TheBlackFin - Thoughts from Tom Edwards

How to Drive Brand Value from Social Media

tom — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:24:00 GMT

One of the more common questions that I receive is how do I truly drive value from social interaction? While there is no "magic bullet" to drive hard ROI consistently across all organization types each organization can show solid social value and results if they consider the following when planning their B2C social GTM strategy.

1) Goals, Goals & Did I mention Goals - Before the first Twitter alias is created or Facebook fan page is posted the first step is to define the goals of the strategy and how it will be measured. But it does not stop here. Where I see gaps in strategy across the board is then taking the next step which is consolidating and truly integrating consumer network interaction with branded solutions. The reason is the data. With consumer networks they may come and go and the availability of data to analyze is hit & miss but with the right mix of branded solutions it is possible to capture social data that can then map back to organizational KPI's.

2) Resources & Champions - One of the consistent issues I see is that there is an expectation that the technology will deliver results. Moreso in social than any other type of marketing initiative it takes dedicated resources to truly drive success. This can be for a period of time until the community can self manage itself but the key to interaction is not the technology but the content that is created. Either leveraging 3rd parties or internal resources to drive fresh and relevant "sticky" content is a key success factor in building the audience that will generate the data needed to map to your KPI's.

3) Consumer Networks - What I consistently see and hear is that a number of organizations are leveraging popular consumer networks such as Twitter and Facebook. An organization can have multiple "campaigns" going at any given point in time. This is a natural response as this is where consumer activity is taking place. It is absolutely essential to position your brand where interaction is happening, but there has to be a plan around the purpose of the interaction. Is it tied to Brand Awareness? Leveraging Twitter to monitor your brand for a more personal customer service touch? Either way I view Consumer Networks as a starting point to branded social interaction as again the value is in the data.

4) OPEN Authentication - The key to bridging the gap between Consumer Network & Branded Solutions is to leverage a platform that enables OPEN Authentication. OPEN authentication allows for consumers to leverage existing credentials they may already have via Facebook, Windows LIVE, Google, etc... And as Jim Haughwout, CIO of Neighborhood America stated in a recent blog post "Don't ask your members to join "Y-A-N" Yet another network". This is critical for branded interaction as you want to eliminate the barriers of entry to your branded solutions.

5) Head in the Clouds - Another important factor to consider is the type of delivery method for your branded solutions that integrate with consumer networks. What I have found over the past few years is that the TCO associated with Software as a Service or (SaaS) solutions are ideal when it comes to provisioning multiple instances of social solutions for community, crowdsourcing and even mobile interaction. The speed to market, flexibility and scalability are all positives when selecting your social platform.

6) Branded Platform - I do reference platform vs. mashing up multiple instances of social, blogging here, wiki there. What I recommend to my clients is a consolidated approach to social so you have the ability to capitalize on the data across multiple sources as again the value in social resides in the data created by social production. When selecting a platform I look for the following criteria:

Flexibility, Scalability, API's, Ability to integrate with legacy systems, All solutions and data can reside in a dimensional data warehouse so that I have the ability to create data marts with other 3rd party data sets. Also there are platforms that exist that can provide Community, Crowd Sourcing, Feedback & Mobile solutions in a single platform.

But if you are already down the path with your social strategy it is possible to enhance your social strategy and incrementally migrate elements to a platform approach.

7) Data is Everything - So the common message throughout thus far has been tied to the data. Why do I care about the data? Data created from social interaction is real and tangible when it comes to understanding consumer behavior and especially directly tying their thoughts or inputs directly back to your brand. The ability to create social profiles and then leverage that data for targeted marketing or to identify key influencers is critical to truly maximize your reach and marketing spend to drive through to results be it transactions or increased subscribers.

8) If Data is Everything what do I do with it? - The next step is to analyze data that is collected. I have talked in the past about social analytics and the benefits of understanding performance, health, member interaction, etc... This is where we map back to step one of defining the goals. The data that is collected can be sliced in many ways and the more data collected the more accurately you can drive to conclusion. My recommendation is to leverage a platform that ties all aspects of data into a single dimensional data warehouse. Why? with a dimensional data warehouse you can compare multiple campaign initiatives either testing performance of campaigns directly or by having the ability to conduct cohort analysis.

9) Don't Guess - There is a lot of talk around sentiment tied to social analytics. Be wary of this approach as it is simply an inference based on an algorithm that may or may not account for certain factors. I prefer and recommend analytics packages that mirror the Rasmussen Report which is based on opinion analysis and actual user interaction vs. an inference.

10) Social + CRM really? - There has been a lot of buzz around Social CRM and how it can drive value for organizations. The key here is not to dump all social data into CRM. The key is to leverage a publish subscribe type of model to only create social profiles that map back to organizational goals. Leveraging a social front-end such as a crowdsourcing solution that ties directly into your existing CRM system is a key driver and the second pillar of how you can drive value out of social. The first being social analysis the second is identification down to the user level of how individuals interact with your campaign. This step is critical in ultimately forming the full picture and this combined with social analytics leads to driving value back to social.

11) Consolidation is King - The consistent theme throughout is consolidation. I recommend that you craft a comprehensive social GTM strategy that allows you to leverage the power of the consumer networks. Then leverage the flexibility of a SaaS platform to service multiple segments or campaign initiatives within an organization all while driving through to value via the data created. This is the framework that can lead brands with large brand inventories to truly maximize their social media strategy and drive real and immediate value.

12) Now What? - If you are running multiple campaigns for an organization today then I recommend reviewing your current goals and strategy against the consolidated model and see where incremental improvements can be made. Question your vendors about data consolidation and ability to provide a central repository of all social data. Ensure that your consumer networks can interact with your branded solutions. Showing a feed is not true integration I recommend the ability to push and pull content from consumer networks so that you can leverage them as a platform.

Ultimately the goal is to drive value from social. Again the steps outlined above can create a model that will enable value definition for your clients or your key decision makers.

What's Next for Social Computing & Business???

tom — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 12:38:00 GMT

The past month and a half has been a whirlwind of change and excitement. As most of you know by now I decided after 3 years it was time to explore options away from Telligent. I have nothing but respect for the remaining team and I truly wish them all well.

I was presented with an opportunity to join the Neighborhood America team out of sunny Naples, Florida. Neighborhood America is a social media SaaS provider and I was very intrigued by their offerings. They address enterprise level challenges by offering SaaS based business services that are designed to meet needs across various scenarios B2B, B2C, B2E all while integrating and deploying off of a world-class SaaS architecture. Just as social networking was compelling to me 3 years ago the move to the "cloud" was a natural progression.

Over the past decade I have been an active part of the Interactive space. I was a part of the bubble, the scramble to monetize online via advertising & e-commerce, the rise of the digital powers (eBay, Google, Amazon.com). Then on to portals then the SEO craze and now the rise of social computing. As technology comes and goes certain truths around business remain constant. Increasing efficiency, growing revenue, Managing assets, etc.... technology truly is an enabler to meet these needs hence the billions of dollars spent each year with more dollars than ever being allocated to Social Computing initiatives.

A number of traditional organizations have made investments in social media applications and platforms. Many decisions were made... behind the firewall vs. SaaS, build vs. buy. As the dollars begin to proliferate more "experts" also came to the fore-front with the latest strategy, Interactive agencies redefined methodologies and measures for success and an entire ecosystem was created. Throughout all of this the needs of business remained constant. It is important to ensure that however a strategy is executed there are clearly defined business objectives that map back to success criteria that are ultimately measurable.

As the community toolkit market becomes commoditized over the coming year the ability to differentiate will go to those who embrace the following: Lowering total cost of ownership (TCO) while showing business value (ROI) leveraging social analytics & comparative analysis based on true data warehousing for cohort comparison as well as embracing the evolution of Social CRM led by companies like Neighborhood America. These factors will determine the next round of market leaders in the social space.

I look forward to the coming evolution of the social market for business. You are seeing signs towards the shift already underway. Social CRM is real and those that understand how to leverage social data while not overloading CRM systems will be key for marketers and businesses alike. I am very happy to continue to ride the wave of innovation. I look forward to the next 10 years... It will be a fun ride!!!!

Blogging vs. Twitter

tom — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 19:46:00 GMT

Over the past month I have found that my online behavior has shifted ever so slightly. Normally when I would review an article or something of interest I would think about it in terms of a blog post. Diving deeper into the issues and applying them towards some value proposition. Now I find myself thinking about condensing what I have to say into a 140 character nugget of information thanks to Twitter.

I have been a Twitter user since April 2007. Working for a social computing company it is par for the course. But I had not fully embraced Twitter as I have over the past few months. For Industry specific news I have found that it is a great source of on-demand information from a variety of sources that I may miss with my feed reader. With the Search Functionality I can follow different topics of discussion through the Twitterverse for real-time updates.

There seems to have been a tipping point recently where Twitter is now officially main stream. Twitter has grown to over 8 million U.S. Users in a fairly short amount of time. But it is the 33% growth over the past month that is the real key to Twitter adoption. Maybe it was the initial tweets of the US Airways crash into the Hudson or the mentions on Jon Stewart's Daily Show, or the Twitter 101 piece on Nightline. Or maybe it is the fact that media organizations like Fox News and CNN added a tweet stream to their tickers and "Live" responses to a piece that just ran. Whatever the reason Twitter is now the "it" tool of the moment.

Now the mad scramble has begun. How do I monetize Twitter? What is the business value of Twitter for my brand? How do I leverage Twitter as a channel?

There are groups popping up on LinkedIn that discuss Twitter Innovation and a number of companies, led by Dell, that are leveraging Twitter to monitor their brands and focus on the discussions that may impact a transaction or turn a detractor into an influencer.

I actually experienced the power of social media & Twitter specifically first hand. A prospective partner of my company was having difficulty connecting with his rep. He tweeted about the lack of response time. Within minutes his comment came across one of the tags that I follow and I saw it and responded via Twitter DM (Direct Message), LinkedIn InMail and based on his Twitter profile I was able to get his name and company and called the Main Line to leave a VM. Within an hour he re-tweeted about his appreciation of my efforts and the power of social media.

However you leverage Twitter either as a way to pass the time or adding value to your business/campaign/Brand it has definitely changed the way that I approach sharing and consuming information. Mainly into 140 chunks of informational goodness.

Follow me for updates RE: Social Computing, Marketing, Gaming and other random updates throughout the day: http://twitter.com/TheBlackFin

Tag Marketing

tom — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 06:48:00 GMT

While recently attending the 2009 Microsoft High Tech Summit I was introduced to the Microsoft Tag system. It works very much like a barcode system with your mobile serving as the scanning mechanism. The interesting play here is the interactivity and opportunity that it provides to extend a traditional campaign.

I am beginning to see the Microsoft tag showing up in more places. While waiting to take-off on a flight to Seattle I was catching up with the latest Official Xbox Magazine and on the first 2 pages was an ad for the upcoming Halo Wars title. I have a moderate interest in the upcoming title but I have seen the ad with a number of Spartans looking to blow things up before. I was about to turn the page when I noticed something interesting.

At the bottom right of the page was the Microsoft Tag with the ability to immediately view a trailer of the game and redirect me to the Halo Wars marketing site on Xbox.com via my iPhone. For the novelty of it and the fact that I can't resist a good interactive campaign I pulled up the Microsoft Tag Reader app that I had recently installed on my iPhone and took a quick shot of the tag and I was off viewing a great cinematic trailer for the upcoming game and of course the marketing collateral tied to it. If I was on the fence for the title this form of immediate gratification may have pushed me over the edge to purchase.

Where this gets really interesting is the ability to extend print in a more direct manner. Traditional ads reference a URL that leads to a product page or micro-site that is dependent on a number of factors to be executed by the end-user. With the tag system I get the immediate satisfaction of accessing information of interest in real-time from my mobile which makes the likelihood of me taking action on the ad much more likely as the barrier of sitting down, trying to remember the URL, etc... is eliminated.

From an ROI perspective I assume that the tag tracking to the destination URL is easy to reconcile and the ability to show ROI based on the "Tag Through" (I think I just coined that) then on to potential transaction should be an easy model to follow.

From a social computing perspective the ability to quickly introduce an interested party to key influencers with minimal barriers is also a possibility. The user-flow could be scan the tag, 20 second trailer and direct the user to key Community Server blog, forum or wiki topics that enhance the core message and leads to validation by peers and additional WOM.

The Microsoft tag system may not become the standard...Although if I were Microsoft I would OEM this on net-new Windows phones and allow for recognition of a tag that automatically initiates the app... but I like the direction from a consumer marketing perspective. I am a firm believer in reducing barriers for end-users. Minimize the steps necesssary to the desired result and the likelihood of action significantly increases.

Sample Tag:

Skate 2 Video

tom — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 23:04:00 GMT

This is a great BlackFin/Telligent Skate 2 spot put together by Deryl "Moonboy Dallas" Dorsett. Note the Hat, shirt and the board at the end. Enjoy...

EA - Skate 2 - Skate Reel

tom — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 16:05:00 GMT

Of all of the projects I have been involved with over the past 3 years Electronic Arts O.G. Skate Reel initiative was by far one of my favorites. It was our first really large initiative with EA and it was very ambitious.

From the start there were a number of different variables that came into play. In-game video then sprayed to the web that enabled community members to rate each others creations across gaming platforms.

With a lot of teamwork between EA (Strategy & Content), Telligent (Community Server platform, Heavy lifting on the technical side) and Blast Radius (Creative & UI) Skate Reel hit the web prior to the release of Skate.

As with all great things you knew a sequel was coming. Skate 2 hit stores on the 21st (Be sure to pick up your copy!!!!) but the new & improved Skate Reel for Skate 2 was pushed out early this morning.

This time around the UI has been tweaked, the transitions even smoother and I am once again blown away by the work of our team around the Community Server platform.

Here is the Telligent Skate 2 Team... Left to Right (w/ gamertags except for John Balod & MJ) ... Deryl "Moonboy Dallas" Dorsett... John "I need a 360" Balod, Jon "BROOMdoom" Broom, Elijah "Prairie Racer" Hardin and me Tom "TheBlackFin" Edwards. Not pictured are Rich "RichMercer" Mercer and Mike "MJ" Johnson.

As for Skate Reel.... The site speaks for itself.

Major Nelson - ROI

tom — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 17:55:00 GMT

I have known Larry "Major Nelson" Hyrb for a few years now. Larry is the Director of Programming for Xbox Live. He has become the Face of the Xbox 360 and his blog is the first stop for avid gamers looking for the latest info on upcoming titles, Xbox Live updates and of course Larry's blog cast's. Larry has held this position since 2004 and the growth that both the Xbox Live network and Larry's blog has seen over the past few years is impressive to say the least.

Community Server powers Larry's blog http://www.majornelson.com. When Larry was evaluating platforms he was looking for a scalable blogging platform that would provide him with a direct line of communication with the consumer and put a face to the Xbox brand. The explosive growth with Xbox Live has coincided with the traffic loads tied to Larry's blog. He is now the de-facto reference for gamers looking for the latest information and the amount of traffic and comments that Larry receives is staggering for a single blog. No other gaming publisher or hardware manufacturer has the visibility or reach via a single employee that Microsoft and the Xbox Live Brand has with Larry.

One of the key ROI takeaways from Larry's blog is that Community Server serves as a powerful tool for optimizing SEO of user-generated content. According to eMarketer, annual spending on search advertising in the US is expected to decrease YOY until 2012 (when compared to 2007). The built-in SEO functionality of Community Server helped grow visitors and members (17 million as of last week) by both direct and referred search. The other takeaway is the cost savings that are available to an organization or a brand by significantly decreasing the amount of spend on search advertising.

Here is a link to a recently published ROI case study on Larry and his usage of Community Server.

Social Network Analysis & Visualization

tom — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 02:56:00 GMT

This was a great post by Lawrence Liu of Telligent. Lawrence is the Director of Platform Strategy and discusses how he leveraged NodeXL to provide analysis and visualization of some data sets of interest but more importantly the correlation between the benefit of visualizing data that exists within social networks.

Read the full post

This was the analysis that Lawrence provided on my coverage within our internal social network.

Social Media and Your Campaign... Where is the Relevance???

tom — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 04:09:00 GMT

One of the golden rules of marketing is having the ability to show your business or clients the value of the campaign that you are running on their behalf. With traditional web campaigns you could methodically calculate ROI based on Click-through rate and project your results. With the introduction of social media traditional models of analytics do not apply and the true value proposition is clouded in the minds of business decision makers. With the economy in it's current state campaign dollars are less readily available and you better be able to deliver tangible results.

How can I show value? Is this the right investment? I know I need to connect with end users but what is the real value?

The key is social analytics that focus on campaign elements specifically around sentiment, tonality, social fingerprints and a model for calculating the incremental value of community.

If you are working on a viral brand awareness campaign how are you going to gauge the discussions that are occuring and the content that is generated within a social network and make sense of it? You need to have a mechanism to take all of the unstructured data and make sense of it all in order to show value. The only social analytic tool that I am aware of that can support campaigns in this manner is Harvest Reporting Server 2.0 by Telligent.

With Harvest you can combine campaign specific keywords with system driven keywords that flow through the Harvest sentiment analysis tools. The net result is gaining a clear understanding of how users interact with the brand and the campaign by analyzing the tonality of the conversations that are occuring. Be it positive or negative, understanding how users are interacting with your campaign allows for quick responses to negative associations or additional investment in areas that create positive responses.

Also with any campaign the user profile is key. Understanding not only how users interact with content but how they interact as a whole is a key step in delivering the right message at the right time. With a social analytic system you should leverage one that provides a fingerprint for how a user interacts. Within Harvest you have the ability to easily identify how a user interacts within the community.

Finally when it comes to launching micro-campaigns within an existing community or social network such as one based on Community Server you can leverage the group functionality to create a micro-community. With Harvest Reporting Server 2.0 you can then analyze just the data that is relevant to that group. The same sentiment analysis and other functionality is relevant even on the group level.

Telligent and Harvest do not have all of the answers... but the tools and solutions provide a framework that can assist you in the areas where it really counts. Organizational efficiency, social ROI, and social analytics are the key to unlocking the full potential tied to your unstructured data. Again what is the value of user generated content if you cannot quickly analyze it and make it meaningful.

Goals

tom — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 21:09:00 GMT

I don't know about you but I am driven by achievements. Yes I hear the laughter now and see the nodding of heads. I like to set an achievable goal and reach the objective. Maybe it is my military past or growing up in a military household but I like to have a clear objective that I can then pursue. Be it professional or personal I really enjoy a good challenge! This is what drives me professionally as it is a constant push to achieve x amount of revenue and margin.

At the beginning of this year I set a few arbitrary personal goals... outside of being the best father and husband that I can be:

1) 50,000+ Xbox 360 Gamerscore - This is one that I have been working towards since April 2007. Why... I don't really know why ;) Call it Market Research, Yeah that sounds good!!!
2) 50,000+ AA Miles (Platnium Status) - Since I travel so much I thought it would be fun to add some incentive to my travels
3) Run for at least 100 miles with Nike+ - Since I am a dad first, meaning most of my activities are home centric, running is one of the ways I workout. Setting a goal definitely adds to my motivation.

I am happy to share that I have now officially achieved these goals! I know it is arbitrary, what value does Gamerscore have? Outside of the ~10 cents per point that I have spent in $$$ not much other than to my friends who play as well. Airline miles??? Yes now I have the ability to sit on the plane a little bit longer. The only one that has any value is the running goal at least from an overall health perspective. But from my perspective these were primary personal objectives that I wanted to complete.

For me I find motivation in having a very clear set of objectives and working hard to achieve the goal. What motivates you? Do you set specific goals and work towards them? Do you wait for things to come to you? I am really interested in understanding how you find motivation to do what you do.

Harvest 2.0 and Advanced Social Analytics

tom — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 20:42:00 GMT

I interact with a number of clients on a daily basis and at some point in our conversations the discusssion ultimately leads to calculating return on investment (ROI) around social media.

With the hyper-growth being experienced in the social collaboration space it is imperative now more than ever that organizational decision makers ultimately understand the value of the solutions that they are associating with their digital marketing campaigns as well as across their organizations.

One of the key trends that has emerged is the need to track social analytics vs. traditional web analytics. The days of tracking and calculating value through CTR, etc... has changed. It is still important to understand where your traffic is coming from but now more than ever it is imperative to understand how users are interacting with each other, your content and your brand.

Telligent just released Harvest Reporting Server 2.0. Harvest 2.0 provides the ideal framework to understand the patterns, behaviors and trends that can help an organization better understand how to interact with their customers and each other by providing insight into the sentiment and tonality of the community, forecasting future behavior based on current trends and understanding how users interact via social fingerprints.

Sentiment analysis is a very important piece of understanding social analytics trends. Understanding the tonality of users be it positive or negative tied to your products, offerings and your brand is very valuable as you can make practical business decisions based on the interaction of your customers.

With social collaboration solutions becoming the norm with how organizations will interact with end-users, partners and employees it is imperative that all of the unstructured data that is collected is then aggregated in a usable format that immediately provides the key insight necessary to drive business forward in the most efficient manner.

Read the Official Press Release

Harvest Product Overview Sheet

Watch the Harvest video tutorial

See Harvest 2.0 in action

Gears of War 2 Today

tom — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 17:16:00 GMT

I cannot tell you how excited I am that today is the day for Gears of War 2. I will be taking a break from my Fallout 3 side quests to get in some social gaming. I have my Special Edition copy in hand and will be firing it up later this evening. The enhancements to the Unreal Engine look outstanding. Be sure to pick up your copy today.

On a side note... one recent observation is the sheer size of some of the latest strategy guides tied to the new releases. The Fallout 3 special edition strat guide was 350+ pages and the GOW2 guide is 303 pages. Seriously I am all for occassionally referencing a secret location but let's get these into wiki's or some format that allows for quick searching of relevant items. E.g. I want to know the location of COG tag "X"... quick search through a strat wiki would net me what I need. Yes you can spend a lot of time searching online, etc... but I want info from the source in a similar format to the guide. Just a thought.

For more info on Gears of War 2 here is an early review I wrote a few months back.

See you online!!!

Vote

tom — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 05:37:00 GMT

Regardless of your party affiliation it is imperative that you exercise your right to vote today.

Every vote counts (Well every electoral vote anyway). :)

New Xbox Experience Preview

tom — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 07:41:00 GMT

Today the New Xbox Experience Preview (The Xbox Live Fall Update) was released to a small group of users to provide feedback on the upcoming NXE release on the 19th of November.

Thanks again to Major Nelson for adding me to the queue to review the NXE.

The Update prompts like any other and your system will cycle. Then it took another 12 minutes to download and for the update to process.

Process just ended.... now greeted with a "Welcome to the New Xbox Experience" message. The Xbox logo fades and an animated sequence executes. Then I am prompted to login with my user profile.

Now it is on to avatar creation. The system gives you a base set of options to customize your likeness. It is a fairly simple system and it looks like it will be built around micro-transactions moving forward. My Avatar is now complete with fin... (See Below)

The rest of the experience is a nice addition to Live. The UI is slick and very easy to navigate. The Marketplace has been overhauled with some nice additions such as box shots for arcade titles and a more appealing flow than the previous lists upon lists of text.

My previous themes are still applicable and the gamerpic is still relevant as you have the option to use your avatar to post as your gamerpic.

The Video marketplace is where a big improvement was made. One of the big recent announcements is the support for NetFlix and HD movie content through Live. This will be a nice addition and allow for instant streaming of the latest HD movies.

The Friends area also received a nice treatment. You can view your friends avatars an get a nice boxshot of the games they are currently playing. You can also invite friends into an 8 person "party" session.

So far I do like the change. I was not sure how I would feel going to an avatar based system. But after giving it a go I have to say I am pleasantly surprised!

This is definitely a change for the better!

Pic of the NXE

9 Years

tom — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 15:30:00 GMT

I wanted to take a moment and thank my wife for the best 9 years of my life so far.

We were married in October of 1999 on this day and I consider myself the luckiest man in the world to have found a woman I love so deeply. Now after 9 years and 3 kiddos I still feel the same as I did 9 years ago.

Thank you Cherlyn for all that you do!

Happy Anniversary