The Future of Social Media: What’s Next?

Recently, I had the pleasure of attending the 3rd Annual Digital Night, hosted by the American Advertising Federation of Baltimore. As a Digital Marketing Manager, it was obviously important that I was there to be part of the discussion of where digital marketing was headed in 2011.

Things in the digital marketing sphere have changed drastically over the past year. In 2010, organizations were struggling with the placement of social. Where would it live? Who would control it? Do you do it in-house? Hire a boutique agency or a large one? But over the past year, people have moved past the beginning stages of social and now are asking, “What now?”

This year will bring more specific questions than “how to.” As this form of advertising becomes more and more legitimate, there is going to be a stricter level of accountability on brands, companies, and agencies alike.

ROI & Metrics

Have we beat this one over your head enough? Metrics will become more and more important, and not just the number of fans and followers or the amount of site traffic garnered to your site. Think bigger picture – maybe how having a social media community in place can save you some dollars on a PR budget, or how your cost per lead has decreased since adopting word of mouth marketing tactics.

Consistency

Companies will start to focus on making their branding extend across multiple channels. With that taking place, we must focus on providing a consistent message or brand across those channels. Sure, the tone might be different from one platform to the next, but at the end of the day, each must feed back into the identity of the brand.

Experiences and Interactivity

Static ads or messages won’t cut it anymore. We have to involve the consumers in our ad messages. We are already attempting this on social networks by making our audiences part of the conversation, but 2011 will require marketers to step up their game. We’ve got to make the actual ad an experience. Think Tippex.

E-Commerce on Social

Facebook has become the hub for consumers everywhere. We all know that their ad network is great, and that if you break away from the norm, it can be a place for brands to live and interact with their consumers. But lately, we’ve seen actual purchases on Facebook. Marketers are beginning to understand that people are comfortable on the Facebook platform, and will bring online merchandise to them in that sphere.

What do you think? Are these the future of online? Where do you think digital marketing is going in 2011?

Have a WOMderful Thanksgiving!

The Cyphers Agency team is ready to get down on some turkey, how about you? Before we all head off for the long weekend, we thought we’d share awesome finds of the WOM persuasion with you. It’s always a good idea to have some light reading material on hand over the holidays so your social media know-how doesn’t get rusty, or just so you can have an excuse to not talk with Aunt Joan about her newest ailment.

Social Good for a Social Media Generation

These days, it seems like everyone is “going digital” and leveraging social media to communicate their message. But, as we’ve mentioned before, it goes way beyond just Facebook pages and Twitter accounts. We’ve noticed that Web 2.0 is emerging as a way for newer generations to change the world without even leaving home. People are already making friends and doing things online based on their interests – its a natural next step to use social networks to connect to causes you care about.

Being A Part of the Online Experience.

Non-profits and corporations alike are embracing the web to get their message to millions of people. These groups can have enormous success by taking their causes online. While non-profits traditionally promote one fundraising event at a time, social media allows charitable organizations to become part of the online experience, enabling more frequent interactions with their audience. And if organizations make it is easy to get involved, people are more than willing to contribute.

It could be on a Facebook page where you can “like” an initiative you’re passionate about. In the case of Pedigree’s “Become a Fan, Help A Dog” campaign, fans can actually make a difference with just one click. Or you could use Twitter hashtags like #AmericaWants to share information with like-minded people and get your cause noticed. You can donate online, and not always just with your money – you can find volunteer opportunities through search engines, message boards and online communities like Jumo. It’s never been easier for people to support a cause.

So what?

Companies are seeing big results from engaging in social good. For example, Pepsi took their Super Bowl advertising budget and turned it into a social good phenomenon. Their Pepsi Refresh program has engaged thousands of regular people by giving them the opportunity to win grants for their grassroots projects. Even more so, Pepsi set aside an additional $1.2 million for projects dedicated to helping the Gulf after oil spill crisis occurred. Since January, more people have voted for Pepsi Refresh causes than voted in the last presidential election. Amazing, huh? And the best part? Pepsi hasn’t suffered from taking their Super Bowl ad money and setting it aside for good – they’ve received a tremendous amount of publicity for encouraging others.

What We’re Doing.

Here at The Cyphers Agency, we’re engaging in some social good of our own by support a local Annapolis grassroots effort, Carol for a Cause. The mission of this community project is simply promoting goodwill, and so we leverage social media and word of mouth tools to engage with people and spread our client’s message. Right now, we’re building some meaningful relationships with bloggers who care about the same things we care about and become ambassadors on our behalf. We’re also running an awesome contest where Carol for a Cause fans can show what “doing good” means to them. The winner will get money towards their favorite charity.

We’re happy to be taking part in social good. We’ve seen some incredible things happen through the web, and we’re glad that we can help businesses use such a powerful and multifaceted tool to make a difference. Have you seen anything like this online? We’d love it if you shared it with us by leaving a comment below.

Going Digital? Don’t Forget Strategy

I always do my grocery shopping at the Safeway just around the corner from my house. It’s location can’t be beat, but if we’re being honest, most of the time their prices can. I regularly use my Safeway discount card, but a few days ago I googled “Safeway discounts”, hoping for a little extra money in my pocket after my shopping trip. Right away I struck gold! At Safeway.com, you can electronically load coupons onto your Safeway card. No printing, no clipping, just click “clip” and you’re racking up the discounts! Alright, I only ended saving about $6, but it was enough to make brag about my discovery to everyone I met.

While coupons may not seemingly relate to social media or WOM, the truth of the matter is that I couldn’t stop myself from telling my friends and colleagues about it. It got me thinking of how something as old-fashioned as a coupon could go digital, draw me in, and create buzz.

“Going Online”

Recently, every company is interested in “going online” to reach their customers and generate more business. It allows for an additional arena to interact with consumers. What we often see is that this foray into the World Wide Web takes shape as a Facebook page or a Twitter account. While those tools can be effective, they might not be the perfect tactic for everyone.

Social media may not be the answer to every question, but there are a multitude of untapped opportunities to reach your customers that don’t involve joining a social network. It may be offering coupons online, like Safeway did. It might involve the creation of an online store to sell your products. It might even be a contest.

Take it to the next level.

Creating unique and different online experiences for your consumers encourages interaction with your product, brand, and messaging. It may even encourage a new audience, who may not have interacted with you in the traditional sense, to experience your brand. And if your digital experience is good enough, it’ll keep ‘em coming back for more. It may even get them hyped enough to tell their friends, just like I did. What company doesn’t dig consumer loyalty and buzz?

Don’t get us wrong, we aren’t saying to abandon traditional offerings. They are still meaningful and worthwhile. However, it is dangerous not to think of ways to encourage online interaction. If you aren’t doing it, know that your competition is. Sometimes revitalizing your brand is as simple – yet revolutionary – as adapting a time-tested marketing technique and turning it into something fresh online.

What ways are you going digital? Are you taking the opportunity to revolutionize your brand by engaging consumers online?

Cut the Crap – No More Lofty Social Media Terms

So we’ve been just as guilty as the next for using those lofty and abstract social media terms that drive everyone mad: transparency, engagement, content generation, conversation monitoring, blah blah blah. I think it is time we all shut up.

I don’t mean that we stop talking about social media or social influence marketing. I just think we need to re-evaluate the way we speak about it. We (as marketing professionals) need to move from the general to the specific and actionable. We need to move from “motivational speaker” to “business coach.”

Step back for a moment.

While we’ve got more and more people jumping at social media, we’ve also got some seriously bad lingo that follows. Let’s look away from jargon and look to stimulating specific, strategic social media dialogue. Saying that each client is different doesn’t cut it anymore. Let’s take these lofty ideas and break them down.

There are countless more ways to impact your audience: Need a flashmob? Don’t know how to pitch bloggers? Want to see how geo-location features can help your business? Need some social media resources? We try to give you resources to see how social media really works, and if you can’t do it yourself, well, that is what we are here for.

Setting Proper Expectations & Follow Your Plan

As an agency, its important to take a look at what is on our plate and strategize. Who is the client? What do they need? Are we working with a Business to Business (B2B) client? We can use social media tactics to locate key influencers in that company. Working with a Business to Consumer (B2C) client? We can locate their audience online by doing an in depth online audience scan and find their consumers, whether it be on blogs, forums, or Facebook, and leverage that community.

So can we please stop talking about lofty, abstract social media terms? Let’s cut to the chase and get working.

Stop giving “social media” all the credit

I was just reading an article about how Starbucks used social media to drive 1 million people to its stores on one day. But these stories are misleading, because it’s not really social media that got all those people through the doors of Starbucks. Those people came to get something that was valuable to them (in this case a free pastry). And as for how they heard about it? Yes, an important TOOL involved was social media, but the STRATEGY was what got them there. The strategy was based on the concepts of word of mouth marketing.

Word of mouth marketing (WOMM) operates on certain concepts that underlie the new ways that consumers think about and interact with brands. WOMM recognizes that the consumer has more power because they have more of a voice. So don’t think I’m discounting the importance of social media, because social media is the entire reason that consumers have more power. But I want to emphasize that you can’t “do” social media. And if all you do is interact on social media because you heard that Starbucks just made a gazillion dollars, you won’t get anything out of it.

To be successful with social media, you need to be successful in word of mouth marketing. You need to give people someone to talk about, or you need to find what people are talking about and get your brand in the discussion. There are tons of other ways to take advantage of word of mouth marketing concepts, but they all relate back to this:

- The consumer is tired of you interrupting them and yelling at them.

- The consumer has so much information thrown at them daily that they are quick to stop paying attention. You know what they will always pay attention to? Their friends and people that they respect.

- If you want their attention you better be telling them something a lot more valuable than “hey look it’s us! buy our product!”

- The consumer will call you out if you have a bad product, and they might have 100, 1,000, or 100,000 people listening.

Respect word of mouth. Start with these concepts and you are bound to get people talking about your brand.

Social Media Measurement

Tim Trefren recently wrote one of the best blogs I’ve ever read in regards to social media tracking (although that’s not necessarily saying much, because people seem to write vaguely about the issue).

I wanted to commend him on his “3 new ways to measure the social web” even though none of them are new. We’ve been using them to track social media and online interaction for several years now. I might sound a little cynical (I am) and I might be using a lot of parenthesis (it’s just my style), but I sincerely thank him for getting the word out about conversion tracking, engagement tracking, and repeat visitor tracking. For some of us in the industry, this stuff isn’t new at all, but many businesses refuse to acknowledge the extreme trackability of social media, and how to use that data to make informed marketing decisions.

I’m not going to take the time to outline our tracking system here because I already wrote a blog post about it several months ago. Some of our metrics change depending on the client, but our philosophy hasn’t changed: social media is as trackable as you want it to be.

What does that mean for us as marketers? I’ll lay it out, plain and simple for you:

- More data = more information = better market research.

- More data = more accurate ROI = better informed marketing decisions

- More data = more targetability = more effective advertising

And these points say nothing about the other obvious benefits of increased communication, positioning, search engine optimization, promotions, etc. Hopefully social media tracking doesn’t seem as daunting as it once was.

If you have any questions, give us a call (410-280-5451) or send us an email. We love to teach companies how to measure their social media efforts!

We Can See Right Through You

In social media (and pretty much any other type of business), transparency is pretty important. If you are a business that is trying to increase buzz or awareness of your products or services, being sneaky and shady definitely doesn’t help create a pretty picture. If you are open, it allows your consumers to give real feedback and engage in real conversations.

Take Tiger Woods as a real-life example. Yes, yes, we know that everyone everywhere is talking about him (hey, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em). When the scandal broke, Tiger remained hidden and unavailable. Had he responded immediately, even with a vague statement, media speculation would have not been as damaging or rampant. We do have to commend him though, because eventually he did release a statement. Most other celebs choose to just stay cooped up, waiting for the storm to blow over. Or they just go on an interview without ever actually talking to their fans. We may not respect Tiger Woods’ decisions, but at least he stepped up to the transparency plate.

On another, more social media oriented note, Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook’s creator and golden boy) also recently practiced transparency. His recent letter, which first appeared on your Facebook home page and now on the Facebook blog, addressed changes that were being made on Facebook that would directly affect the users. He tells you exactly what you need to know: how these changes will be made, when, how, and why. And even though Facebook received some backlash for their changes in privacy settings, we commend Mr. Zuckerberg on his transparent letter in attempt to let everyone know what was up.

That being said, transparency helps. It just does. Having conversations on the web and engaging consumers is about having real, open discussions with people. You can’t have a meaningful conversation if you aren’t acting like a real person. Even more so, timing in your transparency goes a long way. The sooner, the better.

So take the time to make sure that you are being transparent. Reflect on the conversations you are having and make it a priority to be clear and fully open about who you are and what your purpose is.

Facebook-itis and Twitter-itis

Now we aren’t epidemiologists, but we have certainly noticed a trend with business owners and marketers trying to enter the realm of social media; Facebook-itis and Twitter-itis. These serious afflictions leave victims obsessed with the two most popular social networking sites, and prevent the victim from receiving and interpreting proven advice on other tactics that ACTUALLY ACCOMPLISH their respective marketing objectives.

It is extremely urgent that you get these people help IMMEDIATELY. This condition can cause blatant disregard of proven marketing tactics, and an uncanny disregard for measurable client objectives.

Luckily, here at The Cyphers Agency, we’ve got a cure. It’s a five step program with a 100% success rate.

1. Meet with client to discuss situation and marketing goals/objectives.
2. Complete a situation analysis, taking into account (among other things) audience participation, audience sentiment, competitor positioning, and search engine optimization.
3. In conjunction with client, develop a campaign (based on RESEARCH and OBJECTIVES!)
4. Implement campaign.
5. Track results monthly, make adjustments as necessary.

Here in the Push-N-Pull department at The Cyphers Agency, we are tasked with finding the right tools and tactics that align with each of our client’s goals. We can create Facebook pages and perform lead generation via Twitter, but just because we can do those things, and because you heard on the news that Twitter is the next best thing, doesn’t mean that you should automatically flock to that tactic. We’ve been doing this for a while now, and have TONS of great tactics that can accomplish specific goals. Here are some other examples:

Meetups – Meetup.com is a really cool site where people meet up based on similar interests. There are tons of WOM possibilities, from sponsorship to partnership to events and more.

Flashmobs – Flashmobs are a great way to generate interest and just make people say “what the heck just happened?” We’ve got a series of top-secret flashmobs for one of our clients that will occur around the country next near. Stay tuned for details!

Blogger Outreach – This is like PR for the new generation. With newspaper sales declining steadily and blog readership consistently growing, blogger outreach might be the best tactic to gain awareness of your brand/product. It also helps with search engine optimization.

Social Network and Forum Outreach – There is a community somewhere online that is talking about your industry. You should at least find and listen to the conversation, and possibly enter the conversation and engage the community. We can do this for you, we can teach you how, or we can encourage your most loyal customers to do it for you.

Blog creation and writing – Blogs are great for a bunch of reasons. Actually, they can accomplish so many objectives that it would take too long to go into it here, but suffice to say, blogs are one of our reliable tools at The Cyphers Agency.

Multimedia Push – Do you have lots of video, photo, or audio content? Old commercials lying around? We know how to re-purpose your material and get it out on the web for your audience to see. Best of all, we know how to brand your online presence, tag and title your content for search engine optimization.

Reputation management – Are people writing negative reviews about your business online? Do you wish you could increase your positive reviews in a legal and ethical way? We know how, and have great results from other clients that we would love to show you.

And just remember – these are just word of mouth tactics! We’re a full service agency for a reason! (In case you were wondering, that reason is so that we can do everything that a client might need, not JUST social media, or JUST a billboard. Because effective campaigns are integrated and multi-faceted.)

Ok, I’m sure you’ve had enough of my caps-lock emphases. Let us know if you’ve got Facebook-itis or Twitter-itis. We’ve got the cure.

Why Flash Mobs?

What’s a Flash Mob?

A flash mob, defined by Wikipedia as “a large group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual action for a brief time, then quickly disperse.”

They’ve been used large companies and non-profits alike, as a non-traditional presentation that is used to generate buzz. T-Mobile coordinated the flash mob below to promote its “Life’s For Sharing” campaign, as you’ll see below. This video currently has nearly 14 million YouTube views.

While a flash mob caused a big stir about T-Mobile, they aren’t just something only huge companies can pull off. Flash mobs don’t require a lot of money, making them an ideal tactic for a small business or non-profit. Below you can see video of a flash mob done for a non-profit, Donate Life.

Flash mobs can be as simple as chasing something. Check out the “Official VT Flash Mob Banana Chase” video below. While it looks like something college students did for kicks, if Chiquita or Dole was associated with the coordination of this flash mob, they would have generated a ton of online buzz about their brand.

A coordinated dance, simultaneous freeze or banana-chasing aren’t the only things a company can do to generate some buzz non-traditionally.  Guerrilla marketing, an unconventional and unexpected method of generating buzz, is an umbrella term for pretty much anything non-traditional you can do to get people talking. There’s no rule book for guerrilla marketing; it just takes one objective and a lot of creativity.

The Benefits

1. Break the noise- Flash mobs and guerrilla tactics a fun way to get people talking about your product or service. The average American is exposed to thousands of advertising messages a day.  While traditional advertising is a critical part of most campaigns, if you really want to get your point across, you absolutely have to break through in an unconventional way.
2. Captivate your audience and generate traditional word of mouth. Flash mobs and guerrilla tactics are fun for the audience to watch and interact with. If you give your them something entertaining, they are likely to take their own pictures and video, and tell their friends about it.
3. The beauty of flash mobs and guerrilla tactics is their potential to go viral. They provide entertainment that people want to watch and share. If T-Mobile’s Flash Mob was not recorded and uploaded to YouTube, then 14 million people would have not been exposed to its message.

At The Cyphers Agency, we have an entire WOM team that lives for these kind of projects. And that creativity thing? Yeah, we’ve got that covered.