In an age when everyone with a keyboard can be an influencer and the media continues to fragment like the Long Tail, it’s difficult for marketers to determine how and where to spend their marketing communications budget.
In our third post on the Waggener Edstrom Worldwide (WE) Influence Toolkit, we outline our methodology behind an increasingly popular software tool called Influence Ranking. Influence Ranking was created by our R&D superstars Samara Omundson and Emily Wheeler (bloggers behind Contrarian Librarian). The ranking algorithm is intended to rate and rank influential content creators and influence at the media outlet level.
The primary benefit of Influence Ranking is a rank order of influencers across media types — both traditional and social media — that highlights media “stars” who demonstrate consistent, sustained influence in a particular category.
While there are other influence authority measures (Technorati, Radian6, Sysomos), we consider these automated tools to be somewhat “lite” in their metrics. Why? Because most tools available usually only consider reach, or popularity, to be the key indicator of influence. WE’s Influence Ranking methodology crosses media platforms and accounts for nearly 30 discrete measures of influence that go beyond mere reach and popularity metrics.
There are currently five buckets of influence metrics in our algorithm:
- Buzz. Measures of sharing behaviors. Examples might include inbound links, popularity measures such as Digg or Reddit, social bookmarking presence, or retweets.
- Reach. Traditional PR measure of direct readership. Examples might be circulation, unique visitors, Facebook Friends or Twitter followers.
- Engagement. Measures of reader interaction with content. Comments and number of @replies are a good example of engagement.
- Content. Measures related to the relevance of content. Includes the frequency and depth of coverage of a client’s brand or industry.
- Audiences. Measures of the audiences reached or targeted. Preferably based on primary or demographic research, but this could also be extrapolated from reviewing the content.
Example of an influence ranking:
The Pipe Organ technique is the most complex because it combines as many related tools as possible to make “interesting music.” It might not be the most pleasant sound, but it should give you an interesting mix of users to listen to and engage with. Ideally you will have created a masterpiece, a magnetic sound, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder. My list will be different from your list, and that’s just how it should be.
OK, I’ll fess up. Over the past year, the Pipe Organ has become more like an automatic player piano as third-party Twitter apps have become incredibly nuanced. BUT I still emphasize the need for the human elements. The robots aren’t yet ready to take over.
The Pipe Organ technique relies on the Springboard, the Matrix, PLUS some third-party tools. Since I started using Twitter a few years ago, the many third-party tools have made this technique much easier. I now rely upon Tweetdeck to do most of my heavy lifting for me.
I spend about 20 minutes a day filtering potential users I want to follow on Twitter. I’ll walk you through a few steps to see how I choose someone to follow.
Instead of using the search box on Twitter, I can create a search as a column within Tweetdeck. This “dashboard” allows me to multitask without having to open a million browser windows. This morning I made a search for “Social Media.”
Tweetdeck adds a column over on the right with users who have this term within their tweets. I scroll down a bit and find the user @prem_k. I’m seduced by the link he’s sharing “Social Media vs Social Customer Relationship.” Now, using the Springboard technique I would stop here and follow him. Since I’m using the Pipe Organ, let’s take it up a few notches. I’ll click his username within Tweetdeck and take a look at his user profile…
He lists subjects I’m interested in too — plus he has a vantage that is valuable to me; he works at an IT consulting firm. I think I could learn a few things from his perspective. But let’s bump it up another notch! Let’s look him up! Let’s see some recent Tweets that include his username. This way we can see if people are re-tweeting him, who he’s engaged with, what else he’s tweeting about.
It looks like many users link to his writings within their tweets. That’s a good sign. THEN (this is the Pipe Organ, not the Cannonball) let’s see which users (Friends or Followers) Prem and I have in common. There are a few services that do this, but I used Twtrfrnd.com for this example.
Turns out we have a few users in common, and they happen to be people whose opinions I respect. So far it looks like he’d be a good user for me to follow. He’d be someone I’d find interesting, would gain value from, and have a strong potential to engage with. BUT I’m not done. Last step, let’s filter his tweets through the Matrix! I’ll use his homepage on Twitter to read down through his tweets.
Then, after witnessing what appears to be a mix of active RT’s, engagements and specific tweets about the topics he mentions in his bio, I’m comfortable placing him on the Matrix…
It seems to me that he’d fit well within the lower-right corner, which for my own preference is where the users I find interesting tend to be.
My last step is to go back to Tweetdeck and click the “Follow” button, and voila! I’m following him. I’m looking forward to seeing if/when/how we engage.
That’s the Pipe Organ technique. It’s a bit complex, but I’ve found that if you have the time it’s many times more rewarding for your efforts than either the Springboard or the Matrix alone.
Please let me know your questions by posting them in the comments section below. Thanks!
The Matrix is an added layer to using the Springboard technique. With the Matrix, you’re attempting to categorize Twitter users by their personality and style. You would still use the Springboard options to find users, but you’d put them through a filter before you decided to follow them (or not). Based on your own preferences, you would then decide if a certain user meets your definition of “Interesting.” It takes a little more time, but with a little investment you can build a tighter engagement and gain a little more value from your Twitter usage.
Here’s what the Matrix looks like when it’s blank:
Top to bottom on the Matrix is a scale of types of people. At the top is “Spectacular Magnetism,” the people and things we can’t take our eyes and ears off of. Typically, the very top is reserved for active celebrities. People like Kim Kardashian, Lady Gaga or Kanye West who have huge amounts of people following them on Twitter without having to try. They are spectacularly magnetic. At the bottom are the hard-working Tweeters who are actively posting and engaging on Twitter. Day and night, hour over hour, they are out there conversing, sharing, asking. Through their activity, they gain a magnetism, but they have to work at it.
Left to right is the scale of types of messaging. General is on the left, specific is on the right. A general tweets are links to breaking news, wacky trivia, maybe some useful tips for health, business or money. Users who post these messages are seeking to find the largest possible audience by remaining very general. On the right the messages are more specific; the author is parsing up pinheads, focusing right down to the tiniest details. These messages are meant for a very specific audience, not everybody. These messages are meant to be attractive to a particular group of people, such as those interested in posts from a specific sporting event.
I personally prefer users on the bottom right side of the Matrix. I want the details and I want to hear them from someone who is active. At the same time, some spice is nice, so I follow a few celebrities for fun. Here’s a way to think of the Matrix when deciding who fits where:
Here’s where I’d put some of the folks on Twitter:
At the top is Lady Gaga — 6 million people follow her on Twitter. That’s pretty spectacular. Down toward the bottom is photographer Jack Hollingsworth, who’s made a huge impact from his Twitter account. He’s become the guru, the glue, the maven and connector for photographers interested in the digital space. He is very active with messages and engagements that resonate within a specific field.
Over on the left is innovative entrepreneur and author Guy Kawasaki. He’s dropping leaflets all day (or at least the people who manage his Twitter account are). Trivia, crazy and useful links, news items, stuff flows from his Twitter account nearly endlessly. On the right, humanitarian start-up founder Craig Kielburger. He’s providing us a window into his daily life while describing his passion and relationships within his specific world. He’s pointing out examples of community involvement while sharing his own. He’s not so detailed he’s reached the edge of the Matrix, but he’s definitely within the right side.
As I mentioned above, I prefer users on the right side of the Matrix. So when I’m using Twitter’s search function, or We Follow, I take one extra step. I review how the user is interacting on Twitter and see if it matches my preference. If yes, I follow them. If no, I don’t. And sometimes, I just can’t help it and follow a user like Lady Gaga because the user is so spectacular her magnetism is inescapable.
Please let me know your questions by posting them in the comments area below. Thanks!
The trick to taming a lion is to confuse it. Circus lion-tamers point the underside of chairs at their lions, giving them too many points to swipe at. Unable to decide on which leg to paw, the lion halts its attack. The trainer can then guide the lion to its happy place, typically by offering it a grand reward. Let’s call this approach “old school.”
The “new school” approach is to work WITH the lions instead of trying to tame them. The goal is to build lasting relationships with the lions. To be successful, the new-school lion “listener” needs to:
- Study the group and discern the leadership
- Live within the group to fully understand the nuances
- Offer safe havens where the group can visit, without prodding or corralling
The Gap has learned that the old school no longer works.
The new logo designed by Laird & Partners, which I actually liked, was not sabotaged by its poor reception, even though it appears that way through the data. At the time of my writing this, there are tons of digital conversations about the logo. We did a quick search using Sysomos and found:
- 1,457 blog post mentions
- 51,027 tweet mentions
- 364 traditional media mentions
Most of these mentions are negative, but show the fanatical support the Gap has for its brand. Looking at the Gap’s Facebook page there are over 1,000 more comments from eager brand fans seeking to add their voices to the dialogue. (Harness this power!)
The new Gap logo failed because it lacked a full “Social/Digital” plan to life-cycle the launch within the new-school frame. Our social era puts everything out in the open, transparently. These lions, the Gap’s audiences, are out in the open too. They looked at the old bait and saw past it, into the savannah, and knew there was better prey amidst the grasses. Instead of fully understanding this relationship the Gap initially panicked (which you don’t want to do around lions), and offered to “crowd-source” the logo. It’s impossible to tame lions in the wild, but taming lions is no longer the goal. That’s old school; it’s all new school now.
The Gap can still salvage this campaign, even flourish from the results. Social is a process, not a road marker; it’s evolving and is open to ongoing participation. Here are a few symptoms, solutions, and opportunities.
- Own your brand’s digital footprint. When the Gap chose to announce the new logo on HuffPo they relinquished the power of their brand to HuffPo. I still think it’s a good strategy to engage with bloggers and media outlets, but there were earlier opportunities to reach out to thought leaders and highly influential digital trailblazers who could have helped amplify the goals while keeping the Gap’s brand strong. I expect the Gap to have had a well-maintained blog in place, potentially a virtual newsroom where they can offer bloggers, fans and fanatics useful bits of digital gems to foster conversation. Sure, a Facebook landing page is a good idea, but what’s missing is the ongoing conversations with their audience. Another solution could be a Gap-branded digital “home,” a mini-site to land on, to linger at, a place to share ideas with each other. The Twitter account is also too broadcast-heavy with low engagement. Overall, the Gap needs to invest more time speaking WITH their audience in order to own their digital footprint.
- Ramp up slowly, in the open. The Gap could have integrated their audience into the new logo rollout. They could have made the process transparent, open to dialogue, and responsive to feedback. This is not “crowd-sourcing,” it’s engagement. Define the hierarchy of your audience, and pinpoint the strategy to include the grassroots leadership. Then allow the news to grow organically, monitor the response, and then remain in tune and agile enough to roll and react as needed. It’s hard to catch a big wave; start with a smaller wave and build up your response as the wave builds. It’s even harder to herd cats, especially big cats like lions. Instead, walk with them, see where they go, and build a course of action once you can define the trajectory. And above all, don’t surprise them.
I hope the Gap doesn’t batten down the hatches and go reclusive. I think they need to do the opposite, now, and with vigor. They need to be with the lions. They are ripe to harness the power of social.
WE won a Telly Award for the work Studio D — in partnership with Microsoft — did on the Microsoft Enterprise Search campaign! The Telly Awards honor the very best local, regional and cable television commercials and programs, as well as the finest video and film productions and work created for the Web.
ASK
Microsoft asked WE to create something visually appealing and engaging for IT decision-makers that would drive them to the Enterprise Search website.
APPROACH
Our strategic recommendation was a light-hearted video series — told from the customer’s perspective — wherein viewers could identify with the characters’ search problems and identify Microsoft Enterprise Search as a solution to their business problem(s). The approach was a hit with an interactive demo series that showcases three different areas of Microsoft Enterprise Search within an experiential website (click on each video and look for the “view demo” link in the right-hand corner). The site utilizes Microsoft’s Smooth Streamingtechnology, which enables viewers to engage with a seamless, high quality viewing experience —without the buffering. At the time of the site’s launch last fall, Smooth Streaming was a new solution for syncing two videos simultaneously, and the site’s simplicity speaks for how innovatively that solution was executed.
RESULTS
Success for this video series was achieved through increased engagement with the Microsoft Enterprise Search product, and the Telly Award makes that success all the more worth celebrating.
Special shout outs to the following integral people on this project:
- Microsoft Client: Art Pettigrue | WE Account Partner: Heather Gillissen
- Owner: John Weiss | Project Manager: Michelle Crowson
- Contributors: Kevin Murphy, Jeff Paries, Scott McAuliffe, Chris Kalani, Mark Hanson, Aaron Bear, Jessica Evans and many other great people that worked on this truly integrated project
- Video Vendor/Partner: Integrated Talent
Previous WE Studio D Telly Awards include Models Remixed and The Lone Server.
Gartner’s Michael Maoz posts this week on Facebook and Twitter as customer service tools in “Twitter and facebook efforts are mostly distractions for Customer Service improvements.”
“In many cases ‘social’ efforts are interesting but distracting projects. It’s a bit like the dogs in the 2009 Pixar film, ‘Up’ where, in the midst of planning just about anything, one of the dogs reflexively calls out ‘Squirrel!’ and everyone becomes momentarily distracted.”
More and more companies are using social media for customer service. Social media isn’t just the domain of marketing. It has huge value for product development, customer support and CRM/sales. To keep these tools valuable, you need to use them properly and set up the right infrastructure to manage them. For example, a good monitoring system with a decision tree and ticketing to flag comments and determine what part of the company they should be routed to and then assign them to a specific individual who can address appropriately.
For customer service and support, you don’t want to encourage the use of Twitter or Facebook as a primary contact vehicle. There’s just not enough context to be useful, but as a tool to watch for unhappy customers and identify and address issues early, Twitter has tremendous value.
As a transactional tool to solve a specific problem, Twitter and Facebook leave a lot to be desired. For real-time support, you want to move the engagement from social media where it’s public to a more intimate setting until the issue is resolved.
I guess you could agree that Twitter and Facebook are distractions as long as you believe customers are distractions.
Originally published at http://murphypdx.com.
I, like most of us here at Studio D, tend to see patterns and ideas emerge from everyday 
situations that are relevant to building social media strategies and audience engagement efforts. Well, last week — trudging back upstairs from our second fire drill in five hours (yes, second) — was no different. As we were cleared to head back from what was thankfully a false alarm, a few things came to mind:
- Preparation is important. As groan-inducing and interruptive as they can be, fire drills happen for a reason — so that you know where to go, what to do and who does what when it really matters. The importance of advance planning for, say, a crisis communications program is probably obvious, but it’s a vital part of a strong social media engagement strategy as well. Running through a variety of scenarios before launching your new account/website/campaign can help everyone involved understand the process and their role. It’s one thing to prepare for a fire by looking at a building map, it’s another to actually walk the route (and find out it can take a lot longer than anticipated to make it down seven packed flights of stairs…).
- Opportunities are everywhere. The coffee shops and delis that line the streets around our office vie for our attention and lunch dollars with fliers that inevitably end up in the recycling bin. But if one of them had noticed the hundreds of cold office workers filling the parking lot (twice!) and grabbed a stack of cups and a thermos of coffee, they would have created an opportunity to meet — and caffeinate — dozens of new potential customers. Watch for simple, unexpected opportunities to connect with and surprise your audience — and act quickly.
- Mix it up. People fall into patterns and rely on habits to navigate their world — online and offline. Despite a single staircase separating the 6th and 7th floors here at Waggener Edstrom, our routines tend to keep us on our own floors. As everyone spilled out into the parking lot during the fire drill(s), WE folks were mixing and mingling, happy to be “forced” to reconnect with friends and meet new people. I know I can fall into similar ruts with my social media and Web navigation habits, potentially missing great content and chances to connect. How can you help your audience mix up their usual, predictable experience with your brand’s online presence, enabling them to discover new content, connect with other fans and break out of their navigation routines?
Image from Vinc.
A piece by Teressa Iezzi and Ann-Christine Diaz worth reading in today’s AdAge covers how traits of digital communications are rubbing off on all disciplines of marketing. The anchor quote of the article really spoke to me:
The best companies have harnessed the digital mindset and taken the shareable, ongoing, interactive, participatory nature of digital and created brand experiences that matter to people where they ought to — in their real, everyday lives.
I feel this really is the cornerstone of how we at WE Studio D think about our jobs. People often ask me if the “D” in Studio D stands for “digital,” and I tell them that while we work primarily in digital communications, we’ve kept the D purposely vague: digital, design, development, data, demand creation, dialogue, etc.
I think this blurriness of the lines between the marketing disciplines is a good thing, allowing ideas and creativity to bleed out of a model built on distribution and toward a model built on participation. The article mentions Nike Plus and Fiat Eco Drive as “arguably the most compelling brand ideas of the last decade” and how, although they started online, they were successful because they manifested themselves in reality in ways that actually mattered in peo
ple’s real lives.
Pepsi’s new cross media campaign “Refresh” is a great example of this — not positioning itself as a digital campaign per se, but as a campaign that wants to be part of its customers’ lives and to create opportunities for customers to do something important to them. From the article:
Pepsi and TBWA/Chiat/Day’s Refresh Project funds ideas that would make the real world a better place. Rob Schwartz, chief creative officer, TBWA/Chiat/Day, L.A., said that with Refresh, the agency “didn’t set out to create a ‘digital idea.’ We set out to make our brand idea — Refresh — an action. … It’s a brand idea that lets you take action to do some good in your world, your neighborhood, your street.”
We need more of this — integrated comms grounded in driving action, creating opportunities to DO stuff.
If you’ve been evading the zombies this week and following Studio D’s thoughts on the Social Influence System, you may have gotten the impression that we sit on our social media porch and shake our cane yelling “get off our lawn” to social marketing campaigns. While there is no denial that I am often called a grouch, the point of Social Influence Systems actually was created to make these “fun” campaigns easier to execute, easier to integrate into broader marketing workflows and easier to show return on engagement / influence / investment.
When the SIS is built out with roles and resources allocated and put in the right places (be it the influential monitoring and engagement rhythm, the decision hierarchies how and when to respond, or the tried and true content distribution channels, etc.), it’s easy to “plug-in” campaigns into the system. Because we know the day-to-day structure of how we manage social influence is on solid foundation, we can spend the time on the campaign elements, whether fun (like a Facebook app) or not-so-fun (like a news leak containment strategy), and know that the system is taking care of the busy work.
Although every company is going to have its own particular (or is it peculiar?) issues to address, here at Studio D, we have built out “plug-in” scenarios for probable communications situations around eight needs that we see on a regular basis: news leaks, crisis comms, executive platforms, thought leadership, product launch, investor relations, analyst relations and retail/sales campaigns. Think of it almost like an insurance policy — when the shoe drops and the team moves to execution mode, we’ve already got a process in place to utilize social media to solve the communications problem at hand.
Image by yum9me.
Over the weekend, for reasons related to my appreciation of both Brad Neely comics and “Watch Instantly” features on Netflix, I ended up watching an absolutely fascinating documentary about various creative projects inspired by the world of Harry Potter called “We Are Wizards.” Though HP is no doubt one of the most extreme crazes of modern times, it got me thinking about fan appreciation and customer involvement more broadly.
No matter what industry you’re in, there’s an extremely good chance that someone is crazy about the product(s) or service(s) you offer. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying everyone will become your brand spokesperson or company evangelist. What I am saying is that there’s a tremendous opportunity to tap into the excitement that your customers have toward your brand if done thoughtfully.
The key is to give those customers who are excited about your product or service an avenue to share their positive experience in an organic way. And it bears repeating, this needs to be done thoughtfully.
Even if your efforts to engage your consumers may be well-intentioned, people rarely jump on opportunities to share their enthusiasm about your service or product if the guidelines for engagement are too rigid or disingenuous.
Instead, here’s a list of three simple ways to tap into your customers’ passion:
- Seeing is believing. In the right circumstances, your customers/fans will gladly upload photos that show them interacting with your product and/or brand in some way. The Bing photo booth at SXSW was a clever way to encourage fans to add their own personalized take on the “decision engine” as part of the Bing Photo for Good promotion. Encourage your customers to share their “Kodak” moments including unboxings, showing products “in the wild,” event photos, etc.
- Call and response. Though “engagement” has become one of the more clichéd words in the world of social influence, actually engaging with your customers/fans/followers on a consistent and sincere basis continues to yield significant benefits. Have dialogues with your customers. Ask them questions and get their point of view. More often than not, brands on Facebook and Twitter fall on the side of underengaging, and very few push it to the other end of the spectrum.
- Creative connection. All too often, we see companies attempting to herd their customers’ responses into a predetermined narrative by asking narrow questions or dictating the appropriate medium for responses. Don’t undermine the creativity of your customers. Encourage them to respond in ways that have the most meaning to them, whether that means uploading a photo, posting a comment, writing a song or anything in between.
While it’s rare that a brand will give life to a whole subculture of fan projects including bands, a music genre, podcasts, blogs, and other works of creativity as was the case with J.K. Rowling’s empire, you might just be surprised by the inspired tricks your customers have up their sleeves.
Image by Greg Westfall
