What Attribute is Your Brand Looking for?

One of the first steps is to understand the method of influence people can have. After reviewing these, you can better identify which segment you’d like to pursue, culling down the numbers significantly. For instance, Ed Keller and Jon Berry, authors of the ‘The Influentials’ identify five key attributes:

Activists (Specialized): these are the active members of a topic/brand/community who entice people to take a certain action or get involved. If you need this person to incite action in others, activists will help drive response.

Connected (Broad Stroke): influencers who have sizable numbers of connections across the social networks. If you are looking for sheer volume of brand impressions this can be a powerful attribute.

Impact (Trust and Aspiration): these people influence others by being reputable by many and are trusted. If you are looking to build brand goodwill or trust with your customers, this validation from a trusted source can help.

Active Minds (Professional Dilettantes): these people are jack-of-all trades because they have influence across many different topics. These influencers can be helpful if you have many products and the audiences are segmented differently.

Trend Setters (Early Adoption): these people are ahead-of-the game and can influence others before an idea/product is popular. This can help build early excitement and credibility for your brand or product.

After reviewing these, which do you believe will have the greatest impact on your customers?  Looking at the attributes should help you start to understand who you need to pursue and the impact that they will have.

Where Does Your Target Audience Hangout?

Selecting one or multiple channels is another big factor in the social influence equation.  This is where your demographics and existing research comes in. Using this information will help you determine the best method to reach your customer.

For instance say you own a company that makes products geared toward boys aged 13-17.  Based on those demographics, what channel is best to reach them? Where do they hang out online? Where is it likely that an influencer could reach them? You can probably have a gut feeling about this, but make sure to double check the statistics of the channel to confirm your assumption.

Selecting the best channel to reach your target audience will help you identify the major players in that space.

Which Numbers Matter for Social Influence?

This depends on each social channel you have selected, so let’s give you a breakdown of the numbers to look for on the top three most popular social networking sites (in terms of size):

Facebook & Twitter: Fortunately, there is a handy-dandy tool called Klout that will calculate several variables of influence for you, on a rating of 1-100. Best practice dictates that a score above 50 is usually a good influencer. When you are searching for particular topics within Facebook and Twitter, note certain people and double-check their Klout.

YouTube: While many people don’t think about this as a Social Network, it actually is ranked #2 in terms of size and activity. Look for activity in a influencer’s channel:  comments on a video, responses to comments, subscribers vs. subscribe ratio.  This will show you how this person’s content is received, whether they are popular and if they engage with their community.

Other Social Networking Sites: Look for engagement factors, not just sheer size of community: discussions, comments, sharing. Look at how an influencer responds to commentary; are they helpful and problem-solution oriented? Do they suggest further action? What kind of information do they share? (Links, suggestions, products).

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This process can feel like an extremely overwhelming funnel: taking hundreds of millions of people and figuring out who is a best fit for you. Using these guidelines should help you understand how to take the top of this funnel and scale it down in order to find the best influential fits for your company.

Books Are a Social Badge

I continue to love paper books, because of the experience both while I read them and after I read them.  A book on a shelf is a mark of what I’ve done, what I am interested in, and what I think about. My digital friendships cover international ground, though, and many of those people will never get to see my bookshelf.  Luckily, Good Reads came along and provided me with a digital bookshelf (and social network) so I can share, globally, my story as told through book titles.  It gives me the ability to show others what I am reading, rate and review books I’ve read, and keep a list of things I want to read.

Good Reads also serves as a detailed and socially-relevant recommendation engine. I can browse my feed to see what friends are reading, search for a specific book and read reviews from my friends (and other users), and search through themed lists of books. I can also join groups with specific reading interests. It is neatly integrated with Facebook, as well, and allows for two-way sharing. This is reading, socialized. It doesn’t matter if I am reading a paper book or a digital one.

Books Are Digital

Though my world is digital, I read paper books. I am, apparently, archaic. Consumption platforms have changed entirely, and the impact of e-readers like the Kindle, the iPad, and the Nook have been tremendous. As Wendy noted, Amazon claims Kindle books have been outselling hardcovers by almost 50%.

I took a look at the kinds of things people discuss when they talk about E-Readers so I could get a sense for the features so key to these platforms.

I became really interested by the comparison to a paper book. What comes into play quite a bit is the concept of options. Users love downloading free samples so they can quickly scan for what’s most interesting, and then purchase depending on mood and setting. This leads to a totally different relationship between seller and buyer. I have countless books that I have purchased, read 20 pages of, and abandoned on my shelf. In this scenario, consumers can test drive before purchase. That is a game changer.

Amazon has clearly caught on to this, and just announced the release of Kindle for the Web, which allows for first chapter previews directly from your browser.

Books Have a Social Future

What I see happening is, simultaneously, doors opening and closing for the world of authors, publishers, and distributors. Books are about diving into other people’s lives (real, fictional, and instructional) and thus are, inherently, social experiences. It’s all a matter of how the industry capitalizes on the opportunity (or stumbles, painfully, like the newspaper industry has). Much like how Foursquare lays interesting data on top of a physical plant, social media has the opportunity to lay additional related information on top of a traditionally static document. Exciting, no? I’ll end with a beautiful movie by IDEO that envisions just this: the social, community-building, world-changing future of the book.

It’s not a surprising statement, either. What is interesting, however, is that this statement is becoming relevant for consumers in all age brackets. 78% of consumers say they trust peer recommendations. We’re all easily influenced by each other, meaning that information sharing in social media is very valuable.

Enter this:

What you are looking at are screenshots of Google Buzz mobile. Not only can I see who near me is buzzing, I can see where they are. If someone is in a location I’m heading towards, I can see what they are saying. In this case, one person has just told me that the Florentine’s at a local coffee shop are more expensive than at CU Business School.

Real-Time Reviews

As more people adopt buzz, the aggregated conversations in one location can paint an incredible real-time picture of what is happening around you, based on the opinions of other people. Is your favorite restaurant out of their nightly special? Did someone have terrible customer service at the running store you’re headed to? All of this information is immediately accessible, in addition to being timely and relevant.

Large User Base

Geo-location services are by no means new. Consider, though, that Gmail’s active monthly user base is rumored to be around tens of millions (compare that to Foursquare’s 350k and MyTown’s 1mm total users). Add that to the fact that buzz is an opt-out rather than opt-in feature, and we’re likely to see a much higher adoption rate.

It’s Google

I’ve had a few debates about this since Buzz launched Tuesday, and I continue to argue this: A lot of people use Gmail. Through Gmail, a lot of people who aren’t early-adopters have tried out new Google products like docs, calendar and wave. Because these people have an established trust for what Google can bring into their lives, they’ll be willing to try out Buzz, much more so than they’d be willing to try out a similar product from an unfamiliar company. And as our designer Andy Stone pointed out, Google’s “Do No Evil” policy has also helped build trust within a distrusting consumer group.

It’s Social

Now the medium that we (or at least, I) need most on a daily basis to communicate is directly connected with a sharing function that isn’t tied to a type of content (ie Yelp for reviews, Foursquare for tips and frequency). Buzz is just thoughts.  I, for one, am going to share, and I’ll share whatever is on my mind. Freed from the constraints of types of reviews, I think we’ll soon be seeing a geo-tagged map of candid consumer thinking.

Good, Bad, Viral

This is great for the way your brand engages with individual consumers. Fast Company already took a look at user-targeted advertising through Buzz. You may soon be able to target individual consumers based on very individual habits, an act which can help build relevant and meaningful relationships, one person at a time. It also means you need to monitor and play an active role in the buzz (Buzz?) going on around your company. You can respond to any comment that is public, so any time your brand shows up on a map, you should be there to discuss. More importantly, you should be there before the discussion starts, letting us know what’s going on in your kitchen, your factory, and your main conference room.

Take, for example, Bonnaroo’s decision to let individual bands announce their presence in the 2010 lineup (along with individual announcements through MySpace). It took resourceful individuals to piece together the entire lineup, and the news spread like wildfire. What if you had a single person in your brewery Buzz about your latest creation, rather than announce it through press release? Which one would spread faster? Which one would spread organically?

Google Buzz has the potential to create huge buzz, both positive and negative. So get to using it. I am.

Velocity of Conversation

The panel discussion included three individuals with an incredible amount of online and offline marketing experience. Each is a recognized leader within their own organization, and was kind enough to share some candid thoughts regarding their opinions on working with agencies. The background and highlights from each participant’s discussion is as follows:

Steve Knox, CEO, Procter & Gamble Tremor: When I first met members from the Tremor team last year at WOMMA, I was surprised to hear that Procter & Gamble was already aggressively working with an agency to engage in WOM and social initiatives. I then learned Tremor was actually P&G’s internal agency, working exclusively to support the brand(s).

Over time, Tremor has developed a community of about half a million moms through its Vocalpoint platform, and now successfully leverages the data, learnings and continued engagement to help brands outside of its own. Pretty impressive. The following are some of the things Steve had to say in consideration of working with potential partner agencies:

• If there is zero unique IP that a potential partner agency brings to the table, then anything they can provide is essentially a commodity.
• A successful agency is able to demonstrate that they care about the brand, and have a real understanding of its core equity.
• I don’t want to talk to agencies overly focused on digital and tactics. Agencies need to demonstrate they get how offline conversations are going to be activated.

David Witt, Manager, Brand Public Relations, General Mills: David brought a different angle to the conversation, along with a level of humility and humor I think most in the audience recognized quickly. Here are some of the items I noted from his participation:

• From an agency, David is looking primarily for the emergence of creativity and execution
• The first focus should be on customer loyalty, then word of mouth and brand advocacy
• Ideas are power, and are of greatest value when they sustain engagement over the long haul.
• For brands to be social, they must realize it is about giving (example: General Mills just launched tablespoon.com, featuring over 25,000 recipes for consumers to engage with, ratings, coupons, etc.)

Christine Morrison, Social Media Marketing Manager, Intuit: I have followed Christine on Twitter almost since she began her most recent marketing position at Intuit. She has lead award winning efforts (including a Gold WOMMY Award today) for Intuit, and continues to demonstrate what success with social media looks like. Here are the highlights I outlined around her input:

• We look at the hows and whats of social media – and are interested in social marketing assets that are user generated and can be used in conjunction with advertising assets.
• We like agencies that are ahead, out in front, trying new things and have thought through why they are trying them.
• I like to ask, “do you know something I don’t know?”

The main theme I pulled from each of the panelists viewpoints is the value they place in people who get the big picture. Social media and word of mouth marketing are a component of a larger marketing mix. These kinds of professionals (and brands) are past the point of “buy in” when it comes to social media. The more relevant questions pertain to how it social media most effectively fits and benefits their customers and business goals.

Numerous brands have adopted Facebook as a way to interact with their fans and push products or services. Some do a great job and some just throw up pages with the hope that they’ll be a success.  We have found a way to go beyond what standard Facebook pages offer, and provide our clients with a unique Facebook experience.  Here’s a recent example of how we have accomplished this feat.

The Task
Take our existing Facebook pages for Travel Channel and make them more viral, more informative, more interactive, and more targeted.

How We Did It
In order to make the Travel Channel pages more viral, we took advantage of the sharing functionality accessible through Facebook’s API. We built a unique left-hand sidebar for every featured tab, which enables visitors to share specific content with their friends. We also included share buttons on video and blog posts to allow users more flexibility when suggesting content.

We made these pages more informative by featuring content frequently requested by fans. In this case, that content was episode information for each show. We created a custom tab with information on when an episode would air and provided links back to TravelChannel.com for pictures, travel guides, and episode descriptions.

The pages became more interactive through our custom polling application. If you use Facebook, you know how popular polling is within the system. We took this concept and created a tab where users can tell us what they think about recent episodes. This application also provides Travel Channel with a way to gather feedback quickly from viewers.

Finally, we strategized to make Travel Channel’s pages more targeted. Brands are all about gaining new fans on Facebook, but they often neglect to tell users why to become a fan. We solved this problem by creating a landing page where all non-fans would land. This tab includes a welcome message, an overview with information about the show, and a call-to-action suggesting they become a fan of the page.

The Results
It’s all about meeting business objectives, so here are the results of the re-design. In addition to the four objectives I listed above, our goal was to increase traffic back to TravelChannel.com. Within one month after re-designing their show pages, traffic has increased significantly and Facebook has become a top-referring source for the site.

Do you have a Facebook success story? I’d love to hear about it!

Google, Pandora, Digg, and Facebook to offer their products to hundreds of millions of people without charging anything. The marginal costs of adding your millionth user and your twenty millionth user are roughly zero. That is because bandwidth, storage, and processing power are cheap, and they get cheaper every year.

Free is no longer a marketing gimmick, but a necessity for most online businesses.

When you get into the mindset of a consumer, cheap and free are completely different from one another. If Google had decided long ago to charge a single dollar for their services, consumers would have found somewhere else to search the web, manage their email, or read the news.

Free-conomics:

The old way to look at a market was to examine how supply of a product and demand for a product would change as the price shifted. Today, free has become an economy of its own as the marginal cost of doing business online has nearly reached zero.

When you charge the online consumer anything at all you move into an entirely different market with far fewer customers.

In the free economy, attention and reputation are what matters.

The goal is to build your reputation in hopes of earning more attention. Consumers have millions of choices to make when they decide where to spend their attention online. A company’s reputation dictates how consumers choose whether to spend time on Site A or Site B.

“There is, presumably, a limited supply of reputation and attention in the world at any point in time. These are the new scarcities — and the world of free exists mostly to acquire these valuable assets… Free shifts the economy from a focus on only that which can be quantified in dollars and cents to a more realistic accounting of all the things we truly value today.” - Chris Anderson – Wired.com

The good news: your reputation is not beyond your control.

A huge part of your business should be focused on social media campaigns and word of mouth strategies that maintain and build upon your reputation. The idea is to first create the buzz then sell the crazy fans your $100 vinyl album or your exclusive product features. Let 10% of your fanatical fans support your business and use the other 90% to spread your message.

You may have a great product, but it doesn’t mean anything until you build the kind of reputation that will make consumers want to try it.

“Make your record cheaply (but great) and GIVE IT AWAY. As an artist you want as many people as possible to hear your work. Word of mouth is the only true marketing that matters.” - Trent Reznor in a post on a NIN forum

For more information, read Chris Anderson’s article: “Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business,” on Wired.com.