March 4th, 2009 by Arie
Original Article by David Nelles
What makes social media attractive? Evan Williams’s prediction is definitely right. Social media appeal to human’s baser need, which is the desire to socially connect with each other. Social networks as technical solution offer the possibility of globally social interaction. Respectively, the state of interaction between individuals in social media is actually a continuation of the offline social interaction into a digital world. From technical tools, Twitter has somehow fulfilled this baser need of human’s social interaction- shown by its huge number of users. However, I have to disagree with one of William’s comment. Well I think, Twitter won’t need the five extra years to get its tool used by broader public.
March 4th, 2009 by Arie
Original Article by David Nelles
We’ve talked a lot about varying possibilities of dialogs between users and brands by ways of blogs, Twitter streams or branded community in big social networks. Hence, the importance of direct and authentic dialog was often mentioned in regard to building brand reputation and brand awareness. After all, all these platforms have one thing in common; the buying decisions take place at those platforms, but sales are mainly to be found elsewhere. Yet, how does the dialog work between consumers and brands in social shopping platforms such as Amazon or in other product review portals such as Dooyoo or HolidayCheck? Is it necessary for companies to be engaged actively in those platforms? The answer is easy: Yes, even here marketing execs should be active. Product recommendations and buying decisions in Amazon&Co occur in a pretty concrete and concentrated way. Hence, it is highly recommendable for companies in the area of B2C to use these platforms as potential communication channels for a concrete and direct dialog with users. Furthermore, company’s communication execs should take notice of important rules in regard to the communication between users and brands in these surroundings. On his blog post, Todd Defren summarizes quite reasonable rules of communication for product review platforms:
Rule #1: Take notice, what is actually allowed and what is not. Before companies do actively engage in this area, they should at first read and understand each of product review platform’s Terms of Use.
Rule #2: Listen to consumers. Just like each activity in social media, the dialog begins on these platforms with continuous monitoring of the relevant channels. It’s about getting a general view and afterwards to communicate more efficiently with the product reviewers.
Rule #3: Always play with open cards. Companies should always act in an open manner, meaning they should never pretend to be “just another user”. Users of these platforms wish for an open communication with the person in charge of the brands. If companies take this rule to heart, a sustainable dialog between users and companies would be accomplished.
Rule #4: Willingness for a real user dialog. Even if a negative or positive customer feedback exists: a dialog must take place. Therefore, companies should engage courteously and effectively to all comments made by users – be it good or bad comments.
Rule #5: Handling negative feedback in a constructive way. Companies should be cooperative in handling critical feedback. They should show that they do listen to consumers and thus, try to provide the best solutions. If the critics are too personal and false, companies must not react too defensive and ignorant, instead they should comment in a short and prompt way but not getting too deep into discussion.
Rule #6: The best defense is not offence. If company’s communicator rates a comment as harming the company’s business; it is advisable not to force the hosting platform to remove it. Such action would rather lead to higher waves of attention and it won’t do any good for marketers to be on the bad side with hosting platform. Furthermore, it would only leave bad impression on potential brand evangelists.
Rule #7: Rewarding positive feedback with a thank you. Communication in this area does not only mean to respond only to negative comments, but also to the positive feedbacks. By responding to positive comments, marketers could bind consumers/users more strongly to brands. By means of positive communication between users and brands, an important step is certainly achieved in establishing continuous brands relation.
Review platforms and social shopping platforms do belong for certain to a very important element of a social media marketing strategy. In social media platforms marketers are so closed on sales process then elsewhere. Hence, it is quite essential to offer users in those platforms the possibility of an authentic direct dialog with respected brands. Thereby, company’s execs must pay head to be open and direct in their communications and they should respond to negative critics constructively, or in a deescalated way.
February 25th, 2009 by Arie
Original Article by David Nelles
Mirror, mirror on the wall, which one is the priciest blog of all? We’ve known now about the market value of the Top Blogs in Germany, but again the big U.S blogs set the benchmarks with their corresponding financial values. The 247wallst.com analysts have been determining the value of big U.S blogs at regular intervals. Douglas A. McIntyre provides insight on key figures used in the values calculation as followed:
To determine value, 24/7 Wall St. looked at unique visitor and pageviews information from several public sources including Alexa, Quantcast, Compete, and comScore. These services are often criticized for estimating website traffic too low and we have taken that into account to the extent possible. We also looked at audience measurements provided by the blogs themselves when it seemed credible. Our estimated CPMs for ads are based on the current display and text ad environment, the quality of ads at each blog, and the number of ads that it runs on the average pages. The CPM value assigned to each blog is based on all of the ads it runs on its typical pages. To determine margins, 24/7 looked at headcount when available, and estimated costs of operating and maintaining websites. More complex content platforms where assigned higher monthly costs. Current audience growth rates were taken into account. A site which has traffic doubling year-over-year was given a higher multiple than one which is losing traffic. Because not all blogs make money, multiples of revenue and operating income were used to assess value.
The results of the analysis are very impressive:
1. Gawker Properties — $170 million.
2. Huffington Post — $90 million.
3. The Drudge Report — $48 million.
4. Perez Hilton — $32 million.
5. Sugar, Inc — $27 million.
6. TechCrunch — $25 million.
7. MacRumors — $21 million.
8. SeekingAlpha — $11 million.
9. GigaOm — $9.5 million.
10. Politico — $8.7 million.
11. SmashingMagazine — $7.7 million.
12. SearchEngineLand — $4.5 million.
13. Boing Boing — $3.6 million.
14. ReadWriteWeb — $3.4 million.
15. SB Nation — $2.7 million.
16. Destructoid — $2.5 million.
17. Mashable — $2.5 million.
18. Alley Insider sites — $2.25 million.
19. /film — $2.1 million.
20. The Superficial Network — $2 million
21. Neatorama — $1.5 million.
22. Daily Kos — $2 million.
23. Talking Points Memo — $1.2 million.
24. VentureBeat — $1 million.
25. Wowowow.com — $1 million.
February 25th, 2009 by Arie
Original Article by David Nelles
What kind of myths in the context of social media marketing are actually NOT out there? Starting with the notion that social media marketing is for free, up to lack of measurability in this area. Often, one hears from marketers about the use of social media for the company’s benefits, which fit into the myths. I’ve summarized the Top 4 Myths in the area of social media marketing:
Myth #1: Social Media Marketing is cheap, if not free.
True is, social media tools are in most cases free for users. One can set up a free Wordpress Weblog, sign up for Twiter Account, and use Digg for social bookmarking or create a group in Facebook. However, it is essential for companies in social media to interact and get into dialogs with their customers in these free platforms. Meaning, companies must create a proper concept to begin with, and then integrate this concept into the existing company’s communications strategy. Thus, these efforts are tied to time and money. For example, a big advertising campaign in social media can cost up to six figures.
Myth #2: Social Media Marketing guarantees instant success.
Yes, it’s true; sometimes one can achieve huge marketing success in social media within the shortest period. One needs only one thing: Luck. Basically, time factor counts the most in the area of social media, since a sustainable and authentic dialog with consumers does not happen overnight. Marketers should not expect an immediate success of social media activities: corporate Twitter with more than 1000 followers or corporate weblog shows 15,000 unique users daily.
Myth #3: We do it best in-house.
If names like Robert Scoble or Jeremiah Oywang belong to circle of employees, then this argument could be justified. Otherwise such intern social media experts are really hard to come by in German big companies – of course with few exceptions. Thus, German companies do rely on support from external specialists for the concept and implementation of social media activities. Until companies enclose the first Heads of Social Media, like Scott Monty, as connector between marketing and company’s communication, more time would certainly be required.
Myth #4: Success in Social Media Marketing is not measurable.
If one takes the classical parameters of online marketing as scale, then this myth is reality. The success measurement of performance based marketing strategy doesn’t fit in the area of social media. But this doesn’t automatically mean that the success of social media is therefore immeasurable. A successful marketing in the realm of user generated media lies not in leads and sales, but in brand awareness and brand reputation. Meaning, the performance success of social media can be seen in conversation’s participation in weblogs, forums, communities and Twitter about brands as well as the tonality of statements.
February 24th, 2009 by Arie
Original Article by David Nelles
There are lot of ways for companies to represent themselves in social media, or rather how this media could be used to the advantage of the companies. Here are some examples in Germany: the Customer Community 60 years of VW, the employee’s Daimlerblog or the Customer Weblog Two For Fashion from Otto. Ford Germany tweets, Tchibo applies Crowdsourcing and BMW uses amongst others its own YouTube Channel. Hence, in Germany companies do exercise a quite broad application of social media platforms.
A company in the U.S has discovered another use of platform to its advantage. BestBuy sets out for unsparingly transparency in its new social media strategy. It’s called BestBuy Connect, which is a public social media aggregator for social media activities of the employees. BestBuy Connect summarizes all social media activities of employee’s participation through livestream.
Dawn Bryant explains this particular strategy of BestBuy as followed:
If people outside of this company could really feel the culture and drive that makes this place what it is, we can strengthen our reputation, goodwill, and ultimately grow our talent and grow the company. The beauty of that is that we didn’t need to create anything new, people are doing it and we don’t want to control it, we simply want to make it easier for the rest of the world to find the energy and human-ness”.
From a German perspective, this kind of proposition or rather the notion behind the project is somehow astonishing. In case BestBuy could hold its head high with this particular project, it would definitely be by far the most daring project in the area of social media I’ve ever encountered. What Lee Oden said about this social media initiative:
The objective of Best Buy Connect is to showcase the people, behavior and unedited perspectives/ideas of those who power Best Buy. It humanizes the brand, increases accessibility and fuels transparency. This can affect current and future customer perceptions as well as future employees.
Basically I agree with Lee’s opinion. From a consumer’s point of view there is nothing better than an unedited transparency. Yet, I do have my doubt, whether this kind of directness could be maintained overtime. Although German companies have become increasingly open to social media, this kind of project is still unthinkable. It would probably provide sleepless nights for the majority of company’s executives. Thus, BestBuy tries to minimize the danger in the use of Connect by employees through clearly defined Guidelines:
What You Should Never Disclose:
The Numbers: Non-public financial or operational information. This includes strategies, forecasts and most anything with a dollar-figure attached to it. If it’s not already public information, it’s not your job to make it so.
Promotions: Internal communication regarding drive times, promotional activities or inventory allocations. Including: advance ads, drive time playbooks, holiday strategies and Retail Insider editions.
Personal Information: Never share personal information regarding other employees or customers. See the Customer Information Policies for more information.
Legal Information: Anything to do with a legal issue, legal case, or attorneys.
Anything that belongs to someone else: Let them post their own stuff; you stick to posting your own creations. This includes illegal music sharing, copyrighted publications, and all logos or other images that are trademarked by Best Buy.
Confidential Information: Do not publish, post, or release information that is considered confidential or top secret.
What would happen to the employees, if they do not abide the guidelines:
Get fired (and it’s embarrassing to lose your job for something that’s so easily avoided)
Get Best Buy in legal trouble with customers or investors
Cost us the ability to get and keep customers
It’s a daring project from BestBuy, which I can’t imagine happening for the German market, well at least not at the moment. In Germany, it is already problematic for many companies to run a corporate weblog. Furthermore, this initiative of BestBuy is somehow light years away from the actual German social media reality.
Connect is only an element in the social media strategy of BestBuy. For CEO Brad Anderson, social media is the central factor in the whole company’s communication. BestBuy sets out international benchmark, particularly by its use of social media for the optimization in internal communication of 150.00 employees in over 1150 office branches. Beside employee’s forum and internal wiki, BestBuy has also its own social network.
Brad Anderson and his employees have recognized the company’s added value through social media. Not only that, BestBuy understands the use of social media for external communication or rather for marketing and thus, BestBuy also realizes how social media changes the life of a company. As commented by Peter Hirshberg:
I think Best Buy is a leading indicator what businesses will start to look like in the near future…
Hirschberg’s interview with Anderson in Zeitgeist 08
February 24th, 2009 by Arie
Original Article by David Nelles
Well, it’s nothing new about social media engagement in marketing and PR. Even in the area of CRM as well as election campaign, social media appears to be a very efficient medium. Now social media also provides protection against salmonella contamination. Recently, the FDA used Twitter, Youtube, MySpace and Blogs to call back potential contaminated foods products. The center of this particular recall lies entirely on the American’s eating habits: the peanut butter. Thus, the coverage of this recall was extremely immense. To this date, there were more than 2.100 recalled products. Richard Stapleton, the head of U.S Health and Human Services Department justified the use of social media in this case as followed:
When the [peanut product] recall issue broke, it immediately occurred to us to spread the message through social media, which we feel is a much better way than using traditional media…
By acting so, the U.S authorities are certainly going into the right direction. Social media has the coverage and the velocity to spread this kind of themes in a fast and efficient way for the respective target group. Hence, it has been shown quite often, how fast information travels in social media, be it the U.S Airways Crash Rescue or the fire of CCTV building in Beijing. Social media channels, like Twitter, are faster and they certainly do provide wider coverage in spreading the news than the classical media. Though, this doesn’t automatically mean that the classical media should be excluded in this kind of recall action. Most importantly is actually, that all available possibilities and strong coverage media should be thoroughly used. Furthermore, this includes of course the platforms of user generated media. From this point of view, the application of social media for epidemical containment is definitely useful. Rick Turoczy also shares positive view on using social media tools in this area:
Hopefully, this is just the first step – rapidly disseminating information – of many for incorporating Web 2.0 technologies into these agencies. With continued adoption, one can easily imagine the possible advances in protecting the populous from disease before it happens – like employing technology similar to Google’s flu trends combined with social graph information. And that’s only one example.
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”
Stream:
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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.
