social web presentation to agenda setting 2008

Agenda Setting andthe Social Web

How the Social Web empowers the consumer and citizen and what to do about it to your and their advantage

Philip Sheldrake

Director of Digital Strategies

Racepoint Group, a W2 Group company

Agenda Setting Conference

Zurich, 4th December 2008

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2Racepoint Group. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License

About the Social Web

“...The social web will be the most critical marketing environment around.

“...The social web will become the primary center of activity for whatever you do when you shop, plan, learn, or communicate. It may not take over your entire life (one hopes), but it will be the first place you turn for news, information, entertainment, diversion.”

Larry Weber, Chairman, W2 Group, “Marketing to the Social Web”


The Transactional Web

The first consumer Web revolution took us well into the current decade. This was the Transactional Web if you like.


The Social Web

The second phase, the Social Web, is catalysed by the so-called Web 2.0 technologies facilitating easy-to-use, engaging and rewarding online social interaction.

It’s about self-expression, relationships, user-rating, affiliation, trust and user-created content.


The Cluetrain Manifesto, 1999

This seminal text asserted that the Internet allows markets to revert to the days when a market was defined by people gathering and talking amongst themselves about buyer reputation, seller reputation, product quality and prices.

This was lost for a while as the scale of organisations and markets outstripped the facility for consumers to coalesce.

The consumers’ / citizens’ conversation is now reignited.


The Social Web Opportunity

Organisations’ engagement with the Social Web is still sufficiently nascent that it offers earlier adopters competitive advantage.

In the longer term, it will a condition of staying in the race.

Ultimately, the Social Web has revolutionised communications massively and irrevocably, to the benefit of the consumer, the adaptive and agile organisation, and those who cherish an open society.


It's happening, NOW!

Viewership of broadcast media is declining

Broadcast media CPMs are increasing

Technology enables people to avoid ads

Audiences are fragmenting and harder to reach


Social Web Analytics – Your Eyes and Ears

If you could go back to the mid-90s and offer a marketer a little box that could sit on her desk and let her listen in on thousands of customer conversations and participate in those discussions regardless of geography or time zone, it would appear so far-fetched that she’d probably call security.


Social Web Analytics – The Definition

I define Social Web Analytics (SWA) as:

the application of search, indexing, semantic analysis and business intelligence technologies to the task of identifying, tracking, listening to and participating in the distributed conversations about a particular brand, product or issue, with emphasis on quantifying the trend in each conversation's sentiment and influence.

The Social Web Analytics eBook 2008


Motivations

Your motivations for forging and executing a social Web strategy and adopting SWA can be grouped as:

1. ‘New’ PR

2. Brand

3. Measurement & Evaluation

4. Market Research & New Product Development.


1. New PR / PR 2.0

1990s

Public relations increasingly focused on traditional media as the best, if not sole way, to reach the public.

New PR / PR 2.0

A reversion to building a dialogue with all your influencers, stakeholders and audiences.

Fresh emphasis on listening, and developing content that helps to earn understanding and support, using all digital channels.


1. New PR / PR 2.0 – consumer

"91% say consumer content is the #1 aid to a buying decision"JC Williams Group

"87% trust a friend’s recommendation over a review by a critic"Marketing Sherpa

"Social network users are 3 times more likely to trust peer opinions over advertising when making purchase decisions"JupiterResearch

"1 word-of-mouth conversation has the impact of 200 TV ads"BuzzAgent

"Social media sites are the fastest-growing category on the Web - doubling their traffic over the last year"Comscore


1. New PR / PR 2.0 – business

"Information Technology buyers trust social media more than any other content source"IT Toolbox / PJA IT Social Media Index

The social Web may have been led by the consumer, but B2B isn't far behind.

Social networking is being used:

• to build professional relationships, to develop authority and exercise influence

• to assist internal comms and connect dispersed operations.


Neoware – a case study

Challenge: Raise awareness of Neoware’s new thin client to IT decision makers, and drive inbound enquiries

Approach: Develop a short video promoting the durability of the e900 and syndicate on the social Web (YouTube, blogs etc.)

Results: A-list industry blog coverage and associated comments and buzz. Strong 8% response rate from corresponding email campaign. Content reused at tradeshows, events, and for internal comms

Accolade: Video was honoured at the 12th annual Webby Awards


2. Brand

Your stakeholders now collectively define what your brand means, what it stands for, based on all of their lifelong interactions with your organisation and partners and customers. You can’t tell them.

You can seek to influence by exercising finely attuned ears and projecting an open, honest and engaging voice.

In other words, dialogue is essential.



A polemic... If our campaigns strive to exert influence, isn't search the ultimate measure of the influence achieved, and the change in that influence over time?

Even more so when today's consumer search engines incorporate social ranking and elements of semantic analysis currently the preserve of SWA.



It's early days for SWA, so a common approach to measurement has yet to be formalised. We strongly recommend some approaches over others. Examples:

Business impact

Message pull through

Sentiment (tonality) trending / evangelising

Meme tracks... identifying common influence channels

Comparisons with competing and benchmark brands and their associated products and services

‘Buzz'


4. Market Research & New Product Development


4. Market Research & New Product Development

Traditional Research Continuous Engagement

ad hoc or regular interval continuous

one-way (needs a carrot!) two-way (mutually rewarding)

unemotional emotional

independent of loyalty inculcates brand loyalty

tight focus a wide focus

deals with sequential parameters multi-parametric

designed for statistical confidence designed to detect weak signals

Insight

Lastly, some examples…


Honda


Pizza Hut


Gordon Brown, Prime Minister of the UK


Bank of America


And finally, a topic close to your hearts...

Executive compensation has concerned the blogosphere in recent weeks:

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Credits

Marketing to the Social Web

© 2007 Weber

http://marketingtothesocialweb.com

The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual

© 1999, 2001 Levine, Locke, Searls & Weinberger

http://www.cluetrain.com/book

Social Web Analytics charts

In partnership with Brandwatch

http://www.brandwatch.net

Photograph of woman and laptop

tuexperto_com5

http://flickr.com/photos/26158685@N04/2798850223

http://marketingtothesocialweb.com/

http://www.cluetrain.com/book

http://www.brandwatch.net/


Contact

Philip Sheldrake, CEng

Telephone +44 20 8752 3202

Email [email protected]

Blog www.philipsheldrake.me.uk

Network www.marcomprofessional.com

Twitter @sheldrake

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eBook www.socialwebanalytics.com

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