Archive for the ‘Social Media’ Category

Breakdown: 3 Ways Brands Are Earning –and Buying– Followers on Twitter

Categories: MicroMedia, Social MediaPosted on July 3rd, 2009

Companies who don’t have iconic brands with millions of adoring fans, often have to resort to other ways to get the attention of the market. This isn’t evil, nor is it uncommon, it’s just business, and was here before the web, and will be afterwards. Don’t get mad or emotional about it, let’s break it down to understand how it’s going to work, if you’re a concerned user, use this post to figure out how to beat it. If you’re a marketer, figure out what works –and throw away what doesn’t.

Breakdown: How Brands Are Buying –and Earning– Followers on Twitter
As a result, we’re seeing some of the same method applied to the web and email as to the social space. Here’s three examples (again in outline form) that I saw this week.

1) The Sweepstakes Giveaway: Moonfruit becomes a Trending Topic

Summary: This giveaway contest spurs word of mouth –results in opt-in “registration”
How they did it: Moonfruit offers website building services, and is offering a new computer to those that tweet about the contest (see their official contest page), the only way to receive a product is if you follow their account (opt-in). Of course, this means the members are subject to future messages.
This is the same as: Contests, WOM marketing, tell-a-friend.
Benefits: Rapid word of mouth about a brand driving awareness and opt-in as people follow the account, likely a percentage of followers will convert and buy the service.
Risks: This doesn’t build long term engagement with a brand, and it’s likely many will unfollow after the contest is over.
Costs: 10 Macbook Pro (13″) which is $1500 each for a total of $15,000. If the follower count retains at 10k a day (it’s day 3 today) for 10 days resulting in 100,000 followers, that’s about $6.66 a follower, not including marketing efforts.
Results: Big wins. Moonfruit is a trending topic 3 days after the contest landed, there are thousands of retweets and tweets about the brand, as well as an increase in followers of about 10,000 a day (graph).
My take: A natural extension of other marketing forms to Twitter. The giveaway prize matches well with the type of clientele the brand wants, and it’s certainly generating a high degree of discussion for at least 10 days. This really isn’t a new model, and we should expect more brands to offer these types of sweepstakes, however to make it better, the tweets should be more inline with the brand promise, such as asking the followers to tweet about “what website they love, or would build”

2) Buying Customer Matching Lists: uSocial Promises Relevant Followers

Summary: Service called uSocial offers brand cost per action (CPA) advertising resulting in customer match
How they do it: uSocial matches brands with suggest followers that have similar affinities, keywords, or profile information, BBC has the story. It looks like they will find matches, and suggest to twitter users that you follow that brand, (likely through an automated spammy system) till the reserve is met.
This is the same as: What’s new is old again. This is very similar to direct marketers buying email lists of prospects that have similar demographic or affinity information. Martin agrees. Kevin Marks makes a good point that it’s not like email, as you can’t make folks follow them on Twitter. I suggest it’s the same, as you can’t get a user to open a spammy email.
Benefits: They promise lots of followers within a few days, a very low cost.
Risks: Brand damage. If the market finds out (it should be easy) that a brand isn’t earning their followers, they risk backlash and people unfollowing, or even worse, unfollowing.
Costs: The lowest package (there are others) is $87 for 1000 followers–it breaks down to 8 cents a follower. If you buy the 100,000 follower package it drops down to 3 cents a follower.
Results: I’ve not heard if this works, I’m sure someone will report back to me.
My Take: Use as a last resort: If it looks to good to be true, it probaly is. The uSocial site looks like a ‘get rich quick’ site, the design comes across really spammy themselves. It’s likely brands that do buy this will likely act in a similar way, and I wouldn’t expect followers to stick around if they behave in a similar way. It’s likely a brand that goes for the quick hit doesn’t have a long term strategy to interact with their public market, and will use Twitter as a distribution point. However, brands that do have a community strategy, and have developed relationships using Twitter, could certainly benefit from the increased awareness to likely prospects –the only risk is that it may come across as spammy as uSocial makes recommendations.

3) Product Discounts or Specials: Dell Offers Followers Specials

Summary: Some brands are generating followers by providing special deals to followers.
How they do it: For some time, Dell is offering reduced priced or refurbed products on their Dell Outlets Twitter account.
This is the same as: signing up for emails to receive discounts.
Benefits: A low cost channel to sell products to an opt-in crowd, avoiding excess inventory.
Risks: Can’t think of any, leave a comment if you have one.
Costs: Inexpensive. It appears there is a community manager responding and answering questions, so the cost of this part time employee, or contractor, must be accounted for.
Results: Dell has made the claims they’ve generated over $3 million in revenues from this single account. Of course, that’s a drop in the bucket for this tech giant.
My Take: Replicate. This is a great use of using the medium to obtain more interested followers that are requesting to be customers. The downside is that not every company has products to offer on a discount, nor the brand appeal. Brands should find ways to offer special deals to this highly viral community, offsetting the costs by weighing in the benefits of WOM and press coverage.

Hope this breakdown is helpful, it’s important to look under the covers and analyze. Of course, I’ve not discussed the organic way of brands providing helpful content, interacting, or supporting customers, but that’s been written to death by the many social media bloggers.

Posted in MicroMedia, Social Media | 13 Comments »

As Brands Continue to ‘Pollinate’ the Social Web, Expect Corporate Websites to Aggregate

Categories: Aggregation, Future of Social Web, Pollination, Social MediaPosted on July 1st, 2009

Brands are pollinating the social web with easy-to-share features like Sharethis. As conversations splinter across the web, brands must prepare to aggregate those same conversations on their corporate website. As a result, the trusted conversations will centralize back on product pages.

[Trusted conversations have fragmented to the social web --shifting the balance of power to communities]

Social Pollination: Brands Currently Spreading to Communities

Why: Brands are trying to let their corporate and social content spread to many different communities in Facebook, Twitter, Email and others.
Examples: Any blog post, press release, or product page that encourages readers to share the content to other locations. Any brand created Facebook fan page, flickr account, or Twitter account.
Risks: Letting content spread to other locations causes some angst, as brand managers now must monitor content and discussions elsewhere on the web. The command+control mentality of “our corporate website is central” no longer holds true as people can share content using browser features like social bookmarking tool Delicious, or sharing links in Facebook.
Vendors: A variety of tools have appeared such as sharethis, addtoany, addthis and others. Incumbent players include: email, Facebook, Twitter, and Delicious that encourage content to be shared within those communities.

[To regain trust, corporate websites will look more like a collection of real-time customer discussions --not just product pitches]

Social Aggregation: Corporate Websites to Centralize Discussions

Why: Conversations and content have fragmented and distributed on the web, as a result, corporate websites are generally irrelevant. Expect brands to start to centralize these discussions on or near their corporate website in order to bring trust and relevance back to the corporate website.
Early Examples: There’s a few examples that we can start to analyze, they include:
- Any corporate blog that frequently discusses recent topics or industry news is a manual version of this.
- Early examples include Sun aggregating technorati blog mentions of any product to their product pages –even if it’s negative. I’m having a hard time find that example now, they may have removed that from their website.
- IBM’s hosted thousands of developers at a conference called Impact. They aggregated event tweets in this twitterfall.
- Zappos aggregates all Twitter mentions of it’s brand on this aggregation page.
- Perhaps the most mature example is Kinaxis, a supply chain management software company, has aggregated news of it’s industry at Manufacturing Central.
Future Deployments: Expect brands to at first create a lightly branded version of these discussions, on the topics of industry, or around mentions of any product.
- Data and Content: The aggregation will need to pull in data and either sort by recency or relevancy or other prioritization pattern like Techmeme.
- Location: Brands will likely create a seperate site or microsite for events or products that does this, as they get bolder, expect them to aggregate direct on product pages.
- Branding: At first this will be lightly branded, but then will soon integrate directly with look and feeld or corporate site as this mainstreams.
Risks: Brands will have a difficult time finding all the relevant content. Secondly, while it makes sense to filter out off-topic, spam, and hate speech, the natural tendency will be to filter out negative reviews. Expect there to be customer backlash as their complaints are not publicly aggregated on the corporate web pages. Internally, expect social advocates to battle with brand preservationists who don’t want negative reviews on product pages.
Vendors: A variety of vendors will appear to serve this need:
- The toolsets have not yet emerged, however we should expect a series of startups to appear that offer this or spinoffs from Friendfeed (a logical first mover) and eventually a form of a Facebook embed.
- A second set of players could be any of the aforementioned pollinators (sharethis) and potentially listening vendors like Radian6, Buzzlogic, or any data house like Technorati, Delicious or Get Glue (read my take).
- Community platform vendors and CMS vendors like Vignette, Interwoven, Documentum with social features will likely launch modules or features that provide these aggregation pieces, or partner with the above.
- Expect innovative agencies like Federated Media who conducted ’sponsored aggregation’ of “Exectweets” for Microsoft to pioneer this with brands and technology partners. Update: CrispinPorterBogusky is already experimenting

Takeaways
Today, brands are trying to keep up with consumers as they self-connect to each other on social sites. Clearly, many companies aren’t even ready to participate with communities where they already exist, so only a few sophisticated companies will be prepared for this next future evolution of corporate websites. Don’t expect aggregation in the advanced forms I suggested to happen till brands are mature in the era of social colonization (read more about the future of the social web), so expect some time for true case examples to occur.

(Also, I’m trying out a new writing style, this time in outline form to break out a set of ideas. Was this helpful?)

Posted in Aggregation, Future of Social Web, Pollination, Social Media | 43 Comments »

Is Blogging Evolving Into Life Streams?

Categories: Social MediaPosted on June 26th, 2009

Top Bloggers Spend Less Time Blogging
I’ve noticed a gradual change in what we know as blogs when Scoble and Shel wrote the book on Naked Conversations. Both of them are now focused on micromedia: Shel has an upcoming book on Twitterville, and Scoble spends more time promoting Friendfeed than his own blog. Secondly, I just learned that Edelman’s top blogger Steve Rubel has retired his traditional blog, and it’s now a life stream, which aggregates content from any source. Of course, I don’t need to mention that many of the top 100 blogs all look like mainstream media, with a team of writers, photographers, and editors.

It seems as if blogging is becoming old hat, or at least evolving into something smaller, faster, and more portable. I’m with Louis Gray, (who has finally blogged his stance –great graphics) I’m not going to give up my blog, instead, I think of it as the hub of content, and the rest of the information I aggregate (notice the Twitter bar up top and the Friendfeed integration below). To me, joining the conversation is certainly important, but it doesn’t mean the hub (or corporate website) goes away.

More Lifestreams Mean More Noise
As more and more people create content on microchannels, we experience more ambient intimacy, but also a lot more data. For example, Scoble pointed out on our panel last night with Mark Silva and Kevin Marks that the iPhone has resulted in 400% increase in uploads to YouTube. I assure you, we have no time to consume all the content created just from our immediate friends and family –the hours in the day stay fixed.

Steve Rubel’s switch to using Posterous (the tool that fuels his lifestreaming) makes sense for him. Why? he’s slowed down on blogging and increased his activity in Twitter and Friendfeed. But what’s going to work for him may be a detriment for others, this increased volume of smaller content the need for analysis and journalism matters even more. When you look at Steve’s new stream, it’s actually heavily on target with the same content as he’s had on his blog, it’s just published faster and quicker.

Opportunity For Those That Can Distill Noise to Signal
Yes, you should certainly socially pollinate your corporate or blog content to other communities, using tools like sharethis, however these should also be hooks for people to find your content. For me, I’m going to respect the needs of my community, and keep on blogging to distill what I think is important.

Key Takeaways

The trend for people to create more content is afoot, as a result aggregation tools like lifestreams, activity streams, and newsfeeds (and a new form of a social/email inbox) will take center stage.
You should certainly join the conversations where they exist, but this doesn’t mean your base of quality content should erode, there are long term branding and search benefits.
As a result, we’ll start to see new tools emerge that help to find the signal –not noise. Those who can filter out what’s important will matter more:, by using a: blog, delicious, or tweets to let your community know what’s important.
Expect the same heavy pieces on this blog, but feel free to spiral with me on Twitter and Friendfeed and whatever tool comes next. I’m going to leave the choice to you. I want to keep the signal high for my business minded community. Needles –not hay.

Update: I gave Scoble crap last night in person over beers for not keeping his blog up. He takes my challenge and rebuts me in Friendfeed. This proves my point he’s losing his thought leadership, his voice is lost in the noise –what do you think? Update (A few days later): Scoble has come to his senses, and is putting focus on his blog now.

Steve has responded from his blog –in paragraph form, so really, he’s actually still blogging, although aggregating other interesting info in his “journal notepad”, I prefer his method over Scoble’s –he’s also retaining his brand from his own domain/URL –although he made his readers re-subscribe to RSS.

To be clear, I admire and respect both of these guys for leading the next movement.

Posted in Social Media | 56 Comments »

Report: Companies Should Organize For Social Media in a “Hub and Spoke” model

Categories: Forrester, Social Media, Web StrategyPosted on June 25th, 2009

I often get asked by brands: “How should we organize our company for social media?” or “Which roles do we need”, or “Which department is in charge”. So for our latest report (clients can access all the details) answers just that, it has data and graphs about spending, brand maturity in the social space, which department ‘owns’ the program, and how companies are organizing.

Companies organize in three distinct models
For this post, let’s focus in on how companies are organizing. There are three basic models that I’ve observed and surveyed brands:

The Tire (Distributed): Where each business unit or group may create its own social media programs without a centralized approach. We call this approach the “tire,” as it originates at the edges of the company.

The Tower (Centralized): We refer to this centralization as the “tower” — a standalone group within a company that’s responsible for social media programs, often within corporate marketing or corporate communicaitons.

The Hub and Spoke (Cross Functional): Like the hub on a bicycle wheel, a cross-functional group that represents multiple stakeholders across the company assembles in the middle of the organization. The hub facilitates resource sharing and cross-functional communications (via the “spokes” in the wheel) to those at the edge of the organization (or the “tire”)

The above graphic shows how brands we surveyed are organized

Which way should companies organize?
We believe the most sophisticated and effecient way is the Hub and Spoke, which provides centralized resources that can support business units. The business units still have the freedom and flexibility to dialog with the market –and should be in alignment with what other spokes are doing. Social doesn’t impact one department –but impacts marketing, pr, product, services, support, and development –every customer touchpoint.

Remember: 80% is Strategy only 20% is Technology
On a related note, thanks to heavy collaboration with colleague Zach Hofer-Shall we’ve also published a report for clients on a community launch checklist. This checklist reminds brands that 80% of their success is dependent on understanding their customers, defining an objective, and assembling the right strategy that encompasses: plans, roles, process, budgets, measurement, and training –not a focus on technology.

The faster brands can realize that approaching social marketing and collaboration isn’t about technology, but about process and change management the better off they are. You’ll find simliar thoughts from David Armano –who’s scoping out different models within their framework of social business design.

Love to hear from you: Which way is your brand organized? In a tire? tower? or hub and spoke. In my experience, I often ask stakeholders in companies to vote by raising their hands on which model they think they are –most often, not everyone agrees –but most want to evolve to hub and spoke. Try polling your internal teams to start a lively discussion.

Update: David Armano responds, and points out there can be multiple hubs and spokes in a single corporation. We’ve found this in large CPG and Tech titans, this model can work well.

Posted in Forrester, Social Media, Web Strategy | 38 Comments »

Where Your Facebook Pictures and Friends are Featured, “Prototype Experience” Provides A Social, Contextual Video Trailer

Categories: Advertising, Social MediaPosted on June 22nd, 2009

Remember early Jib Jab cartoons where you’d manually upload your own photo and that of your friends? Now, it’s much easier with just a few clicks to Facebook Connect.

Last week, I had dinner with Chris Pan (linkedin, twitter), Head of Brand Solutions at Facebook, who pointed me to a new social interactive marketing advertisement for a video game called “Prototype”. Upon accessing the site, Prototype Experience, (try it for yourself) you’ll be prompted to login with your Facebook account. After a rather lengthy loading period (it’s worth it, hang tight) you’ll watch a short teaser trailer.

This isn’t a normal trailer, as it uses your own social information in Facebook from your profile picture, your profile information, and photos from your friends. Here’s what I saw, see screenshots below.

What’s going on here? This is an example of more contextual ads based off social profiles, which is a trend as you can see my coverage of VW’s Twitter and Facebook campaign). These are early examples of the era of Social Context, where content, media, and ads will be personalized in the future based off your social information, learn more about this in the future of the social web.

User Experience: Screenshot Storyline
Here’s the blow by blow, with my thoughts.

Above Image: First, users are encouraged to login with Facebook Connect –a few clicks. If you’re already logged into Facebook, it’s just a few clicks –all without entering a password. Expect more people to interact as there’s less commitment and up front investment than finding photos and uploading them –Facebook already has the inventory you need.

Above Image: Promo video includes my profile pictures –making things a bit more interesting and personalized. As this evolves, imagine how your face and profile info will populate other experiences and content –we’re instinctively drawn to look at ourselves.

Above Image: “Is that me?” Yes it is, this promo video includes information from my profile –I’m right in the game. In consideration of my friends, I didn’t include their photos –which you’ll see in your own trailer video. Expect future ads where friends ‘promote’ or even sponsor content –some opt-in, some not.

Above Image: Participants are ‘hooked’ into the registration form in order to win in the sweetstakes, a good example of gathering leads from an engaged audience. Facebook isn’t a great way to generate leads, while you can get users to be ‘fans’ of your Facebook page, getting their true identity and email is often limited –as dictated by their Terms of Service.

Above Image: The participants are encouraged to share the campaign with their Facebook or Twitter friends, thus staring a “Viral Loop”. It spreads.

Key Takeaways

This is clearly a trend, expect many interactive and digital agencies to offer this social campaign to their clients.
Consumers will initially ‘freak out’ and be concerned that big brother is watching them –then will accept this as mainstream media over the next few years.
At some point, nearly every campaign will have social content influencing the content –hitting a saturation point that disinterests users
Expect site wide Facebook Connect initiatives to happen, allowing all of the media, content, and ads to be socially contextual. Expect media sites and eCommerce sites to launch this first.
Expect recommended products and ads to appear from your friends and those connected to you in your social network.

Posted in Advertising, Social Media | 15 Comments »

Contextual Ads Based Off Social Network Profile: Twitter and Facebook

Categories: Advertising, Future of Social Web, Social MediaPosted on June 18th, 2009

Things are moving very quickly now, in fact I was pleased to learn about these contextual ads from my new friend Cory O’Brien in SF yesterday.

In my latest report “The Future of the Social Web” we pointed that in the near future we’ll start to see web pages dynamically created based on user profile ID in social networks. Essentially, your corporate, media, or ecommerce site could provide contextual media, content, and advertisement based on users’ info before they login.

[In the Future, The Era of Social Context Will Serve Personalized Content, Media, and Ads to Users based on their Social Networking Information]

Here’s an early example of a contextualized advertising campaign from VW (by agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky, read more about the modernist campaign) that’s intended to help prospects find the right model based on their preferences. Please note this isn’t yet the full entry into the era of social functionality as users have to manually submit their login info or user name (like this Twitter example below) and just examines recent tweets. When the era of social context matures, it will look beyond just profile info, but also behavioral data, friend data, location, and content analysis of explicit and implicit data.

Type 1: Context Ad based off of opt-in Twitter profile.

Above Ad: Enter your Twitter name to see a product recommendation

Type 2: Contextual Ad based off of Facebook profile.
Corey also pointed me in the direction of a second “Meet the VWs” Facebook app that asks users to opt in to analyze their profile and then recommends products based off simple profile info. Read the pros and cons from the smart folks at the Future of Ads of this Facebook advertising effort.

Above image: Facebook recommended these products to me on the VW fan page

Future Expectations:
Expect social context to impact not just ads, but many websites in the future. Also, expect the accuracy to increase as social and behavioral data starts to merge.

Facebook, Twitter, have a tremendous amount of explicit and more importantly, implicit data that could serve up information about users, yet we should expect years of refinement for these engines to truly be accurate. Interestingly, the Twitter ad suggested I’d like the Jetta, yet the Facebook app suggested a Rabbit and Beetle, which I find funny as I’d never drive a Beetle, that’s really not me at all.

In the future, these ads, media, or recommendations should be more intelligent and also find friends with similar cars, or people with similar traits to me that I don’t know and suggest products. As user ID start to federate and connect with other such as Open ID and Facebook Connect, we should expect a higher degree of accuracy.

Then, users may choose to opt-in to expose parts of their identity as they surf the web on trusted sites to receive a contextual experience. For example, I may trust Amazon, eBay and Google search to expose my identity in exchange for a more personalized experience.

We should also expect a rash of privacy concerns and user backlashes to happen, even if they opt in, we’re just scratching the surface here. I have so much more to write on the topic of social context, but it’s 3am and I need to go back to bed, so I’ll save it for a future blog post.

Key Takeaways

The above ads are simple experiments of how context can be served up through social data

Expect this contextual content not to be limited to just ads, but also on media sites, ecommerce, corporate sites, and TV

Expect digital content to be contextual –even without express content of the users

During the early years, expect privacy concerns to overwhelm brands, causing them to rethink this approach

Although it will take years to perfect, expect context to increase CTR, and therefore the cost of ads

What did the Twitter ad and Facebook page recommend to you? Were they accurate recommendations?

Tags: Advertising
Posted in Advertising, Future of Social Web, Social Media | 27 Comments »

Trends: Impacts Of The Era of Social Colonization –Every Webpage to be Social

Categories: Future of Social Web, Social CRM, Social MediaPosted on June 16th, 2009

One of the key findings from the very popular report The Future of the Social Web (which has been translated into over a dozen languages by the community) is that identity technologies like Facebook Connect, OpenID, as well as existing identities will soon colonize the web, making every webpage a social experience –even if they don’t choose to participate.

[Soon, every product page and webpage will be a social experience –even if brands don’t choose to participate]

Although the identity space is still in it’s adolescence, many of the vendors agree on the direction to head, but not exactly how to get there. Secondly, there’s many different groups coming together from Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and the third party OpenID foundation that are trying to make their specific requirements work with each other.

Once the different parties representing the identity systems agree on the specifics and start to implement we’ll still need to see a transport method that will allow these identities to appear on any webpage:

How Every Page Could Be a Social Experience

• Connective APIs. Expect to at the highest level technologies like Facebook Connect and OpenStack to allow third party sites to connect with websites –without users having to give up their login credentials or personal information –essentially bypassing the annoying registration page.
• Social inlays and overlays. At the next level, expect social networks to create ‘overlay’ experiences so their social experience will traverse every webpage. If you currently click on a link within Facebook to a third party site it will open inside the Facebook experience. We also see this with Digg, with it’s “Digg Bar” experience.
• Browsers to add social functionality. Expect every browser to provide a social experience. Finally, at the next level, expect pervasive technologies like browsers to start to become social. Expect Google’s Chrome to allow your Gmail contacts to share their experiences on every webpage and product you visit. In fact, startups like GetGlue are already experimenting with aggregating reviews from a person’s network using Firefox plugins.
• Birth of the Social Inbox. In the most radical future, content will start to appear on a new type of aggregation webpage that resembles both email and newspages. I’m watching vendors like Friendfeed to aggregate public and some private data, expect Facebook and Google Wave to present unique new experiences we’ve not seen yet. As people interact socially with others on the internet, expect social networks to aggregate the colonization creating a new type of ‘Social Inbox’ (more on that soon). Expect to see Microsoft Live, Yahoo Mail, Gmail/Google Wave start to merge with social networks, birthing a new type of communication and collaboration platform. Why does this matter? because fragments of the corporate websites will be aggregated into these platforms, in a social context.

[As a result, people will lean on the opinions and experiences of their trusted network –diminishing traditional marketing efforts]

Key Impact: A Shift to Customer Opinion Over Corporate Messaging
More importantly, this means that your customers will be able to rely on their immediate friends and trusted network to make decisions –not just nameless customer reviews like on Amazon from folks you don’t know. This means they will also start to rely more on each other for reviews –not the marketing created by brands. This also applies to the real world –not just online, as people can access digital devices on mobile social networks to find out which stores, restaurants and activities their trusted network prefers.

Power continues to shift to the participants, and away from irrelevant corporate websites.

If this post was helpful, please tweet it by copying and pasting into Twitter:

Trends: Impacts Of The Era of Social Colonization –Every Webpage to be Social http://bit.ly/aAJ9c by @jowyang

Posted in Future of Social Web, Social CRM, Social Media | 31 Comments »

Looking Behind the Curtains on the Social Media Stage: Humans Don’t Scale

Categories: Challenges, Social MediaPosted on June 13th, 2009

I’ve been watching this space for a few years now, and I’ve started to notice that the people (often those that we think of that are at the upper echelons) are not able to scale, as a result here’s what they’re doing to compensate:

Many social media bloggers don’t even manage their own accounts, they often hire virtual assistants to do their Facebook and Twitter follows and replies.

Quite of few of those top social media bloggers don’t even answer their own emails, they have a virtual assistant that reviews them, sorts them, and sometimes responds on their behalf.

Many of the top social media news blogs are on a race to see who can publish the fastest, why? whoever gets the earliest time stamp often gets the credit and links from other blogs, and will risest fastest on the techmeme tower or google news gauge. As a result, many of these blogs will publish the headline, then adjust, edit, format, punctuate, and add links to the post in real time.

A few authors that have published one of the thousands of social media books outsource their content to ghost writers who create the majority of the content. Although it’s the headlining author’s name that drives book sales, in many cases they don’t actually write the content.

Many of the top celebrities or top social media names don’t even write their own blog posts and tweets, they may outsource it to others.

So what does this mean? It means the social media space is starting to look like just about every other industry that starts to get mainstream. Social media is often the premise built on 1:1 relationships, and even with technology, that clearly doesn’t scale, and I can relate.

What about me? I’m asked every few days “How do you do it all” my answer is “I don’t, the wheels are falling off” Well you’ve probably noticed I’ve not been blogging much, nor tweeting lately, I’ve been under heavy travel and projects (that I’m behind on). Every blog post and tweet that you see is me, including all the errors and typos that come along with them. I will admit that sometimes, I even updated blog posts after they publish, to polish it up. I skim all my emails, read many, but if I answer, I promise you that’s always me. I may not be good at scaling my social efforts, but I assure you, I’m authentic, warts and all.

I can relate to those who don’t scale well. If you’ve ever met me at an event this last year, you may have noticed dark circles under my eyes, and somewhat of a flustered appearance. I recently had a long talk with a good friend yesterday, when I’m tired from traveling nearly every week, you may notice that I actually draw my strength from within or being online, not always from others. So if I’ve ever came across as a bit messy and sapped, I certainly don’t intend to, I’m just stretched to the limit at times.

So what happened to transparency and authenticity? Maybe it’s the econony, with less resources, and more pressure, we’re all being stretched to the limits. Or maybe, this is the evoluation of every industry, music, art, and film started out simple and pure, then became institutionalized. Or maybe, I just never bothered to look close enough.

Update: Chris Saad, who inspired me to write this, has responsed from his own blog. Paid content highlights the challenges. This post has generated a lot of discussion from my friends as I meet them in person, interesting.

Posted in Challenges, Social Media | 52 Comments »

Seeking Case Studies of How Brands Reach Gen X Using Social Media

Categories: Generations, Social Media, TechnographicsPosted on June 6th, 2009

I’m wrapping up my report on “How companies should organize for social media” in a few weeks, and collaborating on a report with Zach Hofer-Shall (a digital device aficionado) on a “Comprehensive community checklist” and am going to start work on a research report exploring the social behaviors of Generation X, and how brands are reaching them using social media. (see my body of research)

I’m probably the youngest of the Gen X generation (people define the age groups differently, but the behavioral traits and beliefs are perhaps the most telling) and we’ve a unique way of growing up with Transformers, GIJoe, My Little Pony, Reading Rainbow, Regan’s Just Say No, and of course Michael Jackson (when he was black). We also grew up with technology: Nintendo games and “↑ ↑ ↓ ↓ ← → ← → B A”, boomboxes, Sony Walkmen and of course MTV and VH1 –or, at least that’s all that comes to my mind during my growing up experience.

Fast forward to 2009, we’re establishing ourselves in the workplace, becoming the successful professionals as we enter the early or mid-career phase of our lives. Yet with maturity comes the big “R” of responsibility: family, kids, the access to disposable income. As this generation, my generation, moves into the prime light, brands are also recognizing the importance to reach us, so I’m seeking your help to submit information.

Seeking Case Studies of How Brands Reach Gen X Using Social Media
I’m seeking examples from brands or agencies that have case studies of how brands have reached Generation X (my Generation) by using social media. This doesn’t have to be a formal PDF, but it’s most helpful if you include URLs or screenshots, a problem definition, a goal, and then measurable quantitative results. I’m seeking these within the next two weeks so by June 15th will be the last day to email me at jowyang at forrester.com.

For Discussion: How Would Gen X Behave If We Grew Up With Social Media
Oh, and to kick off a conversation, how would Gen Xers behave if we had the internet when we grew up, rather than in just the last decade and half? From turntables, cable tv, to compact discs, we mainly grew up as consumers of technology and media –not creators. We grew up with technology as consumer products, yet in many cases, these devices were not connected, not networked, and not tied together through the internet or wireless technology (we were often ‘nodes’ not networked). Do you think Gen Xers would use it differently than Gen Y? Would we be as willing to share all parts of our personal and social lives as some of our younger counterparts? You can learn more about how different generations around the globe access social technologies using our social technographics profile tool, love to hear your thoughts.

Posted in Generations, Social Media, Technographics | 29 Comments »

Breakdown: Digg Allows Community To Choose Advertisements

Categories: Social MediaPosted on June 4th, 2009

Left: This screenshot, provided by Digg shows how an EA Sims ad is embedded in main body editorial as sponsored, as well as in upper right bug.

Digg Launches Community Voted Advertising: “Digg Ads”
Digg, who was formerly partnered with Microsoft for advertising, announced that they will be launching a new type of advertising unit that allows Digg members to vote up (digg) or down (bury) ads that appear in the editorial stream. As a result, the ads that are voted up will cost less to the advertiser. Nodding to the power of the community isn’t new for Digg, in the past the Digg community actually has more control than the management team, so turning over the advertising power to them strategically makes sense. After engaging in a discussion on Twitter last night about this, I gave it a good night’s think, here’s my take:

Social Ads Not New:

Interactive Ads aren’t new, Facebook launched ‘Engagement Ads’ (analysis) nearly a year ago, and community vendor Pluck and agency Razorfish followed suit, in similiar vein community platform Kickapps launched WidgeADs.
Pricing based on ad performance isn’t anything new, we’ve seen this with demand and supply of ads for years with cost per action.

Requirements for Success:

Homogeneous : Community ranked ads will likely work better in homogeneous communities where there’s a common interest or demographic, rather than a large broad community where consensus won’t be found. In the case of Digg, I’d make a guess from watching the community that it’s a lot of Gen X and Y males that are technology optimistic, and liberal. Having spent time at the live Diggnation event (the super fanboys, photo by Brian Solis) it could be a representative sample.
Engaged: Community ranked ads make sense for the Digg community as they are already highly engaged in voting for stories, as well as the very active comment (over 100 comments is norm per article on front page).
Transparency: Dislcosing in the editorial stream that the ad is sponsored.

Risks:

Gaming: Expect gaming of the site, not from marketers, but from fan boys, perhaps those that love Apple products will bury Microsoft ads. Since you must have a registered ID to vote on items in Digg, the chances of the advertiser influencing the ad price will be limited.
Unusual engagement: Expect that most users are more likely to bury ads, not engage with them and promote them. However, if a user buries an ad they don’t like, this cost per action is still an engagement, which is higher than not paying attention to them at all.

Forward Thinking:

If this works, Digg or it’s partners could replicate this product and extend to other sites. Interactive advertisers like Federated Media would do well to open discussions with Pluck and Kickapps, who have a strong media focus.
For brands and advertisers this is a great way to find out why an ad may not work for a particular community, rather than make guesses based on CTR performance. Advertisers that analyze or even engage in the dialog may benefit their next generation effort.
In the most ideal sense, community preferred ads become information and content –not invasive content.

Takeaway: If Anyone Can Pull This Off, It Will Be The Digg Community
Digg is a very unique case study, and if these ads work here, it will be hard to replicate on other communities, a unique mix of a very engaged community that is somewhat homogeneous will be required to make this work. Let’s see how it unfold.

Tags: Advertising
Posted in Social Media | 9 Comments »

Video: The Future of Facebook, an Interview on Bloomberg TV

Categories: Social MediaPosted on May 30th, 2009

Left: To watch this 5 minute video, click on image, then click on “Video” tab then the “Watch” icon.

This week, Facebook raised $200 million injection of capital from a relatively unknown Russian investor Digital Sky Technologies (DST), which has a few related properties. This investment is an exchange for preferred stock, representing a 1.96 percent equity stake at a $10 billion valuation, according to a Facebook press release.

I often get asked how Facebook could monetize, my take is that they are first focused on global growth they have aprox 200 million registered users (keep in mind that’s not the same as active) and need to perhaps double that amount to reach the population of larger websites (stats here).

I went to the SF Bloomberg TV studios for a live 5:45am pacific broadcast to accommodate the east coast market, to discuss my take, which you can watch. To watch the video, click to this page (or on the image above), then go to “Video” tab then the “Watch” icon.

Although I’ve been on many video podcast, this was my first interview on life TV, and as you can tell, I’m a bit awkward and very nervous. Being in a TV studio is so different than doing an in person interview as there’s no one in the room, I can hear the anchor via a small earpiece, there’s a very slight delay, I can’t read her body language, I didn’t know what she looked like till I saw the replay at home, and the only thing I can see is a little red dot engulfed by bright white lights. To overcome my nervousness, I wrote down my talking points the night before and rehearsed many times, a few awkward sentence here and there, but hey, it was a good experience, and I hope to do it again.

Back to the topic: Facebook’s future. I’d love to hear from you, what do you think they’ll do with this new funding, and how do you think Facebook will ultimately monetize?

Posted in Social Media | 7 Comments »

People on the Move in the Social Media Industry: May 30, 2009

Categories: Social MediaPosted on May 30th, 2009

Submissions for On the Move have reduced since the global recession. I’ve started this series (see archives) to recognize and congratulate folks who get promoted or accept new exciting positions. Please help me congratulate the following folks:

Bob Pearson who used to head Dell’s social media activities joins President, Blog Council & SVP, Communities at GasPedal, becomes a Partner at Common Sense Media Group.

I spoke to Adam Weinroth former Marketing head at Pluck, who has relocated from Austin and is now in L.A. heading marketing for parent company Demand Media. Find Adam on Twitter

Clint Schaff is now the New Media Director at Roll International after working in it’s in-house advertising agency Fire Station Agency, you can find Clint on Twitter.

John Yamasaki joined Seesmic team as a Community Evangelist, in San Francisco, you can find him on Twitter.

Matt Miller has been named the Social Media Manager for Mpix.com, a division of Miller’s, Inc. Miller’s is a print lab in the United States.

Fred Alberti has been promoted to Director of Social Media for Salem Web Network.

How to connect with others (or get a job):
Several people have been hired because of this blog post series, here’s how:

Submit an announcement
If you know folks that are moving up in the social media industry, leave a comment below, or if you’re feeling shy (it’s cool to self-nominate) send me an email. Please include a link to your announcement, and ensure you’re really living and breathing in the social media world –this is not a small aspect of your role.

Seeking Social Media Professionals?
If you’re seeking to connect with community advocates and community managers there are few resources

List of Enterprise Social Media Professionals
This list, which started with just 8 names continues to grow as folks submit to it. List of Social Computing Strategists and Community Managers for Enterprise Corporations 2008 –Social Media Professionals.

See Web Strategy Jobs powered by Job o Matic (Post a job there and be seen by these blog readers, these affiliate fees pay for my hosting)

Read Write Web also has job announcements in Jobwire, although at a broader scope than my announcements

Connect with others in the community manager group in Facebook

Jake McKee’s community portal for jobs

Chris Heuer’s Social Media Jobs

SimplyHired aggregates job listings, as does Indeed

ForumOne Jobs for Social Media and Community

Teresa has a few jobs, some around community

New Media hire has an extensive job database

Social Media Headhunter

Social media jobs

Jobs in social media

Altimeter Group’s list of social media consultants and agencies

Hiring? Leave a comment
If you’re seeking candidates in the social media industry, many of them are within arms reach, feel free to leave a link to a job description (but not the whole job description, or I’ll delete it)

I’m seeking folks that are related to full time hands on social media strategy and community managers, to be on this list, so let me know if you see these folks, and please submit them –try to include links to announcements on blogs or on the wire. Also, I probably will not include executive management changes on this list at social media companies, as the list would go on and on, but you can feel free to express yourself in the comments!

Posted in Social Media | No Comments »

As Social Technologies Become Pervasive, Prepare Your Company

Categories: Social MediaPosted on May 29th, 2009

When I started this job a year and a half ago, my coverage was simply over social networks and community platform vendors. On occasion I would speak to brand monitoring companies, and of course pure play social media sites (blogging software, microblogging, etc)

But now, I spend talking to companies from a variety of spaces as social technologies creep into their space. It’s increasingly difficult to monitor as it spreads, but expected as the era of social colonization takes hold. Social technologies become pervasive and spread throughout the entire company.

Vendors that are currently ramping into the social space:

CMS vendors are gearing up and offering social features, much to the chagrin of the community platform players.
Customer support departments are quickly moving outside their defined support domain to where customers are supporting each other.
CRM vendors are connecting to social networks, serving up social content in their dashboard. We’re discussing how far this will reach.
Web Analytics firms are starting to scan social sites and partner with others, they know influence has spread beyond server analytics alone.
Customer reference programs recognize that unfiltered customer opinions are happening beyond their control.
Agencies of all sorts.

Vendors that will become increasingly important in the social space:

Affiliate marketing will become an increasingly important as more brands start to act on word of mouth programs.
Email marketers are starting to recognize that the social network inbox is where eyeballs have shifted to. Given Google’s evolved email platform looks more like a social network or operating system than an email ‘inbox’.
Advertisers want to think beyond banner and IAB ads to more engaging or social ads.
Large consulting firms are preparing to offer million dollar packages to enterprises for change management and social integration systems.

Companies as a whole –beyond marketing– must prepare as social cascades the enterprise
Social technologies are creeping into nearly every aspect of business, making this incredibly difficult for brands to manage as so many systems –and therefore stakeholders– are looped in willing or not. Having spoken to some brands that are tackling this change, here’s some practical advice that I learned the top firms are doing:

1) Recognize the trend that social technologies are crossing over to all aspects of the business: If you’re responsible for social media leadership in your company, recognize that this technology is pervasive beyond corp comm and marketing as we saw in the last few years.
2) Yet, as things start to get complicated, simplify: Rather than focus on the all of the distinct arenas that social crosses, focus on the trend that customers and their opinions will be part of nearly every aspect of your business –even if you don’t choose for them to be present.
3) Start the culture change now with internal education: The internal culture change is the biggest hurdle for companies. I spoke to a traditional media company yesterday that is quickly migrating away from print to online, and is conducting internal ’show and tell brown bag sessions’ across the enterprises where people can come from any department.
4) Rather than build a strategy focused on technologies, build around customers and employees: Above all, don’t focus on the technologies themselves, start to train yourself to start and end a discussion with customers (and/or employees) rather than “Twitter”.
5) Organize your company for social: There’s an innovation curve here that your company must jump, but to be successful, you’ll need to change not technology (only 20%) but culture, strategy, process, roles, and how you measure (the other 80%). I’ll be publishing a report in the near future (with data from a recent survey to brands) that discusses how companies are organizing for social technologies, and what some best practices are in the near future.

There’s a lot of social media strategists that are reading this blog, and vendors who support them, I’d love to hear from you the changes in the last 12 months we’ve seen, as well as some practical advice to brands to be prepared.

Posted in Social Media | 8 Comments »

Google Wave To Bring Web 2.0 Lifestyle to Work

Categories: Social MediaPosted on May 29th, 2009

In the spirit of collaboration (like Google Wave), I’ve obtained insight from Forrester analyst colleagues Ray Wang and Rob Koplowitz. Update: I just chatted with colleague Ted Schadler who also posted his thoughts: Google Wave: Surfing The Future Of Collaboration.

Google launches a Collaboration Platform
Google announced the Wave product, a next generation collaboration platform yesterday at their developer conference, in hopes of getting third parties to build modules on it, the product won’t be released till later this year.

I just spend over an hour watching the Google Wave video, don’t bother watching it, as I’ll summarize. Essentially, Google wows a room full of developers (aka clapping technoheads) at their conference and win them over for 30 minutes of collaboration technologies. I’m not impressed by the collaboration features themselves, I’ve seen pieces from other collaboration vendors and community platform vendors that have elements of this, or similar features that can accomplish the meet the needs of the same use case.

What it Means: Technologies are boring, what they do is what matters:

After discussing with Forrester’s enterprise software analyst Ray Wang, we both agree the Google Wave is about bringing together the Web 2.0 lifestyle to become a workstyle.
Google’s apporach is signicant because it will enter the workforce without having to go through IT management. This undercuts players like Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, and SAP as it grows from the groundup –another groundswell like google docs and yammer.
After speaking with Rob Koplowitz, Forrester analyst who focuses on enterprise 2.0 he suggests this also impacts Cisco, Webex and Webex connect who is also trying to try new delivery models to the enterprise. Expect the Webex developers to take repurpose success on Google Wave platform.
Existing smaller collaboration vendors and community platform vendors with enterprise focus to be part of the developer ecosystem, they can now extend their features to the Wave platform.
Google is pushing real time collaboration, and traditional email is asynchronous, yet don’t expect everyone to be interacting in real time, all the time.
What matters is that the developer ecosystem developing on the platform, (Thank you Steve) where third party developers will do the innovation.
This is a missed opportunity for LinkedIn who launched their platform but has not exploited as they’ve only hand selected a few partners.

These are just my initial reactions, I’ll update this post as I learn more.

Posted in Social Media | 12 Comments »

Weekly Digest of the Social Networking Space: May 17, 2009

Categories: Social MediaPosted on May 17th, 2009

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
The era of social colonization continues to power forward with Google pushing OpenID –this will extend connections to Google’s massive empire to startups and others. The era of social functionality will see some media impacts as media companies seek to provide new experiences for communities, the Watchman movie to be provided to the Facebook community. Facebook seeks to ‘buy out’ shares from impatient employees.

Identity: Google encourages socialization with OpenID interface
Google announces the OpenID User Interface Extension Specification which is intended to streamline the logins and adoption of commonly agreed upon identity systems. This login requests authentication with Google accounts, but also promotes the use of OpenID. Expect more announcements like this from other platforms to occur as we slowly mature into the era of social colonization.

Finance: Facebook raises money to liquidate employees
In Silicon Valley, where I hail from, working at a company with the hopes of an exit strategy is the dream. Workers at hot startups, like Facebook, may have a below market rate salary in hopes of someday cashing in. The challenge, during a recession is that an IPO is unlikely to happen for a few years, and so Facebook raises funds to buy back equity from employees –giving them some cash in hand.

Video: Watchman Movie to be available on Facebook
This is what we call the era of social functionality, when communities can do something useful with each other. In this case, they can watch a movie together, this one being Watchman, comment and explore the scenes as a group. Expect other traditional media content to appear on Facebook making all media, social media.

Strategy: SixApart offers features for Wordpress Rival
Letting go to reach communities where they exist –espicially if they are your competitors is a smart strategy to reach new users. Why limit your reach to your ‘install’ base only, but instead, let your most popular features spread to competitive users. Six Apart has intended to do just that, and has announced they will make plugins available for wordpress users –expect Wordpress to follow suit.

Policy: WSJ enacts social media rules for journalists
This one is perplexing, yet I understand the intent. Journalists have a specific code of ethics to follow when it comes to protecting sources, and keeping subjects at arms length. The challenge, according to this piece, suggests that the policy is out of date to human behavior, and suggests that the new policies are out of touch.

Research: Social Network Advertising to diminish
eMarketer reports that: “Total U.S. advertising expenditures on social networks are expected to fall 3% to $1.14 billion this year, down from the $1.18 billion spent in 2008, according to Internet market research company eMarketer.” Do note that the research appeared to be based on spend within MySpace.

Culture: Social networks a harbor for hatred and sex
We’re at an intersection where social networks must decide if they are going to allow free speech, or clean up hate speech to improve the community experience. We’re seeing uprisings within Facebook’s holocaust denial movement (which they have now made some changes) and even Craigslist under fire for policy changes around adult services. The open web has both benefits of a global conversation, but with it comes the unwanted discussions that each culture may embrace or abhor.

Personal: Amsterdam to Paris
Although I’m on international travel in the Netherlands and about to go to vacation, I continue to do this digest to stay on top of my ever changing industry –it’s my weekly mental workout. I’ll be taking the week off after my client engagement on Monday, but will still be active online –just don’t expect me to answer emails. I’m also wrapping up my first report for the quarter “How to organize your company for social media” which includes survey result data, and interviews from companies.

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.

Posted in Social Media | 10 Comments »

Get Glue Enters Into The Era of Social Colonization

Categories: Future of Social Web, Social MediaPosted on May 11th, 2009

Video: see Get Glue’s demo reel, embedded above.

Summary: Young startup Get Glue is the early steps of how every product and website will be social –impacting recommendations and marketing. It ushers us into the early steps of the Era of Social Colonization, the third era of five in the evolution of the social web.

[Get Glue is an early example of the Era of Social Colonization –a state when every product, services, and object can have social reviews by people you know]

Last week I spent time with small Get Glue team on a briefing, they were recommended to me from former colleague Charlene Li, so if she suggests something, I’m going to quickly follow up. It’s rare that I would dedicate a blog post to a company from a briefing, but this one is significant.

Get Glue is meta social network, meaning it aggregates the explicit and implicit behaviors of other social networks. Example: If you leave ratings about products on different websites, it will start to aggregate it to one page. What does this mean? It means that Get Glue can aggregate the opinions of your friends about nearly any product.

Early example shows significant impacts to brands

Early example, yet not maturity: Although this is focused on media, movie, music, gadgets and more, expect it to grow it’s scope to include services, restaurants, and even enterprise products.
Barriers to mainstream adoption It requires users to use a Firefox plugin to enable, so it’s only reaching a limited number of people –and they have to be active in social networks.
Recommendations will be aggregated: Soon, every product, webpage, and service will be rated by your friends, and the information will easily be aggregated into one location. Silos break down, as Get Glue is pilfering the reviews from thousands of sites to create a unique database with all the social data.
Significant impacts to marketers: You cannot stop this, and marketing as we know it will have to switch to a focus on social recommendations.

Posted in Future of Social Web, Social Media | 22 Comments »

It’s About Intent: Affiliate Links in Twitter

Categories: MicroMedia, Social MediaPosted on May 9th, 2009

Humans have a way of always experimenting with new systems to see how they can be monetized or streamlined –it’s a natural part of the web.

A few months ago, I experimented with Magpie Twitter ads as an analyst, and quickly found the community revolted against it.

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.

Updated: Patricio of eConslutancy agrees, and adds some more examles and recomenndations (added Tues, May 12)

I enjoy Lisa’s counter, who suggest that trust with her readers matters most, and disclosure isn’t needed, however Copyblogger in 2006 suggests (and many other bloggers question) that this could be against the law. I’m not a lawyer, so I’m going to err on the side of conservatism –and that disclosure is a best, and safe practice.

Posted in MicroMedia, Social Media | 49 Comments »

How Brands Balance Their Diet With Social Media Supplements

Categories: Industry Index, Social MediaPosted on May 3rd, 2009

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.
Examples: I know many of the community platform vendors like LiveWorld have such an offering, as well as most social media conferences. Education hubs like Marketing profs have ongoing webinar series, as does Forrester’s teleconfernces.
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
Examples: There’s a great number of councils and clubs from the: Social Media Club, Social Media Breakfast, BlogCouncil, Internet Strategy Forum, Forum One, Womma, EConsultancy among others. IBM hosted a Tweetup in their NYC office to meet and greet the social media community, although a one-off, a tweetup is an ongoing meeting across the world of passionate social users. At Forrester, we offer premiere clients the opportunity to join the Forrester Leadership Board for Interactive Marketers.
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.
Examples: eMarketer, Comscore, Nielsen Online, Pew Research, and Compete offer strong analytics. Brands seeking strategy and advice could approach Society of New Communciations Research, Gartner or Forrester, my employer. Leave a comment below if I’ve missed someone.
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.
Examples: You’ll find consistent summaries and digests from SmartBrief’s Social Media daily wrapups, RWW’s weekly wrapups, or, my weekly digest of the social space.
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.

Posted in Industry Index, Social Media | 23 Comments »

231

The Future of the Social Web: In Five Eras

Categories: Forrester, Future of Social Web, Social Media, Web StrategyPosted on April 27th, 2009

Expect the Groundswell to continue, in which people connect to each other –rather than institutions. Consumer adoption of social networks is increasing a rapid pace, brands are adopting even during a recession, so expect the space to rapidly innovate to match this trend. Clients can access this report, but to summarize what we found, in the executive summary we state:

Today’s social experience is disjointed because consumers have separate identities in each social network they visit. A simple set of technologies that enable a portable identity will soon empower consumers to bring their identities with them — transforming marketing, eCommerce, CRM, and advertising. IDs are just the beginning of this transformation, in which the Web will evolve step by step from separate social sites into a shared social experience. Consumers will rely on their peers as they make online decisions, whether or not brands choose to participate. Socially connected consumers will strengthen communities and shift power away from brands and CRM systems; eventually this will result in empowered communities defining the next generation of products.

We found that technologies trigger changes in consumer adoption, and brands will follow, resulting in five distinct waves, they consist of:

The Five Eras of the Social Web:

1) Era of Social Relationships: People connect to others and share
2) Era of Social Functionality: Social networks become like operating system
3) Era of Social Colonization: Every experience can now be social
4) Era of Social Context: Personalized and accurate content
5) Era of Social Commerce: Communities define future products and services

Update: CRM Magazine has more about the five eras, focus in on the graphic.

Timing of the Five Overlapping Eras:
It’s important to note that these eras aren’t sequential, but instead are overlapping. We’ve already entered and have seen maturity for the era of social relationships, have entered social functionality but haven’t seen true utility, and are starting to see threads of social colonization with early technologies like Facebook connect. Soon these federated identities will empower people to enter the era of social context with personalized and social content. The following diagram demonstrates how we should expect to see the eras play out in the future –with social commerce the furthest out.

Interviews with 24 of the top Social Companies:
Research isn’t done in a vacuum, that’s why we conducted qualitative research to find out what we should come to expect. We came to these conclusions based on interviews with executives, product managers, and strategists at the following 24 companies: Appirio, Cisco Eos, Dell, Facebook, Federated Media Publishing, Flock, Gigya, Google (Open Social/stack team), Graphing Social Patterns (Dave McClure), IBM (SOA Team), Intel (social media marketing team), KickApps, LinkedIn, Meebo, Microsoft (Live team), MySpace, OpenID Foundation (Chris Messina), Plaxo, Pluck, Razorfish, ReadWriteWeb, salesforce.com, Six Apart, and Twitter.

How Brands Should Prepare
What’s interesting isn’t this vision for the future, but what it holds in store for brands, as a result, companies should prepare by:

Don’t Hesitate: These changes are coming at a rapid pace, and we’re in three of these eras by end of year. Brands should prepare by factoring in these eras into their near term plans. Don’t be left behind and let competitors connect with your community before you do.

Prepare For Transparency: People will be able to surf the web with their friends, as a result you must have a plan. Prepare for every webpage and product to be reviewed by your customers and seen by prospects –even if you choose not to participate.

Connect with Advocates: Focus on customer advocates, they will sway over prospects, and could defend against detractors. Their opinion is trusted more than yours, and when the power shifts to community, and they start to define what products should be, they become more important than ever.

Evolve your Enterprise Systems: Your enterprise systems will need to connect to the social web. Social networks and their partners are quickly becoming a source of customer information and lead generation beyond your CRM system. CMS systems will need to inherit social features –pressure your vendors to offer this, or find a community platform.

Shatter your Corporate Website: In the most radical future, content will come to consumers –rather than them chasing it– prepare to fragment your corporate website and let it distribute to the social web. Let the most important information go and spread to communities where they exist; fish where the fish are.

Translations
If you translate this blog post, I’ll add your link here and credit you.

Dutch: Marketing Facts Team, Bas van de Haterd

Spanish: Estategia Digital by Pablo Melchor

Danish: Social Media Marketing by Peter Ulstrup Hansen

Danish: dSeneste by Søren Storm Hansen

Polish: Marketing Technologies by Dawid Pacha

Italian: Digital Ingrediants by Stefano Maggi

Russian: Shchepotin by Denis Shchepotin

Czech: Vlad Hrouda

French: We are Social by Sandrine Plasseraud

Korean: by Jamie Park

Hebrew: Blink by Israel Blechman

Indonesian: Wib’s Web World, by Wibisono Sastrodiwiryo

German: The Social Media Soapbox, by Stephen Rothman

Portuguese: Live from Sao Paulo, Brazil, by Dax

Swedish: JMW, by Brit Stakston

Norwegian: Cruena by Harald, Creuna

Arabic: Technoemedia, by Mohamed Hassan

Chinese: Seaberry, by Sylvia

Japanese: MinoriG Translation, by Minori Goto

Romanian: Blog de Comert Electronic by Adriana Iordan

Persian: Lameei, iclub.ir

Want to translate it into your language? I’ll be happy to add you, read these suggestions.

This project took a team effort, and I’d like to thank Josh Bernoff a guiding force in my career, Emily Bowen who kept the project going, Cynthia Pflaum for the quantitative data, Megan Chromik in our editing team for the polish, and Jon Symons in our PR team for the media outreach.

This is also cross posted on the Forrester blog for Interactive Marketing Professionals. Thanks to Matt Savarino for catching a small typo.

Tags: Future of Social Web, Future of the Social Web
Posted in Forrester, Future of Social Web, Social Media, Web Strategy | 231 Comments »