January 26th, 2009 by Nils Maier
Article by David Nelles:
The discussion is maybe not new but for certain not uninteresting. The question arises over and over – for the companies in the area of social media marketing – concerning the monetizing benefits of social media efforts these companies could actually gain. At the same time the old classical marketers are still leaning on the classical ROI concept for social media. Hence, a prominent question surfaces, whether the adoption of social media in marketing can really withstand the classical application of ROI.
The problem with trying to determine ROI for social media is like you are trying to put numeric quantities around human interactions and conversations, which are not quantifiable.
Jason Falls is right with his appraisals. The dogmatic application of ROI does not really fit into the field of social media. How conversations and user opinions should be numerated in monetize units. Even Katie Delahaye Paine doubts the classical ROI concept for user generated media – for her social media monitoring and its results are the core points in measuring the success of social media efforts in marketing.
Maybe the Holy Grail of measuring success for the application in the area of professional communication does not lie in the area of ROI, but instead in data collection and analysis of user opinions.
Lewis Green shows with the concept of Value Reference Model quite clear, which alternatives companies have to measure success of social media efforts beyond the concept of ROI. The value reference model assesses the dialog with target groups and consumers by means of monetary savings in all areas of lifetime product cycle and therefore goes far beyond a simple marketing approach. This approach considers consumers in social media as the central gravity in innovation, production and marketing. Especially social media platforms like customer blogs or communities offer the optimal medium for this approach.
Value is not measured quarterly nor necessarily annually. It is instead measured over the lifetime of a product, service, process, and individual customer sales. It cannot be measured on a single tool but instead measured on ongoing benefits and results as determined by the lifetime of the product, service, process and customer.
This approach shows once again that each campaign of companies in the area of social media is only a starting point. To accomplish a successful Value Reference Model, a long term engagement in social media must be planned. If a company wants to build a long lasting and good relation to its target groups, then it has to nurse this over time. The debates in the U.S shows pretty clear, how dogmatic the definition ROI is and how new methods are badly needed to measure success of company’s efforts with respect to the collaborative medias. The old fashioned expectation patterns of marketers – which expect certain turnover by investing certain amount in one particular media- don’t apply anymore in social media. In user generated media, marketers must talk to their target groups and at the same time igniting the interest of their target groups over the product to achieve the ROI. Meaning, marketers have to offer added value for their target groups in social media and thus, the investment of pro-consumer will pay off in the end. Only with this kind of added value for consumers in social media, users will bind to brands and then even be in the end user generated marketers and product developers. If companies did achieve this, they would definitely be successful in the long run. From this point of view, Value Reference Model does hold strong significance.
January 26th, 2009 by Nils Maier
The Social Media Club Hamburg has launched officially. The venue at ethority was fully packed with 65 people and thus, this fact has definitely exceeded our – David, Jonas and me – expectations as club initiators.
Again, we would like to thank all for the active interest in social media and your support by attending the first meeting of SMC Hamburg. Our special thanks go to Mark Pohlmann – with his speech “Talking isn’t enough. From the love for Social Media to the need for more professionalism”- which provided positive discussions that night. The feedbacks coming from the guests reaffirmed our estimation that this kind of club in Hamburg could work out quite well. Well we have to admit, one critic point does hold its case: the beer was not cold enough – sorry Nico.
In overall, this development shows again that Hamburg has established itself as the epicenter of social media in Germany. Sorry Berlin and Munich, that we took your hope away 
. We are looking forward for the next meeting of the Social Media Club Hamburg. Until then, free as Mark Pohlmann: “Connect knowledge and convey externalities into internalities”
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Audio Stream from the first Social Media Club Hamburg
We would like to thank Timo for his audio files.
January 20th, 2009 by Nils Maier
Starbucks does it, Tchibo applies it and even the future 44th President of the United States gets it. The magic word is called crowd sourcing and with Barack Obama, it is the platform citizens briefing book. This platform encourages U.S citizens to share their ideas in every single issue. Ranging from economic policy, over social policy themes to foreign affairs – this platform allows citizens to express their reformed suggestions and these will be rated by other users. So far there have been over 44.000 ideas from users in this platform, at which over 120.000 users also reflected in their voting choice.
The legalization of marijuana is the most popular idea at the moment in Obama’s platform, follows close by the commitment to become the “greenest” country in the world. If these popular ideas could help shape a better U.S politics? Well I doubt it. The development of such platform fits pretty well into the communication strategies of Barack Obama. Social media belonged right from the start for Obama’s advisers to one of the central tools in addressing voters. Hence, the development of the actual platform is the logical step in the social media strategy of Obama. Not only the new American President tries to integrate his clientele in product development and service optimization. Even the free economy discovers often the advantage of consumer’s feedback or rather CRM in the area of social media. Of course Dell stands out the most, but Otto, Tchibo and Fiat also communicate with their users to generate successful market oriented products. The advantage of such method is quite obvious in this media. There exists seldom better environment for such a direct way to communicate with the target groups and consumers. I’m positively certain that social media and CRM will go hand in hand near future.
January 16th, 2009 by Christoph Maeurer
Original article by David Nelles
Earthquake, war and flight disasters: Twitter has become a convenient catastrophe medium.
Caution: Consumers are listening. A Tweet with its unpleasant effects.
Google party plane – Google’s flight personal goes nippy.
Beautifully viral – naughty Durex Bunnies + Outtakes.
Nine Inch Nails – make money by giving.
Journalists should be able to handle these Technologies at the latest in 2009.
The wild 70’s in Apple.
Uschi Blum – Love’s slave.
January 16th, 2009 by Nils Maier
What is going on? Shouldn’t Facebook actually be happy about the fact of a well accepted widget among users? Within only a week, Burger King’s newest widget was installed by more than 82.000 users, who then deleted over 230.000 users out of their own friend’s list to get one free Whooper.
This particular approach was definitely a huge success from marketing point of view. Unfortunately; Facebook execs were not amused with it. Hence, they are now suspending this application from the network with following statement:
We encourage creativity from developers and brands using Facebook Platform, but we also must ensure that applications follow users’ expectations of privacy. This application facilitated activity that ran counter to user privacy by notifying people when a user removes a friend. We have reached out to the developer with suggested solutions. In the meantime, we are taking the necessary steps to assure the trust users have established on Facebook is maintained.
Truthfully, I ask myself, what this application in a way does, to be even considered as colliding with data privacy protection. With Beacon, Facebook was definitely not so squeamish. Or perhaps Facebook has all together different intentions? Joe Bubble speculates that Zuckenberg might have discovered a way to make money out of it. Well, I’m certainly open for different opinions and would love to hear them. Actually, there exist quite enthralling discussions regarding this matter in our office.
January 15th, 2009 by Nils Maier
At first glance, it seems quite obvious – for the company in the area of social media – who is actually in charge of the communication with the consumers. Thereby, both marketers and communicators execs are the ones, who stand out the most, since it is after all their tasks to provide the market with powerful brands and brand’s messages. However, this presumption is only true on first sight. The old classical types of marketers are unfortunately loved to talk but seldom do they listen. Well in the era of social media, this good old push campaign without any feedback channels is definitely out. Social media leads marketers in an entirely new and different communication environment. Here, companies, brands and consumers are on the same level and they correspond respectively to one another – a two way conversation as to speak. This mutual both ways of influence means that marketing and company’s communication should pursue an authentic dialog with consumers, and yet marketers are often having troubles to do just that.
With swift and strong changes regarding the usage of media by target groups, decisions maker should ultimately break away – better soon than later- from the deep rooted belief that only marketing department and company’s communication of one’s company are the ones who should communicate with the outside world. A good networking products developer can definitely generate high coverage and more attention by using social media, compared to only just few ads campaigns. Foremost, decisions maker should take this fact as a chance instead of a threat. As foretold by Charlene Li concerning the year 2009:
everybody becomes a marketer…their front line workers will go about quietly, unobtrusively interacting with customers, partners, and other employees within their social networks. Examples like @comcastcares Frank Eliason or “Nuts About Southwest” blogger Gordon Guillory (who is a mechanical engineer) point to the democratization of social media within the enterprise.
Probably they are employers, who do actually help the company in getting the message out there in a really “social” way – e.g. like Guillory from Southwest. Rohit Bhargava affirms also the good possibility of Charlene Li’s way of thinking for brands and companies in the area of social media.
Find a way to embrace your accidental spokespeople. In the social media era, anyone can be a spokesperson for your brand, from regular employees to passionate customers. Find a way that your brand can connect with these voices and amplify them.
Rohit goes even a step further with his proposal; maybe marketers should consider using their own target group as multipliers.
It’s not of importance, whether it’s done by a networking or passionate consumer or even just a single employer. The marketing success for the companies will surely sky rocket in user generated channels through this kind of activities. Thus, an authentic communication with consumers is actually generated and well perceived. It’s not a real alternative for companies to not communicate with consumers online out of fear for losing control of their brand’s message. Brands communication does take place in social media and it gets even stronger and more intense. Hence, no companies can afford to ignore a direct and authentic consumer dialog. Nothing is worst then not taking part in a public discussion of one’s own brands.
January 14th, 2009 by Nils Maier
We just started a xing group for the Social Media Club Hamburg.
The aim ist not just to talk about the SMCHH than rather creating a discussion forum about all relevant topics regarding social media. The most popular topics will be evaluated in the SMCHH meetings once a month.
Join the discussion:
http://www.xing.com/group-32454.1ca775
Most topics are in German but we also have a section for our English natives!
January 14th, 2009 by Nils Maier
After Thestrategyweb.com had explicitly published the survey’s results of Community Monitor 2008 for Brain-Injection consulting and the Cologne Business School, I would like to take a closer look on the presented profits models of each network. The survey’s results show a fresh a quite sober picture. Banners are still the prevalent marketing tools in social networks, but at the same time brand’s marketers appeared to be somehow completely ignorant of the fact, that those kinds of advertising are actually inefficient in the realms of social media. Myspace and Google have had their experience, e.g. the click rates of banner ads in Dickschiff social network is sinking continuously:
The ads’ so-called click-through rate plummeted from one in 100—a decent return by Web standards—in 2006 to one in 1,000 in 2007. “Users became more or less desensitized to the advertising,” says Seremet, a veteran of Take-Two Interactive (TTWO) and now president of video game publisher Green Screen. “You won’t make money on it.”
Google was quite unhappy about the development, considering that the internet empire based in Mountain View, California had promised different numbers, when it bought the sole commercialization rights in 2006 for the News Corp. network for almost $ 900.000.000 (article).
Trouble is, Google pays News Corp. for that right even when the ads don’t generate much, if any, revenue. “We have found that social-networking inventory is not monetizing as well as expected,” said Google Chief Financial Officer George Reyes…
This development is certainly not specifically for Myspace, but rather it applies to the whole networks. I agree and support the comment made by the authors of the survey:
“We assume one of the reasons is that the advertising industry needs time to adjust to new ways and possibilities of advertising in Web 2.0.”
Firstly, marketers must learn to actually listen in social media. Hence, after all the years of doing the talking, it’s now high time that they go into open dialog with the consumers. Invitational ads as banner can certainly be a medium to connect users or consumers to brand community etc. but the dialog with consumers should be the core focus.
Unfortunately, if it’s about profit models, then a central investigation object is missing in this analysis. Brand communities, Fan pages or sponsored groups should have been definitely subjected to the analysis. After all there are excellent examples, which accentuate, how important and meaningful these advertising forms are in social media. German version of MySpace is one of it and for me Jägermeister and Niveacamp of Beiersdorf stand out the most.
Even StudiVZ is successful with its sponsored group of Brands4Friends. This shows again how meaningful a brand community in social networks can be used as an oriented dialog marketing tool.
Well I do think that the survey lacks in the pivotal choice of investigation for profits models of social networks. Since the future of profits models lies for certain also in the area of brand communities.
Profits models like, e.g. Membership fees are certainly not for the big networks. It’s quite different for niche products like the business networks Xing or Linkedin. There, users are pretty concrete about their value added, which they expected from the usage of these networks and therefore willing to pay the fees. On the other hand the value added in Facebook&Co. is much more diffuse.
It’s quite interesting as well that 26% of the investigated networks do actually offer the integration of shops and this development has potentials, which yet to be fully exhausted. A good example from social media E-commerce is e.g. Brands4Friends and also edrugsearch.com. The American search engine for pharmaceuticals had huge success with the implementation of a community. It’s not of importance if at first the shopping and then the network or vice versa, since the outcomes would still be the same. Communities and E-Commerce can have a successful relationship and as former StudiVZ CEO- Markus Riecke said to this connection:
“Online Marketing is easy there, since user’s interests equal the offers”. Therefore shops can certainly be the profits driver for the big networks.
To sum it up: In my opinion the profits drivers lie in the future of social networks in the brands communities and in the alliance with E-Commerce. These two advertising forms are the closest as tools to generate an adequate successful marketing in social media, hence creating a profitable model for social networks. Overall, the future success of big communities would surely lie less in the area banner ads as well as membership’s fees.
January 14th, 2009 by Nils Maier
There are really products out there, which are not so easy to promote in a campaign. Intimate care products for women – amongst others – are certainly one of these kinds of products. GlaxoSmithKline has successfully managed to solve this problem by its campaign of Lactacyd Femina – a vaginal cleansing lotion. With hip sound in the background, the clip shows various activities of women out of their vagina’s point of view.
It’s definitely a well made clip, providing altogether amazingly somehow different perspectives.
January 14th, 2009 by Nils Maier
Defriending will surely be the big trend of 2009 in everyday use of social media. Burger King has anticipated this trend – dump 10 friends and get one free Whooper. Well I asked myself all the time, when I’m using LinkedIn, etc.: who is in god’s name with over 1000 business contacts on his/her a list could speak from “real” contacts or how one even should follow twitter stream, which follows more than 1000 streams? Perhaps it applies in social media, as well as in the world outside of social media: Less is more.
For Charlene Li, the downsizing of followers and Facebook “friends” is surely the trend for 2009:
“Having thousands of friends becomes “so 2008″ and defriending becomes the hot new trend, driven by overwhelming rivers of newsfeeds. The movement is rooted in a desire to have quality, not quantity, as people cocoon in the face of the economic crisis. Facebook apps will emulate Twitter Grader, allowing you to prioritize your friends based on their overall social ranking — and prune safely to ensure the highest quality friends“.
Even Peter Blackshaw – consumergeneratedmedia.com – also foresees quite similar development for year 2009:
“Many of us will feel compelled to join the social media equivalent of Weight Watchers, eager to trim the excess and rediscover a modicum of don’t-follow-everything discipline.”
In my opinion this development is certainly right. A social graph is only then a functional one, if one really communicates with his/her virtual contacts. This kind of communication is by far more than just the act of clicking the confirm button. Truthfully, I find it quite difficult to keep an eye of all the conversations happening in my Twitter streams, facebook, Linkedin, Myspace, etc. contacts, and then to actually be involved in a constructive dialog in the end. In the mean time a flood of information emerges, which are mostly irrelevant. Probably tools like TwitterGrader or Benedikt’s Twitterfriends are needed to accomplish an overdue network optimization. 2009 will be the time for all to join the social graph watcher movement and hence strengthening the networking.
