12:45 — Kurt Vanderah introduces Brian Solis, author of Engage! The Complete Guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web.
12:46 — Brian: How’s your lunch? Since the room is so big, I created a PowerPoint.
Now that you have the book Engage, thanks to Wiley, “Engage or die!”– not somber –a rallying cry. This is the opportunity for engagement. Digital Darwinism — if we don’t take the opportunity we will be less relevant.
12:49 — Brian: A socialized approach — social media is much bigger than we give it credit for. It’s not just about PR or just about marketing.
There’s a disconnect that exists between your brand, your brand representatives, and your consumers. When you have a brand on Facebook and people represent it, you either talk like you, or you talk the brand you’re representing. People who act like their own personal brands dilute the brand.
There are many roles for the social consumer — advisor, peer, advocate, adversary, etc.
12:51 — Brian: Each of these roles map into your company. How will you connect this “last mile” to the brand?
You need that human connection. That last mile is part of a triangle.
12:52 — Brian: A 360 approach beyond marketing and advertising — it is everything: support, service, pr, influence. We have to socialize the entire business. We need to figure out how to get out of silos and get everyone working to connect to social consumers.
We think customers are a captive audience but they’re not. We are consumers, we have our own accounts and our own relationships — so we know what it takes to get through to us.
12:54 — Brian: Relations vs. relationships. A secret: there’s no way that you can form relationships with everyone who likes your brand on social networks. Forget the Dunbar number — focus on relations. Take into account why people are connecting with you. Everything starts with “me” in “social me-dia.” You have to bring the “you” to the conversation.
12:56 — Brian: You are marketing to an audience with an audience. The more you share, the more they can share (via blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) As a content producer, you have to think about what you put into the stream. Everybody is an influencer. It’s not going to be from a top-down approach. The Old Spice commercials are now personalized.
12:57 — Brian: How do you market to an audience that has an audience? We are defined by what we share and who we know. Our networks change based on themes. Twitter — context is king. If you talk about baseball, your promoted tweets will be about Baseball. That’s huge.
12:58 — Starbucks asked Klout to show influencers about coffee, and sent them free coupons.
It’s the dawn of the contextual networks.
Influence: the ability to inspire desirable and measureable action and outcomes.
1:00 — Brian: The twitter box represents value — relevance, resonance, significance. Twitter is getting rid of the CPM model. They are looking for resonance models. If you think of contextual relationships, resonance is huge. How long does the tweet stay alive when you introduce it? On average, popular re-tweet memes stay around for an hour. Twitter promotes tweets based on how many people favorite, re-tweet, etc.
1:02 — Brian: Because things are contextual, you have to introduce a series of relevant items into the stream, one after another.
1:02 — Brian: TweetDeck: a slot machine for attention. How do you introduce something that makes people stop and click?
Q&A
Q: What are units by which you measure this?
A: Brian: Twitter — too simple — click through, favorite, retweet or referencing. I come at it backwards. What do we want to accomplish? What outcome? Those outcomes can generate KPI (key performance indicators), etc.
However you define keeping something alive in the stream — that’s your metric point.
I experiment with trying to raise money for causes. So many people don’t click through — they just re-tweet. I won’t help him, I’ll just re-tweet him and get my audience to help. It can take 80 to 140 tweets or re-tweets to get someone to click through.
Q: Lori, Thompson Reuters — What is your definition of influence, and can you talk more about it?
A: Brian: (Shows a slide)
Q: Larry: My daughter has Farmville. She clicked on an ad and got a new barn. Is this good engagement?
A: Brian: It is one way of engaging. We all look at various aspects and things in different mediums. Farmville is just one way. Look for an article called “The Science of Retweets.” Keep in mind the resonance factor — how long does the message stay alive and help move people in the right direction?
Will people be talking about Old Spice next week? No. We’ll be doing it because we’re in the business. But they didn’t put resonance into the campaign.
The Old Spice campaign is brilliant and personal but there’s nothing to keep it alive over time. Your daughter isn’t on Farmville all the time so if you’re a marketer like 7-11, what are you going to do to keep this going over time?
Final idea — Our actions equate to social currency. Everything that you do as an individual or company equates to social currency. It is all documented. I can find out your last 18 months of tweets and who you talk with. Be mindful of how you interact. You have a credit score for the web now. You have to make yourself a case study for this.
Remember the “me” in social media.
Love this live coverage? It’s all thanks to the hard work of the very talented Howard Greenstein.
