Posts Tagged ‘social media’

This post was inspired by Tuesday’s #SM48 Twitter chat led by Ken Burbary. This particular chat, hosted by Hashtag Media is a weekly gathering of likeminded social media practitioners who discuss a particular topic within social media. This week’s topic was “segmentation”, which fascinated me right off the bat, due to my background in both: traditional and “new media” marketing. During the Twitter chat, we discussed the differences between traditional segmentation vs. segmentation in and via social media channels. The discussion really made me think, as it put an interesting spin on the traditional notion of segmentation.

Traditional marketers have always segmented their users based on a set of common characteristics, thereby creating a customer profile with distinct needs, wants, beliefs, demographics, psychographics, etc. Each segment was assigned its own marketing strategy, with “the 4Ps of marketing” as the underlying framework. Each segment got its own promotional message, through the appropriate media channel (Promotion), sold via an appropriate channel (Place), and sometimes got its own version of the product or product extension (Product) at its own Price. Collecting data to power these insights via traditional market research methods was expensive, and could only be done every so often. Yet, segmentation was the best attempt that we as marketers had to give our customers what they needed, when and where they needed it.

Enter social media. Brands no longer need to ask us what we need, we tell what we want to whoever is listening, and it is my hope that most brands are starting to understand how important listening and engaging is (if you don’t, contact me straight away!). But instead of 10 major customer segments, a brand now has 10 million individuals who have disparate and pronounced needs. How do we segment now? Should we segment down to the individual, or a slightly larger cluster? I believe there’s room for both. We should be listening and analyzing larger trends in our target market’s social media conversations. This will fuel our pricing, product and corporate messaging decisions. Additionally, due to the one-on-one nature of social media, we have the ability to tell our story to the individual in a conversational format. This becomes less about marketing and more about a conversation. Imagine if your friend had a problem, and you offered him / her a solution. Well, this is just like that.

This is what community managers like me do. We scour the social web to find mentions of our brands, our competitors’ brands and product categories. We listen for customers with good brand experiences, bad experiences, and non-customers (these non-customers can be new to the category or just new to your brand). We listen, digest and engage appropriately. What does it mean to engage appropriately? Simply having a conversation within the context of a person’s situation or need. For example, if I hear someone on Twitter saying “I am looking for a an affordable professional social media monitoring solution, competitor X is too expensive”, I can start a conversation with this person about how to get the most out of our tool with the least money. If someone says “I’m looking for a solution that measures sentiment in Portuguese”, I can talk to this person about our foreign language capability. I wouldn’t talk to either person about something that they have no interest in, such as workflow and alerts. Not to say that other features are unimportant; however, when you have 140 characters to make a first impression, it has to be relevant to that person’s expressed needs. Don’t “show up and throw up” and start reciting your company’s top 5 differentiators. Mold your message to the situation and the person. That’s segmentation at its best.

How do you segment your customers? Do you use social media for one-on-one engagement? Do you also let larger trends drive your larger product and strategy decisions? The comments are yours!

Photo source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/2671532954/

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If you have no idea what has been going on between Southwest Airlines and actor / director Kevin Smith, you have probably been living under a rock. The purpose of this post is not to give a recap of what happened. You can find that by going to CNN.com, ABC.com, Kevin’s Twitter account and Southwest’s Twitter account and blog. The purpose of this post is not to take sides, or ruminate about what this incident means for airlines and airline customers of all sizes and shapes, either. The purpose of this post is to measure the buzz created by this situation across all social media sources, as well as to address the impact on sentiment towards both parties involved: Mr. Kevin Smith and Southwest Airlines.

I scoured the social web and found close to 45,000 relevant mentions of Kevin Smith and Southwest Airlines within the relevant time period, across blogs, microblogs, discussion boards / forums, and online news. On the trend graph below, you can clearly see that the event occurred on Valentine’s Day, February 14th, garnering 14,000 mentions that very day. The next day, even more discussion ensued, with 16,000 conversations taking place on the 15th. At this point, however, this topic has pretty much run its course, as interest waned after the 16th.

Judging by the chart below, the incident was discussed in microblogs more  than in any other medium (66% of total conversations). This makes sense, because Twitter became the hub of all activity, as this is where Kevin Smith voiced his strong opinions against Southwest, quickly mobilizing his followers.

The key issue that SWA and Kevin Smith should be concerned about in the aftermath of this proverbial storm, is the impact that the whole ordeal may leave on their respective brands. Yes, Kevin Smith is a personal brand, and, just like SWA, he should be concerned about what happens to it. Perhaps he is even monitoring social media with a monitoring and engagement solution? Hey, Kevin, we can help you with that! Southwest, we would be very happy to help you too!

So how does the public feel? Let’s take a look. For this type of discussion, I like to use sentiment trend graphs to understand how sentiment ebbed and flowed each day. For the purposes of this discussion, I did not analyze neutral sentiment, as it adds less value to the discussion. Looking at sentiment towards Kevin Smith (below), it becomes obvious that this incident has hurt his brand in the short term. Whereas negative was a bit above positive even prior to the incident, the gap between the two was never as large as it became during the 14th and 15th of this month. The day after the story broke on Twitter, negative sentiment soared high above positive, returning to a lower level, albeit still higher than positive, on the 16th and 17th.

Now let’s take a look at sentiment towards Southwest Air. During the days prior to the big event, SWA tended to have mostly positive sentiment. However, between the 14th and the 17th, positive and negative sentiment were both elevated and went pretty much neck in neck. Of note is that although fairly evenly split, negative sentiment never exceeded positive.

Based on sentiment data presented above, I would say that both brands suffered in the process with increased negative sentiment; however Southwest Airlines has netted out ahead of Kevin Smith (in terms of sentiment) by garnering more positive support than Smith did. It’s important to realize that these are short term effects only; the real key would be to understand the long-term effect, if any, that the episode has had on public perception of both brands.  I am going to do a follow-up post on this, to track sentiment in a couple of weeks and maybe even further out.

Right before the Superbowl, we looked at the share of voice and sentiment towards the two soft drink giants, Coke and Pepsi. Prior to the Superbowl, and after its announcement to shift its ad spend away from the Superbowl and towards social media, Pepsi garnered significantly more share of voice than Coke. If you recall, our analysis showed that 90 days prior, the Pepsi Superbowl buzz dwarfed that of Coke at 79% vs. 21%. However, as the big game got closer, and Coke announced its social media campaign, it started to catch up to Pepsi.

Was Coke able to overtake Pepsi on Sunday night? Based on our share of voice analysis (considering Sunday’s social media mentions only), I would say so. Considering yesterday’s data only, Pepsi lost buzz supremacy to Coke, with 39% vs. Coke’s 61%.

However, winning the share of voice during Superbowl is not even 10% of the battle, in my opinion. It’s still one of the most televized events in the U.S, and the Twitter frenzy around ads will elevate any brand who advertised during the game. But how many of us will keep buzzing a week after the big game? My guess is, not too many. And how does Superbowl buzz translate to actual purchase intent? That’s a whole different conversation in and of itself. The real test is the longevity of the buzz, and for that you need to create something buzzworthy. A television ad is no longer buzzworthy; it has to be integrated into a larger online and social media marketing effort. I would be curious to see how share of voice and sentiment develop for these two brands during the forthcoming months.

Perhaps a quick pulse-check of sentiment from Sunday would make sense at this point. Coke came it at a slightly more positive sentiment than Pepsi, considering data from yesterday only (Coke on the left, Pepsi on the right):

Taking a closer look at the tag clouds generated for both brands, it is clear that Coke fans were split between liking the Simpsons / “We are all broke” ad, and not liking the Sleepwalker ad. Curiously, there is a phrase inside of the  Coke could that states “Pepsi wins”.

Looking over at Pepsi’s tag cloud, you can see phrases like “Biggest winner for this year’s superbowl ads”, “Embraces social media for good”, “Pepsi Refresh Project”, “Pepsi wins publicity” and “social media spending $20M instead”. These are positively phrased statements, which point to the fact that the “halo effect” created by Pepsi’s social media efforts stayed strong during the Superbowl, even in spite of absence of traditional ads.

Finally, let’s take a look at costs and ROI. An average cost of a 30-second spot during the Superbowl goes for $2.6 million. Since Coke put out 2 one-minute ads, that works out to be $10.4 that the brand spent in increasing buzz for one night. However, Pepsi’s $20 million investment in social media will last them quite some time and will keep the brand top of mind for many months to come. As I mentioned above, buzzworthy content will win, and Pepsi Refresh is very buzzworthy, as the project elevates the conversation to using social media for common good. I say that given how brand information is consumed and shared these days, Pepsi’s investment makes a whole lot more sense. What do you think?

Sports fans held their breath as the Saints took on the Colts during last night’s Superbowl 2010. At the same time, marketers and ad and social media folks waited with baited breath for the famously lavish and obscenely expensive Superbowl commercials, to see which ones would outdo all others (or perhaps tone it down this year due to tough economic conditions). With the immediacy of social media platforms and realtime access to Twitter, it is now possible to know right away which brands did well in the court of social media opinion and which ones failed.

A quick review of yesterday’s social media chatter via the Biz360 Community tool, clearly shows three winners that garnered the most mindshare in social media: Google, Doritos and the Focus on the Family campaign featuring Tim Tebow.

Looking at sentiment across the three topics, it was mostly positive, although tweets make it very difficult to understand sentiment.

What is more telling is the discovery process that can be done around each brand’s name. Via tag cloud analysis, the phrases that most frequently occurred when speaking about the Google ad, were along the lines of  ”my favorite Superbowl ad”, “liked Google ad”, “loved Google ad”, “great Superbowl ad”. Clearly, this was the crowd’s favorite.

The Tim Tebow ad stirred up quite a controversy (as expected) with words “Controversy”, “Controversial” and “Right Wing Fundamentalist” listed prominently, and alongside statements like “Celebrate Life”. On the one hand, folks were urging others to complain to CBS, while others said: “Let’s make it the most popular ad”. Below the fold, phrases like “violence against women” and “waste of a superbowl commercial” make an appearance.

What were your favorite Superbowl ads?

As the news of Apple iPad broke on Wednesday late morning, Twitter was abuzz with the news. So much so, that  a friend of mine asked in a tweet, prior to the announcement: “What will get more press: the Apple announcement or the State of the Union Address?”, to which I retorted “I bet it will be the iPad”. Was I right?

As a data junkie, I was fascinated on the spot, and recalled this question immediately when picking a topic for this week’s Biz360 trend report. So without much ado, I tracked social media mentions for the following topics: Apple iPad, State of the Union Address, and the World Economic Forum in Davos, which is another big world event going on currently (which seemed to be getting a little lost amongst all the iPad chatter). I analyzed two days: January 27th, the day of the iPad announcement and the State of the Union Address, as well as the following day. I tracked these topics across Twitter, blogs, forums / discussion boards, and online news, and this is what I found:

The iPad coverage did, in fact, far outweigh the coverage received by the State of the Union and Davos, resulting a crushing 58.8% share of voice. People talked about iPad more than twice as much as about the State of the Union (at 34.8%), and completely obliterating any Davos conversation (at 3.8%). The Apple iPad received a staggering 164,000+ mentions across various social media channels.

To an extent, I think this may be a function of the medium, as the lion’s share (86.6%) of the iPad conversations were happening on Twitter (see below), which in its early days tended to skew towards the “geeky and techie” contingent, with traditionally a high adoption rate of Apple products. Thus, it would make sense that the folks most interested in the iPad announcement, were tweeting up a storm about the announcement. However, since Twitter has gone more mainstream, this argument becomes a little flawed. Other than the possible Twitter medium explanation, your guess is as good as mine as far why the iPad received more coverage than Obama’s first State of the Union Address.

So how did the public feel about this very hotly debated new gadget? If you look at all social media sources (which is highly skewed towards Twitter, as we discussed above), sentiment is mostly neutral. Twitter is notoriously hard to measure because its character economy (maximum 140 characters per tweet) makes us forgo the grammar and correct spelling, making it difficult for a machine (heck, even a human!) to understand sentiment.

However, removing Twitter fetches quite a different result. Not counting Twitter, sentiment towards the iPad has been mostly positive (see below). In another post, I think I may dig into how we, the Social Media Republic, feel about the iPad name, which has been responsible for an avalanche of jokes about feminine products.

As a marketer, oh boy do I know how things have changed! No longer do consumers listen to or watch advertisements. Directmail and mass emails get tossed into the wastebasket. Unless it’s a tailored communication or offer, buyers scoff at marketing that treats them like a number. Granularity and 1-on-1 marketing are expected more and more. And to top it off, with web analytics and measurement technologies widely available, ROI is increasingly important to quantify success of marketing programs. So how does a brand stand out? How does a brand truly develop a message, product offering and support to match evolving needs? In a space like ours, with so much data and so many smart technologies around, how do we give our clients what they need? How do we evolve our brand, while keeping our innovative DNA intact? Let’s have Tamairah Boleyn lead the way!

I caught up with Tam Boleyn, our faithful Director of Marketing. Tam lets us in on her path towards this position, and provides  commentary on how our marketing activities have changed to keep up with the changing needs and expectations of our clients.

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Update: we have extended the deadline to Sunday at 2 p.m., so hurry and submit your entry now!

We are proud to be partnering with Social Media Week SF and Social Media Camp to bring you cutting edge content and networking with the brightest minds in the social media industry. Social Media Week is a global event, taking place in 6 cities concurrently, with the purpose of educating organizations and individuals on issues around social media, and empowering them to take action. We are also thrilled to be sharing the stage with thought leaders and practitioners during Social Media Camp on Monday, February 1st, 2010. Our panel will be presenting at 10:30; we will focus on issues of web and social media analytics, measurement, monitoring, ROI, enterprise-level systems that support social media activities (social CRM), and many other issues near and dear to our hearts. A complete list of panelists is forthcoming.

And best of all, we get a chance to give away a free ticket ($99 value) to one of our lucky readers! So how do you win this ticket? We thought you’d never ask! Since our panel will be all about measurement and analytics, we would love to hear your take on why measurement is important, and how you measure your social media activities (feel free to enclose a brief case study  if you feel so inclined). If you are just starting to measure your activities, don’t worry!  Just tell us why you think it’s important, and how you see yourself measuring and monitoring various projects and initiatives. Just jot down a paragraph in the comments section, and we will select the winner with the best response! Contest ends Friday, January 29th at midnight. Winner announced Saturday by 2 p.m.

For a full list of Social Media Week events, check out the event calendar, and we will see you there!

Since we have access to so much data via our Community Insights platform, I thought we would do something a little fun. Most of the time, we use our monitoring platform and smart sentiment engine to help customers engage and win in the buzzing, and often disorienting, social media space. But sometimes, we use our data and sentiment measurement to make predictions on what may happen next. For example, we used our sentiment measurement to predict the winner of American Idol last year.

Today, I want to ruminate and speculate about the Apple Tablet. It grabbed my attention, because the following FoxNews article is now in day 2 of being at the top of Techmeme. A read of the aforementioned article confirms the several-month-long chatter around the Apple Tablet rumors, and also tells us that Apple is in talks with two of the largest carriers, AT&T and Verizon. A data junkie wants to know if we can we use social media to: 1) understand who is talking about the Apple Tablet and where, 2) how people feel about it, and 3) how they feel about the Apple’s partnership with the two carriers?

Here’s what the data tells us:

Most of the Apple Tablet chatter is occurring in microblogs and blogs:

Sentiment towards the Apple Tablet has evolved over the past couple of weeks. We are ending the 2-week cycle with a more positive disposition than we started with (see below). Perhaps because before it was considered a bunch of unfounded rumors, but now it’s actually starting to look real?  A deep dive into each day of sentiment can help uncover who is driving the conversation. This is beyond the scope of this post, but useful information for an Apple analyst or the marketing and social media team at Apple.

Is there any difference in how the different media sources feel about the Apple Tablet? I am excluding Twitter from this discussion, because tweets are notoriously difficult to calculate sentiment due to Twitter’s own syntax and character economy, which makes grammar and spelling fall by the wayside. Other than that, seems that blogs (see below) are more excited about the Tablet than discussion forums. Among some of the largest (in terms of reach and impact) blog sources contributing positive sentiment on 1.21 were Yahoo! Tech Blogs, CNET, iClarified, MacUser, and many many others.

Interesting to note that interest in the subject peaked on forums on the 13th and the 21st of this month (see below), but seemed to languish in between. A deeper dive into some of the negative forums with the widest reach reveals: PC World Forums like this one, and this one and AfterDawn forums, MacWorld forums, Apple Insider and many others. The Apple Tablet community manager has her job cut out for her!

One of the coolest things that Community Insights can do is generate a tag cloud around your topic of choice. Let’s see what the bloggers are saying about the Tablet:

Most of the phrases are around rumors and confirmations of announcement, camera on the iPhone (it won’t have a camera and it will – hmmm so which one is it?), NY Times Paywall, Webcam, 3G, Apple Tablet coming to Verizon (is it really? I guess we’ll have to wait and see on that one), and other “truemors.”

Speaking of Verizon… Which carrier will Apple choose? Apple Tablet certainly seems to have a higher share of voice than AT&T:

And a closer look at the Verizon vs. AT&T tag cloud clearly shows that “AT&T is an Apple Tablet dealbraker” (wow, strong statement), and contradictory statements like “AT&T to get apple tablet” and “Apple is headed to Verizon”.

The Verizon & Apple Tablet tag cloud includes many of the same phrases, but the most frequently occurring phrase seems to be a more definitive one “Apple will be sold” (through Verizon), while many other occurrences include both “AT&T” and “Verizon” in the same phrase.

Although sentiment for both carriers seems to be about even, with the slight leaning towards Verizon, the fact that Apple is talking to both carriers makes me think that they will be able to offer it through both AT&T and Verizon. I certainly  hope so, because after the release of  the carrier-agnostic (sort of) Nexus One, all smartphone manufacturers should start to become available through many carriers. I guess only time will tell, on January 27th.

Biz360 10th Anniversary Interview Series – Interview with Danielle Sherman, Account Manager Extraordinaire

Danielle Sherman understands what it takes to ensure that our clients are using their Biz360 tools to their maximum potential. She is an educator, a fixer, an interpreter of data and a “topic query whisperer”. After we sign up a large enterprise client, it’s the services team, which Danielle is a part of, which makes the social media motor hum daily.

We index such tremendous amounts of data that we want to ensure that our clients can get their hands around their very large numbers of mentions. As easy as our product is to use, our clients have been known to build some very complex topics. And that’s where we come in: from complex topic creation, to custom report generation and  social media education, our services team is here to help unlock the full capabilities of our platform.

Having come from “PR 1.0″, Danielle has a unique perspective on how social media has changed the conversation, PR, marketing, and what our clients are looking for. Take a look at her interview below:

The volume of social media content can be overwhelming, even with the best designed search strategy. And even then, there is the always ubiquitous spam problem…

Because of these challenges, focus is key in navigating your way through the social web. How do I focus my search to make sure that my results stay relevant? One of my favorite features in the Community Insights platform is called “Community Lists”.  This feature allows users to create discrete, spam free source lists, even across multiple content types (blogs, micro-blogs, forums, online news, etc.).  I use this feature to segment coverage so I can focus on tracking high impact industry influencers, another list of bloggers I want to engage with regularly and even internal sources so I can monitor our departmental activity levels.   In addition, there are many other possible use cases.

Clearly, there are times when I want to search across the full blogosphere, for example when using our discovery feature to surface emerging topics.  But day-to-day, using Community Lists saves me a great deal of time and increases precision of my analysis.