5 Facebook Growth Success Metrics

Recently I answered a question on Quora that I wanted to share as a post as well.

“What is the best way to measure ROI for increasing the number of fans for a Facebook Page?”

Since this question is focused primarily on success metrics tied to acquisition, I will forego discussions around engagement metrics and jump into 5 KPI’s that I reference as part of an acquisition plan. 

1 – % growth over a period of time | As I have mentioned before, on average the top 50 (US) Facebook pages growth rate is 5% per month. Using this as a baseline you can track & project your growth % and track the % increase as a core KPI.

E.g. AllFacebook.com has a good resource to track against the last 30 days of growth.

2 – Like acquisition rate | When executing a promotional program or simply tracking ROI against the % increase, I look at the total cost of the program to acquire the Like. Based on my research over multiple campaigns (including media) a good baseline average Like acquisition rate is ~$5.00 per like. We have experienced below $1 acquisition rate on highly successful campaigns but you should be tracking the Like acquisition rate in order to set realistic expectations with projected Likes vs. budget allocated.

E.g. Brand A recently increased Likes by 125,000 and spent 200K to execute the program/media, etc… the Like acquisition rate for this initiative would have been $1.60 per Like well below average thus a great value for the brand.

3 – Earned Media Value | Vitrue had an interesting study determining the value of a Like at 3.60 using the $3.60 as a potential baseline number it is a quick calculation to determine the current earned media value of a brand page.

E.g. Nerf With 420,093 Facebook fans has an earned media value of $1,512,334.80

4 – Facebook Like = 20 | In a recent discussion with Carolyn Everson of Facebook, she referenced that based on their data a Facebook “like” is equivalent to 20 unique visits to a brands web site.

5 – Facebook Media Reach | One additional KPI to review is media performance in terms of both Impressions & # of Likes generated with & without media support. Using the Facebook self-service platform, or a platform such as Adapt.ly are essential to support your growth initiatives.

There are many other metrics that you can track and platforms such as PageLever & Edgerank Checker to go further than Facebook insights but these are a few that I like to use when tracking success metrics on Facebook growth initiatives.

What are some additional metrics that you deploy to track against ROI for growth strategies?

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SnapTags vs. QR Codes the ideal 2D Experience

By now most of you have seen or interacted with QR codes in one form or another. Whether it was online, direct mail, etc… QR Codes are becoming a common tool in marketing toolkits.

qr_tattoo

While it is possible to leverage a small portion of a QR code to incorporate brand elements it is not the most aesthetically appealing execution for a brand. Also, QR codes currently require an application or software to read. While Near Field Communication or NFC is evolving it is still not widespread.

Red Urban QR Code

One additional issue is that QR codes are hardcoded upon generation. In order to manage the response destination changes would need to be made on the response side of the campaign such as changing content at the point of delivery or redirects to the desired response destination or use a premium QR management service.

QRCodePolo

As I look to execute campaigns that require enhancing product packaging, point of purchase, etc… I want a solution that is going to drive the maximum engagement potential with a low barrier of activation.

Initially I was an advocate of QR codes. I Provided POV’s on how to leverage the codes to drive engagement with mobile apps, sizzle videos, social destinations, etc…

Now I am looking to SnapTags more and more to drive that level of engagement for brands that I work with. A SnapTag is an aesthetically pleasing execution that provides multiple engagement options with the brand at the center of the experience.

inception

What I like about SnapTags is that the user has multiple options to activate and engage. They can simply text an image or e-mail an image of the SnapTag to drive the text or multimedia response.

inception-snaptag-640

The beauty of the SnapTag is that you are not locked into a single response destination. SnapTags support the ability to change the response as they are served via a database vs. hardcoded into the tag. This means that you can change the destination of the response without messy redirects off of the original response.

This is an ideal benefit if you want to drive different levels of engagement throughout the lifecycle of the tag.

Also, by driving activation via text or e-mail the SnapTag adds a CRM element to the campaign that can then drive a mobile opt-in vs. simply sending a user to a pre-determined location via a QR code.

branded-snaptags

From an analytics perspective instead of just simply tracking # of scans SnapTags offer media performance and consumer behavior tracking as an added benefit. Which is key when mapping back to the original brand objectives.

So when it comes to driving 2D digital activation I am leaning towards the SnapTag execution more and more as it provides a more robust model that is scalable with the campaign.

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Your Brand vs. Product on Facebook

Brands vs. Products on Facebook. This is a question I have been asked about many times. Is it better to have 1 brand location on Facebook or should I have multiple pages some dedicated to product.

While there is not a one size fits all answer I am a strong believer in having a central brand hub and manage product via that location.

The reason being is that if one of my business goals is to acquire likes I want to maximize my earned media potential by consolidating my Likes for my core brand.

A great example of a brand execution that maximizes product likes is the Nike Football Boot Finder.

Nike Boot

Notice in the middle of the page that individual boots are rated on the sub-brand level. and each also has it’s own product specific page to drive further engagement with the product.

boot sub brand

If you click on the sub category you are presented with a product specific page to drive further engagement with the product, additional share options as well as a direct retail call to action.

Nike Boot Detail2

This allows Nike to drive, track and consolidate sub-brand likes while not diluting the core brand.

Also with the upcoming Facebook changes from FBML to iFrames brands will have increased flexibility in how to execute sub-branded experiences by allowing even tighter integration with existing brand sites.

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Augmented Reality a Reality for Brands

What do you think of when you hear the term Augmented Reality? Do you flash back to Tom Cruise in Minority Report? Or more recently Tony Stark in Iron Man 2 manipulating 3D objects? The prevailing thought until recently has been more style over substance. Some brand teams consider it is a nice gimmick to garner press but not a core element of an integrated strategy. But as you will see, A/R is becoming a key driver for brands that are looking to drive acquisition & engagement.

Minority Report

Iron Man 2

Augmented Reality can be a great addition to an integrated strategy as either an acquisition tool or engagement vehicle that enhances a consumers experience with the brand. With the rapid acceleration of smartphone capabilities the ability to provide relevance to a consumer and enhance their interaction with your brand across multiple channels is now reality. A/R will also be how we will interact digital information in the future.

Now the how…. Augmented Reality is simply when the real world is “augmented” by computer data.

A simple example happens on Sundays in the NFL. The Yellow line that we have now come to depend on when looking at yards to go for a first down is a great execution of AR. Simply applying a digital overaly with the real action.

Digital Line

What do I need? How and where does it work? Who is using it?

Depending on the type of execution there are a variety of ways to execute a program. The executions that most are familiar with were tied to A/R markers called glyphs.

marker

But A/R does not depend as much on the cryptic markers as it once did. The trend is moving towards markerless executions where everyday objects such as a dollar bill can initiate an immersive experience that further enhances a users experience with the brand.

AR BK

The other trend as I referenced above is tied to digital overlays that essentially enhance the environment around you. More and more executions are leveraging mobile devices as the viewer of digitized content.

Layar AR

There are multiple executions on the how. From mobile, online, point of purchase, print, TV and out of home.  Here are a few examples by medium.

Mobile: The biggest leap in recent years has been around mobile executions of A/R. With 50 million smart phone users in the US and the number quickly rising, the hardware can now support robust A/R executions. Your phone essentially becomes the lens by which you digitally enhance the world around you. With the recent executions by Yelp with Monocle & Wimbeltons use of Layar brands are looking to digitally tag the world around them and offer a new perspective on the world around them.

Yelp

Online: The initial executions were highly driven by markers. Now with markerless executions everyday objects such as a can of pringles can create a compelling reason to engage with a brand beyond the clutter.

A compelling acquisition execution was created by Pringles via an A/R advergame that was tied to the recent World Cup. Users used the Pringles can as a controller to interact with the game.

pringles

The next example by the United States Postal Service shows an execution that provides actual utility for users. The Virtual Box execution allows the USPS to create an engaging experience that provides value by digitally representing “will it fit?”

virtual-box-simulator-1

Olympus provides a great example of incorporating A/R via multiple channels that tie to an online experience. Markers in the shape of a new product were placed in targeted print locations. The user then had the option to get a virtual hands on tour of the new product. Again another example of an engaging experience that ties back to tangible value for the brand.

Olympus

Point of Purchase: One of the most innovative usages of A/R in store is the LEGO digital box. If you happen to live near a LEGO store you can use the kiosk to digitally see what your LEGO will look like when fully assembled. This is driven by markers on the package and combined with heavily branded kiosk to create a satisfying retail experience.

Lego

Television: XBOX – One example of A/R providing relevance in the home is with Microsofts upcoming release of the KINECT. The ability to interact directly with gestures to control digital data such as navigation, initiation of content as well as digitizing yourself will prove to be a gateway to mainstream application of digital interaction on a recurring basis.

Kinect

As we continue the trend of advancing hardware and further incorporating digital elements into our lives for everyday activities it will be interesting to see how campaigns are redefined to take advantage of the next great frontier in advertising.

Digital World

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The Need for Social Audience Segmentation

When evaluating & auditing companies usage of social channels I notice certain recurring themes in terms of the combination of branded social media vs. consumer social (Facebook, Twitter, etc). Namely there is rarely a clearly defined approach based on audience segmentation and how the brand positions social media.

Segmentation + Social? Doesn’t that go against the nature of social? Don’t we just want to have a list of social chicklets and assume everyone knows where they need to go?

My immediate response would be “NO”. When defining a social strategy I spend a lot of time looking at the brand objectives, essence, brand pyramid, etc… then it’s on to the consumer insights and audience segmentation and behavioral assessments. Why is this important? Yes there are 500 million people on Facebook but that does not mean that certain audience segments will be open to your message.

The key is structuring a users interaction with a brands social ecosystem by leveraging audience insights for primary and secondary audiences. What you will most likely uncover is that the audiences engage and behave differently. The primary audience may gravitate towards Facebook & Twitter while the other group primarily interacts with blogs & YouTube.

In certain instances, especially those executing acquisition strategies, a social hub may be in order. Isn’t Facebook a Social Hub? Possibly if you are truly integrating all channels and leveraging custom tabs to segment and drive user interaction towards a key objective.

Wait… What did you just say? To state it simply a social hub is basically a portal thats primary purpose is to drive your audience through the appropriate path to engage with content that is relevant to them while closely mapping to the brands objectives (acquisition, engagement, etc…).

The ideal brand experience that reflects this approach based on segmentation is Turbo Tax. Turbo Tax has structured a social hub that enables users to clearly choose the path that best meets their ideal criteria to interact with Turbo Tax’s social media channels. Social Media Examiner has a good case study taking a deeper look at Turbo Tax’s usage of social media.

When I was the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of INgage networks and we were rebranding & revamping the companies digital presence we created a solution that clearly segmented the audience to provide a relevant consumer experience as quickly as possible. The results associated with targeted lead generation surpassed anything that had been done over the course of the 10 year history of the company.

So when considering just adding social chicklets to your branded home page or investigating how to further segment your audience, take a moment to consider whether creating a social hub based on how your audience interacts with the appropriate channels may be the ideal addition to your current strategy.

If you are interested in engaging with me feel free to contact me. We can audit your brands current position in the marketplace that is then scored against our Digital Value Index. Or we can work with your brand team to define an integrated strategic digital framework that supports your brand initiatives.

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Largest Social Network on TV

I write a lot about social media, digital strategy & emerging technology. One of my favorite past times is console gaming via my Xbox 360.

With the recent release of Halo Reach and personally surpassing 100,000 gamerscore on Xbox Live, I wanted to write about how digital marketers can leverage the largest social network on TV to further enhance digital engagement.

TheBlackFin

With over 23 million users and an average of 4 million engaged daily Xbox Live is an incredible platform to execute digital strategies and tactics.

From branded avatar collections, product tie-in’s, promotions and sponsorships there are many opportunities for brands to leverage the sticky experience that Xbox Live provides.

This also goes beyond typical in-game advertising.  Having a truly engaged, socially connected fanbase that also associates closely with brands is a key factor when evaluating the platform.

This is one of the only times I apply my personal insight into a platform. When I am on Xbox Live I pay attention to brand promotions here moreso than any other medium. The reason being is that upon start up of the console I am presented with compelling content blocks that I choose how I interact.

I have found that I enter most if not all of the branded sweepstakes and I pay attention to when new branded avatar items are presented. And with more traffic than ESPN.com this is an ideal way to drive brand engagement.

Being a fan of the platform and a daily user, You don’t get to 100,000 gamerscore by not engaging almost daily, I have experienced the benefits and opportunities first hand.

So the next time you are looking for an ideal channel beyond traditional media and digital outlets don’t forget about the largest social network on TV.

If you are a brand manager interested in leveraging Xbox Live please contact me as I have a long standing relationship with various Xbox Live teams.
From branded avatar collections, promotions, advertising etc…

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Social Foundation

A good portion of my day job is defining social/digital strategies and programs to assist major retail brands maximize their WOM opportunities to drive multiple business objectives. Be it acquisition, engagement, advocacy, etc… Before I begin a new client engagement I like to establish a framework of which there are critical building blocks that I refer to as the Social Foundation. Like a foundation to a house there are key elements that are essential to understand prior to launching straight into strategic discussions.

1) Define Social Strategy: It is absolutely critical to define the GTM social strategy to ensure that all elements are aligning with goals & objectives and are measurable with the appropriate KPIís.

2) Content Creation: The key to driving WOM is to ensure that enough content is created (UGC/Brand) to form a foundation that helps to funnel users through our ideal brand centric social experience. While also maximizing our SEO positioning. Social & SEO are very closely aligned.

3) Discoverability of Content: It is highly important for content to be created in a way that maximizes portability of the content. RSS, tagging and leveraging the latest in terms of highly optimized publishing systems as well as sharing widgets are critical to ensuring that your branded content is being maximized to its fullest reach potential.

4) Highly Engaged Community Management: Social more-so than any other channel requires that the brand fully engages in discussions across multiple channels. This includes going beyond simple content publishing to actually following and commenting on trending topics and reaching out beyond the brand conversation. This is where I see a significant gap in terms of brands that are truly benefiting from social programs to those that are simply executing against a publishing calender.

5) Incent creation of UGC content: 30-60% of product centric search results are actually from UGC, primarily blogs and reviews. It is absolutely critical to get new products that integrate with mobile reviewed as this is a key driver for awareness. Do not focus on a single vehicle for content creation, it is critical to leverage multiple types of media to maximize opportunity. Text, Video, Photos, etc…

6) Unique content sources as a KPI: One form of social measurement that I commonly incorporate is to compare unique content sources to competitors. This is a key metric as the more content that is created from unique sources the higher the likelihood of being shared and viewed by more individuals.


7) Integration of Social Channels: It is critical to ensure that each social channel that is represented is integrated to the fullest with the goal of driving traffic/awareness through to the ideal social destination, be it an engaging application or promotion there has to be a specific intent for the user and the brand. Raise awareness through multiple channels but ultimately drive through to your ideal destination

8) Extend Digital into Retail: Maximizing the reach of both online Rich Media, Social, Augmented Reality and offline communication vehicles such as location based services, QR codes that direct to app downloads or videos, SMS campaigns & mobile loyalty all tie into a brands ability to fully maximize digital vehicles towards retail/offline engagement.

9) Leverage Partners: Corporate partnerships are key to reaching targeted users and to maximize cross-promotion. When selecting the ideal brand partners it is key to review their social strategy and how they are maximizing their channels to ensure there is a cultural fit. You do not want to execute a highly socially driven strategy with a partner who is at the beginning of the social continuum.


10) Incent in-store purchase: Finally incent users via proximity solutions that tie back to providing immediate value while also potentially driving engagement back to online or mobile properties.

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Mobilizing Your Social Strategy

Today I was the host of the weekly Hashtagsocialmedia tweet chat. Our topic was integrating mobile with your social strategy with a focus on strategy, best practices and tactics.

Mobile is a hot topic and according to comscore with 234 million americans aged 13 & older using mobile devices in the US that trend is not changing anytime soon. Of that 234 million 49.1 million in the US now own smart phones. With the continued adoption of smart phones we are on the cusp of changing how mobile can impact a brand.

In today’s chat we discussed the following topics:

1) How would you integrate mobile with your social strategy

2) How do you maximize the mobile web?

3) What tactics & why? (Proximity, Geo-location, Augmented Reality, QR Codes, SMS)

All with the mindset of integrating and extending digital & social via mobile.

Here is the archive/transcript of today’s tweet chat

hashtag1

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First Your Profile Then the World

Big changes are brewing with Facebook as today many subtle changes were rolled out across the popular social network. Becoming a fan has given way to simply “Like”. This is an interesting trend and one that has longer reach than initial appearance.

Fans converted to “Like” so if a user was a fan of a brand or product that did not change. The addition of “Like” is an attempt by Facebook to expand beyond it’s platform and influence more of our behavior beyond the Facebook domain. Instead of becoming a fan of a page it is less of a commitment to simply like a page or brand and show a higher level affinity.

History has shown first with Friendster then MySpace that viability as a destination is short lived and users can be a very fickle bunch. Facebook is now focused on becoming the platform that business relies upon as well as expanding the Facebook experience first by incorporating your web history with ads it serves you but also to drive push the “Like” concept across the web via a toolbar.

Facebook Connect was a first step in the plan that furthered the reach by allowing 3rd party integration and additional dependency on Facebook. With 400 million users as a marketer why wouldn’t I want to drive interaction through this channel. The next step in the process was to launch a toolbar that focuses on distributing “Like” so that any interaction that you have outside of Facebook can connect back to your profile and further drive the value of the network. This then allows interaction wherever I may browse and the ability to share with my network.

This ties into another big rollout… Facebook Community Pages. These are not pages that map to a specific profile and don’t impact status updates. Instead they are public content from users status messages. Now updates can be friend specific or you can have access to the general Facebook population. This is an interesting play from a privacy perspective as initial research shows you can opt into sharing with the community feeds.

Another issue that shows Facebook is serious about dominating expansion was the announcement today around XAuth. xAuth is a proposed authentication standard that will limit the number of share this buttons and will automatically remember what networks you are a part of and only display those options. In theory that sounds great but two of the larger players are not on board. Facebook and Twitter are notably absent from the group that already has the support of Google, Yahoo, MySpace, and Disqus.

Facebooks noticeable absence from Google Buzz is yet another reminder that when it comes to expansion they want to be the primary. This and of course Facebook’s relationship with Microsoft. It will also be very interesting to see how Facebooks geo-location services will impact the Foursquares & Gowallas of the world. With a 400 million user base it could crush the 600,000 Foursquare users.

It will be interesting to watch how the changes in the platform, the desire to follow you wherever you may browse and add in the ability to serve contextual ads based on browsing history will impact user behavior. I see potential tied to some of the changes from a marketing perspective but time will tell if Facebook can go where few have gone before.

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6 Benefits of Foursquare

One of the areas that I monitor closely is the progression/adoption of geo-location services such as foursquare, gowalla, yelp, loopt, buzz and dream walk mobile. Geo-location services have been around for the past 4 years but are now gaining critical mass fueled by smart phone adoption and media attention around events such as SXSW 2010.

For this post I will focus primarily on the service based game foursquare and will follow up soon with a Gowalla post. For those of you who are not addicted to checking in to every location you frequent here is the 101 version of the foursquare service and why marketers & businesses alike should pay attention.

The opportunity tied to geo-location based services such as foursquare from both an agency/marketing perspective as well as a local business perspective are enormous. Local business can gain access to customer insights tied to geotagging, local search & location based analytics which can drive adoption on the local level well beyond that of the standard digital campaign.

The service can become an extension of activities that you are already engaged with as part of your everyday routine. This presents a new opportunity to interact with consumers wherever they may roam.

Foursquare as a service is available anywhere in the world. Meaning both domestic and international campaigns can be supported. To get the full experience (Friend interaction, leaderboards, etc…) foursquare requires an iPhone, Blackberry, Android, or Palm Pre.

For those whose immediate response is to point to smart phone adoption rates note that other options to engage exist including a mobile web option as well as an SMS check in option if you text to 50500 (e.g. @Red Urban ! typing a blog post). SMS checkins are only available in the US.

Example of Text check in

Geo-location services are driven by the concept of geotagging and takes advantage of the GPS technology that resides in your device. This in turn provides a means to digitally “tag” and interact with a physical location you just visited.

E.g. Pull into your local Starbucks, pull out your iPhone/android phone, initiate the app, select/create the location and click “check in”. Once checked in you can then interact with the location by writing a review (tips in foursquare) or you may be presented with a special offer.

Example of Special Offer notification as well as sample offer


With foursquare the primary premise is around rewarding users with three different merit systems. Mayors, Badges and Points.

1) Mayor – A mayor is a user who is in 1st place on the location leader board first place defined as most check-ins
2) Badges – Badges are awarded for achieving various milestones tied to either the number of check in’s at a given location or the amount of check in’s throughout the day or other criteria. As with Xbox Live achievement points recognition can be a key driver in influencing behavior
3) Points – Points are awarded at varying increments based on multiple factors such as a new venue may yield a higher point allocation

Example of Starbucks Foursquare Badge

From a brick & mortar business perspective this is a great service to be mindful of as you can begin to gain insight and influence behavior as well as monitor customer service. Instead of a local ad buy or in addition to it why not promote offers within a radius of your location or serve them directly to your customers as they enter your location.

6 reasons to care about Foursquare as a business

1) Customer insight and word of mouth – You can gain invaluable insight into the behavior patterns of your customers. You can analyze visit trends as well as gain insight into their views of your brand

2) Customer service – With the ability to get near real time feedback as users interact you can gauge the sentiment of your users

3) Customer retention/ Loyalty Program – Forget about punch cards, track loyalty via check-in’s and reward those who frequent establishments with special offers and recognition

4) Viral Effect – With the auto post of updates to Twitter & Facebook with badge unlocks and options to post your check-in’s the viral impact of check-in’s is amplified with this service moreso than other geo-services to date

5) Big Brands are taking note – Starbucks (See image above) & Dominos have already started campaigns with Foursquare and with various media partnerships this trend will quickly continue to rise

6) Measurement – One of the powerful elements of the service is the analytics option that is currently being rolled out. As a business owner it is possible to track: Total checkins, unique visitors, when and if users shared their updates (twitter, facebook) as well as analysis of demographic breakdown and ability to track usage over time

Example of foursquare business analytics screen

One additional service of benefit to businesses and users of foursquare is snacksquare. Snacksquare which is powered by foursquare and is a location-based advertising provider that facilitates local businesses automatically delivering SMS text messages to potential customers that check in near a venue (proximity service). The site also allows end consumers to find the best deals ahead of time vs. just being notified via check in. This framework + the business analytics begins to form a more complete package for marketers & businesses alike. For more information on Snacksquare here is a recent Mashable article.

With additional focus being paid to geo-location by the big players such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc… It is natural evolution that foursquare is focused on extending APIs and integration as their valuation (recently 100 million) continues to sky-rocket.

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iAd

With the iPhone OS 4.0 Keynote today the announcement of iAd caught our attention in the office. Moreso than multi-tasking & the thousands of API’s iAd offers the chance for a true revolution in mobile advertising.

The ability to provide Rich Media advertising within the application is key for marketers, brands & developers alike. There were some great quotes from Steve Jobs today:

“On a desktop, its about search. On mobile, search hasn’t happened. People aren’t searching on their phones. People are spending their time in apps. The average user spends over 30 minutes using apps on their phone. If we said we wanted to put an ad up every 3 minutes, that’d be 10 ads per device per day – about the same as a TV show. We’re going to soon have 100m devices. That’s a billion ad opportunities per day!”

For now Apple will sell and host the ads with a revenue split (60/40 with devs getting the 60) and ads are done in HTML5 (Sorry Adobe). The apps will be fully interactive like their rich media web counterparts and the fact that ads have access to location to tie into geo-location is another win.

If I were a dev/marketer/agency I would get the SDK yesterday!!!

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Red Urban

RedUrbanIt seems that for the past 10+ years all roads have pointed in this direction. I have been involved with agencies since the onset of my interactive career.

From my initial entry during the original dot com boom with Fullmoon Interactive (full service interactive agency) to then moving on to become a co-founder of Smooth Fusion. SF provided the technical heavy lifting to enable campaigns for agencies in the Omnicom, WPP & Interpublic networks. The main constants were always digital + agencies.

For the last five years I have been on the forefront of the enterprise social media explosion thanks in part to my involvement initially with Telligent Systems (Community & Social Analytics driven platforms) then as the Chief Marketing Officer of INgage networks (Cloud computing based enterprise & gov 2.0 integrated social solutions).

During this time I had the privilege to partner and be a part of cutting edge usage of social media by a number of Fortune 1000 companies (Dell, Microsoft, Electronic Arts, Starbucks, P&G, American Express to name a few) and now I look forward to enabling brands via my experience with social strategy definition (KPI’s, ROI) implementation (Community, Crowdsourcing, Mobile, Consumer Networks, Social CRM) and measurement & analysis (Online buzz monitoring, Social Analytics) officially from the agency side!

I recently joined an extremely talented team at Red Urban (Dallas, TX). Red Urban is an OMNICOM group agency that provides comprehensive digital solutions for our end-clients and agencies throughout the Omnicom network. Our primary focus is world class creative & digital (Rich Media, Web, Social) strategy with an emphasis and expertise in integrating social channels and best practices into a brands digital strategy.

My role as the SVP, Digital Strategy will enable me to call upon every element of my experience in defining digital/social solutions while also keeping an eye to the future via emerging technology.

I definitely look forward to collaborating with our team and partners to deliver compelling digital campaigns that truly leverage the power of social as part of an overall digital strategy.

How to Create Profitable Social Strategies

Authored this article published on CMO.com today: http://bit.ly/8K3B5W

Just like people, no two organizations are exactly alike. Every enterprise has its own unique personality. When it comes to social strategy, there is no universal formula for driving ROI. Enterprise social media is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. The most successful social media initiatives occur when the strategy is aligned with the DNA of the brand itself. We don’t ask a wallflower to be the life of the party, nor do we expect a social butterfly to thrive without wings. No matter which of the following four personality types describes your brand, here’s how to start driving value from your social strategies.

1. Social Butterfly

You like to be where the action is, darting from one trendy application to the next. On the cutting edge, you were probably an early adopter of blogs and Twitter. Outwardly, you’ve created an impressive following and have led your organization through uncharted territories. But when the conversation turns to ROI, your attention is quickly diverted to a new tactic.

 — The Risks: Every marketer understands the thrill of winning customer attention. But what comes next? One million fans are only important if you can effectively leverage those connections toward your goals as a business. Consumer networks come and go. Banking enterprise strategy on shaky ground, or scratching the surface of what should be deeper, does not promote sustainable value and results. Without focused commitment, you may disappoint your networks while failing to receive future executive support.

 The Opportunity: Activity is taking place on consumer networks, and it is essential to be where the interaction is happening. Consider ways to bridge your social interests with your enterprise. Open Authentication, for example, can inspire your fans to leverage existing credentials they have from Facebook or Twitter to join your community. And you’ll gain momentum if you keep those fans engaged from one campaign to the next.

Anchoring social media initiatives in an enterprise wide strategy will help you strengthen and deepen your connections. As trendy consumer networks disappear, your brand presence will remain. This engagement can benefit all aspects of your enterprise—sales, customer service…even product development.

2. Thrill-Seeker

Known for your crazy antics, those around you never know what to expect next. You’re the life of the party! You take risks, stir things up, and keep your name top-of-mind—at any cost. But you’re not in it for the long haul. When the excitement dwindles, you’re already off in pursuit of your next adventure.

The Risks: You’re behind some of those social media initiatives that have the industry talking: social takeovers, controversial ad campaigns, contrarian blog posts, and viral videos. But when all is said and done, what have you ultimately accomplished?

Hiring and firing agencies, employee turnover, customer churn, and damage control all weigh heavily on the bottom line. One-off campaigns can be fun, but unless they are part of
a bigger strategy, they cannot help build the momentum that is needed to drive sustainable ROI.

The Opportunity: You have what every marketer wants: the attention of a crowd. And you have followers waiting with bated breath for your next move. Extending your allure, capitalizing on the attention, and offering your networks something of more substance will further elevate your success.

Sure, you have no trouble filling an auditorium. But when you can provide ongoing value, meaningful relationships, and reciprocity—in addition to a good time—you’ll not only fill the auditorium…you’ll keep your audience members in their seats!

3. Wallflower

You embrace social media passively, remaining at the periphery of the action. You’re on a “listen mission,” monitoring discussions around your brand through various social
networks. You have yet to realize the full potential of social media.

 The Risks: Instead of fueling conversations, you’re merely eavesdropping on them. Consumers don’t hear a lot about you, nor do they hear from you. While
you’re playing it safe, your competitors are playing to win.

Without proactively developing relationships with consumers, you risk losing them—and the resulting revenue—to your competitors. It is proved that engaged customers not only spend more, but they can become your greatest advocates. If you aren’t engaging your customers, then who is?

 The Opportunity: Social media doesn’t change your business goals, just how you achieve them. Whatever your objectives—increased productivity, improved retention, reduced costs, or more sales—social media can effectively fuel them all, but not without your taking a proactive role by influencing the conversations around you.

Going social does not require a corporate180. At Neighborhood America, connecting our workforce through internal networks launched us into social strategies. Within 12 months, we experienced financial returns of $10,000 per employee. As we gained confidence, we expanded our reach beyond our walls.

4. Strong, Silent Type

You watch. You learn. Then you do it better. You are successful, but not boastful, letting your accomplishments speak for themselves. You welcome calculated risks that are approached strategically. You’ve witnessed social media transform your business, and seek to continue applying these strategies throughout your enterprise.

The Risks: Whether you’re using Twitter for customer service or an online community for crowdsourcing ideas, social media is at the core of many of your
operations. But bringing it all together has proved overwhelming, if not impossible.

You run the risk of spreading too thin, unable to dedicate the resources needed to manage both content and data. You are ahead of the curve and need to proceed with caution.
Choosing the wrong provider(s) will only magnify this risk—avoid partnering with a vendor that will pull you back.

 The Opportunities: As more social initiatives are deployed, they must be consistently managed across the entire organization. Consolidation is critical to data aggregation and cross-functional teamwork.

The opportunity to launch a comprehensive social go-to-market strategy brings the ability to capitalize on the following:

  • Power of consumer networks
  • Flexibility of an SaaS-branded platform
  • Value of the data created
  • Increased value of existing systems when integrated with social (i.e., Social + CRM)

 Aim for the ability to push and pull content from varying consumer networks using your own community solutions, and leverage them as one complete, integrated platform.

10 Benefits of Social Crowdsourcing

As your social strategy evolves from driving awareness via consumer/liquid networks (Facebook, Twitter, etc…) and basic community elements you may be asking what’s next? How can I continue to drive engagement and provide enough utility to keep the attention on your brand. What can I do to influence advocacy. What about ideation? How can I continue to formalize feedback channels and how do I continue to provide a structured form of support that ultimately leads to cost deflection savings and other benefits beyond simple engagement?

My recommendation would be a branded crowdsourcing solution. Okay… so what does that mean and how is it different? Social Crowdsourcing solutions provide a structured approach to accomplishing multiple goals by leveraging individuals engaged with your brand where ultimately the best ideas and content prevail. In essence it enables a structured 360 degree feedback loop. When executed as part of a cohesive social strategy crowdsourcing solutions can provide value beyond simple engagement.

10 Benefits of Social CrowdSourcing:

1 ) Advocacy & Brand Loyalty – How better to influence behavior than by empowering an individual to directly impact a product, improve the overall customer experience, or deliver feedback within an organization on how to improve an internal process. When an individual truly feels as though they are making a difference there is a stronger connection with the brand or organization. An example is with Starbucks MyStarBucksIdea implementation. Users have the ability to directly influence product as well as the customer experience. Ask for a splash stick the next time you are in Starbucks. That nifty green stick with the decorative end is a direct result of crowdsourcing.

2 ) Structured Feedback (Recommendations/Reviews) – Going beyond a Forum… Social Crowdsourcing is a structured feedback channel. You have the ability to quickly identify feedback that is relevant to your audience and also has a direct influence on your products and services. A good example is with Dell’s Idea Storm. Dell leverages Idea Storm for the purpose of collecting feedback as well as point #5 below which is support.

3 ) Ideation – The old adage 2 heads are better than 1 comes to mind on this point. How about 2,000 vs. 20. By leveraging the power of the social crowd you gain an economy of scale in terms of your brainstorming output. This is applicable in almost every business setting from an agency that is looking to find the best idea for a campaign pitch to a Fortune 500 company looking for new ideas to innovate and maintain relevance. Social Crowdsourcing solutions enable the collaboration to occur. An example is Best Buy’s IdeaX.

4 ) UGC (Content/Contests) – User Generated Contests have been a staple of social strategy. With Social Crowdsourcing solutions you have the ability to facilitate this type of interaction. If you select the right platform (Not all Social Crowdsourcing platforms are created equally. I will be following up with a post on criteria to consider when selecting a Social Crowdsourcing solution) you should select a platform that is flexible enough to support multiple types of initiatives and campaigns while providing centralized access to the data. Both Men’s Health with their Belly Off promotion and HGTV with Rate my Space leveraged Social Crowdsourcing solutions

5 ) Support – When it comes to support we outlined the Dell example above. Other points to consider are decreased e-mail & phone support costs, faster response rates and resolution of issues, decreased escalation, increased satisfaction and decreased customer complaints. This is where tangible value can be gained for an organization beyond simple engagement. In a similar manner to how call deflection is a goal to gain efficiency social crowdsourcing can enable a similar benefit.

6 ) Reducing Product Quality Defects – What company does not want to decrease quality defects. You can leverage social crowdsourcing solutions to quickly identify issues and have a direct channel to address product corrections.

7 ) Decreasing R&D Expense – Leverage the power of social production to decrease your own R&D expense. Again leverage the combined knowledge and loyalty of your customers to help shorten the product development lifecycle.

8 ) Decreasing Time to Market – You can decrease time to market by launching targeted social crowdsourcing campaigns that serve as focus groups and ultimately drive product improvement and expand your reach in terms of testers.

9 ) Customer Service – In a similar manner of leveraging Twitter for brand monitoring it is important to understand the potential of using the structure of social crowdsourcing to directly engage with end users to drive resolution of issues and ultimately increase customer satisfaction.

10 ) Social + CRM – With structured interaction comes the ability to align user interaction and product feedback to your CRM strategy. The ability to create social profiles, create campaigns specific to feedback or rounds of ideation and ultimately gauge social interaction with actual customers is critical to driving value back to the business. A great example comes to us via Microsoft & Neighborhood America. Microsoft Public Sector On Demand this implementation leverages the power of a robust Social Crowdsourcing platform while showcasing integration with Microsoft Dynamics.

In my next post we will discuss points to consider when selecting a Social Crowdsourcing Solution.

Social Commitment

In order to truly capitalize on B2C social strategy it is important to understand that social is a channel to facilitate collaboration and is a part of the overall organizational marketing strategy. However it is not the only element of your overall marketing strategy. But this channel probably moreso than any other marketing exercise requires a longer term investment to truly recognize the value of the approach.

Obviously social solutions can be leveraged for short term spikes, take-overs and quick blips on the brand awareness radar. But to truly maximize the value of social organizations need to advance on the social continuum towards cohesive social strategies and have a solid understanding of the goals associated with the interaction. Brand Awareness, monitoring, customer support, transactions, etc…

This sounds simple enough but there are many factors and behavioral elements that will need to be put to the test to properly execute. Depending on the level of social commitment from the organization a number of factors need to be considered and questions asked. What is the purpose of our usage of consumer networks (Twitter, Facebook). If you think about it for a moment is it to drive awareness? Drive some type of direct response? or some other objective. You should not have a Facebook fan page for the sake of having one. You need to be where your prospective targets are and I am a strong advocate of the usage of consumer networks but not as the primary hub of the strategy.

So you say not to make consumer networks your primary but “I have tried my own community but we did not get the traffic lift we thought we would get”. My first response to this is to review the marketing strategy tied to growing membership. A common mistake I see is the “If we build it they will come”. The expectation that members will magically appear and participate in your branded communities is reserved for a very small group of brands. For everyone else it takes a committed effort to drive fresh, relevant content, dedicated resources, reaching into existing target users and ultimately traditional marketing to drive interaction. You can have the best technology in the world but if you do not have a true plan for driving interaction the branded effort is destined to fail.

Once the plan has been defined, resources assigned and marketing underway it is important that the brand ultimately own some semblance of a branded experience. Be it a portal aggregating relevant content, community or crowdsourcing. The reason for this is that consumer networks rise and fall in popularity and there will always be the next big thing but your brand will remain.

A natural opposition to the longer term value is how marketing is portrayed and executed on a daily basis. When you think about the nature of traditional marketing it is very campaign based driving one buzz push to the next with constant reinvention along the way. With Social it is almost the opposite. The goal is to build momentum and attain critical mass to drive towards creating a sustainable interaction. This in turn enables a solid foundation of social data that maps back to organzational goals to drive the next steps of gaining value.

Regardless of how you leverage social it is important to fully recognize the importance of defining goals and creating a comprehensive strategy. As I stated in my last post the true value from social comes from the information that is created and how you are then able to capitalize on it. But in order to reach this point of organizational enlightenment you must have a commitment to social. It is not a campaign it is a long term channel of direct interaction.

How to Drive Brand Value from Social Media

One of the more common questions that I receive is how do I truly drive value from social interaction? While there is no “magic bullet” to drive hard ROI consistently across all organization types each organization can show solid social value and results if they consider the following when planning their B2C social GTM strategy.

1 ) Goals, Goals & Did I mention Goals – Before the first Twitter alias is created or Facebook fan page is posted the first step is to define the goals of the strategy and how it will be measured. But it does not stop here. Where I see gaps in strategy across the board is then taking the next step which is consolidating and truly integrating consumer network interaction with branded solutions. The reason is the data. With consumer networks they may come and go and the availability of data to analyze is hit & miss but with the right mix of branded solutions it is possible to capture social data that can then map back to organizational KPI’s.

2 ) Resources & Champions – One of the consistent issues I see is that there is an expectation that the technology will deliver results. Moreso in social than any other type of marketing initiative it takes dedicated resources to truly drive success. This can be for a period of time until the community can self manage itself but the key to interaction is not the technology but the content that is created. Either leveraging 3rd parties or internal resources to drive fresh and relevant “sticky” content is a key success factor in building the audience that will generate the data needed to map to your KPI’s.

3 ) Consumer Networks – What I consistently see and hear is that a number of organizations are leveraging popular consumer networks such as Twitter and Facebook. An organization can have multiple “campaigns” going at any given point in time. This is a natural response as this is where consumer activity is taking place. It is absolutely essential to position your brand where interaction is happening, but there has to be a plan around the purpose of the interaction. Is it tied to Brand Awareness? Leveraging Twitter to monitor your brand for a more personal customer service touch? Either way I view Consumer Networks as a starting point to branded social interaction as again the value is in the data.

4 ) OPEN Authentication – The key to bridging the gap between Consumer Network & Branded Solutions is to leverage a platform that enables OPEN Authentication. OPEN authentication allows for consumers to leverage existing credentials they may already have via Facebook, Windows LIVE, Google, etc… And as Jim Haughwout, CIO of Neighborhood America stated in a recent blog post “Don’t ask your members to join “Y-A-N” Yet another network“. This is critical for branded interaction as you want to eliminate the barriers of entry to your branded solutions.

5 ) Head in the Clouds – Another important factor to consider is the type of delivery method for your branded solutions that integrate with consumer networks. What I have found over the past few years is that the TCO associated with Software as a Service or (SaaS) solutions are ideal when it comes to provisioning multiple instances of social solutions for community, crowdsourcing and even mobile interaction. The speed to market, flexibility and scalability are all positives when selecting your social platform.

6 ) Branded Platform – I do reference platform vs. mashing up multiple instances of social, blogging here, wiki there. What I recommend to my clients is a consolidated approach to social so you have the ability to capitalize on the data across multiple sources as again the value in social resides in the data created by social production. When selecting a platform I look for the following criteria:

Flexibility, Scalability, API’s, Ability to integrate with legacy systems, All solutions and data can reside in a dimensional data warehouse so that I have the ability to create data marts with other 3rd party data sets. Also there are platforms that exist that can provide Community, Crowd Sourcing, Feedback & Mobile solutions in a single platform.

But if you are already down the path with your social strategy it is possible to enhance your social strategy and incrementally migrate elements to a platform approach.

7 ) Data is Everything – So the common message throughout thus far has been tied to the data. Why do I care about the data? Data created from social interaction is real and tangible when it comes to understanding consumer behavior and especially directly tying their thoughts or inputs directly back to your brand. The ability to create social profiles and then leverage that data for targeted marketing or to identify key influencers is critical to truly maximize your reach and marketing spend to drive through to results be it transactions or increased subscribers.

8 ) If Data is Everything what do I do with it? – The next step is to analyze data that is collected. I have talked in the past about social analytics and the benefits of understanding performance, health, member interaction, etc… This is where we map back to step one of defining the goals. The data that is collected can be sliced in many ways and the more data collected the more accurately you can drive to conclusion. My recommendation is to leverage a platform that ties all aspects of data into a single dimensional data warehouse. Why? with a dimensional data warehouse you can compare multiple campaign initiatives either testing performance of campaigns directly or by having the ability to conduct cohort analysis.

9 ) Don’t Guess – There is a lot of talk around sentiment tied to social analytics. Be wary of this approach as it is simply an inference based on an algorithm that may or may not account for certain factors. I prefer and recommend analytics packages that mirror the Rasmussen Report which is based on opinion analysis and actual user interaction vs. an inference.

10 ) Social + CRM really? – There has been a lot of buzz around Social CRM and how it can drive value for organizations. The key here is not to dump all social data into CRM. The key is to leverage a publish subscribe type of model to only create social profiles that map back to organizational goals. Leveraging a social front-end such as a crowdsourcing solution that ties directly into your existing CRM system is a key driver and the second pillar of how you can drive value out of social. The first being social analysis the second is identification down to the user level of how individuals interact with your campaign. This step is critical in ultimately forming the full picture and this combined with social analytics leads to driving value back to social.

11 ) Consolidation is King – The consistent theme throughout is consolidation. I recommend that you craft a comprehensive social GTM strategy that allows you to leverage the power of the consumer networks. Then leverage the flexibility of a SaaS platform to service multiple segments or campaign initiatives within an organization all while driving through to value via the data created. This is the framework that can lead brands with large brand inventories to truly maximize their social media strategy and drive real and immediate value.

12 ) Now What? –  If you are running multiple campaigns for an organization today then I recommend reviewing your current goals and strategy against the consolidated model and see where incremental improvements can be made. Question your vendors about data consolidation and ability to provide a central repository of all social data. Ensure that your consumer networks can interact with your branded solutions. Showing a feed is not true integration I recommend the ability to push and pull content from consumer networks so that you can leverage them as a platform.

Ultimately the goal is to drive value from social. Again the steps outlined above can create a model that will enable value definition for your clients or your key decision makers.

Blogging vs. Twitter

Over the past month I have found that my online behavior has shifted ever so slightly. Normally when I would review an article or something of interest I would think about it in terms of a blog post. Diving deeper into the issues and applying them towards some value proposition. Now I find myself thinking about condensing what I have to say into a 140 character nugget of information thanks to Twitter.

I have been a Twitter user since April 2007. Working for a social computing company it is par for the course. But I had not fully embraced Twitter as I have over the past few months. For Industry specific news I have found that it is a great source of on-demand information from a variety of sources that I may miss with my feed reader. With the Search Functionality I can follow different topics of discussion through the Twitterverse for real-time updates.

There seems to have been a tipping point recently where Twitter is now officially main stream. Twitter has grown to over 8 million U.S. Users in a fairly short amount of time. But it is the 33% growth over the past month that is the real key to Twitter adoption. Maybe it was the initial tweets of the US Airways crash into the Hudson or the mentions on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show, or the Twitter 101 piece on Nightline. Or maybe it is the fact that media organizations like Fox News and CNN added a tweet stream to their tickers and “Live” responses to a piece that just ran. Whatever the reason Twitter is now the “it” tool of the moment.

Now the mad scramble has begun. How do I monetize Twitter? What is the business value of Twitter for my brand? How do I leverage Twitter as a channel?

There are groups popping up on LinkedIn that discuss Twitter Innovation and a number of companies, led by Dell, that are leveraging Twitter to monitor their brands and focus on the discussions that may impact a transaction or turn a detractor into an influencer.

I actually experienced the power of social media & Twitter specifically first hand. A prospective partner of my company was having difficulty connecting with his rep. He tweeted about the lack of response time. Within minutes his comment came across one of the tags that I follow and I saw it and responded via Twitter DM (Direct Message), LinkedIn InMail and based on his Twitter profile I was able to get his name and company and called the Main Line to leave a VM. Within an hour he re-tweeted about his appreciation of my efforts and the power of social media.

However you leverage Twitter either as a way to pass the time or adding value to your business/campaign/Brand it has definitely changed the way that I approach sharing and consuming information. Mainly into 140 chunks of informational goodness.

Follow me for updates RE: Social Computing, Marketing, Gaming and other random updates throughout the day @BlackFin360

Tag Marketing

While recently attending the 2009 Microsoft High Tech Summit I was introduced to the Microsoft Tag system. It works very much like a barcode system with your mobile serving as the scanning mechanism.  The interesting play here is the interactivity and opportunity that it provides to extend a traditional campaign.

I am beginning to see the Microsoft tag showing up in more places. While waiting to take-off on a flight to Seattle I was catching up with the latest Official Xbox Magazine and on the first 2 pages was an ad for the upcoming Halo Wars title. I have a moderate interest in the upcoming title but I have seen the ad with a number of Spartans looking to blow things up before. I was about to turn the page when I noticed something interesting.

At the bottom right of the page was the Microsoft Tag with the ability to immediately view a trailer of the game and redirect me to the Halo Wars marketing site on Xbox.com via my iPhone. For the novelty of it and the fact that I can’t resist a good interactive campaign I pulled up the Microsoft Tag Reader app that I had recently installed on my iPhone and took a quick shot of the tag and I was off viewing a great cinematic trailer for the upcoming game and of course the marketing collateral tied to it. If I was on the fence for the title this form of immediate gratification may have pushed me over the edge to purchase.

Where this gets really interesting is the ability to extend print in a more direct manner. Traditional ads reference a URL that leads to a product page or micro-site that is dependent on a number of factors to be executed by the end-user. With the tag system I get the immediate satisfaction of accessing information of interest in real-time from my mobile which makes the likelihood of me taking action on the ad much more likely as the barrier of sitting down, trying to remember the URL, etc… is eliminated.

From an ROI perspective I assume that the tag tracking to the destination URL is easy to reconcile and the ability to show ROI based on the “Tag Through” (I think I just coined that) then on to potential transaction should be an easy model to follow.

From a social computing perspective the ability to quickly introduce an interested party to key influencers with minimal barriers is also a possibility. The user-flow could be scan the tag, 20 second trailer and direct the user to key Community Server blog, forum or wiki topics that enhance the core message and leads to validation by peers and additional WOM.

The Microsoft tag system may not become the standard…Although if I were Microsoft I would OEM this on net-new Windows phones and allow for recognition of a tag that automatically initiates the app… but I like the direction from a consumer marketing perspective. I am a firm believer in reducing barriers for end-users. Minimize the steps necesssary to the desired result and the likelihood of action significantly increases.

Sample Tag:

microsoft-tag-792594

EA Skate 2 & Skate Reel

Of all of the projects I have been involved with over the past 3 years Electronic Arts O.G. Skate Reel initiative was by far one of my favorites. It was our first really large initiative with EA and it was very ambitious.

From the start there were a number of different variables that came into play. In-game video then sprayed to the web that enabled community members to rate each others creations across gaming platforms.

With a lot of teamwork between EA (Strategy & Content), our team and Blast Radius (Creative & UI) Skate Reel hit the web prior to the release of Skate.

As with all great things you knew a sequel was coming. Skate 2 hit stores on the 21st (Be sure to pick up your copy!!!!) but the new & improved Skate Reel for Skate 2 was pushed out early this morning.

This time around the UI has been tweaked, the transitions even smoother and I am once again blown away by the work of our team.

Here is the Skate 2 Team… Left to Right (w/ gamertags except for John Balod & MJ) … Deryl “Moonboy Dallas” DorsettJohn “I need a 360” Balod, Jon “BROOMdoom” Broom, Elijah “Prairie Racer” Hardin and me Tom “TheBlackFin” Edwards. Not pictured are Rich “RichMercer” Mercer and Mike “MJ” Johnson.

Skate2---Telligent-Blog

As for Skate Reel…. The site speaks for itself.

skate2-web

Major Nelson ROI

I have known Larry “Major Nelson” Hyrb for a few years now. Larry is the Director of Programming for Xbox Live. He has become the Face of the Xbox 360 and his blog is the first stop for avid gamers looking for the latest info on upcoming titles, Xbox Live updates and of course Larry’s blog cast’s. Larry has held this position since 2004 and the growth that both the Xbox Live network and Larry’s blog has seen over the past few years is impressive to say the least.

When Larry was evaluating platforms he was looking for a scalable blogging platform that would provide him with a direct line of communication with the consumer and put a face to the Xbox brand.  The explosive growth with Xbox Live has coincided with the traffic loads tied to Larry’s blog. He is now the de-facto reference for gamers looking for the latest information and the amount of traffic and comments that Larry receives is staggering for a single blog. No other gaming publisher or hardware manufacturer has the visibility or reach via a single employee that Microsoft and the Xbox Live Brand has with Larry.

One of the key ROI takeaways from Larry’s blog is that it is a powerful tool for optimizing SEO of user-generated content. According to eMarketer, annual spending on search advertising in the US is expected to decrease YOY until 2012 (when compared to 2007). The built-in SEO functionality of Larry’s platform helped grow visitors and members (17 million as of last week) by both direct and referred search. The other takeaway is the cost savings that are available to an organization or a brand by significantly decreasing the amount of spend on search advertising.

Social Media & Your Campaign

One of the golden rules of marketing is having the ability to show your business or clients the value of the campaign that you are running on their behalf. With traditional web campaigns you could methodically calculate ROI based on Click-through rate and project your results. With the introduction of social media traditional models of analytics do not apply and the true value proposition is clouded in the minds of business decision makers. With the economy in it’s current state campaign dollars are less readily available and you better be able to deliver tangible results.

How can I show value? Is this the right investment? I know I need to connect with end users but what is the real value?

The key is social analytics that focus on campaign elements specifically around sentiment, tonality, social fingerprints and a model for calculating the incremental value of community.

If you are working on a viral brand awareness campaign how are you going to gauge the discussions that are occurring and the content that is generated within a social network and make sense of it? You need to have a mechanism to take all of the unstructured data and make sense of it all in order to show value.

With social analytics you can combine campaign specific keywords with system driven keywords. The net result is gaining a clear understanding of how users interact with the brand and the campaign by analyzing the tonality of the conversations that are occurring. Be it positive or negative, understanding how users are interacting with your campaign allows for quick responses to negative associations or additional investment in areas that create positive responses.

Also with any campaign the user profile is key. Understanding not only how users interact with content but how they interact as a whole is a key step in delivering the right message at the right time. With a social analytic system you should leverage one that provides a fingerprint for how a user interacts.

Finally when it comes to launching micro-campaigns within an existing community or social network you can leverage the group functionality to create a micro-community. With the right social analytic package you can then analyze just the data that is relevant to that group. The same sentiment analysis and other functionality is relevant even on the group level.

Organizational efficiency, social ROI, and social analytics are the key to unlocking the full potential tied to your unstructured data. Again what is the value of user generated content if you cannot quickly analyze it and make it meaningful.

Social Analytics

I interact with a number of clients on a daily basis and at some point in our conversations the discussion ultimately leads to calculating return on investment (ROI) around social media.

With the hyper-growth being experienced in the social collaboration space it is imperative now more than ever that organizational decision makers ultimately understand the value of the solutions that they are associating with their digital marketing campaigns as well as across their organizations.

One of the key trends that has emerged is the need to track social analytics vs. traditional web analytics. The days of tracking and calculating value through CTR, etc… has changed. It is still important to understand where your traffic is coming from but now more than ever it is imperative to understand how users are interacting with each other, your content and your brand.

With the right social analytics package you then have the framework to understand the patterns, behaviors and trends that can help an organization better understand how to interact with their customers and each other by providing insight into the sentiment and tonality of the community, forecasting future behavior based on current trends and understanding how users interact via social fingerprints.

Sentiment analysis is a very important piece of understanding social analytics trends. Understanding the tonality of users be it positive or negative tied to your products, offerings and your brand is very valuable as you can make practical business decisions based on the interaction of your customers.

With social collaboration solutions becoming the norm with how organizations will interact with end-users, partners and employees it is imperative that all of the unstructured data that is collected is then aggregated in a usable format that immediately provides the key insight necessary to drive business forward in the most efficient manner.

Dark Marketing

One of my hobbies is reviewing emerging trends around marketing and social media (Doesn’t that sound like fun?!?)  One such trend is Dark Marketing. No, this is not Darth Vader marketing his favorite life-support system or vacation spot… Hoth anyone??? This approach caught my attention as it is fascinating to me the lengths that certain brands will go to gain traction with potential influencers.

Dark Marketing (Defined in Wired recently) is discreetly sponsored online and real world entertainment intended to reach hipster audiences that would ordinarily shun corporate shilling.

This style of marketing is more “covert” in its approach. And with current and pending regulation around how products such as tobacco, alcohol and even fast food is presented to target markets this style of marketing is being deployed with more regularity than ever before.

The ultimate end goal is to reach an influencing audience without necessarily directly engaging the brand with the prospective targets. Instead the brands are almost non-existent but they are funding events through creating a sense of elite “insider” or “personal” events. During the events brand team representatives would engage with crowds by loudly ordering the products and then casually engaging in conversation about the products. Or a softer approach of casually conversing about a product or using a product that leads to a pitch in a very casual social setting.

Companies like Sony, Ford and McDonalds are actively deploying Dark Marketing campaigns. Sony recently executed operation “fake tourist” where they planted users of one of their camera products in a prime location and asked them to engage with people to take their picture which would lead to a pseudo-pitch around the product.

McDonalds is not a company that you would normally associate with a Dark Marketing campaign. Normally it is here is our food, here are the toys for your kids and by the way we have a great dollar menu… (great, now I am hungry)… is now sponsoring an alternate-reality game called The Lost Ring and it is nearly devoid of golden arches. This is an interesting approach as this ties McDonald’s sponsorship of the Olympics into a hip virtual-reality crossover between Lost and The Blair Witch project in an attempt to reach global youth in a very viral manner.

One thing remains very clear. The time of shotgun marketing has passed and the user is king when it comes to messaging. But one inherent truth still remains that people are social beings and their will almost always be someone who will have influence within a group. The only thing that has changed is that their defenses have gotten better and marketers have to adapt with innovative strategies that the end user ultimately wants to hear.

 

The Art of War

artofwarWhile recently traveling to LA I picked up a copy of The Art of War by Sun Tzu (Translation by Thomas Cleary… Shambhala Dragon Editions). This has always been one of my favorite strategy/business books as it is amazing to me how applicable 6th century BC teachings outlining success in battle are to current day business and corporate culture.

What I really admire is that success even then was defined by more than winning. Winning is key in today’s corporate culture but many people differ on their thoughts and approaches to achieving victory.

It was very interesting to revisit the importance of the human element specifically the human psyche and how vital “fullness” is to success on the battlefield and the boardroom.

Some of the other interesting concepts are as follows:

One of the principles outlined was the importance of “fullness”. Fullness is when leadership and subordinates are of like mind and operate together. Emptiness is the presence of rifts and dissatisfaction within the team. If this exists it is difficult to achieve the overall objective. It is important to empower your team so that “fullness” may be realized.

Regarding leadership “Leaders plan in the beginning when they do things” and “Leaders consider problems and prevent them”. This speaks to the importance of planning and having a clear understanding of more than just what is directly in front of you.

In terms of defining leadership Sun Tzu stated that Leadership is a matter of intelligence (plan and know) , trustworthiness , humaneness (Compassion), courage (Seize opportunities to make certain of victory), and sternness (establish discipline).

Make yourself invincible, and then watch for vulnerability in their opponents. This really speaks to the importance of knowing yourself, strengths and weaknesses. Thus recognize areas where you are weak and make them strong.

The success of military operations was dependent on the harmony of the people. This is directly applicable to business today as those in harmony will contribute naturally, without being exhorted to do so.

And finally it is the unemotional, reserved, calm, detached individual who wins. Not those seeking vengeance or ambitious seekers of fortune.

“So a military force has no constant formation, water has no constant shape: the ability to gain victory by changing and adapting according to the opponent is called genius.”

If you have not read it I would recommend it. It is a quick read and it is interesting to see how little has actually changed in terms of what is required to be successful in any competitive situation.

OMMA & Social Networking

I recently attended the OMMA Global marketing conference in Hollywood, California. Some of the top talent from the marketing industry was there recently to discuss the current state of online marketing, media and advertising. The Event featured a number of session tracks that each followed a specific category (e.g. media, advertising, etc..) as well as an expo that featured a wide array of organizations from social networking providers to Perez Hilton.

The focus of this two day event was to discuss the latest trends and technology that can enable marketers to excel in the ever-changing media landscape. Hot topics were how to apply social networking solutions into campaigns as well as a strong emphasis on monetization of widgets.

Some very interesting data was shared during the sessions such as in 2008 the rate of consumer adoption of social networking to internet users has reached 43.5%. Meaning 43.5% of users are involved with some type of social network. The issue for marketers though is that only 5.7% of marketing spend is being applied to reach these consumers through their social networks. With consumer adoption continuing to rise it is only a matter of time before the marketing spend around social networking solutions will begin to close the gap.

The #1 reason for the difference in % is an inherent lack of standard metric consistency. The old guard of methodology based on CTR (Click-Through-Rate) is not working for defining value around Social solutions. Focus on Social Analytics means that a big step has been taken in providing consistency by focusing not on CTR but on the actual commuinty data by providing in-depth analysis of the latest trends that lead to successfully defining ROI on a given campaign initiative.

Another interesting topic that was discussed was that there is a lot of channel confusion. Meaning a number of marketers do not fully understand how to deploy social media solutions. There are a number of options. White label & SaaS Social Networking platforms, User generated content specific applications, etc… my recommendation is to find a solution that provides an integrated platform with a flexible UI that allows for flexibility to deploy the applications that are relevant for your clients needs but one that also has a strong reporting engine as consistent metrics are the key to defining a successful campaign. Also, depending on your client you may want to position a solution that scales to meet the potential demand.

Finally, one of the other hot topics of discussion around marketing and social networking was the concern around communication control. There is uncertainty about how to manage brand messages when deploying social media solutions. As Rob Howard has stated before, conversations matter. Your customers are going to talk about you whether you have a social networking presence or not. There are ways to control communication such as positioning moderated blogs instead of more collaborative applications where the organization is controlling more of the publishing and the user has less control over the brand. But ultimately we have found that transparency can be a very good thing for businesses as it can reveal a face to the brand that might otherwise miss the crucial connection with end users who are in even more control of the messages that they receive.

It appears that social networking applied to business is about to truly enter the mainstream in terms of marketing budget allocations as the consumers have spoken and shown that they are interested in this style of collaboration. The challenge for the marketers is to develop engaging campaigns that compliment the daily activities of users. One thing is for certain though it is going to be a fun ride!

Community Server 2008 Logo Unveiled

One of the fun parts of my job is that I work closely with our Creative and
Marketing teams in defining the direction of the various brands for our
products. After a number of cycles the team has unveiled the new Community
Server
2008 logo.

Community Server 2008

I am very excited about the progression of the brand over the past few years. I
feel like this iteration is a good representation of what Community Server is
all about.

Great work guys!

Halo Expanded

halo-booksWhile flying to San Francisco today I will be reading The Flood book 2 of 3 in the initial Halo book series. Normally I read business related books discussing the latest on management, marketing, sales and leadership. On occassion however I like to read something…. fun.

Being the avid gamer that I am and growing up on a healthy dose of Star Wars and all things space related it is not a stretch that I like Sci-Fi fiction. When I was a pre-teen I read every Star Wars book I could get my hands on. I really liked the fact that the books expand on the core themes of the movies but took on a life of their own.

I really enjoyed the recent Halo 3 release and to this point had only played through the various titles not thinking about the how, when and why the story took place when it did and how the characters became who they are in the game. I had recently picked up a gaming industry magazine and it had excerpts from all 5 books and I was immediately hooked. I went out and picked up the initial 3 book set and tore through the first book within a couple days.

I won’t go into a lot of detail around the actual contents, but if you are a fan of the game and are looking for a fun read I would recommend picking it up. After the Halo series I will turn to the first Mass Effect prequel titled Revelation.

GDC 2008

GDC2008I confirmed today that I will be attending the 2008 Game Developer Conference February 18-22 in San Francisco.

I am very excited about attending as outside of the networking and expo portion the key areas that I am interested in are the business and management topics of “Make the Community Part of Halo” and advertising and games.

The “Make the Community Part of Halo” discussions are very key as it talks about the bungie.net experience and how they worked to make community an integral part of the game itself.

I have worked with Microsoft Game Studios, Ensemble Studios and of course Electronic Arts on the Skate and NFS ProStreet titles fall along the same lines. So if you are attending the event let me know and we will schedule some time to sync during the conference.

How Much??? Really?!?

How much do we spend in the US on advertising? Well in 2007 we spent 283 billion dollars. Yes 283 billion. 

That may sound like a lot but this level of growth 0.7% versus 2006 puts advertising’s share of the 2007 GDP (2%) at it’s lowest level since the recession year of 1982. 

Even with an uncertain market advertising spend is projecting a 3% growth in 2008 fueled by the Summer Olympics and the Presidential Elections. Being interested in online spending I am very interested in the 2008 projections.

Below is breakdown of the 2008 projections. The data was based on a December 2007 report from Universal McCann’s Robert J. Coen as presented in the December 31st issue of Advertising Age.

  1. Direct Mail – $63B
  2. Broadcast TV – $48B
  3. Newspaper – $42B
  4. Cable TV Networks – $21B
  5. Radio – $18B
  6. Yellow Pages – $14B
  7. Consumer Magazine – $14B
  8. Internet – $12B
  9. All Other – $58B 

What may be surprising is the fact that online spending ranks 8th. Being in the industry our natural assumption is that online spending is in the top 3. With that said though this segment over the past few years has had double digit growth and is projected at a 16.5% increase from 2007. The next closest in terms of growth will be spend on Cable TV at a 6% increase.

The flip side is the reduction in spend on traditional mediums such as newspaper which is actually seeing a decrease of -1.8% of spend as compared to 2007 and Radio which is only seeing a 0.2% increase.

With the recent trends in online spending continuing to increase. The success of Google’s AdWords system and now with Microsoft commiting to a marketing focus now is the time to focus attention on the medium. 

This translates to very good news for online solutions and providers as well. Especially around social media based solutions. The need for social interaction with customers and users has now fully proliferated traditional business and the marketing dollars are now being fully allocated to deploying collaborative solutions as part of their integrated marketing strategy. I see this trend continuing into the near future.

Why $60???

I still remember when I saw my first $60 price tag on a game. My jaw almost hit the floor. Now $59.99 is just what you pay for the latest title. Throw in the collector’s edition ($69.99) or the recent Halo 3 Legendary edition ($125) or the recent Rockbank release ($169) and you see the trend in gaming today.

So how did we get here? Where does the money go? Like any other product there is a breakdown of how the cash is spread around. Take for example a 360 title that sells around 500,000 units. $20 is to pay for the actual development cost of the game. This is everything from coding, level design, QA, etc…Then of course there is publisher overhead which warrants $9 of the $60. Next Microsoft licensing and manufacturing takes $12 for license (You know the Xbox 360 branding and Xbox Live stamps at the top of every 360 title). $7 is spent on advertising of the game. All of the POS materials, TV, magazine ads etc… the money has to come from somewhere right? The final take is the actual retailers cut of $12. This is your Gamestops, Best Buys, etc…

Now throw in strategy guides and downloadable content and the life of a game is now extended as is the profitability of the title. Take for example the latest EA title Need for Speed Pro-Street. It is the best example of a console game that leverages in game play with actual cash based (Microsoft Points) based extras. Don’t want to wait to get your dreamcar in the game? It can be yours for 200 Microsoft points. Not happy with your engine or injection system? No worries upgrade for 150 Microsoft points. It is a great move by EA to add this extra option. This also results in additional revenue for the title.

It will be interesting to see the continual evolution of gaming. I foresee a time when most of the content will be downloaded and the introduction of subscription models moving forward. We will have to wait and see.

SMS & Marketing

SMS based marketing is definitely on the rise. Why is that? Well for starters think about this. There are 6 billion people on the planet. There are over 3 billion cell phones in circulation. That is equivalent to 2.5 times more cell phones than internet connections!!! That will definitely qualify as a potential market for advertisers.

How many of you have received a text based ad, more importantly did you respond? In the month of September alone 4.7 milllion people in the US responded to an SMS ad. That may seem a bit surprising. I know I was surprised to read that data. The trend is definitely on the upward swing as well. Response rates have steadily risen since May from 4.3 million to 4.7 million in September.

So if 4.7 million people responded, imagine the increasing number of text based ads. Currently a majority of the ads are from the mobile operators centered around their mobile phone service (Downloads, News, Entertainment, etc..) I expect to see an increase of advertisers focus on this medium. Especially with a generation of individuals who rely heavily on this style of communication.

So do not be surprised if you begin to feel that familiar buzz of your phone when you receive a text message and you look and there is some form of advertisement. Be prepared for more messages from your favorite or not so favorite advertisers are coming to a mobile device near you.

 

Teaching & Learning

January 2008 will be 5 years for me as an adjunct faculty member of Wayland Baptist University. Initially I taught courses such as Principles of Marketing, Market Promotion, Consumer Behavior and Global Marketing on campus. Now I am a member of the Virtual Campus focusing mainly on distance education around Principles of Marketing and Human Resources Management. Each Semester (4 semesters a year) I get two new groups of students and begin the process of introducing them to the various concepts and provide insight into the latest marketing theory.

After interacting with thousands of students from across the globe I wanted to take a moment and reflect on the impact that this profession has had on me. In many ways teaching a course really enables you to emerse yourself in the content. When you are a student your main responsibility is to comprehend the information that is presented to you. When you are on the other side of the desk not only do you need to comprehend the information, but you also need to be able to apply the concepts to real world scenarios that are relevant to your students to truly enhance the learning experience.

What I have found over the years is that students want the information presented to them to be relevant to their lives in some way. So this makes my job even easier as marketing impacts everyone on a daily basis. It would be very difficult to go through a day without some type of message either directly or indirectly trying to capture your attention. Radio, Television, Print, Online… no matter where you go you are constantly being reminded about various brands trying to maintain their position or gain market share against competitors. 

Many of my students own businesses and this allows them to have a better understanding of how they can reach their target audiences and understand the many facets of their envrionment (Political, Technical, Competition, etc…)

I am very grateful for the experiences and the interact with all of my students. Thank you all.

One Console

While flying to San Francisco today I read an article that got me thinking… It discussed the fact that it is inevitable that a unified gaming platform is coming. It referenced past examples of commodification (when an item that previously was not a commodity becomes one). The primary example was the cell phone and how it started as a status symbol and they were expensive and all they allowed you do was make calls. Now they are small, play music, record video and for the most part are no longer status symbols… essentially a commodity. 

History shows that technology always becomes commodified and follows similar life cycle patterns. This is now happening with gaming consoles. Gaming consoles today do more than the market wants or needs. Now they serve as your media hub for movies, pictures, the web, etc… Once you reach the point in a products lifeccle where you are positioning more features than the market needs you begin to commoditize your offering. 

The current splits between systems also greatly impact publishers as they have to decide whether they are going to release a title across the major first party systems or go with a proprietary system and receive additional compensation. This model is counter productive in some ways as additional resources are utilized not in the creation or enhancement of the gaming experience but to ensure the game ports to the specific format. Also there is more content being released that is not necessarily competing directly with other titles on other systems. This in turn dilutes the publishers efforts as they are not receiving the type of market penetration that is conducive to larger profit margins.

In esssence these factors will lead to the inevitable which is a one-console future. The article stated that this would not occur because we want one but because the market cannot sustain itself. What would happen if this were the case? You would see a drop in hardware cost and an increase in manufacturers as this would de-emphasizes the importance of the hardware (Think TV’s in recent years) and allows game publishers with 100% market penetration which would lead to cheaper games as publishers would not have to split resources between two versions of the same game. This would also create more of a channel approach to distribution.

What are your thoughts? Is a unified console a reality? Can the market continue to sustain the current fragmentation? If it were based on the current generation consoles I would call it the WiS360… or the PSWii60.

Microsoft Marketing Services

Microsoft has a lofty goal. Within the next 4 to 10 years they look to have advertising account for 25% of Microsoft’s business. Based on recent revenue that would be upwards of $12 billion dollars a year. That represents a couple billion more than Google made in total last year. Think about that for a moment.

Why the sudden interest in advertising? Well to start you can look at the strides Google has made in the space with the AdWords model over the past few years. Combine that with Steve Ballmer’s view that there is an increasingly blurry line between software, media, and advertising and the fact that Microsoft spends $3 billion a year on advertising it’s various products and brands and you can begin to see why this is becoming such a central focus within Microsoft.

It’s great to have a goal, so the next question is how will Microsoft strive to achieve a 12 billion dollar yearly run rate? It will be a major transition going from a software services model to a marketing-services/audience company. It looks as though acquisition will be the plan of attack. Looking back to the recent acquisitions of Avenue A/Razorfish, AdECN, in-game ad serving company Massive and mobile network Screen Tonic shows the initial steps in this direction. There are also many rumors swirling that Microsoft is targeting a deal with Yahoo. Microsoft currently has a goal of 30% of the market where their current search share is 11% and Yahoo currently owns 23% whereas Google owns 56.5%. 

It is true than many agencies outsource the technology pieces and focus on being a strategic partner. Microsoft looks to be focusing on all sides of Marketing-services and advertising. Avenue A/Razorfish highlights the desire to learn more about agency style work while they simultaneously are working on gaining market share in online advertising. This is an interesting move considering that Microsoft is a very partner driven company to date. Product implementation and customization services are handled by Microsoft Consulting Services and various partners from the partner program. And currently Microsoft leverages the services of Young & Rubicam and MRM Worldwide to handle the advertising for its various lines of business. It will be very interesting to see how the acquisitions will go on the Marketing-Services side.

If any team can do it (funding and understanding of technology) it is Microsoft. They have always followed a second to the market mentality, or make it better and faster and endlessly market it. Agency style marketing is not in the corporate Microsoft DNA so it will be very interesting to watch over the next few years.

How Do I???

While traveling to London meeting with some of our European clients some common questions arose that we get quite often. How do I measure what is going on with my community? How can I calculate the health of my community? How do I identify key influencers in my community? How will this data help me develop a profile about my users? How do I back up my request for additional budget when it comes to social networking solutions vs. traditional marketing avenues? These are all great questions and ones we at Telligent are happy to answer.

I have talked in the past about calculating B2C return on investment. Prior to calculating return on investment, a common understanding of measurable business objectives needs to take place. This can come in the form of basing your analysis on such things as incremental value of the community, to trending the current userbase over time. The key to this is that the variables selected are measurable.

Once you have defined the measurable business objectives it is now time to analyze the data. With this in mind we have focused on developing a new framework to report on the data within Community Server implementations in the form of an Enterprise Reporting Suite. The new Enterprise Reporting Suite will ship with over 60 different reports and charts to help you understand exactly what is happening in your community. The reports will quickly show you such vital user information such as users by day, roles, points, posts, registrations, activity, country. The remaining reports are directly tied to which applications are currently enabled. This will allow you to quickly build a user profile and discover what information is truly valuable to your community.

The data in and of itself is invaluable, now you have the means to manipulate the data based on your measurable business objectives as well as easily writing new reports specific to your needs. Once you have the data in hand then it is a matter of defining which ROI scenario makes the most sense for your given situation, B2B, B2C, or E2E (Employee to Employee) or leveraging a metric such as the conversation index (Total Posts/Comments + Trackbacks + Ratings) to calculate impact of blog posts. I will be posting more about the ROI scenario’s in future posts but note if you need immediate assistance in defining ROI around your current community initiative please do not hesitate to e-mail me.

A comprehensive demo of the Enterprise Reporting Suite is available athttp://reports.communityserver.org/demo/. The reporting package will begin it’s beta testing in early October and will be a must have for any marketing or community manager running aprofessional or enterprise instance of Community Server.

20,000 Points

It is finally official. I have reached the 20,000K gamerscore mark!!! I have expressed in the past that I am an avid gamer and I enjoy the work that we do with various gaming studios such as Electronic Arts.

One thing about me is that I am very competitive and focused on results. I like to set goals and subsequently achieve them. This coincides very well with the Xbox 360 achievement system as you get a very measurable ROI metric out of your gaming experience.

Gaming is a lot like marketing in that you select a specific vertical that you want to target. For example, I like to focus on sports and retro titles. Then I formulate a plan based on the market segment that I have selected. I review the achievements that are available with each game prior to playing to predetermine ratios around potential time spent on pursuit of the goal vs. actualization of the achievement and then move towards the execution phase of the plan. Once the plan is put into motion it is very easy to then determine success of the strategy. And it is just a lot of fun to have the achievement pop-up on my screen once I have earned the achievement.

So is a 20K gamerscore required to be a good marketer? Not at all… All it shows is that you spend a lot of time looking at a screen. Speaking of which I have to thank my wife and children for allowing me the “small” amounts of time that I spend on…. market research. I also would like to thank the guys at EA for giving me the hookup on the best EA titles.

Thanks again! On to 30K!!!

Microsoft + Electronic Arts = In-game Advertising?

Coming to you live from Oklahoma City. Wi-Fi in a hospital room, who would have thought it was possible? No I am not in the hospital just blogging from one. So Microsoft and Electronic Arts have partnered together to sign the largest in-game advertising deal to date. Initially the campaign will be rolled out to the Sports titles like Madden, Nascar, Tiger Woods and Skate.

The reason this is possible now is how connected most gamers are. Think about some of the current titles in your library. You can get up to the minute ESPN feeds and updates now when the game fires up in NBA Live 07 and other EA titles. These feeds are a precursor of what’s to come. In reviewing research for this post it turns out that there are 4.4 million connected gaming console households. With 46 million game consoles in homes and another 148 million people with access to gaming consoles these numbers will continue to increase. So needless to say it is very appealing to advertisers to want to reach this segment of the population as this is a key demographic for positioning products and services.

All of the major consoles now have an online presence with Xbox leading the way online and the Wii attracting scores of new gamers. The industry is definitely in for additional growth online. So this all leads to the million dollar question… er the $600 million dollar question (market projection in 3 years)… Do you want ads in your games? It is nice to see the Dodge ads on the billboards in Crackdown and it does add to the realism in games, but how would you respond to something that interupts game play?

Personally, I like the subtle (or sometimes not so subtle) product placement approach in most films. It is about characters interacting with name brand products but not about the product itself. This to me has more impact and would make me more likely to remember the reference than stopping in the middle to see a pop-up or ticker during game play.

So whether you are a fan or not, In-game advertising is coming and in a big way. There are too many dollars and distractions these days to not take this medium seriously. What do you think? Are you for, opposed or just in-different to in-game advertising? In the end it will be your dollars that do the talking.

$44 Billion Really?

I just flew in from Denver and boy are my arms tired… Seriously though, I enjoyed attending the 2007 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference last week. I was even quoted in the Denver Post about being a Microsoft partner. It is always interesting to get an inside look at Microsoft as I have been consulting with this organization for the past 8 years. It has been intriging to watch the transformation from a decentralized, maverick organization to one that is applying more traditional business controls such as a focus around procurement, to their ability to quickly adapt in an ever-changing marketplace.

What really impressed me is the partner ecosystem that Microsoft has been able to develop. With 10,000+ attendees at this conference representing 120 countries it is no wonder that 96% of it’s $44 billion in revenue 2006 came from Partners. With their ability to not only provide outstanding software products, Microsoft really focuses on establishing platforms that can be extended, defining industry standards and ensuring interoperability with their offerings. This makes it very easy for organizations to partner with them.

It was very evident that many start-up organizations can benefit from niche offerings around Microsoft products as they are very open to partnering with early adopters. The focus on partners is a key element to their continued success. As I stated before in Software + Services there will always be the customer segment that lives in the now and is focused on the best solution that meets their needs today vs. the trendy offering of tomorrow.

Here at Telligent we have deep roots with Microsoft from Rob Howards time with the ASP.NET team, to 2 Regional Directors, multiple MVP’s and a focus on Microsoft technologies in our products such as Community Server. We look forward to continuing to build out our own partner ecosystem. We focus on providing software platforms that can be extended vs. single applications as well. So why wouldn’t we follow in the footsteps of Microsoft. $44 billion can’t be wrong.

Is That a Kwik-E Mart???

7-11 just did something that is pretty innovative from a marketing standpoint. They have transformed a dozen stores into Kwik-E-Marts from The Simpsons in an effort to promote the upcoming Simpson’s movie. I really like this campaign as it is a great example of reverse product placement and by the buzz and lines at the store I went to today it seems to be working.

KrustyO’s, Squishees, Buzz cola and the ever famous pink Homer Simpson donuts are just a few of the products that you can now pick up and take home with you and as they state have “absolutely no nutritional value”. For those of you wondering, Duff beer did not make the product cut for this promotion.

The ability of 7-11 to “laugh at itself” is very key in this promotion. “The idea of actually changing the stores into Kwik-E-Marts was over the top but a natural” stated one of the execs at 7-11‘s agency. “It shows they get the joke”. You would not think decorating a store to look like a cartoon would be that effective, but they are definitely reaching a new audience as I saw people in the store today that you normally would not see going to a 7-11 for a specific purpose.

It is funny that I get this excited around a campaign, but as an instructor of marketing and a marketing professional, it is great to see creative application of marketing strategy and the ability of a proven brand to embrace something that is “different” in order to garner additional attention. Plus it is just a lot of fun.

Tom-simpsons-7-11

Where Are We?

In our mini-van, yes I know I just lost major street-cred by referencing the fact that my wife and I do in-fact own a min-van, but it’s a fully loaded mini-van thank you very much!!! We have built-in navigation and DVD systems for the kids.

Now instead of actually paying attention to where I am going, I am mindlessly following the directions given to me by the authoritative female voice and glowing maps. As my brain wanders, thinking about parenting, profitability and ROI analysis, Xbox 360 gaming and what’s for dinner, I realize that if we suddenly lost power to the nav system I would have no idea how to find where I am going.

Thinking about this and the High-Tech industry in general and reading Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm I began to think about the importance of not only understanding where you are going but more importantly how are you going to get there.

We at Telligent are at a crossroads. We are almost upon the transition from the Innovators and Early Adopters to the pragmatic Early Majority in terms of product adoption. Marketers are good at identifying fads and even better at exploiting trends. We are currently in the middle of a major trend which is the collaborative boom of Web 2.0 solutions. And Telligent is definitely on the forefront of providing the needs to those Innovators and Early Adopters. With success implementing solutions and providing Community Server to organizations such as: Disney, MSNBC, Dell, Microsoft, Electronic Arts, Intel, Mazda, Honda, Adidas, Lego, etc… We have laid the foundation to successfully cross over to the upcoming Early Majority.

But the Early Majority requires different messaging and they are less concerned with the technology and more concerned with ease of use, support and referrals from others in the Early Majority. This is one of the key areas where High-Tech companies fail. They see the growth in sales between Innovators and Early Adopters and they ramp up their teams and expect big revenue numbers to continue to spike, what they do not count on is the potential marketing pitfall that occurs between the Early Adopters and the Early Majority.

The Early Majority is a very important segment during the product adoption life-cycle. If you catch the wave between Early Adopters to the Early Majority this is where true success starts to materialize.

What we are seeing from organizations is that the Early Adopters were looking for an edge on the competition and now they have found a way to leverage collaborative solutions and engrain them into their marketing strategy. Now the Early Majority is taking note of the trend and patiently waiting to see what best practices arise.

The one thing to keep in mind in all of this is that it is not always the best product that gets selected by the Early Majority, it is normally the products that can market themselves in such a way and are continuous in their innovation that they speak directly to the needs of the Early Majority and are not as disruptive as the competition that they in turn cash in with market share. We at Telligent have the premier collaborative solution in Community Server. The next step is ensuring that we speak to the Early Majority and let them know exactly why it is the best. The rest will take care of itself.

Viral Marketing & SMO

Viral Marketing is now one of the most powerful ways to market online. The key to viral success comes down to interruption vs. invitation. Traditional media such as television has the potential to reach hundreds of millions but the message may not resonate or be clearly discerned by the prospective target audience due to the “noise” and passive positioning associated with this type of delivery. The beauty of viral messaging is that it has a much better chance to get the users attention as the message is either coming from a trusted source, a recommendation, or meets the search criteria defined by the user.  Also, this type of message is available on-demand which gives the user ultimate control over when and where consumption occurs.

One viral aspect that is getting a lot of attention is online video. If you are reading this you have more than likely viewed a user created video on YouTube or some other site and you are not alone.  Online video is beginning to garner more attention from average viewers with 4% of people over the age of 18 watching videos daily and another 14% watching at least once a week. Research shows more organizations will be shifting marketing dollars to producing and positioning online videos. The reason for the shift is that video ads show a propensity to generate higher ad interaction and longer ad viewing (2/3 of the way through on average) this in turn leads to higher click-through rates.

So as an organization you may be thinking about focusing on online video or maybe you are looking to tie into user generated content and incorporate your advertising. If so, you need to focus on a few key factors. As with any type of marketing activity consistency is the key. Ensure that you are intrinsically linked to your brand, your video should require online interactivity and it needs to have synergy with offline marketing material. The other key factor revolves around the concept of Social Media Optimization or SMO.

SMO is the process of optimizing your online media presence by becoming more visible through searches within online communities and community web sites. The concept of SMO is to increase the chances of your video being distributed more widely through community search engines. This is very important as this is the key driver for this type of viral strategy.

As you consider your viral strategy it may become clear that you need a solid community presence associated with your brand. This is where branded community offerings can be applicable. Integrated platform (Blogs, Forums, File, Photo Galleries, Video & Podcast support, RSS) that streamline the positioning of an online community. Let me know if we can assist you with your community or viral marketing needs. We would be more than happy to assist. Feel free to contact me with questions at tedwards@blackfin360.com

Why Telligent

One of the more frequent questions I get is why Telligent? I joined the Telligent team about a year and half ago. Previously I was a co-founder of a Professional Services firm that focuses on custom application development and works extensively with Microsoft. I was the VP of Sales & Marketing, a member of the Board of Directors and had equity in the organization. So why leave for Telligent? Two words, Vision and Collaboration. When I met with Rob Howard, Jason AlexanderScott Dockendorf and remotely with Scott Watermasysk one thing became very clear, this was a team that has the vision and domain knowledge to do something truly unique.

When you first meet Rob Howard one of the first things you will notice is the passion that he has for Telligent and Community Server. If you ever happen to catch him at a conference, or via webex demonstrating Community Server you will immediately recognize that Rob truly is a thought leader in terms of understanding the application of business intelligence, specifically around collaborative software and online community. More than that though, Rob understands the concept of the blue ocean. Mainly, don’t compete over minor scraps in the red ocean of over saturated products and competition, look for the blue ocean and ensure that the focus of the organization is to build something that provides value but may not be completely mainstream just yet. This is where the collaboration reference comes into play.

One of the big shifts over the past few years is the emergence of Web 2.0. Web 2.0 focuses on collaboration. From an organizational standpoint this trend is really gaining traction with traditional businesses. The move from traditional marketing to a more viral approach has accelerated the emergence of strategy aimed at bottom up marketing, whereas the end consumer either B2B or B2C has direct impact on the direction of marketing strategy for an organization. This was very key for me as it provided an opportunity to guide the marketing direction of a product that was still in the early adopter phase of the product lifecycle. The ability to ride the wave of collaboration combined with the vision and drive of the Telligent team were an easy sell for me. Over the past year we have made significant penetration into a number of great accounts, Disney, Conde Nast, MSNBC, Intel, Dell and Electronic Arts to name a few. What is really exciting is that enterprise level organizations are truly just scratching the surface of what is possible in terms of Web 2.0 marketing strategy and software solutions. This means that Telligent and Community Server will continue to be in very high demand.

This year has already started with a bang and with the release of Community Server 2007 which is the best Community Server release to date it just keeps getting better. The roadmap is defined and we are looking to do some very special things in upcoming releases. Look for the announcement of some very large initiatives that are in the works and will be launching later this year, one is just mind boggling and definitely affirm that Community Server can scale to meet the needs of almost any organization.

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