trendpreneur

I’m at Monitoring Social Media 09 right now and it promises to be a hectic, jam-packed day. In an attempt to keep up with it all, I’ll be liveblogging the talks (probably across multiple posts – part 2 here, part 3 here). Also, link to Forrester Wave that’s referenced in a few talks is here, thanks twitter. Some stuff will be on youtube/slideshare apparently.)

Up first is Alan Moore (@alansmlxl) who’s talking about how social marketing intelligence is the ‘black gold’ of the 21st century. Afraid his talk is extremely whistlestop and hard to keep up with so only limited notes!

- you don’t expect to learn social network theory when you go into marketing.. but you need to now
- gain a lot of insight from customers and social – including social revenue – how much a person influences their network – xtract
- bmw – took phone numbers and car info, MMS when winter approaching, buy new tyres – 29% response! relevant audience very useful
- augmented reality will be hot 2010 – ‘that’s weird shit right’ – but it’s just layering data.. like a map. joe the plumber – don’t you want to find out more about him – trust, schedule – local media could monetise on information, new revenue model
- qustodian – my yoad // girlswalker.com // threadless – community generated content
- localmotors – design car of your dreams, community vote on it. microfactories. customers come together, learn about cars, build car, return to local motors. exemplary service.
- data enables us to do some extraordinary things in business – but you have to be absolutely customer centric to succeed.
- i + we. we no longer stand alone. ’social everything’ = toxic tail end of industrial society – we’re almost at the point where we’ve deconstructed humanity – redefining ourselves as people “I’m an x” not a customer.  more enjoyable/ethical to see the “we”.
- interface w/o interference. interactive+connected+human. iphone successful => cuts away interference. threadless allows interaction without interference of other people getting in your way
- no online or offline, only blended reality (bill gibson) => deep context. let people engage authentically in a variety of way. not about social media – embedded sociability. not the platform, the people. human needs.
- technologies of co-operation amplify our human talents to do so.
- nemawashi – “to go back to roots” – build sustainable relationships on the roots of trust.
- don’t stand in the queue of information, stand in its flow. data and people are making all this happen.. enable it to flow.

Neville Hobson – WC Group @jangles [slides]

Trends & observations for leaders of great brands.

- some clear behaviour changes – we don’t trust corporate speak/marketingese, we fast forward our DVRs through ads (”because we can”). in PR world – we’ve lost control of our message – it’s now with the consumer.
- we are content creators, connected wherever and whenever we wish to be. we bring our behaviours to the market/workplace << don’t always fit with standard way we do things.
- business trends: marketers seeking lower cost solutions, want to see what our competitors are addressing because it affects what we do; desire for more accountable channels; focus on reaching customers directly; informal channels not formal structures. the mix shifting, very quickly, from traditional to interactive channels.
- focus on: social media  (34% compound annual growth rate til 2014 – forrester); mobile marketing big at the moment.
10 important trends
- customers co-shaping your reputation every day
- know exactly where conversations occurring, who has influence and why
- you realise media has already changed
- ethical behaviour key part of maintaining trust.

co-shaping:
- are you accidentally outsourcing your brand? what’s the first impression? motrin (US ibuprofen), dominos pizza.
- youtube 2nd largest search engine, know what words your customers are actually using about you, search is clinical.
- media world has changed – paradigm shift – blogs, customers asking each other for recommendations. no online/offline – one media world! you need to know which conversations are defining your brand. get a share of the conversation

- ethics – no fake blogs. no ghostwriters.

disclosure – policy http://www.socialmedia.org/disclosure/identity/

::the case for social media monitoring::
- it’s about knowing: where conversations happening, what your share is, what converations you should be in, who influencers are. if you don’t know these fundamentals how can you react, let alone pro-act?
- expanding news flow, make your content easy to get hold of, people more likely to talk about it.
- understanding communities – which matter, even niche networks? who drives share of conversation in these communities, what next steps in driving relationships?
- leveraging existing content and improving natural search.. once you understand audience you can work out how to repurpose content.

the value of listening – you have to listen, have to start somewhere.

antony @mayfield from icrossing – saywhat – iphone app (free SMM) [slides]

- after brands – listening and organisations.
- the end of brand as an outsourced, maintained thing.
- a web of connected people changes everything. not a change in media.
- howard rheingold – digital literacy – a new set of skills
- start learning how to manage attention, focus & drift. you can’t possibly listen to everything. esp for big brands. have to learn literacy of attention. participation, cooperation, critical consumption. how do we filter out people using product vs a real crisis. networks literacy. learning network theory poss the most important thing you can do.
- will become more sophisticated over time.
- tensions we have to work with all the time
- focus/forget it. we think we should be able to see/hear everything; not really the case. there’s so much data – we need to be a little more relaxed. not every complaint on a social network is going to be relevant/actionable.
- stories/numbers. tell stories from spreadsheets/data, got to be able to explain what’s going on in ways that are actionable. tension between data guys and story guys.
- realtime/slow news. are we making judgements too quickly, based on limited information? you can get involved in something big but you can also make mistakes/miss the point. slow news is a counterbalance. pay attention to the moment and think about the long term. Ushahidi open source platform for putting realtime information onto a map – how do you make sense of it all – and have a result you can learn from (a timeline of the events during a crisis). pull out curated, qualified valid information. client – 300k mentions in a search engine – need models to help deal with this.
- analysis/action. can become obsessed with data/modelling, IBM spending 10s of ks / month on this. how do you make it actionable, and fast?
- where does listening fit into your framework?
- social web literacy. use listening throughout the organisation to raise digital literacy of whole org. you can’t do that all in one place. got to start off with strategic/organisational [how do i wire up organisation to disseminate data and respond to it quickly]/tactical/personal points of view. don’t forget most people in the organisation are as new to social media as the organisation itself.
- measure engagement – awareness [stats] / actions [buying etc = passive] / advocacy [linking, mentions = active]
- when you’re listening it’s not enough to just listen to the text but look at behaviour too. highest levels of engagement = least amount of control.
- social engagement framework – will be on slideshare. this is where listening leads. clear about principles – where you’re starting and going with SM; platforms – digital – the ones you own and the ones you’ll be present in. processes – research&listen – live research – creative/curation/business – wiring it all back in.

Q&A
- level of understanding in businesses is growing – change agent/head of innovation/digital manager. seeing more and more of that. desire to engage but also pull back to “ROI targets now” thinking.
- “how much is it going to cost” – struggle with change from billboard/measurable type stuff – tyranny of numbers – process of migration. fear of change. tension.
- from MSM perspective, how do you define the concept of “customer”? neville – however my client wants to talk about customer (unless it’s radically wrong). it’s not the most important thing to think about. alan – it might mean different things to different people but the question needs to be asked.. when you build businesses around people [not product] [cool stuff happens] that has other ramifications.. worth thinking through, changes perception of how you might engage with people. antony – legacy ways of measuring marketing means we do need to find ways to wean orgs off big number syndrome. proxy measure that measures a big number, win that argument, then introduce real complexity/opportunity of networks and feedback loop. [these answers are really long and hard to summarise]
- silod culture/television – how do you measure the value to advertisers, used to oldschool advertising models. they want big numbers from specific places, “40k highly engaged users” isn’t appealing to them. > antony – it will be [packaged up attractively] eventually.. tons of people trying to solve this problem. alan – represents dichotomy of old/new ways of looking at this stuff.

will continue in part 2 (if wifi holds up) – key themes so far:

- there is no such thing as online and offline any more – no divide.
- listening is crucial, should be something that happens throughout organisation
- brand is something you have to get involved with, you can’t just fire and forget
- there’s a clash between the old-school spreadsheets, big numbers and ROI and the new-school engaged two-way customer interaction that is less measurable – hence the need for social media monitoring.