SPAM-A-LOT: It’s going to get worse…

Posted by Kevin Spidel on Aug 6th, 2009 | Comments

… before it gets better. We are talking about social spam on Twitter.  Other social networks suffer from this problem as well, however recent changes to Twitter this last month has made the issue worse. We feel the worst is yet to come.

This last month, Twitter launched its new front page / logon screen. This gave us insight into their revenue model, which includes trending data and analytics. Many companies  understand that their brands need to be in this space, but they don’t understand how to use social networks.

The proven models are about volume and numbers, not about engagement or advocacy on the social web. Therefore are many semantic bots that have been created and are now spaming the Twitterverse with hashtags and links. Volume, not authenticity, is the focus.

Businesses understand Pay-Per-Clicks and numbers more than they understand brand equity, authentic fellowship and brand advocates on the social web. We at Activating Word of Mouth use a metric that measures a brand’s Social Web Impact. This measures how influential your following is and how authentic.

The reality is, that brands still focus on volume and not engagement. Thus, new strategies like pay-per-tweet and celebrity endorsements are moving forward. This type of marketing will inevitably trend high on the twitter feeds and consequently land on the front page.

Is this good? (more…)

It Comes Down to Numbers

Posted by Jennifer Kindred on Jul 17th, 2009 | Comments

Any marketer knows that messaging is about numbers.  Where you message and how you get that message out takes strategy.  The “where” part of the marketing equation depends on several factors such as geography, product, and consumer demographics.  The “how” is all about what medium you use to get that message out to consumers.  We focus on social web marketing but understand that, like other mediums, this may not be ideal for all companies and products.  However, companies and organizations who do not consider social media in their marketing tool box are making a grave mistake. 

Activating WOM is 100% about marketing on the social web…why?  Because we know that the social web is growing and that where consumers congregate to carry out conversation is where companies and organizations need to be!  Twitter and Facebook are growing at ridiculously fast rates.  According to Nielsen and reported by Mashable, Twitter grew a massive 1,928 percent in the US from June ’08 to June ’09, now reaching a total of 21 million monthly unique visitors.  While Facebook leads all social networking sites with 87.3 million unique visitors in June.

What does this mean?  Well it all comes down to numbers. You can not lightly glance over those numbers above. If you are a company and not thinking about social media as an addition to your marketing plan then you are living under a rock.  If you are an advocacy group and not strategizing about how to get your message out through the social web then you are missing out on your biggest megaphone.

We all know that people use the Internet to communicate and find information, the social web is just another part of this communication.  Denial, fear, and ignorance of these tools will do nothing but allow your business or organization to lose a competitive edge.  At Activating WOM we understand that social media is new to lots of people and want to help businesses and organizations figure out how to integrate the social web into their marketing strategies.

A recession is no time to embrace fear but a time to think creatively and get your message out to a large audiences for the least amount of capital.  Social media can do this and so much more…don’t wait to get on board, engage the social web today.

Respect Culture Within the Social Web

Posted by Kevin Spidel on Jul 16th, 2009 | Comments

In the offline world, respecting cultures is just common sense. Different ethnicities, different geographic locations, heritages, traditions, etc. are all around us.  People come from different backgrounds; in my opinion, cultural diversity is what makes the human race a beautiful thing.

Similarly, the online world is full of different cultures; however most assume online cultures consist of the same  factors that define culture offline. Sure social web users have diverse backgrounds that include religion, traditions, regional understandings, etc., but beyond these distinguishing elements lie cultures of each social network.

What does that mean?

People interact and consume information within a specific social network differently then they would others.  For example, if you are on Twitter and link your Facebook status to your Tweets, do you often get people within Facebook telling you to stop spamming their feed with all your status updates?  They might not even be involved with the same social networks as you and not understand that Twitter is about microblogging short posts.

In the case of Twitter and Facebook, these are two very different worlds. Facebook’s main landing page is a social stream of your network. Where folks can see photos, links, comments, events, etc from friends, family, and colleagues. This tends to be a more intimate interaction as posts are not limited to 140 characters like Twitter.

The point being, if one evolved within a given social network, they understand many social norms within that space that might not carry over to another space. If you tweet a lot, and carry that over to Facebook status updates, some might consider that spam. Or at the very least, see it as a social faux pas with that social space.

Social networks develop social norms within their space; be mindful and respect the given culture within that space.

Many large corporations hire anthropologists to understand the business etiquette of various nations in order to minimize the cultural gap.  Here at Activating Word of Mouth, consider us your cultural consultant to the online world.

There are many spaces that have different cultures. Make sure you don’t take that fact for granted.

Network Growing Pains…Don’t Let Them Cripple Your Authenticity

Posted by Jennifer Kindred on Jul 3rd, 2009 | Comments

Lately, I keep coming across services such as PMS Social Suite and Tweeterfollowers, which claim to grow your Twitter network to thousands of followers within 30 days. Who are these followers? Are they spam bots? People who have similar interests as you? Are they even people?

I am from Illinois and lived in Chicago for sometime. The City’s reputation for wind, beautiful lake paths, horrid winters, and corrupt politics are all right on. Growing up I recall hearing jokes and comments about dead people voting in Chicago…as a child I would try to picture a deceased person rising from their resting place and voting, then wondered how a cremated person could vote (yes I was a strange kid). Now I understand that dead people of course did not actually vote but their propensity to vote straight ticket Democrat preceded them into death thanks to Chicago party politics.

What does this diatribe have to do with Twitter and social networks? My anecdote poses a very important question, are these services akin to having dead people following you on Twitter?

There is an internal debate among the social web community regarding numbers v. authenticity, which is more important? Are they mutually exclusive? We argue that when numbers and authenticity coexist a very powerful network is born. For those that are entering the social web world for marketing purposes, we assert that the “magic sauce” exists in the strategy in which you engage your network. Meaning, if you opt to use a follower aggregator service, you must put extra time in auditing your network to ensure that your numbers reflect real authentic followers.

I think of “fake followers” as inflation, just because your numbers are bigger does not mean you can buy more influence as the influence price will also become higher. So 30,000 followers may seem like a lot but really you only have 2,000 engaged followers. Further, when you follow other artificial networks, your perceived influence becomes almost impossible to gauge. At the end of the day if you are using Twitter for marketing purposes, you must be able to measure your influence and potential ROI. Inflationary numbers will distort your true influences, just as it does in the monetary economy.

If you choose to use a service that automize your network growth there are several strategies you can take to also authenticate your network:

1. Review your new followers everyday.
2. Take out any spam bots or other fake profiles.
3. Go to new follower profile and look through Twitter feeds to see if they are interested in your brand/topic.
4. ENGAGE new followers through authentic conversation and mention of your brand/topic.

Follow these steps and not only will you have a large following but one that is engaged in your topic area. Activating WOM works with clients to develop network engagement strategy and produce marketing analytics to track your network’s influence in terms of sales, brand discussion, and network interaction.

Don’t let your network become dead, white noise…unlike Chicago politics, where a vote is a vote, in the social web world, an authentic follow is much more valuable than fake followers.

The Social Web: Companies that are Catching on in a BIG Way!

Posted by Jennifer Kindred on Jun 29th, 2009 | Comments

When we sit down with potential clients, many are still trying to grasp the world of social marketing. During out pitch, there tends to be a lot of education about what the social web is, and what makes us different than other marketing/PR firms. Many think that volume is the key strategy to the social web. We feel that there is a fine line between spam and volume on the social web. So today we decided to post about different approaches to the social web and how our strategies coincide with these successful engagement methods.

Our specific strategies start with social networks…evaluating a brand’s digital foot print, determining which networks work best for the brand, and executing a specific strategy for the brand.  Obviously we add our special sauce that provides analytic reports. Evaluation is key. Our Managing Partner has spent nearly 10 years in political campaigns.  His specific background is in “field.”  Field work is about breaking apart the trend data of voter files and marketing lists to target a voting base and then “activate” them. With the social web, the data is there!  Marketing lists and social interaction data is resting in the code of the tweets and the pings.

The following are examples of brand sponsored social marketing strategies. Companies are catching on in a big way!

Last week we had the privilege to partner up with Jennifer Van Grove, the Associate Editor for Mashable.com, for the #sdtweetup with Shawne Merriman.  ActivatingWOM was a big part of the event.  Her latest post:

“brand sponsored social media campaigns are everywhere. From SeaWorld, Starbucks, and Dunkin’ Donuts, to Cadbury, A&E, and even Universal, it’s officially the hot trend to replace or supplement traditional marketing campaigns with social media.”

SeaWorld has created a Facebook game application where you can challenge friends to get the most points; Starbucks challenged its network followers to be the first to post pictures of new Starbucks advertisement signs. Cadbury has taken a page out of Ford’s viral marketing campaign and created a contest for Cadbury fans to get as many social media views and points as possible while participating in “Operation Goo.”The winner gets £20,000 ($32,900).

The newest social media campaign is coming from Huggies in partnership with the social site, Circle of Moms. Huggies will be putting its content directly in the path of its primary consumer group…moms.  The “Huggies Zone” will be an interactive site with advice columns, baby photo sharing space, parenting polls, and of course diaper information.

As these examples demonstrate, companies are approaching the social web in a variety of ways…everything from Facebook applications, to photo contests, to large scale viral marketing, to an interactive page focused on a specific consumer group.  Companies can spend and do as much or as little as they want on the social web.

Here at Activating WOM we understand different social media strategies, implementation, analytics/tracking, and most of all reporting.  Companies need to know if their marketing strategies are effective.  We believe in authentic marketing, which is what creates a viral marketing campaign.

When taking the social web plunge, companies should be opened minded …as demonstrated above there is a whole new world of online communication.

Companies should see the social web as a cost effective way to talk about brands, engage consumers, and most importantly track their progress.

The social web is here…. are you ready?

The Perils and Rewards of Being First

Posted by Jennifer Kindred on Jun 24th, 2009 | Comments

By Jennifer Kindred

We usually think of “being first” as a good thing…first across the finish line, first in line for the water fountain, first group to come up with the newest innovation. In the business world, unlike the playground, being first accompanies risk. Sure companies are all over the latest innovation once some other hapless company proves the idea is successful or worse a failure. This, unfortunately, seems to be the approach that many companies are taking to the social web. They see the value but are too risk adverse to take a chance on a seemingly untested method.

Kevin came across a fabulous blog by Ken Kendall, which is the inspiration for this blog and can be found at http://www.mpdailyfix.com/2009/06/givetake_ratio.html The truth is that in communications, the risk adverse lose and lose big time. Ken cleverly uses the example of pizzerias in Chicago, basically a dime a dozen right? So why not use the social web to stand out from the noise, which exactly what Ramon De Leon or DPZRamon has done. Ramon is the owner of several Dominoes chains in Chicago and has built an online network about pizza. Ramon is the “pizza guy” and talks about everything pizza. Ken makes an excellent point saying that Ramon was the first pizzeria owner to take advantage of the social web and is known as THE “pizza guy”, as such, it will be much more difficult for other pizza chains to penetrate the Chicago pizza market on the social web.

Being first definitely paid off for Ramon! What about other business titans that were first in communications? Time magazine came out with their 100 Influential People edition a couple of weeks ago, the first profile under “Builders & Titans” was on Biz Stone and Evan Williams…founders of Twitter. The next page profiled Ted Turner, the guy who took a chance on cable television in the 1980’s before most of America even had access to cable TV. The gambles paid off for these folks.

So what does this have to do with activating word of mouth? Everything. I was on Twitter this morning and saw a retweet about a marketing promotion that Orbitz was doing. If you follow Orbitz on Twitter and retweet their message about a free airline ticket, you might win a free plane ticket, I immediately started following Orbitz and retweeted the message, duh I have a lot of traveling to do this year. All Orbitz had to do was give away one plane ticket and thousands of people took notice. This marketing strategy is unique and has not, to my knowledge, been done by an online travel company. Orbitz now has the foundation to build strong online social networks and engage those communities with travel information and additional free giveaways.

For companies who are risk adverse and hesitant to engage the social web, businesses like Orbitz will make it very difficult for you to build online communities once you determine that being left in the communications dust is not good for business. The amazing thing about social web marketing is how little it costs and how much you can gain. At the end of the day, we are all in business to make money…so why wait, be first in your industry to engage on the social web and see how much bang you get for your buck!

Live TweetUp Webcast: Shawne Merriman

Posted by Kevin Spidel on Jun 24th, 2009 | Comments

We are helping to host, broadcast, and promote a Tweetup for San Diego Charger @ShawnMerriman on Tuesday at 8:00pm PST.

This is the first Tweetup for a NFL player and the first Tweetup being broadcast. We will have an interactive Q&A from you all live, here.

The event can be found on Twitter and streamed live here:

Live Videos by Ustream

Activating WOM the WRONG Way: Celebrity Edition

Posted by Kevin Spidel on Jun 7th, 2009 | Comments

By Kevin Spidel

We are up in the Bay area this week discussing the big differences between traditional PR and Social Media Consultation versus Activating Word of Mouth. We are surprised to find how many CEO’s and Public Relations firms are still not understanding that Word of Mouth authentic engagement can be managed within a social network. They feel it is strictly organic. Organic conversation growth is a big part of WOM, but having organic growth and detailed strategy is not mutually exclusive.

One topic that keeps coming up is celebrities using Twitter and Facebook. Access is now more convenient for their fans to create conversation with celebrities they love. This is exactly what traditional PR agencies fear, turning their clients loose on the web with no filter.

On June 5^th Shaq caused some drama in the athletic world that then  activated word of mouth on the social web. At first glance it just seems like a simple spat among two high-profile athletes. Shaq posted an unusual series of taunts and insults tweets about Howard, while the Orland Magic star has been quiet since losing to the L.A. Lakers on Thursday.

This prompted coverage in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/06/sports/06leading.html?_r=1

This is the wrong way to activate word of mouth and becomes costly to the individual athletes who now need a PR firm to clean up their social web faux pas. Further social media mistakes might prevent others from effectively using Twitter and engaging their fans for fear of similar things happening.

This is where strategic word of mouth is needed. Before an athlete makes the jump onto the social web there needs to be a plan, coaching, and the ability rapidly respond with support should something go awry.

Here is some of AWOM secret sauce to manage celebrities’ social media web presences:

• Step one: Evaluate the digital footprint of the athlete
• Step two: Determine what role each social network will play in impacting that digital footprint
• Step three: Coach the individual about authentic engagement without compromising the plan
• Step four: Engage

Should My Brand Be on Twitter?

Posted by Kevin Spidel on Jun 3rd, 2009 | Comments

By Jennifer Kindred

Tweet, tweeps, tweeter, twead, tweetup…the list goes on.  The phenomenon called Twitter has taken on a language and life of its own.

So what is all the Twitter hype really about?  Community.   The most recent numbers from Nielsen taken in January 2009 indicate that Twitter grew 1,382% year-over-year, registering a total of just more than 7 million unique visitors in the US. Not only is that huge growth in one year, but in one month like in January, Twitter.com clocked 4.5 million unique visitors in the US, meaning the service grew by more than 50 percent month-over-month.  7 million people (just in the US) are using Twitter…who are these people?  Its like knowing that there are millions of Brittany Spears fans but yet you have never met one of them.

Twitter is simply a social network where people are allowed to post comments to their “followers” (people in their network).  The catch is that the posts can only be 140 characters; given these restraints I have seen some interesting uses of the English language.  But what is Twitter really about….just posting random thoughts under 140 characters, surely there is more?  I argue that yes, Twitter is much more than random posts.  It is where millions of people have gathered to start conversations.  What are these conversations about, are they meaningful, or spamiful?

The Harvard Business School recently published a study of 300,000 randomly selected Twitter users during the month of May 2009.  Study results showed that the top 10% of Twitter users are responsible for 90% of the tweeting.  More numbers…what does this mean, is Twitter just a vehicle for white noise and spam?  We at ActivatingWOM argue, NO.

This study actually legitimizes the Web3 semantic marketing approach.  The 10% of Twitter users that use their social networks to engage in authentic, meaningful conversation are the most active and will receive the most responses from their networks because they are not spamming their followers.  The spamming/dark side of Twitter does not receive real interaction with their networks, the socialites of Twitter will not interact with spambots and therefore, those profiles become idle. It is about influence of these conversations.

So what can Twitter do for you, your brand, your company?  Build.  Twitter can be a vehicle to build a community of brand advocates for you, a social network of people interested in what you are talking about, producing, or selling.  However, in order to build on Twitter you must engage the community in a smart, meaningful and most importantly authentic way.  This is word of mouth marketing.

Use Twitter wisely and a whole Community will be there to Build for you!

Is SEO Dead?

Posted by Kevin Spidel on Jun 2nd, 2009 | Comments

There has been a lot of talk about PR firms embracing current SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques  in their digital service packages. Today, for example, Jason from C&C posted a really great post outlining the details that should come in these packages.

He lists some great “How to” steps to familiarize yourself with this word and how it MUST be included in current PR work.

I couldn’t agree more, but there is a big part missing; the evolution of search engines, semantic data, and word of mouth is the trend of Web2 to Web3 boundaries.

There are technical limitations to typical “meta data” that is associated with traditional SEO data. The New Media Knowledge group has pin pointed this as why SEO might be dead in an article here.

Technical limitations such as code standards and non-indexable data (videos, flash, etc.) are only small aspects to why traditional SEO techniques are dying. As the web evolves, influence/word of mouth marketing and transparent networks are increasing online traffic to brands. What does that mean?

Think of it this way. If you know what you are looking for and can break it down into keywords, then by all means Google it. You most likely will find it. Just like you would if you went to a library and searched for something on a subject using the dewey decimal system system. There is still a need for that fundamental way of searching for your product online and making sure your data is coded and optimized for this standard.

However, as conversational networks exponentially grow daily, semantic (conversational, back and forth exchange of data) data is being indexed. There are no influencer gatekeepers on the web. If someone loves Oprah and wants to buy everything she suggests, she is on Twitter, Facebook, Skype, etc. The content that she puts out as an influencer in the market attracts consumers already willing to buy these products. Her conversations are retweeted by lesser influencers to networks and then talked about again and again. If you wanted to know about the best products to buy in your given trade or hobbyist obsession… you can find those influencers in that trade, interact with them, and every little didgibit is archived and index into searchable content. This is the new SEO. Semantic search and inflencual conversations.

SEO is still important, but without a comprehensive word of mouth plan that involves strategic semantic optimization, PR firms will not be ready for Web3. Web3 is transparent, honest, and all about word of mouth. Traditional SEO was about frequency of keywords and searches. Word of Mouth & Semantic Marketing is about authenticity. It is not about frequency of conversations, it is about the integrity of the conversation.

Is SEO dead?

No… but the methods have evolved.

Time to catch up.