360DigitalInfluence

Search Engine Strategies Conference returns to Chicago November 14 – 18. Marketers and SEO professionals will gather to discuss all topics related to search, social media and more. Interested in checking out the conference? Use priority code “OGV20” at registration for a special discount.

I recently had the privilege to interview Eric Ward, president, EricWard.com. Eric is an expert on content linking strategies and has been involved in online marketing since 1993. Eric has helped a countless number of companies create and execute linking strategies to increase the awareness of their web content.

Eric is on a panel at SES Chicago, “Social Media Linking and Promotion,” where he’ll discuss how social media usage has created opportunities (and frenzy) among link building and promotion. Here is an excerpt of what Eric had to say about social media linking and promotion:





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Last April, LinkedIn introduced the Company Follow feature in hopes of offering businesses an opportunity to further interact with their audience. By giving companies the ability to share profile updates, business developments and new job opportunities, how much value did this feature add to the site? Unlike social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, where you can make company pages and offer content as the business, LinkedIn still did not offer a way to directly communicate with its followers.

This was until early October when the site announced the launch of company status updates, giving businesses the ability to offer shareable, personalized content to its followers.

Because LinkedIn is a site focused on connecting professionals, this provides unique opportunities for companies to interact with their employees and customers. Whereas people primarily use Facebook and Twitter to interact with their friends, people are much more willing to seek out and interact with businesses and professionals on LinkedIn. In light of LinkedIn’s new feature, I have compiled my top suggestions on how businesses can best utilize company status updates.

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The new era of consumerism is one in which each and every consumer has a powerful voice. It is one that touches brands across the spectrum, from the families of food, beverage and personal care brands within multinational CPGs all the way to modern B2B technology companies who are in turn focusing on the new voice of the consumer and how this affects their lead generation and sales cycles.

As marketers working with social platforms we focus a lot on influencers and building influencer relationships. However this new social consumerism means that we need to turn our attention to looking at the empowered customer as the new powerhouse that must be considered and included in any advocacy program. This does not need to be a huge expensive operation and can start with something as simple as a thank you.

Here follows five easy things any company or brand can do today in taking the first step to growing a new breed of influential and empowered customer advocates, both on and offline:

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With various types of social media (Facebook, Twitter, message boards, blogs, private social communities, Youtube and other social sites) taking up an increasing portion of consumer attention, we wanted to understand just how relevant social content exposure is to changes in sales and brand perception.

Much of the work to date has looked at direct channel impacts; for example, do direct clicks from a social media site result in sales? This study of restaurant consumers attempts to understand the more complex factors that lead to consumer purchase and perception changes.

We released our final report yesterday at Pivot Conference 2011 in New York.   We found that in the real world, social content exposure - by itself and more broadly when combined with other types of media exposure such as out-of-home, PR or TV ads - is linked with 2-7x higher likelihood of consumption and actual spend increases. And, social content exposure alone is associated with the largest impact on week-to-week brand perception changes.

The infographic below the fold provides a summary of the results.  Here’s the full study:

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Of course. But not in the way retailers might think.

“Social Media Has Little Impact On Online Retail Purchases.” Um, really?
When an influential social media influencer posts a headline like that, their millions of followers in marketing have a collective pre-holiday freak out. Some studies actually back up the claim: a 2011 ForeSee report indicates that social media channels influenced only 5% of holiday shoppers, compared to promotional email (19%) and search (8%). Some studies even put the social channels number at 2%.
Sounds pretty clear. Shift your budget toward email promos, right?
Not so fast.

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Could social data replace your TV listings? New platform, SocialGuide hopes to do just that. The service aggregates comments about TV shows from Twitter and Facebook in real time and links them to its TV listings.

We all live and breath multi-tasking in front of the TV. According to Nielsen, 60 percent of us keep a second screen while watching TV. Many times, we’re sharing what we’re watching or having conversations with friends who are watching the same thing. SocialGuide collects all of those conversations in one spot, creating “Most Social Now” guides. You’ll never feel left out at the water cooler again. SocialGuide will become your one-stop-shop for identifying the most popular shows and even catching up on episodes you’ve missed.

Users can view comments from their friends, all viewers, those in their own region or add to the conversation about programs as they air.

Could this be more than just a way to find something to watch on TV?

The company hopes to license their social listings to cable and satellite TV companies to replace their current offerings. At the very least, networks will have a better view of the sentiment and engagement levels of their viewers. This will change the way that advertisers purchase specific programs and help networks crowdsource feedback.

We find user comments and reviews helpful in other settings such as products and service, so will we use them to determine what we fill our DVRs with?

"Proceed until apprehended," the rallying principle for social media experimentation & execution shared by Brandon Friedman, Director of Online Communications for the Department of Veterans Affairs captured the pioneering spirit of all of the panelists from the October 6^th Ogilvy Exchange: Can the Department of Defense realize the full power of social media? The experienced panel of practitioners — rounded out by Jack Holt, former Senior Strategist for emerging Media at the Department of Defense, and Lieutenant Commander Chris Servello, Director of Emerging Media for the US Navy’s Chief of Information — shared very practical tales from the trenches for applying social media to some of the government and DoD’s most difficult communications challenges.

Lessons & Links
Social greatness comes from the inside out - Jack Holt shared a number of helpful lessons, but thematically returned multiple times to something often overlooked — it is critical to embrace the principles of better interaction and connection internally before the promise of social media engagement with external constituents can be fully realized.

Even small engagements are important. If you visit the Department of Veterans Affairs remarkable Facebook page, you will see 1×1 questions and customer service being addressed in a very “public” forum. Take a read through the discussions and see if that changes your impressions of the Department.

There is power in speaking directly to your audiences — Last week, LCDR Servello’s group at Navy released a YouTube video of the new F-35 fighter landing on the USS Wasp. This brief video clip has racked up a remarkable 200k+ view on YouTube in a week of release with no traditional media aircover — overwhelming evidence that there is an audience for the stories the Navy has to tell. Social media empowers them to speak directly to their audience in the same venue where they can carry the story forward to their networks. continue reading

Now that we’re four weeks into the new fall television schedule and the hype has died down (and baseball is getting in the way of Glee), it would be interesting to know how much attention network executives are paying to Trending Topics on Twitter compared to Nielsen ratings. My guess is that one is becoming as important as the other.

People do all sorts of things when they watch TV, according to a recent report from Ericsson, like eat, talk to people in the room, and work. Rarely is television the only screen in the room.

Despite all the DVRs and Hulus and time shifting, Americans still have favorite television shows and wouldn’t dare miss them. It used to be imperative otherwise someone would spoil the surprises at the proverbial water cooler the next morning. But now, it can be spoiled in real time on social networks. In fact, some programs actually prompt viewers to tweet both subtly by showing small hashtags in the corner of the screen and obtrusively with live hosts begging “tweet me.” Twitter actually reported in May that “across networks and genres, when TV shows bring Twitter elements into the broadcast, there’s a direct and immediate increase in engagement on Twitter: anywhere from two to ten times more Tweets created while the shows air.” Ask and you shall receive.

And it’s not just Twitter driving the television viewers to talk. There are two fairly well known apps that try to make television more social by enabling you to share what you’re watching (both with horrible names). GetGlue is an app that basically serves as FourSquare for television shows. IntoNow from Yahoo! (which just launched a partnership with Facebook) has much fancier technology that uses your phone to listen to your television and then reports what you are watching. Like GetGlue, it has a check in feature but it also makes recommendations for similar shows that you might like based on what you’re watching. That’s cool, but it still requires me to go looking rather than disrupting what I’m doing like most social media platforms in general.

So does television need to become more disruptive? Not for me. Does it need to be more social? Maybe. Secretly, I would like to know what my friends are watching. That’s a connection and something to talk about. It’s fun to say: “I love that show too!” The Media Lab at MIT has been working on a cool remote control that could show that. If a brand could bring it to me, I’d take it too. In the meantime I’m fine using Twitter to find out what Snooki is doing. I should be working anyway.

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”

[Stanford commencement speech, June 2005]

FOUND! Lost script for Steve Job’s dramatic unveiling of “Social Media” service.

The Keynote Address he never gave. Origins uncertain.
Circa 1977. Reed College Auditorium.*

(The following is purely fictional and intended to honor the brilliance and vision of Steve Jobs)

[Notes to self:]
STEVE:
Get directions to auditorium from Woz.
Fill up bike tires.
Replace bulb on Carousel before conference!
Wear that black turtleneck from mom?

SCRIPT:

[LIGHTS DOWN]

[ENTRANCE MUSIC: John Lennon's Imagine, or maybe the Who's Baba O'Riley?] [note to self: invent digital music playback device]

Welcome. I’m Steve Jobs from Apple Computer. Maybe you’ve heard of us.

[wait a full minute for dramatic impact. Walk slowly.]

This is a day we’ve been looking forward to for a long time. continue reading

Events season is well underway and in two weeks time we will present an invitation-only breakfast roundtable at this year’s PivotCon. This is a two-day event, October 17-18, 2011, for brand managers who seek to bridge the gap between their brand and the rising Social Consumer, the topic at the heart of this year’s event.

Ogilvy’s John Bell, our Global Managing Director of the Digital Influence practice, will host a breakfast on Tuesday October 18th, entitled True Social Stories: An Insider’s Look at Transforming the Enterprise.

Taking place from 8:00am at the Crowne Plaza Times Square, this fireside chat will look at how marketers can look at the social transformation of their business, focusing on questions including designing an effective social infrastructure; integrating social media so that it both enhances both reputation and delivers customer value and using social media to create strong brand advocates among employees.

John will host an intimate gathering of panelists from blue chip companies including IBM, Unilever and American Express who will share their success in these areas — what they did, how they overcame obstacles and what’s next for them.

Do you have questions for our panel? We would love to hear more from you here, so we can include them in our session. Post them here, or send to me @gemsie before October 18th.