Digital Age 2.0 - Andrea Harrison

Editor's Notes

1. Facebook currently has over 500 Million active users world wide. While countries like Brazil, Japan and South Korea have favored other networks, recent data shows FB gaining a stronghold in these countries as well.
2. While passive consumption of social media (video watching, viewing a friends page) are activities on the rise in the West, Asian countries are active across the board including blog writing.
3. Facebook recently provided data on the success of their social plug-ins. We see this as a huge opportunity to take back the owned platform as a social destination.
4. Amazon might be one of the first companies to employ social influence marketing to sell products. The site was revolutionary early on for allowing average consumers to create online product reviews. It not only drew people who wanted to buy books, but also those who wanted to research them before buying. When they had to tighten their budgets and eliminate advertising during 2001-2003 it was the community of users who drove sales through their recommendations.
5. The social space is first and foremost about people and relationships. Technology and platforms come and go.
6. We approach our social practice in the following ways: lead with an overarching strategy, execute with Media/Search tactics, create WOM programs, create and optimize content for 3rd party and owned platforms and provide social marketing solutions (acquisition, conversion, retention/loyalty, customer service, etc).
7. We approach our social practice in the following ways: lead with an overarching strategy, execute with Media/Search tactics, create WOM programs, create and optimize content for 3rd party and owned platforms and provide social marketing solutions (acquisition, conversion, retention/loyalty, customer service, etc).
8. As marketers we first started taking notice of the social web when users were creating blogs about our products. It wasn’t always positive commentary, and this caused a lot of marketers to react with fear and a need to control these rogue consumers who were tarnishing our brand. We spent a lot of money to create positive brand perception and one blog could do a lot of damage.
9. The user generated commentary on our brand was even more apparent when the consumer used video to tell their story. It was becoming clear that our consumers not only had some serious writing, design and editing skills, but they were keen to share their message with the world and didn’t care what the brand thought.
10. The content generated so much volume that brands turned to buzz monitoring to try and keep on top of it all. But what were we really learning besides when our brand was mentioned and the volume and sentiment of those mentions. Without a clear plan for how to use this data and create insights from the charts and graphs, there really wasn’t much marketers could do with this information.
11. Starbucks stopped being afraid of what their customers had to say and started listening in an active manner. MyStarbucksIdea created a way for customers to tell Starbucks what they wanted from the brand, including new products and in-store recommendations. The two-way dialogue created more than just crowd-sourced product development and open market research, it increased the trust consumers have for the brand.
12. After the Comcast Technician sleeping on my couch video became a pop culture sensation, Comcast re-evaluated how they deliver customer service. Their Twitter account was started by a team of in-house customer service reps and led by social media pioneer Frank Eliason, who used his social persona to create accountability for the brand with its customers.
13. The most recent example of how brands are embracing social influence marketing is the Old Spice Man on a Horse campaign. Instead of just monitoring conversations and generating reports, they used the twitter comments from their fans in actual copy for a series of videos. Not only was the campaign a huge success but it raised the bar for how social campaigns are created and executed in real time.
14. Don’t be afraid of User Generated content, engage your consumer in conversation about your brand.Us the real time nature of the internet to deliver customer service in the same way your consumer turns to the internet to share a recent experience (good or bad)Don’t’ just monitor your conversations online, mine the data for insights
15. We need to evolve our thinking about social media beyond Buzz or Word of Mouth. A social strategy is the product of a great digital strategy, they really shouldn’t be separated. Don’t assume FB, Twitter, & YouTube are the only social platforms – the right kind or UX and social plug-in technology can help you make your .com just as social (and you get to keep your customers and your data). Any marketing initiative can be made social with the right combination of insight, platform & content, if you don’t believe me – give us your toughest marketing challenge and we’ll show you how to use social to create a solution. Lastly, when people tell you social can’t be measured, or is a different type of measurement – they’re wrong. All social efforts can and must be measured just like existing paid and owned media.