This is a “blog platform” - a collaborative group blog authored by 360° Digital Influence Blog team members throughout Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide. This is a conversation we invite our colleagues, clients, competitors and anyone interested in the strategic use of social media, word of mouth marketing and digital innovation to join. Marketing and communications are changing and we have a lot of folks with insights, ideas and opinions about how this will go down.

More Than a Blog

It’s more than a group blog. We actually aggregate our Twitter feeds, video and pics, blog network, portfolio of best practices, the events we will attend and job openings here. It’s our platform - a jumping off place - our homebase for conversation. So, jump in, the water’s fine.

About 360° Digital Influence

Our 360° Digital Influence team is a global, word of mouth marketing discipline that uses social media, digital marketing and new technologies to sell and build brands. We have a methodology for identifying and engaging influencers  - important bloggers, online community members, traditional influencers and a new breed of influencer that looks like you and me. Successful social media programs are more than just connecting with the most popular bloggers. We also activate networks of people – social networks, groups, communities and affinity groups online - to participate, share and recommend products, services and issues.

By creating engaging experiences and inviting influencers and networks to participate in a way they find valuable, we can amplify the most trusted form of communication today – word of mouth.

What do we do for clients?
We create comprehensive social media-based digital strategy for clients who want to engage customers or constituents in direct conversation. We both plan programs, and we design and build. While our programs are custom planned for each client there are 4 fundamental parts to every Digital Influence Strategy:

Listening
Planning
Engagement
Measurement

Ogilvy PR's 360 Digital Influence social media team

Listening
All of our programs start by listening to what people are saying about a brand, an issue or a set of brand-related topics in blogs, message boards, social networks and review sites online. This intelligence is key to deploying any program online and can provide invaluable insight into how consumers think and talk about brands and issues.

We have three listening programs:

• Conversation Map
• Live Listening Post
• Crisis Monitoring

Planning
Like the tradition of strategic planning in communications firms and connections planning in advertising agencies, we have a process for planning influencer and word of mouth programs. Based upon listening to conversations online, we plan an engagement strategy – how we can authentically involve people online so they will “care to share” with their peers and spread word of mouth. Engagement plans focus on providing value to users and inviting them in to participate with a brand or organization in some way. Engagement plans are highly creative yet firmly based in strategy.

The biggest step in the planning process is our Influencer Audit and Network Mapping. Influencer Audits identify the people with the most potential influence for our engagement program. These can be high profile bloggers, individual mom bloggers somewhere in the world, or proam (part professional, part amateur) experts in a B2B market. Anyone can be an influencer given certain context. We look well beyond the obvious. Network Maps do the same thing at the social network and community level – what affinity groups exist that we can connect with? Both the Influencers and the Networks are mapped to specific engagement plans. We not only identify who is important but how we will reach and involve them online.

Search has changed the way everyone finds information online. Every Digital Influence Strategy includes a Visibility Plan that combines SEO with an overall content plan including multimedia (audio, video, images) distribution. The goal is to make our content and supportive third-party content as visible as possible via search engines.

Engagement
Engagement programs all involve users in different ways from very simple and superficial participation to the deepest levels of engagement in co-creation and community. “Engagement” describes our ability to hold a conversation with people, invite them to participate with a brand or issue, motivate them to co-create a product, service or experience. It’s what sparks sustained word of mouth.

Some engagement programs solicit and make use of consumer generated media (cgm). Many require the development of a Web 2.0 web experience specifically designed to be shareable and encourage participation (vs. simply deliver content).
The best engagement programs are based upon our overall digital influence strategy to meet a stated communication goal or business objective.

We recently announced Insider Circle, a proprietary Influencer Relationship Management (IRM) engagement program.  Insider Circle provides social media influencers with exclusive content and offers from brands.

Engagement programs can include:

• Blogger & Influencer Engagement Programs
• Community Design & Management
• Experience Design & Development
• Co-creation Program Design & Management
• Live Community Events
• Viral Program Cultivation
• Social Network Activation
• Search Reputation Management
• Digital Crisis Management

Contact John Bell, Managing Director,  for more information:

john.bell@ogilvypr.com

Twitter: jbell99

Phone: 202.729.4166