SOCIAL MEDIA:IT’S ONLY GONE AND GROWN UP!

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

SOCIAL MEDIA: IT’S ONLY GONE AND GROWN UP!

MULTI PLATFORM / CHANNEL – SOCIAL IS THE GLUE.

ROI – SOCIAL MEDIA ROI GROWS UP.

SOCIAL BUSINESS – SOCIAL MEDIA IS DEAD, LONG LIVE SOCIAL BUSINESS.

DATA – IT ISN’T ALWAYS THAT BIG BUT IT IS CLEVER.

SUMMARY

1.

INCREASED TIME, PLATFORM GROWTH AND DIVERSITY,CHANGING JOURNEYS

Over the week, we hosted 2 different talks with over 50 attendees, attended 15 different talks as an agency, watched a number on livestream and written, as well as reading many more follow up blogs. During the week, we observed some repeated themes and conversations, including an increasing amount of time spent and relentless growth in certain platforms such as FB, Twitter, You Tube and Pinterest.

For example, a GlobalWebIndex Study showed Twitter at 44% growth from June 2012 to March 2013 and You Tube showed 50% more hours of video were watched in March 2013 compared to last August.

The way we interact is also changing, with social developments such as dual screen TV watching on the rise. This means that the social customer journey is evolving: consumers are researching and buying products in new ways.

A CLEAR PERSPECTIVE AND DISTILLATION WITH SOMEACTION POINTS

We know that not everyone has the time to attend enough of these type of events to get a clear perspective so we thought we summarise four key macro factors that we believe have created this evolution – Multi platform, ROI, Social Business and ‘Big data’.

To help you even more, we've also added a paragraph on “What does this mean for my business” into each section. Finally we've also included a top line review of the 9 blogs we wrote about Social Media Week – which you can read in full at www.gravitythinking.blogspot.com

We would love to hear your point of view or come and see you to talk about these further and how they might impact your business.

Back in the heady days of early social, 2009, Google’s Avinash Kaushik tweeted a much-repeated phrase that summed up what everyone was thinking at the time:

"Social media is like teen sex.Everyone wants to do it. No oneactually knows how. When finallydone, there is surprise it's notbetter."

Fast forward to October, 2013. This year’s Social Media Week has officially come to a close. Events took place across five continents in 8 cities at thousands of different venues. There were over 20,000 attendees in London alone. This year, we cant help but feel that this is the year that social media has finally come of age.

FROM OUTLIER TO HIGHLY CREDIBLE CHANNEL

So how has the child grown up? Once, social was an outlier in the marketing mix to be played with like a shiny new toy, that seemingly had no purpose other than distraction and entertainment. Now it’s a credible channel with a personality, a point of view and a willingness to stand up and be counted.Of course this has been heralded for a while now, but having attended the last few years of SMW there was a distinctively new feeling this year. Everyone seems to be taking the subject of social media more seriously and committing some proper time, the subjects and content of the talks is far more structured and considered and the credibility and quality of the participants is on a par with more established events.

SOCIAL MEDIA:IT’S ONLY GONE AND GROWN UP!

SM has come of age now with 21% growth driven by mobile and tablet

New devices have changed levels and types of interaction

Social Media Week presented 4 clear themes

SPEED READ

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

Social Media Week was opened by Ed Couchman at Facebook who not only directly attributed Facebook’s rise as being due to mobile but boldly announced that ‘Mobile first, mobile best’ would help them maintain their position as “…one of the most effective marketing platforms on the planet”.

CONSUMER IS NOW IN CONTROL

Of course mobile is just one of the different technologies and channels that is driving social media adoption and usage – as Comcast recently concluded:

“Technology is putting consumersin control of what, where, when andhow they consume content, so it’sincumbent upon marketers to go findtheir audience and aggregatemeaningful impressions acrossmultiple screens.”

CONSIDER THE WIDER ECOSYSTEM

As a result, marketing campaigns must now consider the whole marketing ecosystem, not just on a channel by channel basis, but also considering which channels are most appropriate.

Facebook isn’t always the most appropriate social channel, as Drew Bevin pointed out in his talk “Future trends in social media for brand comms”, about how people act in the channel and how the channels react to each other.

SOCIAL MEDIA IS THE GLUE

Social media has become the glue that connects these channels. As Drew Benvie pointed out in his “future trends” talk, this doesn’t mean it replaces the more traditional channels – quite the opposite - it enhances them and makes them more relevant and accountable.

Twitter continues to gain in importance as a channel for marketers as it not only provides near instantaneous conversation and involvement, but also gives a great understanding of the ‘state of the nation’ - something which can apply just as easily to sectors and brands.

A great example of how cross platform activity can work is the Laphroaig activity referenced in our review of the “Future of social media in the drinks industry” - “Friends of Laphroaig is a fantastic campaign and has helped Laphroaig create / nurture a healthy database of users willing to engage with them on a regular basis. For example Laphroaig had nearly 50k users log in to watch their latest Laphroaig Live video stream, quite astonishing for a drinks brand to effectively become a broadcaster like that.”

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?

Understanding consumer behavior is the key to success when considering cross platform / channel communications, especially digital and social usage and actions – this was a specific focus in the “Impact of Social Media on the Drinks Industry” talk.

This knowledge is often a key gap in a brand’s armoury and, given that consumers’ reactions are often unpredictable, it is important to not only consider platform, channel and device but also elements such as use of copy, imagery, tone of voice and call to action…. and of course to always follow the adage of test and learn.

MULTI PLATFORM / CHANNEL – SOCIAL IS THE GLUE.

SPEED READFacebook is leading mobile revolution

Consumer is in charge and it is imperative to know their behaviour across ecosystem

Social acts as glue between platforms and channels

SPEED READ

3.

4.

5.

6.

1.

“The ROI of social media is that yourbusiness will still exist in five years”– Eric Qualman

In past Social Media Week events, ROI has beenthe eternal elephant in the room. We have heardphrases such as Return on Engagement, Returnon Influence and even Return on Effort – all of these were used to skirt round the main issue – that no one knew how to effectively quantify the value of social. SOCIAL BUDGETS SET TO DOUBLE

There is no golden bullet here – a recent report on Forbes stated that whilst social media spending as a percentage of marketing budgets is expected to more than double over the next five years, almost half of CMO’s said they aren’t able to quantify whether social media has made a difference for their companies. Just 36% said they had a good sense of qualitative results. Perhaps tellingly, only a meagre 15% said they’ve seen a proven quantitative impact.

Unsurprisingly, in a Big Data-driven era, this lack of clarity is coming under increased scrutiny; 66% of respondents say their boards and CEOs are tightening pressure to measure ROI.

PLATFORM TOOLS AND METRICS

Social media is addressing this head on in a grown up and sensible manner on two fronts. Firstly there is a concerted effort from Facebook (see Ed Couchman Facebook blog), Twitter and other major platforms, to produce tools and metrics that help understand how to target users effectively. Our own Social Media Talks focused exactly on this point – what we should be measuring and the metrics that we can extract (let us know if you want to hear more).

ADOPTION OF BROADER METRICS

Secondly there is an acknowledgement that social media isn't always a transactional engine or sales machine, so they're dropping half-baked indicators that gauge secondary effects, such as financial return. Instead, the new metrics evaluate social media strategies in terms that are more readily understood by brands: audience-building, brand awareness, and customer relations.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?

The key here is to ensure that this measurement and attribution is incorporated at every stage and across all media. When social is the glue that exists cross-platform, the overall assessment and consideration of ROI has to be far broader. It’s worth remembering that TV and press have survived and prospered with far flakier metrics for many years!

ROI – SOCIAL MEDIA ROI GROWS UP.

Quandary of doubling of budgets yet still no accepted ROI analysis.

Effective platform tools now exist alongside doption of broader metrics

Ensure that there is measurement at every stage

SPEED READ

2.

4.

5.

6.

1.

“If you want to generate trust andbuild relationships with yourcustomers through social media,your organisation needs first toadopt a culture of trust and opennessinternally”– Paul Greenberg

Like ROI, the concept of ‘Social Business’ has been around for a while and is always presented as some sort of nirvana. But now it seems to be turning into a reality and this has led some to the conclusion that it signals the end of the phrase “Social Media”.

CONSISTENT AND COMPLETE CONSUMER EXPERIENCE

Of course Social Business is more than Social Media – it is a commitment to ensuring that all aspects of your business are social. What does this mean? It means that your customers have a consistent and complete experience before, during and after their interaction with an organization. In short, it’s a customer centric model where social acts as an enabler to humanise the company.

The aim of ‘social business’ is not only to improve the foundations for reaching and connecting through a range of channels, but also to provide a conduit through which customers want to be communicated with. This can only lead to delighted customers and ultimately creates brand advocates, which means you create a genuine competitive advantage that turns into business value.

As we discussed in the multi channel section consumers are connecting with brands through multiple touch points, often several at one time.

But organisations are still silo’d especially around new technologies – how joined up are your customer services, IT, marketing and key partners?

SPORT LEADING WAY IN SOCIAL BUSINESS

Perhaps nowhere is social business more relevant than sport – SMW’13 featured at least 7 different talks focusing on this subject - we reviewed 2 of them here. In our blog “Preaching to the converted or preaching to convert” and in the talk “Sport and social: Incredible loyalty, incredible ROI” Richard Clarke from Arsenal talked about how he has worked hard on trying to integrate all elements of the business that has resulted in 6m hits on the arsenal.com website, 0.5m mailing list, 18.5m reach via FB, G+ 1.4m, 2.8m Followers on Twitter and 100m IPB on Arsenal TV. He is currently also experimenting with Soundcloud and Instagram video and activities such as “The Running Man” and their recent Twitter takeover show their commitment to creating a truly social business.

This is where social business and multi platform meet, where becoming a social business also acts as the perfect glue to not only connect fans with social presences, content, conversations and updates but to do so in a manner that allows them to inject personality, include a defined point of view and encourage sharing in a way that ultimately becomes self propelling.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?

Organisations need to train key stakeholders across all departments on social media dos and don’ts, including elements such as activity frequency, which channels to use and the appropriate type of messages. Then, organisations need to give them access to use social at will. Social media is meant to democratise communications; democratising access to it within an organisation will ensure its success.

SOCIAL BUSINESS – SOCIAL MEDIA IS DEAD, LONG LIVE SOCIAL BUSINESS.

‘Social business’ is now overtaking social media

Consistency of customer experience is key

Overcome silo’d nature of organisations for success

Sport is good example of social business

SPEED READ

2.

3.

5.

6.

1.

What a difference a year makes! - Last year you couldn’t get through a talk, seminar or party without hearing the utterance ‘Big Data’ – this year everyone seemed to be making a concerted effort to avoid the ‘BD’ phrase. But that doesn’t mean it is no longer relevant – like social media it has just grown up.

Perhaps more than any other communication channel, it is important to effectively analyse customer data to create personalised and timely social media messages. Social media is a highly personal communications format and customers expect you to treat them as individuals on these channels. When data is not used to determine the next best step for each customer, the consequences can be felt immediately, and there is no point in using social media if your messages fall on deaf ears.

START WITH THE OBJECTIVE

Our blog “So what’s Big Data all about?” talks about the fact that most organisations don’t set objectives for data - they simply jump on the big data bandwagon and often have so much data they don’t know what to do with it and as a result tend to either over report on it or ignore it entirely. It’s important to be objective. The critical question to ask is what level of value are businesses getting from the expenditure they are making on data?

NOT ALL DATA IS NUMBERS

The oft repeated fact that 90% of the World’s data has been created in the last 2 years originated the phrase ‘Big Data’ but a couple of talks also referenced the fact that increasingly this data is visual with stories, feelings and communication being told via imagery, illustration and film. At present no one supplier can use imagery rather than text (keywords and meta data) to collect insight – once this is cracked not only will the amount of data accelerate but the richness of the insights will change the game completely.

PRIVACY NEEDS TO BE CONSIDERED

Perhaps inevitably the privacy issue came up a number of times through the week – the consensus seemed to be that loss of privacy was a consequence of free platforms and experiences, however this can be diminished if customers understand the value they get from sharing data. The industry needs to do a better job of communicating these benefits to customers.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN ?

It might sound odd but the best starting point is the end – have a think about what you want to learn from your data and then set an objective. Then ensure that you spend as much time as possible to really understand your consumer – their social adoption and usage – only then will you be able to plan your social strategy. There were plenty of other elements to consider over the week but the general principle seemed to be - be creative and be ready!

DATA – IT ISN’T ALWAYS THAT BIG BUT IT IS CLEVER.

Personal and timely social messages result from clever use of data

Start at the end – what do you want to achieve?

Consider how visual data could be included

Framing of privacy needs to be addressed

SPEED READ

2.

3.

4.

6.

1.

So at last the lonesome geeky teenager has grown up into an intelligent, independent young person that people want to spend time and converse with across multiple platforms and screens.

Amongst the cacophony of noise that is inevitable at events like Social Media Week it was good to see some broad themes emerging that brands need to consider carefully if they are to master the opportunities that social presents.

SUMMARY.

www.

SPEAK TO USIf you are interested in hearing more about any of these factors and the themes there in or just have a coffee and chat about social then give me a call on 0203141 7700, email me on andrew@gravitythinking.com or pop in and see us (we are right by Tate Modern) at Emerson Studios, 4-8 Emerson Street, London SE1 9DU.

FIND http://gravitythinking.comLIKE http://facebook.com/gravitythinkingFOLLOW http://twitter.com/GravitythinkingCONNECT http://linkedin.com/company/gravitythinkingSEE http://instagram.com/gravitythinking

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

1.