FRANKthoughts

JESS3 / The State of The Internet

Sourced from Mashable.

From Mashable’s article on How Social Media Helps One Small Business Connect with Fans for a Seattle bag business .

“She said the company’s success on social media starts with their bags and that social media tools have given them more powerful ways to connect.” – Darcy Gray, vice president at Tom Bihn bags.

One the most common topics of debate we receive from clients is setting our goal for social media tools.   The easiest and familiar metric for marketers is to grow followers and fans for Twitter and Facebook respectively.  It’s a solid online metric that is similar to growing traffic visits and email databases.

Whilst that is important, it does not paint the broader picture of what social media is all about.  Conversations.  Conversations that help build advocacy, spreading the word (WOM), relationships and ultimately trust or loyalty.

At FRANkVizeum, we have illustrated this via our Conversation Venn Diagram.  By infusing the thoughts of Communities with traditionally 1 to 1 relationships between brands and consumers, we can clearly start seeing where brands sit.

Brands that communicate privately with consumers sit in “Closed Conversation.”   They could be feedback forms, newsletters, or surveys.  Whilst this is effective, it does not make use of the scalability of social media.  The metric here could be site traffic, email database, etc.

For brands that do not participate in any conversation but have consumers enjoying sharing experiences, stories, and news within the community, they sit in “Open Conversation”.  A great example is Nintendo Australia.  They do not participate in Twitter but there are a multitude of conversations, posts, RT, news, etc about the brand.  The metric here is volume of posts, tweets, RT from consumers.  The challenge is how do involve and mobilise the legions of fans?

Brands that use Twitter feeds as a way to broadcast news with little/no followers or active conversations sit squarely in “One Way Broadcasting.”  This is the traditional model in the social space with the focus on building traffic or news feed.  An example is TheAge twitter feed.  The metric here is growing Followers and/or volume of external tweets/post.

Ultimately, it comes down to the a brand’s objective.  Through these objectives we implement a strategy using the right tools and right metrics based on the above Venn Diagram. Eg. Traffic? News? Advocacy? WOM? Monitoring?

Our belief is Brands should find the right balance and should sit in the middle of all 3.  Not only broadcasting feed but to also build relationships to generate RTs and spreading the word to the community.

To support our thinking, there is recent research shared on Fast Company that looked at what is the most effective way to spread news on Twitter (a common client objective).  It shows “the most influential spreaders of news aren’t neccessarily those with the greatest number of online friends or followers.”

Source: Fast Company

We have known this for a while now (we even demonstrated this for GPO in our FRANkademy sessions), but this is the first piece of research that validates our strategy.  The trick is to find the right people strategically placed as the gate holder to people with larger followers that spreads the news.  These guys are hard to find as they aren’t immediately obvious (eg. through their number of followers).

By implementing the strategy that address the 3 points of the Venn Diagram, we can only find these “influencers” by a) increasing followers b) be active c) increase RT and conversations.  They will not only help spread the word, but build lasting relationships, loyalty, WOM, sales and traffic.

A great short video that demonstrates the growth and scale of Social Media.  Enjoy!

Thought of the day post.

Is it easier to remember him as “Geoffrey Normandy” or “The Guy with the Beard“?

If your customer had to find a way to describe your brand / product / business, what would that be?  And are you addressing them in your consumer touch points?

The traditional purchasing funnel defines the consumer journey as Awareness > Interest > Preference > Action > Sale > Repeat Customer.  From a media perspective, the most common approach is to use performance networks and relevant contextual placements to drive users to the brand’s website/store to convert to a sale.  But do consumers really take that journey?  To see an ad, visit the website, and make a purchase.

Probably not always the case.

Even more so if it is a high involvement purchase.

The traditional purchasing funnel is not dead, it just needs to be updated to recognise users that engage in active research.  Using search to seek opinions, reviews, and feedback from a community in forums / blogs / twitter.  SEM can only provide limited help to drive users to the product’s website… but does not help users fulfill it’s current need for research before purchase.  What are other people saying about it?  Who buys this product? “Because if I can trust the maker, I can buy it now and worry about it later.” – The Brand Gap by Marty Neumeier

If we don’t understand our consumer’s journey, spending big $$$ campaigns, fancy creative messages, and site optimisation will only limit a brand’s potential.  Alice is just not going to fit into the rabbit hole.

Does anyone remember what it was like to search back in 2001?

Check out http://www.google.com/search2001.html

In 2001, “Myspace” was “making home improvements better”, “Facebook” was not as we know it today, and what’s “YouTube”?

Also interesting how the leading sites have evolved over the years.

MySpace has launched a new ad platform targeted at SMEs called myAds.  At first glance, it appears to be a similar approach to Facebook Ads where it allows any business purchase a small banner on a CPC campaign.

Have heard of minor bugs such as it doesn’t work on Google’s Chrome browser and requires the latest Flash version to work.

Apologies for the blog inactivity… it has been a busy week for FRANk with the move, pitch, projects, etc.

So a tiny post today to keep things interesting!

Diesel is celebrating their 30th aniversary with a big XXX party running parallel across 17 countries (not Australia unfortunately!).  It will be featuring stars such as Soulwax, N.E.R.D., Pete Doherty, Ed Bangers, etc.  Check it out Diesel XXX.

To promote the event, check out this viral video inspired by Safe for Work Porno work!  Diesel has taken images from 70s porno films, replacing “private” parts with well-thought out designs:

We are moving on the 25th and 26th of September to our great new office just around the corner.

Our new address will be:
28 St Edmonds Rd
Prahran VIC 3181

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All our contact details will remain the same.

We’ve lost our balcony but picked up four!