July 4th, 2011 by Susanne Krohn
“Life is like a rainbow. You need both the sun and the rain to make its colors appear.” This quote seems especially fitting when looking back on the summer party that ethority hosted last Wednesday in Hamburg, Germany. 70 invited guests gathered at one of Hamburg’s hip locations, the east hotel. Their curiosity could not stop them from braving the rain and following the invitation to be part of an exclusive pre-launch of ethority’s latest Social Media technology. Even though the summer party was missing some sunshine the guests and the entire ethority team celebrated the pre-launch of their new monitoring solution full of positive perception. The “gridmaster” is a tool developed by the Web 2.0 specialists from Hamburg which is the only one available on the market that translates Social Media campaigns into relevant marketing key figures, like gross reach and ROI.
Georg Stolz, CEO of Arbeitsgemeinschaft Media-Analyse (ag.ma), ethority-CEO Sten Franke and COO Benedikt Köhler discussed the future of Social Media measurability and key figures for the assessment of impact and efficiency of campaigns as well as the comparability of Social Media measures in front of 70 invited guests from the agency and digital business in Hamburg.
“The time of trial is over, Social Media is an important part of the communication mix by now: campaigns get more elaborate and require a comprehensive budget. For companies and agencies involved with Social Media it becomes more important to verify their success not just qualitatively. Social Media monitoring can do much more than capture and count clippings in the meantime”, says Sten Franke, CEO of ethority.
Sten Franke added: “With the ethority gridmaster we can offer our customers the opportunity to capture campaign impact and efficiency in established measurements like gross reach and contacts and use this as a basis to illustrate the return on investment. The ethority gridmaster is particularly suitable for the preparation of pitches for agencies: The tool is able to identify exciting insights, relevant channels and quantitative provable potential for the customer even in the short term. Positive reactions and a vivid discussion about Social Media KPI’s on the evening of our pre-launch proved that the market is ready for it.”
The full version of the gridmaster will be presented exclusively by ethority at the dmexco on Sept-21 and 22 in Cologne in front of a professional audience.
June 17th, 2011 by Susanne Krohn
Discussions about another possible dot-com-bubble boiled up again when the value of LinkedIn soared into vertiginous heights. On its first day of trading LinkedIn’s IPO was up 109%, bringing the company’s valuation to $9 billion.
Apart from LinkedIn other tech companies are also under close scrutiny now. ethority wanted to know just how much buzz this discussion is generating. Therefore, our ethority research team initiated a Social Media monitoring study. With the support of our own gridmaster Social Media monitoring tool the industry talk about internet companies was recorded. The results of the “ethority Bubble Barometer” can be found in the infographic below.
According to the findings of the study Facebook and LinkedIn are the most frequently mentioned names associated with the internet bubble in Social Media. With Microsoft’s purchase of Skype for $8.5 billion in May, it may come as no surprise that the internet phone service also ranks in the Top 5 of all internet bubble related discussions online. A closer look at the analysis also reveals that the Social Media users tend to prefer blogs over forums and microblogging when debating the topic. The ethority study unveils that blog posts concerning the “bubble 2.0″ dialogue amount to 90 % in English-speaking community. While German and French web users also preferably opt for blogs, they also initiate discussions in forums, which add up to just below 50 % of the conversation share. Twitter is the community channel that is used the least when it comes to the lively web discussion generating just below 5 % of the buzz.
While there is no denying of the fact that the excessive valuations of the large tech firms continue to raise discussions of another possible dot-com-bubble, the answer yet remains uncertain.
May 24th, 2011 by Susanne Krohn
With almost half of all airline bookings made online today, it may come as a surprise to learn that travel sites still lag behind when it comes to their use of Social Media.
The findings of the L2 Digital Index Travel report reveal just how much potential there is for airlines, hotel chains and cruise lines to be explored.
Since people use Social Media when researching, choosing and booking travel online there is no arguing about the main message of the study about the importance of Social Media in the travel booking process.
Twitter, for example is a popular tool for customer service to reply to customer complaints and other issues. 9 of the Top 10 travel brands on Twitter are airlines and the success story of New Zealand’s Twitter campaign “12 Days of Valentines”, where users where asked to post their favorite cuddle position in order to win round-trip “cuddle class” tickets, just proves the immense impact of Social Media channels. Within the 2 weeks of the campaign Air New Zealand was able to increase their Follower base on Twitter by more than 76%.
All you small and big travel brands watch out since 2/3 of your consumers admit to being influenced by traveler-generated ratings. In contrast only 9% of brands do allow reviews on their website, although there is a reported increase in traffic of 24% where sites allow them. Keep in mind that reviews bring authenticity and are highly valued by the consumers.
Here’s a handy infographic that opposes stats that highlight the important role of Social Media and the gaps that need to be filled. Our experts at ethority will be more than happy to assist you with any Social Media need you might have. We have a team of highly experienced professionals who will advice your travel brand in order to get greater value from Social Media.
February 27th, 2011 by Sten Franke
Social media users see “Black Swan” as Best Picture, Darren Aronofsky as Best Director, Natalie Portman as Best Actress in a Leading Role and Jeff Bridges as Best Actor in a Leading Role.
Social media users see “Black Swan” as Best Picture, Darren Aronofsky as Best Director, Natalie Portman as Best Actress in a Leading Role and Jeff Bridges as Best Actor in a Leading Role.
ethority has analyzed over 40,000 user opinions relating to the Oscar nominations in forums, blogs and on Twitter with the help of its Web-Monitoring Software Technology. The most interesting question for the research team was: Which of the nominated films and stars are being most heavily discussed in English and German language social media channels? Who are the hottest candidates for the Academy Awards in user-generated media?
The results of the study provided a few surprises. According to social media users, the films are running neck and neck. The differences between Black Swan (17%), True Grit (14%) and Inception (13%) are so small that we will be waiting with bated breath until the envelope is finally opened on Sunday night. The picture is clearer for Best Director: Darren Aronofsky, with 31% of all posts, is significantly ahead of David Fincher (23%) and David O’Russel (18%) – according to the users, we at least know that the winner’s name begins with the letter “D”.
Things are even closer in the race for Best Actor: Jeff Bridges holds a lead over James Franco (both 24%) of only a few hundred posts. Jesse Eisenberg is only 4% behind. By far the clear favorite amongst film bloggers and commentators for Best Actress is Natalie Portman with 45% of all posts. Anette Bening (17%) and Michelle Williams (15%) can’t even make out the leader’s tutu from that distance.
Sten Franke, founder and CEO of ethority comments: “As a film buff and enthusiast, I would have expected The King’s Speech to have been discussed far more strongly and to have stood higher in the users’ favor. But at the end of the day, we are only showing what the community thinks. The Academy has the final say! We’re keeping our fingers crossed.“
The core of social media lies in the interaction with the target group. Automated social media monitoring offers the possibility to identify what users think about a film, a brand or a company. Users utilize the social web to air their views and opinions honestly, without any sugarcoating.
“Monday will mean going into the office early after a long Oscar night.” Adds Benedikt Köhler, COO of ethority. “We will want to compare our own generated data with the Academy results as quickly as possible and see how buzz developed during the Oscar night. The results will, of course, be available to read in our blog.”
About ethority: ethority GmbH & Co.KG as a Social Media Specialist is one of the leading providers of social media monitoring, strategy consulting, marketing, branding and market research in the field of social media. Ethority has been working successfully with large German and international businesses for more than 10 years. The company’s client base includes global and online brands and medium-sized companies in the field of B2C and B2B who are looked after by the more than 50-strong ethority team based in Hamburg, Munich and Atlanta.
April 21st, 2009 by Marcus Lauks
Original Article by David Nelles
There it goes; Twitter has become a substantially relevant PR tool. Hence, within only few months a number of brands have experienced, how fast a crisis can spread – thanks to this channel of the 140 characters. The American painkillers Motrin had encountered the anger and resentment of few well networked moms. The E-Commerce Gigant Amazon had to experience a hacker attack over Easter, which erased literature offers regarding gay and lesbian themes. And last but not least, the Domino’s pizza delivery service has its share of experience in regard to the short distasteful video of two employees on YouTube. The three cases show that even in the U.S Twitter has definitely become more and more relevant for company’s communication. Yet, how could these three companies avoid the big disaster to their reputation before it even started? Maybe these three tips below can help a little:
Only listening does not suffice
Important is also knowing, who talks about the brand in Twitter, and how badly he/she speaks about the brand and the corresponding company. Therefore, the following few priorities should stand out in foreground:
Priority No. 1 has to be the people who make up the majority of your brand’s customers. And that will be the question for Domino’s as it plots the best plan of response: The pizza chain needs to know not only how many people saw the video but who those people are and how likely they are to be current customers.
A monitoring is not only a quantitative analysis of the relevant brands mentions, but it’s also about the qualitative analysis like the segmentation and the creation of user’s typologies. Only a qualitative analysis ensures an effective potential crisis analysis. Thereby, it’s not only decisive, how often a tweet or retweet comes out but it’s also important, whether the tweet fits into my target group or not.
Don’t hide uncertainty – Transparency is a must
Companies should engage themselves in the discussions with quick and fast manner towards the emerging crisis in Twitter&Co. even if the companies do not actually know, what is happening, just like in the case with Amazon deleting the whole product groups. A short PR statement would only ignite more fire to the unfavorable situation. A transparent answer in Amazon’s case would be to inform users that the mistakes are not known yet and people in charged are doing everything in their power to resolve the problems. Through this kind of behavior, one shows that critical voices in Twitter are being taken seriously and that one does react to the voiced sentiments. This kind of strategy can smooth the situation and best example for it: the action taken by Scott Monty after a notice of one of the Ford fan’s communities:
Monty logged onto Twitter and asked people to hold off: there was “more to the story.” That slowed down commentary. A little later he added, there was counterfeiting of Ford trademark properties involved. That froze the conversation and bought him some time.
“Some time,” in a PR crisis a few years ago used to translate into about four days. Times change. Monty figured he had bought Ford a few hours.
The above example show that through the announcement of the brand alone of something is being done in respect to the circumstances can definitely slow the spread of crisis significantly down.
Exercise precautions and build your own Twitter community
This basic doesn’t only apply for Twitter but it applies as well for the whole area of social media. In case of a crisis, a strong brand community can be a life insurance for the brand.
Strong, emotional brands that have built up years of consumer goodwill seem to be more insulated from long-term hurt. Few consumers judged much-loved Whole Foods when its CEO was caught posting comments on financial sites under a fake name. Another consumer darling, JetBlue, has recovered valiantly from its Valentine’s Day massacre, which left passengers stranded on board on a runway for eight hours.
It appears quite advantageous for brands alone, out of the perspectives of crisis prevention to build a strong community around its brand. An authentic and long lasting dialog with users, and tying customers emotionally to the brand will make sustainable damage of brand reputation very unlikely. Furthermore, a big brand community i.e. a big Twitter followers guarantees a real sense of hearing in the target group of user generated channels. At least, Domino’s Pizza now understood how essential own Twitter community can be.
April 15th, 2009 by Marcus Lauks
Original Article by David Nelles
Okay, we’ve seen the missing willingness of few marketers to get into dialog with their target group in social networks. Now, it’s a fair turn to give these execs some rules on how Facebook can also work for them. Through my research, I’ve come across a really meaningful “manual book” for Facebook on mashable. Based on this manual: The five pillars for a successful Facebook Fan Page.
Networking
Connect your online appearances. Utilize you existing network presence to additionally fill out your Facebook Fan Page with life. With this strategy, you can be absolutely certain that your target group – which already actively involves in other web appearances, has an easy access to the Fan Page.
Cooperation
Use existing Fan Pages for own purposes. Why make something new, when existing pages are functioning quite well. Cooperate with existing brand evangelists. The best example is the actual cooperation between Coca Cola and its brand fans.
Information
Don’t be an advisor or exclusive information giver only to your supporters. Give also other users advises, which they can get out of your Fan Page. With this strategy, you can increase the brand image outside your own fan group. Hence, Dell plants itself as advisor for Facebook users in the application of social media for small business.
Added Value
Increase the attractiveness of your Fan Page through special offers or winning contest. Winning contest can encourage user’s engagement, which can boost engagement in the corresponding Fan Page. Good examples are Adobe , Ben & Jerry´s and Old Navy.
Relevance
Look for your target group. A proper targeting is a must for a successful fan page. Not all brands would get strong fan community like Apple&Co. Hence, a relevance check should always be in foreground of a Facebook initiative.
The following strategies should come out of the five pillars: At the beginning, an extensive targeting must make sure that the corresponding brands i.e. the products do fit into the Facebook target group. Once this process comes out with positive result, it’s helpful to check if there are big fan pages, which are worth to cooperate with. After a possible cooperation or own initiative, it’s quite important to link the fan page with the rest of the brand’s web appearances as to forward the traffic of the existing internet appearances into the fan page. In the end, the success of each branded community – be it on myspace or Facebook- depends on the quality of the contents. The content of such community must show a real added value. This could be winning contest or special offers and even promotions, which increase the user’s engagement in brand communication.
March 31st, 2009 by Marcus Lauks
Original Article by David Nelles
The benefit of social media is undisputable in regard to the dialog between customers and companies. Particularly, the dialog within 140 characters stood out the most in the core of public discussion concerning the usage of collaborative media in business area. Yet, the Customer Relation Management proves to be the perfect environment for Twitter&Co.
…I think that Twitter has a unique opportunity to tap into the lucrative CRM space.
As stated by Jeremiah and he had his point there. More and more companies are using this very direct and authentic way of communications with their customers. U.S provider for web analytics – Omniture uses also Twitter amongst others social media tools, to connect and nourish the relationships with customers.
Regarding Twitter and customer relationship management, I know it’s been hugely important for us—ClientCare, and really for Omniture as a whole. I love the idea that we can listen to our customers so easily. When there are support issues, we can deal with them quicker than ever before.
Ben Gaines mentions in his statements two important USPs, which obviously speak for the application of Microblogging in the area of CRM. On one hand, it was never before so easy to listen to customers and on the other hand, it was never before possible to assist customers having problems with products or services in a fast & quick manner: two reasons, which strongly support the use of this relative new communication channel. Meanwhile, these advantages of Microblogging are already being often utilized by many companies for their customers – starting from Airlines and Automobiles, to Online Shoes and Tea. The increasingly rapid conversations via Twitter are challenging companies to actually collect and organize the flowing customers’ conversations.
It’s important to first realize that managing a large brand on Twitter isn’t scalable, with hundreds –maybe thousands of tweets about a marketplace a day, individuals will have a very difficult time managing…determining who these people are, and if they are a potential customer is important, who are these people, are they important, where do they live?
With this insights, there are recently promising technical solutions for the application of Twitter in the area of CRM, which guarantee a professional utilization and implementation of costumers contacts. One of the interesting solutions is CoTweet:
CoTweet, currently in private beta and specifically designed to help businesses maximize their Twitter ROI, tweaks the Twitter experience to match that of a more sophisticated CRM solution allowing companies to manage multiple accounts from a single dashboard, support multiple editors for each account, track conversations, assign roles, and create follow-up tasks.
Another promising service for Twitter application in CRM is also being offered by Salesforce. Users of salesforce Saas application can integrate Twitter in their CRM:
The new integration allows businesses to search twitter for mentions about their products/services, find and track conversations, track growth and easily create a database of each in their Service Cloud. Once these conversations are part of the SalesForce Service Cloud, businesses can combine these with other mentions across other networks and communities, establish connections, share knowledge across teams and most importantly, completely integrate customer service departments into the cloud.
Applications like Twitter integration in Salesforce or CoTweet will play pivotal roles in the future for the long lasting use of Twitter in the area of CRM. Especially in Germany, where Twitter starts to gain more public recognition and thus, the relevant amount of data collected via Twitter will rapidly rise quite soon. With this kind of growth, it will be impossible to do the research manually. Hence, those kind of technical solutions are inevitable for companies engaging in social media.
With all the excitement and buzz surrounding Twitter i.e. Microblogging, one should always keep in mind that Twitter is only one part of the CRM strategy in social media. It is very essential for companies to use all the relevant areas of consumer generated channels. Hence, the dialog with customers in forums, weblogs, video platforms and social networks as well as Twitter belongs undeniably to a well polished social media set of companies.
March 30th, 2009 by Marcus Lauks
Original Article David Nelles
Users as brand evangelists – as multipliers of brand messaging in social media? Yet, marketers and communications execs perceive this reality as threat. Although, at the same time marketers don’t actually have any control over their brands in social media.
The success of brands in social media starts out solely through users and their engagement. Coca Cola does seem to understand this concept. The Coca Cola’s page in facebook.com has by now more than 3.3 million fans and it becomes the second largest fansite in this network. However, the success story was not initiated by any Coca Cola execs, but instead the idea originated from three normal users, just plain simple coke fans.
the Coke page, which totals 3.3 million “fans,” wasn’t even created by Coca-Cola, but by a pair of Los Angelenos who just love Coke. In late August 2008, aspiring actor Dusty Sorg was hunting for a Coca-Cola fan page he could join on Facebook. He didn’t find one that seemed legitimate so he hunted down a high-resolution digital image of a Coke can, uploaded it to Facebook and made a page.
However, a change in facebook Terms of Use last November made the creators of this fanpage quite worried. The Zuckenberg network specified that a fanpage, which devotes itself to a concrete brand, may do so only if it’s operated by someone authorized by the respected brand. Therefore, facebook offered Coke the choice whether to take over the fanpage or it will be closed. If one considers the analogy of losing control and social media, then one would likely assumed that Coke would have decided to shut the group down. Even one of the fan page creators commented quite negatively.
“Everyone has this vision that if something like this happens, the big company will send you off to Guantanamo,…”
Yet, Coke surprised the audience in this case. Coke resolved the task not by closing the group or by attempting hostile takeover, but instead Coke sought the dialog with group’s creators and even agreed to help and support the maintenance of this huge fanpage. Hence, the fanpage is given the aid of Coke’s interactive team Dusty Sorg and Michael Jedrzejewski. With this approach, Coke as a brand has shown how important it is to support fans in social media. Had Coke decided for hostile takeover or closing off the fan site with more than 3.3 million fans, it would have resulted in massive reputation risk coming from the huge brand supporters.
After the first bumpy ride in the area of user generated media, Coca Cola seems to learn its lesson. Coke has understood to utilize on users as brand evangelists, rather than to intimidate loyal fan communities in user generated media. The American beverage producer pursues with its decision the long lasting of dialog with the target group. Therefore, marketers of other brands should take this great example to heart and support their fan communities in social media. Such approach would deepen the relationships between users and brands, boost trust and loyalty as well as the sustainability of brand image.
March 24th, 2009 by Marcus Lauks
Original Article by David Nelles
Social media marketing only works when a user gets a real added value through his/her engagement. This means: The interaction with brands in user generated channels must result in a measureable ROI for users, as to achieve successful marketing in this area. Thereby, in his latest post – Tom Smith opts for a change in perspectives regarding this matter. It’s not about the added value of social media for companies but instead it’s more about the added value of big brands’ social media activities for users. Smith derives eight advantages for consumers through social media marketing:
1. Social media can transcend the “black box brand” of the past into a transparent dialog partner. Social media enables user a peek behind the scenes of a brand.
2. Social media differentiates bad products from good ones. Thanks to social media, it’s easier for users to get information about specific products before buying decisions are made.
3. Social media is the perfect channel for customer service. Comcast, Dell and Southwest are few of the best examples. The basic for brands should be to actively present themselves where the target group is, as to always be there for the costumers.
4. Social media allows users to take part in product innovation. The keyword is crowdsourcing for the creation of better products. Tchibo, Dell and Procter & Gamble show how companies can involve consumers in product development.
5. User decides if he/she wants to interact with brands. In classical online marketing, users didn’t have the power of choice to decline massive brand messaging.
6. Social media efforts of big brands are the prerequisites for a free of charge usage of Facebook&Co. However, for a continuous availability and development of social media platforms developers need the money, which would come from a booked and well-planned marketing campaign of big brands.
7. Big companies have interesting stories to be told. Brands like Daimler and Coke do have stories of their own and they certainly offer consumers real added value.
8. Brands in social media are alive through users. One way or another, users’ conversations about brands would take place, regardless of whether brands are choosing to be actively engaged or not.
In the end, it’s quite evident: Social media marketing i.e. active brands in social media offer users a real numerable added value. It starts with transparency through direct customer service and the power of choice, where users can decide for themselves whether they want to be exposed to brand messaging: users benefit obviously from this 2.0 brand communication. This user’s ROI is the key indicator for the success of a brand in user generated media. Brands communication in social media ignites two-way added value, both for users and brands. This applies only, if marketers abide to above mentioned added values. Hence, keywords like transparency and authenticity should be the core focus.
March 16th, 2009 by Marcus Lauks
Original Article by David Nelles
In an interview with AdAge magazine Jimmy Wales gives his estimation about marketers’ strategy of mass collaboration in digital platforms like wikia.com. But Walles also thinks that the real success of this media is often overshadowed by marketers’ fear of losing control. Thereby, brands are still not able to enter into a real direct dialog with users in user generated media.
The fear of losing control doesn’t only apply exclusively to Wiki platform, but rather to the entire area of user generated media. This kind of fear resulted from marketers’ way of thinking that they could control their brands message, just like they did back then before social media surfaces. Well could they do it? The answer is a plain simple No. After all, social media is only a consequent shift of social interaction into a digital environment. Marketers are mistaken if they actually believed that they could control their brands communication back then. Even before social media, brands were already subjected to various discussions by consumers and print media. The difference in social media is that the critical voice of consumers for the affected company is instantly visible. Feedbacks about offered services or products should not ignite fear and loathing for marketers in charge in the company. Social media offers the chance of digital consumer conversations for brand’s benefits. Hence, it was never before so easy for companies to achieve consumer insights.
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