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Social media and the era of customer advocacy

August 31, 2010 By Michael Brito Leave a Comment

Move over influencers; advocates are more valuable to brands. It’s a fact. And I won’t try to make the case with research on how consumers want to engage with brands on the social web because we all know that’s the case already. I don’t have a problem with influencers at all; and have been vocal in the past about some of my own influencers. All I am saying is that customer advocacy bring more life and longer term value for a brand. Here’s why:

Influencers can be bought; but may not always deliver

Well, not really. What I am trying to say is that influencers don’t really care about your brand. They may have a crush on you or find your product useful; but they are too busy being influencers – tweeting, blogging, and recording webinars to really care. Of course they love getting free trials and new products before they hit the market; and very rarely will they say no when you offer to send them that new shiny object.

But how many times have you seeded a product to an influencer without any result?

Besides, even if they did love you, they’d probably refrain from talking too much about you in fear of community backlash or the fear of a negative perception of being bought even if it’s not true. I completely understand that conflict. Most influencers get pitched several times a day and all it does is feed their egos; so the time commitment of reaching out to them won’t always reap any positive benefit much less any business value to a brand. I am speaking in general terms here because I do know some really awesome influencers. Point is that influencers are great for generating buzz; not so great for driving purchase decisions. At the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about, right? Go ahead, attack me.

Don’t forget to pay your rent

The minute you stop sending influencers the latest and greatest; or pass on flying them to CES or any other industry event, they will evict your brand in a heartbeat. Then, the already infrequent tweets will completely stop and they may even talk smack behind your back because you poked at their ego. The reality is that with many influencer programs, brands are just renting the conversation; and unfortunately the conversation isn’t always authentic. If it was, you wouldn’t have to keep sending them products to fuel their conversation.

Don’t get me wrong here. Influencer outreach programs do have some validity to a brand’s marketing initiatives. They just need to be done smart and strategically and it shouldn’t be the core focus. I would say that a brand’s first priority should be to focus on its advocates because their love is real.

Advocates love your brand and tell others too

Shot out to Kelly Feller (a previous colleague and friend from Intel) who once said, “if you love your customers, they will love you back and tell others about it.”

Here is the great thing about advocates. They love you even if you don’t give them the time of day. They are vocal, passionate and are not afraid to give your brand praise (on and off line). And, while they may not have hundreds of Twitter followers or thousands of RSS subscribers, the conversation with them is always authentic. I would also argue that advocates outnumber influencers by a long shot. Can you imagine for a second what the impact would be if you paid just a little attention to your advocates? It’s not hard to do at all; and the great thing about it is that they don’t label themselves and are very easy to approach. While influencers consider themselves influencers; advocates don’t really care. And, that makes your job so much easier.

Tapping into the emotional equity

I have never studied the psychology of a consumer’s purchase behavior. But what I am confident about is that there is definitely an emotional connection between a brand and its advocates. It’s the reason why I only buy one kind of television. It’s not out of habit, convenience or price either because the brand I love is quite expensive. But I have an emotional connection to the brand, Sony. The connection can stem from just about anything – a previous brand experience, the value the product brings to someone’s life, its swagger or the product simply kicks ass. When a brand actually becomes human and spends time nurturing their advocates; the emotional equity will grow exponentially. And that’s a hard bond to break.

Advocates affect the purchase funnel

I am sure we have all seen the traditional purchase funnel at some point in our careers (some call it a sales funnel). Marketers – and people much smarter than I – spend a lot of time and coin trying to figure out what messages resonate with customers; and which channels have the greatest conversion rates. We are talking about millions of dollars in media spend that aims to drive marketing messages in each of the phases. And smart marketers are also creating metrics models for each phase of the purchase funnel to measure the effectiveness of these messages.

The purchase funnel is evolving, especially as we think about advocacy. In this model, customer advocacy is at the center. It’s meant to illustrate the power of social media and how advocates aid and influence their micro communities down the purchase funnel through authentic messages (or everyday conversation).

It’s circular in nature because as a brand invests and drives customer advocacy; they will, in turn, influence others at various phases of the purchase funnel; thus creating a cycle of influence and advocacy that the brand is facilitating.

How to identify advocates

Identifying advocates is really not that hard to do. If you spend enough time in Facebook, you will begin to see who stands out and interacts the most with the content. There are tools like SocialTALK that are building this capability into their product which will make life much easier. Also, Zuberance is a great tool that can identify advocates already living in your brand’s ecosystem. What I love about this is that it empowers advocates to share reviews and content about your product with their social circles. Rowfeeder is an exceptional tool that pulls data directly from Twitter and Facebook, and allows you to easily see who is talking about your brand the most and easily identify those advocates.

http://www.britopian.com

Filed Under Social Media Marketing, Social Media News Tagged With social media blog, Social Media Marketing, social media marketing plan, social media marketing services, social media optimization, Social Media SEO, social media strategy

For Digg, Helping Big Sites Was “Just Business”

August 30, 2010 By JD Rucker Leave a Comment

If you’re a publisher who doesn’t hate the New Digg, chances are you’re already getting enough traffic to where a Digg front page is barely a blip on your radar. You’re being rewarded for being huge. Digg needs you more than you need Digg.

Sadly, that’s where Digg has gone.

The fact that Digg has been mostly a failure from a business perspective over the last 5 years prompted the dramatic and (almost) universally hated version 4. The idea was to put the power that Digg wields (for now) into the hands of the big publishers. If you generate tremendous traffic, you’re Digg’s new best friend and will have the best opportunity to be rewarded with more traffic.

It’s just business. It’s nothing personal. Digg was born based upon Kevin Rose’s desire to “give the power to the people.” Unfortunately for Digg, “the people” were AdBlock+ using cynics who scoff at attempts by websites to make money. It’s not an insult to the Digg community. It’s simply the truth.

Firefox and AdBlock+ are used on Digg more than most sites. Statistics show that over 50% of the Digg community is using Firefox and likely AdBlock+, a revenue-killer that has hurt tech sites for the last couple of years.

Believe it or not, it makes sense for Digg to appeal to major publishers. Digg has been the sender of traffic for years. Why not be the recipient? That was the premise.

The problem (which will hopefully be fixed this week) is that Digg users generally do not like their content to be auto-submitted. The idea of human curation is the premise upon which Digg was built. Things become popular because the right submitter found the content and the community liked it.

That isn’t the case with the new Digg.

The decision to appeal to the big publishers, to allow them to have publisher accounts and auto-submit their RSS feeds directly to Digg is, in itself, not a bad idea. Digg wants and needs that traffic and that mainstream adoption if it wants to survive in the competitive world of “getting social media attention.”

It was simply a business decision.

Unfortunately, it simply wasn’t handled well. Not only are certain accounts given huge advantages under the new rules, but it’s also likely that Digg is either blocking or greatly impairing individual non-publisher accounts from being able to hit the front page.

How We Know

There have been 3 non-publisher account stories that have hit the Top News section in the last few days. Three. One of them does not seem to be a true publisher account, but because they are submitting Engadget and getting dugg by that account, they have been able to get 4 front page stories.

More importantly, we asked.

After an exchange of rude tweets (on both ends, with the rudest of them all subsequently deleted by Rose) between me and Kevin Rose, we “made up” and he added me as a friend, posting this:

Ready to give Digg some feedback, I sent one DM:

A short while later I went back to Twitter to see the response. There was none. He had also removed me as a friend.

I thought it was a simple enough question. I wasn’t being rude. I didn’t necessarily expect the “secret sauce” to be DMd to me, but I also didn’t expect to be removed hours after being told that he “would love” my feedback.

Sour grapes aside, the reality of the situation is that Digg needed a change badly. They needed to appeal to mainstream media and get mass-adoption similar to what Twitter and Facebook have received. They needed to become something that even the tech-unsavvy crowd could embrace.

Twitter reached its tipping point in early 2009 thanks to adoption by major media and celebrities. Digg wanted the same thing and took the same approach (almost identically). It won’t work, however, because of 2 or 3 simple things and a couple of major issues.

The path to getting mainstream adoption, increased revenues, and an exponentially growing user base is something that I would LOVE to show Digg. I’ve been on the site daily for 3 years and have a history of advising web properties on the best way to maximize their traffic and profits.

Of course, I haven’t met the criteria that Rose requires from someone to accept their advice.

Rose deleted the tweet after a couple of hours, but thankfully Patrick Smith retweeted it to keep it “on record”.

Despite the jab, I would still be willing to consult. All he has to do is ask.

But of course, he won’t.

http://socialnewswatch.com

Filed Under Social Media News Tagged With social media blog, social media consultant, Social Media Marketing, social media marketing expert, social media marketing firm, social media marketing plan, social media marketing service, Social Media News, social media optimization, Social Media SEO

Manufacturing communities doesn’t work, sorry.

August 16, 2010 By Michael Brito Leave a Comment

Geez, it’s been a while and I have been working on this post for months. I was originally gong to title this “the Facebook Fan Fallacy” but the wizards over in Palo Alto changed it up on me so this will have to do. And, since my schedule has been crazy busy these days, I have decided to make my posts a lot shorter and more direct. Hopefully you will still find value.

My point with this post is to blatantly say that buying fans/followers is not a very effective strategy. I have been bought before by a few brands but a quick glance at the list reminds me that I have NEVER gone back to any of these pages, ever!

I do understand the need to spend money in Facebook or wherever to drive people to a particular domain. How else will the masses even know you exist? The problem arises when brands make this the core focus of their outreach strategy.

Organic growth via real time engagement is what works. Having dedicated employees managing Facebook “like white on rice” is where the true value is. Statistics show by multiple data sources that consumers want to engage with brands; AND according to the Edelman Trust Barometer, consumers TRUST employees of a company. Truth is, people relate to other people, not logos or corporate entities. It’s the core of our DNA.

There will always be a place to buy media and develop applications in Facebook; but unless you have a team of people ready to engage “real time” with the community, it’s a complete waste of time. Unless of course, fan numbers is your only metric.

Quick Tip:

If you really want to grow your fan base on Facebook, consider integrating the “like box” or any of the other social plugins on all of your pages of the .com site.
Do I really have to say that having “compelling content” on the page is a must. Consider content that isn’t readily available anywhere else.
Integrate your Facebook URL with any paid media in market

http://www.britopian.com

The Social Media Impact on… Food Trucks

July 23, 2010 By JD Rucker Leave a Comment

This video by Mashable tells an interesting tale about how everyone from an Ice Cream Truck to a Mobile Bistro are able to use social media to promote their products.

Using Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare, food trucks are hits coast-to-coast. One truck claims that 15% of their sales come specifically from Twitter. Who would have known?