If there’s one thing marketing professionals can probably agree on, it’s that the realm of digital content has created both a wealth of opportunities and a range of choices that boggle the mind. There are numerous statistics to serve as evidence but, suffice it to say, digital is part of the reality we live in.
In choosing where to disseminate your content, it can be deceptively easy to settle for casting a wide net and hoping it hits the mark with a massive audience. This strategy is a bit like a game of Battleship, where you guess the vectors in which your opponent has placed their game pieces, and the larger ships make the easiest targets.
But by leveraging the right data to understand an audience, a company can fine-tune its communications strategies and its content to resonate at a greater level with segments of its larger audience. A critical step in this process is to focus on relevance — identifying the relevant audience, followed by identifying the influencers and the content that will prompt them to act.
To this end, Waggener Edstrom Worldwide created our Influence Ranking™ product. Influence Ranking is built on a methodology that focuses not only on the typical attributes of reach, amplification and engagement, like many of the products on the market possess, but also adds significant weight to audience and content relevance. For example, an outlet or influencer can have enormous reach, but if their content is not relevant to a company’s target audience, their rank goes down significantly or they are not included.
The result is a multifaceted understanding of which outlets or individuals are most influential. Rankings can be further analyzed by audience type, media type, outlet or influential to get a more precise and customized view of results. This can help you identify how to assign resources and will provide a benchmark against which to measure future results.
By arming yourself with the right data, you can leave the guesswork behind and create content that is relevant to your audience and has a true business impact.
More information on Influence Ranking is available on Waggener Edstrom’s Products and Services page.
The revolution rolls on ahead, incessantly causing the disruptions that influence our present. Consultants and strategists rush forward to take a peek at the future (and potentially influence its direction), and then hustle back with our analysis. Like carnival barkers, from our step-stool soapboxes we can see the new way forward. We work hard to lift our clients onto our shoulders just long enough for them to take a convincing glance, and for us, the strategists, to express the merits, the benefits, and the ample successes waiting for them down the road.
“But where’s the ROI?” They ask.
“What’s the ROI of a revolution?” I respond.
The ROI is to be there, at the front, in order to invent the ROI. It’s pre-ROI!
I want to define this space in front of the future as the “Leadership Value,” your “LV.” Before we can get to ROI we need to get your LV.
Envision the future as a speedboat racing through placid water. The boat rushes forward, propelled by the incessant weave of economic, social and cultural factors. In the still water before the boat is the clean slate, the tablet to write the future. Behind the boat is the churning wake, the activity that defines our here and now. We want to be in the still water in the front of the boat. We want our clients to be there with us. We want to see the water the boat is cutting into, to position our clients at the sweet spot.
When clients ask me, “Should we invest in mobile?” I want to answer, “Yes, mobile is important, but it’s driven by a future further ahead of us. To better answer your question we need to see clearly. Let’s get to the front, get your LV set, and the answer will be strongest.”
If we’ve done our job well, we’ve brought our clients to the front, and put them into a positively active position where they are maintaining a presence in the stillness. They are in the lead; they are creating the lead. From there they can see all vantages: the future, the movement of the revolution, the wake and the distant past.
We can then plan for the future while building products for the entire market: the early and late adopters. Our vision is clearest when we’re in the lead.
Build your LV, and the ROI will follow.
While doing some reading recently, I came across a PR industry white paper that addressed some basic concepts important to how we demonstrate PR effectiveness to clients. I was curious to see what the Institute for Public Relations had to say on the matter until I noticed the publication date: 1999.
In my head I started to mock, as quaint, what I imagined might be contained in the paper: advocacy of the dominance of print, the importance of encyclopedias, patronizing mentions of The World Wide Web (chatrooms!), etc. Of course, the internet and email were more than just curiosities 11 years ago, but the degree to which they have become ingrained and vital to our personal and professional lives today was hardly imaginable then.
The real point is that once I began to read through the paper, I almost immediately had a “duh” moment, deflating my smug, snarky attitude, when I recognized that the core principles then are essentially the same as today, regardless of the technologies or methods by which we execute them. The cutting-edge tools we have at our disposal should be (and generally are at WE) operated on a solid foundation of concepts such as “what business problem(s) we are trying to solve” and “how can we show effectiveness and a positive return to our clients?” — just as it was 11 years ago.
As communications professionals, our success is dependent on how we can help our clients succeed — and while existing in a world of constantly evolving communications technologies and channels, we need to stay abreast of change, and ahead of it when possible, and understand what and how we can apply to the PR work we offer our clients. The key is to keep those core principles truly at our core, to always know WHY we’re doing what we’re doing and to build out strategies, methods and use of technologies around that strong center.
Photo by kretyen
This week, Waggener Edstrom Worldwide (WE) invested in the local (and active) social media scene in the Seattle area by sponsoring one of the most respected social media-centric events, Social Media Breakfast. More than 80 social media enthusiasts participated in a presentation by Jim Benson, CEO of Modus Cooperandi and @ourfounder on Twitter, as he shared his knowledge and expertise of social media for business and government. Benson focused on lessons learned from working with previous clients including the United Nations, World Bank, Microsoft, NBC Universal, and the CIA to highlight social media’s strength in collaboration.
The theme of collaboration reverberated throughout the presentation. Perhaps unsurprisingly since as Benson noted, human beings are wired for collaboration and social sites can’t exist without collaboration. Silos prohibit collaboration, so as employees continue to more easily work together and productivity increases, it makes sense for the silos to come down. Until, that is, you realize the challenges that social media’s wide open spaces are creating for those interested in controlling sensitive information. The U.S. government, for example, has quite the challenge of finding its organizational and communication sweet spot with an audience in an instant-gratification world.
A window into the real-time takeaways of the #SMBSeattle event shows:
- @cherylnichols: Nice response! @ourfounder was asked: What’s the ROI of enterprise 2.0? response: What’s the ROI of oxygen?
- @jessestrada: Total opacity or transparency not a good idea. Everyone has a sweet spot in the middle.
- @colleencar: Crowd sourcing (Intellipedia) helps the intelligence community deal w/info overload.
ROI. Is it measured by dollars or impact?
At a recent Social Media Breakfast (SMB) Seattle event, @tacanderson (Waggener Edstrom Studio D) and @neilbeam (AT&T) discussed Social Media Measurement and ROI: Making the Connection from Monitoring to the Bottom Line.
Both Anderson and Beam made the case that ROI is often defined by increase or decrease in sales. It is, however, important to identify your objective before defining ROI. Considerations include loyalty, quality, reach, efficacy and engagement. ROI outliers include brand reputation, SEO and capturing the unexpected.
Calls to Action:
• Measure EVERYTHING.
• Think about establishing values to human activities such as the following:
o view
o review
o kudos/vote up
• Know your audience. For example, Anderson explained:
o IT purchasers are single most users of social media.
o The future of social media is with individual influencers.
Resources:
• Event video
• Event slide deck
• Event photos
• Social Media Vocab Resource
Last week one of the biggest stories related to social media was the Twitterfeud between Kevin Smith and Southwest Airlines around an unfortunate experience he endured on a Burbank-bound flight. If you haven’t read the tweet stream or one of the dozens of articles over the past days, basically Kevin got pulled off a flight after checking in, boarding and settling in for being, um, “plus-sized.” Now Kevin is a big dude, but not Mr. Creosote big, and had, in turn, flown Southwest incident-free on multiple occasions, so upon being bounced from the flight, took out his anger toward the airline via his very well-read Twitter feed. I won’t go into the details or debate whether this was a publicity stunt for Smith’s new movie, or whether Southwest’s policy is unreasonable. I want to focus for a second on Southwest’s response (it gave him an apology and a $100 voucher) and social CRM as a whole.
Some have questioned whether Smith would have gotten a response back from Southwest if he hadn’t been a famous movie producer with a big influential following. I think the answer here is a resounding “no” (see below), but it also got me thinking about something a little bigger — that this actually might be the golden age of consumer-friendly social CRM. Follow me here for a second. Companies know that they need to be monitoring social media for customer delight issues and occasions where the brand promise has been broken. Brands want to look like they are progressive problem solvers “doing social right” and using it to address customer satisfaction issues. This is great. This is commendable. This really does act as a balm to fix some brand equity issues on a 1:1 level.
Unfortunately it’s not sustainable or scalable. We are at an interesting crossroads — most companies’ appetites for using social CRM to fix brand problems via personalized service is actionable right now — but only right now, so enjoy it while you can! As social media continues to grow in volume and influence I think we’ll see this personalized service — social media as concierge — turn more into social media as the evolution of the call center. Some companies are already too big to make that 1:1 connection with every issue; they can direct traffic and collect trends, but that individualized attention (unfortunately) can’t be matched every time. At this point in the companies’ social media maturity they rightfully evolve to focus on influence — finding the social influentials that in turn help drive the conversation.
True story: Last week I stayed in the lovely Kimpton-run Hotel Monaco in San Francisco, a city that I lived in for years, know well and look forward to visiting. It’s a special place that has a unique look and vibe, and one thing I love to do when I stay there is throw open my hotel curtains and just take in the view to see how the city changes throughout the day. This trip, unfortunately, I had a view of the dumpster depot where all the garbage cans go to sleep at night awaiting the morning garbage trucks. Kind of gross — and at the risk of sounding like a snobby whiner I tweeted about it. Later that day I got a call from the hotel manager who had seen my tweet and offered to move me to another room. I declined (all they had left were internal rooms with no window), and that seemed a little claustrophobic. But I thanked him for listening, commended the hotel for its customer relations and hung up the phone feeling really great about Kimpton. Moments later a bellhop showed up at my door with a bottle of wine and a cheese plate, compliments of the hotel. Totally unnecessary but very thoughtful, and I tweeted back out about how delighted I was with how this worked out for everyone: they get a delighted customer willing to tweet about his experience, I get the satisfaction of knowing a brand I respect is listening to me, and — bonus! — I get to drink wine while I do work from the hotel (which is something I usually don’t get to do in my cube (unless it is Terry Neubauer Power Hour-ha!).
Too bad it’s not sustainable or scalable. Next time it just might be extra pillow mints!
David Patton, Editor in Chief, WE Studio D
When WSJ.com was experimenting with social media like Twitter, Facebook and Digg my thought was: This is a chance to publish our content on someone else’s site or platform (that had an established audience) for free. Sign us up.
For media companies this is a no brainer because they are all about creating content. They have reporters, writers and editors that are paid to create content or news that is in search of the widest audience possible. It takes minimal additional time to ensure the content is getting to social media outlets.
But what about organizations that aren’t media companies? They typically aren’t set up to be content creators or publishers. There are rarely reporters or writers on staff. Can organizations use social media as effectively if they don’t have those resources focused on content?
Yes, if they begin to think of marketing, communications and advertising teams as content creators and publishers. These resources also need to refocus some of their time on creating the right kind of content and getting that content onto social media platforms.
It’s important for organizations to look at social media not as an add on, but as a replacement for some of the things the organization might have done in the past.
As Tac Anderson wrote this week, it’s possible to measure the ROI of social media in many ways. Whole Foods has been very active in social media and feels it has a high ROI, but admitted in this Mashable post that it’s taken more time than expected.
While using social media is almost free (if done quickly and efficiently), especially when compared with ad placement, creating the content that will be effective in telling a story isn’t. But creating content that is authentic and credible, that lets the expertise and passion of the organization show through, is less expensive than creating slick marketing and ad content.
Is your organization shifting resources to content creation for social media from other tasks? Do you plan to?
Photo by Material Boy
Josh Rein, Assistant Account Executive, WE Studio D
I took a bit of a culinary leap of faith today. I went to the Home Depot on my lunch to pick up some stuff for home projects this weekend and decided to grab some Korean spare ribs from the food cart in the parking lot. Now there are some fine food carts located in downtown Portland, but I don’t tend to associate quality food with the parking lot of my local home-improvement megastore. After looking at the cart, taking into account tangible things like cleanliness and menu, as well as things like how many customers they had, I decided that the chances of a good meal far outweighed the risks.
Now the reason I bring this up is not to try to turn this into a food blog, but to discuss the choices our companies go through when they decide to increase their digital budgets, or devote more time to using the newest social media craze (I’m hoping by now everybody has agreed that a company needs to reach out directly to its customer base, be it through blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc.).
As most of us know, the initial foray into digital PR, and even more so into social media, was slow and filled with a great deal of analysis and doubt. However, the more we grew comfortable with engaging customers directly via blogs, the easier it became to see the value in new sites like Twitter. More importantly, we begin to actively seek out innovative ways to enhance our presence with sites like Yammer, or even FriendFeed. While it’s never been more important to properly vet any new social media opportunities, it goes to show you that the more you open yourself up to something new, the better chance you have of finding something truly great.
However, I’m probably still going to be very careful of food I find when picking out sinks at Home Depot.
Kevin Murphy, Digital Experience Director
We had our annual team offsite this week. A lot of agencies are struggling and have had to pull the plug on things like travel and all-day meetings — ours was by no means extravagant; in fact it was pretty lean. One thing that really caught my attention though is the continued optimism among my teammates . . . here’s why:
- Our clients are doing some of their best work ever — lean times mean only the best projects get funded and people are passionate about those projects. Passionate clients are the most fun to work with and push us to do our best work.
- We’ve learned to leverage our global resources. When looking at some of our best projects to date, the teams have been made up of experts from all over the world. Each brings something different to the work.
- We’re not an agency inside an agency. There is no us vs. them. I can’t be a business expert on everything, but if a client has a business problem, there is someone in the organization who understands that business and is vested in our mutual success in solving the problem.
- The industry is starting to find ways to connect communications success with real ROI — and we’re a part of it.
Jennifer Houston, Senior Vice President
Cross-posted at PRWeek Insider
At last week’s D: All Things Digital conference, a big piece of news was a significant cash infusion from Digital Sky Technologies to Facebook. $200 million… Even in a down market, investors are flocking to Facebook.
But it makes sense; Facebook has over 200 million users, dominates its market, and sets today’s standard for social networking — people are hooked.
But, given that they haven’t even turned their first buck yet, why invest in Facebook? Because, most simply, it’s a powerful influence platform.
Facebook has created a convenient way to build and nurture personal connections, coupled with a measureable digital footprint. Because of this, we can now measure content resonance, engagement and reach — and these indicators “dimensionalize” the interconnectedness of content, audience and the distribution mechanism. These digital, social tools give us insight into how, where, what and with whom these nodes of influence connect and drive behavior. We can actually measure our Return on Influence.
Merriam-Webster defines influence as: the act or power of producing an effect without apparent exertion of force or direct exercise of command. Today, most influence channels are always on, direct, audience-centric, audience-driven platforms that touch many parts of most people’s lives.
Influence isn’t about having the best “thing;” it’s about reaching the right people, with an engagement that delivers value, offering your audience a meaningful connection to your brand. Having great content isn’t enough if you don’t have, don’t know or don’t understand the audience(s) you want to reach and how they want to engage with you.
True influence is the art of communications in action. It requires a deep understanding of nuance, building authentic relationships and commitment to trust. The great news is, we can take those skills and now measure that impact unlike ever before. That’s my kind of investment!
