360DigitalInfluence

It has taken the whole weekend to completely digest all the amazing learnings we gathered last week at the WOMMA summit. The WOMMA tagline is “Creating Talkable Brands Next and Best Practices” and they totally delivered. Great learnings from great brands like Mattel, Sprint, Intel, Unilever and Sephora just to name a few. But the most talked about sessions were definitely the keynote addresses that carried four themes that will help us navigate the social media industry over the next year.

The summit opened with Sally Hogshead teaching us all what it means to Fascinate – the theme of her recently released book of the same name. One key theme was how brands need to stand out in our cluttered and noisy world. It doesn’t matter if you’re the best, if no one knows about it. And with an average attention span of only nine seconds, consumers will remember the brands that persuade them in the most social ways. The brands with the best word of mouth reputations will stand out and others will fade into the background. Later in the conference, there was a panel discussion of legal counsel from Coca-Cola and American Express, and I was reminded that both of those brands have been able to stand out with plenty of reason to be risk averse.“

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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.

Fresh off the conference floor from this year’s School of WOM, it’s difficult not to feel conflicted as a digital communications professional. However, I’ve come to realize the true value of most conferences isn’t in the “Ah-ha!” moments, but rather the reflection. I don’t ever want to walk away from a gathering like WOMMA’s yearly event with notebook full of answers. If I did, I could have easily learned those lessons in a book or a blog post. A valuable conference in this industry is one that spurs discourse, rumination, and plenty of brow-furrowing.

What concepts stirred the pot during the 2.5-day event? Find out after the jump.

Crayola provided crayons so we could show off our artistic abilities (or lack thereof)

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The Word of Mouth Marketing Association’s School of WOM has been a wonderful combination of hands on skills development with leading practitioners,  inspiring keynotes, and a new element this year - questioning some of the “obvious” things about our profession that might not even be true, much less obvious.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Duncan Watts, author of extensive previous exploration on human social networks and the new book Everything Is Obvious Once You Know the Answer.  His new book provides compelling information for why we should question our human intuition and “common sense” as there are too many cases in which that “common sense” could reverse justify any number of outcomes.  Being people ourselves gives us a false sense of understanding how our fellow humans work.  As Duncan said yesterday, a physicist would never put himself in the shoes of an electron and imagine which way it would go, yet we in the (practical application of the) social sciences do this on a regular basis. continue reading

Attendance is up this year at the upcoming WOMMA Summit. I attribute that to a great agenda and teh coming of age of social media in major brands. I serve on the board as past president and you would expect me to be bullish about the organization and its events. I am. No apologies there. But I could not endorse something that had a good chance of disappointing people. That would be bad.

You can see the full agenda here (IBM, Harrah’s, Motorola, HP, Ben & Jerry’s, Unilever and more).

There are two conversatiuons that will happen at the Summit that I am looking forward to sparking and participating in…

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If you’re wondering who owns the eyebrow-lift-inducing Facebook vanity “hotasianbuns”, look no further than Chicago’s own Wow Bao.  Wow Bao is a concept of Lettuce Entertain You, but it has a social media voice and plan of action all its own.   Geoff Alexander, Wow Bao’s Managing Partner joined me on a panel at WOMMA’s School of WOM and shared enough of those elements to make me want to learn more.  The personality and choices that Wow Bao has made qualify it as a Brand Worthy of a Weekend (BWOW) - a brand for whom there is a passionate set of fans that would give up a weekend with their families to come “immerse” themselves in the brand - learn more, meet the people behind the brand, and want to have a hand in crafting the brand’s future.  So what’s Wow Bao’s recipe for a talkable, weekend-worthy brand? continue reading

Day one at the WOMMA School of WOM, and a key theme has already emerged … Advocacy.

It’s on the tips of everyone’s tongues - mentioned in every session yesterday.  What I took away …

• Advocacy is a marathon, not a sprint.  Takes true commitment.
• Scaling advocacy efforts are crucial to driving sustained WOM.
  
• Share everything that’s great about your organization (and even, in certain circumstances, what’s not so great) - the honesty and transparency will engender trust.
• You gain vocal advocates by focusing on people’s hearts/minds versus their eyeballs/ears.
• Desire + Direction = Change (per Dan Heath).  The path to success is to stir up that emotional desire ->  give people clear motivation to advocate on your behalf -> make the behavior visible to make it contagious.
  

Let’s see what day two brings …

Getting jazzed for the WOMMA School of WOM confab in Chicago (my hometown) on May 24-26.  A few thoughts and tips …

Sessions

The conference is packed with great sessions.  I’m seriously impressed.  A few I’m personally keen to catch …

• Jeffrey Hayzlett of Kodak speaks on Monday from 2pm-3pm.  You might know that Hayzlett recently announced he’s leaving Kodak, which could make for a very candid session.
• Also on Monday (4:30pm-5:15pm) , Pete Blackshaw and John Stieger lead a session on P&G’s customer relations efforts as a spark for WOM.  I’ve never met Blackshaw, and am looking forward to doing so.
• On Tuesday morning, Sarah Hofstetter and Roberto Mastracola deliver a case study on Coke Zero.  When Coke speaks, I listen.
• The Tuesday keynote is from Andrew Mason, CEO of Groupon.  These guys are darlings of the Chicago scene.  Very eager to hear what he has to say.
• Ogilvy’s very own Kaitlyn Wilkins will join Ford’s Marisa Bradley on Tuesday to talk about building a more social Ford Motor Company.  This is a topic near and dear to my heart; and knowing how passionate Kaitlyn is about her Ford work, I’m sure it’ll be a great discussion.
• Jason Anello of Yahoo will lead a session called “How 20 Purple Bikes Generated 20 Million Impressions.”  I’m a big Y! fan, and I’m really looking forward to hearing Jason deliver an overview of this program.

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Last week, I attended a webinar from WOMMA where WOMMA General Counsel Tony DiResta discussed the importance of disclosure across social media. This conversation normally focuses on brand-blogger relationships but the same best practices and government guidelines may also affect your Facebook Page.

Here are five things to keep in mind about your brand and disclosure on Facebook.

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With so many great insights and case studies at this year’s WOMMA in Las Vegas, it’s hard to sum it all up in one post. We saw a number of trends in insights, bringing to light the best practices from top WOM marketers.

Many of these best practices were incorporated in the Team Aquaphor campaign with Active Marketing and Beiersdorf (leading to it’s success).

Active Marketing Group works w/ teams of ambassadors (or their list of influencers) who apply for specific brand engagements/positions made available through Active Marketing Group. Featured at WOMMA was a campaign to create word of mouth around Aquaphor with Beiersdorf.

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