Study. The 8 success Criteria for Facebook Page Marketing.

Juli 28th, 2010 • View Comments Reports, Social, Strategy
Tags: Altimeter, Best Practice, Brands, Cases, Facebook, Reports, Social Influence Marketing, Strategy

Altimeter Group has just staged a new report that wants to define ‘The 8 success Criteria for Facebook Page Marketing‘. Seriously – the report is not a revolution. Nevertheless it works with quite an interesting empirical model. And I like the conclusion and case studies in the end.

The report ‘gleaned input from 34 vendors, agencies, and experts, to determine success criteria and develop a roadmap for Facebook page best practices‘. And about half of the reviewed brands did not do too well in activating full scale Word of Mouth. Take a look at Altimeter’s report. I am happy to hear what you pull out of it.

google Me. Or: How I stopped worrying and learned to love Privacy.

Juli 12th, 2010 • View Comments Business, Social, Strategy
Tags: Business, Facebook, google, google me, Prediction, Presentation, privacy, Reports, Social Networks, Strategy, World

Most of you may have heard about the so called Facebook killer ‘Google Me‘ that supposedly binds half of google’s resources currently. And as most of you know, google has not exactly been successful with social networking by now. Especially after google Buzz also failed as a platform that is able to compete with Facebook. google knows they need to get their hands on social. Why? Steve Rubel explains it quite well…

google will ‘continue to dominate “pull.” But Facebook will aggregate content, make it social and rule “push.” Using our social circle it will surface content that we care about just when we want it – and allow us to comment on it all. As more people use Facebook to connect, share and create, a network effect takes over – and the system get even smarter.’ And that is exactly what google needs to do to stay alive in the long term.

No matter how successful Facebook is with its social strategy – they need to conquer Planet Push asap or become Facebook’s junior partner. In the middle of all the buzz about google Me we have to read the deck embedded below as a first rationale for google’s new platform – not as the ‘designing social networks’ deck that it wants to be. It was created by one of google’s lead User Experience architects Paul Adams and it criticizes Facebook existing social networks and the way they make people interact with a clear focus on privacy. What a surprise!

Even beyond the google Me hype – definitely a deck worth to take a look at (even though it is looooong).

Big question: Do you think google might make it this time? Do you believe privacy will be an USP strong enough to differentiate google Me from Facebook? Leave a reply.

Read more »

Social Currency. Where Brands meet Dynamic Context.

Mai 2nd, 2010 • View Comments Brands, Social, Social Business, Strategy
Tags: Adaptation Marketing, Brands, Business, Report, Reports, Research, Social, Social Business Design, Social Currency, Strategy, Study, Trends, Vivaldi, World

One of the really good studies about brands and their social environments has just been published jointly by NYC think tank Vivaldi Partners and Professor Johann Füller (University Innsbruck) in cooperation with Lightspeed Research.

The report ‘Social Currency’ asks what a brand’s social currency is, and what it takes to build and nurture it. And, the report indeed brings a couple of crucial things across – it defines the buzzy term Social Currency and attributes success metrics for brands here.

Defining Social Currency

So what is Social Currency and why is it important? From the report’s perspective it is the contextual sum of experiences users can have in relation and interaction with a brand. And a brand’s social currency is bound to a dynamic process that we call reality.

Social Currency is the extent to which people share the brand or information about the brand as part of their everyday social life at home or at work. (…) It is neither a product feature, nor a communications or PR campaign that is completely managed by any one company. From this perspective, social currency is a far more delicate asset to build, nurture and maintain than is brand equity.

Social currency represents a shared asset of consumers and company-owned brands. It originates from interaction between customers and consumers. And it is the material a brand’s success will be fundamentally influenced by…

1. Across categories and brands, 53% of consumers’ brand loyalty can be explained by social currency
2. Users of brands with high social currency show a significantly higher willingness to pay a price premium (correlation=0.73)

The study’s explanatory strength does not only lie in these results – it is remarkable as it tries to define what social currency is made of. Since the research assumes that social currency is crucial for brands to create customer loyalty it consequently also reveals its components. No, a brand does not necessarily have to access all levers – this varies in regard to which industry and brand is involved…

Read more »

Dear Forrester. No, We Are Not Going to Die.

März 29th, 2010 • View Comments Business, Strategy
Tags: Adaptation Marketing, Agencies, Brands, Business, Diagram, Forrester, Future, Ideas, Industry, Reports, Social Business Design, Strategy, Trends, Truth, World

Since Digital has initiated the revolution in Marketing the question for the ‘Agency of the Future’ has almost become an Internet Meme. Pretty much every agency around claims to have found the recipe. That’s in fact no very surprising. Over the time the already-complex agency-marketer relationship has been significantly altered by factors such as the recession and the rise of social media. With brands and agencies stumbling into the real time web and over interacting customers (OMFG!) the key question is obvious: Whose agency future is it anyway?

The challenge

In their late Forrester report about ‘The Future of Agency Relationships‘ Dave Frankland, Sean Corcoran, and Vidya Drego have tried to define a CMO’s challenges and their criteria catalogue when it comes to choosing an Agency of Record – a highly complex task. Agencies have always managed to adopt to changes. There were many paradigm shifts from the ad sales era of the early 19th century to our wired reality. Nevertheless agencies (or similar institutions) managed to offer services which were relevant enough. Today, once more, agencies are faced with new requirements in what they are supposed to deliver:

That may not exactly sound completely new. But it is quite interesting to ask which agency model might be able to accept these challenges.

Read more »

My Perspective. The New Rules of Relationship Management.

März 7th, 2010 • View Comments Allgemein
Tags: Adaptation Marketing, Altimeter, Brands, Business, Monitoring, Reports, Social, Social Business Design, Social CRM, Social Influence Marketing, Strategy, Tools, World

Altimeter Group has just published its new report entitled ‘Social CRM. The New Rules of Relationship Management.’ It assumes that companies are simply overwhelmed with social interactions. They need tools, but they need tools to deliver on certain, clearly defined objectives. This report tries to give an overview on the tech-related maturity of SCRM tools and their relation to company objectives. Most of you will find it f*****ing boring. I don’t.

About half a year ago I posted an article entitled ‘Social CRM. Ready for action?‘. I tried to give a rough overview on the relevance of a new approach to brand-customer-relations in an era shaped by interactions among users via social software.

Of course I am not the first one to reflect the outcome of a world gone social for CRM. People like Esteban Kolsky (read his articles ‘The Roadmap to SCRM‘), Wim Rampen, and a few more CRM guys try to define the role of SCRM for today’s marketing. And now there is a new report by Altimeter’s notorious Jeremiah Owyang and Ray Wang – Social CRM: The New Rules of Relationship Management.

What’s it SCRM?

Social CRM extends the classic definition of Customer Relationship Management. According to Paul Greenberg…

CRM is a philosophy & a business strategy, supported by a technology platform, business rules, workflow, processes & social characteristics, designed to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation in order to provide mutually beneficial value in a trusted & transparent business environment. It’s the company’s response to the customer’s ownership of the conversation.

SCRM accepts the fact that there are millions of people virtually interacting . They are chatting about your brand, recommending your sneakers, or rate your restaurant online. This is where SCRM starts off…

Read more »

Social Networks. Age is definitely more than just a number.

Februar 28th, 2010 • View Comments Reports, Social
Tags: age, Cool, Diagram, pingdom, Presentation, Reports, Social, Social Networks, Strategy, Trends, visual, World

First of all follow Pingdom on twitter. Seriously.

Secondly, it is not common for me to quote the research results of one thinktank for the second time in two days. Here I will make an exception. Simply because Pingdom respects the golden rule of being quoted on the social webs in perfect harmony with the four key elements of social nerd buzz:

• do the research/poll/well argumented guess about Planet Earth
• follow up with number crunching (if there are numbers)
• draw a great looking diagram
• tweet the hell out of it

Today we talk about age distribution and social networks. It’s neither a secret nor surprising that there is an age gap between LinkedIn and Twitter. But as long as you don’t nail down this fact into a diagram you don’t make a point on the intertubes. Right? Right.

Here we go…

Fact: Age distribution in social networks varies among social networks

High five! We are number one. If you are a 36 year old tech savvy, male, digital nerd the following diagram enlightens you with one key information – you will meet the ones you like (and who are like you) over and over again. Your mom probably isn’t yet a registered member of Facebook and your teenage cousin probably isn’t as well. But be prepared for the next generation to be 150% part of the game. Unfortunately they are not really relevant yet marketing wise (but they will follow….muahahahahahahahahahahahaha).

Read more »

2010. What’s going to happen in 140 characters or less.

Dezember 23rd, 2009 • View Comments Business, Reports, Strategy, Twitter
Tags: Brands, Business, Cool, Diagram, Experimental, Ideas, Prediction, Presentation, Reports, Social Influence Marketing, Strategy, Trends, Truth, Twitter, World

As the year ends it’s time to think of the next big…year. 2010 is coming closer and while the Mayan Calendar seems to save us from the rapture for two more years, it is still time to think about next year’s trends. Okay…we get drown in trend predictions lately, but I liked this one – Trendspotting‘s third annual prediction report following major trends in six categories. This time with trend predictions by the industry’s rock stars in 140 characters or less. Good to go?

Trends. Most Contagious 2009 is live…and kicking.

Dezember 17th, 2009 • View Comments Allgemein
Tags: Business, Contagious, Cool, Creativity, Experimental, Future, Ideas, Prediction, Presentation, Reports, Strategy, Trends, visual, We like, World

Contagious Magazine is one of the really good providers of quality content about global trends in marketing (do also check out trendwatching.com and PSFK among zillions of others). Apart from the magazine and DVD, Contagious also provides a pretty cool online resource, weekly newsletter, events & consultancy service, in-depth media reports and intelligence ‘Feeds’ for advertisers and agencies.

Now they have published their annual review for Global trends in Marketing last year, Most Contagious 2009.  It contains quite a pile of more or less known trends from design, technology, and real time media, summarized in a more than nicely designed document. A great compendium of everything that’s dynamic nowadays in our business.

They asked their readers to share the link to the PDF. So here it is – the link to Most Contagious 2009.

Adaptive Marketing. How not to go the Dodo way, Part 2.

Dezember 9th, 2009 • View Comments Business, Intelligence, Reports, Social Business, Strategy
Tags: Adaptation Marketing, Business, Forrester, Future, Ideas, Reports, Social Business Design, Social Influence Marketing, speed, Strategy, Trends, World

I did write about the concept of Adaptation Marketing two weeks ago. I admit, it’s another buzz word in the digital/social realm. But it’s a meaningful idea for what brand management might be like in the near future. A model which enables brands to deal with the social sphere without necessarily focusing too much on Facebook, Twitter & Co. A thoughtstarter for rather traditional as well as new marketers alike.

Adaptation is a term from Darwin’s evolution theory. Wikipedia knows that “when the habitat changes, three main things may happen to a resident population: habitat tracking, genetic change or extinction. In fact, all three things may occur in sequence. Of these three effects, only genetic change brings about adaptation.”

The life of the last Dodo ended in the 17th century. His habitat changed drastically when men appeared. An unwelcome surprise for Dodos as for brands who also struggle with real people who behave different than what they are used to. They talk and they walk and they don’t necessarily care for Dodos and brands. We, marketers or advertisers may like it or not – but things in our habitat change. Quickly. And two key aspects of it are  feedback and real time.

How social will we have to be?
The Dodo formula is simple: Humans arrive = Problem. Brands know this problem since the social web startet going mainstream. Some of them adapt quickly. But most of them behave like rabbits in the headlight.  Caught between a rock and hard place, the challenges seem to leave no other way than to use it or lose it, Facebook Fan Page or nothing at all.

I think there is a third way.

Read more »

The social workspace. Keep on tweeting, peeps.

November 11th, 2009 • View Comments Work
Tags: Reports, Study, Tools, Trends, We like, Work, World

Okay, good news for all you guys twittering and facebooking while you work. Personal surfing/tweting/networking while at work does not mean you’re ineffective (yeah, you knew that already).

Dr Brent Coker, from the Department of Management and Marketing, says that workers who engage in ‘Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing’ (WILB) are more productive than those who don’t. “People who do surf the Internet for fun at work – within a reasonable limit of less than 20% of their total time in the office – are more productive by about 9% than those who don’t,” he says. “Firms spend millions on software to block their employees from watching videos on YouTube, using social networking sites like Facebook or shopping online under the pretense that it costs millions in lost productivity, however that’s not always the case.” (via University of Melbourne)

Plus, as an article of Harvard Business Magazin explains:

• Millennials will seek jobs that encourage the use of social media: They network 24/7 and expect the company to accommodate pervasive connectivity. As an accenture survey points out the use of various technologies such as instant messaging, text messaging, Facebook and RSS feeds is crucial to how they do their jobs. One participant said “I need to access my Facebook in order to do my job.” Has blocking Facebook today become the equivalent of denying an employee access to a phone at work 40 years ago or email 20 years ago?
• Companies that provide access to social media create a more engaged workforce. Enterprise 2.0 solutions, networking and real time interaction with customers and partners becomes more and more essential. Blocking the access to Social Media sites while leveraging such tools is a contradiction. Global cooperation tools have increased access to experts in the company, reduced the cycle time from discovery of new products to launch of new products, and increased employee engagement and satisfaction in the workplace.