360DigitalInfluence

(Part 2? Yeah, check out Part 1.)

In case you missed it, Ron Paul supporters, ASU students, and VFX artists were among those that joined the fray since my last post. The variations continue to proliferate further down the tail, satirizing - and entertaining - more niche audiences. What does this add up to? Segmentation.

While I easily enjoy Sh*t ASU Students Say even though I’m not a Sun Devil - and haven’t even been to the campus - the video resonates better with those who were. Beyond that, the video’s arc is more relatable to students who enrolled in the past 5-10 years and drink socially - perhaps even deeper for students who were in the Greek system and enjoy campus takeout.

The point is, there’s a clear difference in the type of viewer who’s going to watch the video halfway through for a chuckle and a viewer who’s going to share across social networks. Those pearls of info are demographic, psychographic, and behavioristic qualities - in some ways digital has obscured their importance.

As segmented as some brands' social media programs get these days.

On-platform segmentation

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First of all, this isn’t new. We have had a social media-related ethics code in place since 2005. At that time, it was the Blogger Outreach Code of Ethics. It helped us decide what was ‘best-practice’ and what wasn’t. These are our ethics not something handed down through culture or a governing body. We simply believed that social media’s true power was grounded in trust — trust between bloggers and their readers; between brands and their followers; between marketers and customers.

The updated code covers more contemporary circumstances. Facebook for one. We have learned that there are principles that can guide our behavior in community management as well as influencer management. We have made a choice to embrace the principles of clear disclosure in our work everywhere even while only one consumer protection body that I know of, the FTC, requires it.

I wanted to share with you and certainly ask for input and feedback. This is a living document and can hardly ever be called “done.” Still, it will guide our global teams as we continue to design and execute complex, multi-market programs around the world. Check it out:

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Something I’ve been mulling over for a while was solidified over the course of several recent conversations with my colleague, Alan Kercinik.

It has to do with the way brands traditionally launch a product/service versus a more optimal approach that can take better advantage of earned conversations.  At the heart of the discussion is what we call the Conversation Chasm.

And while not new thinking - I’ve seen people write about the topic and a Google search reveals several mentions of the term, including a rough version of a post on my personal blog about a month ago - I do think it’s worth revisiting the topic.

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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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Happy Friday!

Yesterday in Lisbon at the Global Sabre Awards, Ogilvy’s 360 Digital Influence team won the THE GLOBAL SABRE FOR OUTSTANDING DIGITAL/SOCIAL CONSULTANCY! Winning what we see as the top honor in the communications field is hugely uplifting to our team around the world. Receiving this honor from Paul Holmes organization means a lot to us. He is the one thought leader in the communications field that actually takes time to spend with all of the agencies out there to really learn what they are doing - year after year.

From day one (7 years ago) we focused our attention on being the best strategists and practitioners in social media not on blowing our own horn, so-to-speak. We wanted to develop creative and effective ways to solve real business problems via an emerging discipline. We also believe in the power of social media to transform marketing and communications organizations.  So, we applied that to our own organization.

We  focused our energy on growing the largest global network of social media strategists and practitioners. We see change all over the world albeit differently in every market. My recent posts on my own blog about Russia are a good example of that.

The true power of  social media comes through a fully integrated model. Not simply where we combine owned, earned and paid media for the compound effect it delivers but connecting new disciplines like shopper marketing, CRM, crisis management, and advertising with social media. This means breaking down the barriers between disciplines and forming new teams and new ways to work.

We are honored to win this award.

image by John Moore a.k.a. @BrandAutopsy

On a panel last week for a WOMMA event at Chicago’s Social Media Week, I had the pleasure of sitting with Keller Fay’s Ed Keller, Brains on Fire’s Robbin Phillips, and Social Media Today’s Robin Carey to discuss social media measurement under the heading of “Is WOM worth it?”.  In the context of that discussion, I talked about the siren song of social media counting (vs. measurement) and the trap that we too-frequently see: social media “cases” that end by rattling off 20 different social media metrics that do not track to a meaningful business metric.  To illustrate, I mentioned that no CEO is not banging the table looking for more tweets (which BrandAutopsy riffed into the above), he’s looking for shareholder value - sales, market share, preference, purchase intent and a legion of other measures that can not be ripped off the back of Facebook insights.

So, with that in mind and the voices of my esteemed co-presenters in my head, I put together a list of 4 potential measurement pitfalls that can kill your social media measurement program before the horses have left the stable:

1) Setting the wrong objectives.  This sounds silly, but often an activity or “client brief” will be mis-translated as an objective.  For example, “run a high-impact event” is an activity, but “increase consideration and share of voice among X audience” attending that event is an objective.  TEST: Can it be measured?  If the answer is no, it isn’t an objective.

2) Determine the meaningful (vs. diagnostic) KPIs before you begin:  Chances are, meaningful KPI’s will require measurement techniques beyond simple, spoon-fed social media metrics like likes and shares.  Take a walk through our Conversation Impact(TM) white paper to determine how to craft meaningful Reach, Preference, or Action KPIs.

3) Find where your audience is interacting on a relevant topic: Yes, Facebook has 800 million people and likely some of them are in your desired “audience” but they may not be on Facebook to discuss their mother’s prescriptions or whatever topic that you may have value to add.  The important second step to “going where the party” is already happening is not just determining where your audience is, but how they are using social media for different things - where do they share recipes vs. look for snowboot recommendations?  While they could light up for FB, Twitter, Flickr, etc it will be critical to understand the relevance of those platforms to their lives to put together a measurable strategy.

4) Plan to measure: If you put together a measurement plan after you’ve already begun, you have lost your chance at a baseline and being able to know the true impact of your efforts.  Ed Keller admitted that he often gets calls halfway through campaigns at which point, there are limitations on the types of measurements that can be taken.  The baseline is going to be the key to your “winning” metric such as “Increased purchase consideration by 45%”.  That is the type of metric that CEOs do care about and will keep your social media efforts on strategy and in budget in 2012.

Personal branding has taken kind of a bad rap over the past few years. As the overglorified “social media rockstar” label has been brought to life by people skilled in hype and little else, the idea of building a personal brand can seem inherently egotistical. Yet what if someone were to suggest that only egotistical companies need to worry about building a brand? Of course that would be silly, yet there is a double standard when it comes to individuals.

In many cases, there is good reason for this. Most companies are afraid to get employees who are not dedicated to doing their job, but rather focused on self promotion to their own ends. Yet the companies that manage to create an atmosphere where employees can build their personal brand and explore their interests are the ones who will win in the long term because they will have the employees that everyone wants to work with - and be better able to hold on to their best people and not drive them away to look for jobs elsewhere.

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Has mobile planning been little more than an afterthought for your brand’s or your client’s overall communications strategy? Or, does mobile live as a silo, distinct from your larger communications and outreach plans?  In 2011, mobile reached a point of critical mass with over 75 million of U.S. consumers owning smart phones - and the number continues to grow rapidly. We have passed the point in the industry where mobile can be put on the back burner, to be sprinkled on like magic fairy dust in the form of an afterthought app, and have entered the era when mobile needs to be top of mind.

As part of our “Brand Planning 2012″ series this week, Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence sat down with Martin Lange, Executive Marketing Director of Mobile@Ogilvy and learned, among other insights,  his top five steps for brands to integrate mobile into their marketing and communications strategies.

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With those summer whites put away, most brands are now in the midst of planning for 2012. As well as brainstorming big ideas, this involves looking at which marketing activities worked well and those that were not so effective to decide the exact mix for the next year. Which for many includes looking social media. 2011 has certainly been a break out year for social as brands continue to move up the social media adoption curve from the late adopters to brands where social is being applied across programs and being operationalized regionally.

Our series of posts this week casts a gaze ahead for those planning the next 12 months and look at where social media fits in the mix. We aim to provide practical takeaways as well as predictions for the platforms that should feature in your  planning, starting with 5 key considerations for social media when in those ideas meetings over the next few weeks.

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