THINKing

‘Facebook fatigue’ kicks in

An article in today’s Register says, ‘Facebook fatigue’ kicks in as people tire of social networks.

Well, duh. Like everything new, people will flock to it initially and then the ones from short-attention span theater move on to the next thing. Bound to happen. It does every time.

But that doesn’t mean that social networks are a thing of the past. There still is value in them. I believe the biggest value is in those social networks that center on some niche. Smart marketers will develop their own networks. Think Apple. They had a network of brand evangelists before the term social media was in gestation.

The term “social technographics” covers what I’m talking about in this new social, digital world. Forrester Research has coined the above phrase and says on the subject that,

Many companies approach Social Computing as a list of technologies to be deployed as needed — a blog here, a podcast there — to achieve a marketing goal. But a more coherent approach is to start with your target audience and determine what kind of relationship you want to build with them, based on what they are ready for. Forrester categorizes Social Computing behaviors into a ladder with six levels of participation; we use the term Social Technographics® to describe a population according to its participation in these levels. Brands, Web sites, and any other companies pursuing social technologies should analyze their customers’ Social Technographics first and then create a social strategy based on this profile.

You know that’s right! Nothing ever changes. If you figure out the strategy first, the tactics naturally follow.

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7 Most Helpful January Posts

Sometimes you miss the best information on your favorite blogs, like THINKing, just because other things are happening. Here is my list of the Top 7 Most Helpful Posts from THINKing in January.

8 Best THINKing Posts of 2007

New Business Primer

Contact

Media Relations How-To

RSS vs. Email

What Does Social Media Success Look Like?

It’s Not Your Brand

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It’s Not Your Brand

Many marketers see their brand as an asset they own. Not completely true. I’m not arguing that the brand is worthless. I’m just saying you don’t own it. You never have. And in today’s web 2.0, social media world, you never will.

I laughed out loud when I ran across this from Citi’s Chief Marketing Officer. She was on a social media panel talking about her decision not to dive into social media, nor let consumers have free access to the company’s graphics.

“We’re not there yet, and we’re proceeding very cautiously,” said Lisa Caputo, Citi’s first company-wide CMO. “I am very loath to put it (the brand) at risk and let some individual do what they want with it.”

Lisa, Lisa, Lisa. Thanks to all the social media tools in the market, consumers already are getting your logos and doing whatever they want with them anyway. People are already talking about Citi, its successes and its failures. Your risk is twofold: you think you own the brand and you are avoiding – not engaging – consumers.

You’d think someone who has risen to this level would know that a brand is community property. The company, its employees, allies and consumers share the brand. A brand is not solely graphics, logos, taglines and such. Every interaction a company has with its various publics adds to or subtracts from the brand.

Even the venerable BusinessWeek – is off the mark when it comes to brands interacting with consumers through social media. The authors of the article say that smart marketers must realize that social media users have, “the potential to become brand partners – or brand message hijackers.”

Consumers will say what they want to say. It’s not hijacking, it’s an opportunity for marketers to hear the truth and respond to it. End of story.

The Jurassic period of marketing with its three-martini lunches is gone. Get used to it and get social. Your organization’s survival depends upon it.

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What Does Social Media Success Look Like?

Jeremiah Owyang at Web Strategy By Jeremiah has an interesting post on why social media plans should contain success metrics. Jeremiah gives us a few examples of what success could look like for you:

•  We were able to learn something about customers we’ve never know before
•  We were able to tell our story to customers and they shared it with others
•  A blogging program where there are more customers talking back in comments than posts
•  An online community where customers are self-supporting each other and costs are reduced
•  We learn a lot from this experimental program, and pave the way for future projects, that could still be a success metric
•  We gain experience with a new way of two-way communication
•  We connect with a handful of customers like never before as they talk back and we listen

Do I agree? Unequivocally.

Every marketing tactic in your plan should be tethered to metrics that will indicate whether they succeeded or failed. Here’s the dirty little secret: if you look at 90 percent of the marketing plans out there, they don’t include success metrics. The 10 percent that do contain metrics rarely are reviewed to see if they were accomplished.

Be different. Develop a plan that contains success metrics, review them, learn from them and repeat. By the way, here is a piece I wrote some time back about marketing measurement.

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Super Bowl Ad Update – Nielsen Super Ad Focus Group

When the New England Patriots and the New York Giants take the field, tens of thousands of online users will take to their computer screens to rate the TV commercials running during the coverage of the game. It will be the first commercialized use of Hey! Nielsen, the online social community launched by Nielsen Co. last summer with a goal of creating a new method for measuring social buzz and interaction around brands, media, entertainment and sports properties.

MediaPost Publications – Nielsen Commercializes Social Network, Will Use HeyNielsen.com As Super Ad Focus Group – 01/28/2008

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RSS vs. Email: Technology Smackdown

(Photo by tanakawho)

Email is ubiquitous. People understand it and use it despite its problems. Some industry experts say email deliverability is in the 60 percent range. US Airways has a better on-time record than that.

RSS has 100 percent deliverability. But people don’t understand it or use it despite its advantages. In fact, eMarketer estimates that only about 20 percent of consumers use RSS. Peter Lenkfi has a good article on this topic today at SiteProNews. Lenkfi says – and I agree – that what we are missing is a piece of killer software like Outlook that makes RSS easy and intuitive.

In this new more advanced world, you will have your own personal RSS address. Not connected to a business or blog content, just to you personally. Yes, you may be thinking… “just like my email address”. When someone wants to hear from you, they will go to some fancy Web 2.0 service and subscribe to your personal RSS feed. They will sign-up for their own personal RSS feed and then subscribe to yours, providing you with their name (if they are a friend) and perhaps their interests if they are a business contact. When you want to send them, and only them a message, you’ll open up the fancy wysiwyg editor provided by the cool Web 2.0 service mentioned above, create a message and publish it.

That’s not here yet. In the meantime, here is an RSS resource from Mashable. And, here is a link to a previous THINKing post, Top 16 RSS Links. And in the interest of balanced reporting, here’s some good email news.

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22 Best On-Camera Interviewing Tips Ever

As a former journalist, I often become incensed today when I see what passes for quality on-camera interviews by so-called reporters. I’ve just discovered the blog of Director Tom, and he provides a list of 22 tips for better on-camera interviewing.

Whether you are a journalist or a marketer, these tips will help you.

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Marketers Are Holdin’ Some Foldin’

Holdin’ some foldin’ means you’ve got cash ready to spend. I just got a missive from the Chief Marketing Officer Council that says the marketing wallet is out and ready to drop some cash. In this annual survey done for CMO by Deloitte and Marketo, marketers appear poised to spend.

The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council today released the findings of its annual Marketing Outlook survey with an upbeat report on spend levels mostly holding steady or trending upward in 2008. However, many marketers say they are frustrated and stymied by organization cultures, senior management mindset, and insufficient budgets.

More than 800 senior marketers across all global regions responded to the CMO Council audit, which looked at a wide range of planned investments, organizational changes, process improvements, and performance indicators. eRewards was a partner in fielding the online survey worldwide. The CMO Council has over 3,000 members controlling more than $70 billion in annual marketing spend worldwide. This year’s research initiative was co-sponsored by Deloitte Consulting LLP and Marketo. Both contributed perspectives on operational effectiveness and advances in marketing automation to the report, which can be downloaded from the CMO Council web site www.cmocouncil.org.

According to the CMO Council, 37.6 percent of respondents say annual budgets will not change in 2008, while 33.1 percent expect to increase spend by up to five percent, and almost 10 percent say their budgets will grow between six and 10 percent. Only 7.6 percent expect to see budget increases greater than 11 percent. Last year, the majority of global marketers (52.6 percent) had budgets that equaled less than four percent of revenue and 35.4 percent said their spend was between four and 10 percent of revenue.

“It’s not just what they’re spending, it’s where dollars are going and how effectively they are being used,” notes Donovan Neale-May, the CMO Council’s executive director. “There’s definitely more attention to the analytics side of the business and the use of more tangible and targeted forms of personal interaction, contextual communication and online demand generation.”

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PostOnFire

PostOnFire describes itself as

a social network site for bloggers & blog readers. It’s a free online community anyone can join. PostOnFire users discover & share the best blog posts on the net. PostOnFire includes a voting system that put our readers in control of which blog posts should be in the front page. When a new link to a blog post is submitted, it will be added instantly to our “just submitted” section. When a blog post link in the “just submitted” section receives enough votes and less “extinguish”, it will move to the front page “hot posts”. “Extinguish” is a feature that let users report a link that is not worthy or it’s a spam. When a blog post link receives too much “extinguish”, it will be discarded.

It’s like Digg, but may prove itself to have a little less attitude. I’m trying it, and I’ll let you know how it is working in terms of driving blog traffic.

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What Impending Recession? Super Bowl Brings Out The Buyers

This morning MediaPost reports that the Super Bowl will spark sales of $10 billion,

The Retail Advertising and Marketing Association says it expects the Big Game to generate nearly $10 billion in sales this year. And it’s not just guacamole and such (although beer, chips, avocados, ice cream, frozen pizza and chicken products are the perennial best-sellers): this year, consumers are expected to spend even more than usual on such big-ticket items as TVs and furniture.

There is no doubt that there are some economic challenges, but Americans will spend money even when the media is trying to talk us into a recession. BIGresearch did a study that found some 3.9 million people plan to buy a new and bigger TV just for the Super Bowl. That’s up more than 50 percent from last year.

Apparently, we are ready for some football. Sing it, Hank.

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