After spending the last few weeks telling brands and start-ups to consider LinkedIn as a marketing opportunity, I thought it could be helpful to post some of the hard numbers that make this a compelling channel and social network to sell higher-end products and services.

While many Global 1000 marketing departments currently have a reasonably mature Facebook and Twitter strategy, only a select few are working on a robust LinkedIn marketing strategy.  Considering the demographics of the audience that makes up this social network, it is surely an untapped channel that can provide deep targeted messages to reach an affluent audience with the power to spend money.

According to a compilation from the LinkedIn Ad Platform at the beginning of Feb 2012, LinkedIn has over 147 million members of which 44% work in companies that have more than 10,000 employees.  Within these members, about 40% are Managers or higher and 25% have the title of Director, Owner, Chief Officer or Vice President.  More than 26% of the members are in the high-tech and finance industries, and in fact, every single member has identified what he or she does for a living.

As the level of conversation and number of participants across social networks increases, marketers are having a harder time finding and advertising to the right people who may actually be interested in their products and services.  LinkedIn is a simple way to tap into the interest graph, and as a marketer, this is going to tie together ability-to-purchase with demographics and/or interest.

A simple use case could be for a technology brand.  You sell CRM solutions, and you want to market to people who are authorized to buy these tools for their company.  On LinkedIn, you can buy ads that directly target the roles and types of companies that you are looking for.  On top of that, you can create and contribute content to conversations through  LinkedIn’s Company Pages, Groups and Answers.  If the content is engaging, you can get people who actually buy CRM solutions to talk more about your company with other people who are also in the market for buying CRM solutions.  It’s a way to use a single social network across the entire customer decision journey.

But this also works for other scenarios, where you, as a marketer, are not necessarily looking for an interest that is directly related to an individual’s job.

Imagine running a campaign for a luxury car.  While you could advertise on Facebook, to people in a certain age group or maybe even individuals who have included a reference to cars in their profiles, is that really the right set of people to target for your campaign?  Instead, you could show your campaign ad to every member on LinkedIn who is a Director or above.    Luxury cars are not necessarily for car enthusiasts or people over 50.  Luxury cars are for people who can afford them, so use the tools and channels that can better help find these people.

This is not to say that Facebook advertising does not work, but rather that LinkedIn as an advertising platform is too often ignored.  While a number of technology companies are already trying to figure out how they can use the channel, there are still too many companies with big ticket products and services who are not paying enough attention.  This is probably not the best channel to sell Hanes underwear or Cherry Coke, but it is worth looking into for any company or start-up that wants to target an affluent audience with the ability to spend money.

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.

This morning, Facebook unveiled a new way of reaching and marketing to customers through a product called Sponsored Stories. Basically, it allows companies to turn likes, check-ins, page posts and certain actions within apps into ads that appear on friend’s pages. So rather than just showing up in a news feed, ads are going to be generated using the same language as the post or check-in, and these ads will appear on the right hand side as a “sponsored story”. This example of a sponsored story below is driven by a check-in:

As Ben Parr noted in Mashable today: “Facebook’s roster of launch partners includes Coke, Levi’s, Anheuser Busch and Playfish. Also, the social network is partnering with a slew of nonprofits for Sponsored Stories, including Donors Choose, Girl Up!, Malaria No More, Amnesty International, Women for Women, Autism Speaks, (RED), Alzheimer’s Association and UNICEF. However, anybody will be able to bid on Sponsored Story slots (by a per-impression and/or a per-click basis) starting January 25.”

From a revenue generation perspective, this is going to be a huge win for Facebook. It’s a great way to make money off of publicly available information, and maintain the authentic voice of its users within those ads. For companies, however, there is surely a bit of danger here. While “likes” are generally good bets on positive feedback, there is a risk that negative comments as sponsored ads could lead to embarassing PR situations.

In our client work, we tend to see many negative comments, not only on page posts, but also with check-ins. While it is important to be open to negative feedback, the possibility of accidently turning complaints into ads may be inevitable… and yet avoidable.

Imagine a CVS ad that reads: “Stuck in line at CVS again” or an ad that reads: “Good coffee, but I hate the people at Starbucks”. What type of reaction would that drive? This type of “mistake” is a lot harder to recover from than a Tweet or Facebook message that a community manager can react to, and the reach of such an ad could have the potential to go viral.

With this in mind, it may be safer to use “Sponsored Stories” when individuals “like” a product rather than some of the other user actions that drive these new ads. It will be interesting to see the volume in revenue of these ads over the upcoming months, as well as the types of actions that companies buy to deliver the ads.

If you are looking to build a company that embraces social, and you do not have a current client set, I think there are a few steps that you can take to make the process of “going viral” a realistic possibility.

1. Listen to what people in your target pool are saying – Most new companies have identified a pretty large set of individuals who can use their products or services.  Understand who is actually using social channels first, and then figure out what resonates with that target audience. 

If you are a service that provides access to ”green” products, find out the largest set of people who are engaged on social media discussing similar topic areas.  Let’s say that there a lot of people in many different demographics discussing “green”.  Great, that’s an opportunity for future growth.  But maybe mothers with young children take up over 60% of the conversation related to “green”.  Well, start there, and see what they are looking for.  When they talk about products, are the products for themselves or their children?  Let’s say that they are talking about personal products for themselves (services, personal care, etc.)

2. Develop relationships/partnerships with companies who provide these items – If you want to reach mothers who are looking for “green” personal products, you want to have products and partnerships with your service that resonate with this group.  Perhaps, you go after local businesses in your region that provide these products.  Build up a portfolio of as many companies in perhaps Ohio who provide green products.  Most businesses are happy to be included as part of new channels to get their product to market, so work on creating this first.

3. Engage with your target audience - Once you have set up adequate relationships to make it worth the while of mothers to start talking about your product and how you can provide local “green” personal products to mothers, get the word out.  Tell bloggers that your service provides access to over X different companies in the Ohio area who deliver the products that their audience is looking for.  If you are providing value, these individuals will help to spread awareness of your service.

I think a lot of new businesses are thinking about social in the back of their minds, but they are not thinking about how they can build their business to strategically utilize social and current discussions.  In this example, if you simply build partnerships with all “green” businesses without focus (personal hygiene, solar equipment, restaurants, etc.), you may just not resonate with any specific group.  And then it can be a long hard road to readjusting your vision, as you subsequently see where the interest is coming from.

Lots of people have said it before, but the technology is secondary to the strategy.

Marketing - If you are a marketer, first look for the places where individuals are talking about your brand.  Don’t waste time trying to figure out how you are going to engage.  Too often organizations will spin their wheels thinking about engagement when they could just use forums as places to actually market their products and services.  So today, really understand who is talking about you, what they are saying, and where they are saying it.  Refine your message, and advertise based on what you learn.  Want to create an engaging social media widget?  Great.  That’s step two.

PR - If you work in public relations, you want to control the message around your brand.  First things first.  When someone says something that is blatantly false, help make corrections and provide simple transparent content that does that.  Whether it’s a paid monitoring tool or not that gives you insight to these conversations, focus on the negative.  As a PR professional, you want to keep the message clear.  Step two is creating a conversation with people who love you, people who are not sure how they feel… and driving more conversations that emphasis this message.  I think PR is a bit further along with social media, so being more proactive on listening and engaging is something that you can do.  But focus on the message, and address conversations that are off-message first.

Sales- Of all the functions that can suffer from analysis paralysis, there is no function that can fall into this trap more than the sales function.  Developing new business is usually high-touch and often a really difficult endeavour.  There are businesses who are making sales by looking on social media, but this can often be a long process.  If your Marketing and PR team focuses on advertising and message within social media, they have you generally covered.  After all, these groups, especially Marketing, are designed to drive sales.  So setup your monitoring tools to look specifically for individuals who are looking to buy now.  If you are up for the challenge, go ahead and engage those individuals.  Otherwise work in conjunction with Marketing and PR to be aware of the conversations that are occurring on social media.  While there are a few industries which may benefit from directly talking to individuals discussing an imminent purchase, this is an extremely difficult thing to do.  Wait for the tools (and the associated algorithms/processing) to get better, and then revisit using social media from the direct view of a sales function.

If you can attack these ideas first, there will be plenty of time to use other (much cooler) ways to get involved with social media.  Let’s get back to running a business!

Social media is the definition of a method of communication. That’s it.

It means that individuals can now have conversations with their friends, companies and governments in a way that they never could before.  Everyone can talk to everyone.

It’s open and public dialogue, and people talk about what they want to talk about.

If you read between the lines, I am saying that people don’t talk about things that do not interest them.  And there lies the danger of aligning traditional marketing goals with social media.  A lot of people are not listening to the conversations that are currently taking place, and then going straight for what they know whether it be the fundamental principles of marketing, PR, etc.

I think it’s easier to see with an example (this is not from a specific client, but a generalization from what we see).

CASE STUDY

Imagine you work in Marketing for a large credit card company. 

Here’s what you know - We market our credit cards to college students, and they are highly profitable.  Typically, they stay loyal to credit card brands over the course of time.  In addition, they hold balances, but eventually pay them off in order to maintain good credit.  College students generally will have increasing salaries over the course of time, and will thus spend more money with us.  Bottom line – College students should be pursued to become new customers of our credit card.

Here’s what you find listening to social media – College students really don’t talk about credit cards with their friends on social networks.  On the other hand, there are a lot of other groups talking about credit cards in reference to your company and your competitors.

Here’s what you think - If we use the right marketing, we can figure out a way to reach college students through social media, if we make the content and tone engaging.  They are a profitable group, so we should probably attack that demographic first.  In addition, they are one of the most active demographics in social media, so it might be easier to engage this group.

Here’s what can happen- It turns out that college students actually do not care enough about credit card companies, APRs and annual fees, especially when it comes to sharing with their friends and communities.  The social media assets that we setup to engage this group begin to accumulate dust, and eventually we think that the social media does not provide adequate ROI.

What we could have done

If we think of social media more as communication method, then maybe we could have started first by listening to who is actually communicating about credit cards.  Are these positive conversations or negative ones?  Maybe it’s newly married couples, entrepreneurs or people starting new jobs. 

Then we need to understand what they are saying.  Consolidating credit cards between couples, financing a new project or increasing credit limits…

And then we need to find ways to answer their questions, and engage with them.  This may involve monitoring, engaging or building social media assets.

But I think we all need to go through this exercise whether we are Marketing, PR or Sales professionals.  Who is talking about us, what are they saying, and can we make that experience better by engaging more closely based on what we do?

Social media is not marketing, but a communication tool that can make some parts of marketing more effective for our business as well as our customers.

With the recent flurry of news and blog posts on mobile social networks like Foursquare, there is a sense that these networks really have a shot of taking this all the way.  On Thursday, Foursquare announced that they had over a quarter million people “check-in”to some physical location in a single day.  That’s pretty impressive, and while there has been hype around Loopt and Gowalla, there is a sense that Foursquare has the momentum to actually make something of this attention.

To take a quick step back, Foursquare and its competitors are services that allow people to broadcast out their location to their network.  When you go to a restaurant or store, you “check-in” to that location, and do two things.  One, you tell your friends that you at a specific place, and two, you let the store owner know that you are there.  Why would you do this?  Well, the most loyal person (most checked-in visits) can become the “mayor” of that establishment, and they get some bonus for being sucha great customer.  Maybe a free coffee or pitcher of beer, as well as the social capital of being the mayor.

When we think about this from a branding level, this is some amazing data to have at your fingertips as a marketer.  And all of this information is supplied by your customer, broadcast to his/her network and verified by GPS as being accurate.  Couple that with profile data and incentives, and you have an army of bonafide brand ambassadors.  And apparently, over a quarter million people are already putting their location onto the airwaves.  Scary but exciting stuff.

I think what’s unique about Foursquare is that they are actively taking advantage of the current attention to their service to forge relationships with major media companies as well as with retail stores like Starbucks.  In addition, as the Economist reports, there are a number of stars that have aligned to put Foursquare in the right place at the right time.  The prevalence of smart phones, unlimited data plans, GPS accurate devices and a slew of applications that can take advantage of this information have put companies like Foursquare in the sweet spot of winning the race.

While I don’t believe that mobile social networks are going to become fully mainstream anytime soon, I do think that consumer facing companies should start experimenting with how they can use these tools to drive revenue and increase customer loyalty.  According to the Economist article that I referenced earlier, “Juniper Research predicts that global revenues from location-based services could soar to $12.7 billion by 2014, up from $3 billion last year”.  Even if this is an exaggerated figure, there is surely a sense that it’s worth playing a game of peek-a-boo with your customers to see if they are up for it.  There’s a lot of money at stake here.

I spent tonight at the World Affairs Council here in San Franciso listening to Jay Walsh, Head of Communications at the Wikimedia Foundation, talk about his organization.  The talk was titled: “A New Model for Global Collaboration”, and it was a deep dive into the history and size of the Wikimedia Foundation.  What I really want to talk about is what brands can get from wikis in general, as well as from Wikipedia, but here are the basic numbers from his presentation:

• 275 languages
• 340M unique visitors in a month
• 100,000 volunteers (about 10% who contribute more than 100 edits a month)
• 5th largest site globally according to ComScore (after Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Facebook)… and it’s a non-profit
• Over a 1B edits since Wikipedia got started in 2001

What I think is really interesting is the total number of languages that are covered across the various Wikipedia sites as well as the sheer volume of the articles and edits.  We are not talking about straight translations of the English site, but rather unique versions on the same topic area.  A simple search of “Nintendo” in both Spanish and English will show that there are differences in both entries, and as Nintendo there is a lot you could learn about cultural and political biases or preferences by looking through these entries.  Collaboration tools like wikis across languages can help brands get a very focused idea about what a “neutral” point-of-view believes.

For large global brands like Nintendo, Coca Cola or Sony, organizations can begin to make observations across countries, languages and cultures as they look to bring products or services to new markets.  Jay presented a number of studies where Wikipedia in certain languages were broken up based on the type of content that they searched as well as the countries that searched within specific languages.  Undoubtedly, a corporation like Procter & Gamble or Pepsi could conduct similar types of studies on a more granular level.  Here are a few of the examples that the Wikimedia Foundation have put together from a macro-persepctive.

To take my Nintendo example one step further, the organization could look at how the company and its competitors are percieved across continents and languages.  Differences in opinions across games, genres, etc. could result in better content development and marketing campaigns.  Console decisions and strategy could be tweaked based on what certain groups look for out of gaming.  We are talking about research for marketing, strategy, sales and product development all through wiki analysis.

While we typically advise clients to use Social Media and wikis to manage their brand, I think there are some other very big implications of using wikis specifically.  By analyzing this level of data across wikis (which happen to have the advantage of being user-generated and social, while being seen as “neutral” through their unique crowd sourcing style model), a company can take advantage of global brand data that can help them make decisions across a number of topic areas in a very focused manner.

New product releases are one of the hardest things to undertake from a marketing perspective.  On the one hand, you’re taking a huge risk on an innovative idea.  On the other, you have no idea how the market will react, what aspect of the product it will like and who the exact target demographic will be.  I recently met with a digital marketing manager at FMCG company about a recent product launch, and it made me think about how Social Media could help the company react quickly with its marketing message… at least from a digital perspective.

• Ask for comments – If you have a brand that is going to get people excited and coming straight to your website to learn more about the new product, come right out and ask for comments.  Put up a product blog and respond back to comments as they come in. 
• Setup channels – In addition to a product blog, setup a separate Facebook page and Twitter account for your product and direct people to create buzz.
• Look for conversations – People are going to be talking about the product launch on other channels as well, and it’s probably a good idea to listen in to what they are saying.  Here’s where you can get some really meaty information on what people like about your product and what they really think.
• Engage in conversations – Once you start listening to conversations, become a part of them.  Talk to your customers directly, and ask for suggestions.

And once you have all of this free flowing dialogue, use it!  Feed it back into the way your company markets and distributes the product over the upcoming weeks.  Digital marketing allows you to change things on the fly, so take new social insight and put it into action immediately.  Normally, you would only have one chance, but now you have the foresight of your customers.