DirecTV – great customer service to start the year off right

It’s great to start the year off with a really positive experience.  I have been a customer of DirecTV since about 1998.  Originally I joined because it was the only way to get Formula 1 racing here, and I’ve been a customer ever since.  Note I didn’t say “loyal” customer.  I love the idea of satellite mind you, it just seems so Jetsons.  But up until now, if cable came along with a good enough offer I might have been tempted.

The loyalty factor went way up a couple of weeks ago when their customer service team reversed a long standing billing error.  They did it gracefully and without complaint, even though the relatively small error went back years and compounded to a pretty significant number.  And they threw in a free service upgrade to say sorry for their mistake.

I decided to use RelevantMind to see if that positive experience showed up in online communities, compared to DISH Network.  Did it ever!

Here is the conversation volume versus Dish Network for October through December:

The sentiment around DirecTV  is very positive.  And based on my experience, if they keep up the good customer service they’ll continue to enjoy the lion’s share of online conversations.  Good work and thanks!

What are athletes saying about…Sports Nutrition?

As you can imagine the topic of what to eat and drink is a hot one among athletes.  RelevantMind looked at what over 400,000 runners, cyclists, skiers, triathletes, climbers and more had to say. We looked at a number of different dimensions and here are some of our top-level findings.

This is the leader board showing percentage mindshare of conversations over the last 3 months:

 

The list of companies includes top brands as well as companies with a full page ad in one of several magazines including Bicycling, Runner’s World and Rock & Ice.  Gatorade is the clear leader, with Gu, Clif, Powerbar and Hammer Nutrition all having over 10% mindshare.  Met-Rx, Myoplex, Twinlab and Nature’s Path all have full page ads in one or more of the magazines we looked at, but as you can see they aren’t getting a share of the conversation.

We also wanted to look what things the community talked about when discussing nutrition.  We looked at a specific set of terms related to nutrition:

 

 It is clear and not too surprising that “Taste” and “Natural” aren’t nearly important to athletes as the more performance oriented characteristics.  This is the kind of data that can be really helpful in crafting campaign messaging targeted at a specific consumer or community type.

 This is just a small slice of the overall data RelevantMind has.  We also dive into trending over time, sentiment, influencers, specific conversations and more.  We’ll include some of our other reporting in upcoming posts.

Survey finds only 15% of Fortune 500s are blogging…

A recent Burson-Marsteller survey found 15% of the Fortune 500 have blogs. I had to read this one twice.  I was frankly surprised by this, though probably shouldn’t be.  Actually I should, since Burson’s Chief Digital Strategist Erin Byrne was also surprised:

“When I thought about it, I thought that the number would have been higher, and I think the reason…why it still isn’t higher is that companies are still grappling with how they participate in the conversation when they don’t have control over the message.”


As you would guess the 15% is heavily weighted to companies in the general tech sector, with retailing also well represented.  Still the number is low  - really low considering that blogging is a pretty basic building block of a social media strategy. 

At RelevantMind we spend a lot of time dealing with the strategies impacting the broader social engagement landscape.  I’d somewhat disagree with Erin though – blogging is one of the more structured and controllable forms of social media. I think the reason behind the lack of adoption isn’t that blogging in and of itself is that daunting.  But an effective blogging strategy needs both commitment and internal evangelism.  It may be (relatively) controllable, but it is opening the door to the whole social media engagement world.

Consumers take on engagement

Over the past few weeks, I’ve done a lot of talking about “engagement” – what it really means, who’s missing/driving the boat, why it’s important, etc. But the results of a recent survey by ExpoTV.com, Brand Engagement: What Consumers Really Think, show that online engagement with consumers needs to be a top priority for companies because consumers are asking for ongoing engagement, especially regarding product design. According to results, listening drives loyalty.

“Eighty-nine percent of survey respondents said that they would feel more loyal or significantly more loyal to a brand they liked who invited them to participate in a feedback group. And, 63% of respondents would even feel loyal to a brand they were unfamiliar with that reached out to hear their opinion.”

This got me thinking about the brands towards which I am most loyal. I could only think of one that attempts to listen to me – Apple. Apple makes the effort to engage with me throughout the entire product life-cycle. The other products/brands to which I’m loyal – Anthropologie, Prada, Coke – to name a few. I’m just as “loyal” to these brand, as I am to Apple. But there is a significant difference in how I talk about these brands – which is critical from a word of mouth standpoint.

For instance, when someone asks me why I only drink Coke my answer = I’m from Atlanta and it’s the home of Coke. Prada = because Prada shoes don’t hurt my feet and are well suited for city walking. Anthropologie = they have affordable style that fits my body type. Not very exciting comments.

But when someone asks me how I feel about Apple or my Macbook, iPhone, iPod, I’ve got an earful for them. Each of these three products makes doing everyday things (like work, working out, walking the dog, waiting for friends, finding the right directions, etc) easier and more enjoyable. And Apple has done a great job of listening to how people work and live to make sure of that. And because they’re listening to me and others like me, I (and they) feel more personally attached to their brand/products – which drives me to purchase more of and only Apple products when possible.  Sure, I prefer Prada shoes because of how they fit my feet. But I insist on buying Apple products because of how they fit my life and I’ll passionately tell anyone who is willing to listen.

Visa has gone social

Today Visa threw their virtual hat into the social media marketing ring by launching the Visa Business Network on Facebook. According to the press release, the network is designed to provide small-business owners with tools and tips on attracting new customers, trimming costs and other ways to make more money. Businesses that belong to the Visa network on Facebook (the social networking site already has over 80,000 business profiles) will also be able to communicate with each other to share ideas or even negotiate deals. Additionally, they will also have access to the business network’s resource center, which will provide resources such as Google Business Apps and articles by The Wall Street Journal and Entrepreneur addressing questions posed by the community.

To promote the network, Visa is giving a $100 advertising credit on Facebook to each of the first 20,000 U.S. businesses that download the Web application needed to join. I couldn’t resist. I added the app to the RelevantMind Page which added us the network and placed The Visa “Click to Connect” banner at the bottom of the page. Not too intrusive and good branding for Visa. Upon download I got an email with the details for redeeming my $100 ad credit, but I was more excited about connecting and access to the resource center.

However, after clicking around to find the actual network, I realized you can’t access the network community until you add the application to your profile page. I guess Visa wants to connect specific users to the community versus a company with multiple users. But I don’t see why you can’t register for the network when you add the app to your business page – seeming as you are more than likely trying to promote that business and you have to fill out a new profile anyway.

Regardless of the experience, the access to the network content was worth adding the app to my profile page. I’m anxious to play around with it some more to see how useful the podcasts and articles are. Only time will tell the effects this network will have on the Businesses’ growth, Visa’s brand, and Facebook’s revenue stream. But in order for the program to be a true success, everyone within the community (Visa, Facebook, Sponsoring partners, and the network) will have to win – which should be the goal of all social media programs.

Do we really need a standard for measuring return on conversations?

For at least the past few years there has been constant buzz about online advertising measurement standards. The chatter still continues though it’s exacerbated by the additional demand for defining a social media measurement standard. Even though RelevantMind is technically in the “measurement” business, I’m not so sure there is a need for the IAB to define new standards for measurement.

Would a new standard make it easier for our sales to sell our product? Yes
Would a new standard help the majority of our customers better justify an ROI? Probably Not

Thinking about this leads me to the bigger question – Are we looking for a standard for measurement because the online advertising industry needs a standardized pricing model or are we looking for a standard that enables our clients to recognize a return on their efforts?

I’m afraid it is more likely the former, because it would be almost impossible to determine a standard for measuring all social media efforts. Why? Because not all social media communication efforts come from marketers or are directly related to sales.

The folks in customer service, product development, corporate brand, etc. we work with aren’t solely focused on sales. Of course, they’re focused on things that relate to sales, but in some cases the measurement priorities of these groups are very far before or after the sale in the funnel. (sidenote: I also think the days of the traditional sales funnel are over – but more on that another day)

This is why we take the time to better understand our clients’ objectives when kicking off an initiative – I’ve been calling this our objective-focused approach. But today I found a much better term when reading Tim Leberecht’s post, Big ideas, smaller audiences, and too many (or the wrong) metrics.

“’There is more and more emphasis by advertisers for greater return-on-objectives in campaigns, particularly in the digital space where the accountability data is so readily available,’ said Grant Prentice, Starcom USA’s director of connections research and analytics.”

Return on Objectives. It’s actually the perfect compliment for ROI (though I’m not so sure ROO rolls off the tongue as nicely). And if companies are focused on a ROO (see, sounds funny) when approaching social media then the standards of measurement will differ, but be driven by their needs as opposed to the advertising outlets’.

Hey Corporation X, it’s not all about you anymore!

It’s all about your customers. And that is scary, isn’t it?

Other than the overwhelming breadth of the social media landscape, the next big fear for companies wanting to dabble in social influence marketing comes with the realization that they will have to listen and react to the conversation. It’s always a touchy moment when a client realizes that engagement doesn’t mean forcing your message onto consumers on Facebook or via Tweets. Engagement is about having a conversation – and, for businesses, it means doing more listening than talking. This is a hard pill to swallow, as no one likes to talk more than those in marketing. And, of course, there’s also the risk of losing control of the “brand message” that they’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars crafting. But what’s the ROI on that message if it doesn’t resonate with your target audience?

In yesterday’s post – Five Plugged-in Dudes Get Fired Up About New Media at Pub Club -  Amanda Gravel, author of Social Honeycomb, offers some great commentary on the new era of corporate messaging. Quoting Mike Volpe, she says, “Mike really hit the nail on the head as he explained that there’s simply no such thing as the crafted, corporate message working anymore and that “the message” is what people are saying, regardless of what you put in a PR plan or what your client’s legal team approves.”

He’s right. We should altogether replace the term corporate messaging with community messaging since those that are “on message” will be the ones that realize it’s no longer about the corporation and are crafting their message by listening and engaging the community.

What is really the social media game-changer?

It seems the clients and prospects we’ve been working with aren’t the only ones who put all their social media eggs in the blog basket. In “Beyond the Blog,” the BusinessWeek (BW) cover story a few weeks ago, the publisher offers a “mea culpa” claiming the big time media publisher missed the boat by putting too much emphasis on blogs as the largest game-changing outlet within the social media landscape, stating “we focused on blogs as a new form of printing press, one that turned Gutenberg’s economics on its head, making everyone a potential publisher. This captured our attention, not least because this publishing revolution was already starting to rattle the skyscrapers in our media-heavy, Manhattan neighborhood.”

This makes sense. To BW, and all other publishers and media companies, the blog phenomenon changed the game, making 24/7 access and reporting a must have versus a nice to have. These days every major reporter (and almost every major company) has a blog, despite the fact that readership numbers aren’t very impressive.

In the article, BW points out that while blogs are important, only a small amount of consumers participate, citing a recent study from Forrester Research that states only a quarter of the U.S. adult online population reads a blog once a month.

That seems like a lot of work for very little return. And for the past two years I’ve wondered how companies can rely on a blog as their social media strategy. Again, I’m not knocking blogs here. (It would be ironic of me to knock the power of blogs on the blog for which I am one of the most frequent contributors.) I’m was just pleased that Business Week (my favorite magazine) finally realized that blogs, while definitely a player, are only one of many tools in the social media toolkit.

But the more I thought about the article, I began to feel like BW has once again missed the point. There will always be a new outlet popping up that is the “game changer” at one point or another. Yesterday it was the blog, today everyone is all a buzz about Twitter. But the winner won’t be the company or person that learns to monetize one of these outlets. The winner will be the company or person who learns how to maximize the value of the community conversations begin generated within these outlets.

When writing this blog post, I went back to check some facts/quotes to make sure I had it right. In doing so, I realized I’d missed something. In a special section within the article, BW asked two prominent bloggers to give their take on how old media will adjust to the new rules of social media.

Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine says, “next, I think, BusinessWeek’s readers will see that social media are changing their fundamental relationship with customers to be less about serving and more about collaborating. No, I don’t mean that every product will be the product of a committee. But customers who want to talk will, and smart companies will not just listen but will engage them in decisions. This will have an impact not just on PR and image but on product design, marketing, sales, customer service—the whole company. Three years from now, I predict BusinessWeek’s cover won’t be about blogs or tools but about companies as communities.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself. That’s definitely the cover story I’m anxious to see.

Find. Listen. Engage.

As Aaron mentioned in his last post, the social media landscape spans far and wide and changes so quickly it’s hard to keep up. This is why most of the folks we talk to choose to either launch a blog and call it their social media strategy or ignore social media altogether because it is too overwhelming.

It’s understandable. Community is our business and we are sometimes overwhelmed by the variety of ways people congregate and communicate online. Aaron gave some great examples of how he uses different channels for different reasons within the bike communities.

I’m an executive on the University of Georgia’s NYC Alumni Board. You’d think that communicating with that audience would be easy – coordinate some social events and game watching on fall Saturdays and send some emails, right? Not so easy. We have over 20,000 people in our database – ranging in age from 20 – 94 and anywhere from 400 – 800 alumni come out on football Saturdays to watch the game together. We do use our list-serve for a majority of communications. And Facebook. And the telephone for the older generation that don’t use the Internet at all. This isn’t too difficult for disseminating information to the group. What’s challenging is finding all of the other places where members of the group connect and share information and find the appropriate way to engage them based on the “rules of engagement” within that particular outlet.

Just this past fall we learned that a significant amount of our loyal alum hated the location where we regularly meet to watch football. How did we find out? From a UGA alum who found a NYC DAWGS message board that we didn’t even know existed when he was searching for information on Google. Not such a good first impression, huh?

If this were a business, we (the executive management) would have learned that a majority of our customers were unhappy from a prospect. Not such a sustainable business practice, but it probably happens more often than we think.

Luckily, despite the means of discovery, we were able to use the same medium where people were connecting to rant to better understand why they were unhappy and get their input in finding a new location. Once we found a new location, we used the influencers (the folks with the most involvement within the community) to become advocates for the new location to help us get buy-in from the crowd. I’d be lying if I said everything worked out perfectly. Of course, there are some folks that are still unhappy with the new choice and others that LOVED the original place. But at least they are expressing their displeasure within a forum where we are listening and engaging.

Here, there and everywhere – community platform diversity

About a month or so I was at a breakfast when someone asked me – “Do people still use discussion boards?  I thought everyone twittered now”.  Ah San Francisco!  350 million people use discussion boards, about 200,000 (weekly users) on twitter. The fact is people are not just using forums or twitter, or blogs or social networks for that matter. People tap into a combination of outlets for engaging the community for various reasons and at different stages of the product lifecycle.

Through discussions with our clients, we know that most companies are confused about how to effectively craft a social media strategy simply because they become overwhelmed by the vast amount of social media channels.  Where do you start?  Where do you engage?  How do the ground rules differ by community type or social media channel?

The RelevantMind team lives and breathes community conversations and the data extracted from these channels. This breakfast conversation got me thinking about the various ways the RelevantMind team interacts through the numerous social media channels and how we can draw on our own experiences to better help our clients make sense of it all.

For the past few weeks, we’ve been paying closer attention to the various social media channels we participate in for our own purposes. How are people interacting? What types of conversations are they having? Why did I choose this channel versus another for engaging with the community?

By taking more time to listen while participating within these channels, we’ve been able gain a better understanding of the nuances or and advantages/disadvantages that make each channel unique.

This exercise has helped us help our clients better understand the social media landscape, as well as understand that a one-size fits all social media strategy won’t drive the results they are seeking and, in fact, may do more damage than good.

Over the next few weeks, we’re going to put more of what we’ve learned about our own social media interactions out into the blogosphere. Hopefully our readers will have some of their own insights to share.