Archive for May, 2007

Keenometer – Tracking the Andrew Keen meme

Andrew Keen writes on how web 2.0 detrimentally affects literature, art, and culture. His book “the cult of the amateur” is available from June 5th. He generates significant conversation and is really up to date with commenting on his blog. He is a very active blogger and given how he has embraced the medium there have been plenty of people pointing out the irony of deriding blogs and web 2.0. Whatever people may think we are now monitoring the Keen effect and how the web (MSN) and blogs perceive him by using strong descriptive terms and web 2.0 “friendly” Dave Winer and Robert Scoble as co-references. Searches have been for “Andrew Keen” and each of the terms selected. We will monitor this over time as the book goes into main release.

First results show that across all web pages, there are relatively more references in articles with brilliant or dangerous, with a fair amount of web pages containing stupid, Robert Scoble, and provocative. I am disappointed by the small mentions of polemic, I love the term, it’s antonym is apologetics by the way.

The make up of buzz in blogs is different, with co-references to Dave Winer being the most prominent. Less brilliant references and relatively higher mentions of stupid, dangerous and my favourite polemic.

Blog seeding – approaching the people behind the blog

From our experience the phenomenon of asking bloggers to trial products or services is increasing markedly. It makes sense from a number of perspectives.

1. If the blogger talks about the user experience, it can help sales as often bloggers have strong network, it may “kick start” a word-of-mouth campaign. (+ or – impact is possible)
2. The blog post plus accompanying comments provide an online live focus group where companies will find out things they didn’t know before. (+ or – feedback is likely)
3. If a number of well connected bloggers post then there may be positive SEO impact as often they are picked up quickly by Google, MSN and Yahoo and when you and I search there we see the results potentially on coveted page 1 or 2. (+ or – impact is possible)

If targeting bloggers is common sense when part of a well thought through marketing and communications plan, the question is how to approach the bloggers in a common sense way when they have been selected? If you know the person already, calling is a good option, this may not be possible in all cases but the rules below are good for whatever medium is chosen. By the way I took part of this content from worldcadaccess blog.

1. Avoid the Intimacy Trap: “The marketing person may know a lot about the blogger but the blogger may not know you. So it’s easy to become over-personal, colloquial or even slack in your pitch. This can come across as being forward, lazy or careless, even though that’s not your intent.” (Source: http://worldcadaccess.typepad.com)

2. Personalise the message: “You have selected the blogger because it is believed they have talent and passion for the target area. It is important not to insult the person or undermine their time by writing to them via a mailer. A simple message well constructed explaining the purpose of the seeding is required.” (Source: http://worldcadaccess.typepad.com)

3. Openness: Attentio advocates openness at all levels of this process. Explain to the blogger why they have been selected i.e. they are an authority on the topic area and will be able to give insights into use of the product. Their feedback would be gratefully received. If they blog about the experience they should mention how they received the product. Of course bloggers should not be forced to write anything, although they should indicate that if they receive the product they will endeavour to at least to trial it. I believe in the future that companies will want to know that the blogger will post about it, accepting good or bad feedback; this is not the norm now. Bloggers should not be paid to trial; it creates too many potential problems for bloggers and company.

4. Incremental approach where possible: It may not be advisable to give products to everyone at the same time. Start first pass of seeding with a small sample set, this is will give insights into the process and take initial feedback in order to shape rest of campaign. Initial phase might be to place 25% of allotted products; however a decision will have to be made on how this fits into the overall marketing plan.

As always, it is crucial to monitor the impact of the campaign. There will be positive and negative feedback. There should also be take-up from other bloggers. Monitoring and subsequently measuring enables the acquisition of vital consumer feedback and return on investment information. (Disc: Attentio offers this service)

Buzz tracking the Belgian elections

After the great success of the French political buzz tracking with advisor Anders being on French and Norwegian TV plus the cooperation with XGM/L’express we are now doing the Belgian political buzzmeter with XGM and Roularta (thanks Robin) sites. This picks up the main buzz being generated in blogs and news by main candidates in the election. There’s a nice example already up on the Le Vif web site. What was truly super was seeing the rise of Sergo in the French election it will be fun to see what gets picked up this time…

Dell update

I wrote a post on the 4Ms of social media marketing and it was picked by 10000 marshmallows. I commented back and interestingly one of the Dell bloggers picked it up with the following comment

“We made a number mistakes early on, for sure. But it’s important to accept that mistakes can and will happen. More important to learn and grow in the process. Today, Dell’s blog has blossomed into one of our primary means of direct dialogue, and according to Technorati is ranked No. 1,906 out of more than 71 million blogs.”

It is interesting to see what can happen when a company gets involved like this. I wonder what quantifiable benefits they are seeing in their analysis of blogging and the rest of social media, is there a better perception of Dell online or offline? Perhaps anecdotal evidence is pointing that way…

Radical shift in consumer decision making

There’s an interesting report from Weber that talks about advocacy, the impact of influentials and speed at which decisions are now made. 63% of respondents decide much quicker on whether or not they like products, brands or issues that are marketed to them. They also use the term Badvocates which I think is “catchy”. It’s a good piece and also brings in to discussion the importance of new media… Amen…

“Both traditional and new media play critical roles in forming Advocates’ opinions. Advocates’ opinions about issues, causes, companies, brands and products are more strongly influenced by the media than non-Advocates’ opinions. Following broadcast and print, online media ranks third in importance of opinion influence among all global consumers.”

The 4Ms of social media marketing

Many of the aspects of marketing in social media are similar to mainstream or other online media. There are nuances like the extra special need for ”authentic” communications (i.e. be upfront with who is behind the initiative) or the real viral power of the networks. I believe that the following framework the 4Ms is a good way to understand social media and make better decisions on how best to interact to increase relevance and ultimately sales.

Stage 1: Monitoring – in this step company decides what sources of conversation they want to track. Is the opinion of bloggers most crucial, is it better to look at discussion forums, review sites etc. In our experience this is both industry and campaign dependent. Once the sources have been identified the next step might be too look for country specific information or other demographics. Companies then choose brands they want to monitor for and set up a system of tracking. There are a number of free tools that can be used (Yahoo Pipes for example, Netvibes, Blogpulse) and some commercial class (Ok, ok Attentio has one of these)

Stage 2: Measurement – Now it is time to see first results of the monitoring exercise and identify where the brand perception is today and what trends are emerging. At this stage it can be quickly seen how brands perform against same in class or best in class. Also there is country specific tracking to see if the brand performs better in one area versus the next. This measurement enables companies to see how they perform but it also sets the comparison point which will be measured again after a campaign.

Stage 3: Magnitude – The first steps find out where the conversations are and also offer the first pass on measurement. Now the next level of data looks at the difference between the grass roots buzz and the influential buzz. Who is pushing the debate around the brand or issue? Are these people with large communities and active commentators? Yet again how does this compare with other companies in the sector? Influencers may be an authority on a certain topic but not another, this explains why targeting only popular blogs may not be the way to go with a communication campaign.

Stage 4: Mingling – At first I was calling this mixing or even meddling (Thanks Michaela for helping me with this). This is how companies decide to engage with social networks or blogs. The number of ways of doing this is increasing. Bloggers are often asked to seed products. Companies may directly advertise with blogs or forums. Market research firms recruit panelists from demographically friendly social networks. I’ve seen company’s blog themselves in greater numbers, enable forums and enter into more discussion directly with blogs either ad-hoc or actual commenting strategy. This whole area is not mature yet, to some it is still an experiment, to others like Microsoft it is core to communication strategy, I know of a number of companies who just do not touch this space yet (this will change).

Conclusion: Even if companies decide to avoid stage 4, it is likely they should already be doing stages 1-3. This can be done relatively cheaply with free tools available. Stages 1-3 should include counting the raw buzz, identifying sentiment, tracking web and feed statistics, but also were possible seeing how social media impacts the brand and sales. When companies decide to mingle with social media they should increase efforts with stages 1-3 to make sure that they can take away learning from their tracking and understand ROI. There is more to come with case studies showing how companies interact with social media with good and bad results.

Quebec presentation

I was in Quebec presenting to their tourism industry on technological changes. This was an amazing time and I had a whirlwind trip around Quebec City which is a medieval city and the only one with fortified walls in the whole of North America. Claude Peloquin moderated and I presented with David Joly from Transat who are a major Canadian carrier, Julien Cormier and also “a couple of chicks” who offer a very popular SEO service in Canada. I presented on how social media is active in travel, mentioned examples such as Nooked, WAYN and of course Trip Advisor. For case studies I presented the American Airlines new social network for women  and the subsequent controversy, which to be fair American Airlines dealt with well. The audience (we presented at two sessions) asked some really interesting questions especially interesting was on how people could protect their copyright as “lifting” content is becoming more of an issue in this industry.

For the evening Alicia and Patricia from A couple of chicks and went out on the town and we had a great time brainstorming on blog initiatives, the 4Ms of social media marketing and bunch of stuff normal human beings talk about :) Our final drink was at the very trendy Voodoo lounge and the next day I was back in the air getting back to Brussels exactly 72 hours after I left… Major thanks to Sonya Carreau and Paul Arsenault for inviting me, and big thanks to Audray Lemieux and Francois Chevrier who picked me up from Montreal and brought me back, that saved me from the worse effects of jet lag. Definitely a place I will go to again, absolutely beautiful city and the province in 3 times bigger than France, so there is a lot to see… 

Amateur cult

I was quoted in FT last week, this was part of an article by Stefan Stern on how companies should be more confident with web 2.0, not hiding under the table. It was the first time I had ever heard of Andrew Keen, who has a dystopian view of web 2.0 and is critical of the four tenets of the Cluetrain manifesto i.e. customer, citizenship, community and conversation. He releases a book soon called “the cult of the amateur” written with this darker view of web 2.0. I personally see mainly positive aspects of a more “social” web but I also want the “web 2.0 will cure cancer” brigade to be counter-balanced.

The whole discussion around him is laden with irony. Furious commentary on how misled he is (you don’t have to like everyone in your community right?), his own meme has been transported at lightning speed by the social web (OK, with help from mainstream) and some recent criticism has been anonymous.

He said in an interview that “after reading my book I doubt that any chief marketing officer of a large corporation will have the confidence to let go of their brand and allow any anonymous internet user to abuse it”. I agree with this in the main, but shouldn’t the CMO be interested in when what is said, is meaningful, put in front of many people and put in context of the company brands and their objectives? With an ever increasing amount of conversations (sorry Andrew) it just stands to reason that some will be more important than others and some can and should be ignored…