Social Media Darwinism » Twitter

The Emotion found in Social Data

Paul Dunay — Wed, 09 May 2012 19:00:48 +0000

Let’s be clear. Most people who write on social media outlets don’t do so just for the sake of doing it. Some might, but the vast majority of people who share content, post comments, or offer sentiments and opinions online do so because they are in what Andrew Jeavons of Survey Analytics calls “the point of emotion.” In other words, they are emotionally invested in the product, service or experience about which they are opining.

As Jeavons points out, most feedback is conducted via traditional methods that suffer from huge structural deficits.

Surveys – break-down for four reasons: they are episodic, have limited sample-sizes, the answers are effected by the way the questions are posed, and because they rely on the concept of “recall.” And recall is imperfect because it asks a person to offer information on a past event outside of the context and situation in which he or she experienced it.
Focus Groups – are skewed in three ways: small sample sizes, self-selection population, and the dreaded “decibel rule’ – the loudest person in the room wins. They are not real-time or data driven and they don’t parse their findings with the objective use of technology.

It appears to us that companies that make million-dollar decisions on this kind of “static” data are doing themselves a disservice. We believe they should be using more authentic and real-time data in order to make data-driven decisions.

That is exactly why Social Media is so special, so different. Because with Social Media, people become “micro-authors” when and where it matters. Instead of a laborious production process, Social Media reduces the distance between the production and consumption of opinions; in fact, it even obliterates it.

In some contexts emotions are considered bad. But if you truly want to know what consumers really think and want to be able to predict how they might behave, find them at the point of emotion. Very likely that means you’ll find them on Social Media.

The opportunity is yours for the taking! What you really need is real-time data, gathered and interpreted by smart technology and then put into practice by a team who now understands your customers’ REAL attitudes and interests.

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5 ways to use social media for solution marketing

Paul Dunay — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 18:00:35 +0000

It’s easy to get caught up in the buzz, and the hype, around social media. I’ve been working with many B2B companies to help them figure out when and how to use social media in their business. The answer is always a bit different depending on the product or service. One area that few people have written about is how to use social media for solution marketing. Let me demystify the topic a bit by sharing five ways I’ve seen it really work.

1) Is there a market for your solution? – With one-twelfth of the world connected through social media there is bound to be a conversation underway about your specific solution. Wouldn’t it be nice to know upfront what that conversation is about and the needs the participants are expressing? Few marketers do the social-focused research ahead of time to determine the market. But there are great opportunities, such as the ways social media data is being used in the stage-gate funding process for solution development.

2) Leverage your brand advocates – If you already have fans and followers on Facebook and Twitter, why not energize their word of mouth about your solution? You could enlist them to use the solution for free if they agree to write a review of it. Of course you can’t dictate that they write something positive. But whatever they say, they’re helping shape your solution with the power of their voice!

3) Leverage your community – Whether you build your own or rent one from a provider like LinkedIn Groups, a community is a great place to promote a new solution to your existing customers. B2B marketers often host advisory board and user group meetings, and these forums are hungry to stay connected via a tool like an online community. When you do that the results reported in a recent Jive report of over 2000 customers are outstanding. Lower costs and increased revenue – a perfect combination!

4) Find intent to purchase – You’re probably interested in how these great social media conversations can help you find leads. There are various ways to mine the data using search terms. Both competitive and noncompetitive search terms can reveal buyers such as “replace solution X” or “upgrade competitor Y.” Just search competitive terms paired with “replace” or “upgrade,” and voila, a list of solution prospects!

5) PR blitz in conversations not publications – The US is becoming a newspaper-less society. Meanwhile, new companies start up every day that want to be featured in the shrinking number of publications. Your PR needs to move from publications to conversations. Begin by tracking conversations where you brand’s solution fits best. Then start commenting at least daily on the stories that are most relevant to your solution. This will lead to 250 articles with mentions of your solution, as well as links back to your site (think of the SEO value there!). Over the course of a year, this is comparable to having hundreds of relevant, contextual ads out there for your brand, at a fraction of the cost of traditional PR!

So there you have it. Five ways you can use social media in your solutions marketing, all with the potential for solid return on investment. Good luck, and let me know if I can help you.

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Is Sentiment Making Brands Stupid?

Paul Dunay — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 18:00:26 +0000

I loved the article by Nick Carr a few years ago that asked the question – Is Google Making us Stupid? Nick likened the use of Google and other tools as training us how to “power browse” and not really read effectively.

So I have been thinking about a parallel article that would apply in the social media space as people try to effectively read what is being said on mediums like Twitter and Facebook about their brand. Most often they end up with a tool that monitors for them brand mentions and breaks them into bite sized chunks of data and ranking them by sentiment.

So consider the fact that raw sentiment as determined by machine is often only 65% accurate – to me this is dangerously close to 50% or the equivalent of a coin toss. In fact most social media analytics firms do something to “augment” their sentiment analysis to make it more accurate – usually involving human intervention.

But in my estimation these firms are working on the wrong end of that equation. Why fix sentiment – its never going to be 100% accurate – since most people can’t agree on the spirit or intention of a tweet anyway and they never will.

I think brands need to focus on the broader content being used about a brand. Brand managers pride themselves on understanding the audience that surrounds their brands. The Internet and now Social Media have spurred two of the largest shifts in consumer behavior in the last 15 years; analyzing online and social activity is now a requisite to accurately anticipate trends. And focusing on positive sentiment over negative sentiment ignores 50% of the conversation that was classified as neutral – I guarantee you that there are key learnings in there that any brand would want to focus on. In fact in our tests, only 10% was either positive or negative (obviously, that can vary from topic to topic or day to day), so even more than 50% of the posts were ignored. So I ask you again – is Sentiment Making Brands Stupid?

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What’s a Twintern anyway?

Paul Dunay — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 18:00:07 +0000

Sitting around the dinner table a fellow marketer the other day I heard this term I never heard before … a Twintern.

Sure you probably heard of a Marketing Intern before … you know someone from a local college looking to learn a bit over the summer, maybe get their foot in the door of a multi billion dollar firm and who might make them an offer when they graduate.

I was shocked to learn that this company actually hired one of these Marketing Interns just to “Do Twitter for us” into a role they dubbed a “Twintern”

OMG I almost fell off my chair!

When did it become ok to just give anyone off the street the keys to one of the most important assets you have … your Brand! I remember the days when we used to have very senior executive who were really well versed in the company and highly compensated for their ability to communicate – we called them the Corporate Spokesperson!

When did it become ok to fire the Corporate Spokesperson and replace them with a Twintern? Holy Cow we must be in times of irrational exuberance with Social Media if that’s the case.

I basically went off about how companies like Nestle are the poster child for the case study on why you shouldn’t hire a Twintern just to “do twitter” (or in their case do Facebook). Kids don’t even like Twitter they much prefer Facebook, Twitter seems to be an older phenomenon. And I am not convinced that someone fresh out of college is able to handle a multi billion dollar brand. Go ahead call me old fashioned – I dare you!

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11 B2B Marketing Predictions for 2011

Paul Dunay — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 18:00:43 +0000

Around this time last year I wrote about the 10 B2B Marketing Predictions for 2010 and while I would say 7 out of 10 have already materialized and the others are on their way. So that begs the question – what’s on the horizon specifically for B2B Marketers next year?

Here are 11 concrete ways I think the environment in which B2B Marketers operate will evolve in 2011.

Enjoy!

Facebook Advertising – will continue to improve and unfortunately get more expensive. After 9 years of Search Engine Marketing – I think it is safe to say any keyword you are going to buy is maxed out when it comes to the Google AdWords auction process. So people are looking for an alternative and that’s Facebook Advertising. I even wrote a book this year on just this topic called Facebook Advertising for Dummies (Wiley). And as more people find out about this gem of an advertising experience CPC and CPM prices will continue to march upward – I have already begun to see this in my own ad buys!
Mobile Marketing – I know I said last year was the year of mobile marketing but I just saw a stat from a Mary Meeker presentation that smart phones will eclipse PC sales in 2012 (that’s just a year away) which will lead us to more mobile usage than PC usage so you better start your Mobile Marketing program now. Keep in mind we all start in the same place and that’s at ZERO! Mobile it totally optin and you need to start building your mobile optin list now.
Facebook will move into Mobile Ads – having said what I just did about us marketers not having a good mobile optin list – its just so natural for Facebook to ask you (you will ask us first Mark right?) if he can extend his advertising into your mobile device which he already has (if you put it on your profile). I have been thinking about this play for Facebook for a while – glad I am getting it down on virtual paper for my grandkids to see!
Social Media Strategists will become Chief Customer Officers – ok so you know I am also @Avaya_Support on Twitter so perhaps this is a closet fantasy for me but it may just come true – perhaps not this coming year but in years to come. Think about it marketers have been given this gift of Social Media which is reinventing areas of your company on the fly. In my company alone we have seen it touch Product Development and R&D, to Billing and Finance, to HR and Recruiting, to Customer Service and the Contact Center. You need someone to own the customer experience now in all those external channels and your internal channels as well!
Ecommerce will hit Facebook – Next year the deal that Facebook has with oodle.com for the Facebook Marketplace will be over. My predication would be they cut the cord there and open up a marketplace of their own. Startups like Payvment, and Alvenda will help companies large and small to open up shop in Facebook. Delta, Levis and 1800 Flowers are already there – can Victoria Secret, Brooks Brothers, and Godiva be far behind?
NFO is the new SEO – that’s News Feed Optimization on Facebook. Basically .2% of fans return to a fan page and in some cases it’s more like .02% (hat tip BrandGlue) So people on Facebook who “like” your Fan page basically never go back to it. So stop thinking of it as a micro site and making it all fancy. What you need to focus on is the content and optimizing the content to get comments and likes which will help you drive amount of people that Facebook will show your page to. It’s all based on Facebook’s algorithm called EdgeRank.
Advocate Marketing comes into Focus – you know all those people we are delighting with great customer service using Twitter – well they have become a strong voice for our brand. Now we are looking at ways of collecting and harnessing them. Tools like Zuberance are helping to do just that and allowing firms to do special things with their advocate base like provide them special events, invites to live events etc. We are just scratching the surface on this one but I can tell you its going to be big!
Reputation Management emerges in organizations – Toyota, United Breaks Guitars, Dominos Pizza, Motrin Moms, Dell Hell – we have had some major disasters all brought on my lack of speed in this market. Many firms are listening now for their brand (I know I spoke to 50 of them this year about this issue) but I don’t think they are ready for a crisis. I did a Reputation study on this topic two years ago and it proved how many companies lack the infrastructure then – we have come a long way since but do you really have a process to react quickly?
Real Time Marketing makes headlines – ok so I am reading David Meerman Scott’s latest book called Real Time Marketing but you know what – he’s right! He’s got tons of examples of firms that capitalized or failed to capitalize on Real Time issues (United Breaks Guitars!) We all need a lesson on how to be more real time – it’s a great book, I can’t put it down – I have read every book David has published and I can tell you – you need to read this one!
Someone better win the SmartPhone Application race soon – I can’t keep building 4 versions of the same application in order to cover the SmartPhone market – Blackberry aps, iPhone aps, Android aps (what the growth rate on Android) and Windows aps. Ok yes HTML5 should help this but throw in iPad and various other tablet aps and marketers are starting to look like Technologist which brings me to my next prediction.
The Rise of the Marketing Technologist – Marketers for the last few years have been closet techno geeks and its time for them to rise up – companies need digitally fluent marketers who can apply technologies to help make marketing more measurable and scientific. Then we can really change the dynamic from marketing as a cost center to marketing as a profit center!

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Is User Generated Content building a Wall between your Brand and your Customer?

Paul Dunay — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 18:00:03 +0000

So here is a little fact that really scares me – User Generated Content has surpassed that of publisher content which means we marketers (or publishers) are the “white noise” to the User Generated Content “signal” they produce.

So let’s dive into that for a moment …

At a recent concert I was attending at Madison Square Garden – the most popular thing to do at the concert was not dancing (good thing in case you have seen me dance) but it was video taping, text messaging, and generally sharing the experience with others who were not in attendance. 20,000 people for 4 hours producing tons of content – more content than I produced with all my teams around the world in a year – they exceeded in 4 hours!

Now take that same dynamic and put that in front of your brand. If you have (lets take Microsoft for example) customers who are avid users of the brand and tend to be socially active blogging, tweeting, posting on Facebook, or posting on forums about their good and bad experiences with the Microsoft brand – then how as a brand marketer am I supposed to get my message through all that mess?

The answer is – you can’t!

The dynamic I am pointing out exists for most brands today B2C and B2B brands. They quantity of conversations are growing every day about your brand (at Avaya our brand mentions have increased 5 fold in 18 months!!) Now I am not sure it can continue at that pace but I am not 100% sure.

150 million people use Facebook everyday and access it via mobile (more than the entire Twitter registered user base!) and they are said (by Facebook) to be 2 times more active than those that only access Facebook via the web.

One thing is for sure that dynamic is going to continue to get worse as smartphones surpass internet users in the next 2 years. That’s a stat we all need to keep an eye on!

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Brand Advocates vs Brand Adversaries – it’s a Very Thin Line!

Paul Dunay — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 18:00:02 +0000

Everyday I provide support on the social web to customers. For the last 18 months we have solved hundreds of issues both small and large for customers around the globe, some as quickly as 15min others as long as 24 hours. But what’s becoming clear to me is that real time communications is essential in this new multi channel world where you better be listening for your customers and delighting them with Social Customer Service.

Xbox Support found that people they help on Twitter are far more satisfied than people they help via the call center, not to mention the cost of providing that service is significantly cheaper as well.

It’s a great double sided ROI story for Social Customer Support. It saves customers who are having an issue call them Brand Adversaries and delights them into becoming a Brand Advocate while it also provides a cost reduction ROI when it comes to the call center.

I see this in my travels talking to Avaya customers about how social media can be integrated into their contact center.

But I also hear all the horror stories about the customer who they ignored and it got worse. I like to say I never read a Social Media case study that was titled “We Ignored this Tweet and everything was Great!” in fact it is always the opposite of that.

I think there are 2 factors at play here – the first is listening and being able to react quickly – if you don’t have a listening engine in place and a routing for that complaint to get fielded you are just tempting fake – its not IF there will be an issue its WHEN is there going to be an issue.

The line between a happy customer who is now having an issue (a Brand Adversary) is VERY thin. Which brings me to my next factor which is time – when a customer is having an issue they want action – when they tweet you they expect you to be there and unfortunately Twitter doesn’t have an Out of Office feature so you better be ready to help (I have seen Xbox Support post hours of operation – lets see how that goes for them).

You can use this to your advantage and make your Brand Adversaries your best Brand Advocates if you surprise and delight them with outstanding customer service in by using social. Then it unlocks all the great things about social when they tweet and tell others about the great experience they had with your brand.

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3 More ROIs in Social Media – Conversations Leads and Advocates

Paul Dunay — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 15:00:41 +0000

If you follow me you know I talk a lot about the ROI of Social Media since I happen to have stumbled on a great ROI using Social Media in providing support for our customers at Avaya.

Social customer support I would argue is the single best place to focus your social media efforts since it can reduce customer churn and increase your retention rates faster than any other program I have ever seen before thereby delivering a strong ROI. Listening for and spotting a customer issue, responding to them and solving their problem in minutes using social media not only lets you conquer social media but delight your customers in the process.

But I think there are 3 more ROIs out there where you can build a great business case with Social Media

Conversations – PR needs to move from publications to conversations and if you take that concept and really track and engage in conversations where you brand would fit – I could see that leading to an ROI over time – similar to the way the long tail works for books or movies – this is the long tail of conversations and it would be like having 100s of ads out there for your brand that were all relevant and in context. Which leads me to my next ROI …

Leads – Listening for mentions of your brand or product or even competitors brands is a great way to find leads – evidence I have when listening for the competitors of Avaya – if I hear someone say “replace Cisco” – don’t you think that’s a conversation Avaya should be engaged in? Grant it there haven’t been a ton of those conversations but if you add up all your competitors and your own brands product lines it becomes meaningful.

Advocates – Here is the last one where we have had some success as well. How are you building and taking care of all those really avid followers on Twitter or die hard fans on Facebook – perhaps if you were able to harness them like some companies are doing now with service like Zuberance – you can get them to make recommendations and build your brand with the power of their voice. We are seeing some success with this but some clients of Zuberance are really killing it with this one strategy.

Dell has been talking about how they made $3 million dollars off their Twitter site – how did they do it? With a Coupon Code! – We have plenty of tools both old and new at our disposal to measure and track so many things on the web – so much so – that I have lost all patience for the concept that “we cant measure social media” – if Dell can measure with a coupon code just think what can you be doing to track the flow of social media with special 800#, special email addresses, special landing pages.

That’s how we did it at the beginning of the web – I don’t see why this time is any different!

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Social Media for the Boardroom

Paul Dunay — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 15:00:24 +0000

At a recent BlogWell event I got a chance to hear Robert Raines from Chevron present his Social Media program and how he reports their activity into the Boardroom. It all starts with the Pulse Report that Chevron had produced by Edelman (their PR firm) using their Alterian’s SM2 social media monitoring tool. They identified around 60 Million conversations (per year) across blogs, microblogs such as Twitter, discussion forums and social networks like Facebook and other enabling technologies such as YouTube, Vimeo and Flickr relating to Energy.

From there the work began with Edelman to classify them into key conversational issues (of which they identified 50 issues) and then narrow that down to 8 major issues within 3 broad categories: Energy Resources, Energy Technology, and Energy & Environment. These were the three broadest terms that applied to the most relevant conversations about energy.

Obviously a topic like Energy has been written about for ages – at its highest level it has millions of conversations, press, articles, blog pages and best of all opinions! They used Boolean searches (which are available in most listening engines today) to narrow their searches to only the most relevant posts. Then they detailed a taxonomy of trigger words that signaled whether the post was positive or negative in sentiment. And from there analyzed and tracked the changes in volume and sentiment for each topic by quarter.

Using the report they were able to glean insights into the prominence of certain topics by consumers and the trending of the topics that were most important to Chevron. Moreover they could use the report to build content and engage in topics that were trending where Chevron was a thought leader or was looking to become more of a thought leader.

I think this report is a great example for all of us – it shows a very comprehensive approach to monitoring and gaining insights from data. Many listening engines provide you with “streams” of data which is great. But as I like to say “there is a big difference between Data and Insights” and this report shows you how Chevron navigated the streams of data to create real insights that can be shared and discussed at the highest levels of the organization. Its perfect example of where I think PR needs to focus these days – on conversations and not on publications.

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Social Media – is it really mainstream in B2B Marketing?

Paul Dunay — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 15:43:57 +0000

So I ran across some interesting stats last week when I picked up a tweet from Jeff Bullas on the 15 essential social media facts and figures for B2B Marketing.

Seems as if more B2B Marketers are engaged in Social Media then B2C marketers (actually data point from the article – 81 % of B2B companies have accounts on social media sites compared to 67% of B2C) which leads me to think Social Media has gone mainstream in B2B. That’s a good thing yes but I don’t feel like we are there yet.

Let me explain …

I don’t know how you feel but I certainly feel like everything I read about Social Media is the same old thing just a rehash of something else I read before. There doesn’t seem to be anything really new. Sure Facebook changes its platform every Tuesday but I mean something more like groundbreaking ideas using social. Maybe that’s because we are entering a stage where we are all including social in everything we do. It’s no longer a social science experiment by a bunch of early adopters – it’s just part of our everyday approach!

Also I am not seeing anyone really “killing it” with or in social media (sans Mark Zuckerberg of course). There seems to be tons of Social Media consultants and Directors of Social Media but will that party last? (see my post on Fire your Director of Social Media).

Furthermore everyone seems to have a book out on Social Media – heck I have 3 books on social media (2 out there and 1 on the way!) It’s amazing to see so much written on this topic which leads me to believe the party is over.

So where do we go from here?

I guess we head back to the core of what we do as B2B Marketers and take these lessons learned in Social Media back with us and see if we can innovate. I once heard that innovation happens when people get bored with a technology – perhaps we are at that point now in social.

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