Yesterday, after the Oscars, the general news media from CNN to the New York Times began speculating on the way that micro-media like Twitter could change the way that national broadcasts are produced. Richard Robbins, the director of social innovation at AT&T, was quoted from a tweet as saying, “In future, live show producers should have contingency plans to make on-the-fly changes when social media chatter shows trainwrecks.”

It’s a great pie in the sky idea, but let’s face the facts. Most businesses do not move at this speed, and probably should not move at this speed anyway. It may even be a little short sighted to make strategic decisions for a television show (… or a product or service) on the fly. Just In Time (JIT) businesses like Zara and Toyota are quick to meet consumer demands, but they are not that fast. Reportedly, Zara takes about 2 weeks, compared to the traditional 6 months, to develop a new product and get it into stores. But it may be unrealistic to think that businesses can provide valuable product at the speed of thought.

One of the problems with over-hyping social media is that many companies are ignoring some of the most valuable parts of this form of communication as a result of these unrealistic ideas. It may be a safe bet to assume that next year’s Oscar telecast will not include a contigency plan for negative feedback from social media, but we are finding that this often leads companies to ignore aspects of this data that could help them.

After a major event, campaign or product launch listen to the conversations leading up to the launch and right afterwards. We would advise the Academy to figure out what messages the overall conversation conveyed. Not just single posts, but the WHOLE conversation. Segment those trends and volume reports across different time periods and for different aspects of the event (presentation, red carpet, nominees, etc.). From these segments, the Academy can begin to understand what works and what does not.

For the next event, campaign or product launch, use learnings from the previous analysis to start out on the right foot. Social media is about experimentation, and the second experiment should be better than the last. Analyse the whole conversation again three months, two months and one month before the next launch, and continue to change the way you market and to whom.

Navigating social media marketing can be difficult and unknown territory. If individuals are talking about your organization on these channels, they are providing something valuable. But social media is not a one-size-fits-all type of medium. Match the speed of your business with the level of data you collect. Not only will the task become more manageable, but strategies will be more coherent within the context of your business.

A recent article in the Economist about how companies should fight rumors may turn out to be pretty pertinent to our clients as they begin to engage… and fear the consequences of social media. We have heard many ways to attack social media rumors, and this study may throw things for a bit of a loop. The article cites the studies of three business school psychologists: Derek Rucker and David Dubois, of the Kellogg School of Management, and Zakary Tormala, of Stanford Business School who argue that companies who directly address a rumor may actually be doing themselves harm.

“Instead of denying false rumours, a company should put out a stream of positive messages about itself,” state the authors of the study. It sounds a lot like broadcasting doesn’t it?

While we do not necessarily think the psychologists mean to completely ignore rumors, there are parts of this advice that would serve a company well in social media engagement. Rather than perpetuating a rumor by restating it, we recommend creating content and messaging that counters the rumor without explicitly mentioning it. The more a rumor is repeated either in its defense or to propagate it, the more likely the rumor will stick.

Passivity is not an option, and neither is denial. A strong positive stream of content can go a long way.

After last week’s post on using longer format social media channels for insight, we started hearing from our clients. What is broadcasting, and should we be encouraging it?

First, a definition on “broadcasting” from a social media perspective -

Broadcasting is the act of redistributing content without the addition of incremental value.

It is sharing with the least possible effort, and Brian Solis recently wrote a thought provoking article about the balance needed between creation and consumption that can perhaps get the juices flowing.

So then is this really valuable to the enterprise,especially if it is basically just passing along a message? As we look to our clients, there is clearly a benefit to having fans, followers and customers who “broadcast” content about a company. Granted, the value of that shared content becomes more valuable when someone adds their own ideas and thoughts to it, but increasing the conversation volume around your company, product and service can only help raise the visibility of the brand across the web.

The other great thing about broadcasting from an enterprise perspective is that content created by bloggers or evangelists is generally positive or optimistic in tone. Except for the occasions where there is a PR crisis or a set of complaints, broadcasting helps most of our clients to spread the word about what they do in a relatively cost effective manner.

So what happens over time? As people filter out the “noise” and try to keep out broadcast messages, the effectiveness will be diminished. I think two things will happen here. First, people who broadcast will try to keep messages fresh by adding their own twist (they are after all trying to keep their own audience engaged). And second, companies will have to provide interesting and engaging content that does not lean too far into marketing, in order to allow their followers to quickly think of ways to make the re-tweeted content more applicable to their audiences.

For the last three posts, we looked mainly at influencers, who they are, and how companies can think about finding them outside of the traditional conversation topic areas. This may inevitably bring up the question that asks what individuals are generally talking about on the web. Not all industries and companies generate equivalent levels of buzz, and as a communication tool, social media is not always the best way to reach out to the customer.

In November 2010, Technorati released it’s 2010 State of the Blogosphere which analyzed trends and topics across the web, specifically in the blogosphere. Granted that this is not the entire social web, the graphic below can help guide our clients to have a clearer understanding of what topics drive the greatest volumes of conversation.

Yesterday, we advocated building a community site for your consumers to help engage and market to your target demographic while reaching out to them in forums that are not directly correlated with your brand or service. Using the graphic above, we advise our clients to try to think about creating these types of social media assets along the lines of the topics listed on the left:

1. Technology
2. Business
3. Computers
4. Music
5. Spirituality
6. Travel
7. Family
8. Health

With ManOfTheHouse.com as a test case for this theory, we notice that while P&G products may not necessarily fall into any of these topic areas, the site is a set of articles and forums that discuss technology, business, computers, family and health issues (with a little of the other topics sprinkled in, as well). Given that many people blog about these topics and spend time creating content about them, it is perhaps not a complete surprise that ManOfTheHouse has gained such a consistent level of traffic after only a few months.

A couple steps to get started on how to build a community site (this is obviously a bit more complex, but can help get the ideas flowing):

1. Listen for conversations that are slightly outside the realm of your product and competitors’ products, but focused on your target demographic.
2. Match up those conversations with the topics listed above.
3. Determine which topics have the highest volumes.
4. Think about ways that your products or services can fit in with those topics, and then work to build social media assets/communities that can connect with your target demographic in a meaninful way.

Building a community is difficult, but by focusing on what people are already talking about, you can avoid having to build interest from nothing.

After our clients have spent the time listening for what customers are saying about them and their brands, the next question is how to find others who may be interested in their products or services… but maybe just do not know it yet. As companies look to reach this additional set of customers, they will need to step outside of their comfort zone to identify influencers in channels and domains that do not seem obvious at first. They may even have to think about groups that they can create that resonate with their target demographic.

Yesterday, the Pew Institute’s Pew Internet & American Life Project released a study yesterday called the Social Side of the Internet which focused on understanding the role of groups on the Internet. The study notes that “80% of Internet users are active in groups [which] amounts to 62% of all Americans”. Of the top types of groups that people are involved with online in a social media context, the first five are: consumer groups, sports groups, charitable organizations, professional associations and community groups. Thinking about most of our clients, those types of groups may actually be a more viable way to reach customers for many organizations.

Procter & Gamble has often been used as a case study example for building community sites to give their target demographic a place to aggregate, learn, discuss, and be lightly exposed to some marketing. Most recently, the company launched ManofTheHouse to reach a new marketing demographic consisting of family men by offering advice and taking in comments on date nights, tech products and fashion. All of the ads are focused around P&G products, but the company neither pushes brands or hides the fact that the company is the creator of the site. Having launched in June 2010, the site was already seeing over half a million users a month by December.

In the Forrester book, Groundswell, another P&G example of BeingGirl.com (focused on teenage girls and addressing health issues that they might be facing) is analyzed. The research in the book suggests that of the 2 million visitors per month the site saw in 2008, P&G would only need to convince 6,250 girls to use its products to break-even on the cost of running the site. This coupled with the other non-direct financial results seems to indicate a real reason to think about building these communities.

With the data mining capabilities of today’s monitoring and analytics tools, there are methodical ways to understand what topics and ideas will resonate with future consumers. Consider analyzing for influencers and domains who may not be talking about your product, but are talking to your customers. As we noted yesterday, this is a bit harder to do, but the benefits can be well worth the effort.

Continuing the discussion from last week around influence, we looked a little more deeply into some of the social behavior work being done at HP to see if there were any other insights that we could glean. Last August, Social Computing Research at HP put together a study focused on analyzing who people follow in closed online social networks. The team acknowledges that there is a difference between a network within an organization and the social networks that we advise our clients on, but there are some pieces of the data that can help anyone trying to build a following.

The analysis broke down “follow” recommendations into three major categories: Behavioral, Network and Similarity. The basic premise of the study was to understand if people were more likely to follow others based on Behavioral reasons (they read or replied to individuals often), Network reasons (they knew someone in common), or Similarity reasons (they had similar interests).

What is interesting here is that people found the most useful individuals to follow to be those that they followed based on Behavioral or Similarity reasons. The least useful posts (to the reader) were from those individuals that they followed based on Network reasons. And, as may be obvious, the most recognizable individuals were those who were followed for Behavioral and Network reasons with only a small percentage of those in the Similarity category being recognized.

For organizations looking for new influencers in social media channels, this means that finding those in the Similarity category is difficult, however actually very valuable both to the organization and the influencer. It is pretty straightforward to see who talks about your company or knows the company well, but it is a lot more difficult to find those who should know about your company. Using listening tools like Radian6 or SM2 can help to uncover new forums, blogs and influencers across the industry that are not specifically talking about the brand, product or company.

A final insight from the HP study demonstrated that individuals follow people who “post interesting things” and “have similar interests”. As companies look to increase their list of “followers” on Twitter and Facebook, there is a great opportunity here to reach out to those who have similar interests but are not yet devoted fans talking about the organization.

Define your target demographics and industry and take a methodical approach to analysis. Search not only for products and services that your company produces, but also for similar topics that may have individuals who would be interested in your company. It can take a little bit of effort to weed through non-relevant posts and noise, but the resulting list of new domains and influencers is well worth the time and resources invested.

With the recent addition of $8.5M to Klout’s coffers, influence has become a prized commodity in social media engagement and monitoring. As we talk to our clients, there’s a real disconnect between the idealized form of harnessing the power of influence and a practical approach to disseminate marketing messages and affect the overall discussions occurring across the web. How can an organization discover influencers when influence for an individual brand or industry is not just about followers, tweets or reposts?

During the fall of 2010, HP Labs conducted a study that analyzed the factors which determine influence on Twitter. It’s a pretty interesting read, and one of the conclusions that jumps out is that the correlation between influence and popularity is relatively weak. Dr. Huberman and the HP team also note that influence depends on both the size of the influenced audience and its passivity.

In short, an individual must have a large audience as well as a following that actively passes along messages to be influential. The HP study also noted that an average Twitter user retweets 1 in 318 URLs. That means that posts are either being read passively or they are simply disappearing into the vast noise of social media chatter. To be honest, it is probably a little bit of both.

As social media goes from being a buzz word to a requirement in marketing, our clients are looking for individuals or domains who are already influential and can help spread messages. Brian Solis and Vocus conducted a study (September 2010) in which they polled about 700 business leaders about social media influence. Among the many nuggets of data, it is interesting that 57% of individuals polled were willing to pay an influencer to drive actions. Of these individuals willing to pay for influence, C-level executives made up the majority. This may help to explain a growing need in the market for better influence data as well as the growing success of startups like Klout and PeerIndex.

So how do we recommend that our clients find influential individuals across the social web?

1. Monitor for Volume – While many would tell you that volume is a poor judge of influence (or even popularity), we find that monitoring across keywords specific to your company, competitors and industry will help lead to those individuals who have the potential for being influential. You have to start somewhere, so rather than pontificate on what influence really means, go find the people who are talking a lot about the topics that matter to your organization.

2. Listen to Potential Influencers - Once you have a set of 30 or 40 influencers, take the time to understand who they are, what they typically write about, and what they are trying accomplish with their online persona. Figure out quickly which individuals are useless to what you and your business are trying to accomplish, and try to not to waste time on them.

3. Cross Reference Influencers - This is when sites like Klout can become helpful. You have paired down your list of 30 to 40 influencers to people and domains that could affect your brand in a substantial way. Now take the individuals and cross reference them with their online rating. In addition to seeing the number of followers, these ratings can give a more holistic view of an individual’s online presence.

Influence is a hard thing to gauge in both the physical and the online world, but it is getting a little easier by the day. Determining the activity (or lack thereof) of an individual’s audience is another thing all together. But when certain individuals propagate more relevant conversations than others, it is a good sign that they are potentially a valuable influencer. As additional money is invested into making the tools and technology more accurate, we will continue to have better insight into an individual’s overall online influence.

With that level of investment for social network advertising alone, brands need to also start thinking about areas outside of Facebook and MySpace in which they can buy ad space.  Understanding where the bulk of conversation is coming from can help uncover new places to put up digital billboards.

For some clients, the thought of having to “engage” with customers on new channels outside of the comfort zone is scary.  It’s sometimes easier to focus on Facebook advertising and maybe some occassional Twitter engagement.  While this is an important first step, I think companies need to start marketing and advertising on mediums other than the usual suspects in order to have simple and easy access to their target audiences.   Finding the next tier of social media channels focused on your industry, products or services will be crucial to the next step in social media marketing.  And who knows, advertising on these channels may even provide better ROI!

When I talk to clients these days, everyone who is new, cool and innovative wants to talk about creating Foursqare badges, and super engaging ways to get people excited about their companies.  It’s like the whole mantra of using social media to help enhance what you already do to drive business and revenue is thrown out of the window. 

This is the next wave, people will tell you.  This is when you think outside of the box.  Of course, ask around that corporate office, and the only people who are using location based social networks are the social media people.  Who’s in the box?

Money has been and will continue to be made on these networks.  This is why Facebook is getting in on the game.  There is a value in having this physical/virtual world tie-in for some businesses.  But this, out of all of the other social media channels, is not for every business.  In fact, it’s probably not for the masses either, and I think Facebook will soon find that out. 

Look into your business from a marketing, PR and sales perspective.  Can you really add to the experience that your customer has by adding a new level of engagement on mobile?  If it is, then by all means, get to work.  On the other hand, if you are a tanning salon, and you want to create a confusing game where people collect badges from Walmart, Target and Jamba Juice to win a free month of tanning, it’s time to walk away from the hype.

Release as many press releases and content heavy stories as possible. 

Make them available to social media channels, try to keep the branding to a minimum, and develop interesting content that people want to share. 

Everyone wants to drive traffic back to the business, and there is no better way to do this than filling up a search engine with thousands of posts about your company.  Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a complicated business, but if you let other people tweet, blog and repost information about things you are doing, you will definitely get noticed by search engines.

And that’s really the main point.  Everytime some types in something about your industry, product line, etc., you want to make sure that your company shows up near the top of the list.  Search engines love social media because it’s current, and if you can make content that people share, then you can continue to stay near the top. 

As as example, if you are a lawyer who focuses on distressed real estate, then distribute as much content about the topic that you can.  It is amazing how just a little effort can help push your rankings to the top.