Another revolt could be at hand as I’ve recently learned that some Twitter users are putting in affiliate links in their Tweets (some are not disclosed), thereby recommending products (like to Amazon) resulting in them generating a cut of revenue if the product is purchased. I know if someone buys a Kindle based on your affiliate link, that person can generate $35, not bad for a simple link.
Of course, it comes down to intent, which ultimately drives trust, and may result in followers clicking, ignoring, unfollowing someone they feel taken advantage of. Perhaps in the worst case, followers could report a twitter user using affiliate links as spam.
How to make it work
Affiliate links aren’t anything new, we’ve seen them on blog siderolls for years, so it comes down to a few requirements if people are going to make them work:
1) Make sure it lines up editorially with your personal brand, promoting a product that people don’t associate you with will raise eyebrows.
2) Disclose it’s an affiliate link, perhaps with a hashtag #affilliatelink.
3) Be sincere about your recommendation. If you truly love that product you’re promoting, perhaps write a review on a blog first, explaining why.
4) Be fully transparent before people follow you: Create a link from your Twitter profile page that is up front about how you use Twitter, and explain your intentions when it comes to product recommendations and affiliate links.
5) Updated: If you’re linking from your Twitter account to an affiliate, you can disclose on that destination page, Shawn Collins, an affiliate marketer puts disclosure on his blog posts.
Hope these guidelines are helpful, we know for certain that affiliate links are common across the web, it’ll be interesting to see how people monetize Twitter, just as they did with blogs.
“How do I Keep Up? This is one of the most common questions I get from folks, or a variant: “Do you sleep?” or “Do you have a family?”
I can answer succinctly: “I don’t, in shifts, and yes… I think.”
I’ve dedicated my life to how the web helps companies connect with customers, it’s something I knew I wanted to do for many years, I’m lucky I fell into my passion. It comes with costs however, I’m out of shape, stressed, I don’t sleep well, and my blood pressure is up. In fact, Mary Duan of the Silicon Valley Business Journal has interviewed me to find out how I keep up –and the risks that come with being an analyst over the fastest moving industry in business.
Without a doubt, staying on top of this rapidly changing industry has its tolls, so I’ve figured out a system that keeps me half way sane. I pay myself first every morning by reading and sharing (you’ll see me tweet out interesting links as early as 3-4am) I then focus on my blog, savings links for my weekly digest, reading and responding to comments, and if I get time, I’ll write a post. Then, I’ll check my personal email and try to clear those out –then shift to work email. Pretty much always in that order.
Sarah Austin of Pop17 interviewed me at SXSW, enjoy this fun one. Yes, and I’m serious, I’d really like to go to Dubai, let me know if there are any conferences you may need a speaker at.
Sometimes, in a recession, the best way to increase profitability is to fire your own customers.
I’ve been hearing from a few vendors and agencies, that they’re letting go of their least wanted clients. Why? During a recession, vendors are focused on being efficient with all resources, and in some cases, some clients are net negative in time, energy, resources, and morale.
Some clients are net negative
There’s a rule-of-thumb in the business realm that 20% of your customers will comprise of 80% of your total revenues. If that model is true, then likely the inverse holds truth: the bottom 20% of your clients account for 80% of all of your resource spend.
This is exactly what I heard from a recent agency I met with, they strategically decided to get rid of the bottom fifth of their client base. Why? The costs require to service some high touch clients that increase scope creep, are cheap in the invoice, shop around beyond reason, and even cause emotional abuse to account managers made it ‘net negative’. It makes sense, especially with the account manager abuse, right? What would you rather lose, a client or a dedicated employee, and risks of damage to morale?
So which clients are most likely to get canned by their vendors? Often times top name brands feel they can tout their reputation in hopes of getting business from vendors at the lowest cost –yet expecting the highest service. Having worked in the banking industry for a short time, I know that vendor management often has it’s own department that scours the market to ensure the company is getting the best deal.
Social media vendors at risk for unpaid education services
In the social media space, (which I cover) I’ve been hearing of some brands requiring extensive education from vendors. From full strategy days (non paid), non-stop Q&A in email and IM, and phone calls. While in such a nascent industry this is important, and key for a vendor to demonstrate ability, at some point, it crosses the ‘greasing the skids’ to being a complete ‘time sink’ –especially if the vendor isn’t charging for it’s hard earned knowledge in formal education offerings.
Vendors should analyze their customer base
Vendors, now more than ever, are starting to evaluate how to cut costs, and perhaps the first place to look is finding the resource sink that’s taking up the organizations time, resources –and willpower and focus on the higher value clients. A few considerations:
Evaluate the clients that you have that are net negative –is the long term gain worth it?
Could you better allocate your resources to increasing growth in premium value clients
How could your staff be better spending their time?
Often, companies purge their employee base to ensure quality talent, can you do the same for clients?
Buyers should partner with vendors
Brands, who don’t want to be stuck in the costly multi-month RFP, vendor evaluation, negotiation, and paperwork process should take in the following considerations:
Are you exceeding the scope of the original requirements of the agreement?
Is your team calling in special favors on a consistent basis?
Do you consider your vendor a long term partner and have made that clear?
Is your team getting proper education from folks who specialize on new topics? Or are you unrealistically expecting them to hand hold you beyond profitability?
Having an unhappy vendor will ultimately impact your quality of service –and folks in any industry talk amongst themselves.
Business relationships are two-way
In the end, we should all remember that these business transactions go both ways, and the relationships will sever when both sides aren’t met. In my predictions of the future of the social web, it’s possible that buyers (and vendors) could rate their relationships with brands –and even individual stakeholders, if that comes about, it could cause a shift in power from buyer to seller.
Would love to hear stories from you all about when vendors have fired their own clients, I ask however, please keep specific brands names out of the comments.
If you haven’t figured it out, the Five Eras of the Social Web are a roadmap that you should factor into your product roadmap (vendor side) and social strategy (brand side) You should have already dove into the era of social relationships, experimenting with era of social functionality, and thinking about the coming era of Social Colonization.
Developing a social strategy is a lot like having a balanced diet. While the employees can learn from each other, additional external supplements must be introduced into the diet for a balanced meal.
Unlike other tried and true mediums that are used to connect with customers, social strategies come with implications and risk. While brands will ultimately drive and implement their own social strategy entrée they’ll still need supplments to ensure they’re getting a balanced and healthy diet for this marathon. The below is a list of methods that brands are getting their daily dose of supplements for their social programs.
[Developing a social strategy is a lot like having a balanced diet. While employees can learn from each other, additional external supplements must be introduced into the diet for a balanced meal]
How Brands Balance Their Diet With Social Media Supplements Brands ultimately drive their own strategy, but must have additional resources outside of their firewall to understand the rapidly changing social space. For each supplement, I”ll define what it is, give an example, then suggest how to best use, these supplements include:
Workshops and Webinars:
What it is: Brands often bring in third party experts that have formalized workshop agendas, content, and workshop content to help them succeed.
How to use: Use these once internal stakeholders have buyin, and there’s momentum from groups that want to learn best practices. Don’t apply too early –nor too late.
Ongoing Training/Internal Labs:
What it is: Brands are offering marketers ongoing training classes for social, that include a variety of external speakers, but coordinated by an internal resource or central team.
Examples: Proctor and Gamble has the P&G social media labs which has provided a multitude of internal brands with resources, including a safe place to experiment. See their recent “Tides of Hope” experimental campaign, which was a success in learning. Secondly, PepsiCo, is leaning on Edelman Digital Strategy team (Rubel) for internal training, strategy, and recommendations.
How to use: Large conglomerates or CPG brands will benefit first by having this ongoing educational program and curriculum. Great to deploy when multiple teams need education –and need to benefit from synching from each other.
Social Media Advisory Boards:
What it is: Brands have a dedicated relationship with external thought leaders and practitioners, build relationships with them and seek their perspective.
Examples: Intel has a social media advisory board, dubbed the “Insiders” that has a broad collection of industry practitioners and commenters –I’ve noticed some of them get Intel sponsorships. In some regards, Wal-Mart’s 11 moms program, which is non-paid sponsored conversations will result in similar benefits.
How to use: Brands that want to develop long term relationships for programs, campaigns, should set these programs up, these are great stepping stones for influencer relations, esp in markets that take heavy criticism.
Councils and Clubs
What it is: Brands join ongoing clubs and councils created by third parties. Some have member fees, and some are free, depending on sophitication. In some cases, memberships are wide open for the public, and others have private membership
How to use: Encourage practitioners to attend these clubs to learn from peers on an ongoing basis. Host or sponsor these meetings at your own company to learn from folks.
Research Firms:
What it is: Research firms provide brands with data, best practices, and recommendations that help them to make successful decisions.
How to use: Research is needed before crafting a strategy, as brands must find out who their customers are, how they use technology, and use for vendor and service vetting.
Ongoing Social News
What it is: News about the social media space is well, noisy. Finding the right areas to find signal are key for every brand, as spending time scouring blogs can easily consume one’s day –and night.
How to use: Be selective in your choices, you don’t have a lot of time during the day, once you find your credible news sources, be sure to encourage your colleagues to subscribe.
Other Forms
Of course, this dietary supplement is an ongoing process, and not just limited to social, brands, leaders, and everyone need to constantly learn to stay fresh. Additionally, brands should have internal training areas that employees can share their best practices and learn from their wins and losses. Take for example Vignette’s Dirk Shaw, a recently appointed social media strategist who has an internal blog dedicated to helping their marketing and product teams and beyond learn social. I purposely left out the extensive list of books on the topic, and this large list of marketing related conferences.
Upcoming Research on this Topic
I’m working on a Forrester report to uncover “How companies organize for social media” and if you’re a large brand that wants to talk to me, I’d love to interview you for this Q2 report, contact me at jowyang @ forrester.com.
I hope this list helps you maintain a balanced and regular social diet, leave a comment with additional suggestions, I’ll add them in as appropriate and credit you.
I’m respecting your limited time by publishing this weekly digest on the Social Networking space, which I cover as an industry analyst. By creating this digest (I started this over a year ago) it really helps me to stay on top of the space I cover.
I’ve created a new category called Digest (view archives). Start with the Web Strategy Summary, then quickly scan the succinct and categorized headlines, read text for my take, and click link to dive in for more.
Subscribe to this blog in your feedreader, or use the email subscription box in the right column. Or you can subscribe to this digest tag only and not receive my other posts.
Web Strategy Summary
Busy week, yet again. Vignette starts to come forth with it’s community features, which are a direct challenge to the community platform vendors. Facebook extends further into the era of social colonization by allowing activity streams to be displayed on third party sites. The impacts of the swing flu echo throughout social networks.
Launch: Vignette CMS rolls out social features
Community platform vendors need to be prepared to be squeezed from above as more CMS vendors prepare to enter this market. Vignette, who has a stable footprint in the enterprise space, launches first generation social features. They’re also demonstrating thought leadership by publishing best practices documents. Watch this change –the incumbents are waking up. I spent an hour with this team last week reviewing their live product, they just rolled this out, and hope to have customer adoption soon.
Government: Obama addresses nation on Flu
Using his weekly Youtube platform, Obama gives a clear assessment – Google Search of the situation, gives recommendations to schools, businesses, and people, then discloses the solution that have in place for vaccines, all without doublespeak. These simple social tools are empowering –but the content is most important.
Feature: Silverlight and Facebook create shiny UI
This is shiny, meaning it’s pretty, but doesn’t neccesarily offer multiplicative collaboration (useful), either way, see how silverlight flexes it’s UI muscles by displaying FB pictures.
Culture: US Military uses Social Networks to recruit soldiers Now, you can befriend a recruiter. The pentagon is making considerable shifts towards using social networks to recruit young Gen Y folks for the military. Facebook is the leading social technology where they will deploy.
Personal: IBM’s Impact and Calgary’s Web Strategy Summit
Last week, I started to give personal updates, and some suggested I continue. I launched the future of the social web report this week, and it received positive feedback. I’m headed to IBM’s IMPACT conference in vegas to speak, then to the Web Strategy Summit in Calgary to present my findings on the future of the social web. I’ve mentioned several times on Twitter that I’m forgoing shaking hands to protect the community, I’m a germ magnet, since I travel so much and meet many.
Submit: I’m listening. If you’re a social network, or widget company, I want to know of your news, send me an email, or leave a comment below. Help me stay up to date but first, read how to score your announcements.
Hungry For Social Networking Stats? Then you should see my collection of Social Networks Stats for 2008 and 2009. Bookmark them, then share it with others as I continue to update it.
Era of Social Relationships (started 1995, matured in 2003-2007)
This era is mature.
AOL, 1995
eCircles, 2001
MySpace, Facebook, Twitter
Era of Social Functionality (started 2007, matures in 2010-2012)
These are prelimnary examples, but are not examples of maturity, as we’ve not seen true useful utilities to improve business.
Era of Social Colonization (started 2009, matures in 2011)
These are prelimnary examples, but are not examples of maturity when your entire digital experience is social.
Era of Social Context (starts in 2010, matures in 2012)
This era is certainly not in maturity, but we can see some early examples of demographic scraping.
There are no current examples
Era of Social Commerce (starts in 2011, matures in 2013)
These are prelimnary examples, such as Techcrunch’s crunchpad, but it’s not a true example of a crowd created, spec’d product.
There are no current examples
As you see examples, please leave a comment, describe why you think it belongs and which era, I’ll credit you as appropriate.
