As someone who works agency-side I started thinking specifically about what the implications of Paul’s observations of human social behaviour are for brands, especially those taking part in the social web. Intriguingly, it suggests that social media is a customer retention, not a customer acquisition, game.

Social ties

In his presentation, Paul discusses the established theory that human beings develop two types of connections – strong ties and weak ties. Strong ties are those people closest to us, such as best friends and family. Most people are unlikely to have more than six strong ties in their lives. Our weak ties are those we are less close to but might be in infrequent contact with. It is believed that the limits of the human brain mean that the average person is not capable of staying up to date with more than 150 weak ties at any one time. We might know many more people but we simply can’t stay alert to them all.

What does this mean for brands in social media?

The implications for those who work in marketing are quite profound, but also incredibly useful. It opens up a new level of detail, and in some ways provides a reality-check, to the all-encompassing notion of engagement. It suggests there are limits to just how engaged with people a brand can be. Realistically, a brand is not going to make it into someone’s group of strong ties and should not try to do so. This group is incredibly small and reserved for those closest to us.

Equally, it means that judging Facebook success, for instance, by the amount of people who ‘like’ your brand is flawed. For many of the people who have ‘liked’ you, it’s highly possible that your brand still falls outside the 150 weak ties that they can keep up with. The social web has enabled us to expand our list of connections – people don’t limit their list of Facebook friends to 150 after all – but the human brain is no more able than it was before to deal with them all. And, significantly, Paul points out that Facebook users currently have 130 friends on average.

The limits of our ability to maintain any more than 150 weak ties also brings into question the value of campaigns that require you to ‘like’ the brand in order to take part, such as competitions. Here, you are creating one-off relationships that will be difficult to build upon.

Instead, it seems a more realistic, and strategically astute, decision to focus digital marketing efforts on making sure your brand is a valued weak tie in people’s social networks. This is even more sensible when we consider that if we can only ever handle 150 weak ties at any one time then each person’s ties are likely to be at capacity already. A quick look at the brands I have ‘liked’ on Facebook suggests that, other than those that have a work-related purpose, most are ones that I already had a connection with outside of my use of that site. It wasn’t their presence on Facebook that established the connection; the connection already existed.

What should the strategy be?

The suggestion here, as made by Paul in his presentation, is that social networks don’t actually enable the creation of additional connections, they just make our existing connections more visible to us. This of course somewhat belies the common marketing notion that there are tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people just waiting to fit your brand into their lives. In fact, for most people, their lives are likely to be full already.

The possible outcome of this, somewhat controversially, is that much of a brand’s effort in a social media space such as Facebook should be given to maintaining existing ties rather than establishing new ones; to forging deeper relationships with those people who are already positively predisposed to your brand.

Of course, social media activity is still likely to result in your brand creating some new weak ties – after all, our social ties are not static, permanent connections. That said, if it is predominantly a retention game then the likelihood is that you’ll have to be interesting enough to bump out an existing connection in order to enter someone’s network of weak ties. And of course, if you’re not proving to be interesting enough yourself then you might be the one that gets bumped out.

If all this is true then we are indeed in a relationship-based customer retention game, not a numbers-based acquisition one.

You can find Paul Adams’ original presentation, which provided the inspiration for this post, here. It’s lengthy, but in a good way, and comes wholly recommended.

Post from: Connect

Does human behaviour make the social web a retention game for brands?

One of the recurring themes for us at iCrossing and our clients over the past year or so has been the way that the social web is should be thought of as a business issue first and marketing issue second.

An article about libel on The Lawyer website called “Virtual veractity” reinforces the importance of thinking outside of the marketing box when it comes to social media. It outlines the libel case against Simon Singh by the British Chiropractic Association and how in a number of important ways social media influenced the trial, from scrutiny and public discussion of the details by a significant online community of interest to the fact that “those following the case on the internet were able to demolish the central element of the British Chiropractic Association’s (BCA’s) case long before it was able to reach the courtroom.”

Image: If social media is re-writing the law, what does it mean for business? ((cc) Eflon)

We have seen the social web begin to change the way that politicians campaign and make laws, how the fourth estate, the media operates, and recently, with this case and in the de facto destruction of super-injunctions we are seeing the influence of a connected citizenry having a direct influence on how our legal system works.

The Lawyer article calls this “wiki litigation”.

When a business engages in planning its strategy, it often uses a variation of the PEST model: looking at how Political, Economic, Social and Technological environment is likely to change in the next five to ten years. The “S” in this analysis represents how demographic and cultural shifts (for instance an aging population or attitudes to corporations), but the social web should be considered in each of these areas.

Obviously, the considerations would be specific to a particular business, but here are some off-the-cuff generalisms by way of an example.

• Political: Will a connected electorate mean a change in the voting system, more direct democracy? Will that mean more or less regulation? Will this make politicians less prone to fad campaigns from Fleet Street, or more susceptible to single-issue campaigns from a web-mobilised electorate?
• Economic: Will social finance models like Zopa begin to change how the way you sell your product works? Does the acceleration of business models as edge ideas become mainstream (John Hagel and John Seely Brown’s Push The Power of Pull is the definitive work on this effect) mean your market will be more volatile, fragmented?
• Social: How will attitudes to the data you hold about customers change? How will the spread of digital literacy change the relationship between employees and their employers? How will people think of transparency? What will the tolerance of response time to customer service via web services be? Will your customers think less of you if they cannot access your services or information in the social networks they use?
• Technology: Before we even get to mobile web access and geo-location as strong emerging technologies, existing social computing tools like wikis, Twitter (and its ilk) and other ways of sharing and collaborating are establishing themselves as alternative ways to get things done in organisations.

For a long time the question that was most frequently asked about the web was “what is the ROI?” It is becoming very clear, as the social web disrupts so many aspects of our society that the question should be “what is the business case for social media?” Even more, “what could the business implications be of ignoring social media?”

Post from: Connect

PEST test your business for social?: Wiki litigation and the social web’s wider effects

A while ago he wrote a post in the official forum, which describes the three iCrossing Social Media principles (Understand, be useful, be live) pretty well:

“I found myself realizing that for me to have any concept of how to interact with the community and know what they might want / what they find appropriate, I need to immerse myself in that world and live it for a while.”

And further:

“What you’ve seen happen with the marketing and presentation of NIN over the last years is a direct result of living next to you, listening to you, consuming with you and interacting with you. Directly. There’s no handlers or PR people here, it’s me and my guys – that’s it.”

So what did he do after listening /understanding? He released two records (Ghosts I-IV and The Slip) under the Creative Common License and later also brought limited editions of those to the record store (as fans were requesting it). Social Media was used to increase the awareness and find new potential buyers.

Remixes of his songs were always a big part of the Nine Inch Nails project. That’s why he developed a vivid community where people could download the original multitracks of many of his songs, remix them and upload it to the official website. Social Media was also used to increase the interaction rate of fans and brand loyalty.

Last month he also started a new band: “How to destroy angels”. And again, he released the first EP under Creative Common license. This EP seems to be yet another kind of social media experiment, combining very different sounds and styles (within his genre) with a female voice. So he listens again and will use his fans feedback to define the sound on the first full length record of his new band. Social media as a feedback channel for product development.

But also for him as a public person being open and engaged in Social Media is not easy and solely beneficial. During the time of his post, he was annoyed of people massively spamming him. So he decided to leave parts of social media landscape.

I think these are really great examples of someone understanding his fans and finding ways to help them. We will see if the music industry will adapt his approach.

Do you know any other bands acting similar as Nine Inch Nails?

Post from: Connect

Why Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails) truly understands the value of Social Media

One of my favourite sectors to glean up to the minute information from is the music industry. That may sound like a barren pit to mine as the music biz’s archaic approach to digital is well documented and in the main considered to be one of the key factors in the fall of that industry of recent years.

This conception holds weight, but only if you consider the music industry to be limited to a small pool of corporations. The music industry is fractured and should not be grouped into one single entity when it comes to digital.

Yes, there are the giant monolithic majors that on the face of it appear to be laggards when it comes to digital (although I’m sure behind the scenes it is not so clear cut), but then there are also independents and unsigned artists who consistently impress me with their rapid uptake and integration of the latest digital developments. I often see practical implications of the newest platforms and customisations of existing ones first in this sector. It has always been a great resource for me as an analyst and a superb observation point / testing ground for learning how users react to and engage with the latest developments.

I personally regularly test developments through music related content as it is a topic that recurrently stimulates participation (enabling a test with real people). These learnings give me the confidence to advise clients how it may play out for them with a degree of practical experience under my belt (for example Facebook Pages iterations and Twitter best practice).

A music industry practical implementation that caught my eye recently came courtesy of a friend of mine recommending a fantastic looking aggregation service called Flavors.me (cheeky link for you David – http://flavors.me/davehaynes). It is a service that lets you create a light-weight but super slick website in less than 5 minutes. Perhaps that in itself doesn’t sound that innovative, but here the beauty is in the detail. I would say from my early trials this is already proving to be my current favourite aggregation service (aka Lifesteaming, Brandcasting), and one that I think will gain considerable penetration in the market if it continues on its current course.

Before I go into the ins and outs of Flavors.me it is probably worth explaining why someone would want use an aggregation site in the first place. As people’s tenure on the web increases, services get much more user friendly, and more attain that critical mass of users which makes individuals feel they are missing out if they aren’t participating too; most individuals have found themselves managing several web presences at once, be it Twitter, Facebook, Flickr or YouTube accounts.

They are usually all topically inter-connected and make most sense when viewed in totality, but in their fragmented form they don’t give visitors a holistic view of your digital activities. Kind of like trying to complete a jigsaw and finding there are missing pieces (had to slip a lame analogy in at some point, I do work in social media you know). Aggregating enables you to wrap all your content into one feed and consequently unify your presence online. It’s the perfect way to create a cohesive online identity.

Building your own website to aggregate content from your distributed presence can actually be quite a challenge and adds additional tasks to your digital to do list. I checked out a number of different vendors that offer this service, but most either required too much html knowledge from me, lacked the aesthetic ooof I desired, or constrained me into a very specific set-up (which didn’t suit my needs). This is where Flavors.me comes to the rescue. It solves the problems listed above and enables users to pipe all of their social services into one beautiful, super-customizable site.

One of Flavors.me big plus points is how user friendly it proved to be. To make a professional looking site there really is no need to have attained developer-level skills or understand a platform such as Wordpress and its coding inside out. A basic version of Flavors.me is available for free (without time restrictions).

This version is supposed to provide a taste of what Flavors has to offer, including essential fonts and layouts, customisable colour palettes, basic statistics, and up to four connections with RSS feeds and social services. You connect the different accounts you have on the web by simply authorizing Flavors.me to access the data of your accounts via oAuth. The same settings panel also lets you easily access the different customization settings like layouts, backgrounds, colours and fonts.

The full version promises to give users a more premium Flavors.me experience, with an extended font collection, beta layouts, a contact form, detailed statistics, metadata and unlimited services. I also particularly liked the ability to use your own custom domain (and actually buy one straight during the sign up process if you don’t have one) and get access to more detailed statistics about the traffic and visitors to your page.

To summarise, if you’re looking for an easy way to get a useful and desirable web-presence without the head-ache then look no further than Flavors.me. I see it being adopted by individuals and brands, as is a good, quick, slick alternative to more complex web builds.

Read more about the latest news on their blog http://blog.flavors.me or check out the video on their homepage (http://flavors.me/) for some inspiration.

Post from: Connect

Aggre-great

“When employees log in to their computers, we ask them to look at a picture of a random employee and then ask them how well they know that person — the options include “say hi in the halls,” “hang out outside of work,” and “we’re going to be longtime friends.” We’re starting to keep track of the number and strength of cross-departmental relationships — and we’re planning a class on the topic. My hope is that we can have more employees who plan to be close friends.”

Setting aside how sharing this personal information may make you feel this is a very interesting exercise in revealing the implicit social network that exists in a business. Wherever you work there is generally some sort of organogram or chart that shows who manages who and explains how the business is structured in theory. Practical experience tells us that this isn’t actually a map that enables us to understand how to get things done. Personal relationships exist alongside implicit knowledge of who is the ‘right’ person to speak to in a given situation, regardless of explicit job title or status.

Tony Hsieh describes one approach in the quote above but we could try and go further by mapping this network, to give us an insight into the strength of relationships between individuals. I’d suggest setting up a means to record this information along the lines of the illustration below:

There are three questions to answer, but the input the user can give as an answer is based on a slider to indicate a degree of preference between two opposing points. This will allow us to gain far greater insight into the strength and type of connections between nodes in the network when we come to map it out.

The first question will give us an insight into the bonds of friendship within the organisation. Do people in the same teams generally see each other as friends? Are there teams where the working relationship is more professional than personal? If so, why? Is this a good or a bad thing?

This leads to the second question which establishes where collaboration is occurring. Which people across which teams work most closely with each other? Where this occurs do their managers work as closely as the people who they manage? Where are there links of friendship that cross departments that otherwise do not work closely with each other? Do these people fill structural holes?

The final question is a trickier one as here we want to reveal people’s preference for working with other individuals. Phrasing this is rather awkward as I expect people to be biased toward saying they are indifferent to working with someone rather than saying they absolutely would rather not work with that individual. Depending on responses we could always weight this scale accordingly.

There are many, many insights to be drawn from this data. However, key to this project working is setting the parameters of what the data is going to be used for ahead of collecting the information as well as guaranteeing that consultation will occur should other uses be thought of subsequently. Hopefully you work in an organisation with a high level of trust so people will see this as a benefit to efficient operation rather than as an invasive exercise.

I think the results produced would be a fascinating look at the internal dynamics of a business, particularly if the project is re-run at regular intervals. Time would be an element to add to the visualisation and allow changes in connections to be demonstrated alongside the attrition and addition of staff.

You can read a description of social network analysis here on Wikipedia’s page.

Let me know in the comments below whether there are any useful questions you can think of adding to a little app like the one illustrated above that would reveal something we could map out.

Post from: Connect

Revealing implicit social networks

An interesting study by Burson Marsteller based on some of the world’s larger brands (in this case  Fortune 100 companies) reveals the social media platform selection and useage types that these brands are currently active in. Here’s the key takeaways (via i-Strategy)…

• 79% of the Fortune 100 are present and listening, using at least of one of the main social platforms to communicate with their customers.
• 20% of Companies are using all four of the main social technologies (Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and Blogs)
• 82% of the Fortune 100 update and engage with customers on their Twitter account
• Fortune 100 Companies on average post 3.6 wall posts to their Facebook page per week
• 50% of the Fortune 100 have a YouTube account and upload 10 videos on average a month

What we don’t get as part of this study though are the marketing objectives for why each of these brands may be using each social media platform.

This infographic, created by CMO.com, provides a very top level heat map of what value  each of the key social platforms could offer an organisation. Although I’m not saying that I completely agree with all of the summaries for each, it is a good top level guide.

For instance; there’s a statement that Facebook won’t necessarily provide that much traffic to your site, but we know for a fact that Facebook is rapidly catching up Google in terms of visits in the UK and with  those brands that have got it right (some in retail) often have a higher number of conversions from Facebook than Google itself. Another recent report by Typepad featured on Mashable revealed that Facebook Like increases referrals on the sample of blogs by almost 50%. With more and more brands integrating the ‘Like’ code on their sites’ this will also be interesting to keep an eye on.   Perhaps there should be an additional objective focusing on traffic quality (engagement, conversions, actions, return visits) too, although this would obviously be unique to each company.

Regardless, I think this is a really useful infographic – covering the pros/cons of using each platform for different types of objectives. Click to enlarge and check it out.

So do you agree with the advice for each platform?

Post from: Connect

The CMO’s Guide to Social Media [Infographic]

Social media is growing quickly in popularity and shows no sign of slowing down. Facebook the biggest social property in the UK currently has 400 million users worldwide and is growing quickly.

So Social Media is big, but how do we make money from it? Search engines found a way to monetise the traffic they receive by providing targeted ads based on users queries. When users search they reveal their intent and this allows search engines to match adverts to those queries which allows them to charge for that space. The trouble with social media is that people don’t type in queries and therefore reveal intent, they just browse and interact and comment and chat. Social has yet to find an effective way of monetising all the traffic they’re getting, but could all this be about to change?

Facebook recently released its Open Graph platform which allows content publishers to easily integrate Facebooks social elements such as the Like button onto their site. There has been a lot of discussion regarding this new feature over the last few weeks. People have suggested that this could change the web, potentially challenging links as the primary way to index and rank websites the discussion of which is outside the scope of this post, but what I will talk about is all the data they are collecting.

Search managed to monetise itself by delivering highly targeted ads that people clicked on, now the data that Facebook is collecting can help them do something similar. As people move around the internet and click on all those ‘like’ buttons, facebook is building up a database of user interests, the sites they visit, where they spend their time, how often they come back and what they like. Using this information Facebook could know for example that I visit a lot of technology sites, that I have read a lot of articles on the new iphone 4, that I have posted links on my friends Facebook wall about the new iphone, visited carrier websites to check out pricing and even mobile phone recycling website to see how much I can trade in my old phone for. Using this information they can serve up ads offering me the new iphone at a discounted price, offer to buy my old phone or even tell me which of my friends are also thinking of buying the iphone 4 (adding an extra dimension to my purchase decision).

“(your friend) John just bought a new iphone 4 and traded in his old phone for cash, click here to read John’s review of the phone and get 10% a new iphone today”

Social has the potential to engage at a more emotional level than search has ever been able to. It can leverage personal relationships, psychology and add interaction to encourage clicks, something search cannot do. One of the strengths of traditional media, and something that search is not great at is branding campaigns. In search Chanel can bid on the term ‘perfume’ using sponsored ads but that ad won’t have the same emotional and brand building impact as a full page glossy ad of an attractive young couple in a sensual embrace with the perfume in the foreground.

With Social Media you can create immersive and engaging brand experiences. Imagine if a company such as Coke was to create an online experience as social and engaging as Farmville, the hugely successful Facebook game that has more players then there are twitter accounts. In such an engaging environment users would spend hours and hours, playing the game, interacting with their friends all within a world Coke created. Players could collect in game credits slowly by performing tasks, or quickly by buying bottles of coke in the real world. Collect enough points and you can win prizes. Products could be advertised and purchased right within the game. All the while users are living in coke’s world, subject to their brand message, they are building brand awareness, positive sentiment and brand loyalty, this is something than search engines cannot offer. Search is not emotional or engaging, social is and that’s what builds brands.

Social has the potential to be a much bigger market than search. It has emotion, engagement, detailed user data and friend networks. You can leverage social status among friends, encourage competition and impulse purchases. This is the space brands need to be in, it is no longer a question of if, but how.

So is Search dead? No. Search currently outperforms Social with respects to driving sales and revenue but the tide is changing and I think the next 12 months will be an interesting time in this space.

Post from: Connect

Social Media bigger than Search in the UK – Should Google be Worried?

Community Pages are “dedicated to a topic or experience that is owned collectively by the community connected to it”. Right now there is no ‘community’ to directly contribute to these Pages so they’re being generated in part by running a search query on public posts related to the term in question. Say I’m looking for ODEON’s presence on Facebook and do a search by this brand term. The top result is not a property owned by ODEON but a Community Page that pulls in Wikipedia’s entry as a description followed by a list of the most recent posts featuring this term. This is the top post as I write this:

With no brand-developed Page to compete with, visitors to this Page are going to leave having had no opportunity to engage with ODEON itself. They may even ‘Like’ this page which represents a further missed opportunity to start building an all-important network of followers tied to an official presence. ODEON are losing the chance to be useful and relevant to people who’ve expressed an active preference in finding something out about them. These people are highly likely to be engaging in social activity around a film release, perhaps trying to find out what’s showing and arranging to go and see something with friends.

The posts that are coming up at the moment on the ODEON Community Page are nothing to worry about, but it is possible customer service issues could appear in this list. A serious example can be found by searching for ‘BP’. This reveals the following: ”

There are a host of similar comments and a page refresh reveals more being added minute-by-minute due to the significant attention this disastrous event is attracting. This Community Page has become a hub of anti-BP information with links out to news, video and a wealth of other material.

It could be argued BP would be in no better position with a Facebook Page, something Nestle discovered recently when a representative of theirs exacerbated an already volatile situation by behaving in a hostile way toward commenters. That isn’t the point however. I would say that any business that provides a product or service to individuals is also a part of society and to shy away from addressing issues of public concern is at best irresponsible and at worst reprehensible. If people are talking in one of the most active social spaces on the web then an organisation needs to step up and answer what I believe is a duty to respond, be it a minor issue or a calamity. With the right framework and guidelines in place participation can be open and a dialogue established.

As it is, without an official presence the opportunity to respond, to provide a hub on the most visited destination on the web, to attract real people to follow you who you can build a long-term relationship with is lost. Instead the Community Page will be what people see as the result of a search, something entirely out of your control and an area where Facebook is still unclear on what the exact functionality will be.

Email me or call me on +44 (1273) 827 739 to discuss creating a Facebook Page, managing one you have already set up, or to establish guidelines on how to make the most of this important contribution to people’s perception of your brand.

Post from: Connect

Community Pages make the need for your own Facebook Page more important than ever

Facebook has published a Gross National Happiness Index where you can track levels of happiness across different countries. Users rate their happiness as positive or negative. I found this at least interesting but of doubtful methodology although 400 million of Facebook users is a fair sample.

Gross National Happiness is the difference between the positivity and negativity scores.The model is taking into consideration the words used in users’ status updates breaking them out by positive or negative words, for later assess that the day as a whole is counted as happier than usual.

Additionally, the model has been calibrated differently to ensure consistency for different countries which eliminates effects due to differences in the countries’ population and language use.Computers do the calculations.

The graph below shows a positive and negative word use in status updates which covaries with self-reported satisfaction with life. Also note that the graph shows peaks and valleys on days that are culturally and emotionally significant.

Some interesting insights, Argentina has a peak for the International Woman’s day and Puerto Rico is on the contrary a country with large negative fluctuations. For the UK, anything surprising as Christmas is still the happiest day.

It would have been great to have had Greece in the list of countries.

Now we only need to understand if there’s any correlation between this graph and shopping patterns. A good source of insights during the next Football World Cup or another important sports events.

Maybe Facebook will bring in the immediate future models allowing partners to check automated brand engagement (done by computers) and how happy consumers are with a particular brand or service based on people’s status updates.

Post from: Connect

An unobtrusive model of “gross national happiness”

Photo credit: CC Flickr user no3rdw

Thanks to Tom for condensing so much information into his short speaking slot, and for sticking around to answer questions afterwards. Thanks also to Wired Sussex, and to everyone who turned up – we hope you all found it useful.

A couple of attendees have asked for a copy of Tom’s presentation. Here’s a slideshare link:

Cheers.

IMAGE by Flickr user no3rdw

Post from: Connect

Social Media and the Law event