trendpreneur

Part 1 here. Notes (unedited) from the talks at MSM09 on 17 November ‘09 – all juicy stuff on monitoring social media. Below the jump, ’cause these posts are long.

Up first Ann Longle,y Digital Strategy Director of mediaedge:cia

The case within an agency
- why we listen, how we listen and what we need from providers
- mediaedge, part of WPP, +25% year on year. death of advertising? they’re doing extremely well. more and more of ad spend going online.
- investment arm, WPP digital, looks at digital innovation and invests in best in class companies – visible technologies being one.
- earned media is now the most influential – recommendations from friends/experts >> advertising. massive impact on their core business.

- do need to be change agents, the social media dynamic is different.
- the base case for listening:
- kryptonite example -> if there are problems these days everyone knows about it. things are less likely to be kept quiet. no such thing as local news.
- others can undermine your messages – counter-campaigns [eg greenpeace]. organising protests has never been easier – if you’re not listening you won’t have a clue protests/boycotts are going on.
- social media is word of mouth on amphetamines. speed! kryptonite – 10 days to lose $10million. bad news can damage you quickly.
- news isn’t all bad. many brands have fans, people creating content that’s positive [jaffa cakes on screen]. this can be harnessed. if you’re not looking for your fanbase you’re missing opportunities. smart brands cultivate it. skins as example – get the fans actively involved.
- if you have fans, get them involved – it’s not just risk it’s opportunity.
- listening = raise digital literacy – it’s a journey of changing the organisation.

traditional marketing funnel -> now a lot more complex. not just eyeballs to buyers. calls out orange – using SM to promote announcements.
- marketing now a two-way street – a loop.
- reputation in the digital age – based on responsiveness/strength of fanbase/market leadership/product&service innovation.
examples – coke; 3.5m friends on FB, fans run the group. McDonald’s lets customers report on its operations. walkers let its customers create a new flavour and vote on them. starbucks, dell – invite regular co-creation.

going to hear clients talking about how much they’re talked about. superbrands based on online buzz; bbc, google, sony, apple, microsoft. online RT monitoring=instant feedback. http://www.superbrands.uk.com/. sentiment score on superbrands x credibility: top lego monopoly harrods virgin atlantix dulux guinness. a new order.

new world => new approach
- it’s about listening. what are people saying, topics, themes. separate relevant from irrelevant. who influencers are.
- planning – insights => not just online strategy but all activity.
- responding – [some brands don't respond, not ready yet - get them ready]
- evaluation => leads back into listening.

design and evaluation frameworks
- how do we get people involved. [table hopefully to come from slides]

benefits of paying attention – risk management, focusing on your and competing products – can get a lot of competitor intelligence > improve products and services. evaluate campaigns. look at other metrics too. find new influencers – always new people to talk to and partner with – eg plebble.
- tools chart – free vs fee based – fee based still ‘far from perfect’ but >> free.
- vendor screening checklist & how they listen. they make sense of data, but machines not humans = weakness. need human analysts.

what do we need from buzz monitoring providers?
- transparency about strengths and limitations. clarity – what you provide and don’t, what you will do later. coverage – don’t just blind us with big numbers, what is and isn’t included. services – training, workflows, data integration, vetting/classification. responsiveness – develop tool and service offer based on our requirements. work with us – we understand the clients.

annlongley.com

Q- free vs paid – free tools good for a temperature check, google a fantastic tool for basic research – but they don’t put the information in context. professional tools – good at aggregating, temporal information, exportable for your own voodoo. “do you have a favourite” – brandwatch named, wavemetrics.
Q- live events + social media – not off top of head.
Q- social media + CRM data? we’re on the beginning of that journey. social CRM = big next step. starting to have those conversations.

Tim Callington from Edelman on influence [slides]

[by now we are hearing the same things from everyone - top level views on why to listen and 'the problem' - twitter starting to comment that we all know this stuff already]

“identity online is dispersed”
we have the means to collect data but distilling it into useful is hard [we know this...] – tom waits quote “buried beneath the weight of information”
information != knowledge.
what do you want to achieve as a brand?
context > understanding > insight > strategy.
- understand community – why are people saying what they’re saying?
- quantity + quality = measure: attention; engagement; authority; influence; sentiment; content. page impressions; wall posts; links; followers; +/-; content quality.

[rest lost due to bsod - but mostly repeat of earlier talks]

katy howell – immediate future – behind-the-scenes reputation management
what really happens inside large organisations

the frameworks put in place don’t always match the clients/brands – silos, politics, competitiveness, age gaps, etc. trying to bring SM into a larger organisation = by steps. sneak in the best practices before anyone notices.

some of the probs big brands face: analysis, the enemy within, control/fear.

analysis – not just something you do at the beginning.. forensics + puzzle solving. how can you do it throughout your programme?
- client example. every time news out, twitter profile raised. news drove search demand.
- can’t be specific about exact best practices because every client is different.
- where’s the ROI?
- how do you get this done? move on the fly. clients assume it magically happens by itself. look beyond monitoring. do something with the learning!
- many large orgs have ‘unsinkable’ ethos. ‘we have everything we need’. that surety > safety – but they’re not safe.
- example of agency subcontracting – but naive post – immediately called out. despite corporate comms policy, leaks will happen. people working outside your organisation can cause you issues, having policies in place isn’t enough.
- example – activist attack a FB page. “don’t turn the site off, take it offline, monitor conversation” = advice. what happened? senior mgmt ignored advice and brought in lawyers.
- don’t sit in our own silos, we’re evangelists. it’s our remit to go explain and remove the fear. get mgmt to understand. educate. it’s a lot of work, hugely time consuming. scenario planning with senior mgmt – a lot happens on the fly!
- you don’t have to kill someone to take over their identity. brandjacking. it can be comedic not purely negative. orgs say “we’re on facebook and twitter!!” and forget about anything else. eg greggs bakers – negative discussion on twitter.

- follow trending technologies, reclaim accounts as soon as possible, make sure things are clearly official
- punching through social media – start thinking how you need to analyse the situation. use all your [spider] senses. make sure your activity online works for you – to its potential. spin a web. protect holes. don’t let reputation get the chance to escape. don’t ignore the green goblin – the internal enemy. get them on board and help them understand – crisis point is too late.

Q&A

Q- embargoes – taken one client 12 months to realise no amount of NDAs/embargoes will help. if you don’t want it known, don’t tell anyone! an example of frameworks great on paper but bad in practice – old media practices.
Q- examples of good issues management – preventing issues at the beginning is hugely important. gets irritated by monitoring. “we’ll get some tools in” – but that’s only *part* of it. watch and listen twice a day – it costs but incredibly effective.
Q- positive unprompted campaign #welovetheNHS – how can we bring that back to us? ask them what they want to share about, get them more involved – ask your fans what they need. look for different types of love – different people want different things. look and know your community.

Next up – STA Travel.

STA Travel Case Study
Celia Pronto

internal buy-in
- historically product led business
- started with social media audit – senior mgmt got involved when they saw people loved brand, products, experience – but the relationship ends when they’ve booked travel.
brand SM objectives
- Help – leverage expertise. encourage positive online wom
- Inspire – support overall marketing activity
- Leverage – existing investment in online tools and SM
- have ended up delisting products after social media feedback.
- help people connect – people asking questions and people providing answers – as well as create own content. set up WOM world – glue holding strategy together.
- STAtravelbuzz – separate site – showcase content, travel bugs programme – help people who actively come to STA. explorers-showcase people creating content – now past the point of booking. offline component too, stimulates online, driving 50% of word of mouth.
results
- positive vs negative sentiment – volume as well as what’s stimulating it.
- competitive benchmarking – intent to purchase and recommend vs competitor.
- broke down pos/neg/neut comments into three areas – helpful, quality, availability, value, reputable [how did they do this? manually?]
- graded polarity – how are people mostly feeling. [seem very sentiment focused]
tips for success
- know in advance what you mean to measure
- ensure consistent reporting and tracking – took 6-9 months to see results – consistent benchmarks help.
- integrate into business metrics and reports
- refine initial measurement criteria as you iterate.

Q&A

Q- what was the singular point to get buy-in? – debunking myth that everyone was talking about the company and saying nice things, esp. cf. competitors. pointing out finite relationship.
Q- explorers – even if they do post negative things STA are right there ready to engage and interact.
Q- resources – mixture of internal and external. agency manages explorers. integrated their own consultants into that. everything else inhouse. link to customer service team – complaints/issues – immediate response.
Q- success metrics – basic model at the moment. now – value/cost per post – positive/negative. favourability. adding in influence. when started out “we need to drive more of the business” – loose metrics like website stats.
Q- ROI models – can measure what people are doing online but hard to measure have they actually walked into a shop.

Panel – ROI of social media

@davidcushman chair – also chris quigley, matt atkinson, tommi leitonen, jon moody [no women! - search twitter for msm09+women for discussion]

- we struggle to measure interaction.
- jon – look at each reference out there. as well as positive/negative, is it a recommendation? suggestions? is there a call to action? how many questions? benchmark against competitors. the questions can lead you to figuring out what action to take (communicate better).
- what do clients say the ROI should be? how far should you push them?
- chris – a lot of clients aren’t really sure. built SM tool, spoke to 20 agencies/brands – “it can do all these things” – “great, but what do i *do* with it?” they could see the value of social media but hard to turn that value into ROI.
- value of wiki fixing – getting everyone to join in – listening => adapting.
- is there anything in data analytics toolkit that helps people rapidly solve probs + demonstratable to finance guys?
- tommi – ROI becomes more visible when you start looking at all the data.. not just marketing dept stuff.
- matt – we’re trying to get large orgs to integrate social media – start with how you use SM and insights to harness/improve existing activities. listening can really make a difference. enhance customer service. yes there are pioneering businesses like STA, but most of us trying to get an organisation to change over time, insights best used initially are to improve existing process.
- Q- what proportion of orgs that you work with use social media internally?
- more global clients more engaged in use internally.
- depends on scale of organisation. just the really big ones that worry about it.
- examples – IBM IdeaJam
- Q- what about the “I” in ROI. the costs of engaging in the overall process. social media investment can mean reconfiguring your business – that’s a major investment!
- at a base level a large number of clients can use social media as an enhancement – not too major an investment – focus on final goal and work backwards – small steps first.
- cost can be just employ someone to play with free tools or get an agency, can be quite low. do you have to go through fundamental change? probably but not right away. prove model first.
- Q- a lot of really good tools are pay-for. how long til google do it?
- they have something in the pipeline.
- Q- long point about analytics – data – not enough by itself – need to make decisions.
- initial work with customer insight dept. bring smart data. customer planning, insight planning and good analytics. most effort on “what does this tell you?” – human.
- “we take photos of what’s going on, we don’t video it” – snapshots rather than flow. behind curve with analytics.
- “you’ve got this data.. but then what” – they don’t want to know more – they know a lot already – it’s what to do with it that’s hard.
- Q- how would you convince me to use SM?
- i’d give you a story/example. where can social media add value for *you*, relate that to your existing spending -> ROI.
- sometimes you make the case by “x people saying this, y people seeing that message” – case to engage and monitor.
- Q- does ROI have to be financial? this is ’social’ media
- using social media to be more friendly/connected is sort of measurable, return into buying products, but the need for $$$ is not necessarily the main driver initially.
- benefits over time. eg BT, started out listening and some response, but are they making sense of the overall data yet?

ok that’s the end of the pre-lunch session. interesting to see the ‘real’ use of social media within big organisations. it’s all about effecting overall change and engaging with customers. stats and metrics are such a small part of the big picture.

will continue in part 3 – again pending wifi and laptop reliability (in the interests of social media commentary, don’t buy a samsung NC10, mine’s decided to crash and randomly power off recently – and only 2 months old.)