Monthly Archives: May 2010

The power of online comparison

Posted on by
Reply

Have you read the new report ‘Your Brand: At Risk or Ready for Growth?’ from social search specialists Alterian which argues that the world of online marketing means big changes in terms of  delivering individualized marketing to consumers? Check it out here: Brands at risk (pdf, 1mb).

I was interested in the points made (jump to page 15) about price comparison and the power of finding similar folks and cross-checking with them, and using multiple sources of online information to make a purchase. Plus the point in the summary that never mind all the tech talk about the power of cloud technology, from a marketing perspective it is really about expressing/representing the individual.

The power of comparison

Consistent with our earlier findings, ‘formal messages from the company’ or ‘brand’ rate very low, with ‘advertising’ placed last with only 5% (4% UK, 6% US), seeing this as at all trustworthy. Second to last was ‘what the company says about itself’ with 8% (9% UK, 6% US), all well behind the hardly surprising ‘friends and family’ (40%).

Perhaps more interestingly was ‘professional reviews on the internet and magazines’ (28%) and the next most trusted source ‘people that are similar to me’ 19% (16% UK, 24% US). Recent research has indicated that, overall, people who view their friends and peers as credible sources of information about a company dropped to 25%.

Importantly, Edleman* believes this can be interpreted as ‘it is a sign of the times, and the lesson for marketers is that consumers have to see and hear things in five different places before they believe it’.

Key Points

  • Empowered consumers are massively connected, always available, expect others to be available and are used to directly interact with content.
  • Individuals ‘assemble’ relationships/experiences/things about themselves in an on-demand manner, by doing so they build rich and highly personalized structures.
  • Devices and media are clustered round the individual, often providing a ‘rich tapestry’ of multi-mode/channel communications.
  • Many of these developments can be traced back to a growing social sense of individuality developed over several decades.
  • Social media is one manifestation of this much deeper social change.
  • Although the cloud potential of the media receives much attention it is really about expressing/representing the individual.
  • Much of the communication/engagement by the individual should be seen as a means to express and establish identity.
  • Building strong engagements requires organizations to interact at a personal level.
  • Trust is increasingly seen as something established in an interactive manner.
  • Beliefs or information are tested by verification from several sources, these may not all be in consistent agreement, the final choice arises from ‘active dialogue’.

* ‘In Age of Friending, Consumers Trust their Friends Less‘, Edleman Trust Barometer, in Advertising Age, (12-02-2010)

A bill of privacy rights for social network users?

Posted on by
1

I spotted this via Twitter this morning – a bill of privacy rights for Facebook folks, and social network users in general:

Proposed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

“Social network services must ensure that users have ongoing privacy and control over personal information stored with the service. Users are not just a commodity, and their rights must be respected. Innovation in social network services is important, but it must remain consistent with, rather than undermine, user privacy and control. Based on what we see today, therefore, we suggest three basic privacy-protective principles that social network users should demand:

1: The Right to Informed Decision-Making

Users should have the right to a clear user interface that allows them to make informed choices about who sees their data and how it is used.

Users should be able to see readily who is entitled to access any particular piece of information about them, including other people, government officials, websites, applications, advertisers and advertising networks and services.

Whenever possible, a social network service should give users notice when the government or a private party uses legal or administrative processes to seek information about them, so that users have a meaningful opportunity to respond.

2: The Right to Control

Social network services must ensure that users retain control over the use and disclosure of their data. A social network service should take only a limited license to use data for the purpose for which it was originally given to the provider. When the service wants to make a secondary use of the data, it must obtain explicit opt-in permission from the user. The right to control includes users’ right to decide whether their friends may authorize the service to disclose their personal information to third-party websites and applications.

Social network services must ask their users’ permission before making any change that could share new data about users, share users’ data with new categories of people, or use that data in a new way. Changes like this should be “opt-in” by default, not “opt-out,” meaning that users’ data is not shared unless a user makes an informed decision to share it. If a social network service is adding some functionality that its users really want, then it should not have to resort to unclear or misleading interfaces to get people to use it.

The Right to Leave

Users giveth, and users should have the right to taketh away.

One of the most basic ways that users can protect their privacy is by leaving a social network service that does not sufficiently protect it. Therefore, a user should have the right to delete data or her entire account from a social network service. And we mean really delete. It is not enough for a service to disable access to data while continuing to store or use it. It should be permanently eliminated from the service’s servers.

Furthermore, if users decide to leave a social network service, they should be able to easily, efficiently and freely take their uploaded information away from that service and move it to a different one in a usable format. This concept, known as “data portability” or “data liberation,” is fundamental to promote competition and ensure that users truly maintains control over their information, even if they sever their relationship with a particular service.”

How’s Facebook’s social graph doing three years on?

Posted on by
Reply

It’s three years since Mark Zuckerberg proclaimed the power of the social graph? Well its certainly progressed from the 24 million active users it had it May 2007. Here’s what he said, as reported by ZDNet on the subject. Interesting to note that Ning has had a few problems since then, shedding its free service to most users, while Gina Bianchini has left the company – I guess that’s freedom for you. Anyhow it’s time to get into the time machine and turn the dial to May 2007:

Zuckerberg attributed the power of Facebook to the “social graph, ” the network of connections and relationships between people on the service. He said, “It’s the reason Facebook works.”

“Its changing the way the world works,” he said, pushing information out faster than any big company can. “As Facebook adds more and more people with more and more connections it continues growing and becomes more useful at a faster rate. We are going to use it spread information through the social graph.” The net effect of the social graph is that groups and application can achieve exponential growth, he said.

“The Facebook platform is optimized for building applications in Facebook, and with more value for people to develop on our base than we could do on our own. People are already building social apps, but they have to reconstruct the social graph all by themselves. We are going to allow developers worldwide to do complete new things. Today social networks are completely closed nets…today we are going to end that. With this [framework] any developer worldwide can build full applications on top of the social graph inside the Facebook Platform.”

Gina Bianchini, CEO of Ning, which makes another social networking service doesn’t agree that Facebook is going to bring the end closed social networks. “All freedom is good, but when people get a taste of type of freedom Facebook is launching today, they want more than a bite. A tightly controlled service can be successful, but fundamentally people want freedom at every level,” she said.

Facebook is open to third parties to integrate on top of the service, but you do have to inhabit the Facebook’s walled garden, social graph. On the other hand, a controlled environment like Facebook can leverage the huge network of people and allows for targeted innovation.

I guess Mr Zuckerberg is doing is trying to make sure that Facebook has the largest possible social graph, and any issues around privacy controls need to be therefore considered in that context. Obvious when you think about it. Anyhow take a look at Mashable’s view on the subject, in this piece from April this year, with the launch of the new Open Graph API and protocol and the “ability to integrate websites and web apps within your existing social network”, the point is that “public no longer means “public on Facebook,” it means “public in the Facebook ecosystem”.

‘You Oughta Know Inbound Marketing’ vs ‘It’s SM2 (Social Media Rap)’

Posted on by
Reply

Love this video from Hubspot dramatizing the value of inbound marketing.

But then in the face-off on the dance floor Alterian do a mean rap about their SM2 social media monitoring product:

How I understand the science of simplicity vs Facebook

Posted on by
6

I like to think I understand the relationship between simplicity and complexity as well as this guy because I’ve approached it through people’s understanding of the world from an everyday perspective. Put me to the test and ask a complex question and demand a simple answer? For example how to generate revenue from your online community manager.

Perhaps a useful start to demonstrate the value of simplicity would be to go through Facebook and figure out what does what, such as the privacy controls, and convey that on this blog in a simple way.

But first maybe it’s worth just reading this post from the New York Times on the ‘heterogenous organisation of data’ (nerd dry humour, ey!), that’s Facebook’s privacy options, and Facebook’s response. Then have a read of the practical privacy advice from Fast Company. Before digesting the passionate blog post on this subject from Danah Boyd.

And for balance, on Mark Zuckerberg’s perspective, I turned (in the storeway of WH Smith’s in Leicester Station) to the US edition of Wired Magazine to this choice set of quotes, as part of a piece on hacker culture titled ‘Geek Power: Steven Levy Revisits Tech Titans, Hackers, Idealists’:

Unlike the original hackers, Zuckerberg’s generation didn’t have to start from scratch to get control of their machines. “I never wanted to take apart my computer,” he says. As a budding hacker in the late ’90s, Zuckerberg tinkered with the higher-level languages, allowing him to concentrate on systems rather than machines.

For instance, when he played with his beloved Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Zuckerberg wouldn’t act out wars with them, like most other kids. He would build societies and pretend the Turtles were interacting with one another. “I was just interested in how systems work,” he says. Similarly, when he began playing with computers, he didn’t hack motherboards or telephones but entire communities — manipulating system bugs to kick his friends off AOL Instant Messenger, for instance.

Like Gates, Zuckerberg is often accused of turning his back on hacker ideals, because he refuses to allow other sites to access the information that Facebook users contribute. But Zuckerberg says that the truth is just the opposite; his company piggybacks — and builds — on the free flow of information. “I never wanted to have information that other people didn’t have,” he says. “I just thought it should all be more available. From everything I read, that’s a very core part of hacker culture. Like ‘information wants to be free’ and all that.”

Ironically as a result of Facebook’s new Community Page feature a new community on hacker culture has been created. And talking of communities – from a community management p.o.v. what this reminds me of is trying to match up role permissions in the admin of a community cms like Drupal to what is good practice for community management in terms of who does what. Now let me admit that this can itself get very complicated, so my sympathies with the privacy team at Facebook. For proof of the complicated nature of this project I recall it felt like a minor achievement when working with one client’s community manager we identified a small error with one specific aspect of a role permission – and then sorted it out ourselves without needing to ‘triage it’ with a developer.

The second reason I know from personal experience of how complicated it is was working on trying to get a good practice matrix of roles and permissions sorted working at SiftGroups. I still have Lawrence Clarke’s words ringing in my head, instructing me to order the allocation of roles to permissions in terms of what roles cannot do, rather than set up by what they can do. Online community roles and permissions and their integration with online community good practice is not easy in other words, but perhaps it can be easier if we can keep it as simple as possible?

On the subject of monetizing your online community, which I’ve also written about recently, I see SiftGroups is holding a great looking workshop on 26 May titled ‘Creating an integrated social media strategy’ which includes a module on that very subject, at the appropriately sounding location of Royal Mint Court in London.

So it appears I’ve moved on from privacy to marketing; for me it’s clear that the new social media marketing mantra is that less control equals more sharing. That’s from marketing guru David Meerman Scott. He should know his passion even got him fired from his corporate job at Thomson’s, but perhaps it’s because he’s also a Grateful Dead fan! But to hear the full story see the webinar below, in which he spells out the new viral rules of the ‘world wide rave’ which also comes in book form too if you’re interested…

Greg is one way to make money out of social media: three extras

Posted on by
2

It’s been claimed that customers are three times more likely to buy when engaged in community1. So here are three connected thoughts on how to make and lose money from your online community I’ve come across over the long weekend, following on my recent post around the tricky issue of monetizing your community. That last one links to Lithium’s Dr Michael Wu’s final post on targeting influencers:

1. [For social media marketers, 2010 will be the year that...]…they have to deal with the three Cs of backlash: consumer, community and client. Consumers (a.k.a. “human beings”) are already expressing frustration with community members who turn out to be marketing shills. Community managers will crack down on marketers-posing-as members because of the impact on trust and participation in their sites. And clients will either pull back or redirect their social media efforts when they discover that, surprise! marketers don’t have the answers on how to actually reorganize their customer relations and R&D teams to meet the demands that social media marketers have awakened.

Alexandra Samuel, from Social Signal, quoted in ‘Collective Wisdom: Some expert thinking on five social media questions as we enter the first decade’

2. RT @rhappe: Big decision point – is the community meant to make money itself or does it play a supporting role or as new channel -@adamzawel

3. Boost influencers’ cred with your users by making their content more searchable, & promote it via tweets & bookmarking: http://ow.ly/1FUtM

As a real world analogy for the role of the community manager in earning member’s trust and in turn helping monetize the community in a sustainable way I like what Altimeter’s Jeremiah Owyang says in the introduction to ‘The Community Roundtable’s State of Community Management – 2010′ report:

“To be successful, companies, and their internal cultures, need to empower community managers to help customers and employees – just as they would in a physical store.” This is nicely reflected in a survey by ComBlu which revealed one of the best online communities (B2C) they came across comes from retailer Sears: “One of these standout communities was “MySears”. Its tag line, “Get advice before you buy,” reinforces that this community is about helping consumers, not selling specific products.”

Indeed to come full circle to the reason for this post the report’s authors acknowledge while “some areas of social media and community strategy have shaken out, other areas are still being discussed for their efficacy in various situations”, including “when and how to monetize, as well as, what is the right mix of products/services”.

What I’m sure would help in the subject of monetization is a way of measuring with the majority of readers (‘lurkers’) of a community, whether they use information they read to guide their purchasing decisions. There’s a nice (B2B) use case example below from Siemens reference in the report which points to how offline and online conversations can assist cross-selling. Jump to page 18 of the slideshare to get straight to the example.

The bottom line is that online communities can deliver value in a number of ways, you have to figure out what works best for you.

In closing consider these community ROI stats  from Bill Johnston to underline the potential value of your community:

a. Community users remain customers 50% longer than non-community users. (AT&T, 2002)

b. 43% of support forums visits are in lieu of opening up a support case. (Cisco, 2004).

c. Community users spend 54% more thancon-community users (EBay, 2006)

d. In customer support, live interaction costs 87% more per transaction on average than forums and other web self-service options. (ASP, 2002)

e. Cost per interaction in customers support averages $12 via the contact center versus $0.25 via self-service options. (Forrester, 2006)

f. Community users visit nine times more often than non-community users (McKInsey, 2000).

g. Community users have four times as many page views as non-community users (McKInsey, 2000).

h. 56% percent of online community members log in once a day or more (Annenberg, 2007)

i. Customers report good experiences in forums more than twice as often as they do via calls or mail. (Jupiter, 2006)

References
[1] The claim that:  “Customers are 3X more likely to buy when engaged in community” was reported in the Online Community Unconference: Book of Proceedings, June 10, 2009 in Mountain View, CA.