Posts Tagged ‘Social media’
CMI B2B Content marketing report review
December 6th, 2011
The B2B Content Marketing: 2012 Budgets, Benchmarks and Trends report, was published yesterday by the Content Marketing Institute in the U.S., led by its founder Joe Pulizzi.
We usually try to focus on UK/Euro stats on this blog, but I found the data in this piece to be particularly interesting. You can see the full findings here, and the sample of 1,092 marketers was taken in August 2011, and focused on how well B2B marketers are achieving their goals when it comes to content marketing, and how much has changed in the past year.
The 2011 study follows the 2010 piece of the same name and therefore allows for comparison between this year and last year.
In brief, the report shows:
Usage and effectiveness
• 9 out of 10 organisations market with content marketing
• On average, B2B marketers employ eight different content marketing tactics to achieve their goals. The most popular tactics are: (see graph below for full breakdown)
- Article posting (79%)
- Social media (excluding blogs) (74%)
- Blogs (65%)
- eNewsletters (63%)
- case studies (58%)
- in-person events (56%)
• Marketers are using content marketing to support multiple business goals, led by:
- brand awareness (69%)
- customer acquisition (68%)
- lead generation (67%)
- customer retention/loyalty (62%)
The least widely employed goal for content marketing is lead management/nurturing.
Measurement
• Web traffic is the most widely used success metric (58%). However, this year, sales lead
quality (49%) is the second-highest used metric (versus direct sales in the previous study).
Budget
• Marketers, on average, spend over a quarter of their marketing budget on content marketing
• 60% report that they plan to increase their spend on content marketing over the next 12 months.
Challenges
The greatest reported challenge is “producing the kind of content that engages prospects
and customers” (41% of respondents). And nearly the same percentage of respondents in 2011 as in 2010 reported that “producing enough content” (20%) and “budget to produce content” (18%) are their greatest challenges in content marketing.
While in-person events and webinars are still seen as the most effective tactics, on average, the following ranked notably higher in perceived effectiveness compared to the 2010 report:
• Blogs: 45% increase
• Case studies: 32% increase
• Videos: 36% increase
• Webinars/webcasts: 25% increase
The challenges section will resonate with many marketers, identifying points that will continue to test brands of all types, specifically: producing the kind of content that engages prospects and customers, producing enough content, and budgeting to produce content, which is difficult enough without considering those organisations that have little or no experience of the resource required to produce high quality and engaging content in a consistent way.
Of the tactics, it was a bit of a shock to see blogs coming out highest in terms of perceived effectiveness compared to 2010. The general trend has been away from blogs, but perhaps this is a reflection of quality beginning to tell over quantity, as those that have actually put the effort into B2B blogs are now seeing the return over the ‘me too’ blogs that see very little in either response or effort.
Measurement is always a prickly subject, and it was no surprise to see web traffic ranking as the most popular, although sales lead quality is beginning to show a little more relevance for those B2B businesses putting the time in to identify metrics and better understand opportunities and outcomes.
61% of Britons do not want to engage with brands on social networks
November 10th, 2011
The findings of TNS’s Digital Life study, A global survey that is billed as the most comprehensive view of how more than 72,000 consumers in 60 countries behave online and why they do what they do, were revealed today.
The full details on the research can be seen here and in brief the survey found that 57 per cent of people in developed markets* do not want to engage with brands via social media - rising to 60 per cent in the US and 61 per cent in the UK. Of the 72,000 surveyed between June and September 2011, 2,093 were Britons.
However, the research also shows 47 per cent of digital consumers now comment about brands online, and 54 per cent of people admit social networks are a good place to learn about products, which shows a willingness to get involved where there is relevancy or a reward for doing so, proved by the following stat: 61 per cent of consumers are driven to engage with brands online by a promotion or special offer.
The figures are a little more encouraging in Fast growth markets** , which were found to be far more open to brands on social networks. Just 33 per cent of Colombians and 37 per cent of Mexicans said they don’t want to be bothered by brands online, while 59 per cent of people across fast-growing countries see social networks as a good place to learn about brands.
Interestingly, the findings showed that more people like to praise than complain online (13 per cent vs. 10 per cent), which goes against the old understanding that people are more likely to complain, if only just.
So does this mean that brands are wasting their time and money by developing social campaigns? Well, if they are doing it just to tick a box, or simply to say to the MD ‘we have a Facebook profile’, then yes, they are. This is not a new learning, bad social campaigns do more harm than good, and taking a broadcast methodology online will only serve to highlight the lack of understanding of the brand, and return little in the way of results.
Although there are many social commentators banging on about the importance of the theory of social communications and the importance of listening to a community, understanding its needs and holding a two-way conversation, none of which is new or exciting, the message doesn’t seem to be getting through.
There are many more bad examples of social brand campaigns than good ones, and research such as this only goes to prove that education isn’t getting through to those that hold the budgets, and perhaps also a reflection to those that the brands trust to carry out social campaigns.
There is no doubt that individuals as a whole do not particularly wish to engage with a brand online for no reason, unless of course they have an offer or reward, why would they?
However, if a brand, individual or charity is truly engaged with its community, offers relevant and useful content, understands the platform on which they are communicating and actually listens to its audience, the likelihood of engagement will be higher. Not because it’s a brand, but because the individual believes the engagement is worthwhile.
So, should we all go away and give up on social communications, or should we just start being social in our communications?
*TNS defines developed markets as: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Republic of Korea, Singapore, Slovak Republic, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, Taiwan, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States.
** Fast growth markets: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, China, Columbia, Egypt, Estonia, Ghana, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Tanzania, Thailand, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, Vietnam.
Social Media adoption stagnates among Fortune 500
October 27th, 2011
Interesting research from the University of Massachusetts shows that for the first time in 4 years there has been virtually no change in Fortune 500 companies adopting Facebook, Twitter or Blogging, which is a surprise to say the least.
According to the research by Dr. Nora Ganim Barnes, PhD, Senior Fellow, Society for New Communications Research & Chancellor Professor of Marketing at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, nearly one third of Fortune 500 are without either a Twitter or Facebook account. While the percent of companies blogging remains at 23%, that number now represents 114 companies with blogs instead of the 116 recorded last year.
Dr Barnes, suggests: “These results may signal a levelling off and possibly retrenchment when it comes to the adoption of social media among the 2011 Fortune 500. There is also evidence of change in the adoption of these tools by industry and a clear sign from some companies that these are not part of their communications strategy. Given that the Fortune 500 are the titans of American business, we may be seeing the slowdown in business adoption of social media. At the very least, this group appears to have slowed or stopped its adoption of the three most prominent tools - Blogging, Facebook and Twitter.”
The full research can be downloaded here and key findings include:
• 23% (114) of the primary Fortune 500 corporations have an external corporate blog. This represents a levelling off since 2010 and only a 1% increase over the 2009 study.
• Fortune 500 companies are blogging at a lower rate than other business groups, specifically the Inc. 500. In 2010, 50% of the Inc. 500 had corporate blogs and in 2009 45% had externally-facing corporate blogs.
• 62% (308) of Fortune 500 primary companies have corporate Twitter accounts. This is an increase of only 2% over the 2010 Fortune 500.
• 58% (289) of the 2010 Fortune 500 have a Facebook presence. There is an increase of only 2% over the 2010 Fortune 500.
• Specialty Retail stores are most likely to have a blog. These include Home Depot, Best Buy, Toys-R-Us and BJ’s Wholesale.
• 31% of the 2011 Fortune 500 do not have a Twitter account or a Facebook presence.
The figures are interesting for a number of reasons. Firstly, does this really show a slow down in social adoption among the biggest organisations in the U.S? Or simply a reflection of the vertical structure of the Fortune 500, which at this (still) relatively early stage of adoption means those outside of the key sectors (Retail, Auto, Finance, Travel for example) are unlikely to adopt as yet.
Could this slowdown be linked to a pull back on budgets as a direct result of the economic slow down, and a more sustained focus on traditional and boardroom-accepted communications / marketing focuses?
However, whatever potential excuses we put forward, it’s clear that there is still much to be done in terms of educating large corporates in social media adoption, and more specifically its potential benefit. We also need to put more focus on making social relevant to vertical organisations / sectors, by highlighting specific approaches such as Social CRM, and Social Business.
Social Media Marketing and Monitoring 2011
September 20th, 2011
We attended Social Media Marketing and Monitoring 2011 in London yesterday, and since its launch this event, developed and run by Luke Brynley-Jones at Our Social Times, has never disappointed.
This year the event included impressive speakers such as Charles Arthur (The Guardian) , Neville Hobson (Nevillehobson.com) and Jon Morter, Big Other (organiser of Rage against the X-Factor campaign).
The event covered a range of topics, including: Social Commerce, Location Marketing, Social Search, Social Media Monitoring, Social Media Management, B2B Social Media, Engagement & Social CRM and Integrated Marketing Campaigns.
The highlights for me were:
The first panel debate, which featuring Luke Brynley-Jones (Our Social Times), Charles Arthur (The Guardian), Neville Hobson (Nevillehobson.com), Wayne Gibbins (Viadeo) and Jenni Lloyd (Nixon McInnes).
The subject was ‘The Future of Social Networking’ and one of the first topics of debate was: have we ‘bloated our streams?‘ particularly Facebook, and is this fatigue or perhaps a maturing of social networking?
The panel also came out with a great statistic to highlight the difference in international usage of social networks: 48% of web users in China are content creators compared with 24% in the western world.
Neville Hobson outlined the difference between methods of measuring influence, which focused on PeerIndex’s founder who makes the distinction between “influencers” and “opinion formers”.
We then heard from PJ Verhoef at Clarion Consulting, who covered: The What, Why and How of Social Local Marketing, and hit us with a range of useful figures, including:
Over 50% of internet connections are location enabled smartphones and 20% of ALL search is mobile.
- 96% felt QR codes were useful, 92% would use it again.
- 55% of tweets are from a mobile.
- 55% of people will travel 15 minutes for a 10% discount.
Following a brief break, we went into a discussion on monitoring, measurement & engagement
Chair: Andrew Grill (PeopleBrowsr), Joshua March (Conversocial) , Giles Palmer (Brandwatch), Catriona Oldershaw (Synthesio), Tammy Kahn Fennell (MarketMeSuite)
Catriona Oldershaw made a good point about brands often having too many metrics and not enough measurable insights, and that social monitoring and responding shouldn’t be siloed, i.e. within an agency, or marketing department.
Andrew Grill used BT as an example of using Twitter engagement, stating BT has 25 people monitoring and talking to customers via Twitter.
Giles Palmer at Brandwatch referenced analysis that his team had completed on the top 200 brands in UK and U.S., which showed 5% UK, 8% U.S. brands are responding to customer service issues through social media.
Tammy Kahn Fennell from MarketMeSuite offered input on the issue of Compliance and liability through social media, confirming the law is going to have to catch up, but it is also going to have to understand we are social people.
One of the key discussion points centred around how the Metropolitan Police should have reacted to the London Riots.
Giles Palmer confirmed the issue was difficult to track as much of the conversation was on BBM (Blackberry Messenger) which is a closed network and so difficult to access/monitor.
However, assuming the data is public, he suggested sentiment analysis could be employed around hate management detection. i.e. normalising traditional language usage, and then monitoring ‘hate language analysis’ that could act as pre-cursors to potential unrest. He confirmed it would be important to set up alerts to bring in humans who will interpret the conversations and act appropriately.
Joshua March also made a good point, confirming he used Social Media during the riots to understand where to avoid, and where was safe to go, so it wasn’t all bad.
Then came one of the presentations that many of us had been waiting for: How I Beat Simon Cowell Using Social Media by Jon Morter - Big Other.
John gave an excellent presentation on his two campaigns to beat The XFactor to the Xmas number one. He used the learnings from his first campaign, which didn’t bring the desired results, and the successes of the second campaign, which as we know kept The XFactor from the number 1 spot, something that we should all be thankful for, at Christmas or any other time.
John achieved some amazing results through his campaign, including achieving 72,000 sales of the track in the last 3 hours after releasing a live version (which is more sales than is needed most weeks to top the chart).
Jon Morter also told us that he got a call from Simon Cowell 3 hours before the chart result was due to be issued. Apparently Simon congratulated him and offered him a drink, which he still has not yet followed up on.
You can read Gordon Macmillan’s write up here.
Then Raf Keustermans an independent Consultant, (former EA and Playfish) spoke about Using Gaming Mechanics for Marketing. His presentation offered real insight into the opportunities available through gamification, including:
Before 2008 games were Niche, a big but closed industry, which rose from 250M gamers in 2000, to over 1Billion gamers in 2011.
He also confirmed 150 billion minutes are spent every month on social games, that’s an average of 10 minutes for everyone on the planet.
Next, Marcus Taylor from SEOptimse spoke about Social Search & Social SEO for Marketing, and posed the question, through various experiments: ‘Does Facebook Likes have effect on Google rankings?’
His answer being: directly no, but as part of ‘ranking circle’ yes. And that it is safe to assume Google +1’s are an influencing factor towards search rankings.
Marcus also offered five tips on encouraging brand search and getting the benefits of personalised search:
1. Appear for comparison and head of tail key terms where people start stopping.
2. Be awesome and encourage return visits.
3. Run offline radio / TV / print) ads with a ‘search for us’ call to action (Pontiac were first to do this in the Superbowl).
4. Run branded events / sponsor events.
5. Link or reference search results from products - tell people to ‘search google for X” if you know you rank number 1 for that term.
There were also case studies on the day from Play.com, Captain Morgan’s Rum and BMi Baby, as well as a final panel discussion: Is Social Commerce the Future of e-Commerce? Chaired by Luke Brynley-Jones (Our Social Times) and featuring Peter Parkes (Expedia), Amy Kean (Havas Media), Jenny Chiu (BrandAlley), Robin Grant (We Are Social)
The event was a massive success, and congrats once again to Luke Brynley-Jones and the Our Social Times team.
Slides from most of the presentations are available at Our Social Times’ Slideshare.
Is marketing evolving through social media?
August 11th, 2011
Two opposing pieces focused on social media understanding within the marketing sector caught my attention earlier this month.
Allow me to set the scene, the following piece was published on the Telegraph’s site on August 1st: ‘Businesses still don’t ‘get’ social media - and it’s 40-year-old marketing directors that are to blame.‘ By Alexis Dormandy, of LoveThis.com
Here’s a snippet to whet your appetite:
“Our 40-year-old marketing director probably spent four years at an agency, before going to work on the client side. They spent the 1990s pulling together billboard campaigns, debating what they could say with the Advertising Standards Authority, agreeing joint promotions with other big businesses, and sponsoring celebrity sportsman. Life was still a lot of fun.
“They turned 30, the dot-com bubble came, and a small number of the more enterprising ones became entrepreneurs. Most kept rising up their businesses, learning to take eighteen months to launch a consumer product, and working with retailers to plan their Christmas sales nine months in advance. The really good ones rose to the top and had teams to look after all this stuff for them.”
Although obviously designed to be controversial, the article sparked some good debate, well in the main (see the comments on the Telegraph piece, some of which were not really about debate). However, one of the best reaction pieces was by Gordon MacMillan at Brand Republic: Are Generation X’s class of marketing directors to blame for businesses failing to get social media?
In his piece, Gordon opened up the requirements for a marketing director, confirming: “While he (Alexis) makes some interesting points, I’m sure he’s wrong. Marketing isn’t about analytics, maths and measurement. It is about ideas. Sure you have to understand all of the above, but being brilliant at understanding analytics is not going to help produce great marketing.”
I tend to agree with Gordon here, Alexis’ piece makes some strong points, and to be fair his piece starts off by focusing on social commerce, and in that case, analytics is crucial to deliver sales. However, marketing, or social media for that matter, is not just about, or mainly about, maths. Nor is it focused purely on data and analytical dissection of your audience.
Yes, I completely agree measurement and analytics is a hugely important part of the mix, and researching and understanding the brand’s community is the foundation for any campaign, combined with constant monitoring, measurement and evolution based on the numbers. However, although the importance of analytics and audience research has increased, it’s certainly not a new tactic, which is where I think the argument fails, are we really saying marketing campaigns did not employ market research and analytical measurement strategies 20 years ago?
I’m the first to agree the marketing landscape has changed, but the main point for me is not that we’ve just changed from long term campaigns to listening and engaging immediately, although that is true. It’s not that we just need great ideas, although again that’s part of it, and it’s not about the maths. The main issue is that we can’t live in our previously disparate and comfortable marketing specialisms, because the barriers have been blurring for so long that they are practically non-existent.
In-house marketers need to have a good understanding of the full range of marketing strategies, and to some degree, the possible tactics as well. As Gordon says, yes you can hire agencies to help with specific knowledge, and of course I support that, but the agencies are having to be more generalist as well.
The simple economic reason for this is: why would a client pay for three or four agencies to cover a range of specialisms (e.g. search, social, PR and web dev) when one can do them all - and do them better and more coherently without the painful time management required to bring agencies together?
That’s without even getting into the complementary nature of these services.
At Liberate Media, we experience a full range of enquires in terms of their understanding of social and how it should be utilised as part of any campaign. We have social-savvy clients that are fully immersed personally, through to RFPs from those that just want ‘some social media‘ because their boss or competitor mentioned it. This situation has improved dramatically over the last five years and today we are getting smarter briefs and better questions, and I expect that to continue developing.
I agree that the world of marketing has changed, and I think it’s a great change, and honestly believe marketing of the past was really advertising in disguise, as we were telling people what they need, not asking them what they want. Today we are truly grasping the meaning of marketing and evolving that role. Today we are able to call in specific and useful tools to assist in practically every element of our jobs, but the understanding across the board, the knowledge of what our customers want and how we can help them by being useful is the key for me. The maths, ideas and other elements are pieces of that puzzle, and to be successful we must solve it all.
I do however agree with the Telegraph piece that the social media managers of today will inherit the earth, or at least have the understanding, cross-discipline skills and versatility to have a bright future!
Twitter ye not … the end of social media as we know it
August 1st, 2011
Blimey! This is a long post for which I apologise. Hope you have time to read and get something from it because it’s about the end of social media as we know it. There. I’ve said it.
I scribbled this because a man who I’ve never met or engaged with online wrote a post about social media that, frankly, was a little discombobulating. Whether it deserved this post is moot, but there we are.
In his post on ELEARNSPACE George Siemens says:
“Google+ was a bit of a breaking point for me. After recreating my online social network (largely based on blogs from early 2000) in Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and Quora, G+ was a chore.
“I spent a few weeks of responding to G+ friend requests, trying to engage with a few people, posting a few random links, all the while trying to upkeep (occasionally) Twitter and (almost never) Facebook.
“I’ve concluded that most of the hype around social media is nonsense and that people, particularly the self-proclaimed social media elite are clothing-less.
“Sure, I’ll still continue to participate in those spaces periodically – as soon as this post is done, I’ll tweet it and share it on G+. Beyond that, however, social media is getting credit for things it’s merely flowing, not actually creating.
“Merely flowing, not creating” – now there is an inchoate phrase wrapped around a relative truth.
He makes a reasoned argument for his dystopian focus:
“A few things over the last few weeks have helped to crystallize this view. First, I saw this very silly post by Jeff Jarvis, pretending that a hashtag was the equivalent of a power movement. For me, this was a threshold moment where the noise of social media and the actual impact were starkly contrasted.
“The notion that a hashtag=power or the no one owns a hashtag appeal to power and fairness is absolute and utter nonsense. And reveals just how vacuous power social media users are in their orientation.
“We are left then, with a small group elitist new media users, trying to build consultancy around the tools, and telling others how wonderful they are. What has social media actually done? Very, very little. The reason? Social media is about flow, not substance.”
You should read the full post but meanwhile I’d add some thoughts and hope they are useful. First, he is positive about how online engagement has played an important part in his life, a feeling that we all draw on from time to time.
He drifts into personal contradictions as he pursues the central idea that social media is less than we think it is. Being online has helped him, social media sucks as a conduit and enabler of change. Contradictions are the way we progress so that’s a benefit.
He separates social media, which he describes as “emotion” from blogging, writing and transparent scholarship, which he equates with “intellect”.
Isn’t that where the argument dissolves?
Maybe I have misunderstood the function of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and SuckOnThis (sorry, I made that last one up).
But I thought that these platforms were now being used, whatever their antecedence, as a head of a funnel, a way to say “LOOK AT THIS. IT’S VERY IMPORTANT”. These are a first-base promotional opportunity, whether you want to share ideas around self-ventilating hats or the crisis in global economy,
Now, given the sceptical natures of the great majority of people on social networks, aided and abetted by the extraordinary numbers of social messages, the only differential is authority. And that is hard earned by being useful, relevant, positive, forward-thinking and sometimes right.
Twitter is the new Headline, backed by a degree of authority and trust. Facebook is the new Features, Gossip and Op-Ed pages, and LinkedIn is the new Business pages, to use imprecise analogies (aren’t they all?).
The new forms of constructed, detailed, thoughtful, edited, curated and often wrong information are being created as you read this. Same as it ever was … but with a twist. They will almost certainly not be the final form. Indeed, the social web works against any form of dominance in the means of communication. And that, alone, is a perfect joy.
Agreed on the hashtag, though. That was a big DUH!
George blogs regularly on ELEARNSPACE and on his connectivism site from time to time. He’s with the Technology Enhanced Knowledge Research Institute at Athabasca University and you can follow him on Twitter @gsiemens.
Tesco breaks into social with Bzzagent acquisition - via Dunnhumby
May 24th, 2011
Tesco has broken into the Social space with the acquisition of Bzzagent for $60 million, or at least Dunnhumby, owned by Tesco, has done the deal.
If you’re not familiar with Dunnhumby, it was acquired by Tesco not so long ago , and this isn’t the first acquisition by Dunnhumby. It purchased KSS Retail, a US price-modelling company, in early 2010 which offers a clue to what it is doing.
So, far from being a new diversification into a different market, which Tesco is well known for, this acquisition is in fact to strengthen Tesco’s loyalty and consumer comms/research and product marketing.
After all, Dunnhumby was the power behind the Tesco loyalty card which revolutionised retail in the 90s, and more precisely customer data, and has continued to keep Tesco’s grip on UK retail strong and forward-facing.
The trend of purchasing U.S. organisations is likely to be a planned strategy as Tesco has had its sights trained firmly on the U.S market for some time, and current stores on the other side of the Atlantic are doing well in a tough climate.
Bzzagent describes itself as a word of mouth agent that uses 800,000 BzzAgents (advocates), who are basically people that compete to be first in line to try free or discounted products to build awareness, make recommendations, talk about brands and ultimately drive sales.
By combining the data wealth of Dunnhumby, with the social intelligence and reach of Bzzagent, Tesco is clearly making a move for the social consumer and it seems to be well ahead of its competitors in this endeavour. Combining data with social knowledge and experience is a powerful advantage for Tesco, and this could be money well spent if it can make significant returns from social conversation and product marketing and sales.
For further information on Bzzagent and the deal, the following articles will be useful:
TechCrunch
AdWeek
The Drum
50% of UK businesses ban social media at work
May 11th, 2011
Research just published by Lewis Communications and HCL Technologies, found that from the 2,500 businesses surveyed, 48% ban their workers from posting updates on Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites.
Vineet Nayar, HCL Technologies’ chief executive, said: “It is quite remarkable that in this day and age, many employers are still putting their employees’ interests as a low priority by not allowing them to use sites like Facebook.
“Banning them outright will impact employees’ approach to work in a negative way, having a detrimental effect on the business as a whole.”
The next web comments, “Most companies are comfortable with staff taking ten minutes out for a cup of coffee, a cigarette or a chat in the canteen. So what’s wrong with staff posting the odd status update or firing out the occasional tweet”
For me it all comes down to social media staff guidelines and training. You should allow employees to tweet and use Facebook if they want to, do you stop them from reading papers? Additionally all your customers are probably online so you need to be aware of that too.
Social Media is a new form of communication. I’m sure these occurrences will decrease as businesses realise it is an important relationship building and monitoring tool.
Social CRM 2011 - London (overview)
May 9th, 2011
On Friday (May 6th) some of the Liberate Media Team went to Social CRM 2011 in London.
The event was developed by the team at Our Social Times, headed by Luke Brynley-Jones, to explore the latest tools and techniques for implementing a successful Social CRM strategy.You can read the official overview with presentation links here.
The day kicked off by trying to answer the question that was challenging us all: ‘What is Social CRM?’ Having discussed this issue with a number of attendees at the event there seemed to be some agreement that the term Social CRM may be one of the key issues effecting its development. Many do not understand the term, but most want to do it and in fact some already are, with varying degrees of success.
This is perhaps the perennial problem for social media, in its many forms and guises, all of which come with different titles and definitions.
So what of the speakers? The first was Brent Leary - Co-founder, CRM Essentials LLC who kicked off trying to explain The Social Contract: Realising the Promise of Social CRM
He began by identifying how the changes in web usage have led to Social CRM, highlighting that in 2005 Eric Schmidt - Google CEO announced there was 5M Terabytes of web information, this was before Facebook, Twitter and the new generation of mobile devices.
At that time, there were 20 million blogs, which have since grown to 200 million, with 1.2 Zettabytes of web info. This is predicted to grow to 35 trillion gigabytes by 2020.
He described current CRM as CIM (Customer Information Management), and highlighted that ‘organisations must provide content that builds trust, and helps customers do what is important to them.’
The issue is that Consumers believe that companies are not going the extra mile (AMEX quote) and that ‘2011 will bring an impressive increase in the amount of customer service delivered over social networks‘
The second presentation, ‘Three reasons you will do social CRM‘ was given by Esteban Kolsky - Founder, ThinkJar who is very passionate and knowledgeable on this subject.
He stated that: “Companies tend to start using social media to talk at their customers not to listen to them” and defined CRM as a philosophy and a business strategy, supported by a system and a technology, designed to improve human interactions in a business environment.
Esteban highlighted four key functions of Social CRM, and confirmed SocialCRM is merely a new way to translate social activities into CRM:
1. Community management
2. Social analytics engine
3. Actionable layer unit
4. System-of-record integration layer
He also offered the following key reasons why organisations should engage in SocialCRM:
1. Your customers are talking
2. Big data is coming - analytics engines will be crucial (not just about the amount of data, it’s about what you do with it)
3. It is about collaboration
Kolsky, brought us back to the bigger picture, saying Social CRM is just one step, the evolution is social business and then a collaborative enterprise.
He warned that ‘Companies must have social infrastructure inside that reflects, reinforces and develops external social customer links.’ And ‘Success in social media for business as it relates to customers can be considered social CRM success - for now.‘
I also noted Kolsky’s generational slides, which can be seen using the slideshare link:
10 year generational focuses
1960s - loyalty economy
1970s - service economy
1980s - personal computes
1990s - internet www
2000s - social evolution
Evolution of social deployments
1990 - CRM collaboration
2010 - SCRM E2.0
2015 - Social business
2020 - Collaborative enterprise
Up next was Mitch Lieberman - VP Strategic Marketing, Sword Ciboodle who presented on Coordination or Collaboration, and started off with a David Meerman Scott quote: ‘Nobody cares about your products, people care about their problems’ - and added ‘Customers do not want a relationship with your business, they want the benefits a relationship can offer to them’‘.
Lieberman made an important point that ‘Community is not only external - it’s internal as well.‘ And ‘You are traditionally the most Social part of the organisation - that has not changed.’
After a short break we went into the first of the monitoring services, and Catriona Oldershaw, of Synthesio UK who spoke about implementing enterprise class Social CRM offering case studies of tool usage, specifically for Accor Hotels.
She also highlighted the Synthesio tool by looking at the conversation around Prince William’s balding head during the recent Royal wedding, and suggested an opportunity to Regaine, while also identifying Pippa Middleton’s Facebook and Twitter profiles, which sprang up from the coverage of her bottom at the same event - e.g. @pippasass
We then went into a Discussion Panel on Implementing Social CRM for Brands.
Chair: Mark Tamis (Net-7), Esteban Kolsky (ThinkJar), Mitch Lieberman (Sword Ciboodle), Eric Stahl (Salesforce.com). This included some nice one liners such as:
‘95% of social data is noise. Stop fighting fires and focus on your most important customers.’
‘We need to connect the dots! How well do you know your customers? You may have their email address but do you have their Twitter ID or Facebook?’
Following lunch, Giles Palmer, Managing Director, Brandwatch who is always a great speaker, presented on How to Identify Social Media Mentions That Matter, with case studies on Nissan and redefining Social CRM as Web Based Customer Issues/Relations.
He also told us that ‘Google alerts finds less than 5% of the social media mentions that Brandwatch does‘, which will come as a shock to many that rely on Google Alerts alone as part of their social media monitoring.
We then heard from Salesforce.com, who spoke about ‘how to grow your internal corporate Network to leverage collective knowledge and experience, featuring Eric Stahl & Xabier Ormazabal - who did a live demo of Salesforce.com’s Chatter. This is a Facebook-like platform that allows organisations to internally follow colleagues, docs, opportunities and campaigns in the newsfeed.
Luis Carranza, Head of Social Media, Chemistry Communications Group presented Hit Me Up: Managing Multi-Channel Relationships for Marketing, in which he told us about hyper-connected networks and the need to focus on human interaction.
He confirmed that Content works best with the right context, and ‘finding someone’s passion points is essential.’
Luis gave us the run down on how Facebook rates content, looking at Affinity, Content Weight and Time’.
Richard Hughes, Head of Product Strategy, BroadVision, then offered 5 reasons Why Companies Need Their Own Social CRM Platform
1. Control the conversation - or at least some of the conversation, with the ability to steer the conversation. You have to accept people are going to say bad things about you, accept this then you get started!
2. Control the Platform
3. Complexity of relationships
4. Depth of Engagement
5. Connect your social ecosystem
Finally, Mark Tamis at Net-7 offered us an insight on the Future of Social CRM, confirming broadcasting and not listening is ineffective, and collaboration is the missing piece of the puzzle.
The last session was a panel debate on SCRM & The Customer Perspective: Privacy, Ownership & Expectations. Featuring Chair: Richard Sedley (Commercial Director, Foviance), Richard Hughes (BroadVision), Chris Butler (COO, WeCanDo.Biz) and Brent Leary (CRM Essentials).
This was a great way to finish off the session, with some good audience conversation around:
- Humanising the conversation. It’s not about the technology/data, it’s about the person using it.
- Encouraging us to avoid automated monitoring and interact with your followers
This session ended on a question from Luke Brynley-Jones about what the panel thinks about LinkedIn potentially going into Social CRM as an end game? Probably the best answer was: ‘what do they mean by social CRM?’
Congratulations to Luke and the Our Social Times team on another excellent event with a strong delegate list that offered really insightful conversation, not just during the sessions, but also throughout the networking elements and breaks.
Kenneth Cole - Social Media fail or social fail?
February 4th, 2011
No doubt you’ve heard all about the Kenneth Cole Twitter issue that broke yesterday (February 3rd) by now. If you haven’t, here’s a brief review:
Kenneth Cole, and I mean the man himself (apparently), tweets the following: “Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online at (adds link) KC.”
The ‘KC’ closing is a key part as it signifies Kenneth Cole tweeted this himself, and he has basically just tried to market his Spring collection around serious unrest in Egypt, which is turning the country upside down, causing wider instability in the region and taking lives of those on the ground fighting for what they believe to be right.
Wow! Without wishing to over simplify this, surely that’s amazingly insensitive and completely inappropriate to say the least.
On seeing the Tweet relatively early on, I watched the inevitable happen, as Kenneth and his business felt the full force of those with a social conscious, and access to various social networks (unlike those in Egypt). Some of my favourite examples are included below.
I did consider blogging on the issue at the time, but assumed it was fairly cut and dry; the stupidity of the Tweet will result in a hefty backlash. Kenneth Cole eventually sees the error of his ways as his wares are boycotted, and he becomes another social media case study, while we debate whether his actions were down to a lack of social media experience, or a lack of knowledge on the gravity of the unrest in Cairo.
However, it appears Kenneth has some supporters. I don’t want to get all moral on this blog, but i was amazed at the amount (although small overall) of people suggesting his tweet was a ‘funny’ or ‘innovative’ stunt.
One such example popped up, somewhat suspiciously on Chris Norton’s post on the subject, which i also commented on and put down to lack of understanding at best, or a ploy from somebody employed to lessen the backlash at worst, hence the suspicion.
However, the fact remains, even if you don’t agree that using such a sensitive issue as an excuse to sell your products is wrong, surely you must understand that many people do. And, some of those people not only buy the products in question, but also influence many others.
In other words; agree with it or not, this is a massive business mistake as well as a reflection of the brand, and as a result it will affect the business negatively.
Here’s a great example of a tactic (spoof account) one Tweeter used to express his/her emotions about the issue, and since then Kenneth has made this apology on Facebook, although the time this took and the earlier response; “Re Egypt tweet: we weren’t intending to make light of a serious situation. We understand the sensitivity of this historic moment -KC”‘, suggests the social issue may be bigger than the social media issue in this case. The 403 responses (at time of writing) may also offer additional insight for anyone unsure of the problem.