When one of the biggest global management consulting firms decides to build a social business consulting practice, you know that big business is taking notice and asking for help. In a recent blog post Mark Fidelman profiles how CapGemini is making the move to help its customers figure out their social business strategy, very interesting I think.
Social business is far more than social media. Even using the term "social" in this context seems to trivialize what is a radical transformation in the midst where corporations and businesses of all sizes, in all industries, are finding innovative ways to leverage social technologies to foster innovation, deepen relationships with customers and connect employees in new, more meaningful and efficient ways.
As we enter 2012 and beyond it will be fascinating to watch which brands get it and which ones do not. Those that fail to evolve and adopt a real social business strategy will likely not survive in the long-run as customers will defect to brands that truly listen AND act. And employees also gravitate towards careers with businesses that empower them through the social technologies they have in place; allowing for accelerated career and idea advancement without the more traditional structures of power and control that still exist today.
You can read more about this in the full report from MIT and CapGemi, Digital Transformation: A Roadmap for Billion-Dollar Organizations.
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Monday, November 21, 2011
Measuring Content Engagement with Share of Choice
So I've been working on and refining my perspective around social media measurement for the past five years and I feel that I've been exposed to or heard the vast majority of ideas around metrics. Recently though while at Pivot I heard something new that stuck with me. The concept is "share of choice".
Whereas "share of voice" is a competitive metric I've been measuring for years, "share of choice" is a nice twist and meaningful competitive metric. It offers a new way to move beyond comparing conversation volume and to evaluate the important area of content engagement. While you want people to talk about your brand and products online, what you really want them to do is take action and demonstrate preference as well.
To make this distinction more clear, share of choice can be understood and defined as how often your brand is chosen to be engaged with versus your competitive set. As compared to share of voice, which evaluates the relative volume of conversation around your brand or products versus that of your competitors. I like how share of choice offers a view into understanding brand preference through people's direct actions of literally choosing to click on and view your video content.
With the increasing use and consumption of online video, I believe that determining how often your content is chosen versus that of your competitors is not only a relevant information point but can sincerely help you evaluate how well your content is resonating with your target audience, and in cases where it's not, enable you to learn from what your competition is doing well.
Whereas "share of voice" is a competitive metric I've been measuring for years, "share of choice" is a nice twist and meaningful competitive metric. It offers a new way to move beyond comparing conversation volume and to evaluate the important area of content engagement. While you want people to talk about your brand and products online, what you really want them to do is take action and demonstrate preference as well.
To make this distinction more clear, share of choice can be understood and defined as how often your brand is chosen to be engaged with versus your competitive set. As compared to share of voice, which evaluates the relative volume of conversation around your brand or products versus that of your competitors. I like how share of choice offers a view into understanding brand preference through people's direct actions of literally choosing to click on and view your video content.
With the increasing use and consumption of online video, I believe that determining how often your content is chosen versus that of your competitors is not only a relevant information point but can sincerely help you evaluate how well your content is resonating with your target audience, and in cases where it's not, enable you to learn from what your competition is doing well.
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Online Influence and The Nuances of Measurement
Online Influence and the ability to identify relevant online influencers for a brand, product or service is not only a hot topic in marketing today but also a field of measurement that is rapidly evolving as we continue to learn more. With the ability to observe connections between people and uncover individuals whose opinion matters within different spheres of conversation, services like Klout and Kred are giving marketers more sophisticated tools for analysis and interpretation of the ever-evolving social media landscape.
I recently had the opportunity to attend the Pivot Conference in New York city; an event focused on the connected consumer and how this new breed of customer is having a sincere impact on the ways that brands market, communicate and build trusted relationships. There were many fascinating sessions and topics discussed at Pivot. For me one of the more interesting was a panel led by David Armano discussing online influence. The panel included Joe Fernandez, CEO and Founder of Klout, Larry Levy, Co-founder and CEO of Appinions, Elisa Camahort Page, Co-founder and COO of BlogHer; essentially people who should be quite well versed in the theory and practice of influence and influencer identification.
While I've personally been working on influencer programs and discussing with clients all the various attributes that constitute influence, I think the panel did a great job of distilling online influence into a few logical categories that made a lot of sense to me. They broke the forms of influence into the following schema:
1.) Topical: where someone has influence in a topic of content or expertise
2.) Temporal: where someone has influence within a defined span of time
3.) Identity-based: where there is life-style association and affinity amongst the audience and influencer
While there were certainly other nuanced definitions and sub-categories discussed such at likeness, experience and expertise, these three seemed to bring clarity to how you should be thinking about the influencers you might be looking for.
I recently had the opportunity to attend the Pivot Conference in New York city; an event focused on the connected consumer and how this new breed of customer is having a sincere impact on the ways that brands market, communicate and build trusted relationships. There were many fascinating sessions and topics discussed at Pivot. For me one of the more interesting was a panel led by David Armano discussing online influence. The panel included Joe Fernandez, CEO and Founder of Klout, Larry Levy, Co-founder and CEO of Appinions, Elisa Camahort Page, Co-founder and COO of BlogHer; essentially people who should be quite well versed in the theory and practice of influence and influencer identification.
While I've personally been working on influencer programs and discussing with clients all the various attributes that constitute influence, I think the panel did a great job of distilling online influence into a few logical categories that made a lot of sense to me. They broke the forms of influence into the following schema:
1.) Topical: where someone has influence in a topic of content or expertise
2.) Temporal: where someone has influence within a defined span of time
3.) Identity-based: where there is life-style association and affinity amongst the audience and influencer
While there were certainly other nuanced definitions and sub-categories discussed such at likeness, experience and expertise, these three seemed to bring clarity to how you should be thinking about the influencers you might be looking for.
Friday, November 18, 2011
The Social Media Marketing Plan: 12 Critical Questions for Planners
Originally published on The New Group blog on 10.1.11
Faced with the request to create a social media marketing plan for your organization?
Crafting a defensible social media marketing plan can be time-consuming and even frustrating if you don't have a good framework to build your social media plan around. By considering the right questions up front you'll set yourself up for success.
The following 12 questions are helpful to consider when creating your social media marketing plan. Thoughtfully answer these questions before you jump in and start posting content, engaging with customers and orchestrating conversations around your brand.
1. What are our strategic vision and business goals for social?
2. What does integrating social mean for our organization?
3. From a marketing and operations perspective where does social fit?
4. What are realistic objectives to pursue?
5. What's our social channel mix?
6. What role does each social channel serve and what's our approach to each?
7. How will we measure success?
8. What content should we invest in?
9. What else should we invest in?
10. How do we get people to share?
11. What's the 90-day plan?
12. What's next on the 12-month horizon?
By taking a methodical and analytical approach you'll be prepared to measure social media marketing tactics and analyze results, learn what really works for your business and ultimately understand the relationship of social marketing programs to your business objectives. However, having consensus on the right social media strategy for your brand is critical to making smart decisions as you gain momentum and grow your social media programs. Plan accordingly and get your internal and external stakeholders on board before just doing something for the sake of doing something.
An additional concept also worth considering is the bigger-picture opportunity that developing a social media marketing plan brings up. What I mean is the bigger picture of social business and what else you should be considering beyond just social media marketing.
Think about what it means to integrate social into the way your brand conducts business. Consider what this means, for example, in the context of driving real business innovation and connecting people globally to harness the collective intelligence of your organization. Social can play an important role.
Faced with the request to create a social media marketing plan for your organization?
Crafting a defensible social media marketing plan can be time-consuming and even frustrating if you don't have a good framework to build your social media plan around. By considering the right questions up front you'll set yourself up for success.
The following 12 questions are helpful to consider when creating your social media marketing plan. Thoughtfully answer these questions before you jump in and start posting content, engaging with customers and orchestrating conversations around your brand.
1. What are our strategic vision and business goals for social?
2. What does integrating social mean for our organization?
3. From a marketing and operations perspective where does social fit?
4. What are realistic objectives to pursue?
5. What's our social channel mix?
6. What role does each social channel serve and what's our approach to each?
7. How will we measure success?
8. What content should we invest in?
9. What else should we invest in?
10. How do we get people to share?
11. What's the 90-day plan?
12. What's next on the 12-month horizon?
By taking a methodical and analytical approach you'll be prepared to measure social media marketing tactics and analyze results, learn what really works for your business and ultimately understand the relationship of social marketing programs to your business objectives. However, having consensus on the right social media strategy for your brand is critical to making smart decisions as you gain momentum and grow your social media programs. Plan accordingly and get your internal and external stakeholders on board before just doing something for the sake of doing something.
An additional concept also worth considering is the bigger-picture opportunity that developing a social media marketing plan brings up. What I mean is the bigger picture of social business and what else you should be considering beyond just social media marketing.
Think about what it means to integrate social into the way your brand conducts business. Consider what this means, for example, in the context of driving real business innovation and connecting people globally to harness the collective intelligence of your organization. Social can play an important role.
Social Branding: Is Social Marketing Right for My Brand?
This post was originally conceived and written by Derek Phillips when we worked together at The New Group. I subsequently edited some of the content. Derek is a seasoned content strategist whose opinions and work I highly respect. Derek is currently a Content Director at Critical Mass.
Originally published on The New Group blog.
Social branding: Is social marketing right for my brand? It's an important question. Fundamentally I believe there is opportunity for all brands to leverage social marketing, but it all depends on how broad your perspective is.
Many brands today think of social marketing as simply Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Others understand the power of monitoring and nurturing conversations in public online forums, and even fewer are yet to tap into the power of private online communities to spur innovation around their products, marketing and business model. The point here is that social marketing and social media are much bigger than just "likes" and "retweets." While those are aspects of social marketing, the bigger conversation is about social business and how to leverage social channels, technologies and human behaviors to build better, more responsive and ultimately more profitable brands.
As digital marketing strategists we're often asked how we can prove ROI on social marketing investments. Honestly there are a variety of answers to that question, but it often helps to consider other parallel investments that you probably already budget for today. Ask yourself what ROI metrics you and other companies apply to public relations, customer service, customer insights research and business innovation.
Too often people see social media as simply a marketing channel where the point is to gather as many "brand ambassadors" or "evangelists" as you can and the measure of success is how many people have liked your brand page on Facebook. While it's true that some brands can motivate legions of fans on their behalf, that's not necessarily true of all brands and misses huge opportunities that the social space offers outside of messaging and promotions. Below are some further thoughts on how you might think about social media as it relates to areas of your brand that you likely already invest in today.
Social Branding Through Public Relations
It used to be that companies hired PR professionals because those people had access to and relationships with the gatekeepers of media, thus providing access to audiences. While the value and need for PR professionals remains, the way these professionals do their jobs has changed and it's something we can all learn from.
1. Access to audiences is no longer gated by mass media (which doesn't mean that mass media doesn't have its place—it does, it's just not the ONLY way to access audiences).
2. Conversations about your brand are happening now and you can learn from them even if you decide not to engage.
3. It's easier to put out a small, smoldering fire than a raging blaze.
Even if it doesn't make sense (either from a legal or an organizational politics perspective) to directly engage users who speak ill of your brand, wouldn't you like to know what negative messages are resonating with real customers so you can prepare and take action before it becomes a much larger and more complicated issue?
Social Branding as Social Customer Service
One of the most overlooked opportunities in social marketing is what some are calling SCRM or Social Customer Relationship Management. In its simplest form it's applying a social layer to standard CRM practices and has value across each of the three phases of traditional CRM:
1. Acquire
2. Enhance
3. Retain
Acquisition can be achieved through a variety of social marketing promotions that encourage people to engage with your brand and are propelled by leveraging their social networks. We've all seen those campaigns:
* "Retweet this for a chance to win!"
* "Like our page and get 10% off your next purchase!"
* "The foursquare mayor of this establishment gets a free dessert with every meal!"
Enhancement can include access to exclusive content and events or direct interaction with people of interest. TV shows have leveraged these opportunities to keep viewers engaged beyond the 30- or 60-minute timeslot. From online chats ("Real Time with Bill Maher") to deleted scenes ("The Office") to extended interviews ("The Daily Show"), there are countless opportunities for creative brands to keep that audience engaged…and it's not just media companies.
The true genius of the notorious Old Spice campaign is that it took a TV commercial character who was resonating with fans and extended the campaign to a social sphere where those fans could directly interact with the character—and spread word of the campaign as a result. The millions of dollars in earned media are still being tallied.
Customer retention is a challenge for most companies, and a costly one at that. Most people, even the loudest and most obnoxious among us, just want to be heard. We want to feel good about our purchases and be acknowledged when we have issues. Social media allows savvy brands the opportunity to not only address the person who is directly affected, but show others that you're doing it. Most customer service complaints are related to common issues (that's why so many companies employ scripts). Address once and resolve for many. Even if you can't come to an immediate resolution, the fact that you're engaging and treating your customers with respect has resonating value.
Customer Insights from Social Brand Building
There are enormous opportunities to gather customer insights via social channels. The short story is that people are out there talking about your brands and your products and you can listen in to find out what they really think about your latest ad campaign or how they're actually using your products. Customers can be very clever in discovering new uses for products, and understanding that can lead to optimizing how you market and enhance those products.
Social Branding Through Business Innovation
An area that forward-looking social brands have already benefitted from is using social technologies to connect global internal teams as well as connect marketers and product developers with passionate customers to decrease time to market and unearth new directions to pursue.
This is a meaty topic deserving of a dedicated blog post, but for now let me just say that building internal social communities to connect employees around ideas and to connect customers with the people shaping your products is an area that many brands could benefit from.
So is it appropriate for all brands to have social outreach and engagement programs? No, probably not, but that doesn't mean there aren't real opportunities in social marketing, and the ROI on those activities can be substantial.
Originally published on The New Group blog.
Social branding: Is social marketing right for my brand? It's an important question. Fundamentally I believe there is opportunity for all brands to leverage social marketing, but it all depends on how broad your perspective is.
Many brands today think of social marketing as simply Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Others understand the power of monitoring and nurturing conversations in public online forums, and even fewer are yet to tap into the power of private online communities to spur innovation around their products, marketing and business model. The point here is that social marketing and social media are much bigger than just "likes" and "retweets." While those are aspects of social marketing, the bigger conversation is about social business and how to leverage social channels, technologies and human behaviors to build better, more responsive and ultimately more profitable brands.
As digital marketing strategists we're often asked how we can prove ROI on social marketing investments. Honestly there are a variety of answers to that question, but it often helps to consider other parallel investments that you probably already budget for today. Ask yourself what ROI metrics you and other companies apply to public relations, customer service, customer insights research and business innovation.
Too often people see social media as simply a marketing channel where the point is to gather as many "brand ambassadors" or "evangelists" as you can and the measure of success is how many people have liked your brand page on Facebook. While it's true that some brands can motivate legions of fans on their behalf, that's not necessarily true of all brands and misses huge opportunities that the social space offers outside of messaging and promotions. Below are some further thoughts on how you might think about social media as it relates to areas of your brand that you likely already invest in today.
Social Branding Through Public Relations
It used to be that companies hired PR professionals because those people had access to and relationships with the gatekeepers of media, thus providing access to audiences. While the value and need for PR professionals remains, the way these professionals do their jobs has changed and it's something we can all learn from.
1. Access to audiences is no longer gated by mass media (which doesn't mean that mass media doesn't have its place—it does, it's just not the ONLY way to access audiences).
2. Conversations about your brand are happening now and you can learn from them even if you decide not to engage.
3. It's easier to put out a small, smoldering fire than a raging blaze.
Even if it doesn't make sense (either from a legal or an organizational politics perspective) to directly engage users who speak ill of your brand, wouldn't you like to know what negative messages are resonating with real customers so you can prepare and take action before it becomes a much larger and more complicated issue?
Social Branding as Social Customer Service
One of the most overlooked opportunities in social marketing is what some are calling SCRM or Social Customer Relationship Management. In its simplest form it's applying a social layer to standard CRM practices and has value across each of the three phases of traditional CRM:
1. Acquire
2. Enhance
3. Retain
Acquisition can be achieved through a variety of social marketing promotions that encourage people to engage with your brand and are propelled by leveraging their social networks. We've all seen those campaigns:
* "Retweet this for a chance to win!"
* "Like our page and get 10% off your next purchase!"
* "The foursquare mayor of this establishment gets a free dessert with every meal!"
Enhancement can include access to exclusive content and events or direct interaction with people of interest. TV shows have leveraged these opportunities to keep viewers engaged beyond the 30- or 60-minute timeslot. From online chats ("Real Time with Bill Maher") to deleted scenes ("The Office") to extended interviews ("The Daily Show"), there are countless opportunities for creative brands to keep that audience engaged…and it's not just media companies.
The true genius of the notorious Old Spice campaign is that it took a TV commercial character who was resonating with fans and extended the campaign to a social sphere where those fans could directly interact with the character—and spread word of the campaign as a result. The millions of dollars in earned media are still being tallied.
Customer retention is a challenge for most companies, and a costly one at that. Most people, even the loudest and most obnoxious among us, just want to be heard. We want to feel good about our purchases and be acknowledged when we have issues. Social media allows savvy brands the opportunity to not only address the person who is directly affected, but show others that you're doing it. Most customer service complaints are related to common issues (that's why so many companies employ scripts). Address once and resolve for many. Even if you can't come to an immediate resolution, the fact that you're engaging and treating your customers with respect has resonating value.
Customer Insights from Social Brand Building
There are enormous opportunities to gather customer insights via social channels. The short story is that people are out there talking about your brands and your products and you can listen in to find out what they really think about your latest ad campaign or how they're actually using your products. Customers can be very clever in discovering new uses for products, and understanding that can lead to optimizing how you market and enhance those products.
Social Branding Through Business Innovation
An area that forward-looking social brands have already benefitted from is using social technologies to connect global internal teams as well as connect marketers and product developers with passionate customers to decrease time to market and unearth new directions to pursue.
This is a meaty topic deserving of a dedicated blog post, but for now let me just say that building internal social communities to connect employees around ideas and to connect customers with the people shaping your products is an area that many brands could benefit from.
So is it appropriate for all brands to have social outreach and engagement programs? No, probably not, but that doesn't mean there aren't real opportunities in social marketing, and the ROI on those activities can be substantial.
Social Monitoring for More Effective Media Planning
Originally published on The New Group blog on 10.1.11
Given the current and growing trends in business and consumer usage of social media, it's quite clear that media planners need to incorporate not only social properties into their mix but also social monitoring insights in order to build the most targeted, cost-efficient and results-driving media plans.
This means taking a comprehensive view with respect to how we as people interact with brand-produced, earned and consumer-generated media, and using these insights to architect the most relevant touch points for consumer and business customer interactions with brands: at the right time, within the right context, at the right place.
Using social monitoring is an important topic that we as marketing strategists continue to learn more about and refine our perspective on. I'm happy to have found a great presentation from the smart folks over at Forrester Research and Networked Insights that digs deeper into this topical area.
Since I'm a concept guy, I thought I'd share a few of the most interesting concepts presented in this presentation. Here they are:
* Incorporating social conversation catalysts into creative
* Starting with digital first, then editing for TV
* Next layer filters
* Directional indicators
* Contextual discovery
* Spending the "minimal effective amount"
* Making your TV media buys work harder with social
* Social data as a leading indicator to project audience growth
* Dynamic segmentation
* Real-timing sensing
* Using social data sequencing
* Social lift scores
I've long held the belief that you need to go beyond psychographic and demographic data and tap into an understanding of influence to make your media dollars work harder. This presentation really helps take that concept and add some further detail around how and why.
Bottom line, great presentation, excellent ideas that really add value to where media planning is and needs to be going, thanks again to Forrester and Networked Insights. If you've got 45 minutes to spare, grab a coffee and check it out.
Given the current and growing trends in business and consumer usage of social media, it's quite clear that media planners need to incorporate not only social properties into their mix but also social monitoring insights in order to build the most targeted, cost-efficient and results-driving media plans.
This means taking a comprehensive view with respect to how we as people interact with brand-produced, earned and consumer-generated media, and using these insights to architect the most relevant touch points for consumer and business customer interactions with brands: at the right time, within the right context, at the right place.
Using social monitoring is an important topic that we as marketing strategists continue to learn more about and refine our perspective on. I'm happy to have found a great presentation from the smart folks over at Forrester Research and Networked Insights that digs deeper into this topical area.
Since I'm a concept guy, I thought I'd share a few of the most interesting concepts presented in this presentation. Here they are:
* Incorporating social conversation catalysts into creative
* Starting with digital first, then editing for TV
* Next layer filters
* Directional indicators
* Contextual discovery
* Spending the "minimal effective amount"
* Making your TV media buys work harder with social
* Social data as a leading indicator to project audience growth
* Dynamic segmentation
* Real-timing sensing
* Using social data sequencing
* Social lift scores
I've long held the belief that you need to go beyond psychographic and demographic data and tap into an understanding of influence to make your media dollars work harder. This presentation really helps take that concept and add some further detail around how and why.
How to Infuse Media Planning with Social Data - Networked Insights & Forrester from Networked Insights on Vimeo.
Bottom line, great presentation, excellent ideas that really add value to where media planning is and needs to be going, thanks again to Forrester and Networked Insights. If you've got 45 minutes to spare, grab a coffee and check it out.
Social Media Monitoring—Choosing the Right Tool
Originally published on The New Group blog on 10.1.11
If you're a marketing strategy professional you know the importance of customer insights. Additionally, you know that you must incorporate the behavioral and conversational insights from the way business people and consumers are using social media today. With this an important question rapidly becomes: what's the best social media monitoring tool for my brand or business unit?
Well, it depends. Do you need to conduct historical analysis—and if so, over what time frame? Or do you need a tool that excels at real-time monitoring—if so, what social channels are most critical for your social media programs? Are you trying to identify and track your interactions with online influencers—and if so, do you need to coordinate the outreach efforts of multiple people or departments in your organization? Is closed-loop tracking of your outreach efforts a requirement or just a nice to have? These are not all, but certainly some, of the important questions you'll want to consider as you evaluate what the best-fit social media monitoring tool will be for your brand or business unit.
Over the past five plus years we've seen a plethora of social media monitoring tools enter the market. At The New Group we were early adopters and have used a number of tools including Social Radar, Radian6, Nielsen Buzzmetrics, Buzz Logic (before it turned into a social advertising network), Scout Labs (before it was purchased by Lithium), Alterian SM2 and Sysomos. We've conducted our own research into more than 30 tools and generally take a deep look at the social media monitoring tool market about twice a year.
Currently our tool of choice is Sysomos. Far and away, our favorite feature is speed, and the user interface is pretty friendly too. Speed is crucial to our social media listening workflow. Social media isn't slowing down anytime soon, so tools that cannot return real-time results are quickly becoming obsolete. However, depending on your particular situation, a different tool might better serve your needs. There really is no perfect one-size-fits-all social media monitoring tool on the market today. If you start with that mindset then you'll be a happier camper with the tool you end up selecting in the end.
If you're a marketing strategy professional you know the importance of customer insights. Additionally, you know that you must incorporate the behavioral and conversational insights from the way business people and consumers are using social media today. With this an important question rapidly becomes: what's the best social media monitoring tool for my brand or business unit?
Well, it depends. Do you need to conduct historical analysis—and if so, over what time frame? Or do you need a tool that excels at real-time monitoring—if so, what social channels are most critical for your social media programs? Are you trying to identify and track your interactions with online influencers—and if so, do you need to coordinate the outreach efforts of multiple people or departments in your organization? Is closed-loop tracking of your outreach efforts a requirement or just a nice to have? These are not all, but certainly some, of the important questions you'll want to consider as you evaluate what the best-fit social media monitoring tool will be for your brand or business unit.
Over the past five plus years we've seen a plethora of social media monitoring tools enter the market. At The New Group we were early adopters and have used a number of tools including Social Radar, Radian6, Nielsen Buzzmetrics, Buzz Logic (before it turned into a social advertising network), Scout Labs (before it was purchased by Lithium), Alterian SM2 and Sysomos. We've conducted our own research into more than 30 tools and generally take a deep look at the social media monitoring tool market about twice a year.
Currently our tool of choice is Sysomos. Far and away, our favorite feature is speed, and the user interface is pretty friendly too. Speed is crucial to our social media listening workflow. Social media isn't slowing down anytime soon, so tools that cannot return real-time results are quickly becoming obsolete. However, depending on your particular situation, a different tool might better serve your needs. There really is no perfect one-size-fits-all social media monitoring tool on the market today. If you start with that mindset then you'll be a happier camper with the tool you end up selecting in the end.
Behavioral Advertising Units Informing the Consumer
Originally published on The New Group blog on 7.2.10
Would you like to learn more about why you are seeing this ad?
Behaviorally targeted online advertising has been under increasing scrutiny lately; here's a good example of enabling consumers to be more informed about what they're seeing, and to make a choice. You're still going to see advertising online, but you may now be getting just a little more choice about what.
Would you like to learn more about why you are seeing this ad?
Behaviorally targeted online advertising has been under increasing scrutiny lately; here's a good example of enabling consumers to be more informed about what they're seeing, and to make a choice. You're still going to see advertising online, but you may now be getting just a little more choice about what.
Mobile Content Engagement and Usage Trends
Originally published on The New Group blog on 6.17.10
I know how much I use my iPhone and how often I check my surf forecast and weather apps, but some recent stats published in the MediaPost Mobile Insider newsletter are worth considering for a moment.
"the iPhone version of GQ magazine is seeing almost the same levels of monthly engagement (65-70 minutes) as the print magazine (80 minutes). Compare those numbers to GQ.com, which gets a measly 10 minutes a month."
If these early trends reported by publishers continue in the direction of heavy mobile engagement, the bigger question really becomes about the role of a "traditional" website meant for viewing via a laptop or desktop monitor. While I don't believe these form factors are going away anytime soon, one interesting question for me is what will mobile innovation look like over the next few years?
There's more stats in the full article if you're curious about this topic: Mobile: What the Web Should Have Been?
I know how much I use my iPhone and how often I check my surf forecast and weather apps, but some recent stats published in the MediaPost Mobile Insider newsletter are worth considering for a moment.
"the iPhone version of GQ magazine is seeing almost the same levels of monthly engagement (65-70 minutes) as the print magazine (80 minutes). Compare those numbers to GQ.com, which gets a measly 10 minutes a month."
If these early trends reported by publishers continue in the direction of heavy mobile engagement, the bigger question really becomes about the role of a "traditional" website meant for viewing via a laptop or desktop monitor. While I don't believe these form factors are going away anytime soon, one interesting question for me is what will mobile innovation look like over the next few years?
There's more stats in the full article if you're curious about this topic: Mobile: What the Web Should Have Been?
Mining Social Relationship Data for Serving Your Online Ads
Originally published on The New Group blog on 5.26.10
Should you or should you not mine the deep social connections between your customers and their friends as a source for finding new customers? This appears to be the next wave of socially-targeted advertising that is happening on the web, and based on a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, with impressive results.
There’s a handful of new measurement technologies in the market that are enabling this type of contextual, socially-targeted advertising. Through sophisticated data mining and relationship mapping, leveraging people’s social graph of connections, companies are now able to target messages and offers to the peers of their customers. Pretty cool I think, but I’m sure there’s others who will be paranoid about this stuff.
With all the scrutiny of behavioral targeting going on these days, this will likely be another interesting space to watch. It sounds promising, and I look forward to testing it out. While data-mapping connections between people seems to be a powerful way to target your ads; will it survive legislation that regulates it? I’m not sure yet. For the moment though, here are a few of the companies who are making it happen:
Meteor Solutions
33 Across
Media6degrees
Lotame
Should you or should you not mine the deep social connections between your customers and their friends as a source for finding new customers? This appears to be the next wave of socially-targeted advertising that is happening on the web, and based on a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, with impressive results.
There’s a handful of new measurement technologies in the market that are enabling this type of contextual, socially-targeted advertising. Through sophisticated data mining and relationship mapping, leveraging people’s social graph of connections, companies are now able to target messages and offers to the peers of their customers. Pretty cool I think, but I’m sure there’s others who will be paranoid about this stuff.
With all the scrutiny of behavioral targeting going on these days, this will likely be another interesting space to watch. It sounds promising, and I look forward to testing it out. While data-mapping connections between people seems to be a powerful way to target your ads; will it survive legislation that regulates it? I’m not sure yet. For the moment though, here are a few of the companies who are making it happen:
Meteor Solutions
33 Across
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Measuring Twitter to Understand Personas
Originally published on The New Group blog on 12.7.09
Do you know the psychological profile that your trail of tweets tells about you? TweetPsych just may be able to tell you. Another new entrant into the ever expanding world of Twitter measurement tools,TweetPsych is uniquley different in that it seeks to provide a psychological profile of a person through deep linguistic analysis of their tweets. I'm always looking for tools that can provide insight into people's mindset and provide data that helps to build a more accurate persona, TweetPsych is a facinating discovery. It will be interesting to see how it evolves over time.
Here's what I just learned about myself (although it would help if I had more tweets for the tool to analyze!)
Furthermore tools like TweetPsych hold great promise for helping us (as marketers) better understand the people we want to interact with through Twitter, thus providing insight to fuel content and related marketing strategy decisions. Very cool stuff.
Thanks to Avinash for blogging about this and other new Twitter measurement tools recently.
Do you know the psychological profile that your trail of tweets tells about you? TweetPsych just may be able to tell you. Another new entrant into the ever expanding world of Twitter measurement tools,TweetPsych is uniquley different in that it seeks to provide a psychological profile of a person through deep linguistic analysis of their tweets. I'm always looking for tools that can provide insight into people's mindset and provide data that helps to build a more accurate persona, TweetPsych is a facinating discovery. It will be interesting to see how it evolves over time.
Here's what I just learned about myself (although it would help if I had more tweets for the tool to analyze!)
Furthermore tools like TweetPsych hold great promise for helping us (as marketers) better understand the people we want to interact with through Twitter, thus providing insight to fuel content and related marketing strategy decisions. Very cool stuff.
Thanks to Avinash for blogging about this and other new Twitter measurement tools recently.
Real-time revenue optimization, metrics for multi-channel retailing
Originally published on The New Group blog on 11.23.09
I was recently blown away at seeing the sophisticated measurement and real-time optimization systems of a large multi-channel retailer and their ability to not only measure, but influence in real-time the metric of revenue per minute. It was almost like watching a highly active trader on the stock exchange make minute-by-minute decisions on buying or selling stock. Very cool stuff.
While not every business has the integrated measurement systems, high transaction volume and purchase activity required to use revenue per minute as a key metric, the ability to define, track against and measure KPI’s is something that every business should have in place.
Back to my story though, what was even more impressive about interacting with this retailer was that in speaking with employees throughout the company it was clear that this KPI of revenue per minute was fully ingrained. When new ideas were discussed, new marketing programs or advertising tactics, the conversation usually got back to evaluating those ideas against their ability to impact this KPI.
This is another really important point…while it’s great to have KPI’s, if they aren’t communicated broadly and referenced in decision making around the rationale for your marketing investments, then you’re simply not getting the full value and power out of defining your KPI’s.
So what are your KPI’s and how do you communicate them throughout your organization?
I was recently blown away at seeing the sophisticated measurement and real-time optimization systems of a large multi-channel retailer and their ability to not only measure, but influence in real-time the metric of revenue per minute. It was almost like watching a highly active trader on the stock exchange make minute-by-minute decisions on buying or selling stock. Very cool stuff.
While not every business has the integrated measurement systems, high transaction volume and purchase activity required to use revenue per minute as a key metric, the ability to define, track against and measure KPI’s is something that every business should have in place.
Back to my story though, what was even more impressive about interacting with this retailer was that in speaking with employees throughout the company it was clear that this KPI of revenue per minute was fully ingrained. When new ideas were discussed, new marketing programs or advertising tactics, the conversation usually got back to evaluating those ideas against their ability to impact this KPI.
This is another really important point…while it’s great to have KPI’s, if they aren’t communicated broadly and referenced in decision making around the rationale for your marketing investments, then you’re simply not getting the full value and power out of defining your KPI’s.
So what are your KPI’s and how do you communicate them throughout your organization?
Social Optimization and Measuring Engagement
Originally published on The New Group blog on 11.4.09
Not every interaction or engagement with your brand by consumers has equal value. Especially if your goals are to influence consideration of your brand or ignite word of mouth sharing about your products.
So do you have a schema for measuring engagement with your brand across online social channels? If so, how have you determined which actions and points of interaction are the most valuable? Which get higher weighting than others?
While it would be great if there was simply one universal system that I could share with you and say, "this is it", it just doesn't work that way.
Engagement measurement is something that needs to be tailored to your brand, the initiative, the social properties you are utilizing and ultimately against what your core business objectives are. Measuring the impact of social interactions with your brand is interesting stuff that many marketers are just getting their minds around.
Here's a great post from the Econsultancy blog and a list of 35 social interaction metrics to measure.
Not every interaction or engagement with your brand by consumers has equal value. Especially if your goals are to influence consideration of your brand or ignite word of mouth sharing about your products.
So do you have a schema for measuring engagement with your brand across online social channels? If so, how have you determined which actions and points of interaction are the most valuable? Which get higher weighting than others?
While it would be great if there was simply one universal system that I could share with you and say, "this is it", it just doesn't work that way.
Engagement measurement is something that needs to be tailored to your brand, the initiative, the social properties you are utilizing and ultimately against what your core business objectives are. Measuring the impact of social interactions with your brand is interesting stuff that many marketers are just getting their minds around.
Here's a great post from the Econsultancy blog and a list of 35 social interaction metrics to measure.
Social Media & Financial Performance - new study findings
Originally published on The New Group blog on 8.10.09
A recent study has found a linkage between social media engagement and financial success and profitability. In the first study of its kind, Engagement DB has provided the marketing community with some compelling directional findings. While the study findings can not show true causality, it's very exciting to see the linkage between deep engagement within social channels and the financial performance of some of the world's leading brands. Some key findings include:
* "Socially engaged companies are in fact more financially successful."
* "Companies that are both deeply and widely engaged in social media surpass their peers in terms of both revenue and profit performance by a significant difference."
In addition to some compelling findings regarding financial performance the study also presents some qualitiative findings relative to best practices; things like how these major brands are staffed internally, how they are procuring and producing content as well as how they are leveraging external partners such as their agencies. All in all this is a great study and a very worthy read.
A recent study has found a linkage between social media engagement and financial success and profitability. In the first study of its kind, Engagement DB has provided the marketing community with some compelling directional findings. While the study findings can not show true causality, it's very exciting to see the linkage between deep engagement within social channels and the financial performance of some of the world's leading brands. Some key findings include:
* "Socially engaged companies are in fact more financially successful."
* "Companies that are both deeply and widely engaged in social media surpass their peers in terms of both revenue and profit performance by a significant difference."
In addition to some compelling findings regarding financial performance the study also presents some qualitiative findings relative to best practices; things like how these major brands are staffed internally, how they are procuring and producing content as well as how they are leveraging external partners such as their agencies. All in all this is a great study and a very worthy read.
Longer-form video content on the web
Originally published on The New Group blog on 7.6.09
Recent consumer research regarding online video consumption behavior combined with production trends expanding beyond the 30-second spot are ushering in a new era on the web for online video.
Where once it was thought that the Internet was not the venue for such content, apparently many of us are now choosing to watch longer-form online brand videos and short films. In this 12-minute piece the Schweppes brand only appears twice. The content is an engaging story. It would be great to hear from Schweppes how they measure the impact of this investment on their business. Did this increased awareness drive more people to go buy Schweppes sodas?
While not entirely new, BMW films being one of the best original examples, this new 12-minute film "Signs" from Schweppes is an interesting entry into this new era of longer-form online video.
Recent consumer research regarding online video consumption behavior combined with production trends expanding beyond the 30-second spot are ushering in a new era on the web for online video.
Where once it was thought that the Internet was not the venue for such content, apparently many of us are now choosing to watch longer-form online brand videos and short films. In this 12-minute piece the Schweppes brand only appears twice. The content is an engaging story. It would be great to hear from Schweppes how they measure the impact of this investment on their business. Did this increased awareness drive more people to go buy Schweppes sodas?
While not entirely new, BMW films being one of the best original examples, this new 12-minute film "Signs" from Schweppes is an interesting entry into this new era of longer-form online video.
Lead quality or quantity: what's your goal?
Originally published on The New Group blog on 6.29.09
Hopefully it's a no-brainer that closing deals and generating revenue from leads is directly tied to the quality of the leads you generate. What's the focus of your lead gen programs? And how are you cultivating a stream of sales-ready, high-quality, qualified leads?
Here's an interesting recent study by MarketingSherpa that points to the necessity of optimizing your digital media for organic search as well as ensuring that your PPC search ads are sending visitors to content that delivers on the expectations set by your ad copy.
How to read this chart
CHART NOTE: Marketers were asked to rate the quantity and quality of leads generated for each of the search tactic listed at the bottom of each column using the scale shown to the right of the chart. The total percentage of each column reflects those who are using that tactic. For example, 71% of respondents use 'Search engine optimization'. The remaining 29% do not use this tactic.
Hopefully it's a no-brainer that closing deals and generating revenue from leads is directly tied to the quality of the leads you generate. What's the focus of your lead gen programs? And how are you cultivating a stream of sales-ready, high-quality, qualified leads?
Here's an interesting recent study by MarketingSherpa that points to the necessity of optimizing your digital media for organic search as well as ensuring that your PPC search ads are sending visitors to content that delivers on the expectations set by your ad copy.
How to read this chart
CHART NOTE: Marketers were asked to rate the quantity and quality of leads generated for each of the search tactic listed at the bottom of each column using the scale shown to the right of the chart. The total percentage of each column reflects those who are using that tactic. For example, 71% of respondents use 'Search engine optimization'. The remaining 29% do not use this tactic.
Should you create a formal brand ambassador program?
Originally published on The New Group blog on 5.20.09
The short answer is yes. The bigger question is how and what will it cost you.
It seems that every business today wants to discover, interact with and harness the connectedness and influence of brand ambassadors. Why? One great benefit is to stimulate authentic word of mouth through people that other people already trust and listen to, AND are outside the formal corporate brand marketing and messaging machine.
Numerous studies have been done which point to the reality of what information sources people trust and it has become clear that brand messages are way down the list while information from colleagues, peers and friends is squarely at the top.
Intel is one of a number of corporations to jump on this trend over the last year and proactively develop a network of brand ambassadors. They’ve reached out to bloggers with influence, who are articulate, opinionated and have a following of readers who listen…and likely act on the ideas these brand ambassadors put forth.
As with many programs of this type, Intel did invest some dollars in making this happen. They pulled the bloggers from the virtual world of the Internet into the real world of the Intel campus, got to know these people better and in-person, gave then an incentive of a free Mac book Air and sent them off to continue putting forth perspective on Intel products. Pretty simple, it will be interesting to watch the evolution of this program to see how the investment of time, energy and dollars pays off, I think it will.
You can read more about the “Intel Insider” brand ambassador program. Great to see big brands that get it that organizing people with influence online often involves getting people together in the real world to further solidify connections.
The short answer is yes. The bigger question is how and what will it cost you.
It seems that every business today wants to discover, interact with and harness the connectedness and influence of brand ambassadors. Why? One great benefit is to stimulate authentic word of mouth through people that other people already trust and listen to, AND are outside the formal corporate brand marketing and messaging machine.
Numerous studies have been done which point to the reality of what information sources people trust and it has become clear that brand messages are way down the list while information from colleagues, peers and friends is squarely at the top.
Intel is one of a number of corporations to jump on this trend over the last year and proactively develop a network of brand ambassadors. They’ve reached out to bloggers with influence, who are articulate, opinionated and have a following of readers who listen…and likely act on the ideas these brand ambassadors put forth.
As with many programs of this type, Intel did invest some dollars in making this happen. They pulled the bloggers from the virtual world of the Internet into the real world of the Intel campus, got to know these people better and in-person, gave then an incentive of a free Mac book Air and sent them off to continue putting forth perspective on Intel products. Pretty simple, it will be interesting to watch the evolution of this program to see how the investment of time, energy and dollars pays off, I think it will.
You can read more about the “Intel Insider” brand ambassador program. Great to see big brands that get it that organizing people with influence online often involves getting people together in the real world to further solidify connections.
Do consumers want to know what online advertisers really know about them?
Originally published on The New Group blog on 3.23.09
A recent article on the New York Times blog, An Icon That Says They’re Watching You, brings up a fascinating issue in the area of behavioral analytics and consumer control. I guess the answer really depends on who you are and what the context of your desire to know is. I mean, I’d be fascinated to know what a given online advertiser knows about me that triggered them to serve me a particular advertisement or offer. I already have fun guessing when I see surf trip ads on facebook or a Jenny Craig ad on snow-forecast.com...clearly someone is targeting me by my behavior, and that’s fine, I get a kick out of it.
Maybe that’s just because I’m in digital marketing. However, I’d wager that there are many consumers who would be curious to know, if they were aware the information was available to them.
Apparently Google is blazing a trail to make this happen in the near future with its new behavioral targeting system by including the phrase “Ads by Google” on all its advertisements. You’ll be able to click on a link and access a limited profile of what Google knows about you, and even edit some of the preferences. It will be interesting to see what percent of consumers choose to access the data, and even more fascinating, how many edit any of their information.
While many in the advertising world may see this transparency to show consumers what we really know about them as a negative, I see it as a positive. If people don’t already get that advertising is in many cases necessary to fund the production of the content they consume, then that’s a fundamental piece of reality to acknowledge. Beyond this though, what if the ability to target brand advertising actually got better because people knew they could edit their anonymous online identity with ease, and trusted the systems that managed this information?
Consumers giving brands more information to better target offers and ads – it certainly brings up controversial issues around trust with online data. It will be interesting to revisit this thought in five years. I bet I’ll have more control over editing my anonymous advertising data. What do you think?
A recent article on the New York Times blog, An Icon That Says They’re Watching You, brings up a fascinating issue in the area of behavioral analytics and consumer control. I guess the answer really depends on who you are and what the context of your desire to know is. I mean, I’d be fascinated to know what a given online advertiser knows about me that triggered them to serve me a particular advertisement or offer. I already have fun guessing when I see surf trip ads on facebook or a Jenny Craig ad on snow-forecast.com...clearly someone is targeting me by my behavior, and that’s fine, I get a kick out of it.
Maybe that’s just because I’m in digital marketing. However, I’d wager that there are many consumers who would be curious to know, if they were aware the information was available to them.
Apparently Google is blazing a trail to make this happen in the near future with its new behavioral targeting system by including the phrase “Ads by Google” on all its advertisements. You’ll be able to click on a link and access a limited profile of what Google knows about you, and even edit some of the preferences. It will be interesting to see what percent of consumers choose to access the data, and even more fascinating, how many edit any of their information.
While many in the advertising world may see this transparency to show consumers what we really know about them as a negative, I see it as a positive. If people don’t already get that advertising is in many cases necessary to fund the production of the content they consume, then that’s a fundamental piece of reality to acknowledge. Beyond this though, what if the ability to target brand advertising actually got better because people knew they could edit their anonymous online identity with ease, and trusted the systems that managed this information?
Consumers giving brands more information to better target offers and ads – it certainly brings up controversial issues around trust with online data. It will be interesting to revisit this thought in five years. I bet I’ll have more control over editing my anonymous advertising data. What do you think?
Practical tips for Conversational Marketing Outreach Programs
Originally published on The New Group blog on 1.6.09
Harness the social capital within your organization & leverage your agency to deepen your insights.
Thinking of moving beyond listening to online conversation around your brand to a mode of engaging with influential bloggers and participants within social communities? There’s a lot of opportunity to join the conversation these days, but prepare yourself and your organization first before jumping in.
Before immediately looking outside your organization for experts to engage in dialogue on behalf of your brand, look internally – you might just be surprised at what you find. Your strongest brand evangelist may be sitting right down the hall, across the country or working remotely from their home office. These people know your brand, can engage as direct representatives and bring an immediate level of authenticity to online dialogue.
However, consider this, while you may find people within your organization with deep expertise in various areas, they may not be comfortable sharing their opinions and thoughts openly on the web. With this in mind, look for people who are both interested in contributing and knowledgeable on topics that matter to your brand. Passion for engaging in the online social mediums will provide the fuel for your program.
Understanding this, while a direct representative of your brand is often the best way to build trust with online audiences who are eager to dialogue with your company, you may want assistance getting started and managing your program as it evolves over time. This is where your agency partner can help you with setting program strategy and objectives, diving deep into conversations to mine for trends and unearth engagement opportunities, amplifying your program with fresh ideas and unique angles to approach your prospects and customers.
Harness the social capital within your organization & leverage your agency to deepen your insights.
Thinking of moving beyond listening to online conversation around your brand to a mode of engaging with influential bloggers and participants within social communities? There’s a lot of opportunity to join the conversation these days, but prepare yourself and your organization first before jumping in.
Before immediately looking outside your organization for experts to engage in dialogue on behalf of your brand, look internally – you might just be surprised at what you find. Your strongest brand evangelist may be sitting right down the hall, across the country or working remotely from their home office. These people know your brand, can engage as direct representatives and bring an immediate level of authenticity to online dialogue.
However, consider this, while you may find people within your organization with deep expertise in various areas, they may not be comfortable sharing their opinions and thoughts openly on the web. With this in mind, look for people who are both interested in contributing and knowledgeable on topics that matter to your brand. Passion for engaging in the online social mediums will provide the fuel for your program.
Understanding this, while a direct representative of your brand is often the best way to build trust with online audiences who are eager to dialogue with your company, you may want assistance getting started and managing your program as it evolves over time. This is where your agency partner can help you with setting program strategy and objectives, diving deep into conversations to mine for trends and unearth engagement opportunities, amplifying your program with fresh ideas and unique angles to approach your prospects and customers.
Social Media Measurement
Originally published on The New Group blog on 1.25.08
Blogs posts, conversations within social networks and threads of dialogue in message boards, all of this online content represents a potential gold mine to gain deeper insight regarding what people really think about our brands, products and services. As marketers we’re fortunate to have a number of analytical tools available to us today that allow for measurement of conversations occurring across these different social media channels. This is exciting, powerful stuff that offers up many opportunities to gather strategic intelligence that we can weave back into our marketing, branding and advertising initiatives. Generally speaking most brands have passionate devotees as well as a few critics.
Previous to the availability of social media tracking and analytical tools, mining the conversations around a brand was a laborious if not impossible task, today the landscape is much different. Current social media measurement tools offer great opportunities to tap into the conversations occurring around brands, identify people who are influential in these conversations, understand the sentiment that is being expressed and ultimately devise strategies by which to reach out and engage with these individuals and communities in ways that can create positive word-of-mouth momentum, often multiplying the effect of other advertising and marketing programs.
Recently at The New Group we’ve been getting deep with a number of the latest tools that are pretty interesting and offer the ability to mine deeply into and target conversations happening in blogs, social networks, discussion boards and other online spaces. The way these tools work is often similar to a search engine in that you specify query terms or keywords, particular phrases you want to show up in posts as well as other conditions to focus your research.
What’s important to consider up front is the breadth and depth of conversations you’re looking to surface. Thinking this through will save you time from searching through too many off topic conversations…because in the end you still must do some reading of the posts, so knowing how to intelligently focus your queries is pretty important! Something else I’m pretty excited about is the ability to visualize the conversational landscape around a particular topic. Through social maps we can see the relationships between people engaged in a conversation and also get a sense for the reach of each participant’s voice.
I could go on about cool features of social media measurement tools…maybe in another post, but for now I’d like to suggest that if you’re embarking on a social media strategy, remember to keep your mind open to learning something new because you just might find a nugget of insight that you could have never anticipated.
Blogs posts, conversations within social networks and threads of dialogue in message boards, all of this online content represents a potential gold mine to gain deeper insight regarding what people really think about our brands, products and services. As marketers we’re fortunate to have a number of analytical tools available to us today that allow for measurement of conversations occurring across these different social media channels. This is exciting, powerful stuff that offers up many opportunities to gather strategic intelligence that we can weave back into our marketing, branding and advertising initiatives. Generally speaking most brands have passionate devotees as well as a few critics.
Previous to the availability of social media tracking and analytical tools, mining the conversations around a brand was a laborious if not impossible task, today the landscape is much different. Current social media measurement tools offer great opportunities to tap into the conversations occurring around brands, identify people who are influential in these conversations, understand the sentiment that is being expressed and ultimately devise strategies by which to reach out and engage with these individuals and communities in ways that can create positive word-of-mouth momentum, often multiplying the effect of other advertising and marketing programs.
Recently at The New Group we’ve been getting deep with a number of the latest tools that are pretty interesting and offer the ability to mine deeply into and target conversations happening in blogs, social networks, discussion boards and other online spaces. The way these tools work is often similar to a search engine in that you specify query terms or keywords, particular phrases you want to show up in posts as well as other conditions to focus your research.
What’s important to consider up front is the breadth and depth of conversations you’re looking to surface. Thinking this through will save you time from searching through too many off topic conversations…because in the end you still must do some reading of the posts, so knowing how to intelligently focus your queries is pretty important! Something else I’m pretty excited about is the ability to visualize the conversational landscape around a particular topic. Through social maps we can see the relationships between people engaged in a conversation and also get a sense for the reach of each participant’s voice.
I could go on about cool features of social media measurement tools…maybe in another post, but for now I’d like to suggest that if you’re embarking on a social media strategy, remember to keep your mind open to learning something new because you just might find a nugget of insight that you could have never anticipated.
Still pushing your USP? It's time to connect with your UBT.
Originally published on The New Group blog on 11.1.07
The days of the unique selling proposition (USP) are over. People don't want to be sold to anymore, they want to be part of a community, associate with others they trust and consume the products and services that their group of like-minded souls supports. Think Amazon reader comments, customer reviews on CNET, niche communities in B2B spaces of all sorts, people want to hear the objective opinions of peers to inform their purchase decisions.
Enter the concept of the unique buying tribe (UBT). This is a concept woven into a great book about branding, ZAG by Marty Neumeier - check it out on your next plane trip, it's a quick insightful read. People want to trust the brands they support and the companies they purchase from. More than ever people trust the opinions of their peers above and beyond your marketing communications and advertising.
So consider thinking of your audience as a tribe and think about how you can provide ways to build trust with that tribe, they'll tell others why they trust your brand and provide a powerful source of influence in the market.
The days of the unique selling proposition (USP) are over. People don't want to be sold to anymore, they want to be part of a community, associate with others they trust and consume the products and services that their group of like-minded souls supports. Think Amazon reader comments, customer reviews on CNET, niche communities in B2B spaces of all sorts, people want to hear the objective opinions of peers to inform their purchase decisions.
Enter the concept of the unique buying tribe (UBT). This is a concept woven into a great book about branding, ZAG by Marty Neumeier - check it out on your next plane trip, it's a quick insightful read. People want to trust the brands they support and the companies they purchase from. More than ever people trust the opinions of their peers above and beyond your marketing communications and advertising.
So consider thinking of your audience as a tribe and think about how you can provide ways to build trust with that tribe, they'll tell others why they trust your brand and provide a powerful source of influence in the market.
Strategies for Capturing & Transferring Knowledge
Originally published on The New Group blog on 9.26.07
So I just attended an event put on by ASTD Cascadia this morning. It was a small panel event with senior learning and development professionals from organizations like PGE, Nike and Boeing, plus a variety of other people who've been in the training and development fields anywhere from 10 to 25 + years. Aside from bringing to top of mind some basic but often overlooked practices, things like documenting processes, conducting "lessons learned" de-briefings and developing easy to use job aids like diagrams, check lists and such, a few of the more interesting topics that surfaced were:
1.) the fact that learning happens all the time, not just when we intend it to happen
2.) recognizing and tapping into communities of practice
3.) the notion that storytelling is fundamental to the knowledge transfer process
4.) the simple act of asking people to share their knowledge can be incentive enough for them to participate in the knowledge transfer process
5.) "tacit knowledge" - that which comes only from experience - is one of the toughest yet most important types of knowledge to capture and transfer
What I'm most curious to explore further are the types of internal communications that can impact employee behavior relative to participating in the knowledge capture and transfer process and how to make the captured content not only accessible but easy to consume.
So I just attended an event put on by ASTD Cascadia this morning. It was a small panel event with senior learning and development professionals from organizations like PGE, Nike and Boeing, plus a variety of other people who've been in the training and development fields anywhere from 10 to 25 + years. Aside from bringing to top of mind some basic but often overlooked practices, things like documenting processes, conducting "lessons learned" de-briefings and developing easy to use job aids like diagrams, check lists and such, a few of the more interesting topics that surfaced were:
1.) the fact that learning happens all the time, not just when we intend it to happen
2.) recognizing and tapping into communities of practice
3.) the notion that storytelling is fundamental to the knowledge transfer process
4.) the simple act of asking people to share their knowledge can be incentive enough for them to participate in the knowledge transfer process
5.) "tacit knowledge" - that which comes only from experience - is one of the toughest yet most important types of knowledge to capture and transfer
What I'm most curious to explore further are the types of internal communications that can impact employee behavior relative to participating in the knowledge capture and transfer process and how to make the captured content not only accessible but easy to consume.
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