Connecting to customers is going to get more complicated, and brands (and their partners) must pay attention to the Dynamic Customer Journey.

We want to hear your point of view on the Dynamic Customer Journey (either in the comments below, or from your own blog) and we’ll cross-link to thoughtful discussions.  

Introducing The Dynamic Customer Journey
We see this disruptive theme as consumers being able to use many sources, devices, and mediums at any given time, giving them more options and choices. The result? Consumers are enabled to have a unique path each time, making it harder to predict. This means the experience becomes increasingly fragmented for the brand, as they struggle to reach consumers across all these choices of sources, mediums, and channels.

What’s the opposite of a Dynamic Customer Journey? Back in the early mid-century, consumers had only a few TV channels and a few newspaper outlets to choose from. As a result, the experience was predictable, easy to target, and one-size-fitted-all. Today, this has drastically fragmented and is ever changing.

The metaphor I use, is when I’m in Times Square NY, and I’ve so many choices to look at logos, ads, and content across many screens, the real world, and people to talk to. We see a similar experience being present in front of consumers wherever they go, even in their living room with so many choices between TVs, laptops, tablets, mobile devices and soon-to-be Google Glass augmented reality.

The Factors that Impact the Dynamic Customer Journey  Multiply Complexity
A corporation that’s seeking to connect to their customers must understand all of these forces that impact the journey.  They must be able to quantify the following for every persona:

• New sources of information: Aside from press, media, analysts they are also relying on the crowd, and their friends. Soon augmented reality will allow for new data forms we’ve not yet seen.  (that’s about 5 factors)
• New forms of media: The channels as we know them Paid Owned and Earned are starting to intermix, as a result a new form of media is impacting them. Social websites have social ads, making content and advertising a new form. (that’s about 3 factors)
• New screens: Traditionally we’ve thought of TV, Laptop, and Mobile, but now we must factor in a tablet experience (which is different than the aforementioned) and with Google Glass augmented reality coming, that will be a fifth screen to build a strategy for.  (that’s 5 factors)

To understand the complexity, this model suggests 5X3X5 which is 75 different permutations.  Next, the brand must understand this for every single phase: awareness, consideration, intent, purchase, support, loyalty, advocacy, (that’s 7 steps, resulting in 525 permutations per persona) then multiple times every product group and then geography, the math is staggering on the complexity.

Call to Action: Share your Point of View
This theme is complicated, so in our Open Research model, we’re calling for the community to source and share ideas, so we can collectively learn together.  Want to get involved? We’ve published more on our POV on the official Altimeter Blog, and if you wanted to share your perspective, we want to hear, and will link to the community discussion.

• Technology innovators: What new devices, software, data do you see emerging that’s resulting in customers having more choices in their journey?
• Agencies and Service providers: How will brands need to catch up in their go to market strategy? How should brands restructure their internal organization to accommodate this change?
• Brands and Companies: What are you seeking from your solution partners to help bridge this gap? What do you need from technology and service providers to move forward?

Related Discussions
I’ll cross link to all thoughtful discussions

• Official Altimeter Blog: Our request to see your posts
• Sprinklr’s Jeremy Epstein has posted his point of view
• Altimeter’s Rebecca Lieb, on the DCJ
• Recording: Learn about all of Altimeter’s three research themes
• Altimeter’s Mobile Analyst Chris Silva asks why companies aren’t connecting with their customers

In business school, case studies of successful companies often involve a story of an innovator who created physical products and services, mass media, or services at scale for global consumers.  Yet I’d assert that web-based Facebook is one of the most brilliant business models we’ve ever seen.  If you use the service, Facebook has you to thank for all your hard work.

Despite yesterday’s IPO closed at nearly opening price, it’s important to pause and think about how this company’s market cap reached $100 billion (for context, Pepsi is at par at $106b).  We’re already seeing many become wealthy, from newly minted millionaires in brand new M3s at the local car wash in silicon valley, to the investors, VC, and ecosystem that will benefit from the revenues, we need to pause and think why.

So what is so important to pause and think about? Why do I say the Business Model is “Brilliant”?  Facebook’s business model smashed the traditional manufacturing style we see with consumer products, and instead built a  ’consumer platform’ that enabled many around them. In fact, the Facebook business model is brilliant for the following reasons:

1. Brilliant because the users do the work.   In many companies, hiring paid or unpaid interns is a source of scale, or even off shoring work to developing regions.  In the case of Facebook, there are 900,000,000+ unpaid members that are generating meaningful content and value to each other.   In fact, official Facebook stats indicate that 526million of them are active each day, many of which are using mobile devices and applications to connect to Facebook as they traverse the world.  While Facebook continues to grow, third parties are observing that the rate of growth may retarding, what’s important to remember  is that most of the commercial base that brands want to seek are likely within Facebook.
2. Brilliant because the brands send the traffic and inject the revenue.   That’s right, this couldn’t have been done without brands.  In fact, as one of the largest monetary streams for Facebook, they are spending dollars to reach the commercial base inside of the Facebook experience (despite GM pulling ads).  In fact, Altimeter research indicates 90% of corporate websites link to their social media accounts, showing how 10+ years of hard earned traffic spent on SEO and SEM with Google has now been shifted to send that traffic right to Facebook.com.   It goes without saying the partner ecosystem of Social Media Management System has also contributed –and generated associated revenues.
3. Brilliant because a small company stayed agile.   Despite revenues being $3.7b, their cost of goods is only $860m. Facebook has published their employee base is a mere  3500+ employees at their Silicon Valley HQ and beyond, a small cadre compared to headcount of Google (33k employees), Apple (60k), and Microsoft (90k).  This lean and mean team was able to stay hungry, focused, and innovative to constantly roll out new features and products (both loved and hated) that captured the attention of the world.  Even large software enterprise companies like Salesforce have modeled their software to emulate the features inside of company.   Despite that there is no shortage of investors, the leadership team was able to maintain control and act against Mark’s clear vision, hopefully evading some corporate bureaucracy.

Facebook Success is Here Because of Your Contribution
This business model is notable as it involved millions in creating a consumer company at tremendous scale (without traditional, manufacturing, distribution or a person-to-person sale), in fact, anyone who’s used Facebook as a consumer, or as a brand marketer should also be to thank.  Now that the IPO has happened, those who have purchased the stock may feel even more connected as they have some financial ownership to the company.

The Facebook business model is brilliant, as everyone around them helped to do the work.

I’m presenting here at Webcom in Montreal, sharing the State and Future of Social BUsiness.

In fact, I think the Cluetrain as we know it, while right for many years, needs modification to represent how the social web is changing. I took the first three theses of the mainfesto and translated it to represent how I see advertising integrating with social as well as optimization and Social Performance software.

The three trends that I see impacting the social business space include (but are not limited to):

• Trend 1: Corporate Websites Reborn. I assert that corporate websites as we know them will be defunct, instead they will dynamically assemble content on the fly, making every page dynamic based on social data.
• Trend 2: Social Becomes Automated: Bots among us? Sort of. We’re already seeing the rise of Social Performance Software emerge, and this will enable brands to quickly respond (yet there are risks)
• Trend 3: To be Heard, You Will Pay: With every brand using social networks promoting their latest product, the space is getting saturated, as a result, social networks will monetize by making content visible, via ads.

I recently completed a research report covering Trend 2: Learn about the Social Media Management System space, and my upcoming report on the integration of Paid, Owned, and Earned, will publish in June.   A lot of this focus is on the customer interactions, but for a complete view, also see Charlene Li’s report on internal enterprise social networks and my research on how companies are organizing internally, to understand how companies are trying to ‘catch up’ internally.

The slides are embedded below

• Being prepared in advanced with: the proper policies, teams, roles, and education programs. These are the foundation needed to build a Center of Excellence.
• Advanced corporations have enabled their business units to deploy social –once they’ve provided the right training, process, then technology (in that order)
• Savvy companies are developing a social support triage process, rather than arbitrarily responding to customers, as it can teach the crowd bad behaviors

Enjoy the embedded video below, as well as access the full research report on the Social Business Hierarchy of Needs.

Also, if you’ve not heard about the Dachis Group, they’re a management consultant, software, listening, and digital design quasi-hybrid solution provider that’s rolling out interesting programs for large brands. Ping Jeff Dachis to find out more, or interact with him here in the comments, as he’s a reader and commenter.

People on the Move in the Social Business Industry:

• Although I’m a few months behind this, first of all, congrats to Mia Dand (twitter, linkedin) is Director, Global Social Media at Symantec, focused on building and leading social media strategy for Symantec’s Consumer Business. Includes content, campaigns, analytics, social commerce, and COE.  I’ve worked with her at her prior employer HP and excited to watch her continued growth.
• Kelby Johnson joins Banyan Branch as Sr. Account Director Social marketing strategy, I’ve worked with Kelby on projects for years, and consider him a friend, congrats to both.
• TechCrunch’s gets New COO, Veteran Exec And Entrepreneur Ned Desmond.
• Patrick Cunanan joins thismoment as Team Lead, Brand Programs. He will lead the Brand Program team and production of all DEC (Distributed Engagement Channel) deployments.
• Brian Snyder joins GolinHarris as Director of Digital Directing interactive campaigns for clients in the midwest
• Rachel Medina joins UnitedHealth Group as Senior Communications Specialist – Social Media focusing on day-to-day social media channel management, measurement and analysis of UnitedHealth Group social media initiatives and assistance with social media strategy development.
• Qais Roussan joins The Online Project as COO. The COO is responsible for leading the financial and operational teams at The Online Project. He is responsible for developing new structures to make the operations more profitable and scalable, allowing The Online Project to effectively serve more high profile clients in the Middle East.
• Bill Robb is promoted at SAP as Sr. Director, Social Media Strategy. Bill has been promoted and continues to run the brand channels and social programs for SAP across our many properties.
• Dana Dillehunt joins Market America/Shop.com as Social Media Writer Primary content contributor for Shop.com and Market America social media.
• Amanda LaRiviere joins Market America/Shop.com as Social Media Manager Managing Market America and Shop.com’s social media properties.
• Patti Sellman joins LiveWorld as West Coast Sales Director Working with marketers on scaling their social efforts through moderation, community programming and insight
• Keith Wiegold joins LiveWorld as Midwest Sales Director Working with marketers on scaling their social efforts through moderation, community programming and insight
• Rita Yampolsky joins thismoment as Director of Operations, Studios Handling managing the operations of the thismoment studios team, including scoping, project estimation and resourcing for custom work at thismoment.
• Laura Burns joins The Institutes (AICPCU) as Community Manager Responsible for The Institutes Community management and coordinating digital marketing strategies, ensuring active and engaged communities.
• Adam Monago joins ThoughtWorks Studios as VP of Marketing Social strategy, customer engagement and product evangelism
• Cameron Uganec joins HootSuite Media, Inc. as Director, Marketing & Communications Cameron is responsible for growing the brand, through the development of an agile Marketing and Communications team that crafts compelling content and stories.
• Brian Bailard joins HootSuite Media, Inc. as VP Global Strategic Accounts Brian is responsible for growing HootSuite’s presence in the very largest corporate and government organizations globally.
• Joeline Hackman joins Strutta as Director of Marketing responsible for helping clients build stronger relationships with their customers.
• Patrick Searle joins Social@Ogilvy as Head of Social, Indonesia Accelerate the adoption of social business solutions by Ogilvy’s Indonesian clients.
• Zena Weist joins Expion as Vice President Strategy As Vice President of Strategy, Zena will work with our clients and demonstrate how Expion’s platform can be utilized as a solution to specific organizational and market challenges they face today.  It’s been great watching Zena’s career continue to skyrocket!
• Rick Corteville joins LUXUS as Chief Executive Officer, Rick will lead all US operations and focus on building on Luxus’s strength as an international digital agency that’s known for creating beautiful work with a laser focus on ROI. Additionally, he will closely collaborate with the management teams in Helsinki and Singapore to further build global momentum for Luxus and its international clients.
• Bob Stanke joins Minnesota Timberwolves as Director, Interactive Services Oversees the strategic direction of the web and social media components for one of the NBA’s up-and-coming franchises, the Minnesota Timberwolves.
• Jeff Peters joins The Halo Group as Social Media Specialist. Jeff is a social media advocate for Halo and their clients; a generator of buzz, awareness and conversation. He is a thought leader and a creative thinker who pushes the boundaries of marketing and communications.
• Clément Chapillon joins We Are Social France as Account Director Responsibility for developing and driving forward existing business, building and developing client relationships

Submit a new hire:

• Submit a new hire that’s ‘on the move’ with this easy-to-use online form.

Seeking a job?

1. See the Web Strategy Job Board, which includes paid submissions from the top brands in the world.
2. Social Media Jobs Facebook Group
3. Social Media Jobs by Chris Heuer
4. Social Media jobs, filtered by SimplyHired
5. Social Media Job Network by James Durbin
6. 25 places to find social media jobs by Deb Ng

Additional Resources:

• Community Manager Facebook Group
• Community Manager Appreciation Day (Every 4th Monday of Jan, yearly)
• List of corporate web strategists and community managers for 2010
• Social Media Headhunter: Career advice, job postings and services
• New Media Hire community by Jim Long and team

Please congratulate the new hires by leaving a comment below.

After interviewing over 10 software companies and 10 agencies, a new trend has emerged that will change the social business landscape. What is this trend? The marketing performance techniques to refine TV, Radio, SEO and other marketing mediums are now moving to the social space.   Read my definitive post on Mashable to learn how this impacts not only brands, but also Facebook and my long term predictions on how this will play out.

Market Needs
Companies are struggling to scale to keep up with all the conversations in this space, secondly, the noise is becoming deafening with everyone from consumers to brands all shouting in social that targeting is needed to cut through the noise. Those that deploy volume quickly find they’re part of the noise, and get cast by the wayside.  As a result, we’re seeing a new category emerge, called Social Performance Software.

Social Performance Software Defined
Software tools and methods that analyze, plan, deliver, and measure media such as ads, content, and conversations published in social channels. For example, they will analyze the conversations of your followers, then suggest which content and media to publish, then determine when to publish, on which channel, and to whom. As a result, content will reach the intended audiences and result in higher resonation, or higher call to action rates

List of Vendors focused on Social Performance
Here’s a list of the vendors, if you know of others, leave a comment below. Please note that this category stretches across a number of product lines, as this will be a horizontal feature set spanning nearly every social software company.

• Adobe Social, which includes multiple acquisitions including Omniture and Context Optional.
• BuddyMedia, offers both campaign platform marketing tools along with social ads with their Brighter Option acquisition.
• Bazaarvoice, now has turned their earned content from ratings and reviews into a new social ad unit –even outside of FB.
• Crowdbooster, analyzes, measures and then optimizes when content should publish.
• Prosodic, which analyzes the who, what, where, and aids publishers.
• Shoutlet, focused on larger scale companies can help with complicated publishing needs, at scale.
• SocialFlow, analyzes your current socialgraph activity, guides users on content creation, then publishes at highest resonation.
• Tigerlily, focuses on publishing content by theme, audience and location, increasing relevance.
• UberVU, who first mines and analyzes data, then optimizes when content will publish.
• Webtrends Social, tracks content and ads, and measures performance across these multiple locations.
• Wildfire, a campaign platform marketing company has recently partnered with Adaptly to provide social ads and more

I’ve written other posts discussed why this trend will be important, one major industry force is that with Facebook and Twitter now offering ads (and new ad networks will emerge off FB and Twitter) we’ll continue to see social media agencies turn to advertising. I’ll be writing more about this space in the coming quarters, such as benefits and downsides of automation, and where this future will head.

Update: This is on the official Altimeter blog, and CMS Wire.

One of the assertions I make is the term “Social Media Agency of Record” (aka SMaoR) will eventually go by the wayside, as those pure play agencies are starting to move into advertising (starting with social ads), digital, interactive, and more. My take? We’ll just have a broader focus as social becomes nicely integrated with other digital efforts.

Listen in to the podcast below using the embed, or watch on Mitch’s website.

I’d love to hear from you in the comments, should the term Social media agency of Record dissolve? Or will this remain as a dedicated type of pure play firm?

Working among our team of analysts and researchers, Altimeter’s Research group has found three common higher level themes that will disrupt all businesses. Working among our analysts from mobile, content marketing, advertising, analytics, leadership, change management, user experience, and social, we’ve distilled all of the trends we’re seeing and found a common thread among them.

We generated the three research themes with the following in mind: the goal was to ascertain business disruption trends –beyond just technology changes. Each Altimeter analyst provided a unique viewpoint to help create a consolidated view of disruptive trends. All Altimeter analysts will focus on these research themes for 2012 and beyond. All our artifacts (speeches, webinars, reports, blogs, and client interactions) will stem from these themes.

Three Disruptive Business Research Themes

1. Dynamic Customer Journey: How can inflexible organizations synchronize with the changing customer?
2. Adaptive Organization: How can an organization adapt and thrive in a real-time world?
3. Sentient World: What’s smarter: A college grad or your future fridge? (intriguing, yes?)

The recording is below, and you can listen in, and watch the slides in this short 20 minute presentation between myself, Jeremiah Owyang, and partner Alan Webber. We will be announcing a blog ring shortly, encouraging the industry to explore each of the three themes in the coming quarters from your own blog. If you’re interested in learning how to get involved email us at info @altimetergroup.com

Whether it’s on a job interview, before a meeting, a first date, and as you walk into a store, more disruptive technologies are on the horizon that will enable social data to be easily accessed and viewable in real world situations. Profiling, which has negative connotations in terms of race, law enforcement, and beyond, is commonly used by marketers (and humans sub-consciously) to sort people around us. Yet in our digital and social world, this same profiling technique will be applied to today’s modern world. In fact, this recent story from Wired shows how an unlucky marketer was unable to land a job due to having a low Klout score.

This simulated image illustrates how Google Googles could allow us to easily profile who has the most social capital –without them even knowing.

‘Social Profiling’ Defined, and the Technologies That Will Fuel It
What’s Social Profiling? Digital technologies that enable social data to easily be referenced in public by others using mobile, AR, or other technologies. New technologies are emerging that allow us to overlay digital content on top of the real world, called Augmented Reality, we’re expecting Google to launch their Google Goggles “Project Glass” this summer. Additionally, it’s expected that Apple’s next iPhone will have facial recognition features that will enable us to identify people, and it’s assumed we’ll be able to quickly pull digital content about them.

Don’t Overly Rely on Social Scores –Understand True Influence
Logic tells us that new mobile applications will emerge that will allow digital content about us, in fact, we should expect apps to emerge that instantly allow us to tell one’s Twitter follower count, Klout score, and Facebook fans. But before we jump to conclusions on how this could help us identify ‘influencers’ take Altimeter’s guidance in understanding that these tools don’t fully tell the whole story. In fact, you should first read my colleague Brian Solis’ report on digital influence, which shows why social scores are not telling the full story, as well as see his presentation he gave on this topic.

Social Profiling Will Impact Society, Business, and You.
We should expect that social profiling technologies and techniques will impact us in at least three ways:

1) Digital ‘influence’ scores will emerge in the public real world –like it not. The social dynamics of determining who a dominant member of society could change. The largest male, the richest female, may now rival that of the most ‘influential’ person in the room –and everyone will know it quickly. As a result, a new pecking order in business could emerge that breaks corporate hierarchy, wealth, or attractiveness.

2) Marketers will use this to prioritize and reward influencers. Brands have been attracted to influencers for decades, and now they’ve new tools to segment. Hotels like the Palms are already prioritizing guests with high Klout scores to receive special treatment, this will now cascade to hospitality, retail, and more. Expect those with higher scores to be offered special treatment (here’s a breakdown of how it will happen), whether they take the offers or not.

3) New business models will emerge to offer ‘digital grooming”. Like personal grooming in the bathroom, we’ll now have to prepare for our own digital grooming as we venture into the real world. Expect a new form of digital consultant to emerge that will help professionals manage, prune, and improve their digital self, much how image consultants assist those who want to appear their best.

Get ready for this new world where our digital lives will now be easily displayed around us in the physical world, forever changing the social dynamic in which we play, work, and love.

Update: Jason Falls, respected thought leader, likens Social Profiling to a new form of racism is this counter post.

This is a strong move to help web teams become more efficient in working beyond version issues in email attachments, but further show the promise of how collaboration can be applied to the web management process. Although I can’t speak for Adobe’s future roadmap, but as this trend continues, there’s an opportunity for communities to be applied to Creative Cloud that will allow two new use cases: 1) Leverage an ecosystem of web experts available on demand, similar to CrowdSpring, 99Designs, oDesk and others empower transactional services, 2) Tap into final end users and users of websites to rate, collaborate, and even create copy, design, and creative, perhaps using web-based-versions of photoshop elements and beyond.

Perhaps a future version of Creative Cloud will be called “Creative Collaboration” (or even Creative as a Service) as web teams continue to connect closer and closer to their ecosystem, imagine refining all that we do by tapping into our most engaged customers. Let’s watch closely as social technologies are applied to how web teams work, grow, and reach to customers like never before. I work closely with innovators in marketing and web strategy, as a result, we believe in transparency so you’ll trust us more, please note that Adobe is a client, as well as I’ve been using their products nearly my entire career.

Love to hear from you: How can social be applied to today’s modern web team? What new business models will unfold?