Marketers, social
networkers and even social media evangelists got together in Paris for this
year’s Marketing2.0Conference.
Here are some Hot Topics,
BuzzWords, and Latest Interests.
HOT TOPICS
1. How
do you measure Social Media?
2. How
do you sell it to your CEO?
Question 1: Where are those
nice, interesting Audience and ROI charts that traditional media has been tempting us with for the last decades? What is the ROI of social media and how do marketers measure it?
Potential Answers
- What is the ROI of telephone, sending email, getting to a meeting, getting up in the morning?
- If trying to measure Social Media in the traditional way, we will definitely move from noun: HITS to acronym: How do Idiots Test Success
- Ask not so much of what is the ROI of social media, but what’s the cost of not doing it
- There is no good unique tool now (is being measured throughmultiple tools: share of voice, reach, engagement)
- Some professionals focus on the only metrics that matters: Sales
Question 2: How do you sell it to your CEO (management) in order to support your social media work?
Potential Answers:
- You either are in a learning organization where the management is interested and involved, allows you to experience and learn by doing and is also willing to take the risk of letting the brand opened to interact with the customers,
- Or the management allows you to go on and "do that thing that you do" with the following attitude: “I don’t really
understand this, however, I am trusting you to go
on with the job"
- You
might as well be in the type of organization which trusts all its employees on-line
(empowering them with the possibility to lively present their view and role in
the organization)
- Or there
might be the situation where you really need to “sell” your work to the
management (explain the benefits). This could be the case where you would get to choose from one of the
attitudes (answers) above, regarding the social media ROI Measurement.
FEATURES OF THE NEW WORLD
- Small is in fashion: there’s a spotted tendency (in social media, as well as in the entire business) to reconnect, touchback, get smaller, try niche, start testing.
- In this new world, everything you create needs to be able to socialize on its own (Nokia Conversations).
- Time for the big idea? not quite ( CP+B); in the context of the new economic shape, now is time for small ideas: lots of different “small” ideas, challenging the status quo, with the power to change, re-shape, innovate. Lots of small ideas involving less time and money, to be left playing outside, engage with the consumer, getting their own life. Only after this first step, professionals get to decide which one is to be developed further more (as the case of Burger King Flame)
- at the same time, frequent, low involvement, limited investments ideas, allow professionals to watch the market and quickly react; they have a lower risk and a higher flexibility. However, in this case, marketing budgets need to allow the exploration of these ideas; we need to change the way clients think about investing in exploration, testing and non-traditional media.( CP+B)
at present, is not so much about advertising as it is about cross disciplinary engaging with the consumer in different ways, on different platforms (either we are talking about, NPD, events, 2.0 PR, traditional or social media).
- From 360 degrees to getting small. As mentioned before, this is a time for several more ideas implemented and tested at the same time on different platforms. A time for brands talking to people on different media in different matters with different interesting things (it allows marketeers to change the tone and try different levels of consistency). And when clients consider social media a bit ahead of its time, we simply need to help them "move there".
- It is also a time about "democratizing social media, opening it towards everybody in the organization” (following Southwest Airlines) so that everybody can express and bring in their personality. Allowing people to give and open their personal perspective outside: a day in their worklife or their perspective on a specific story to be shared with the customers are becoming a must in the world of construing authentic brands.
- Consistency. If we are to hand power to consumers and allow all these people represent
our brand (customers, as well as employees) aren’t we going to lose the
treasure of brand’s consistency?
- Well, “the time of being very consistent about a message with a certain type of consumer is over”; we’d rather be multidimensional. Consistency is a state of mind, not a dogma. (Virgin).
- Investments. In digital start-up investments, the losers show earliest; the winners only at the end. Therefore, unlike the traditional investments, way “digital investments funds need to show patience"(BDMI) .
- An important distinction emerged nowadays between paid media and earned media: in the new world you get to earn media; all of your investments are now into the content: stories to engage with; relationships in order to drive /earn media. Brands invest now the same amount of money, yet in other types of efforts CP+B
BUZZ WORDS:
- Crowdsourcing
- Brandividuals
- “By invitation, only” (L’Oreal way of Social Marketing)
- PR 2.0 = Publicity
(among digital opinion leaders) + WOM
- Sense providers. It is not about advertising, nor about traditional or innovative media; is about brands becoming sense providers in the best possible way, in cross disciplinary approaches, regardless the traditional or new media.
More on each session of Marketing2.0Conference , to follow, on Contagious Ideas.
Posted by: Andreea Hirica
