Social Networking BlackFin360 - Innovation To Reality

October 25, 2011October 13, 2013

Social Networks & Our Time

Since 2007, I have been blogging about various topics related to social media. I have worked with many fortune 1000 & Global 50 brands and have defined strategies across channels & various platforms. But the sheer velocity and reach associated with how social has become a part of our everyday lives is simply amazing.

Below is a great infographic that provides a visual look at how social networks are now taking up a majority of our time online.

Social Networks: Dominating Our Time Online by Infographiclabs

Follow Tom Edwards @BlackFin360

May 3, 2011October 14, 2013

Social Turf War

During a recent iMedia Summit a simple question was asked to Bryan McCleary, Director of Public Relations, Procter & Gamble, Baby Care. “Who should own social strategy?” Brian’s response was interesting and made a lot of sense. His response was “The Brand and Agency should own the social strategy or the “building of the house” and the PR agency should own the “storytelling” and brand reputation management.”  

 This is a very telling statement as times have changed and the evolution of social has gone from Social Networking to social media and now to the world of Social Activity. This creates a conundrum for many brands as internal & external turf wars are being waged both in terms of who owns social internally as well as the blurring line between the agency side and PR.  

 Going back to Bryan’s statement for a moment, the reason it makes sense is that the agencies both traditional and especially the digital/social are very closely aligned with the marketing objectives of the brand. This extends to acquisition and engagement strategies as well as driving advocacy towards the objectives of the business. Also, agencies bring an element of social creativity in terms of campaign support that is unique and essential to creating a compelling experience beyond the “story telling”.  

 Where PR really enables a brand is with the ability to drive the conversations and reputation management while “telling the story” of the brand through compelling content or by activating influencers. 

 It is very clear though that the objectives for PR & Agencies differ as different expectations, goals and even KPI’s are in place. Ultimately brands that understand the need to define roles & responsibilities and realign with changing consumer behaviors and channels are the ones who will thrive and exceed expectations.

 I personally live this model everyday as we have great relationships with the PR companies that we work with on the Hasbro account and many others. There is a clear delineation between our role of “building the house” and the “story telling” and reputation management delivered by PR. By working together instead of competing for turf, this has allowed us to drive progressive programs jointly.  

 What we find is that by clearly articulating the roles of the groups both internally and externally and allowing each group to maximize their expertise the end result is a comprehensive social strategy that can truly move the presence of a brand forward.

Follow Tom Edwards @BlackFin360

March 1, 2011October 14, 2013

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Follow Tom Edwards @BlackFin360

February 22, 2011October 14, 2013

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.

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.

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.

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.

Follow Tom Edwards @BlackFin360

February 17, 2011October 14, 2013

Influencer Identification, Brand Marketers & the Growing Divide

Advocacy, acceleration of content creation and generating buzz around products and services are always at the top of the list for most brand Go-To-Market strategies.

One consistent goal is to identify and engage key influencers in a specific brand category and work to activate them by peeking their interest into becoming a brand ambassador for your offering. Sounds easy enough right?

The problem is the divide between influencers and brands is very real and more fragmented than you may think. Obviously there are the A-list influencers in each category. Getting a single mention from Guy Kawasaki (@guykawasaki) or a featured article via a TechCrunch or Mashable author are worthy of praise.

But how do you identify RELEVANT influencers? A large number of Influencers have moved past only residing in blogs and are leveraging other social channels. While blogs are still a key component of influencer outreach it is incredibly important to review an influencers comprehensive social footprint in comparison to your target consumer to ensure that you are maximizing your true social reach.

Many tools exist today to identify influencers across categories such as Technorati’s top 100 (Blogs) , Klout (Twitter), Radian6 (Multiple Channels) etc… but additional analysis needs to be conducted prior to executing your outreach program. Generating tool created influencer target lists is only half the battle.

When I work with brands I use a combination of tools to craft the ideal influencer target list for my brand category. But before I proceed with any type of outreach there are 2 additional steps that need to be taken.

#1 – It is extremely important to take into consideration the target consumer segments and behavioral characteristics. This is critical as your influencers are only relevant to your consumer target if they are actually relevant to your consumer target!

#2 – Not all influencers are created equally. Just because you have a list of 100 potential influencers to target it does not mean that you will get the most reach per channel.

When I review influencers for potential brand impact I take into consideration the following variables:

1 – Ensure my Consumer Segmentation is as detailed as possible including characteristics and perceived personas.

2 – Consolidate sets of traffic & engagement patterns via publicly available sources.

2 – Map Target Demographics & Age indexing against my consumer segments
3 – Categorize and review social channel penetration and impact per channel as well as review how integrated their individual channels are.
4 – If available brand partner history

Once all data has been collected I score each set of variables based on a proprietary influencer index that I created. I will review as much data as possible around each influencer… Monthly uniques, demographic indexing tied to my consumer segments then I run numerous calculations on factors such as Dan Zarrella’s Retweetability Metric (# Tweets per day /# of RT’s per day)/Followers as well as analysis of Facebook reach, YouTube subscribers, video views and more.

Each data element receives a 1-3 weighted ranking based on Primary, Secondary & Ancillary influencer target status and all scores are then averaged to gauge an influencers potential brand impact rating.

What I find is that there are many tools that will get you 80% of the way there in terms of identifying relevant influencers. There are many tools that are channel specific and provide valuable data. In order to find the individuals that are truly relevant to your potential target audience it is important to venture that last 20% in order to truly maximize your program for success.

Regarding the outreach portion it is extremely important to be respectful in your approach. Take the time and show an interest in the topics they are passionate about and incent them in a way that will definitely encourage them to engage and be reciprocal in your praise. Facebook’s upcoming change that will allow brands to take more control of responding as a brand can further increase the bond between influencers and the brand. Aggregate relevant posts, provide links back and respond to their requests in a timely manner. Treat influencers as you would like to be treated and it will go a long way.

I have found these steps to be an extremely valuable framework to executing a successful influencer identification and outreach program.

Follow Tom Edwards @BlackFin360

October 3, 2010October 14, 2013

5 Steps to Branded Social Relevance

The 60’s were known as the creative age in terms of advertising. Since the mid 90’s we are now in the digital age and it shows no signs of slowing down. Working in digital over the past decade means the one constant has been change. Technologies advance, new tactics are defined, the next shiny object that transforms how we communicate is introduced. Yet during this explosion into a digital society certain behavioral elements remain the same. People have an inherent desire to share, look to others for recommendations on products & services and have a desire to consume products and services that are relevant to them.

Fast forward to today and the latest iteration of digital is social media. It’s on the minds of senior level executives to the most jr. brand manager. All looking for the right combination to amplify the reach of the brand, drive acquisition, strengthen brand relevance, activate influencers both domestically and internationally, integrating with CRM & e-commerce solutions, encouraging engagement and ultimately hoping to influence purchase.

Creating a truly engaging experience is not a given. For the sake of this conversation assume a solid awareness campaign is planned to drive acquisition. As I have discussed in previous posts the “build it” and they will come only works if you are Apple nowadays. For most brands it is imperative to leverage multiple vehicles to drive awareness as well as rock solid consumer insights.

5 Steps to social relevance

The Big Idea – One of the THE most talented creative director I have ever worked with recently boiled the big idea down to being able to explain it with one sentence. Then the supporting tactics immediately begin to surface. This is also one of the key points to consider when evaluating the fragmented landscape of where the ideas come from?

Should the idea come from our PR firm? Social agency? Traditional Agency? Digital Agency? In my experience the idea should support the overarching brand objectives & the medium.

It is one thing to develop an elegant strategy that maximizes appropriate vehicles based on insight but until you are able to overlay a compelling idea that meets brand objectives while providing both utility and relevance for your audience you are rolling out tactics that may not ever reach their full potential.

It is important to spend the time developing creative concepts that are supported by a digital framework that maximizes each strategic brand pillar. With social now residing in multiple parts of an organization, having an underlying theme tying all of the tactics together into a cohesive package that drives relevance and engagement is the most difficult element of social relevance.

Utility – To put it simply the big idea needs to support enabling a basic need. We as consumers all have needs. A need to connect, a need to uncover information, a need to help me accomplish a goal. In order for us to interact with your brand an inherent benefit needs to be provided to the user.

An ideal example is the simple utility associated with the Hallmark Social Calendar Facebook application. For those of you not familiar with the application it recently gained 4 million users over the course of a week by meeting and enhancing individuals desires to stay connected with their friends.

With a combination of basic utility and offline reminders, users are constantly driven to engage with the application. Sometimes the simplest tasks like aggregating your friends birthdays and events can lead to quick adoption.

Relevance – Take just a moment and think about your own behavior. What are the apps you use the most? Of everything installed on your iPhone, Android, BlackBerry…. What do you actually use? Most of you would say some combination of the following: Facebook, Twitter, Google, Banking App, News, etc…

The common thread to each of these is personal relevance. “I” want to connect with my networks, “I” want to be able to find the latest headlines or search for directions to the restaurant I will be at later in the day. The point is apps that provide relevant content or opportunities to engage are ultimately rewarded with adoption.

Looking at Hallmark once again the basis of the application is tied directly to users desire to stay current with events and it provides relevance to the user and that translates into engagement.

Incentive – Attention all brand marketers… Attention… People Like Free Stuff. Yes I know it is hard to believe but in order to entice users to engage it is always helpful to offer a tangible reward for engagement.

My preference is to incent users with rewards that are digital yet have application beyond my branded experience. One of the best examples is Hallmark’s recent usage of Facebook credits. This was one of the first applications that was a non-gaming app that adopted the soon to be default Facebook currency (Zynga fully on board) to entice users to engage with branded properties

Integration – Integration is key to driving relevance. Consider how to incorporate cross-platform vehicles to provide further points of integration that impact the user while offline. Whether it is tied to offline SMS messaging, mobile application, e-mail campaign, etc… the key is to think beyond the application and how other channels can further enhance engagement.

Follow Tom Edwards @BlackFin360

December 9, 2009July 6, 2011

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.

November 13, 2009July 6, 2011

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.

February 17, 2008July 6, 2011

GDC 2008

I am in transit to San Francisco to attend the Game Developers Conference 2008.

I look forward to the numerous sessions and networking as well as all of the latest and greatest gaming demonstrations during the expo portion of the conference.

On Wednesday I will begin my blog coverage of GDC 2008 as that is when the Expo gets underway.

On deck is an interview with Larry “Major Nelson” Hyrb discussing his thoughts about the impact of Social Networking and gaming as well as insight into the keys to success of his blog.

January 14, 2008July 6, 2011

GDC 2008

I 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.

January 5, 2008July 5, 2011

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.

Direct Mail – $63B
Broadcast TV – $48B
Newspaper – $42B
Cable TV Networks – $21B
Radio – $18B
Yellow Pages – $14B
Consumer Magazine – $14B
Internet – $12B
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.