Fun Facts To Know And Tell About Social Media In 2011

By Kip Knight & Dave Evans

• Social media and mobile devices are rapidly becoming a common way people engage with each other and brands; brand marketers need to be proactive about leveraging this accelerating trend

o   There are now over 500M Facebook users (with more than 200 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices)

o   There are over 90 million tweets per day on Twitter with millions of comments, complaints and recommendation about brands

o   Every weekday, there are about 7.5 million people tuning into Oprah vs. 43 million people play a Zynga game

o   P&G recently shifted the bulk of its daytime advertising from soaps to social media marketing campaigns

o   Online advertising is predicted to set a new record in 2011, growing 14 percent to  51.9 billion, up from  45.6 billion in 2010

• Social media is now much more than just marketing…it’s about the whole business (i.e. customer support, product development, etc)

o   Leading companies who have bet big on social media (such as Dell, Ford and Starbucks) are now integrating social media into all facets of business  (including crisis management)

o   A recent global survey indicated only 29 percent of companies even have a social media policy – this is a very dangerous position for a company to be in given the damage one untrained employee can now do to a company (even with the best of intentions)

• Social media is turning into a major “listening platform” for brands

o   Technology is enabling us to convert millions of online comments into an on-going tool to measure consumer sentiment (and dig into the “why” and source of this sentiment) in close to real time

o   This will NOT replace the importance of in-depth consumer understanding (such as in-home visits) but helps enhance understanding of what’s happening in the marketplace

• Companies should have a global game plan and strategy to stay ahead of the curve in the rapidly evolving social media space

o   A company needs to be integrated into overall business strategy (not just marketing); they also need to utilize social media as a primary way of listening and responding to their target consumers(as well as monitoring what’s happening with competition and category) as a core competency

o   Companies need to make a  time and budget commitment to developing a strategic framework,  in-depth training and robust online tools to ensure their teams are prepared for managing their brands (both offensive and defensive) using various social media platforms

Social Fatigue?

July 24th, 2011 • social media • 6 Comments

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With the recent launch of Google+, marketers are excited to have a shiny new social network. Even though brands aren’t technically allowed on Google+ yet, some (likeFord Motor) are setting up personal profiles to get started and the marketing world is buzzing with possibilities.

When thinking about opportunities, it’s important for brands to remember that the message is more important than the media. The quality of the conversation is more important than the quality of the platform.

A couple months ago, I shared Andrew Blakeley’s “Social Consumer” experiment where he “Liked” every brand that asked him.  His conclusion: “My week as a social consumer left me tired and confused. It left my Facebook newsfeed crammed with nonsense, to the point that I could scroll entire pages without seeing my friends.”

Even as marketers excitedly brainstorm how to reach consumers on a brand new social network, many consumers are tiring with how brands are reaching them on the current ones. An antisocial brand that uses social media is still an antisocial brand. A content strategy must come before a social network strategy.

The arrival of Google+ is a good time to revisit and reevaluate how our brands interact with consumers. It’s not enough for communication to be good for the brand. It has to be good for the consumer.

Tom Fishburne

What Dell can teach your company about social media ROI

By Jesse Stanchak on July 18, 2011 | Comments (3)

How is your company determining the return on investment for its social media programs?

At the recent Corporate Social Media Summitin New York City, Richard Binhammer, Dell’s head of social media and corporate-reputation management, said the equation is a little more complicated than simply calculating money in and out. As social media programs evolve, they require a more sophisticated understanding of their benefits, he said.

A few lessons from his talk:

ROI is about more than sales. From many other companies, that would sound like a dodge, but Dell is one of the few companies that’s able to say it uses Twitter as a direct-sales tool. The company hasn’t announced an update to that sales figure in many months because it is thinking about ROI differently, Binhammer said. It’s not only one number because it isn’t only about sales; it’s also about increasing business value, he said.

Remember that social media are only another tool. The problem of social media scalability becomes apparent once you realize that businesses can’t win over a fan one time and then move on, thinking that they’ve made a fan for life. Social media aren’t a channel for pushing communications; they’re a tool for managing relationships. “Control is not as successful as influence,” Binhammer said.

Social media can transform your business. If you aren’t taking into account a network’s ability to affect your brand’s communication strategy, product development and customer service, as well as its sales and marketing potential, you’re not seeing the full ROI of social media. Done properly, social media can increase the value of every part of your organization that affects customers. Organizations shouldn’t be asking how social media are making them money; they should be asking how social media make an organization better. That means social media shouldn’t be run by any one division; they need to be part of every aspect of an organization, Binhammer said.

How are you using social media to increase your organization’s value?

Image credit: jpa1999, via iStockphoto