The
Fluent razorfish digital influence marketing survey can't let go of the funnel metaphor for marketing, but their analysis of the different phases of the consumers and the role of influencers in these phases is interesting:
- Key influencers in specific fields have an outsized influence on brand affinity and purchasing decisions on social platforms. Key influencers typically have their own blogs, huge Twitter followings and rarely know their audiences personally.
- Social influencers are everyday people who participate in social platforms. These users are typically in your consumer’s social graph and influence brand affinity and purchasing decisions through consumer reviews, by updating their own status and Twitter feeds and commenting on blogs and forums. In some cases the consumer knows the social influencers personally.
- Known peer influencers are the closest to both the purchasing decision and to the consumer. They are typically family mem- bers, or part of the consumer’s inner circle. They influence the purchasing decision most directly and have to live with the results of their family member or friend’s decision as well.
Further reading:
According to new research from The Nielsen Company, Americans spend nearly a quarter of their time online on social networking sites and blogs, up from 15.8% just a year ago (43% increase).
The research revealed that Americans spend a third their online time (36%) communicating and networking across social networks, blogs, personal email and instant messaging.
Further reading:
From Deloitte’s “American Pantry Survey”
- 81% of consumers new-found use of coupons and loyalty programs is fun
- 93% said they still expected to spend cautiously even if the economy improved
From PriceGrabber.com "US Shopping Behavior in this Economic Climate" survey
- 55% of respondents to a said they were spending more time shopping for and researching purchases on the internet this year, compared with 26% in 2009.
More in this eMarketer graph:
Further reading:
- The ‘New Normal’ in Consumer Shopping Behavior @ eMarketer.com
Social media for retailers: What's next?- Adding E-Commerce to Social Media Platforms (e.g. Facebook Credits )
- Adding Social Media to E-Commerce Platforms (e.g. An Amazon-Facebook Alliance to Make Shopping More Social)
- Running loyalty campaigns in social media
- Running referral campaigns in social media
- Using social media for customer experience management
More where this came from:
In an
excellent mini-whitepaper DoseOfDigital's Jonathan Richman points out five facts about Facebook Page I didn't know yet:
- If you turn off commenting on your Facebook Page's wall, you also turn off the Like function.
- Updates from your Page turn up in the "News Feed" of your Pagebook Fans' profile page. Most only read the top of their "Top News" (as opposed to "Most Recent"). So it's very important to rank high in your Fans' "Top News" feed.
- Whether your updates rank high in "Top News" or not depends on a Facebook algorhythm called EdgeRank.
What is EdgeRank?EdgeRank is the algorithm that Facebook uses to determine the order of items in your Feed. In the end, it’s really simple, as it has just three factors:
affinity, edge, and decay. [...]
Affinity is basically the connection between you and the piece of content. The more times you’ve interacted with the source of the content (Facebook calls it an “object”) in the past, the higher the affinity. For example, if you comment on your sister’s Wall everyday, content from your sister will have a high affinity score because you interact a lot with her. Second is “
edge.” [...] All that edge refers to the relative weight of objects. For example, a comment on a Wall Post probably carries more weight than a Like because it take more effort to post a comment.
[Note: making your Page content mostly text will probably affect your Edge negatively]. Last, and simplest, is
decay. This is the time that has past since the object was created.
[Note: Updating content rarely will probably affect your Edge negatively]- In the Facebook page analytics tool Insights can give you an idea of the amount of impressions (= how many times your content was shown)
- Facebook Insights are only available for verified, authentic pages. To get a Facebook Page verified, you need to fill in this form.
Further reading:
Key takeaway from <
The hyper social organization, a presentation (and
book) by
EmergenceMarketing.com's Francois Gossieaux:
Turning a business process into a social process
IS NOT:
- Running traditional programs using social media platforms
- PR by blogging press releases
- lead gen by spamming community members
- recruiting through spray and pray over Twitter, etc.
BUT IS:
- Running programs based on human reciprocity and social contracts to get others, whose job it isn’t to do so, to help you do your job
- customer support with the help of all employees and customers
- product innovation with customers and detractors, etc.
These two presentations seem to contradict each other, but if you read carefully you will see how both elaborate on how technology can change people's daily lives.
Social media is a logical extension of what we've been doing for centuries. The technoly and the medium has changed, but the same driving need to connect, learn, express, share and interact has not.
Social media is redefining virtually f**king everything, including (but not limited to)...
• how we work.
• how we play.
• how we learn.
• how we share.
• how we discover.
• how we create.
• how we complain.
• how we celebrate.
• how we mourn.
• how we applaud.
• how we influence.
• how we collaborate.
• how we investigate.
• how we evaluate.
Vitalicious Inc.
describes itself as "the [U.S.] market leader of innovative "vital and delicious" baked goods that promote a healthy lifestyle, without sacrificing taste."
But they also know how to integrate email marketing and the power of Facebook. Have a look:
Key elements:
- They offer a "hack" of their own product (muffins) by creating a recipe to turn it into a milkshake.
- This recipe was shared first with Vitalicious' Facebook audience.
- Attention-grabbing headline: New Frozen Chocolate VitaShake Recipe – Plus 2 Coupons!
- Social plugins ("See what other Facebook fans are saying" integrated into an emailing.
- Conversion is tracked by the unique coupon code.
Found at
How the Big Brands do Facebook Marketing by Webtrends offers a pretty good overview of all available tools for brand owners to interact with their audience.
Slide 22 ("Facebook Campaigns") is interesting:
- Contests
- Sweepstakes
- Virtual Gifts
- Polls
- Coupons
- Quizzes
- Product Samples
With the exception of Virtual Gifts, which will be discontinued by Facebook by August 1st.
Further reading:
Transcript from slides 147-173 from this amazing presentation
The Real Life Social Network v2 by design strategist
Paul Adams:
.
We often look to others when making decisions
People try to behave rationally, they try to make objective decisions, but other factors mean that they can't. The problem is that we all have limited access to information, and limited memory. Because of this, we have learned to rely on others to help us make decisions. We assume that other people know things we don't. In fact, we do this so often, that we automatically look to the actions of others, even when the answer is obvious.
Increasing our reliance on social networks to make decisions
The web is increasing the volume of information available to us, but our capacity for memory isn't changing. So it's likely that we'll increasingly turn to others to make decisions. There was once a time when we picked what restaurant to eat in by looking in the window. But now, we often can't decide without pulling out our phones and searching the web for reviews from people who have eaten there before.
How people in¿uence each other is complex, and the role of "in¿uentials" in society is over- estimated.
There may be some individuals who have great in¿uence, but it is without doubt that how people in¿uence each other has many other factors. A key insight is that when we study how people in¿uence each other, it's important to focus on the person being in¿uenced as well as the person doing the in¿uencing.
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