Social media is more than a digital water cooler for TV and movies. The global conversation that takes place around events and the experiences people share based on what they watch teaches us about consumer preferences. More importantly, their activity influences behavior. Behavior counts for everything. Studying it is just the beginning of course. In order to understand and eventually steer behavior, we must translate activity into insights and in turn, translate insights into actionable strategies and programs.

The Hollywood Reporter recently published an exclusive poll about social media led by market research firm Penn Schoen Berland. As the report opens, THR notes, “There’s a sea change afoot in how Americans discover and consume entertainment.”

According to the study, 88% of respondents view social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook as a new form of entertainment.

Hours Spent Each Week Doing Online Activities

Social networking and listening to music top the activities for Generation-C and each is greater than the time spent watching full-length movies or television shows on a weekly basis.

- 8 Hours: Visiting social networking sites.
- 8 Hours: Listening to music
- 7 Hours: Watching full-length television shows.
- 4 Hours: Watching full-length movies.
- 4 Hours: Watching video clips (e.g. YouTube)
- 4 Hours: Instant messaging

How Social Networking Impacts Entertainment Choices

The report found that 79% of connected television viewers visit Facebook while watching TV.

Pollster Jon Penn notes, “Social media is the connective tissue that enables consumers to multitask during their entertainment experiences by connecting with others and sharing their opinions.”

Additionally, 83% surf the web while viewing TV and 41% tweet about the show they’re watching.

When we look at the psychology of engagement, this next stat becomes a bit more revealing. Of those who post about TV shows, 76% do so live and 51% do so to feel connected to others who might also be watching.

Comedies, Reality TV Put Social in Social Media

Social networking is in its own right a reality show made for the web. It is its own form of entertainment. And, as the study found, an overwhelming majority of people agree. When we look at the types of programs viewers are most likely to post about while watching TV, Comedy, Reality TV, Sports and News take the top four spots.

Types of shows people are most likely to post about while watching TV:
56%: Comedy
46%: Reality TV
38%: Sports
26%: Cable News

Social Media on the Silver Screen

Digital Influence is often misunderstood, but it is potent. Influence is causing effect or changing behavior. Here, we can see that those who Tweet about movies actually influence the behavior of those who follow them.

One out of three connected consumers saw a movie in a theater because of something they read on a social network.

The report found that horror and other younger-skewing film genres benefit most from social networking. For example, more than 6% of respondents saw Paranormal Activity 3 because of social networking activity. One can assume based on psychological studies, that this form of social commerce is driven by either #FOMO (fear of missing out) or social proof.

Social Networking in Theaters…Really?

Prior to watching any movie in theaters nowadays, viewers must sit through a short spot that reminds them not to use their phones during the theater. Aside from the ringing adding unnecessary distractions to other theatergoers, the bright white screen is also disruptive as it tends to light up an otherwise dark room.

However, social networking is not limited to at-home movie watching. 55% of moviegoers have texted during a movie. Film moguls and theater owners should take note: The poll also found that an overwhelming majority of 18-to-34-year-olds believe using social networks such as Facebook and Twitter while watching a movie in a theater would actually add to their experience. Nearly half would be interested in going to theaters that allowed texting and web surfing.

Penn added, “Millennials want their public moviegoing experience to replicate their own private media experiences.”

The same can’t be said for all consumers though as 75% of respondents said that using a mobile phone would take away from the experience.

Additionally 24% and 21% have posted about what they’re watching in theaters on Facebook and Twitter respectively.

Social Media Multitasking ≠ Distraction

Gen-C is often falsely diagnosed with a thin attention span. Yet in reality, Gen-C focuses on all that’s important to them many times at the same time. They’re just wired differently and rather than challenge it or try to debunk its value, our energy should instead focus on understanding how multitasking adds to the experience.

When asked what other activities are performed while social networking, watching programs on TV was by far the most popular at 66% followed by watching movies on TV at 50%. Interestingly, 11% stated that they watch a movie in a theater while networking.

So, what are viewers saying while multitasking between networking and watching TV. It’s a bit of give and take as 67% will listen to or read what others have to say and 33% will most likely express their own opinions or thoughts.

Social Media Impact on TV Viewing Choices

How can social media drive tune-in? That’s often one of the top questions on the mind of TV marketers. As of now, serendipity certainly plays a role in contributing to tune-in. Three out of 10 people watched a TV show because of something they read or saw on a social network.

Social Media Spawns a New Genre of Critics

In the age of social media, viewers have become participants in real-time experiences. And many, are also becoming critics simply what they say and share online. Social network activity certainly influences behavior, but to what extent requires greater study.

The study found that 72% of respondents post about movies on social networks after watching a film. We can assume that those expressions are rooted in opinion and we can also hypothesis that these shared opinions in some way affect the impression of those who see them. At the same time, 20% post before and 8% post during a viewing.

This Just In…

News no longer breaks, it Tweets. Those who run social activity streams all day will tell you that they learn about news on Twitter first which then drives them to a online or broadcast news source to learn more. But, 31% and 28% of respondents reported that their main source for breaking news is cable news stations news web sites respectively.

I wonder about that data point however as it’s not clear if it is the primary source or the main source. The fact that the study found that social networks make up 19% of their breaking news source provides some clarity, but I still question the source of the flashpoint.

Social Media is Music to My Ears

It’s not just TV shows or movies that benefit from social media. All forms of entertainment lend to peer-to-peer behavioral influence. THR found that musicians also benefit from social media with 70% of respondents listening to music by an artist based on what a friend posted on a social networking site.

For those who saw or read about my interview with Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins at SXSW, certainly heard how he believes fans must step up their support for the artists that they love. And, sharing what you’re listening to is certainly one way to contribute, whether it’s through frictionless sharing apps such as Spotify or stated support by Tweeting, Facebooking or blogging support.

Social Media Tests Positive for Influence

Based on the work of Robert Cialdini, I analyzed six universal heuristics and the role they play in consumer decision making in social commerce. Referred to as “thinslicing,” consumers tend to ignore most information available and instead ‘slice off’ a few relevant information or behavioral cues that are often social to make intuitive decisions.

The THR study surfaced that more than half of respondents (56%) believe that social networks play an important role in making entertainment-related decisions. Across every genre of entertainment, respondents felt that positive posts held greater influence over their decisions than those that are negative.

Specifically, 82% are influenced in the music they listen to; 76% in the TV shows they watch; 75% in the movies they choose to see; and 74% in the video games they play.

Facebook vs. Twitter

I often refer to Twitter, Facebook and activity stream apps as new attention dashboards. THR asked respondents which networks they used and how. The answers help in how we better understand what’s of interest to consumers.

Of all respondents, 98% are Facbook and 56% are Twitter members. In terms of daily visits, 9 out of 10 visit Facebook and 1 of 2 visit Twitter every day.

When asked about who and what they follow, participants shared the following…

Companies/Brands:
Facebook = 49%
Twitter = 37%

TV Shows:
Facebook = 49%
Twitter = 30%

Movies
Facebook = 43%
Twitter = 25%

Actors/Actresses
Facebook = 32%
Twitter = 41%

Reality TV Stars
Facebook = 16%
Twitter = 23%

Journalists/Reports
Facebook = 9%
Twitter = 15%

I find it interesting that consumers connect more with brands, movies, or shows on Facebook whereas Twitter is the preferred choice for connecting with people. Marketers should take note in how people form fandoms and communities, where and how.

The State of Movie Marketing

Considering the behavior of Gen-C as well as all other consumers, marketers can’t rule out any form of promotion or engagement without understanding the balance and how each contribute to consumerism.

The study found that even through social networking is playing a significant role in movie watching and shared experiences, traditional marketing is still king in how consumers make moviegoing decisions. Trailers and previews are the biggest influence for movie choices at 40%, which can include a variety of sources for where that trailer is viewed (theater, TV, website, Youtube, etc.) TV ads still play a large role in decision making at 20%. Real world word of mouth is also a important source of the selection process at 18%. Only 9% of respondents said that comments or reviews on social networks influenced decisions.

You are Now the Architect of a Multi-Screen Experience

Processing this data is one thing. Interpreting its impact on your strategy for programming, marketing, and engagement is up to you. What’s clear is that what we think about social media, entertainment, and influence and how consumers are behaving can only teach us about how to be more engaging, entertaining, and how to create and steer experiences that matter to consumers and producers. So what’s your second and third screen experience? Have you defined it? If not, this is the time to develop an engaging multi-screen experience because it’s already happening with or without your design.

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I’ve been a long-time supporter of MediaTemple’s (MT)Residence program along with Gary Vaynerchuk, Neil Patel, and many others whom I respect. I wanted to share my “7 questions to answer to become a social business” with you here..

Social Media is pervasive and is becoming the new normal in corporate marketing. Brands who get this right are starting to build their own media networks rich with customer connections numbering in the millions. Right now, Coca-Cola has over 34 million fans on Facebook, but they’re hardly alone. Disney follows just behind with 29 million fans, Starbucks boasts 25 million, and Oreo, Red Bull, and Converse play host to over 20 million fans. If we were to look at other networks such as Twitter and Youtube, we would see a recurring theme. People are connecting en masse with the businesses they support and new media represents the ability to cultivate consumer relationships in ways not possible with traditional earned or paid media.

Sounds great right? This might sound abrupt, but the truth is that we’re hardly realizing the potential of what lies before us. Everything begins with understanding not just how other brands are marketing themselves in social media, but also seeing what they’re not doing and envisioning what’s possible.

We’re already approaching the first of many crossroads that new media will present. Do we take the path of a social brand or that of a social business? What’s the difference? A social brand is just that, a business that is remodeling or retrofitting its existing marketing practices to new media. A social business is something altogether different as it embraces introspection and extrospection to reevaluate internal and external processes, systems, and opportunities to transform into a living, breathing entity that adapts to market conditions and opportunities.

It’s a tough decision to make right now especially at a time when all we read about is how much success many businesses are finding without having to answer this very question. With all of the newfound success in social networks, the truth is that we’re only just beginning to learn what’s possible and that’s where you come in. When compared to the investment in time and resources across the board, social media represents only a small part of the mix. But with your help, that’s all about to change.

The CMO Survey, an organization that disseminates the opinions of top marketers in order to predict the future of markets, recently published a report that gave credence to the fact that social media is taking off. One of the most profound takeaways from the report was this gem; “The “like button” [in Facebook] packs more customer-acquisition punch than other demand-generating activities.” With insights like this, it’s easy to see why the race to social is becoming heated.

The report also highlighted exactly where social fits in the marketing mix today and as you can see, despite all of the hype, it’s not a dominant focus yet. As of August 2011, the percentage of overall marketing budgets dedicated to social media hovered at around 7%. However, in 2012 the investment in social media will climb to 10%. And, in five years, social media is expected to represent almost 18% of the total marketing budget. Think about that for a moment. In 2016, social media will only represent 18%?

Queue the sound of a record scratching here. With businesses finding success in social networks, why are businesses failing to realize the true opportunity brought forth by the ability to listen to, connect with, and engage with customers? While there’s value in earning views, driving traffic, and building connections through the 3F’s (friends, fans and followers), success isn’t just defined simply by what really amounts to low-hanging fruit.

The truth is that businesses cannot measure what it is they don’t know to value. As a result, innovation in new engagement initiatives is stifled because we’re applying dated or inflexible frameworks to new paradigms. Social media isn’t owned by marketing, but instead the entire organization. This changes everything and makes your role so much more important. It’s up to you to learn how to think outside of the proverbial social media box to see what others don’t, the ability to improve customers experiences through the evolution of a social brand into a social business. Doing so will translate customer insights from what they do and don’t share in social networks into better products, services, and processes.

See, customers want something more from their favorite businesses than creative campaigns, viral content, and everyday dialogue in social networks. Customers want to be heard and they want to know that you’re listening. How businesses use social media must remind them that they’re more than just an audience, consumer, or a conduit to “trigger” a desired social effect.

Herein lies both the challenge and opportunity of social media. It’s bigger than marketing. It’s also bigger than customer service. It’s about building relationships with customers that improve experiences and more importantly, teaches businesses how to re-imagine products and internal processes to better adapt to potential crises and seize new opportunities.

When it comes down to it, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Foursquare, are all channels for listening, learning, and engaging. It’s what you do within each channel that builds a community around your brand. And, at the end of the day, the value of the community you build counts for everything. It’s important to understand that we cannot assume that these networks simply exist for people to lineup for our marketing messages or promotional campaigns. Nor can we assume that they’re reeling in anticipation for simple dialogue. They want value. They want recognition. They want access to exclusive information and offers. They need direction, answers and resolution.

What we’re talking about here is the multidimensional makeup of consumers and how a one-sided approach to social media forces the needs for social media to expand beyond traditional marketing to socialize the various departments, lines of business, and functions to engage based on the nature of the situation or opportunity.

In the same CMO study, it was revealed that marketers believe that social media has a long way to go toward integrating into the overall company strategy. On a scale of 1-7, with one being “not integrated at all” and seven being “very integrated,” 22% chose “one.” Critical functions such as service, HR, sales, R&D, product marketing and development, IR, CSR, etc. are either not engaged or are operating social media within a silo disconnected from other efforts or possibilities. The problem is that customers don’t view a company by silo, instead they see one company, one brand, and their experience in social media forms an impression that eventually contributes to their view of your brand.

The first step here is to understand business priorities and objectives to assess how social media can be additive in achieving these goals. Additionally, surveying the landscape to determine other areas of interest as its specifically related to your business.

• Are customers seeking help or direction?

• Who are your most valuable customers and what are they sharing?

• How can you use social media to acquire and retain customers?

- What ideas are circulating and how can you harness user generated activity and content to innovate or adapt to better meet the needs of customers?

- How can you broaden a single customer view to recognize the varying needs of customers and how your organization can organize around each circumstance?

- What insights exist based on how consumers are interacting with one another? How can this intelligence inform marketing, service, products and other important business initiatives?

- How can your business extend their current efforts to deliver better customer experiences and in turn more effectively unit internal collaboration and communication?

Customer demands far exceed the capabilities of the marketing department. While creating a social brand is a necessary endeavor, building a social business is an investment in customer relevance now and over time. Beyond relevance, a social business fosters a culture of change that unites employees and customers and sets a foundation for meaningful and beneficial relationships. Innovation, communication, and creativity are the natural byproducts of engagement and transformation. As a social brand, we are competing for the moment. As a social business, we are competing the future in all that we do today.

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It’s inevitable that I will get the question. You’d think by now that I would learn to expect it…that I would prepare for it…or have a response that would be purely second nature. But I don’t. I’ve no standard answer that automatically inspires anyone in the moment to take action. And, to this day, I neither expect the question nor do I have a rehearsed or standard riposte committed to memory.

So what is “the question?”

The question faces those who see disruption all around them. They believe survival requires change and they aspire to fight for transformation. But, at some point in their quest to pursue a new course, a direction in which they deeply believe, they will ask reluctantly, even desperately, “How do I convince others to see what I see” or “how can I get those in control to recognize the importance of what’s happening around us so that we can move forward in the right direction?”

While my response in each moment always attempts to zero-in on the individual circumstance, the truest, most genuine answer that I can share is that…to bring about change does not take technology, it takes courage. And, this is why change is not a commodity. Change is not easy nor is it formulaic. But I can say this with the utmost conviction, change.is.inevitable and it is yours to define.

We live in disruptive times. As such, everything we know transcends into everything we once knew. How we communicate, connect, discover, learn and share is changing. New and emerging technology is becoming increasingly relentless and it is forcing evolution or complete transformation. And, it touches your personally and professionally. In our own way, we each are gravitating toward dissonance or disarray and it can be distressful. As students, parents, role models, employees, managers, entrepreneurs, artists, or some or all of the above, we will at some point collide with disruption. And in that moment, we will have a choice to make. We either fall down, choose to embrace change, or we will see the possibilities beyond what’s immediately apparent to pave the way toward a more meaningful outcome.

But again, it takes courage. It takes courage to see what others don’t or do what others won’t. It takes courage to push forward when pushed back.

Courage is the ability to do something that frightens one, yet it is the very thing that all leaders share. See, courage takes great strength to stand in the face of pain or inevitable grief and without it, your vision, no matter how brilliant or essential, is merely a masterpiece painted on a napkin—a promise that is never fully realized.

We stand today upon a foundation of uncertainty and apprehension. Everything is changing. What is constant however, is the absence of clarity, direction or answers. To tell you that there is an easy path toward transformation or that there are a series of “top 10 ways” to help you change the perspective of leadership or those around you is, well, misleading or a complete falsehood.

Contrary to popular belief, there are no rules for revolutionaries…just as there are no leaders who don’t continually strive to earn a position of leadership. It takes courage to be a change agent, to rise up and lead the way when others are filled with fear. It takes courage to walk in a different direction when others walk along a contrasting path. Most important, it takes courage to drive persistence to overcome resistance…to find comfort outside your comfort zone when the promise of reward is ambiguous. For, it is the vision to see where you need to go and the conviction to shepherd the march toward relevance that earns the greatest rewards of all, leadership, significance, and advocacy.

This is your time…

“Courage is grace under pressure.” – Ernest Hemingway

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Rebecca Lieb, my colleague at Altimeter Group released a new report, “Content: The New Marketing Equation Why Organizations Must Rebalance.” The report helps organizations find balance in the creation of effective content strategies while delivering value to stakeholders and consumers and also the bottom line.

It’s safe to assume that the attention of the audience as we knew it is waning. And when we look at the online and mobile behavior of connected customers, a sense of responsibility emerges as everyday people become media beacons in their own right. As such, they rigorously share and curate for their audience with an editorial-style approach as what was once a static audience is now an audience with an audience of audiences. People are learning that there are rewards for contributing to signal instead of the noise. Those who do not, learn the hard way…that people will disconnect in order to preserve the integrity of their stream.

Such is true for organizations. For those organizations that do not contribute value to social streams will find that content and desired voices will fall upon the severed ties of once captive communities. Rebecca’s report will help companies identify a path for increasing relevance. And, it starts with adopting an always-on approach that extends campaigns through a continuum model. As she observes…

Marketers can serve customers and prospects with content through every phase of awareness, branding, intent, conversion, and customer service. Yet, unlike advertising, content initiatives are continual rather than episodic, placing new demands not just on marketing organizations but also across the enterprise as a whole.

When you study the intentions and architecture of many branded social media campaigns and strategies overall, it’s difficult to not wonder whether social media isn’t an oxymoron in its current incarnation. I’ve written about this on several occasions over the past year, calling for an end to an era of Social Media 1.0. It’s a call for businesses to move from antisocial social media strategies and raise the bar for more compelling and mutually beneficial forms of engagement.

Good friend Tom Foremski recently observed that, “Corporations are being pressured by legions of ‘experts’ to exploit social media as a lucrative sales and marketing channel. This will destroy social media…” His point was that brands used social media channels to push traditional corporate media, exhibiting a collective broadcast mentality disguised as social engagement. He then started EC=MC (Every Company is a Media Company), a movement to help businesses realize the opportunity presented by social for not only marketing, but true storytelling, experiential journeys, and engagement. Also referred to as brand journalism or brand publishing, the idea is that brands can earn greater attention, reach, and results by investing in a journalistic approach. It’s a move away from promotional content to the delivery of useful, entertaining, or meaningful engagement and experiences through new media.

Attention is finite and the competition for it is only escalating. But to entice and capture attention will take more than a new content strategy and a supporting editorial calendar. It will take a new mission, purpose, and culture to unlock experiences and pave engaging journeys through content.

As Rebecca notes…

Content marketing requires a shift in company culture, resources, budgets, partners, and strategy. Rebalancing is critical to achieve these goals. The choice is whether to rebalance now, or later when the battle for attention may become even more difficult than it currently is.

To adapt to a new landscape for effective attention marketing, Rebecca introduces a five-stage maturity model. It details how organizations evolve in the quest to market efficiently with content. Not every company will reach every stage. But as she observes, evolution, direction, and purpose must start at the top…

Yet to effectively market with content, organizational change and transformation must be driven from the top level of the organization. Left to the marketing department alone, success is limited. New skills must be developed and training offered, both in digital technologies as well as in job functions more aligned with the responsibilities found at a newspaper, magazine, or broadcaster, than in classic marketing functions. Content requires more speed and agility than does marketing, yet at the same time it must be aligned with metrics that conform to the business’ strategic marketing goals.

1. Stand: This organization may have dabbled in social media or created a blog, but activity is infrequent and not generally viewed as important within the organization. The marketing department relies almost wholly on “push” communications such as email marketing, direct mail, and advertising.

2. Stretch, Taking the First Steps While Scanning the Horizon: An organization at the Stretch stage realizes the value of content marketing and begins to build the strategy and support necessary to create and publish content.Understanding develops that, while many of the tools and media are free, content requires an investment of resources. An executive sponsor is necessary to lead the program and communicate its value and reach to the organization. This executive sponsor is also tasked with identifying team members to engage with early channels, building basic forms of content, and evaluating potential agency relationships.

3. Walk, Ambition and Forward Momentum: In this stage, content creation and production get a solid strategic foundation organizationally. From channel specific (e.g. “we blog”), content begins to become channel agnostic and is distributed across a variety of channels and platforms. Processes are formalized. This is the stage at which a team begins to take shape, strategy is more fully refined and tweaked, and the team begins to establish governance to scale and shape content processes.

4. Jog, Sustainable, Meaningful and Scalable Content Initiatives: The organization’s strategy is clear, as well as communicated throughout the enterprise at this stage. Focus shifts toward expanding the team and its ability to create experiential, engaging content rather than simply create and publish simpler stories and informational pieces. The processes for producing content are also more fully developed and strategic. Content is created with a view toward being reusable or repurposed across multiple media platforms.

5. Run, Inspired and Inspirational: In this phase, a successful, real-time integration of content marketing and curation is part of the fabric of nearly all aspects of branding. The organization has become a bona fide media company, actually able to monetize innovative and highly polished content that is either branded and/or related to the brand proposition. Content is sold and licensed based on its standalone merit, with content divisions having separate P&L responsibility.

In the report, Lieb also introduces four fundamental steps toward content marketing maturity. These steps serve as important reminders that no matter how sophisticated your program is today, its success is always determined by how audiences with audiences engage and contribute to the dissemination of your story, value, and mission. And in turn, success is measured by how they feel and/or the actions that they take as a result of the engagement.

1. Understanding That Content Marketing is Not Free

2. Implementing Broad Cultural Integration Around Content Marketing

3. Integrating Content Marketing with Advertising

4. Avoiding Bright, Shiny Objects

To get there of course is not an easy task. As noted earlier, it comes down to culture…it comes down to leadership. Additionally, effective content marketing strategies and ultimately the experiences and outcomes that they can deliver require a supporting infrastructure that is strengthened by pillars of new expertise. It takes a different vision for what’s possible, higher standards and supporting metrics, and most important, a new perspective.

- Organizational Structure. The infrastructure that allows content creation and distribution to be fostered and encouraged both within the marketing department and beyond it.

- Internal Resources. Staff roles, teams, and leadership that support and create content marketing.

- External Resources. The extent to which the organization works with outside vendors and service providers including agencies, creative resources, and technology vendors.

- Measurement. Creating meaningful metrics around content marketing, including tying them to overall marketing and sales goals.

- New Skills and Capabilities. Fostering understanding of content marketing, executive buy-in, and ensuring staff can manage, create, and publish content.

- New Mindsets and Approaches. Content marketing is almost never a 9-to-5 undertaking. Creating, managing, and monitoring content outside of normal business hours, often in real time, is essential.

Rebecca’s report includes a self-audit that’s designed to assess where your organization is on the Altimeter Content Marketing Maturity Model. The goal is to help you better understand what you need to advance along the framework and also improve the effectiveness in how content increases engagement, experiences, and outcomes as a result. The case studies provided in the report are eye-opening. I also believe that they will inspire creativity in defining your content marketing goals.

In the end, content is a representation of the sentiment you wish to evoke, the story you wish to tell, the experiences you wish to deliver and the journeys you wish to create. Content though, is a also reflection of your vision, supporting culture, and the intentions that define the social objects you introduce. It’s time to rebalance.

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A key objective for senior executives over the next several years is to use disruptive technology to get closer to customers, to improve relationships, and enhance experiences. It is a considerable move and the result will usher in a new era of adaptive and empathetic business models. However, this is a move that is easier said than done., especially when vision and execution are two sides of different coins. This is a critical path where businesses must not only commit to new technology and goals, but also invest in the methodologies, systems, processes, and people to bring about change from within before it can effectively engage outside.

Like in anything, businesses are measured by actions and words, where outcomes reveal true progress. In 2012 and 2013, businesses will prioritize efforts that bring the organization closer to customers while also performing against the metrics that are constant, including revenue, market share, increased efficiencies and improved margins. The difference now is that today’s company faces a formidable customer that is connected, empowered, influential, and most notably elusive. To earn their attention, their business and ultimately their loyalty and advocacy, the customer journey must be reconsidered, redesigned and individualized.

In a survey of over 1,700 CMOs in 2011, IBM found that the intention of customer engagement was certainly present, but that executives were unclear in how to assess and integrate new technology in managing and leading customer relationships. Of the 13 key market factors below, an alarming 50+ percent of respondents are under prepared to manage all but two key changes, Regulatory Considerations and Corporate Transparency.

Certainly, the model for tomorrow’s business is under development today. What’s clear is that the answers to lead change and chart new directions are unclear. And, this represents both a challenge and opportunity.  Determined businesses will not sit idly while the market is defined by new technology and corresponding customer behavior. Nor will enterprising businesses adopt every new trend that comes along as a way of surfing waves of short-term relevance. Leaders and change agents will develop a process and taskforce to assess new technology against corporate vision, customer expectations, and market direction to prioritize investments in the following areas:

1. Integrated strategy and execution toward business objectives
2. Renewed, unified and consistent branding
3. Organizational structure, alignment and the empowerment people
4. Operations and supply chain
5. Improved processes
6. Collaboration
7. Customer service and engagement in new channels
8. Risk and reputation management
9. Integrated experiences – Mobile/Tablet/Digital/Social
10. Syndicated commerce
11. Metrics and value systems

These areas of focus represent the trends in transformation as expressed through the aspirations of executives who hope to get closer to customers and the expectations of the customers they hope to reach. This is as much about technology and vision as it is about reducing friction, inside and out. In the end, the convergence of disruptive technology, business processes, and customer experiences forces any organization to examine and re-examine everything.  Every effort today carries opportunities for optimization or complete overhaul. The end result is increased relevance, improved experiences, and escalated results.

Some of the key areas of focus for any business in this convergence will include:

1. Big data and the necessary algorithms to make sense out of sheer volume and noise – the net result is intelligence to set the foundation for Adaptive and Predictive business models

2. Social and mobile media as it relates to customer influence, the customer journey, and post-commerce activities

3. Contact centers and the unification of democratized channels such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+ and a managed customer relationship system

4. Metrics, ROI, and meaningful outcomes that look beyond today’s limited KPIs that focus on friends, fans, followers, views, etc.

5. The relationship between CMO and CIO and how together, they will need to invest in innovation and scalability for a new breed of employee, consumer, and an unending array of emerging and disruptive technology

While these reflect only part of the trends requiring transformation, they collectively contribute to customer and employee preference and ultimately competitive advantage. This is the year when we must take a step back to cut through the fog of hype and identify the gaps between business objectives, customer expectations,the important technology channels that separate businesses and customers, and the capabilities and prowess to effectively engage and lead experiences across the board.

In further reviewing the IBM CMO Global Study, CMOs are prioritizing new technology investments as it relates to increasing engagement and improving customer relationships and experiences.

As you can see above, the examination of disruptive technology and the exploration of revising internal processes are aligning to…

1. Enhance customer loyalty/advocacy

2. Design experiences for tablet/mobile apps

3. Use social media to engage customers…their way

4. Use integrated software to better manage customer relationships

5. Listen and learn

This list should be viewed as a checklist for leading important conversations that contribute to a strategy roadmap. Where businesses are and where they will be next year and five years from now will not be predicated simply by social media. Customer expectations and the capacity to translate trends into actionable market opportunities requires a syndicated, but integrated approach, one where all channels are considered and weighted based on behavior and educated predictions. The true opportunity for customer engagement and scalable profitability lies in the architecture of not only a more social business, but a holistic enterprise that operates under a united front. But to get there requires the difficult first step, acceptance. Second, businesses need to assemble capable stakeholders who can organize the necessary treatise between social media champions, change agents, and leaders to organize a distributed movement that empowers employees, engages customers optimizes experiences, and adapts to new opportunities for growth and earned relevance.

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Guest post by Dan Zarrella, author of Zarrella’s Hierarchy of Contagiousness

The key to applying science to marketing is being prescriptive. Calculating and analyzing data that is interesting is fun, but information becomes useful when it tells you how to achieve a specific goal. Throughout my career, one of the goals I’ve focused on is the engineering contagious ideas. I’ve worked for years, using science and data to understand how to craft content that spreads like wildfire.

Humans have been spreading ideas for thousands of years, telling each other where to find the best hunting ground, what dish detergent to use and what god to worship. The web provides unprecedented access to these conversations, allowing researchers to analyze millions of ideas to reverse engineer what it is about them that makes them spread.

Generally, when you ask someone why certain ideas go viral, the best answer you’ll get is “because they’re good.” That video I sent you last week was so funny, I had to share it. Any more than a few moments of thought reveals this to be entirely untrue. There are plenty of good ideas that go nowhere and lots of bad ideas that spread like crazy. Clearly there are some other factors that determine how contagious ideas are. And it is exactly those factors I’ve devoted my work to studying.

If you’ve been to enough social media conferences, or read enough books or blogs about modern marketing, you’ve undoubtedly heard a ton of what I call unicorns-and-rainbows advice. Feel-good stuff like “engage in the conversation,” “hug your followers,” and “have a personality.” It’s hard to disagree with this kind of stuff, because I’m not going to get on stage and tell you to punch your customers in the face, but it’s generally not based on anything more substantial than what sounds right, or makes the listener feel good.

Unicorns-and-rainbows advice is kind of like the snake oil and magical cures peddled before the rise of real, scientific health care. No real doctor would treat his patients with a certain procedure simply because it “sounded right.” It’s time for social media marketing to move beyond the dark ages and embrace the deluge of data now available to us.

One of the biggest problems with the superstitious approach to social media is that success is considered luck. Under the hegemony of unicorns-and-rainbows it’s black magic to make a piece of content “go viral.” The only things those myth-based marketers use to guide their efforts is gut feelings and anecdotal (and often misleading) “experience.”

I for one, don’t like to base business decisions on luck or gut feeling. I prefer to use science and data to create reproducible and reliable results. To accomplish this, I crafted a model for understanding how ideas spread and I’ve studied how marketers can optimize for success at each step of the process. I call this model Zarrella’s Hierarchy of Contagiousness. It’s what my latest book is all about.

While the name is reminiscent of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, the actual model draws on two other concepts: AIDA and OODA. AIDA is a sales methodology that describes the steps in the selling (or buying process): awareness, interest, decision, and action. Each of those steps must occur if someone is going to buy something. OODA comes from military strategy and describes the decision making process in a confrontation: observe, orient, decide, and act.

My framework describes the 3 steps that must happen if someone is going to spread your idea for you:

1. The person must be exposed to your idea. They have to be following you on Twitter, subscribed to your email list or “like” your page on Facebook.

2. They must actually become aware of your idea. I follow 8,000 people on Twitter, so I don’t see every tweet. Your target must actually read your Tweet, open your email or see your wall post in their feed.

3. Something in that content has to actually motivate them to spread your idea. Once I’ve read your tweet, it has to make me want to retweet it. Your email has to make me want to forward it.

At each step of this process, marketers can optimize for success. My book goes into detail about each of these steps and provides data on how to do the best, but here’s a run down:

1. To increase the number of people potentially exposed to your ideas, you must increase your reach. Get more followers, email subscribers or Facebook likes.

2. You have to learn to be heard over the noise of social media. By being more attention grabbing or using contra-competitive timing.

3. Your content must include motivation-raising features. Combined relevance, calls-to-action and us vs them are examples of contagious “hooks.”

For more social media science like this, pickup Zarrella’s Hierarchy of Contagiousness on Amazon.

The following report is brought to you by the Pivot Conference taking place in New York on October 15-16, 2012. You can download a full copy of the report for free by clicking here.

At the end of 2011, Social marketing stands at a profound crossroads. Some organizations are finally embracing the importance of social networks and, as a result, increasing investments in creative engagement, marketing, and service programs. Others see the future value, but lag behind in execution. At the vanguard, Social Businesses drive a virtuous cycle of discovery: Their successes in Social marketing lead to new data, which lead to insights, which lead to new and more effective programs as well as the business systems and processes necessary to improve internal and external collaboration.

In 2012, social media marketing, driven by these innovations, will only continue to mature. Bottom-up learning about what really works in Social will be essential for this expansion. Research conducted by IBM in 2011, for instance, revealed a gap between consumer expectations toward the businesses they support in social media, and executive assumptions about what these consumers wanted. This “Perception Gap,” as defined by the IBM study, demonstrates the importance of bottoms-up, informed social marketing programs, as opposed to the traditional top-down strategies tied to the usual monologue-marketing channels.

Not all customers are created equal. So, businesses are learning that there must be more than one approach to reaching and engaging customers through the emerging Social channels.

This year, at the second annual Pivot Conference, we explored the evolving landscape for consumerism as colored by the emergence of Social Consumers. Brands, agencies, academics and thinkers examined how Social Consumers find and share information, how they influence and are influenced by engagement, and also how they make decisions. In the end, it was clear that the Social Consumer is fundamentally unlike a traditional consumer and, as such, compels brands to rethink sales, service, and marketing strategies across social, broadcast, and mobile networks. At stake is a business’ relevance to the Social Construct, which is the new key to consumer connection and success. For brands today, if you don’t establish this connection, Social Consumers will just connect themselves and collaborate without you.

To help brands more effectively plan for improving customer engagement and experiences in 2012 and beyond, the Pivot team, along with The Hudson Group, surveyed 181 brand managers, agency professionals, and experts. Their answers paint a picture for how businesses intend to reach their Social Consumers. Additionally, the results serve as a benchmark as you, the Social Business leader, assemble your strategies over the next year.

The Rise of the Social Consumer

Who is this Social Consumer and how does he or she differ from traditional counterparts? Let’s start with a working definition. A Social Consumer is someone who first goes to their social networks of relevance to learn about products and services. Though somewhat influenced by their overall social graphs, Social Consumers emphasize the input of those who define their interest graph – like-minded individuals on any given subject who share common interests and experiences with them. In this way, Social Consumers evaluate the shared experiences of those they trust, and expect businesses to respond to their socialized questions. As a consequence, Social Consumers don’t follow a linear approach through the classic ‘interest to intent’ funnel during their decision making process. Rather, they follow an elliptical pattern where their next steps are inspired by the insights of others, and their experiences are, in turn, fed back into the cycle to inform the decisions of others.

Reprinted from The End of Business as Usual, Chapter 14

In the Pivot study, we asked if participants had a clear picture of who their Social Consumer is. An astounding 77 percent said yes.

Comparing these results to the working definition presented above, which survey participants did not review in advance, as well as the Perception Gap produced by IBM, I wonder how these numbers would change if the question was asked now. Given the results noted below, it appears that respondents believe they know who their Social Consumers are, even though they may not have actually engaged them in a detailed conversation.

When the Pivot team explored specifically if respondent organizations asked Social Consumers what they expect from engagement, most responded, “No.” This is intriguing because we have 77 percent of organizations who say they know what their Social Consumers want, but 53 percent haven’t really asked. They do not—cannot—really know how to deliver value in social and mobile networks, thus pointing to IBM’s Perception Gap. On the other hand, 35 percent did note that they asked Social Consumers about their expectations. Our belief is that these organizations will most likely outperform organizations that did not ask.

Businesses shared their perspectives on the benefits and customer expectations of social engagement in their responses to the survey. The results cover a wide spectrum of sales, service, and marketing benefits, with customer service, insight to make decisions, and the ability to learn about new products as the top three entries. Deals and rewards came in fourth and fifth respectively. Each of the benefits is important, however. Offering exclusive content, the ability to provide feedback for improvement and social commerce add to the complexity of reaching and engaging the varying needs of social consumers. We think marketers should look here at the whole tapestry, more than the individual strands.

When asked about the gender of the Social Consumer, respondents believe their Social Consumers are equally divided between male and female. This is result is intriguing for many reasons, not least of which is the findings in previous studies that females skew higher across popular social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, as well as for most social commerce services. Are we seeing the emergence of more men in social networks? Perhaps.

As we continue to examine the demographic makeup of Social Consumers, this study indicates they tend to be most commonly in their 30s and 40s. But there are strong showings of Social Consumers distributed across those 26-30, 46-50 and also 51-55. Clearly, social is no longer the province of just the young.

The household incomes of Social Consumers are scattered across the board. But in aggregate, it appears that Social Consumers lean toward desirable income levels. Median income from the study results is just over $60,000.

When asked which networks are frequented by their Social Consumers, participants stated that Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn were numbers one, two and three respectively. Facebook and Twitter are viewed as essentially ubiquitous. At the time of this survey, Google+ hadn’t yet opened up brand pages, but as of November 2011, businesses can develop official brand presences. Yet, even without the ability to do so during the survey process, businesses recognized the important role Google+ plays in the lives of their Social Consumers

When it comes to Social Consumers’ increasingly common mobile activity, Facebook and Twitter still maintain the top two spots. Foursquare, though, jumps into the third position ahead of LinkedIn, an indication that geo-location networks continue to rise in popularity.

Pleased To Meet You, I Hope You Get My Game

Gamification is becoming part of social networking, education, and loyalty programs due to its attractiveness to the Social Consumer.

Zynga is currently the overwhelming leader in capturing the time and attention of Social Consumers when it comes to gaming, probably a reflection of Facebook’s current dominance. Intriguing here is that the second most common response is “other,” a sign of the diversity in this arena.

Social professionals don’t see a clearly dominant player amount the many current portable photo networks available for popular smartphone platforms. No option received even 25 percent of the responses. However, Hipstamatic is firmly positioned at the top of the list with almost double the usage of Dailybooth, which currently sits at number two, according to respondents. They seem to be leading a rather open field.

In the world of social and group-based deals, Groupon ranks number one among Social Consumers, but LivingSocial maintains a strong foothold in the number two spot. Facebook Deals was in third, but the service has since been discontinued by Facebook.

“After testing Deals for four months, we’ve decided to end our Deals product in the coming weeks,” Facebook told Reuters in a statement published in August 2011, during the time the survey was already in the field.

Engagement is not defined by conversations. Engagement is the act of a consumer and an organization or brand interacting within the consumer’s network of relevance through a combination of conversations, content, or related information. Engagement, and here’s the important part, is then measured by the takeaway value, sentiment, and resulting actions following the interaction.

Brands largely disagree with the belief that conversations in social networks alone drive meaningful business outcomes. The true test, of course, is whether or not outcomes are defined and if they are introduced into engagement as a desired click path. On the flip side of the coin, brands either completely or mostly agree that conversations help with brand lift and relevance responding with 51 percent and 45.5 percent respectively.

There’s notable difference, however, in whether or not brands think their Social Consumers want something of tangible value in exchange for a social connection. 21.6 and 45 percent completely or mostly agree. 27 percent and 6 percent mostly and completely disagree. Our advice: When in doubt, ask.

With all of the fanfare around social media, it would be easy for those living within the new marketing paradigm to assume that social media already was or soon will be mainstream within the organization heading into 2012. However, respondents were divided in their outlook. Just over half believed that social marketing is already mainstream within their organizations and just under half think that social marketing will still be experimental a year from now. This shows where we are in the social revolution: the reality of change is broadly accepted, but norms about fundamental issues still remain elusive. We know we are going to a new place, we just aren’t yet sure exactly where and how fast.

When asked what was preventing the organization from moving beyond experimentation in social marketing, respondents’ reasons were widely distributed. Budget was seen as a challenge, as was the inability to define or measure clear outcomes. We feel that, whatever your personal sense, each of these points is worthy of exploration and definition within the organization. This is the only way to ensure that the needs of Social Consumers do not go unmet. A working strategy and understandable benefits are critical to rallying support across the organization, especially among executives. Defined metrics tied to thoughtful strategies demonstrate progress. Listening combined with research will reveal the need for a cross-functional approach as data always spotlights the varying needs of Social Consumers – beyond marketing.

Confusion reigns today, but conviction lies on the horizon. 2013 is the year a solid set of respondents sees social marketing finally breaking beyond experimentation within the organization. Still, we can see the current uncertainty about the development of social: 15 percent look to 2014 as likely year for corporate breakthrough, another 15 percent see 2015 or later, and a sobering 35 percent still don’t know what to think.

While respondents see social marketing as crossing into the organizational mainstream relatively soon, an overwhelming 89 percent of participants see social marketing as a permanent series of experiments. The takeaway here is that professionals, for the foreseeable future, feel that there is much to learn with regard to the Social Consumer and how to effectively engage and steer positive experiences and outcomes for social marketers. As one area of social moves into the mainstream, it will just open up new areas for experimentation.

The trend in social media budgets is positive. The percentage of respondent companies spending less than 5 percent of budget on social drops by about half between 2011 and 2013 and the percentage spending over 50 percent more than doubles. The sweet spot hovers around 25 percent of budget, rising slightly over the next two years. All this indicates to us is that it remains early days in the development of social in organizations.

Looking ahead to 2012, brands are thinking through goals as they plan next year’s social marketing programs. At the top of the list, at almost 100 percent, is the need to increase sales, which is a reflection of the need for marketers to demonstrate tangible ROI. Consumer engagement, lead generation and brand lift are also atop the list. Among the notable responses from participants, influencing consumer behavior is at just over 60 percent, establishing points of influence at just under 60 percent, and discovering points of relevance shown at 40 percent spotlight how new touchpoints will play a role in driving desirable outcomes and experiences. The overall sense of the responses is a tilt away from “soft” benefits toward harder edged benefits that drive the bottom line.

Surprisingly, improving customer service and support was toward the bottom of the list, but it is promising to see that the research does show that businesses are placing it in the upper half of 2012 planning. We see customer service as one of the potential breakthrough areas for social networks.

Make the Pivot

Here’s the important takeaway: To successfully reach the Social Consumer and ensure that social media extends across the organization, look at this list as a series of steps rather than a hierarchical rank. Thinking through each item will force a more thoughtful approach to reaching Social Consumers and guiding positive experiences and outcomes. Budgets and support are the net benefits of following these action items.

1. Increase understanding of the benefits of the Social Construct within your organization.
2. Develop a clear strategy for social.
3. Define outcomes.
4. Tie strategies and supporting metrics to business objectives.
5. Earn executive buy-in with data, demonstrate the needs of Social Consumers, and show how others are successfully engaging them today.
6. Earn support across departmental functions by showcasing how the varying needs of the Social Consumer are unmet by key roles in the organization.

As you review these data and compare them to your 2012 plans, or if you’re in the planning stages now, remember that benchmarking against peers is only one part of the process. The real opportunity lies among your Social Consumers by identifying their needs, and benchmarking them against your solutions for them and thus your business opportunity.

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Guest post by Todd Blecher, Communications Director, The Boeing Company

Much wisdom did Yoda accumulate. But experience with social media I think not the Jedi had. Yoda’s insistence that we “do, or do not. There is no try,” to brand journalism does not apply.

When it comes to brand journalism the instruction should be “Try. There is no do or do not.” In fact, since April, 2010, when we transformed www.boeing.com into a brand journalism platform, we’ve been all about trying. We started with modest goals and walk-then-run approach that has been essential to sustainable success.

Starting with walking seems obvious but not everybody does it. It not only builds your experience in a manageable way it also helps gain essential internal cooperation. We designed our initial stages as a trial run that could be halted relatively easily. Going slow helped address the unease of doing something new (aka risky) that we found in some corners. It got our nose under the tent and allowed for gradually picking up the pace when the time was right.

From what we’ve learned success with brand journalism seems to flow with the force of some basic principles outlined below.

First and foremost, as with any communications effort, brand journalism must be part of an overall communications strategy. If it’s not, its content will communicate in a vacuum, with little benefit to the organization and of little interest to audiences.

When thinking about brand journalism content an organization must recognize that the stories must, as Shel Holtz recently put it, “be inspiring, clarifying, funny, useful or just plain interesting.” Developing such content requires thinking like an audience member and not just a representative of the organization. Content that serves a communications strategy must be shared. Content that meets what Holtz outlined has a much higher likelihood of being shared than content that doesn’t.

Many organizations, however, won’t allow for thinking like an audience member. They should not do brand journalism.

For those ready to try brand journalism I would recommend hiring some former journalists. And I say to former journalists, as David Meerman Scott put it in this column, consider the opportunities of working for brands. Being that kind of journalist isn’t akin to joining the Dark Side, as some would have you believe.

Having former media journalists doing your brand journalism should save time, money, and aggravation because they are trained to create the engaging content that brand journalism requires. What’s more, they know the necessary tricks of the trade. Organizations doing brand journalism are publishers. They need to think about broad and timely content distribution, editorial calendars, and a strategy for repurposing stories. Former media journalists know how to do all that.

As you may’ve guessed, we have many former reporters on our team. While it’s possible to hire such talent on a project-by-project basis, the best brand journalism requires commitment, access, and trust. Those all seem to come easier for an in-house journalist.

When brand journalists think of what’s interesting to their audiences and create engaging content they generate stories that can, pardon the pun, really take off. Here’s one of ours that did. This story is about testing the brakes on our new 747. The test involves speeding an airplane down a runway then hitting the brakes just before takeoff. It ends with the brakes on fire, which is eye catching, to say the least.

That story had it all for our audiences: iconic airplane, an interesting test activity, and great visuals. We’ve had more than 1.1 million views, and our key messages about safety and durability reached more people through our website, YouTube channel, and Facebook page, than we would’ve reached with a traditional news release.

Another, albeit more unexpected success, came with this story about our Phantom Eye unmanned system. It has more than 400,000 views, a lot for a military story as those usually appeal to a niche audience. This one broke out by presenting a new and unique vehicle in a way that sparked imaginations and discussions.

We’ve certainly had our share of stories that didn’t work. Here are two: this one is about a retiring security dog while this story is about designs for World War Two-era uniforms. Our audiences didn’t know what to make of either of them.

Overall, however, we think (metrics remain a work in progress) that we’re succeeding more often than not. We’ve concluded that brand journalism is a very useful communications tool that, if an organization is prepared to properly pursue it, is worth trying. And doing.

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Dunkin’ Brands is a customer-centric business and has earned a community of loyal supporters over the years. If “America runs on Dunkin’,” or if it is to continue to do so, the company must continue to earn the time, attention, and support of customers. As their behavior and preferences evolve, Dunkin’ to must rethink its customer approach to remain part of its customer’s daily routine.

Tyler Cyr, Web Communications Manager, Dunkin’ Brands shares how social media helps continue and improve the Dunkin’ experience and also shares how the company is learning and changing as a result.

Please take some time to watch the episode and share your thoughts with us…

This episode was recorded during the Salesforce Social Advisory Board meeting in San Francisco. Participants included brand managers from the likes of Disney, Livingsocial, P&G, Nissan, SunTrust, Dunkin Donuts, Get Satisfaction, and VW, we address the need for businesses to not only react to conversations but also lead them.

Season 2 – Episode 11

Season Two:

S2E1: How Mercedes Benz Successfully Uses Social Media to Engage
S2E2: Technorati’s Richard Jalichandra on the State and Future of Social Media
S2E3: Guy Kawasaki on the Art of Enchantment
S2E4: Adly CEO Arnie Gullov-Singh on the Social Era of Celebrity Endorsements
S2E5: Filmmaker and Webby Awards Founder Tiffany Shlain
S2E6: Jim Louderback, Revision3 CEO on the Future of Broadcast and Web Television – Part 1 of 2
S2E7: Jim Louderback, Revision3 CEO on the Future of Broadcast and Web Television – Part 2 of 2
S2E8: Marcel LeBrun of Salesforce Radian6 on the Future of Social Media Monitoring
S2E9: Our Digital Society in the Next 30 Years: An Interview with John Battelle
S2E10: How Social Customer Service is Changing the Culture at Comcast

Watch Season One on YouTube

Now on iTunes!

Part 5 in a series introducing my new book, The End of Business as Usual…this is not content from the book, this series serves as its prequel.

What do people want? If you don’t know, why not ask them?

Seems like a common sense question to ask. However, when it comes to customer engagement and relations, common sense appears to be an uncommon virtue. The good news is that asking customers what they need is now easier than ever before. Learning about what they prefer or what they’re missing based on their actions and words is prevalent within social media. Asking them directly is also a powerful form of engagement. At the very least the act expresses intent to learn and perhaps adapt.

Too many research projects or studies these days focus on what brands are doing in social media rather than what they should be doing. And at the same time, most are conducted from the perspective of the business and not from the perspective of the people affected by the actions or missteps of brands.

In February 2011 ExactTarget and CoTweet released a revealing study “The Social Breakup,” that provided a glimpse into the oft missed customer point of view. While many reports highlight why people Like and follow brands, this study divulged why consumers “break up” with brands in social networks.

Like any interpersonal relationship, the consumer-brand relationship has a distinct and fascinating life cycle. The relationship begins with the initial “spark”—the decision by the consumer to become a SUBSCRIBER, FAN, or FOLLOWER—followed by a blissful honeymoon period in which the consumer gets to know the company better through communications and social interactions. As the relationship progresses, the frequency and quality of interactions shapes the consumer’s desire to take the relationship to the next level.

If the company fails any of these relationship tests, a “social break-up”—i.e., an “unsubscribe,” “unfan,” “unlike,” or “unfollow”—is all but inevitable. When the consumer is no longer happy in the relationship, they will actively break off contact with the company…or just ignore their communications in the hopes the company will get the message that it’s over.

According to the study, 55% of Facebook users have liked a brand and then later decided they no longer wish to see the company’s posts. 51% of fans say that they really aren’t fans as they don’t visit the page or web site after the “Like.” 71% of consumers say that they’re now becoming more selective.

When asked why the honeymoon is over, the top reasons for unliking a brand in Facebook are:

1. The company posts too frequently
2. My wall was becoming too crowded with marketing posts
3. The content was too repetitive or boring

The reasons, regardless of percentage are equally revealing…

I only “Liked” the company to take advantage of an offer.

They didn’t offer enough deals. (note: if you combine these two details, “deals” would become the one of the top reasons people connected and disconnected from brands)

Their posts were too promotional

The content wasn’t relevant.

The company’s posts were too chitty-chatty without adding value

Twitter is a much different network than Facebook. However, that doesn’t stop brands from attempting to connect with customers. And, it doesn’t stop customers from experimenting with brand engagement. However, 41% of Twitter users followed a brand only to unfollow them shortly thereafter.

Again, when you ask the customer why they decided to unfollow their favorite brands, the answers are as difficult to hear as they are enlightening.

1. The content was too repetitive or boring
2. My stream was too crowded with marketing posts
3. The company posted too frequently

The remainder of responses are identical to the reasons shared earlier in reference to Facebook.

Not enough deals.

Too conversational.

Irrelevant.

Mind the (Customer) Gap

It comes down to something that’s repeated so often throughout our lives that we may have become immune to the importance of its message, “Mind the gap.” This cautionary expression is designed to protect us from our own potential missteps. But in business, we must mind many important gaps, one of which represents a dangerous pitfall in the evolving landscape of business.

The customer gap represents the distance between what we think customers want and what they actually want. The definition of this gap is different for every business and it is something that we must overcome.

Today we see so many brands flocking to Twitter and attempting to befriend new customers without realizing that they’re willfully stepping directly into an abyss of irrelevance.

It starts with answering some very basic, but vital questions.

What do customers value?

What do customers value in social networks with regard to the culture of each?

Why are customers seeking or reacting to brands in these networks?

What turns them off?

Why do they unlike or unfollow brands?

How can we introduce value to induce a sense of appreciation and ultimately loyalty or advocacy?

The answers to these questions exist. It just starts with asking the questions. More importantly, it requires that you do something with the answers…that’s the hard part.

When Perception isn’t Reality

IBM recently set out to measure the gap between customers and the corresponding awareness of businesses and their ability to meet the needs of consumers in social networks. Authored by Carolyn Heller Baird, Global CRM Research Leader with the IBM Institute for Business Value, IBM Global Services and Gautam Parasnis, Partner and Vice President for IBM Global Business Services, the study, “From Social Media to Social CRM,” teaches us about the emerging social consumer. Coincidentally, we learn more about their preferences than many social media best practices reveal to date.

The report begins with a level-setting that is refreshing and also challenging…

Understanding what customers value, especially when they are in the unique environment of a social platform, is a critical first step toward building a Social CRM strategy. What triggers a customer to seek out a company or brand via social media? What would make a customer reluctant to interact? And does social engagement influence customers’ feelings of loyalty toward a company as businesses hope it does?

The answer lies in one of the reports greatest insights and also one of its most obvious, “Obtaining tangible value is the top reason most consumers seek out businesses via social sites.”

While it’s easy to blame it on the youth, the reality is that the DNA of social customers is indiscriminant of age or any other demographic for that matter. This is more about psychographics, the linkage of people through common interests (note: interest graph) than it is demographics or the social graph.

As discussed earlier in this series, consumers are investing time in social networks to connect with friends and family. According to the IBM study, the total number of users in social networks doing so accounts for 70% of all social consumers. The subsequent reasons individuals interact in social networks is to access news and entertainment at 49%and 46% respectively. 42% desire to share their opinions and another 30% seek to access reviews. But what of those seeking to engage in conversations or relationships with brands? They number at a mere 23%.

IBM mapped the chasm between brands and consumers highlighting the separation that divides intention and actuality. 65% of businesses view social media as a new source for revenue. At the same time however, consumers claim that it is they who expect to realize value from businesses in social media. Nevertheless, the discrepancy between what customers want and what businesses think they want reside at opposite ends of the stream.

The perception gap is reminiscent of couples therapy where each individual sees the world so entirely differently that they require mediation to meet one another in the middle.

If you ask consumers why they interact with companies in social networks, they’ll tell you it’s to receive a discount (61%) or to make a purchase (55%). If you ask a business why they think consumers follow them in social networks their response is likely to mirror IBM’s results. 73% believe that consumers wish to learn about new products and an additional 71% connect to receive general information.

Perhaps most telling is the severity of misperceptions between consumers and brands. While consumers expressed the desire to receive discounts or make purchases as the top reasons for engagement in social media, businesses view these actions as the lowest two motives for connecting in the social web.

To “bridge’” these gaps requires a social CRM strategy and infrastructure to foster collaborative experiences through engagement that customers value. Social CRM tends to focus on technology and systems to provide stakeholders with access to information and processes to support informed engagement. sCRM can also greatly benefit by adapting to the 5th P in order to inspire updated methodologies for engagement that today’s customer can appreciate. It is as much a function of infrastructure as it is a matter of adapting to human nature.

Next Steps

Brands must face the tough reality that social media is in direct conflict with the mode of business as usual. Businesses must first with understanding the wants and corresponding behaviors of the social consumer to effectively adapt.

Introduce mutually beneficial engagement strategies and programs that are unique to the expectations of each community. Technology is an enabler, but customer service works best when it’s designed to serve.

Think like a customer. Or better said, take the insights that are gleaned from gathering intelligence to become the customer you’re trying to reach.

Social consumers are not looking for information, recreations of your Website or links to existing, probably outdated web pages. Recognize that the social consumer is quite content operating without your interference. If you’re unsure what they want, ask them. Then build experiences that deliver value and also build experiences that are shareable. K.I.S.S Keep it Simple and Shareable or Keep It Significant and Shareable.

Elvis once famously sang, we need “A little less conversation and a little more action…”

The End of Business as Usual will be available in the coming weeks. You can order now at Amazon | Barnes and Noble | 800CEOREAD.

Part 1 – Digital Darwinism, Who’s Next
Part 2 – Social Media’s Impending Flood of Customer Unlikes and Unfollows
Part 3 – Social Media Customer Service is a Failure!
Part 4 – We are the 5th P: People

Part 4 in a series introducing my new book, The End of Business as Usual…

It seems that adding the word “social” to any category escalates its importance. From the Social Customer to Social Commerce and from Social Business to Social CRM, the common thread that weaves everything together is people. It is people after all that are responsible for placing the social in social media. Everything else is just technology. So why is it that businesses still approach social media and the services and channels that connect this very human network as it has traditional media in the past? Just as in the emergence of connected customers, this inherent behavior is simply part of the DNA. This DNA where perhaps the “D” stands for disconnected represents the very fabric of business and the very essence that requires evolution in order to genuinely connect with tomorrow’s customer, today. Operating with a business as usual mindset no longer cuts it.

Regardless of media, good business comes down to a simple process of identifying customers, learning what they want or need, feeling their challenges, learning how they communicate with one another, and observing how they discover and share information. Yet, many businesses approach what is a natural bottom-up occurrence through a top-down system of pushing information, pulling would-be customers through funnels, and confining them to artificial feedback loops. To put it simply, if we visit the traditional 4P’s of marketing of Price, Place, Promotion and Product, the key ingredient of favorable engagement and business outcomes is the very thing that’s been missing all along, People – you, me and the individuals who invest in products and sometimes the brands behind them.

Even though businesses are experimenting with engagement in Facebook, Twitter, forums, comments, et al., I’m not convinced they see us beyond our avatars. Nor do they view our communities as influential cliques, but rather as rudimentary clicks. Many businesses don’t take the time to get to know us, yet they invest in new media as an attempt to build relationships without understanding why we engage.

The bottom line is that customers are not necessarily looking to build relationships with brands. They’re, we’re, looking for solutions, direction, insights, and value. Information, contests, and clever videos are now commodities that contribute to the already clogged arteries of new media. But every day, companies ask customers to “Like” them on Facebook and “follow” them on Twitter weighing the extent of their efforts on the quantity of the 3F’s (friends, fans and followers) in addition to traffic, clickthroughs, and views. It’s no wonder why so many pundits debate the value of ROI when businesses are still not defining the “R” or the return we seek nor are brands defining outcomes.

We’re not driving experiences, we’re reacting to them.

We’re not introducing meaningful value, we’re pushing content and creative.

We’re not designing programs around intelligence, we’re focused on monitoring.

It’s time we had a click to action!

I Think We Need Some Time Apart

A few years ago, Microsoft released a video that to this day personifies the disconnect between brands and their customers.

Customer: “I want a divorce.”

Brand: “What now?”

Customer, “We don’t talk anymore.”

Brand: “I just put down a mil on a TV commercial just to talk to you.” OR sub that with, “I just invested time and resources on Facebook and Twitter just to talk to you.”

Customer: “Exactly, you do all the talking, I never get a chance to…[cut off by brand.]”

Brand: “You can talk on our web site can’t you?” OR sub that with, “you can comment, Like, RT, or interact with us in social networks.”

Customer: “Sure, if I want to say, ‘order this product.’”

Brand, “See…!”

Customer: “This isn’t exactly dialogue.”

Even in any examples of today’s social media best practices, even the dialogue isn’t representative of the dialogue customers are seeking or that they find enough value in to continue to return or interact with brands. The first step in the in a journey that lead brands and customers down discontinuous paths is the lack of understanding, context, or desire to better understand customers and the virtual and real worlds in which they dwell.

Again, customers are not on social networks seeking relationships with business. You know that better than anyone. That’s not why you’re there. You’re there to interact with friends, family, peers and everyone else who matters to you. In many ways, you are the very person you’re trying to reach and it’s that perspective that should factor into any business, marketing, service, or product development cycle moving forward. We are the 5th P of marketing and business and this is the end of business as usual…

The End of Business as Usual will be available in the coming weeks. You can order now at Amazon | Barnes and Noble | 800CEOREAD.

Part 1 – Digital Darwinism, Who’s Next
Part 2 – Social Media’s Impending Flood of Customer Unlikes and Unfollows
Part 3 – Social Media Customer Service is a Failure!
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Connect with Brian Solis on Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook | Google+ | BrianSolisTV

Twitter continues to impress its supporters and critics alike. With 100 million active users, one billion Tweets published every day, and a fresh round of funding, Twitter’s monetization strategy continues to mature. In addition to licensing deals for its coveted fire hose and a future revenue stream tied to analytics, Twitter’s blue bird truly flies with the help of its expanding portfolio of Promoted products. The company is now releasing its latest offering, and it’s the most controversial product yet. New Promoted ads currently in a limited round of tests, hit streams even if users do not already follow the brand but are “like” those who do. Notoriously conservative in pushing ads to its fiercely loyal audience, this move represents a Mad Men moment for Twitter as it ventures into bold new territory.

The new form of in stream ads are an extension of its existing Promoted Tweets product where ads are placed at the top of the stream if the user already followed the company. Additionally, brands can used Promoted Tweets tied to search to plug directly into the interest graph. The first ad produce released by Twitter helps brands reach people who search for relevant keywords by serving up a promoted Tweet related to the search. Twitter is expected to also introduce self-service products for smaller businesses later in 2011.

Twitter’s other advertising products help brands reach consumers by attracting attention in the active panel that frames the Tweet stream. Through Promoted Accounts, brands can buy an opportunity to increase the number of followers. And, with Promoted Trends, brands tempt users with intriguing words or hashtags to entice click-throughs.

Companies such as Starbucks, Virgin America and Coca-Cola have actively invested in a variety of Twitter’s Promoted products since the beginning and each claim that Twitter’s ads consistently deliver worthwhile performance. Brands continue to line up to be among the first to experiment with these new media buys.

In a marketing world where media is neatly divided into paid, earned, and owned (P.O.E.M.), Twitter forces marketers to think beyond the traditional banner mindset. I spent the last couple of years studying the new opportunities for brands in the new media world and vehicles, channels, and mindsets required to use them effectively. The new take on media was released recently with the help of JESS3 as The Brandsphere. It introduced Promoted and Shared as two new channels to round out paid, earned, and owned. For example with Twitter’s new Promoted product, brands are encouraged to look beyond flashy graphical elements or using images or names of friends as bait. Twitter is carefully monetizing its popular service by requiring brands to lure consumers through clever word play, linked by interests that drive noteworthy experiences. Brands now need to rethink the click-through experience to take consumers on an extraordinary journey to not only perform well, but also reinforce the value of Promoted products as they introduce potential disruption to the precious Tweet stream.

Will Twitter’s new product pay off? Advertisers are certainly willing to give it a try. In a recent study conducted by Pivot, 60% and 32% of brands that experimented with social advertising, including Twitter’s Promoted products, found the new form of advertising very useful and useful respectively. Of those we polled, 93% had deployed social ads on Facebook and 78% on Twitter.

When it comes to consumers and how they feel about Promoted ads in Twitter, Lab42 found that only 10.9% say that they “are annoying and take away from the Twitter experience.” For this moment in time, consumers are open to Twitter’s cautious expansion of new advertising products. In the same study, 24.8% had already reported seeing Promoted ads related to relevant brands. Another 21.6% have received discounts offered through Promoted Tweets, 21.2% found new brands, and 14% have retweeted Promoted Tweets.

If you look at the doors that Twitter’s promoted products open, you start to get an idea of just how far this can go.
Promoted products can reach people based on interest, device, geolocation, behavior, and demographic. Indeed, Twitter’s Madmen moment has arrived. The company must now look at innovating not just how to sell media opportunities, but also work with brands to consistently deliver value and unique experiences that consumers appreciate rather than disregard or revolt against. Here, Twitter’s competition is itself as this is an opportunity that’s theirs and only theirs to win or lose. Even though Facebook is for all intents and purposes a competing network, budgets will continue to fund experiments in both and many other social platforms as brands experiment with reaching consumers where their attention is focused, their social streams.

Connect with Brian Solis on Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook | Google+ | BrianSolisTV
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The End of Business as Usual: Rewire the way you work to succeed in the consumer revolution

Pre-order now at Amazon | Barnes and Noble | 800CEOREAD.
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ENGAGE!: The complete guide for businesses to build and measure success on the social web

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Click here for your favorite infographics…now in 22 x 28 poster format!

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In preparation for the launch of my next book, I’m proud to share that v1 of the site is now live at EndofBusiness.com.

About the book:

TODAY’S BIGGEST TRENDS- the mobile web, social media, gamification, real-time- have forced us to rewire the way we think about and run our businesses. Consumers are creating a new digital culture, shifting business landscapes one tweet at a time. New networks have created an ever- expanding “egosystem,” in which everyday people believe their lives deserve 24-hour broadcasts. But now, we need to decipher the significance of this behavior and understand where the social and mobile web are headed. At the heart of all of this, a new breed of consumer is emerging—and they’re changing the very foundation of business.

The End of Business As Usual explores each layer of this complex consumer revolution that is changing the future of business, media, and culture. As consumers connect with one another, a vast and efficient information network takes shape and begins to steer experiences, decisions, and markets. It is nothing short of disruptive.

The End of Business as Usual is available for pre-order now.

More soon…

The debut of a series introducing The End of Business as Usual…

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I would like to talk about an inflection point in social media that requires pause. I am not suggesting that there will be a social media 2.0 or 3.0 for that matter. Nor do I see the term social media departing our vocabulary any time soon. After all, it was recently added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary.  Instead, what I would like to discuss is the end of an era of social media that will force the industry to mature. It won’t happen on its own however. Evolution will occur because consumers demand it and also because you’re willing to stake your job on it.

From Social Network Fatigue to Deals Fatigue to Follow Fatigue, businesses are facing a crossroads at the intersection of social and media. Following the path of media continues a long tradition of what Tom Foremski refers to as “Social Media as Corporate Media.” Following the path of social is a journey towards relevance.

As Foremski states, “Social media is not corporate media…if corporations try to turn social media into a corporate sales or marketing channel then they risk losing the naked conversations, and the insight into customer behaviors.”

His point is that there’s more to social media than clever campaigns and rudimentary conversations. Talking isn’t the only thing that makes social media social. Just like adding Facebook, Twitter and other sharing buttons will not magically transform static content into shareable experiences. Listening, learning and adapting is where the real value of social media will show its true colors.  Listening leads to a more informed business. Engagement unlocks empathy and innovation. But it is action and adaptation that leads to relevance. And, it never ends.

Indeed, there really are more examples of media than there are that of social media in many of the celebrated examples out there today. Even though distributing corporate media in social channels sets the stage for dialogue, there really isn’t much that’s social about it. In fact, study of many social media initiatives have led me to believe that much of what we benchmark against is actually anti-social in its approach.

The future of social media comes down to one word, “value.” Without it, businesses will find it much more difficult to earn and retain friends, fans and followers (3F’s). As adoption of social networks soared in previous years, growth is now plateauing.  eMarketer estimates that Facebook growth will hit only 13.4% this year after experiencing 38.6% acceleration in 2010 and a staggering 90.3% ascension the year before. Facebook isn’t alone in its sobriety either. The  rate of Twitter user adoption fell from 293.1% growth in 2009 to 26.3% this year.

Don’t get me wrong, people are still embracing social networks. However, the severity of competition for consumer attention is now unmistakable. Once liberal with their likes, Retweets, and follows, consumers are becoming much more guarded and realistic. Therefore brands will now have to more effectively listen to markets to make more informed decisions about how social media impacts the enterprise and in turn customer experiences.

The GlobalWebIndex “Wave 5 Trends” report delivers insight into how consumers are using social networks and technology in general.  According to the report, growth in social network usage among 16- to 24-year-olds in the US is stalling. And, in a few countries usage within this group is declining. In fact, one of the key insights shared in the report is subduing, “Facebook is no longer the one stop shop for the total internet experience.”

However, the report is not a harbinger of social networking’s demise. It is merely a lens into how behavior is changing. This is important for any business to realize that business as usual in social networks is in fact anything but.

Between June 2009 and June 2011, the following changes were noted in Facebook activity:

- Uploading videos is experiencing a modest increase around the world up 5% in the U.S. and 7.6% worldwide.

- Installing apps is on the decline, down 10.4% in the U.S. and 3.1% worldwide.

- Sending virtual gifts may not be gifts worth giving after all, with numbers declining 12.9% in the U.S. and 7.5% around the world.

Twitter on the other hand is a rich exchange for  information commerce, where links become a form of digital currency. For example, 45% share an opinion about a product or brand more than once per day. Another 34% of Twitter users also share a link about a product or brand more than once per day.

When asked what consumers want from brands, knowledge and entertainment soared to the top of the list. Additionally, The GlobalWebIndex Wave 5 Trends report tells us that online consumers want brands to provide services that fit with their lifestyle. They also want brands to listen to them.

What can we learn of this?

1) Businesses must first realize that there’s more to social media than just managing an active presence, driven by an active editorial calendar. Listening is key and within each conversation lies a clue to earn relevance and ultimately establish leadership.

2) Consumers want to be heard. Social media will have to break free form the grips of marketing in order to truly socialize the enterprise to listen, engage, learn, and adapt. You can’t create a social business if the business is not designed to be customer-centric from the outside-in and the inside-out.

3) Social media becomes an extension of active listening and engagement. Strategies, programs, and content are derivative of insights, catalysts for innovation, and messengers of value. More importantly, social media becomes a platform for the brand and the functions that consumers deem mandatory. From marketing to HR to service to R&D, brands will expand the role they play in social networking to make the acts of following and sharing an investment in a more meaningful relationship.

The end of Social Media 1.0 is the beginning of a new era of business, consumer engagement, and relevance.

#AdaptOrDie

The End of Business as Usual will be available in the coming weeks. You can pre-order now at Amazon | Barnes and Noble | 800CEOREAD.

Part 1 – Digital Darwinism, Who’s Next
Part 2 – Social Media’s Impending Flood of Customer Unlikes and Unfollows
Part 3 – Social Media Customer Service is a Failure

Earlier this year, I announced that I was writing another book. I left clues here and there, but I had yet to officially announce the title or the focus of the book. The truth is that I didn’t want to give readers of Engage 2 the impression that I was ready to move on.

So finally, it is with great pleasure that I share with you the name and also the semi-final draft of the book’s cover.

Officially introducing, “The End of Business as Usual.”

It will go live on October 1, 2011 and it’s available for pre-order now at Amazon | Barnes and Noble | 800CEOREAD.

An Excerpt from the Cover

The End of Business As Usual explores each layer of the complex consumer revolution that is changing the future of business, media, and culture. As consumers further connect with one another, a vast and efficient information network takes shape and begins to steer experiences, decisions, and markets. It is nothing short of disruptive.

The End of Business As Usual will change the way you view the world of business, from sales and marketing to customer service and product development to leadership and culture.

More to come…

Thank you once again for your support over the years and also thank you to the wonderful team at Wiley.

Connect with Brian Solis on Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook | Google+

During the planning of the upcoming Pivot Conference, I’ve been asked many questions about what it is, what it isn’t, and why the need for another conference. Most importantly, I’ve been asked more often than not, “What is our story?” I think that’s a great question. So, I took a moment to write the story for the Pivot Conference and while I was sharing it with the team, I thought that I would also share it with you here. Why? First, for those considering the event, it may help answer your questions. Second,  as your business continues to explore new media, this story arc could serve as an outline for internal planning and development. Hopefully some of the free research we published will also help you.

Report 1: Brands Pursue the Social Consumer

Report 2: The Rise of Social Advertising

The Pivot Story Arc

The Pivot Conference is not a conference about social media. Nor is it a conference about advertising or marketing technologies. The Pivot Conference is an exploration of the social consumer and the role the social consumer plays in the future of marketing and business. It’s a journey that travels the paths social consumers use to make decisions and how they establish relationships with friends, like-minded people, and the companies that capture their attention.

The conference agenda is rich with unique content and provocative thought leadership, structured to foster deep learning, engagement, and creative thinking. No panels. No hour-long keynotes. No on-stage commercials. Only evocative experiences, advice, and insights. The rapid-fire two-day format will help attendees develop the meaningful and effective engagement strategies they need to connect with social customers. And, the experts assembled on stage in October will reveal how to define and support effective social experiences pre-, mid, and post-commerce, today and over time.

The program is based on my research for where things are and where they’re headed and supported by the pain points shared by years of work with leading brands and agencies. The conference is designed with a story arc told with a beginning, middle and end. Pivot is divided into chapters ranging from the deep human roots of social consumer behavior through disruption in audience, technology and transactions to explorations of what lies ahead for branding, commerce and culture. Each hour is action-packed with discussions and dramatic presentations based on the needs and challenges of connected consumers, businesses and the service providers in between. Every aspect of the conference is designed to inspire new ideas and drive action.

Subjects include:
- The new consumer perspective as revealed by social consumers
- The transformed decision making journey of social consumers
- Gathering insight and putting intelligence to work in a social world
- Designing campaigns by interests and psychographics
- Identifying and recruiting the new influencers
- Transmedia storytelling
- The new creative frontier and how to beat banner blindness
- Building ROI frameworks for social
- The gamification of marketing
- How to unlock effective mobile advertising

Attendees will hear from social’s leading thinkers, revered brands, and the creative professionals who are changing the rules of the game. Beyond the main stage, the Pivot Conference will also feature a second “studio” stage where additional content will be presented in an unplugged format. This more casual venue offers a special opportunity to freely interact with experts, ask detailed questions and connect with others to solve problems.

Pivot is a unique experience. All in all, it’s designed to help those ready to learn bring new ideas, processes, and metrics back into the work place. More importantly, the greatest beneficiaries of Pivot are the customers of those businesses that employ more meaningful and valuable programs and services.

I would love your feedback. What are some of the issues you’re dealing with and what answers could you use to be more successful in your endeavors? Please share in the comments and I will take your recommendations back to the team.

About Pivot

The Pivot Conference is designed for brands and their agencies and will take place October 17th and 18th in New York. This year’s theme focuses on an important shift in marketing as brands respond to “The Rise of the Social Consumer.”

If you’d like to join us, you can register here. Please use SOLISVIP for a special 20% discount.

Connect with Brian Solis on Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook | Google+

Guest post by Kyle Monson, a former technology journalist and editor at PC Magazine, is Content Strategy Director at JWT. Follow him on Twitter @kmonson

You probably already know this, but we marketers are the bad guys in the battle of good versus evil. One commonly employed metaphor—“The Dark Side”—is particularly apt: we hunt down Jedi masters and destroy Alderaan. The top guys in marketing might refer to themselves as ninjas, but siths is a better descriptor, depending on whom you talk to.

I hear the moniker all the time; after seven years as a journalist and editor, I defected a couple years ago and took a job at JWT. I’m constantly asked by friends and coworkers “How do you like working on The Dark Side?”

My answer: I haven’t blown up any planets lately, but my work is quite fulfilling, thank you.
JWT brought me on to lead its Brand Journalism practice, working with global clients and the agency itself to adopt the best practices of publishers. At its most basic level, Brand Journalism involves honest brand storytelling that invites the audience to participate.

Brand Journalism as a term has been accused of being typical Dark Side dissembling, but at its best, it can be a powerful combination of honesty, narrative, and audience participation. We tend to target the most intelligent and most savvy audience members—the influencers. These people are not easily fooled, they hate crappy content, and they tune out traditional advertising. It’s tough to reach them, but brands can do so by being real, addressing their information needs, and maintaining relevance in a real-time world.

In other words, we need to act like journalists.

Like journalists, we can create compelling content under extremely tight deadlines, and engage with communities in meaningful ways. Good and fast—that’s what we’re striving for with Brand Journalism. The marketing industry isn’t exactly known for creating good content quickly, but we’re working in a real-time world, and clients and agencies are realizing that they’re struggling to keep up. Brand Journalism can be a tool that helps them optimize for speed.

The marketing industry also isn’t known for its honesty and transparency—it’s The Dark Side, right? When I tell my journalist friends that I’m working to help global brands communicate more openly, they react with skepticism. An advertiser that acts like a journalist could be a mole, trying to trick an unsuspecting audience into consuming and believing whatever crap a brand wants to spew.

I look at it as quite the opposite: I’m a mole, but for the other side. And I’m not alone—JWT has a team of editors and strategists with journalism and publishing backgrounds. Other agencies and campaigns are hiring journalists as well. Together, we infiltrate big companies and convince them that it’s possible to work quickly and openly.

In my Brand Journalism work with Microsoft, we built what is essentially a news organization. Our audience of savvy IT leaders wasn’t interested in hearing from marketers and executives, so we tapped engineers, product managers, and even independent journalists to produce content. After our first year, our top five bloggers were averaging more than 19,000 views per post. By the second year, our best articles were being shared hundreds of times across several social networks.

We did it through speed, human interaction, and relevance. We published same-day responses to hot news stories, supported by ads that we could traffic with a 6-hour turnaround time. We interacted with our audience on Twitter and in blog comments, and we partnered with some of the biggest tech publications and tech journalists. Furthermore, we were always transparent about our relationships with those partners.

I doubt this level of speed and transparency will be a big deal five or 10 years from now; the industry knows it needs to move in this direction. But until it does, a company’s ability to speak honestly and quickly to its customers, fans, and detractors is a huge competitive advantage.

There’s a lot more to Brand Journalism than speed, relevance, and transparency—perhaps in a future post I’ll delve into how we incorporate balance theory and cognitive disequilibrium—but in the meantime think of Brand Journalism as a way of enabling brands and audiences to shine a light on themselves.
In other words, we’re trying to make The Dark Side a bit less dark.

This is part of a series on brand journalism as told by the brands that are paving the way. Please send me a note if you would like to tell your company’s story on its move to what Tom Foremski dubbed EC=MC, Every Company is a Media Company.

To truly see opportunities within social media requires viewing the consumer landscape through a different lens…

Social media is enjoying yet another gust beneath its wings. Google Plus is rekindling the love affair of social networking among the early adopters and mavens who friended their way to higher Klout scores and also social network fatigue. The numbers of social network users are soaring well past 10 figures. Even celebrities such as Bono, Justin Timberlake, Ashton Kutcher, Lady Gaga et al, are not only living social, they’re putting their money where their cliques are by actively investing in emerging social technologies.

Can you believe that today, skeptics still remain? What’s most concerning is that many of them are primary decision makers responsible for the future direction and corresponding relevance of their businesses. Some of you either work for this leadership team or you are part of it.

“Social networks are where people share what they had for lunch. No one’s listening anyway. You saw what happened to Myspace, Bebo and Friendster. You see that Google+ is already killing Facebook. No one sees the point of Twitter. See what we saved by not jumping on the treadmill?!”

No, social media is not a fad nor is it merely a soapbox for inane, narcissistic or self congratulatory over sharing. And no, social media will not cower in the shadows of “what’s next.” We’ve reached the end of the destination web and are long past the attention rubicon. Social is now a fabric of everyday technology and digital engagement. It’s is only gaining in momentum and permeance. Those businesses that miss this opportunity will find a slipping point that may eventually give way to Digital Darwinism, the evolution of consumer behavior when society and technology evolve faster than you.

Benchmarking Against the Opportunity

Many businesses realize the potential of social media and are savoring a seemingly compelling way to reach customers. Many are even boasting millions of fans and followers. But what they too underestimate is the power of people. It’s not so much about technology as much as it is about the democratization of information and the equalization of societal influence. People are now part of the equation and are willingly shedding their “audience” moniker and vacating the branded auditoriums of yore in favor of building their own stages, their own personal theaters. Consequently, customers are becoming influential as they fill the seats to their performance. They’re creating dedicated information networks and as a result, consumers have evolved into a connected and more discerning audience with an audience of audiences.

How businesses embrace this opportunity says everything about how they view customers and the relationships they’re shaping as a result. Equally, how businesses measure success in this new frontier also says everything about how they value customer relationships. Hearing it this way makes the measurement of Likes, followers, views or +1′s seem trivial. And, thinking about customer value and how to deliver it where attention is focused makes us rethink website traffic as a KPI. Instead, businesses must embrace a new perspective, one that takes the lessons rife within social media to build a more meaningful engagement strategy for building customer relationships and growing new opportunities.

Have you defined the customer relationship you’d like to develop in 2012?

Have you revisited the company’s vision and mission for the connected customer?

It Takes a Leader to Lead…Not Follow

eMarketer recently visualized the findings of Jive Software and Penn, Schoen, & Berland study that examined how social media impact business strategy. 78% of participating executives believe that social media is somewhat or very important to the future success of their business. Amongst medium-sized businesses, this appears to resonate as 51%, the highest in the group, see social media as very important to business strategy and direction.

In aggregate however, 22% of small, medium and large businesses either don’t know or don’t see the importance of social media to long-term success.

Executives need help in understanding the significance of social networks in fostering customer relationships and how doing so affects the lift for sales and brand resonance. On average 27% of executives view social media as a top strategic priority and another 47% see it as necessary, but not necessarily as a priority. Again, medium-sized businesses lead the way with 49% placing social media as a top priority moving forward.

Surprisingly 26% of executives do not see social media as a necessary or strategic priority or they’re not sure either way. Are they wrong? We cannot measure what we do not know to value. Executives need help in understanding the opportunity. This is why we must leave behind the training wheels of social media 1.0 and graduate to a new era of greater social media significance, one where business priorities and customer needs and value coalesce.

The Future of Business is not Created, It’s Co-Created

Customer influence is growing and when they’re not focusing attention on one another, they’re focusing activity toward the things that move them. As we know, brands and organizations are the recipients of sentiment, both good and bad. It’s what we do with the feedback and insights that define the brand in the future. In addition to brand, competitive advantages will lean toward businesses that embrace customer engagement to shape and steer experiences and innovate future products, services and uses.

In a separate study, eMarketer learned that customers do indeed want deeper engagement with the brands and products they care about. At the same time, companies that embraced a culture and philosophy of co-creation are realizing that open collaboration is instrumental in keeping a competitive edge.

Companies also tend to restrict their co-creation activities to discrete moments in the product life cycle. But the greatest benefits can be realized when collaboration centers on building value that enhances a product’s daily use.

The study found that companies benefit from customer insights which in turn delivers customers benefit through product satisfaction. This in turn increases sales while saving customers time and increasing their productivity.  Of course, co-creation promotes loyalty and builds pride and a sense of recognition, which equally lowers customer service costs while building a strong community of customers and advocates.

As we’re learning, it’s not enough to be present on social networks. It’s not enough to engage in customer conversations. Leadership organizations, not just marketing departments, must realize that social media are not a cure for the ills of common business malpractices. The rules of relationships still apply and in fact are only amplified.  In social media and in the real world, the pillars of any great business must embody service, innovation, experiences, performance, value, and now co-creation. Remember, customers are not looking to build a community with your company simply because they can. Community rules require the cultivation of affinity and belonging through relevance, empathy and the consistent delivery of tangible and intangible benefits.

Companies must now be engaging and worthy of connection now and over time. And more importantly, businesses must embrace a culture of change to become adaptive and survive Digital Darwinism.  Social media will not save business, but it will challenge them to evolve, to adapt…to do better.

As a wise executive of a leading global company once told me, “If you come to me with a request for budget and resources for social media, to make it a priority for our business, you will lose every time. If you tie social media to our business priorities and objectives and demonstrate how engagement will enable progress, you will win every time. Social media must be an enabler to our business, just show me how.”

Connect with Brian Solis on Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook | Google+

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The New ENGAGE!: If you’re looking to FIND answers in social media and not short cuts, consider either the Deluxe or Paperback edition

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Image credit: Shutterstock

Recently, the Pivot Conference team set out to learn more about the state of social advertising and the future ahead by conducting an industry survey of 230 brand managers, executives, and marketing professionals. We will release the full report during the week of July 25th. Not all of the insights we learned will make it into the final report. However, I will share a few interesting findings as they come up starting with this one…

The Top Marketing Sites for Social Media Marketing Trends

We asked participants to share their favorite sites, blogs, and newsletters for learning the latest about social media marketing trends.

1. Mashable earned the top spot with 82%
2. Techcrunch followed with 61%
3. AdAge earned the third spot with 54%
4. emarketer – 44%
5. Brandweek – 36%
6. MarketingProfs – 27%
7. SmartBrief for Social Media – 26%
8. Altimeter Group – 26%
9. MarketingSherpa – 21%
10 ClickZ – 20%

We also asked survey respondents about the role they play within their organization. The titles reflect the state of social media within business and the importance executives place in information related to new technology and trends.

Corporate Marketing Managers represented the largest group of individual respondents with 16%, but a three-way tie followed closely behind with participants representing Corporate Presidents/CEO’s/Principals, Directors of Marketing, and Agency Presidents/CEOs/Principals.

What do you think? What are your favorite resources for social media?

Stay tuned for the report on Social Advertising next week! To read our first report, please follow the link: “Brands Pursue the Social Consumer.”

About Pivot

The Pivot Conference is designed for brands and their agencies and will take place October 17th and 18th in New York. This year’s theme focuses on an important shift in marketing as brands respond to “The Rise of the Social Consumer.”

If you’d like to join us, you can register here. Please use SOLISVIP for a special 20% discount. Contact Mike Edelhart at medelhart@pivotcon.com to inquire about sponsorships.

Connect with Brian Solis on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+

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The New ENGAGE!: If you’re looking to FIND answers in social media and not short cuts, consider either the Deluxe or Paperback edition

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This guest post is by John Earhardt, Director of Social Media Communications at Cisco on the important of brand journalism. You can follow him on Twitter @urnhart.

Why My Mom Invented Social Media

As Brian Solis stated in a recent blog entry, “social media has never been about the technology as much as it has been governed by social science.” There you have it! Brian Solis has just confirmed that my mom invented social media.

No, my mom’s last name is not Winklevoss or Zuckerberg. She is not on Facebook. She is not on Twitter. But starting when I went to college some eleventy-seven years ago, she started mailing me articles that she thinks I might like. “Thought you might be interested in this” she’ll scrawl on the top of an article in the Wall Street Journal that she has ripped out of the Marketplace section. This is social media at its core. And she still does this.

She knows me. She knows what I am interested in. She is willing to take the action to share that information directly with me. She is making a piece of media (an article) social. Social is sharing. And, as my four-year old says, “sharing is caring.” That’s the social science part that Brian talks about.

Technology clearly allows us to do this a little easier than the analog method that my mom still chooses. We can e-mail an article to a specific person or a few people. We can opt to share something with our friends on Facebook or our followers on Twitter. We can offer an insightful comment on someone else’s piece of content.

In my mind, a piece of content that is shared with a friend, or friends, or followers, or the world is the ultimate measurement of its success. That person is validating that the piece of content they are sharing was valuable enough, interesting enough or topical enough to share with one or with many. They know the audience they are trying to reach and they target it to that audience with the sharing technology that is appropriate.

INTRODUCING: “THE NETWORK” – Cisco’s technology news site

This brings me to what I do at Cisco. I lead the Social Media team within Corporate Communications. We own and develop the corporate social media “pipes.” Facebook, Twitter, Talk2Cisco Ustream, our corporate blog (The Platform), LinkedIn, and our corporate newsroom among others. We use these tools and channels for different things to reach different audiences, but all of them are there to make us accessible as a company and share information about the cool, innovative things that we are doing at Cisco.

Our latest project is a revamp of our corporate news site, currently known as “News@Cisco” and now being renamed (voted on by our Facebook followers) to “The Network.” The Network is our effort to tell stories and share information on the topics that are the most important to Cisco, namely: Video, Collaboration, Core Networks, Data Center, Cisco Culture…and, more parochially to my team, Social Media.

We will create, share and curate content on these topics as a part of our overall Cisco voice. We have engaged world-class reporters who have worked at Fortune, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, AP and more to create content on the technology news topics that we want our audience to care about and, ultimately, share with their social footprint. The purpose of these stories isn’t to showcase Cisco or our technology, but to create compelling content in the topical areas that we care about. This is content that you might read on any other technology or business news site. We are supporting the generation of this content in the hopes that our audience shares it and becomes more educated on the topics that are important to Cisco and to our customers. Some are calling this “branded journalism,” but I just call it content creation around the topics that we care about.

Sure, we’re also going to use The Network to tell our own stories on innovation or highlight our smart employees and the good work they are doing. We hope our audience finds this information compelling and “share worthy” as well, but because we will embed the number of views a piece of content gets, its tweets, it’s Facebook likes, etc. into the actual piece and allow our readers to sort content by most viewed and most shared by week, month and year, they can easily see what others are reading and sharing. The ultimate validation of a piece of content might be measured by page views, but it also might be measured by how many comments it gets. After all, is starting a conversation on a technical topic that a few are passionate about less important than reaching 10’s of thousands of readers? I think they’re both important and I hope The Network can play a role in the discussions that are happening on the topics of video, collaboration, data center and core networking…and, hopefully, we can start a discussion on occasion as well.

MY SOCIAL MEDIA AND EDITORIAL PHILOSOPHY

The Network has been a lot of work by a small amount of people within Cisco and we’ll see if our new editorial and content philosophy resonates with our audience. Actually, because of the measurement tools embedded into the pieces, we’ll all see.

My general editorial philosophy and approach to The Network can also be applied to what I think about social media holistically.

These are the principles that I follow:

1. Offer Value (this can be defined in many ways)
2. Push it to the audience you want to see it (that can be one person, that can be many people)
3. Stick to a core set of themes (this will allow your audience to self-select whether they want to receive your information) (or, stated differently, if you stand for everything, you stand for nothing)
4. Don’t always talk about yourself.
5. Repeat

This will allow your audience to see if they want to join in the conversation.

This is part of a series on brand journalism as told by the brands that are paving the way. Please send me a note if you would like to tell your company’s story on its move to what Tom Foremski dubbed EC=MC, Every Company is a Media Company. Please visit The Network for more information. [Disclosure, Cisco is a client of Altimeter Group.]

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