McKinsey Quarterly is one of the many resources that I use for keeping current with industry research.

They posted a great article, Demystifying social media, that I wanted to share.

They also have a slide presentation that goes through the journey in more detail.

Below are a few key points.

• Executives certainly know what social media is, but have no idea how to harness social media’s power
• It’s pretty difficult to see where and how to influence social media conversations
• ROI and impact of investments in social media are difficult (but not impossible) to track, because there are short and long term impacts

The article does a good job of trying to distill social media down to some key functions:
“We have identified its four primary functions—to monitor, respond, amplify, and lead consumer behavior—and linked them to the journey consumers undertake when making purchasing decisions.”

I firmly believe that social media programs should be integrated into an overall digital marketing approach that includes search (paid & organic), email, paid display, etc. and mapping out touch points across all communication channels is key to establishing marketing resource investments.

“Marketing’s primary goal is to reach consumers at the moments, or touch points, that influence their purchasing behavior.”

Chef Daniel Boulud at Los Angeles Food & Wine:

Adam Karwoski posted a good article, How To Take Your Next Trade Show Social, that highlights some key components:

• Video: livestream Q&A, how-to videos, testimonials, behind the scenes
• Twitter: live Twitter feed, tweet-ups
• Facebook: polls, contests
• Website: landing page
• Photos: share via social profiles and web
• Blog: guest blog, live blog, recap

One of the many amazing items at LA Food & Wine:

I take a slightly different approach, breaking it out into before, during and after the event. Video and contests are great, but take quite a bit of advance planning, approvals and coordination, so I listed a few simple things that most companies can do. If you sponsor an event, be sure to ask about having the event share your content and links to your properties (web & social) through their channels: press releases, email, web, social.

Before the event:

• Announce attendance / sponsorship via press release, email list and social media channels.
• For speaking events, be sure to communicate when, where and the topic.
• Reach out to prospects, key media contacts and partners to check if they are attending and schedule meetings if available.

During the event:

• Monitor hashtags, check-ins and keywords for opportunities to connect and engage. Utilize tools, such as Klout for Twitter to identify influential contacts
• Post a few key pieces of content from the event – could be photos taken by your company, retweets of key blog posts, etc.

After the event:

• Post recap of event – ideally in a blog post and share blog post via social channels and email list. Including links to other recaps is helpful as well, as everyone will have a different take on the event.
• Go through the list of new companies and contacts, add them to your CRM system for tracking and connect with key contacts. Doesn’t hurt to share the link to the recap blog post as well.
• Continue monitoring hashtags and keywords for opportunities to connect and engage

Event attendance and sponsorship is a great investment – just make sure you have a plan in place to capitalize on it and leverage the investment to grow your business.

I highly recommend following eMarketer on SlideShare, Twitter and checking out their email newsletters.

One presentation I seem to be referencing quite a bit lately is the eMarketer 2012 trends report.

eMarketer Webinar: Key Digital Trends for 2012

Summary:

• Individuals are consuming content and interacting with brands through a variety of devices, including smartphones, ereaders, tablets.
• Brands are looking for new ways to share their content and connect with consumers through social media, online music & online video – all areas that are hot and growing.
• Social, search, mobile and local/location-based components all influence the shopping experience and ultimately the buying decision at the point of purchase.
• Privacy is important to consumers, but it’s a complicated balance as consumers are sharing more data and want more relevant targeted ads but don’t want big brother snooping around to use the data against them or in an unexpected manner.

What is your favorite source for marketing research?

It’s a great and valid question without an easy answer.

Social media sites, from Facebook to Twitter to YouTube – don’t live independent of other advertising and marketing initiatives.

You get more traffic to your social media sites by incorporating links to social profiles throughout your existing assets – websites, business cards, email signatures, etc.

In order to really grow your social following you have to invest in paid media such as Facebook ads. You’ll quickly come to the conclusion that social doesn’t stand alone.

A good article on paid, earned & owned is The new PEO media model. You can also refer to my article, Paid, Earned & Owned: Social Media Opportunities for more details on the topic.

(image from The new PEO media model)

If you have an email database, you can give your Facebook page a Like boost when you send out an email with a special offer for Facebook fans (especially if the offer is fan-gated, requiring visitors to Like the page in order to receive the offer).

A recent study showed that blogging has a positive ROI:
Blogging Trumps Traditional Advertising in ROI Head-to-Head (Case Study).

So, where do I recommend spending your ad dollars?

Well, I don’t recommend putting all your dollars into one bucket, but finding the right balance. There’s a minimum spend to make each platform worthwhile. The ROI of each tactic will plateau at some level with diminishing returns. Each tactic plays a different role from awareness to loyalty – all things that must be considered.

You can read studies that show ROI on every marketing and advertising tactic. But, in order to get the best return, you have to consider the role of each tactic as they relate back to your business objectives: selling more stuff at a profit.

Just because Pinterest is growing at 4,000% doesn’t mean that it is right for your brand. But, if you have a female target market – it’s definitely something to investigate since the current audience is 95% female. I’ve recommended Pinterest to several brands.

While I don’t have an easy, succinct answer to the ROI question – I can tell you that social media isn’t free, but it can be measured against objectives. Social requires an investment in paid media to drive traffic, which in turn gets the volume of conversations and engagement to a level that can justify the investment.

I recently had the opportunity to keynote a Kansas City Media Mix and Social Media Club Kansas City event. My presentation focused on the paid, earned and owned media types made popular by Forrester:

Defining Earned, Owned And Paid Media

I included the presentation below.

First, lets take a look back at my post from January 4, 2010: Trends, Predictions & Thoughts for 2010.

While I predicted a pretty aggressive growth trend for location-based services (Foursquare, Gowalla, etc), I think the adoption rate has followed my expectations. I was surprised that Facebook decided to build their own vs. acquire someone, but I’m sure they figured that since they have such a large user base that is growing so fast, they didn’t have to go down the acquisition path. While Foursquare has five million users, Facebook is approaching 600 million.

Not everyone is sold on location based services yet. According to
Who Uses Location-Based Services, only 4% of US online adults have ever used location-based social networks on their mobile phones, with only 1% using them more than once a week, according to Forrester. A typical location-based app user, it says, is:

• Influential, with 38% more likely than the average US online adult to say that friends and family ask their opinions before making a purchase decision.
• Part of an interesting target group, as they are typically young adult males with college degrees.
• A heavy mobile researcher, as they are also far more likely to search for information about businesses and products, as well as read customer ratings/reviews of products and services.

The biggest miss I had was branded virtual goods. Virtual goods have their places in games such as MyTown and Gaia Online but haven’t taken off on Facebook. Virtual goods are an important part of games like Farmville. Facebook currency could be big, but it’s still in the early stage. Based on my conversations with social gaming companies, the ability to offer credits for taking an action, such as viewing an advertisement and get five credits in return, could be a way for brands to provide incentives and reward engagement.

I would say that Apple pretty much dominated the consumer tech space in 2010. Much more than I had predicted. iPad, iPhone 4, Apple TV. Oh, and the millions of iPods sold every year, but that doesn’t get much press anymore. Yes, I understand that companies like Dell sell millions of computers every year, but you don’t see people waiting in line to pick up the latest release.

As of today, Apple stock is currently trading at 340. Not bad since it started 2010 at $210/share.

The iPad came out in April. While it doesn’t have Adobe Flash support, that definitely hasn’t slowed it down. The iPad helped move Apple into the middle ground from a pricing standpoint between iPods, which it seems every household owns at least one these days, towards a higher priced laptop computer. While the iPad doesn’t have the full features of a laptop computer, it covers the majority of where consumers are spending their time: email, Facebook & media consumption. While not all content is available on the iPad, Netflix, Hulu & most major sites are moving towards better support with HTML 5. 15.7 million tablets sold worldwide in 2010, and the iPad represents roughly 85% of that and tablet sales are expected to quadruple by 2012. YouTube had more than 700 billion video views in 2010 and part of the success has been their multiple device and format support.

Amazon’s Kindle will surpass 8 million units in 2010 and at $140, that’s a pretty hefty chunk of revenue for Amazon, not to mention book & content sales. Amazon has launched new features that enable their content to be read on multiple devices, including the iPad, mobile phones and online, so that will be a big boom to their content distribution model.

PC World published a list of their best tech products from 2010, which had the iPad listed as runner up.

ZDNet listed the iPad as the top technology surprises of 2010.

And, just like everyone else, VentureBeat listed the iPad as one of the biggest stories of 2010.

The latest generation of the iPhone was met with much anticipation and was in the hands of consumers in June. Descriptions of the phone were leaked after one was found “lost” in a bar in California.

While there was controversy around the device, including some reception problems, after using an iPhone 4 since they launched, I can say the device definitely brings the power of a computer into your hands. HTC EVO 4G & Samsung Epic 4G were launched by Sprint and powered Android. Verizon and other carries launched powerful Android phones like DROID from Motorola and Verizon is launching with the iPhone in Q1 2011.

According to Wikipedia, as of October 2010, there are at least 300,000 third-party applications officially available on the App Store, with over 7 billion total downloads.

On October 25, 2010 the official AndroidDev twitter account announced that the Android market had surpassed the 100,000 app milestone and as of late December 2010, over 200,000. You can check out the latest Android stats at Wikipedia & AndroLib. Several reports have been published that show Android & Apple as pretty much even at the end of 2010.

There are application stores for Nokia, BlackBerry & Windows devices, but none of them are as popular as Android market & the Apple App store.

HP bought Palm in April, as they try to gain some ground in the mobile connected space, including smartphones and tablets. I’m not sure how that is going to net out, since the Palm share of the market is so small.

Ping, a music-focused social network created by Apple topped the list of bad ideas from NPR Music.

Based on the install base of iTunes, I’m sure the usage will grow over time, but I wasn’t wowed by it and I haven’t used it either.

The one exception I see to Apple’s dominance of consumer technology was been the successful launch of Microsoft Kinect, with 8 million sold in the first few months of the release.

Angry Birds, which was created by a small Finnish company, has taken the mobile gaming world by storm, racking up 200 million minutes of game play each day.

New York Times:Although Rovio has released two dozen other mobile games, none have come close to the success of Angry Birds, which cost about $100,000 to make and has been downloaded 50 million times in the last year. The paid version for the iPhone, which costs 99 cents in the United States, has brought in more than $8 million in revenue; Apple said last week that it was the best-selling iPhone app of 2010. The free version for phones running Google’s Android software should produce $1 million a month in advertising revenue by the end of the year, Rovio says.

Data makes the world go round. And those in control of the data are in the position of both power and responsibility. Gawker Media was one of the sites that got hacked.

The email addresses and passwords of hundreds of thousands of users were compromised. Some of the basic passwords were decrypted and I’m sure eventually the whole file will be decrypted to expose all 1+ million user accounts.

With a large user base, Facebook is a huge target for attacks. And as more sites allow authentication via Facebook and Twitter and sharing content back out to social networks, they will continue to be targets.

One of the challenges with many of the startups is that for the ones that are successful, the growth curve can be difficult to support and sometimes the focus is shifted to reliability and scalability vs. security. Twitter was unavailable so much when they were getting off the ground that it got to be expected and accepted.

Between WikiLeaks, hacked celebrity accounts and the rise of an online Do Not Track list, online privacy and security will hopefully get more attention in the next two years than they have in the past. The amount of data available at the individual level is staggering – social data, purchase data, demo data, etc can all be connected. Semantic targeting has been discussed as one way to get around some of the privacy concerns, but it’s not ready for prime time yet, so in the short term we’ll see a growth in branded incentives for viewing branded content. The government will step in and try and get more involved, but it will be several years before anything gets passed or standards are created.

Applications, like Firesheep, a Firefox extension that makes it relatively easy to hack into social sites if consumers aren’t careful when using open WiFi hotsposts, were big news and then gone. I thought it would shake people up, but it seems everyone has just been ignoring how easy it is. It’s almost like people expect their accounts to get hacked at some point.

Net Neutrality has been in the press and will continue, but the FCC doesn’t have the regulatory control to really push it through and enforce and the regulations are going to be challenged in court and by Congress, so I don’t plan on seeing it for a while. And, since wireless is left out and is the biggest area for growth, I’m not sure how big of an impact it’s going to have, as everyone involved is going to find ways around the regulations.

I enjoyed The Social Network movie and with multiple awards and nominations, including 6 Golden Globe nominations, I’m sure we’ll see movies around other high-growth companies. Twitter? Google? Who will be next…

That’s a lengthy list of topics, but if nothing else, I’ll look back 10 years from now and laugh at how antiquated everything on this last has become.

You could argue the way consumers are engaged and products are sold is continually evolving, but I don’t think we’ve seen such a dramatic shift as the last ten years. The internet, mobile, online video and most recently, social media are just a few of the many things that have contributed to the change in the advertising model.

Some people are saying that the future of advertising isn’t advertising at all. I would argue that advertising will always exist. The model is shifting to be more participatory with consumers, but someone still has to create the platforms and tools to engage consumers. The growth of search marketing has grown to address the demand for consumers initiating the dialog, such as “I have a need for a product to do X.”

Fast Company had a good article that circulated around agency circles recently called The Future of Advertising. The question that everyone is asking, is how do we get there and still make money for the big ideas we bring to the table?

There is one line in particular that struck me as interesting:
They’re all well aware that coding is now prized over copywriting and that a résumé that includes Xbox and Google is more desirable than one featuring stints at BBDO or Grey.

For those outside the ad agency world, BBDO & Grey are a few of the many well respected and award winning advertising agencies. Xbox, or Microsoft for that matter, didn’t create all the ads themselves (McCann Erickson created some really great ads for Xbox).

I agree that “At agencies, the new norm is doing exponentially complex work” (The Future of Ad Agencies and Social Media) but traditional media skills still have a place. And really, in the near future, there won’t be “traditional” or “digital” – as digital is really becoming a key component of all campaigns.

The key is having award-winning brands in your portfolio and successful campaigns, from the client or agency side. Working at an innovative organization doesn’t mean all the individuals that work there are necessarily innovative. Most innovative campaigns aren’t successful, for a variety of reasons. Not every brand wants, or can afford, a cutting edge campaign and many times emerging media campaigns aren’t a good fit for a brand.

Speaking of the Xbox, there was an interesting article around how everyone, including Microsoft, is looking for ways to monetize their products in a different way: Kinect could be Microsoft’s ticket to addressable advertising on your TV. This approach raises all kinds of questions around privacy, but that’s for a different post.

I’m a big advocate of investing in emerging technology. Advertising agencies need to be on the cutting edge to continue to draw attention – “the most successful, game-changing campaigns are generally a bit ahead of the curve” (The Future of Ad Agencies and Social Media), but emerging media campaigns don’t have the reach and scale needed all by themselves. Sure, TV and how video content is consumed is changing as products like the iPad and Apple TV go mainstream, but TV isn’t dead (yet).

In summary, advertising (and agencies) will continue to evolve, but will always have a place, with opportunities for new leaders to emerge as platforms, channels and technologies continue to change.

Technorati Tags: advertising, agency, model, trends

So here’s the summary: In my opinion, Facebook Places is the AOL of location-based services. I’m a big fan of Foursquare and they aren’t going anywhere, for now at least. They don’t have the scale (yet), but they have the cool factor and brands on board.

Let me explain a bit more.

Facebook has a huge number of users. Over 500 million, currently. But, Facebook Places is limited to an iPhone app and a mobile website that somewhat works on newer smartphones like the Andorid platform (although it’s pretty clunky, from what my Android friends have said). While everyone is touting the 500 million user level, it’s actually quite smaller than that when it comes to Facebook Places users. So, when it comes to location, they have some of the same challenges as other services until smarthphones take the majority.

Everyone keeps telling me that because Facebook has so many users, they will for sure dominate location-based services (see visual below from jess3), but I disagree. Everyone knew it was only a matter of time before Facebook launched a location-based check-in program. I’m sure Twitter will do the same in the near future.

Brands will inevitably get on board and claim their locations in mass and Facebook will start to monetize all the data they are collecting. I’m just surprised they didn’t launch with more strategic partners like they did with the Facebook social plugins.

But for now, there just aren’t many reasons to use Facebook Places.

Meanwhile, companies like Whrrl are announcing significant rewards for sharing check-ins. Click here to read about their latest Vegas campaign.

Foursquare was part of the Facebook Places launch, along with several other location-based companies, which was a bit awkward for everyone.

In an interview with The Telegraph, Crowley says: “I have now had a chance to play around with Facebook Places and it’s not that great or interesting. It’s a pretty boring service, with barely any incentives for users to keep coming back and telling their friends where they are.” To boot, “The only interesting thing about Places is that it has a potential audience of over 500 million people around the world… but that can only be a good thing for location-based services, like Foursquare, as Facebook will educate the masses about check-ins,” Crowley adds. Crowley believes that Foursquare’s gaming mechanics will keep people far more enticed into using his service over the likes of Places. “I always knew Facebook would launch a check-in tool,” he tells The Telegraph. “I knew that on the day we started creating Foursquare. But I also knew that people needed incentives to keep checking-in and sharing their location. Facebook could copy our games ideas, but we are working on a raft of new mechanics which we hope will keep Foursquare fresh and ‘check-in fatigue’ away.” source

Compared to other location-based services like Yelp, claiming a location on Facebook is downright painful (see below). Who’s going to upload their articles of incorporation? And how will Facebook store this data? I understand that Facebook wants to verify that someone has the ability to claim the location. But they don’t do that with Facebook pages or URL’s, which I can pretty much say that I’m anyone and wait for a major brand to complain, in the meanwhile, creating consumer confusion.

The poll below was from Mashable: Location Faceoff: Facebook Places vs. Foursquare. The results would lead me to believe that the influencers on the cutting edge are sticking with Foursquare. At some point, when a technology or service reaches mainstream, it loses the cool factor for emerging technologist. If everyone is using it, it isn’t emerging anymore. That doesn’t mean that consumers and businesses are using it correctly, just that the usage has grown.

The feature to allow other users to check you in on your behalf, in my mind, is just a bad idea all around and has huge privacy implications. Sure, you can create customized lists of individuals you would like to share your location with (see video) but most people won’t go to the trouble and just share check-ins with everyone.

Facebook newsfeeds are being clogged up with meaningless Facebook Places check-ins. I’ve heard a variety of different stats in regards to percentages of Foursquare checkins that are also posted to Facebook & Twitter. Some people have their Twitter accounts automatically post to Facebook, so that number may be larger. I’ve heard that around 20% of people share their Foursquare check-ins to Facebook. The results tend to be higher at locations that have a positive cool factor like Starbucks vs. a random gas station.

I’ll occasionally share check-ins, but usually only when I have a comment to add in addition to the check-in – more than just “I’m here.” Foursquare suffered from this same problem when it started, but most users have figured out the balance so that they don’t drop a bunch of friends in the process of over-sharing every time they took a step.

Greg Sterling takes an interesting perspective in a post about the real target of Facebook Places

…if you want to argue that Facebook is going after anyone in particular, the same thing must equally be said about a range of companies that includes yellow pages publishers, newspapers, cityguides, local verticals and many others that offer local information online and/or sell ads to small businesses.

So, what do you think of Facebook Places? Little by little, several of my 2010 predictions are taking shape. While I’m not on board with Facebook Places at the moment, I’m sure they’ll make improvements over the next 6 months to make it a very solid product, including brand partnerships, multimedia integration and rewards programs. The launch is definitely good for the location-based services market as a whole and will help educate the masses. I think Facebook will start to compete more directly with Yelp & yellow page/directory services and turn their web search into a map based local search service, including recommendations from friends. In essence – competing directly with Google and others for world domination of the technology world.

Technorati Tags: Foursquare, Facebook

There is also a related article – “Innovation: Trendy Topic, Hard to Do” that I had to mention, because the headline really hits home. I think the challenges that smaller businesses have is that they want to be innovative, but lack the ongoing support and sustain it.

While the article focuses on innovation in IT, the approach applies to innovation in general.

Many people also believe that innovation just “happens” – but it doesn’t. It takes a very systematic approach to maintain innovation over the long-term.

Katrina Lane, Chief technology Officer at Harrah’s Entertainment asserts that it’s crucial to manage the innovation process; it’s not something that will happen on its own. “There have to be strong metrics, timelines and processes, such as how you get to rollout. It’s not all research and dreamy,” she says. “Innovation is a systematic process. It’s like research and development. You have to manage your pipeline.”

In particular, there was a section that I wanted to share, listed below. The one sentence summary:
“The keys to making innovation a sustainable process, they say, include understanding the business inside and out, setting up a team dedicated to trying new ideas, and not being afraid to fail.”

The Building Blocks of Innovation
Consultants say the following elements are key to building an environment that can sustain innovation:

• Give employees the right to fail
• Spread responsibility for innovation throughout the organization, top to bottom
• Develop partnerships with other departments
• Create a central repository for ideas and experiments
• Establish processes and ownership

There has to be a good blend of providing enough time and resources for employees to innovate, but not in a vacuum so that they understand the real challenges of the business. The article also references the importance of shorter term innovations, which may be implemented with the shifting of existing resources, to future technologies that, while not applicable at the moment for a wide scale deployment, may help shape the future of the organization.

Technorati Tags: innovation, research

Last week I was fortunate to be invited to speak on a panel about the future of advertising and location-based services at MobileBeat 2010.

Location is a hot topic in the industry, with venture capital flowing into this area (Andreessen Horowitz Leads $20 Million Investment in Foursquare)

VentureBeat put together a good recap of each session: Here’s what happened at MobileBeat 2010 including my panel, Location and advertising: A new recipe for monetizing content?

Technorati Tags: mobile, Shopkick, Placecast, Twitter, location-based, mobile social networks