I "attended" to a webinar by Jeremiah Owyang as part of Social Media Success summit .

I have been following Jeremiah a few years and it is always a pleasure to read or as in this case to listen to his clever analysis. I found his keynote interesting and I would like to share with you some of his thoughts and my reflections. I would appreciate if you share your thoughts with me.

What is the current state of Social Business?

Some of the thoughts he presented in his keynote are based on his research study How Corporations Should Prioritize Social Business Budgets. The reports confirms that Social media has become mainstream but it is not mature yet. Thus, his report shows that only 23% companies in US are advance users.

Who owns the social media?

Is social marketing or social business strategy, only a territory for the marketing department? 

His research shows the following:

• Marketing represents 41%.
• Corporate communications 30%.
• Webdigital department 11%.
• Customer Support and R&D deparments represents only 1%.

He anticipates a significant change in the near future where corporations will invest for in the possibilities that social software offers to manage customer service and to get better insight from customers to base future innovations. 

What is the future?

He envisions two posible paths for corporations, when building a Social strategy.

Path 1: Grounded to the Social media help desk

As internal and external demands mount, companies become mostly reactive, relegating themselves to a “Social Media Help Desk. Social efforts are uncoordinated and fragmented. The more we respond customer request in social channels the more we are encouraging them to get our attention by yelling at their friends. The situation is compounding. If you are reactive you are headed towards the social media help desk. Many companies in the research are continuing to realize that social business does not scale in a 1:1 basis. Your customer voices will always outnumber the number of community managers you can hire. Smart companies should try to avoid this path. 

The other strategic path, a scalable path is what he calls Achieve Escape Velocity.

Path 2: Achieve Escape Velocity

In order to avoid getting stuck in a one-to-one service model, companies should act now to build sustainable, scalable social strategy programs.

Here are Jeremiah’s 6 steps to escaping the social media help desk.

1. Create a Center of Excellence

His main recommendation is "Get ready internally- focus on governance, process then education and establish a business center that operates as a cross-functional team"

Easy to say, but how?

He suggests to create what he calls a Center of Excellence.

In this center of excellence, the company involves new individuals and teams. The central hub outlines corporate Social Strategy and Social Policies. Additionally they make sure that the organization gets the appropriate training and education in social marketing. They also conduct the necessary research initiatives to find how your customers and competitors are using these technologies. They put in place measurements plans so that they can provide the different lines in the organization with the necessary data to measure ROI.

He says that 1:1 does not scale-leverage the crowd for first response, then interact in escalations. At the same time, community adoption rate is very high. Communities are allowing the customers to help you do the job for you when it comes to marketing and support. With other words, getting the crowd to do the work for you.

Community platforms are a top social business priority for all maturity levels

Best Buy, best example?

According to him, Best buy is a good example of this.

Best buy community receives 2.5 million visitors a year. 25 super users spend 8-12 hours a week on the site answering questions. Customer answers 30% of all the questions.

Is this something for the big guys only?

He says that, "if you are a small business you do not have to spend a lot of money. You can find platforms that are free to use like Google groups, Facebook".

3. Integrate socially-relevant discussions at every phase of the customer lifecycle 

His advice here is also very straight forward, "Integrate social to increase relevancy and reduce costs on creating content".

In his survey he asked the following question to a number of bif corporations;

What threes external (go-to-market) social strategies objectives will you focus most in 2011?

The first priority for 46% of the companies asked in the research says that Website integration is the top one priority.The second priority is Developing Ongoing Dialog with Customers (43%). The third is listening/learning about customers (36%).

In regards to Website integration, he encourages companies towards practising Social Aggregation. 

• Basic Feeds
• Curated Aggregation
• Contextual Aggregation

Example, Microsoft curates mentions of its new product on a dedicated page. What people are saying about Windows 7?. They publish both "the good" and "the bad" comments. This gives them credibility. At the same time Jeremiah advise us to leave out "the ugly". 

He also suggeste to practise what he calls, Social Context.

Every time a user visit your site coming from Facebook connect, Twitter or other platforms you serve content based on the data you have from them.

• Social Content
• Social and contextual content

Tripadvisor visitors view friend reviews through Facebook Instant Personalization

4. Formalize a customer advocacy program

In How To Create A Customer Advocacy Program Jeremiah uses Edelman's research to state that "buyers, customers and consumers often will trust each other far more than they'll trust employees, sales or company. While factual information about product specs, pricing and usage will still be relevant on the corporate website, expect customers to do online research and consider advice from their peers before they make purchasing decisions."

Unpaid army that do marketing and support for you. As an example he uses again Microsoft, with its valuable professional (4000 MVPS). SAP mentors.

Any downsides?  Well, companies will loose some control since they are not your own employees. In adition, do not expect to achieve this overnight. It takes some time to build up a succesful program, but you can scale. 

Again, one could question is this only for the big guys? He mentions Fiskateers as an example of a small company with a succesful advocacy program.

5. Streamline workflow with social media management systems (SMMS)

Big corporations struggle to manage hundreds and thousand of accounts. 

As the adoption rates grows companies will have a need to manage and monitor interactions with stakeholders in all the different and relevant social networks. Investing in these systems now is important in order to scale.

60% of companies who are at an intermediate level in social media use social media management systems. Example of these can Cotweet, Hootsuite, Sprinklr, Objective Marketer, Expion, Seesmic, and Spredfast amongst many others.

6. Create a measurement strategy

His last step is to create ROI meassurement system.

When asked to companies in the mentioned research what they meassured, most of them answered that they prioritize Engagement, Sentiment and Traffic.

This is not sufficient. Owyang suggest what he calls the ROI Pyramid.

Thus, he argues that companies need to deliver right metrics to the right stakeholders.

As an example he says that business executives need less data and less frequently. They need business metrics and not social media metrics. The worst thing you can do is give your executives engagement data. You don´t want them to think that the goal is to get more fans, likes, followers etc. The important thing is what you get from this engagement. They care just about three metrics:

• Top line revenue
• Reputation or share of voice
• Reduce cost in customer support

 Therefore, each department need different data.

Marketing department needs, for example, reputation, resonation, WOM data. Customer support needs support response, customer satisfaction data etc. Community managers need engagement data and they need it frequently. 

What can we learn of this?

Do you want to escapesocial media help desk and scale your marketing activities?

Jeremiahss advice in my opinion very straight forward.

1. Get the internal stakeholders in place, first. 
2. Then build up fans that "do" part of the job for you.
3. Integrate your website with the relevant social networks but remember that your website is your most important channel. Do not send traffic uncritically to facebook or other networks.
4. Get the organization to learn the most relevant social technology. 
5. Build up your advocate army.
6. Measure ROI, but use the right measure for the right segment.

How will your business organize its social media efforts in the future?

The Sun is shinning for marketeers

I came to work today. It is a sunny day in Oslo, the world capital of XC Ski. Spring season is soon arriving. This is something we really appreciate here in cold and dark Norway.

But there was something else that put a big smile in my face today, rather than the sun rays shining down on my office window. You can call me nerd, but It was the following e-mail from Amazon. 

The following item is auto-delivered to your Kindle or other device. You can view more information about this order by clicking on the title on the Manage Your Kindle page at Amazon.com.

The Thank You Economy [Kindle Edition] $11.99

Sold By: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.

I thought "Yes baby here it comes my most awaited marketing book so far in 2011". I still remember how much I enjoyed Crush it two years ago both in the digital version and on audible. 

But why am I so exited? This is a book about CLV. Customer lifetime value.

Well this may not sound like a lot of fun for some people.But it does for a guy like me, who started his marketing career selling shampoo, lipstick and make up to old ladies in his moms drugstore.

What the heck is CLV may some of you wonder? 

From my beloved Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In marketing, customer lifetime value (CLV), lifetime customer value (LCV), or lifetime value (LTV) is the net present value of the cash flows attributed to the relationship with a customer. The use of customer lifetime value as a marketing metric tends to place greater emphasis on customer service and long-term customer satisfaction, rather than on maximizing short-term sales.

Check out one of the ways to calculate CLV

I have read about this topic many times before. Actually, my research paper in my second year at my master studies about Strategic Marketing Management started with this quote from Customer Equity Management:

“A business is not a business if it can’t stay in business. It can’t stay in business if it doesn’t attract and hold enough solvent customers – no matter how efficiently it operates. Marketing is about getting and keeping customers”. Customer Equity can be defined as: “The total of the discounted lifetime values summed over all the firm’s current and potential customers”. 

Yes I get this. Treating your customer nicely, pays off in the long run. So why am I so excited about this book then?. It sounds like another book about been nice to your customers. Well is it?

Amazon reviewer arguments that the Thank you Economy "represents a much bigger movement". He also writes that "This book could easily have been called The Humanization of Business or Manners Marketing".

Gary Vaynercuck is not known by being the best mannered entrepreneur, he swears a lot. He does not use an academic approach or language, but who cares?.This guy speaks a clear language based on his own experience. He is part of the Social Marketing Revolution but with a big advantage from other "social talkers". He walks the talk. He has made it and he is making it in the social media marketing game. I love Gary´s attitude, I love his wineblog and I think he is one of the biggest representatives of the democratization of branding. I am excited because this book is so much about the content as it is about how Gary delivers the content.

Well, I will hold my horses. I have not read the book yet. I expect a book where Gary Vaynerchuk explain in a simple, charming and plain language, how we marketeers, regardless on whether we work for small or big corporations, can be better in using both traditional and new digital media to thank the most important and maybe the only reason of why you and me have a job, our customers. In other words, I expect from him to inspire me and my colleagues to be better at "getting and keeping customers".

Gary has been marketing this book for quite a while. I hope he, like in one of my favorite marketing phrases, "underpromise and over deliver".

Looking forward to deep into it.

Thank you! for reading this.

What about you are you going to read The Thank You Economy book?

Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, founders of Chicago-based web applications company 37 Signals wrote on their book Rework, "all companies have customers, lucky companies have fans, but the most fortunate companies have audiences and an audience can be your secret weapon.  This is a book I can recommend to every manager, and why not every employee interested in learning how to get more value from her job and give more value to her employer.

They argue how most traditional companies use expensive advertising every time they want to reach their customers. They also say that this is not only expensive but also unreliable. Companies who have learned the digital marketing game do this differently. These companies want people to come to them, again and again. They build audiences.

How do you build up an audience? 

Well this is not easy and it does not happen overnight. Fried and Heinemeier give us the following advice "Speak, write, blog, tweet, make videos – whatever. Share information that’s valuable and you’ll slowly but surely build a loyal audience. Then when you need to get word out, the right people will already be listening.

Is this new thinking?

Not really. But they express it with the clearness managers that want to succeed need.

They remind us about how to build up brand awareness using unexpensive media.

They remind us that is important to build up relevant and strong associations to our brand. Relevant because we share something they have use for. Strong because we represent quality with our product or service.

They remind us about the importance of building... not a customer data base that we can spam every time we want to sell something to them. Nor a group of opportunistic "fans" or that "like" us only when offer campaigns, givewaways or competions. But build an audience, yes an audience that follow us, that let us now when we are wrong so that we can improve; that recommend us to their peers when we deliver more than they expect. They are talking, in other words, about building brand loyalty.

They remind us about the importance of building strong brands based upon a good reputation over time, not just based on fancy ads they won´t remember a week later or cannot connect to our brand.

And finally they remind us about the importance of building a strong company culture. About taking as much care of our employees as we take care of our customers. About creating teams that live the brand. That are willing to spread the word, share their knowledge, be ambassadors of the place where they spend most of their time.

It is not really new, but it is very important and relevant for small company like ours,Skalar. We are a web applications company. We have a team of 6 people, 5 Ruby developers and me, a marketeer. Developers that love what they do (they love Rails) and they like to share what they learn. They are enthuastic about building web applications that hopefully make the live of our users just a little bit easier. 

I am not a developer myself but I am enthusiastic about how new technology, new applications can improve our daylife as users and our profits as a business. I love sharing with others what I read or experience myself. I love sharing knowledge about how new technology can help your brand to get attention. Like for example, how using unexpensive media like your own website, Twitter, Linkedin, blogs and other social platforms you can try to build up an audience that know that you exist, that thinks you are all right and that is willing to tell others something positive about you. 

We, as a company, need to build up an audience that follow us because we offer value to them. We do not have a millions of bucks to spend in advertising. We need to use the scarce resources we have in a smart way, we need to get a good ROI. Actually, since we do not have lots of money to invest, I should probably rather call it ROTI (return on time invested).

Have We build up an audience?

We are not there yet. We are still in primary school of building audiences.

Our audience wouldn´t fill the Wembley Stadium, but that is not we are aiming either. We are small and want remain small. We like to think that bigger is not necessarily better. We hope that we can build up an audience of regulars, like in a small jazz or indie club. But we hope that the ones that follow us, the ones that have experienced our services can put out a good word for us. A loyal audience we can help... one "app" at a time.

What about you, are you building an audience? What do you do to build up your audience?

Do you feel that it is difficult to keep an overview of the updates your proffessional contacts? Well lots of people do.

Linkedin has added a new functionality called Linkedin Signal (Beta), aimed at making it really easy for you to filter only the most relevant insights from the stream of status updates and news. Take a look at this presentation video.

(download)

Click here to download:

Search_updates_on_LinkedIn_with_Signal.mp4 (7.89 MB)

I have had a Linkedin account since 2004. Linkedin has added lots of interesting features in the last two years making the tool more relevant for me. I use it more like a B2B proffessional alternative to Facebook. 

I visit my Linkedin homepage a few times a day. What about you? Do you use Linkedin on a regular basis? Will you feel more compelled to visit Linkedin after this new Linkedin Signal function?.

Hei Steinar.

Jeg likte innlegget ditt. Det er fint med et kritisk blikk, og jeg er enig med deg i at kanskje ikke alle trenger en iPad.

Jeg hadde tenkt å svare i kommentarfeltet. Det ble et lengre svar enn jeg hadde tenkt. Derfor skriver jeg et oppfølgingsinnlegg til mitt innlegg "Min første kveld med iPad."

Jeg har nå hatt en iPad i 6 måneder og jeg merker stor forskjell på å ha og ikke ha eniPad, og jeg er veldig fornøyd med min nye dings. Er den perfekt? Nei. Jeg regner med atApple vil forbedre den en gang i året omtrent som de gjør med iPhone og andre produkter. Er dette kynisk? Sikkert. Men sånn har verden blitt. Men på den annen side så får vi muligheten til å kjøpe og prøve et produkt før det blir perfekt. Andre ønsker å vente med å kjøpe produktet til det er blitt mer modent og perfekt for deres bruk.

Trenger vi iPad?, spør du.

Jeg tolker det som at du mener "Trenger alle en iPad?"

Da spør jeg tilbake trenger vi alle en iPhone? Blue Ray? Hoppetrampoline i hagen? Mikrobølgeovn? Jeg håper ikke det.

Jeg liker også Duppedingskuttisme utrykket. Alle må ikke ha alt. Noen bør kanskje vente til produktet er mer modent "Late adopters" "Laggards", Diffusion of innovations.

De som venter vil kunne kjøpe en duppedings med mulighet for multitasking, kamera, videokonferanse, mange flere kule nyttige og sikkert "unyttige" applikasjoner, og mange andre ting. Det er ikke så dumt å ha en vente og se -strategi. Det er det som gjør en forskjell mellom Innovatører og Laggards. Venter man enda lengre kommer andre produsenter med gode og mer "åpne" tablets.

Jeg tilhører "Vi" som bruker iPaden ofte og til veldig mye, og som kommer til å bruke den mer og mer. Jeg kjøpte den første versjon før 3G versjonen kom. Nå har jeg kjøpt 3G versjonen og det er en helt annen verden. Jeg bruker den overalt.

iPad er dessverre laget for å konsumere innhold, mer enn å produsere innhold og det er en svakhet i første generasjonens iPad. Men etterhvert blir det lettere også å kunne produsere innhold på en lettere måte.

Prioritering er viktig. Mobile enheter dekker blant annet behovet for å konsumere og produsere innhold, være tilgjengelig når vi ikke er på vår faste plass osv. Jeg klarer meg godt uten TV og snart uten Aftenposten på papir.

Men er jeg "vi"? Og hvem er vi? Hva slags type bruker eller personas av duppedingser er du?

Har du behov for å "casual" surfing hjemme, på stranda, når du reiser kollektivt, på fly?

Jeg bruker iPaden til og fra jobb når jeg tar bussen. Kan ikke lenger klare meg uten.

Liker du å holde deg oppdatert og oppdatere statusen din på Twitter, LinkedIN, Facebook, og mange andre medier når du er på farta?

Liker du å kunne kjøpe bøker å ha dem på maskinen din på noen få sekunder slik at du kan lese dem når det passer deg.

Liker du å lese fagbøker på engelsk uten at man må bære flere kilo med papir?

Liker du å ha en duppedings til underholdning så du kan spille musikk, se video, film, spille når du ligger i senga, er på hytta eller er på en lang kjøretur (til barna selvfølgelig hvis du er den som kjører bilen :)?

Har du barn? iPaden er en maskin som alle hjemme kan bruke, også når bestemor er på besøk og er barnevakt. Det trykke i vei, uten å måtte forholde seg til bruksanvisninger, kablinger til tv og fjernkontroller for å få på spillkonsollen.

Liker du å gå på konferanse å kunne ta notater og lage tankekart, uten å måtte bære en laptop som trenger lading?

Liker du å kunne bruke Keynotes for å presentere innhold for kunder, ansatte samarbeidspartner osv uten å måtte bære med deg laptopen?

Ja, iPad er en mobil enhet med noe av det beste fra en iPhone og noe av det beste fra enMacbook.

Trenger alle en iPad? Sikkert ikke. Jeg har barn og har hverken hoppetrampoline i hagen eller en mikrobølgeovn. Andre venner med barn skjønner ikke hvordan jeg klarer meg uten. Mikrobølgeovnen.

Har iPaden kommet for å bli? iPaden er allerede en salgssuksess for Apple.

Jeg tror at iPad og andre tablets som Android tablet kommer til å endre måten vi surfer på. De har allerede gjort det. Jeg tror det vil bidra til bedre og mer EFFEKTIVE og brukervennlige NETTSTEDER med mer fokus på "kuttisme" . Det komme til å øke bruken av HTML5 samtidig som flash kommer til blir mindre brukt noe som kan fremme brukervennligheten og en bedre "web" opplevelse for en enda bredere målgruppe fra man er 1- 100 år.

Forresten hvordan gikk det med din mor? Klarte hun å se hva du ikke ser? Eller ble det "som sønn som mor?":-)

Mange ledere og markedsførere er opptatt av hvordan de kan bruke tid på sosiale medier på en fornuftig måte og hvilke resultater man kan forvente.

De lurer på følgende:

Hvor mye tid går med for de som får gode resultater og lykkes med bruk av sosiale medier?
Hvordan kan jeg overtale sjefen min eller min kollega når de sier at ”Det er ikke noe vits å bruke tid på dette?”
Hvordan kan en organisasjon unngå å bli overveldet av tid brukt på sosiale medier?
I rapporten Social Media Marketing Industry Report "How marketers are using Social Media to Grow their businesses" av Michael A. Stelzner, USA, kommer man frem til følgende:

56 % av markedsførere i USA bruker mer enn 6 timer per uke

30 % bruker 11 eller mer timer per uke.

Det er også interessant å lese at 12,5 % bruker mer enn 20 timer per uke på sosiale medier. Nybegynnere bruker ca 1 time per uke, mens de som har holdt på med denne type form for markedsføring i lengre tid bruker i gjennomsnitt 10 timer per uke. De som er mellom 20 og 29 bruker mer tid på å markedsføre via sosiale medier.

Et annet spørsmål som ledere er opptatt av er, ”Hva får dem ut av det?”

De nevner følgende resultater i denne rekkefølgen:

1.Det hjalp meg å lukke et salg
2.Det økte vår synlighet
3.Vi fikk nye samarbeidspartnere
4.Det genererte relevante leads
5.Det reduserte mine markedsføringskostnader
6.Det hjalp oss til å komme høyere opp på søkemotorer
7.Vi fikk økt trafikk og flere abonnenter til vår mailingliste

Du kan lese hele rapporten på Social Examiner.

Jeg bruker 3-5 timer daglig. Hva med deg, hvor mye tid bruker du eller din bedrift på å markedsføre via sosiale medier?

Hva har du/dere fått ut av det så langt?

Har du tenkt å bruke mindre eller mer tid på denne type markedsføring i fremtiden?