Can’t teach an old consumer new tricks? Reward ‘em for their habits.
What are the technographics of your target market or (aka) how do your consumers behave online? Do they enjoy creating videos, blogging, and the like? Or do they simply prefer to comment or critique? Perhaps they don’t engage as much and only enjoy joining social networks and maintaining their profiles.
How does technographic segmentation play a role in your social media campaign? Sometimes, campaigns reach out to ask users to do things outside of their preferences. For instance, if a particular company’s target market’s were described as critics it would be unsuccessful to engage them as if they were content creators. Thus, we should assess the kinds of behaviours our consumers exert and adjust accordingly. This is where analyzing your target’s behaviour online or their technographics can help lead a campaign in the right direction.
Here are some examples of campaigns that put technographics into consideration:
Polyvore is a fashion community that allows users to create their own style collages. Recently, American Eagle featured a contest on Polyvore to reward the best collage for their new spring campaign. The winning American Eagle collage would be featured as a billboard in Times Square, New York. The contest received the most entries for a single campaign on Polyvore.
Kraft recently decided to bring a playful element to their latest Mac & cheese campaign on twitter. For every two people who mention mac and cheese at the same time, Kraft would send a “jinx” link, and the first to click the link would receive 5 boxes of kraft dinner and a tshirt.
Edge shave zone, with a no irritation message, uses a the hashtag #soirritated to monitor people who complain. Since their moniker was “no irritation, they sought out to relieve these irritations in different creative ways. For instance, one consumer ran out of cereal one morning and decided to tweet about his irritation. Shortly afterwards, Edge Shave Zone sent him several boxes of cereal to relieve his irritation. In another example, one consumer complained about how her husband never wears his hearing aids. Edge shave zone couldn’t make her husband wear hearing aids so they sent her a mega phone instead. Other examples include an irritated designer complaining about work, in which Edge shave zone sent her a dancing panda video that made her day.
What’s common between the three campaigns is that they engage users by rewarding them for online behaviours they were going to do anyways. In these cases, the behaviours were to create collages on Polyvore, rant about mac and cheese or complain about their problems on Twitter, and the rewards were contesting and prizing. As such you too can create a conversation by rewarding them for their favourite activities.
What other campaigns reward users for their current behaviour?
Leave a comment or tweet your reply to @wwspaghetti.
EightBit: Personalized Social Gaming in a Fun Package
In the world of personalized avatars, EightBit is the latest “big thing”… with a twist. EightBit is a combination of avatar, gaming and social networking.
Currently being executed at SXSW, EightBit encourages users to first create their own character, download their mobile app, and in a Foursquare fashion, check in to various places to earn coins/points. With these coins you will be able to “purchase” in-game items for your character.
Whats different about EightBit is that they want to become the one avatar to rule them all (in terms of social networking). As such, they plan to have cross-platform functionality. Another point of difference, is their use of HTML5 for both web and mobile. In both instances, EightBit is completely rendered in-browser using the impressive capabilities of HTML5.
On another note, if one thing’s for sure, people really do love customizable avatars. If you look at games such as World of Warcraft, Second Life, many people go far lengths for customization. Will EightBit become the WoW of social networking? (And I mean that in the most positive way.)
Lastly, the design is really adorable and nostalgic. It’s about time pixel art became more a part of our everyday lives. It’s even demonstrated in their promo video. Alternatively, you can make your own EightBit avatar or take a look at mine. All in all, I’m looking forward to see what will happen with EightBit, post SXSW.
Source: TechCrunch
Source: TechCrunch
Don’t go there: Leveraging Emotional Current Events
We’ve seen it happen before and we’ve seen the uproar and criticisms. A few months ago, @KennethCole sent out a tweet relating his spring sale to the uproar in Cairo. It was inappropriate and thousands reacted negatively. It even spawned the creation of @KennethColePR, a fake twitter account done similarly to @BPGLOBALPR, BP’s fake account.
The moral here is: just because a certain event is garnering lots of media attention, doesn’t mean it would be a good idea to use as a marketing tool. Ultimately, it shows up as insensitive and inappropriate.
As such, in the past few days, I’ve come across two different tweets in regards to the latest horrific earthquake and tsunami situation in Japan. Here is a tweet from @VitaCoco on the first day.
@Bing probably saw @VitaCoco’s tweet and did the same:
Since the Bing tweet, there has been some negative feedback from twitter users. In this regard, why does this differ from the regular (and usually successful) “retweet this/tag this/do that/etc. and we’ll donate a dollar” type of corporate social responsibility campaigns?
With emotional current events, the situation is in immediate dire need, yet companies try to use this as a marketing opportunity. Is promoting yourself more important than the cause at hand? Why don’t they just donate in the first place? Must there be a delay/barrier for users to earn it? These kinds of criticisms arise and the actions are very different from raising money for a general cause.
In a situation of a general cause, there is no urgency involved because it is an ongoing problem. Users are willing to participate in order to help the situation with little to no criticisms as it raises awareness while helping the cause.
Although most users complied with RTing without complaint, Bing decided to listen to the minority of offended users. They reacted quickly and issued an apology 6~7 hours later with the following tweet:
Bing may have saved themselves from a larger public outcry, but what about VitaCoco? What’s surprising to me is not many have spoken negatively to the VitaCoco tweet. Isn’t it insensitive to try to promote your slogan in the same tweet to donate to the earthquake? I was particularly turned off by the “ONLY natural to care” part.
Perhaps it is because Bing mentioned “up to 100K” or the fact that they are owned by Microsoft, a multi-million dollar corporation, is what angered users.
Whatever it may be, using emotional current events to market oneself is a bad idea. If you want to help out an emotional current event, do it genuinely (i.e. directly donating or providing useful information to encourage others to help). Otherwise, it will likely seem like marketing your brand is more important than the situation itself.
On a related note, if you want to help donate to a Japan Earthquake Relief fund, Huffington Post has compiled a list of different organizations you can donate to. Many of them offer donating through your mobile phone. It’s definitely the easiest method to donate.
Rogue Tweets: How to respond to a PR disaster
Imagine this scenario: You’ve spent months/years worth of time building your brand and community of followers on Twitter. Everything is fine and dandy, but one day, someone makes a mistake and posts a potentially brand damaging tweet, aka a rogue tweet. It seems like everything you’ve built comes tumbling down. This is a social media nightmare that can happen to anyone. But can this situation be fixed and healed?
Yesterday morning, @ChryslerAutos dropped the f-bomb in a tweet stating:
“I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the #motorcity and yet no one here knows how to f**king drive”
Since the incident, Chrysler has removed the tweet and responded with the following:
“Our apologies - our account was compromised earlier today. We are taking steps to resolve it.”
Later, Chrysler responded with a press release revealing that it was actually an error from their social media agency and the employee who made the mistake has since been terminated.
Was this solution the best way to respond?
In this case, Chrysler first denied their fault, and then proceeds to apologize by telling us that the person who made the mistake has now been fired.
Although this was was an attempt to remedy the situation, our attention has now shifted to the fact that the employee is fired as a result. Several responses have been that it was too harsh of a solution. Even though termination might have been inevitable or the decision was only from the agency, the way Chrysler handled the situation now makes them seem corporate, distant, and most importantly, not very human.
Why does being “human” important? If we think back to what makes a successful twitter account, one of the main points is to bring a human element to your brand. Twitter allows you to engage in conversations and through that build a personality.
In a similar scenario that occurred last month, American Red Cross, @RedCross, was seen tweeting the following:
“Ryan found two more 4 bottle packs of Dogfish Head’s Midas Touch beer… when we drink we do it right #gettngslizzerd”
It was actually a mistake by an employee who later tweeted this to her personal account:
“Rogue tweet frm @RedCross due to my inability to use hootsuite… I wasn’t actually #gettingslizzard but just excited! #nowembarrassing” -@riaglo
As such, Red Cross responded with:
We’ve deleted the rogue tweet but rest assured the Red Cross is sober and we’ve confiscated the keys.
By using humour, Red Cross made light of the situation and according to Mashable, they later issued the following statement:
“We are an organization that deals with life-changing disasters and this wasn’t one of them,” says [Representative at Red Cross]. “It was just a little mistake.”
This was not only effective in changing the situation around, but it also was an opportunity to reaffirm their brand’s mission.
Dogfish Head saw the opportunity and helped contribute as well by suggesting fans to donate to Red Cross.
RT @Michael_Hayek: #craftbeer @dogfishbeer fans, donate 2 @redcross 2day. Tweet with #gettngslizzerd. Donate here http://tinyurl.com/5s72obb
By leveraging a disaster into a positive situation, we can create a new opportunity.
As such, how do we respond to rogue tweets? Here are 4 elements that are necessary to drafting your response.
1) Acknowledgement the mistake: By acknowledging, we take responsibility of the situation. Apologizing or letting people know we’ve deleted the comment are ways we can do this.
2) Find a point of connection with your organization: How does this relate to your brand? If possible, reaffirm your brand messaging. Put attention to the importance of your organization/mission/brand, not the unintended mistake.
3) Engage the community: ask them questions and engage in conversation (the main point of Twitter and web 2.0). Remember, community is a dialogue, not a monologue.
4) Use humour whenever possible: People are likely to sympathize with you if you are genuine and take things with a grain of salt.
Through these guidelines, Chrysler could have used a similar approach. This is how I think Chrysler should have approached the subject:
Sorry some people may have road rage, but #motorcity is all the rage. We’re from Detroit. What makes you proud to be in #motorcity?
By acknowledging the situation, using humour through a puns, and engaging conversation using a derivation of their slogan, “Imported from Detroit”, this could change the direction of the general public’s attention.
All in all, how do you think Chrysler should have responded? Are there any other elements that you think is needed for a response to a rogue tweet? Leave a comment or tweet your reply to @wwspaghetti.
Source: Mashable
Radiohead gives best response to Thom’s viral dancing parodies
As some of you may know, Radiohead’s new album was released early on February 18th, with the addition of a new music video, Lotus Flower.
The Lotus Flower video is of frontman Thom Yorke dancing erratically in an empty studio.
The music video received numerous critiques, both positive and negative from its many viewers. However, one internet user decided to post a parody of the video that re-edited Yorke’s dance to the pop song Single Ladies by Beyonce. This triggered an onslaught of new videos of dancing Yorke.
Considering the fact that Radiohead is currently in the spotlight for something other than their new album release can be a little disconcerting for the band. These parody videos are hurting their image, especially the integrity of the video itself.
What should Radiohead do, after discovering that their latest video has gone viral in more ways than one?
If we analyze this situation according to any typical social media response model, these posts would be categorized under:
Rager: is the posting a rant, rage, joke or satirical in nature?
The variety of responses are all in jest. As such, The correct response would be to:
Monitor Only: avoid responding to specific posts, monitor site for relevant information and comments, and notify HQ.
Thankfully they are doing just that. There has been no response and no surprises since the parody videos have gone viral.
But what if they responded?Here is a convincing video of a comedian portraying Yorke’s choreographer.
This may only be a fake video, but it is a good representation of how serious their response could have been. Taking offense from something that was originally intended as a joke, can potentially cause further escalation and crafting out a proper response can be just as difficult.
Overall, it’s good to pick and choose your battles carefully and in terms of social media, using a response model can give you that extra help.
Source: Mashable, Rolling Stone
Source: Mashable
Social Media: carving your thoughts in stone
Recently, there has been several different stories circulating on the misuse of social media by employees. After looking into these articles and digging around on the internet, it turns out that this is occurring a lot more than just a few select cases that we occasionally hear about in the media.
For example, “Fired by Facebook”.
A group to post stories about people who have been fired because of their actions on Facebook and other social networking sites.
There are a number of testimonials and news stories posted about this common occurrence. What is most interesting is variety of offenses, ranging from reasonable to unreasonable. From light comments to harsh criticisms, most of these seem to result in serious measures from the company—firing the employee. As such, here are my two cents for both sides of the story…
First, the employee:
Often at times many of us don’t think about the repercussions involved with social media. Privacy has always been a big issue, and as such we should look at the internet as a permanent database of everything that you decide to post. And particularly, be aware that it may resurface at any time, be it a year from now or ten years from now.
At the same time, what about our rights to freedom of speech? Should we be fired for what we say? We should be able to say what we want, but you can still get fired if you swore at your boss at work. When speaking privately we are not recorded, but on the internet, again, it’s carved stone.
Moreover, sometimes the measures are just unfair for an action that was of no harm in the first place. For instance, this teacher was fired over a profile image of her holding both a glass of wine and a bottle of beer. However, the photo was originally kept in her private settings and was taken during summer vacation(not during school term). Even so, it was still somehow leaked. Should she be fired for enjoying herself during her summer break?
Perhaps the questions we should ask ourselves are: a) where does this line between private and public, end and begin? and b) what kinds of comments go too far and which are safe?
Second, the company:
At what point should the company take action? Employee complaints have never been a new thing. It’s only now that we can see it in plain view instead of the whispers in the corridors. What’s important is to evaluate whether or not an action should be made. In a sense, it’s a relateable process to responding to customer unsatisfaction, where instead, the employee is like the customer. Instead of jumping to the conclusion of responding/firing, perhaps the following two topics are something to think about.
1) No response. Yes, monitoring can be good but not everything must result in suspending or firing. In some cases the company might not be affected at all and it could be something that would backfire and make the company look bad.
For instance, an employee at Best Buy made a humourous video about iPhone customers, that happened to go viral. Best Buy took notice and decided to suspend the employee. What’s interesting is that the video had no representation of the brand. Because of this, Best Buy received a large amount of criticism for suspending the employee. This resulted in more attention to the video and linkage to the brand (where there was none in the first place). In the end Best Buy decided not to fire the employee (a good decision), but he decided to leave anyway. If Best Buy fired this employee, it’s likely that they would end up in a lawsuit. As in this case and many other examples, firing was an unreasonable solution and often resulted in lawsuit headaches.
2) What about listening? In many of the articles I’ve read, listening to the employee was not mentioned. There is lost opportunity here to improve employment relationships. Surely, employees complaining about employers in a mass status update, is not the best method to raise attention to an issue. But it shouldn’t be ruled out either. By finding out the motives and issues behind the complaint, both sides can benefit and change the situation around. Perhaps involving human resources in this monitoring process could create less complaining and more happy comments coming out.
The most recent development?
All in all, the case about the paramedic who complained about her boss on Facebook has been settled. In this situation, the judge ruled out that the ambulance company violated free speech, and this case will be taken as precedent.
“If they are communicating about the workplace, and they’re talking about their supervisors, then it’s a protected activity,” law professor Paul Callan said.
Perhaps companies shouldn’t fire over a hasty rant on Facebook after all… at least if it’s about your supervisor.
Google: Your new Wedding Planner
Google has recently released a new project called Google Weddings to help brides-to-be and wedding planners plan their special day.
What’s interesting is it incorporates a variety of google services such as Google Sites, Picnik, Google Docs and Picasa Web Albums and includes specialized theme templates.
Wedding planning can be extremely stressful so why not make it easier them while letting users familiarize themselves with the different services Google can offer at the same time.
This initiative also follows a common trend of aggregation for ease. In other words, compiling resources to make user experiences easier. Many other websites have done this. Not surprising, as we want things that do everything.
We already have Google phones and Google Offers… What’s next? Google takes over the world?
Source: TechCrunch
Source: TechCrunch
How much is too much? Engaging the over-engaged.
Since the leap from web 1.0 to web 2.0, we’ve moved from monologue to dialogue. To today’s emarketer, it is all about engaging the user to get involved in the conversation. As such, we see users getting active through blogging, commenting, sharing and the like.
But how much is too much? Is it possible to want to create that conversation so bad, to a point that it can become annoying?
More than 90% of consumers unsubscribe, “unlike” or stop following brands because of too frequent, irrelevant or boring communications
- Mashable
The answer is yes. You can become the over-commenting facebook stalker, the stranger who adds you as friend, or just the guy who talks about boring things. None of which, are favourable at all.
The moral here is a good balance of communication and figure out how interested the target consumer is in the first place. Some industries will have it easier than others, but despite such anyone can easily become a culprit.
Some of the other facts relating to this topic show a common trend. Like traditional advertising, many consumers are becoming more adversed to emarketing. They are are weary when giving out emails or ‘liking’ a brand. They’ll also delete marketing related content posted to their walls, or easily unfollow/unlike a brand.
I’m sure this growing backlash can affect the future of emarketing, and make engaging the consumer much more difficult than it used to be. A familiar cycle, isn’t it?
Source: Mashable
Source: Mashable
Product Complaints get the Yelp Treatment
From the emergence and popularity of various product review sites, it comes to no surprise that the product complaint system is moving into a Yelp-like online community.
Starting March 11, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) will be launching a website that will not only allow users to make anonymous complaints, but also view the complaints of others.
What could this mean? Well first, there will be more talking and listening between consumers and companies. Not only will it be a faster process to post complaints, but the CPSC will also contact manufacturers to give them a chance to publish a response. This makes it easier for companies to participate in the discussion from the get-go as many complaints are not dealt with in time and can cause further headaches.
Aside from being useful to complain, this database can bring a new level to product reviews. As all complaints are posted publicly, users can also use this platform to preview possible problems. This double edged sword can warn consumers which products to avoid.
With most online platforms comes the potential for abuse. As such, the CPSC will attempt to mitigate this problem in a few ways. To prevent random complaints, individual profile information will first go through a verification process, and all complaints will be reviewed for authenticity before it is posted to the public.
Despite such, there is also the potential for consumers to complain more now that the process is easier. Competitors could also use the public information to their advantage.
These are some of the many new benefits and challenges that may appear but overall the conversational distance is shortened between consumers and companies.
Source: AdAge
Source: adage.com
6 tips for your next search marketing plan
The way we search online has evolved in numerous ways. Today, we can search for various kinds of content from videos on how to cook “okonomiyaki” to images of dogs dressed as lobsters. We can even use our phones to find maps or reviews of recent movies from complete strangers.
Searching has not only improved for the user, but also for the marketer. Now with “improved analytics, increased automation and richer search interfaces and ads,” Marketers have a new and improved toolkit that can incorporate search into the average campaign. Here are 6 strategies for developing a search marketing plan.
1. See how they see. How do users find you? Put yourself in their place, and figure out how they search and what preferences or habits they may have in the process. Do they use Google to find results? or product reviews on Amazon?
2. Find the business reasons for using search. By understanding how the user would benefit through search, we can be better prepared by providing what they need.
3. Read between the lines, not just the keywords. For example, when searching for “Vancouver Magazine Best of 2010” - a magazine well known for restaurant reviews- users like myself, are simply looking for a good restaurant. By understanding the intention, we can gain lost opportunities when focused on keywords.
4. Use existing know-how. If you have data about your users from a different channel, use it to your advantage as it may improve your search marketing.
5. Give them what they want. And what they want is the answer to their search. By using customization, we can tailor the answer based on the question asked. In other words, we can create a different landing page based on what words they searched and clicked through.
6. Tapa, tapa, tapa. (aka) Practice, practice, practice. Gain more from mistakes, and sometimes give up good performances in favour of experimentation to truly innovate.
Source: Forrester
Source: forrester.com
eMarketing in a slurpable format
