“What we have here is a failure to communicate” says The Man to our hero Cool Hand Luke and that characterized the marketing world of Web1.0 and may have inadvertently helped lay the social media foundation that is Web2.0. The Web2.0 revolution has now matured into a new stage, moving from initial confusion (and no doubt a bit of “surprise!” from the vantage point of many corporations) to a rolled-up sleeves practicality of how to manage the relationship now that we’ve gone beyond the first date.

There are obvious benefits for companies in terms of getting involved with their consumers (and prospective consumers) via social media. A perspective that is often not considered is the benefit that online consumers themselves gain with this new desire to engage on the part of corporations. It’s been said before but it’s fascinating to me that marketing strategy in the social media arena necessarily has to move beyond projection and into conversation. Conversation is not a poorly targeted banner ad or a link to your website inside of a clever blog - it’s about establishing a dialog with individuals. The opportunity to engage individuals online opens a conduit through which information flows, which in turn provides a closed feedback loop (and benefits – that’s the symbiosis) between you and your customers. And you don’t have to pay thousands of dollars in survey research or focus groups.

According to the findings of the 2008 Cone Business in Social Media Study, “56% of American consumers (who use social media) feel both a stronger connection with, and better served by, companies when they can interact with them in a social media environment.” Additionally,

• 43% say that companies should use social networks to solve my problems
• 41% want companies to solicit feedback on their products and services
• 37% feel that companies should develop new ways for consumers to interact with their brand
• 33% of men and 17% of women interact frequently (one or more times per week) with companies via social media

Engaging your customers can now serve marketing, customer service, and primary research functions. But how does one go about obtaining valuable information about your customers?

Kevin Mannion of Sky Road Consulting provided some wonderfully basic advice for social media approaches to primary research and engagement, including:

• Visit Quantcast and look at the kinds of information that “Quantified” sites can offer about who visits their sites. In my consulting work with the company, I know that Web publishers are enabling advertisers to understand better the demographics, business and lifestyle profiles of their audiences. See the wealth of audience info under Bloomberg’s Quantified Profile, for example.
• Take Avinash Kaushik’s simple advice and ask your visitors in an unobtrusive pop-up survey some basic questions about what they are doing on your site and how your site is helping them accomplish their goals.
• Talk to them. There are many great ways to identify representative visitors who can offer you a gold mine of intelligence about your site, your clients’ brands, and the best ways for your advertiser to win their minds and hearts.

Of course, not every social media effort needs to be about harvesting information – successful social media strategy can simply be building a consistent, entertaining, and engaging message strategy about your products and services using a variety of social media tools. Social media marketing drives awareness through entertaining (but transparently honest) communication to catch and keep the attention of voracious online consumers of information.

Remember, online consumers were here having vibrant conversations before you arrived – when you’re late to a party that’s already been going on for awhile, it’s better to take some time and figure out how to introduce yourself instead of barging in and grabbing the mike for a little unsolicited marketing karaoke. You might learn a few things along the way.

Tags: Advertising/Marketing, Social Media Insights, Uncategorized // Add Comment »

“Analysis paralysis” and “desktop fodder” are two phrases I’ve heard over the years associated with reporting and analysis that subsequently takes you on the road to marketing nowhere. Moving beyond reporting, dashboards, and analysis is not rocket science – what is required is a desire to test some of the conclusions out in the marketplace. Action tends to generate inspiration while the reverse (for me at least) is more difficult to achieve.

A few brief examples of acting on social media analysis:

1. Blogger outreach – Susan Getgood has an excellent post on reaching out to bloggers, which starts with social media analytics to identify relevant individuals
2. Improve natural search through social media campaigns – often this involves nothing more than consistently and diligently “spreading the word” about your current assets and can be done through a vendor partner or by dedicating resources internally
3. Optimize SEO – based on themes (like those listed below) extracted from unstructured data using semantic analyses, tags can be created to automatically (and dynamically) update sites based on conversations people are currently having about your products or services
4. Modify existing digital assets (e.g., messaging) based on emerging concepts – use modified targeted banner ads within social network communities through ad networks if you have a bit more budget
5. Tap into your favorite social network community to spread your message (based on concepts gleaned from social media analyses) – setting up a Facebook profile is an obvious beginning but note that Facebook is looking to move beyond the “walled garden” by providing the ability to externalize profiles – more to come
6. Learn how to do a bicycle kick on a beach in Brazil (OK, no connection but what is a blog entry without a little fun?)

Conclusion

Testable marketing strategy can be implemented quickly and, in the quick-time world of social media, its impact can be measured on the back end by examining common social media metrics (e.g., activity and sentiment) as well as other web and primary research metrics.

Ernest Hemingway once said, “Never confuse movement with action”. So dive in, engage, and act upon data with testable strategy. Because Hemingway also said* that “understanding social media is a crucial step in implementing a fully developed brand strategy.”

*No he didn’t.

Tags: Brand Management, Social Media Insights // Add Comment »

The 2008 Olympics have already been marked by both shattered records and controversy, making it the perfect event to cover in Social Media. CI tracked eight selected Beijing Olympic sponsors— Visa, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Lenovo, UPS, General Electric, Kodak and Panasonic— over a selected time period of 8/2 to 8/13. We compared each sponsor’s Olympic-focused conversation from the six days prior to the Olympics (8/2 to 8/7) to the first six days of the Olympics (8/8 to 8/13).

Three sponsors in particular stand out as having achieved a significant Social Media lift: Coke, McDonald’s and Visa. Coke, when referenced near the Olympics, experienced a 17% lift from the first time period to the second. A great deal of conversation surrounded their Bluetooth campaign, which is the first instance of Bluetooth marketing in Olympic history.

Activity around McDonald’s and the Olympics increased 51%. People posted most often about their TV commercials and their large, temporary store on the Olympic Green.

Visa’s Olympic-focused activity increased by an outstanding 141%, showing the huge success of their campaign. Their role as the sole payment method of the Olympics, as well as their mid-Olympics release of the special-edition Michael Phelps commercial contributed to this drastic increase in Visa’s buzz.

Tonality was overall positive for all selected sponsors, although UPS/Olympic conversation accumulated a bit more negative sentiment when pro-Tibet protestors stormed a French UPS store on 8/6.

Although negative sentiment for the sponsors continues around human rights issues, the majority of these posts do not single out specific sponsors. Individually, these eight sponsors have been generally well-received by the overall public, and many have shown an increase in Social Media activity as the Olympics continue.

CI will continue to track the Olympics through the completion of the games and follow up with our new findings.

– Jackie Wood

Tags: Brand Management, Mass Media/Culture, Social Media Insights, Social Media Monitoring // 1 Comment »

Start experimenting with these ideas for social media marketing, and you’ll start to understand Web 2.0. Now take it a step further and listen to the conversation with analytical tools, determine your brand’s sentiment, find the insights and create authentic conversations with your topic mavens, then you’ll be several steps closer to using social media for your own purposes. If you want to reach even more definable goals, then Collective Intellect would be happy to help.

Read on for a topical best practice for social media marketing within the following reposting of the “fifty ways for marketers to use social media” from Chris Brogan. Jeremy Owyang went another step further and segmented the list into 5 groups. Catch that one here.

Idea #47, ” Spread good ideas far. Reblog them. Bookmark them. Vote them up at social sites. Be a good citizen.” Well, we’re doing our part. Read the full post here.

From Chris Brogan:

50 Ways Marketers Can use Social Media to Improve Their Marketing

1. Add social bookmark links to your most important web pages and/or blog posts to improve sharing.
2. Build blogs and teach conversational marketing and business relationship building techniques.
3. For every video project purchased, ensure there’s an embeddable web version for improved sharing.
4. Learn how tagging and other metadata improve your ability to search and measure the spread of information.
5. Create informational podcasts about a product’s overall space, not just the product.
6. Build community platforms around real communities of shared interest.
7. Help companies participate in existing social networks, and build relationships on their turf.
8. Check out Twitter as a way to show a company’s personality. (Don’t fabricate this).
9. Couple your email newsletter content with additional website content on a blog for improved commenting.
10. Build sentiment measurements, and listen to the larger web for how people are talking about your customer.
11. Learn which bloggers might care about your customer. Learn how to measure their influence.
12. Download the Social Media Press Release (pdf) and at least see what parts you want to take into your traditional press releases.
13. Try out a short series of audio podcasts or video podcasts as content marketing and see how they draw.
14. Build conversation maps for your customers using Technorati.com , Google Blogsearch, Summize, and FriendFeed.
15. Experiment with Flickr and/or YouTube groups to build media for specific events. (Marvel Comics raised my impression of this with their Hulk statue Flickr group).
16. Recommend that your staff start personal blogs on their personal interests, and learn first hand what it feels like, including managing comments, wanting promotion, etc.
17. Map out an integrated project that incorporates a blog, use of commercial social networks, and a face-to-face event to build leads and drive awareness of a product.
18. Start a community group on Facebook or Ning or MySpace or LinkedIn around the space where your customer does business. Example: what Jeremiah Owyang did for Hitachi Data Systems.
19. Experiment with the value of live video like uStream.tv and Mogulus, or Qik on a cell phone.
20. Attend a conference dealing with social media like New Media Expo, BlogWorld Expo, New Marketing Summit (disclosure: I run this one with CrossTech), and dozens and dozens more. (Email me for a calendar).
21. Collect case studies of social media success. Tag them “socialmediacasestudy” in del.icio.us.
22. Interview current social media practitioners. Look for bridges between your methods and theirs.
23. Explore distribution. Can you reach more potential buyers/users/customers on social networks.
24. Don’t forget early social sites like Yahoogroups and Craigslist. They still work remarkably well.
25. Search Summize.com for as much data as you can find in Twitter on your product, your competitors, your space.
26. Practice delivering quality content on your blogs, such that customers feel educated / equipped / informed.
27. Consider the value of hiring a community manager. Could this role improve customer service? Improve customer retention? Promote through word of mouth?
28. Turn your blog into a mobile blog site with Mofuse. Free.
29. Learn what other free tools might work for community building, like MyBlogLog.
30. Ensure you offer the basics on your site, like an email alternative to an RSS subscription. In fact, the more ways you can spread and distribute your content, the better.
31. Investigate whether your product sells better by recommendation versus education, and use either wikis and widgets to help recommend, or videos and podcasts for education.
32. Make WebsiteGrader.com your first stop for understanding the technical quality of a website.
33. Make Compete.com your next stop for understanding a site’s traffic. Then, mash it against competitors’ sites.
34. Learn how not to ask for 40 pieces of demographic data when giving something away for free. Instead, collect little bits over time. Gently.
35. Remember that the people on social networks are all people, have likely been there a while, might know each other, and know that you’re new. Tread gently into new territories. Don’t NOT go. Just go gently.
36. Help customers and prospects connect with you simply on your various networks. Consider a Lijit Wijit or other aggregator widget.
37. Voting mechanisms like those used on Digg.com show your customers you care about which information is useful to them.
38. Track your inbound links and when they come from blogs, be sure to comment on a few posts and build a relationship with the blogger.
39. Find a bunch of bloggers and podcasters whose work you admire, and ask them for opinions on your social media projects. See if you can give them a free sneak peek at something, or some other “you’re special” reward for their time and effort (if it’s material, ask them to disclose it).
40. Learn all you can about how NOT to pitch bloggers. Excellent resource: Susan Getgood.
41. Try out shooting video interviews and video press releases and other bits of video to build more personable relationships. Don’t throw out text, but try adding video.
42. Explore several viewpoints about social media marketing.
43. Women are adding lots of value to social media. Get to know the ones making a difference. (And check out BlogHer as an event to explore).
44. Experiment with different lengths and forms of video. Is entertaining and funny but brief better than longer but more informative? Don’t stop with one attempt. And try more than one hosting platform to test out features.
45. Work with practitioners and media makers to see how they can use their skills to solve your problems. Don’t be afraid to set up pilot programs, instead of diving in head first.
46. People power social media. Learn to believe in the value of people. Sounds hippie, but it’s the key.
47. Spread good ideas far. Reblog them. Bookmark them. Vote them up at social sites. Be a good citizen.
48. Don’t be afraid to fail. Be ready to apologize. Admit when you’ve made a mistake.
49. Re-examine who in the organization might benefit from your social media efforts. Help equip them to learn from your project.
50. Use the same tools you’re trying out externally for internal uses, if that makes sense, and learn about how this technology empowers your business collaboration, too. “

Tags: Social Media Analytics, Social Media Best Practice, Social Media Insights, Social Media Monitoring // Add Comment »

Part Two of Two:

When I wrote the first part of this post, I wondered how, if at all, Ron Paul’s army would react. I hoped that his supporters would read the post, and comment rationally– to tell me why I was wrong about their chaotic message board responses to anything Ron Paul-related. But what I honestly expected was more of the same. I did get a few reasoned replies, but the overwhelming response was what I feared. Some samples of the more outlandish comments:

“What if we don’t want to be the slaves of usurers and thugs? The End is nigh! Can’t stop the freedom train! Vote RON PAUL!” - Max

“NAU, UN and NAFTA are NOT ‘conspiracies’ for those who read. They are things that are happening with which we disagree. For example, UN treaties now control what is taught and done in our public schools. Ask any teacher about that! They even dictate what books we can read or how we can line up the children for the bathroom…” - Fed up with bloggers like you

“Your obvious attempt at misinformation about the Ron Paul supporters will result in the same type of blowback that accompanies every attack on his freedom message: more people supporting Ron Paul…” - Scott Mitchell

“if you shut out the truth for too long it rises up and explodes in many surprising ways……” - Paul Weber

“Keep it up msm your showing the world your biased ass!!” - American

A handful of readers did put up reasoned counter-arguments, like Brian:

“I post comments and donate money and vote in polls because I love what RP stands for. And I do sometimes give back a bit of attitude whenever a blog or news story is patently ridiculous and insulting to RP. However I haven’t seen much of the cringe-worthy bad behavior that you referred to, though I’ve seen a lot of references to it…No matter what RP supporters do, they and he will be marginalized. If they do nothing, he’s a fringe candidate, and if they are passionate, well that can be spun in a million bad ways.”

Other commenters simply re-gurgitated their usual online talking points about biased polls, and repetitive talk about “libertarian principles”, foreign policy, and the bias of the mainstream media — which I suspect they simply copy and paste to each Ron Paul post they read.

This is not an effective technique. I was a bit surprised that none of these commenters corrected me when I said that I don’t know if they have a leader. Ron Paul does in fact have an e-campaign manager named Justine Lam. She is at least partially responsible for the initial flood of online Ron Paul support, which of course is an overall boon to the campaign. But it’s since gotten out of control — chaotic, sporadic, and quite frankly, annoying. Granted, a lot of money has been raised online. But the e-campaign has become a parody of what online campaigns should be — organized grassroots efforts with a real shot at locating and convincing new supporters utilizing technology to the greatest effect. I hope Ms. Lam has recognized this, and has an E-Campaign 2.0 in the works that will surprise us all.

Tags: Social Media Best Practice, Social Media Insights // Add Comment »

One reason social media continues to experience growing popularity is its ability to quickly disseminate information, especially that which is often overlooked by traditional media. This is especially relevant for a nano-cap company such as Palatin Technologies (PTN), that may receive little or no coverage in traditional media outlets. Social media not only rounds out the story, but sometimes provides the only story.

PTN is currently stalled in its objective of proceeding with phase III clinical development for its feature sexual dysfunction drug Bremelanotide. As is typically the case, traditional media have covered the major “newsworthy” events surrounding PTN:

• Bremelanotide’s stalled development
• an earnings event
• data for a study indicating a new application for Bremelanotide

All valuable stories certainly, but social media takes this coverage a step further, delivering context about these stories with ongoing discussion that enable a reader to gain a more comprehensive analysis. Here at Collective Intellect, our ability to track these conversations in both social and traditional media helps me gain a greater picture of the “real” story about Bremelanotide.

The chart to the left shows just how much PTN coverage is dominated by social media (this graph shows results over the past two weeks).
Only 6% of media coverage comes from traditional news sources.

Example data

This message board post references a relevant deal with AstraZeneca that has long been forgotten by traditional media — but, it actually warrants further consideration because PTN’s stock has been battered by the news of Bremelanotide’s delay. Another board poster points out a number of reasons Bremelanotide would logically proceed to phase III studies, furthering the discussion of anticipated off-label use once approved. Although off-label drug use tends to enter a realm of moral dubiousness, it is common practice, and very relevant to the discussion, but more than likely avoided by the journalistic standards of traditional media. These comments, of course, are left to be translated by any prospective trader, but their simple existence provides a platform on which to proceed.

Ultimately, if a trader or analyst were to rely only on traditional media coverage for context to PTN’s financial picture, that picture would find a depreciated stock with little information available to forecast future developments. In addition, if PTN were to only look at traditional media for earned coverage, they’d be missing part of the story that makes up the full view into outside opinion, insight and corporate sentiment. Social media provides other insight for further analysis and inferences.

Tags: Blog Analysis, Social Media Insights, Social Media Monitoring // 1 Comment »

Political bloggers won a major victory this week in their quest towards mainstream acceptance and relevance. On 9/4, the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) ruled that political blogs are considered media, as far as US Electoral Law is concerned. Essentially, the FEC reaffirmed the right for political bloggers to exercise free speech with the same rights as any other media organization.

If the FEC officially recognizes blogs as a legitimate form of media, more and more candidates, campaigns, and interest groups will likely begin to come to the same conclusion. As the relevance and reach of the political blogosphere grows at a rapid rate, politicians will have an increasing and increasibgly difficult need to filter through the noise and get to the content that matters.

Of course a major difference between “traditional” media and blogs is that in the blogosphere, even the illusion of objectivity is absent. This FEC ruling is obviously a boon to the blogosphere, but “Publishing 2.0″ points out a potentially dangerous (and likely unsolvable) side-effect that could develop, if it isn’t already happening on a widespread but subtle scale.

Tags: Analyzing Consumer Generated Media, Social Media Insights // Add Comment »

It was bad enough in the days of Web 1.0 (has enough time in Web 2.0 passed for us to refer to 1998 as Web 1.0?). Back then, Most of us Collective Intellect staffers were working in some dot.com or telco software company or “ on the web” company. We were writing code, provisioning bandwidth or drawing up strategic powerpoint presentations with bullet points like “demand for IP is doubling every 6 months” and “build traffic first, then worry about how to make money”. Despite repeated attempts at explanation, my mother still described to her friends what I did as “something with computers”.

A lot has changed since then, and some things have stayed the same.

THE SAME: Venture Capitalists love disruptive technologies, experienced management teams and big marketss
DIFFERENT: Venture Capitalists actually expect businesses to make money.

THE SAME: The amount of information out there is growing exponentially.
DIFFERENT: Blogs and MySpace have replaced “homepages”. In between Chinese dudes’ lip-synch videos and teen-age diatribes are great posts about pharma, consumer technology and healthcare.

THE SAME: Small companies are innovating faster than Big companies.
DIFFERENT: The small companies are filled with entrepreneurs who have been around the block and are wary of dot bomb ideas. Plus our girlfriends/boyfriends are now our spouses and and they won’t let us work at companies with stupid ideas anymore.

And while my mother still describes my job as “something to do with bluggs on the Internet”, and least she faithfully reads my blog through her RSS reader now.

Welcome to Collective Intellect. We are the company that monitors and filters the crazy world of New Media for the largest institutional investors and Fortune 50 companies in the world. If you have budget for it, we’d love to help you.

Now excuse me while I go try to explain to my wife why I have a profile on MySpace……

-DK

Tags: Analyzing Consumer Generated Media, Social Media Insights // Add Comment »