Word of Mouth Marketing - Social Media - Search Visibility

Facebook Fan Pages and Calculating ROI

BY LAUREN MAYNARD

Feelings and Marketing

In an excellent blog post this week, Brian Solis outlined his predictions for the role of a marketer in 2010. Out of eight high-level points, he made four that seemed particularly relevant to the building of strategy in a campaign: 

• Listen to and engage customers one to one

• Build relationships and not campaigns

• Create experiences not impressions

• Earn media and not buy it

What he's talking about here is a set of things I hear often. Listening. Engagement. Relationships. Experiences. I'd lump these under "feelings", something that doesn't mesh well with the traditional concept of measurement and ROI. 

Measuring Intangibles 

Just yesterday, Facebook rolled out some changes to Fan Pages that give a helpful boost to our effort to measure these intangible feelings. Fan Page administrators will now be able to get numbers on impressions for status updates. This means that we can gauge how many people see the information placed on a page through their own news stream; it no longer requires a user to come directly to the page. 

Facebook also gives us a handy impressions-to-interactions ratio which shows up as a feedback percentage.

What does this mean?

As astutely noted by our own Wendy Hofstetter, this relatively simple change could have some big impact:

• Reporting numbers on Facebook will be more accurate than the standard "pageviews" statistics previously provided. 

• We can more easily compare the return on Facebook versus other more traditional media by calculating a CPM (cost-per-thousand). Most companies use CPM as a way to gauge how expensive their advertising is (that's how TV, outdoor, Radio, Magazines, etc. are purchased). 

• We can begin testing what time of day is best for Facebook engagement. 

• We can understand what kinds of posts (videos, quotes, etc.) get the most engagement.

Why is this important?

Brian Solis had another point in that list: Look beyond the quantity of friends, page visits, eyeballs, readers, and viewers to measure changes in consumer attitude and intent.

Facebook allows brands to create meaningful interactions with consumers. At Room 214, Facebook allows us to keep our clients' fans updated with relevant information and content that the fans wouldn't necessarily find otherwise. We can solicit feedback, engage in direct conversation and create content that, if worthy, can be shared over and over again by interested parties.

That being said, a bottom line is a bottom line. Our clients need to understand how their money is being used. And we need to continue to interact with consumers in ways that produce repeat engagement, support, sharing, and evangelism. This new feature from Facebook gets us closer to creating relationships that we can quantify. It also helps us better understand what content isn't interesting; we can then refine our strategy and provide our loyal fans with things they'd prefer to hear, see and discuss.

TAGS: FACEBOOK • SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY • BRIAN SOLIS • ROI • ROOM 214

Posted at 3:23 pm | 1 Comment | Share this blog post

The Power of Online Conversations: Are You On Team COCO?

BY LAUREN MAYNARD

Here's a look at a noteworthy online conversation that's been everywhere this week. By now we all know about NBC's very public fumble with their weeknight talk show hosts. I'll admit that I don't actually watch The Jay Leno Show or The Tonight Show (this of course is the exact reason that NBC is having issues in the first place). I have, however, been fascinated by the way this has spread online.

Supporters of Conan O'Brien have joined forces to (loosely) create Team COCO. This team has some major traction, and it's all because Conan O'Brien's core audience is a group of Facebooking, Youtubing, non-traditional TV watching 20-somethings like myself. What I find most interesting is that the online conversation, one large enough to effect a sea-change in the world of late-night, is being held almost entirely outside of the reach of Conan O'Brien, Jay Leno and NBC.

There's also an online store where you can buy a tshirt and print of this now well-known image. In case you're too broke and/or busy to buy a t-shirt and attend a rally, you can simply download and print out an image of Conan's hair and either wear or display it. He's also had tremendous celebrity support (catch this great video of Jimmy Kimmel on Leno).

Even google search appears to be on Team COCO.

So what?

Conan's ratings, which have consistently been lower than his CBS counterpart David Letterman, have been up dramatically this week. Last night he beat out Letterman's 1.0 rating with a 1.9, a number which represented Conan O'Brien's all-time high. And, regardless of all the negative press, NBC has enjoyed a huge increase in viewership for The Late Show with Conan O'Brien.

Does this mean NBC will reverse its decision? No. The timing and fate of both NBC shows remains undecided. But it is without a doubt that NBC, any other network shopping a Conan show, and Conan O'Brien himself will take this extremely vocal audience into account as they move forward with decisions. It's a tough debate with this group; you've got an audience who doesn't affect a traditional metric (live viewership) but still will take the time to speak in a collective voice loud enough to make headlines. 

So if you've got a group who is going to talk, it's important prepare for their reaction. I'd venture to guess NBC had no clue the effect of their conversations regarding late night. It looks like it's had both positive and negative effect thus far. I'm interested in the outcome.

TAGS: ROOM214 • CONAN O'BRIEN • JAY LENO • NBC • PR • SOCIAL MEDIA

Posted at 2:28 pm | 1 Comment | Share this blog post

#Haiti, By Way of Twitter

BY LAUREN MAYNARD

Social media helps information spread like wildfire, and there is no better example than what is happening today with information, relief, and fundraising efforts regarding the devastating earthquake in Haiti.  

Wyclef Jean, Yele, and the Red Cross 

At about 3pm MST on January 12th, both Wyclef and the Red Cross had their first tweets about the earthquake. Within an hour, Wyclef had started tweeting about texting a code to Yele to donate $5 for relief efforts. The initial was response was so overwhelming that the Yele servers went down.

Wyclef tweeted throughout the night with news updates, re-tweets of those who donated then tweeted, and his travel plans. A 3 hour gap in his tweets represented the time he was flying to the Dominican Republic; from just before takeoff to the moment he landed, he let the world know what he was doing, what others were doing, and how we could help.

The Red Cross has followed suit, letting us know (with less frequency than @wyclef) that they committed $200,000, then moved that number to $1,000,000 and that we can help by texting to donate $10.

Twitter as a news feed

As power and phone lines are out across the country, many major media outlets have turned to Twitter to monitor what is going on. CNN created a list of twitter users with useful updates on the situation. Twitter has essentially become the communication hub for all live information out of Haiti. 

It's almost impossible for me to write this article as every 30 seconds (this is in no way hyperbole) Twitter is giving me more information on relief efforts and Twitter accounts raising funds, as well as painting a picture of on-the-ground devastation. 

The effects of crowdsourced reporting

Reporting through traditional media is often emotionless in its attempt to be unbiased, and the circumstances in which it breaks from this mold are always noteworthy. I distinctly remember watching Soledad O'Brien report on Katrina in 2005 with an emotion that was unusually humanizing (she later won an award for that work). She was overwhelmed, she was passionate, she was angry. I felt like, in the moment, I was on the ground with her in a way that I couldn't be with other reporters. Still, the world I saw in 2005 was through her eyes only. 

At this moment, I can see Haiti through the eyes of hundreds of people through eyewitness accounts, both written and visual, updated the minute they themselves have seen it*. There is no comparison to this ability to see news real-time through the eyes of many. I'd love to hear about other experiences people have had with Twitter as a successful news source, and thoughts on how this will impact major news outlets.

*(I'd also note that this began to happen with Iran in 2009, but significant internet blockage prevented the same thoroughness of accounts).

TAGS: TWITTER • HAITI • EARTHQUAKE • WYCLEF • RED CROSS • CNN • ROOM 214

Posted at 2:40 pm | 3 Comments | Share this blog post

Learning How To Blog: A Short Exploration of Corporate Blogging

BY LAUREN MAYNARD

Why Hello There

Hi, I'm Lauren, the newest addition to the Room 214 team. As the company's new research maven, I'll frequently share my thoughts about all things social media and WOM. I'm looking forward to opening up some conversations with our readers about the way that you and I view and understand the ever-changing online world. 

As this is my first proper post for Room 214, I've done a lot of thinking about the concept of voice in a company blog. I've spent the whole week obsessing over this post. What should I say? What do you, the reader, feel like reading? Will you connect with me? Will you comment? How does one begin the practice of being a consistent, passionate blogger for her company? I began to search around.

Forming a Relationship

Spend some time Googling best practices for corporate blogs and you'll find an overwhelming amount of information. You'll also find this depressing study from Forrester, which says that in 2008 only 16% of those who read corporate blogs trusted them. Yikes. People think corporate blogs lack honesty.

Knowing that stumbling block, it's important to consider why successful corporate blogs create a sense of trust with their readers. Jason Keath compiled a list of great examples of corporate blogs that I spent some time looking through. The radically different styles of each of those blogs reminds me of the importance of knowing your audience as a basis for forming trust. So do you know your audience? How is it that you come to understand your audience?

Jeremiah Owyang took the time to poll his blog readers and was kind enough to share the results here, which gave not only him but also his readers a chance to understand why people chose to connect with his website. Here at Room 214, we do this on a much larger scale, asking who, what, where, when, why and how as a basis for shaping communication with our clients' consumers. 

Creating Space for Dialogue

But it's not just about knowing your audience. It's about having a conversation with them, a notion that Jason Cormier explained as the top of the Conversation Maturity Model. Marriott shared a lovely, simple detail on hosting Cleveland's 18th annual Polka Festival, letting me know about their engagement in the local community. Zappos taught me the best way to wrap a package for return, which is helpful to both me and them. All the blogs on this top ten list, because they are blogs, are clearly sharing with me. But, as explicitly clear with the Zappos example, they let me know that they are listening to me or, rather, the collective "me" that makes up their blog consumer. I enjoy this. I feel empowered to let them know what is on my mind.

Where Do We Go From Here?

It's funny to me that, on a high level, the basic tenets of a good corporate blog sound like the same basic tenets of a healthy romantic relationship: establish trust, listen, create a forum for open dialogue. Interesting. So here I am, pondering what to do with all this and hoping that I can begin a conversation. In the coming weeks I'll spend some time highlighting interesting conversations I find online. To kick it off, I'd love to hear of the ones you think are most interesting, whether that means successful, bizarre, failed, or other. 

TAGS: ROOM 214 • BLOGGING • STARTING CONVERSATIONS • LISTENING • MARRIOTT • ZAPPOS • JASON KEATH • JEREMIAH OWYANG

Posted at 6:54 pm | 3 Comments | Share this blog post

The Conversation Maturity Model: From Listening to Leading in Social Media

BY JASON CORMIER

My last post revisited the "markets are conversations" principal. I proposed that companies/brands have been joining conversations in their industry, but selling themselves short if not working towards starting them.

As a framework to facilitate this discussion, addressing the progression and value of brands starting conversations, see the Conversation Maturity Model below:



From a social media strategy perspective, you should find this model fits well as part of, or along side, Forrester's POST (People, Objectives, Strategy, Technology) approach or even Room 214's PPLE Social Media Framework.

The Value of Starting Conversations
To keep this blog post digestible, I'll summarize the model by saying the ultimate value of starting conversations is in building and sustaining your brand as a leader.

Leadership, like almost everything that's enabled your company's success, must be earned. Each (maturity) level within the pyramid model is representative of where your brand may be in any given conversation about a product, service, industry, etc.

Of course, this is only a model. Naturally, activities associated within each of these levels are ideally taking place as more of a continuum to your social media / marketing initiatives.

The Conversation Continues
Although the concepts may be simple, there are plenty of reasons brands are not effectively starting conversations -- from incomplete strategies to limitations in technology. There is more to offer here in terms specifics on these limitations - and more importantly, solutions helping companies to address them... but this will need to be for another post. Happy Holidays everyone.

TAGS: CONVERSATION MATURITY MODEL • PPLE • POST • FORRESTER • ROOM 214 • SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY • STARTING CONVERSATIONS

Posted at 4:14 pm | 2 Comments | Share this blog post