in the first place; after all, brands already have access to advertising vehicles on blogs that are far easier and less risky than paid blog posts, such as banner ads and Google's AdSense. The reason that brands want mention and acclaim within the content of blogs is, as noted by Forrester's Josh Bernoff, that "sponsored conversations" done right are genuine because they are in the blogger's voice.

Being "genuine" is important; being perceived by consumers as "genuine" is vital. Marketers must not lose focus on the goal of promoting genuine dialog on blogs or doing anything that would undermine perceived authenticity in the minds of blog readers. With this in mind, we can explore how brands can create or undermine genuine dialog with "sponsored conversations."

Form of Payment to Bloggers

As Jeremiah Owyang points out, the form of compensation matters. He's identified eight types of compensation for bloggers, ranging from blogola to access. It is very important for marketers to understand that these forms of payments are not equivalent options and that the way bloggers are paid may be more important than the amount they're paid.

Cash: If all brands want to do is buy blog awareness and links without regard for the impact on consumer perception, then paying cash to bloggers is fine. Of course, marketers do care about consumer perception, which is why writing a check for a blog post is a weak and risky option. Paying cash for a blogger to post about your product does not buy authenticity for that product; in fact, it does the opposite.

My hope is that, as disclosure and transparency become the law and expectation in the blogosphere, we'll see the disappearance of marketplaces that connect greedy bloggers wanting to sell the trust of their readers and brands looking for the easiest way to be mentioned within blog content. After all, when fully disclosed at the outset of a blog post, what blog subscriber would continue reading past the words, "This blog was paid $500 to write 300 words about Jinkies cereal...?"

Product Demonstrations: While blog readers are apt to find posts less genuine when bought and paid for with cash, they will have a different reaction when bloggers are compensated with free or demonstration products. Readers will be more inclined to engage with and believe posts that begin, "I was given the opportunity to try new and improved Jinkies cereal, and here's what I thought..."

No one objects when a movie reviewer gets to see a preview of a film for free, and we expect car makers to lend new models to "Car and Driver" magazine for the purpose of evaluating and publishing reviews to their readers. Access and product demonstrations are forms of compensation that increase the authenticity and reduce the risk consumers will punish brands or bloggers with diminished trust. (Of course, depending on the product, there is a huge difference between giving a product and loaning it to bloggers--see below for a discussion on the importance of perceived value.)

None: The only form of compensation that can be completely disclosed without any risk whatsoever to brand sentiment is none--nothing of value given to bloggers other than great brand experiences that motivate them to share.

Social Media hasn't changed the basic principles of Word of Mouth. The same is true today as ten, twenty, or fifty years ago--the best form of advertising isn't tell people things but to get people telling each other. Of course, advertising will always be a vital part of the marketing mix; brands like Disney were built and are maintained with large investments in advertising, but the company's ads are not why Disney World was mentioned on 10,000 blogs in the past week while Six Flags' 14 parks were mentioned only 4,300 times. Creating authentic buzz on blogs with no special compensation is the ultimate answer to the challenges and opportunities presented by Social Media.

Of course, getting people talking is still hard work! As noted by the Word of Mouth (WOM) Marketing Association, "Word of mouth can be encouraged and facilitated. Companies can work hard to make people happier, they can listen to consumers, they can make it easier for them to tell their friends, and they can make certain that influential individuals know about the good qualities of a product or service." In short, "sponsored conversations" may have a place in building WOM, but it must be a portion of an overall WOM plan and not a replacement for it.

In the end, smart marketers will challenge themselves to avoid the easy path of pulling out the checkbook to pay off bloggers and instead seek ways to create genuine buzz in genuine ways. A fan who raves (without compensation) about a positive brand experience is extremely authentic; a blogger given a product to review is mostly authentic; a person given cash to say something on their blog does not convey genuine sentiment and (when properly disclosed) will tend to reduce rather than enhance the brand's authenticity.

Perception of Financial Value of Offers to Bloggers

Whether or not compensation is monetary, the cash value of the offer must be carefully considered by marketers. This is because the value given to a blogger in return for a paid post will be subconsciously assessed by consumers as they weigh the credibility of the sponsored conversation, the blog, and the brand.

To illustrate this point, let's return to the example previously introduced of new car reviews in auto enthusiast magazines. Subscribers of car magazines understand the quid pro quo between automakers and the publication: Car makers lend cars to the magazine for the purpose of evaluation and review; they don't transfer ownership of the cars to the writers. If readers learned that "Car and Driver" reporters were making tens of thousands of dollars a year by reselling the "gifts" they received from car makers, this knowledge would substantially affect the perception of trust for both the magazine and the brands. (Even under the system of loaned cars, it still caught some bloggers' attention when Motor Trend editor Arthur St. Antoine admitted he didn't even own a car because he had access to "too many test cars.")

How should appropriate cost or value be determined for a paid blog post? Relying on the traditional impressions/readers/eyeballs method of pricing paid media is extremely dangerous for "sponsored conversations." Marketers need to recognize the distinction between paid advertising on blogs (which can vary by the number of impressions) and paid editorial on blogs (which should not). While this may sound counterintuitive, marketers must never lose sight that their actions in Social Media must be seen as genuine by consumers.

Blog readers will likely accept the authenticity of a blog post from a mommy blogger who received a case of free diapers for the purpose of sharing relevant perceptions with her readers. But will readers' perception of authenticity scale with the size of the blogger's audience? If a blogger with a thousand readers receives one case, should a blogger with 10,000 readers receive 10 cases and another with 100,000 readers get 100 cases?

No, consumers' perception of authenticity is based on factors other than the size of the blog's audience. While marketers will and should consider the size and composition of a blog's audience when identifying potential blogging partners, the only factor that matters when determining the value of the offer is how it will be perceived by consumers. Paying more to a blogger with a large audience is risky because it not only raises the question of the authenticity of the blogger's sentiment but does so across a wide audience.

The question of how consumers will perceive value is a tricky one, because it is subjective and not objective. The perception of value will vary based on a variety of factors such as:

Actual dollar value of compensation

Form of compensation

Type of product or service

Type of blog

Contractual obligation of the blogger

Consider your own reaction to the following similar situation:

A blogger is paid $1,500 for a blog post of 500 words.

A blogger's trip to a brand tradeshow (worth $1,500) is paid by the brand with the expectation of a three blog posts about the brand.

A blogger's trip to a blog conference (worth $1,500) is paid by a brand with no expectation of coverage for the brand.

Ninety-five boxes of disposable pull-up training pants (3800 diapers worth $1,500) are sent to a mommy blogger, enough diapers for 12 to 18 months for one child.

A car maker loans a car to an auto blogger for a month, and since it can no longer be sold new, the loss of value of that car is in excess of $1,500.

A blogger is given the opportunity to give away a $1,500 prize as part of a brand-sponsored contest on the blog. No direct compensation is paid to the blogger, but this promotion allows him or her to increase the blog's readership and earn more money from the paid advertising on the site.

A blogger is paid $1,500 cash for 15 hours of consulting and research conducted by the brand into the needs and wants of consumers (with no anticipation of coverage on the blog).

A blogger is given the opportunity to interview the CEO of the company in order to furnish content for the blog. The executive's time plus the time required to arrange the interview costs the organization $1,500.

Each of these situations has an actual, objective value of $1,500, but the perception of consumers will vary widely. Brands should proceed with caution, deal only with reputable bloggers, generally avoid cash compensation, and above all research and test the way different forms and amounts of compensation will be perceived by consumers. Compensating bloggers for posts may be a form of paid media, but treating it as if it's just another option in your media mix--a simple question of reach and impressions--can be very harmful to brands in Social Media.

Blog POV

The final dimension that should concern marketers as they evaluate options for sponsored conversations is the Point of View (POV) of the blog. This includes several factors such as:

What is the blog's POV with respect to Paid Blog Posts? How often does the blog participate in sponsored conversations? What brands has it promoted in the past? Under what circumstances has it taken paid blog posts? Has it furnished readers with appropriate disclosures? These are questions that should influence a brand's willingness to work with one blog or another.

What is the blog's POV with respect to the brand? A blog may have never mentioned the brand in the past, may have criticized it, or may have praised it. If the blog has been critical of the brand in past, that doesn't necessarily mean it should be avoided; in this case, marketers should consider if the criticism was reasonably fair, dispassionate, and professional. A toilet paper company would be well advised to avoid attempting a "sponsored conversation" with a blogger who rails against the destruction of forests, but finding someone who has complained about the texture of the toilet paper may make sense when rolling out a new, softer version of the product.

Of course, sometimes a brand may find bloggers that have praised the brand or perhaps even find blogs dedicated to promoting the brand. It is not uncommon to find blogs such as Only WDWorld and Harley Davidson Sportster--blogs dedicated to a brand. The rules of the road in terms of maintaining credibility are different on these sorts of blogs since there is no allusion to objectivity. If your brand has fan blogs, this opens up additional opportunities for "sponsored conversations" or other forms of relationships with reduced risk.
What is the blog's POV on brands, marketing, the category, or the world at large? Making sure a blog is aligned with and appropriate for a brand is vital when marketers create partnerships with bloggers. There are many ways a brand could be embarrassed by an association with a blogger, and since the rules for bloggers are far less defined and rigid than for traditional media, brands must proceed with caution. Thorough vetting is necessary to make sure the blog and blogger demonstrate the sort of professionalism, consistency, attitude, and beliefs that enhance and support the brand.

Clearly, blogs are here to stay and will only grow in importance to readers and marketers. And there is no stopping the flow of money to bloggers from brands eager for more Social PR. This is recipe both for success and mistakes. Some marketers will succeed in building their brands authentically using Social Media and blogs, but others will get caught in embarrassing situations involving inappropriate disclosure, unethical influence, excessive payments, or improper control of bloggers' content.

Social Media may provide an opportunity for your brand to go viral, but it does the same for your mistakes. A single embarrassment can undo a great deal of brand building in Social Media, so the burden is on marketers to proceed cautiously and with a full understanding of the risks.

If you have additional thoughts on the factors that enhance the opportunities and minimize the risks, please comment!

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