Our conclusion being that if brands could find a way to recruit more high sharers more people would recommend the brand to their friends and sales would almost certainly increase.

Over the past couple of weeks, two brands have caught my eye for running campaigns designed to increase the number of high sharers interacting with the brand.

The first is Samsung which has launched Samsung Nation. This is a social loyalty program where people can earn badges (and rewards) for reviewing products, tweeting, sharing links, contributing to Samsung communities and, of course, buying a product!

It is a fantastic execution designed to tap into the exact finding of our study using a combination of gamification techniques and monetary rewards to not just recruit high sharers for the brand but to get existing sharers to start sharing even more.

The second example is right at the other end of the spectrum because it is a niche online small business: http://tirechaindealer.com/. (You guessed what they sell).

I discovered them last weekend. It was raining in San Francisco so I got excited at the prospect of going skiing again in Tahoe so I thought I would get prepared.

I purchased some chains and then on Monday morning when I got in to the office there was an email waiting for me which offered me $3 for recommending them on Google by clicking +1 and a $10 refund for taking part and dropping a link in a discussion forum (nice crowdsourced SEO) or writing a blog post.

What they are doing is really smart. Their program is definitely SEO lead but the principles are exactly the same for recruiting and activating high sharers.  After all, I did find them searching on Google so it is clearly working.

Having mentioned both of these examples at a recent company meeting lots of people had experienced similar programs. One such program mentioned by @Codyelam was from a vacation rental firm Holiday Velvet, which was offering 35 Euros for Liking them on Facebook and 50 Euros to a customer who created a video of the apartment. I know the Euro isn’t in great shape right now but 35 Euros for a Facebook like seems a bit pricey!

I am sure you have examples of other brands creating programs to incentivize sharing content so it would be great to hear about them so we can start to collate them.

If you are interested in learning more about High Sharers and how brands can identify and activate them we are holding an event in San Francisco on 13^th December to discuss this study in more detail.

source: ABC News

In the last 24 hours, a few interesting things have happened in the airline industry, but none of it should come as a surprise. Rather, the somber reality that American Airlines is filing for bankruptcy, and conversely the daring move by Virgin American to let 146 friends rent a plane and name it for $60,000 on Gilt for Cyber Monday, are simply a sign of the times.

Across all industries, there continues to be talk about brands that “get it” and those that don’t when it comes to using social tools and reaching customers via digital channels. This is no truer than among major airline companies. American Airlines, a stalwart with a hell of a name, has seen its business demise as it has stood still and watched scrappier more energetic brands like JetBlue and Virgin America fly by them (pun intended). While it is not to say that social media is the only aspect that has led to the success or failure of these businesses, a study from merely a few weeks ago that rated American Airlines the “most hated” on social media and Virgin the “most loved” can now be seen as some serious foreshadowing to where we are today.

In the case of American Airlines vs. upstarts like Virgin and JetBlue, one clear area that has led to the love/hate divide is customer service. This is one of the most fundamental elements of social media. Nothing is worse than being stuck in an airport. Except for feeling like the airline doesn’t care.

But, what JetBlue and Virgin also really “get” is the experience. Both online and offline. And, more importantly, where the two meet. While American Airlines has been stingy with the free peanuts, Virgin has been dishing out Chromebooks to its passengers.  Further, JetBlue has introduced a whole new lexicon: “jetting.” Everything they do – from booking your travel online to arriving in the terminal to taking off and landing – all comes back to “jetting.” That’s smart and it’s worked.

What also works is taking risks. That $60,000 trip with all your friends and chance to re-name a plane? Someone bought it.

source: Gilt

Seth tweeted @ChipotleMedia and emailed Chipotle’s CEO Steve Ells to state his dismay. Within the same day he received a personal response from Steve, who then took the time to take the matter offline and to the phone. During this phone call, Steve informed Seth that Chipotle will now include the bacon facts on their menu.

Now, one could argue that Seth got the extra special attention because he’s got a fancy title at a major publisher. (I doubt he’s the first to ever complain on Twitter about the pork and beans issue.) However, the fact is that Chris Arnold (the guy behind the @ChipotleMedia account), saw Seth’s comments, escalated them to the right people and had it taken care of all before the day was through, leading to a very happy customer.

That right there is the essence of community management and the heart of social media. Kudos to the Chipotle team and customers who voice their opinions.

At Beyond, we believe in not only creating experiences that people want to share with friends, but helping brands create and maintain communities that people can rely upon and want to come back to. Providing quality customer service is just one piece of that puzzle, to find out more: talk to us.

Last week Italian fashion house Versace disabled wall posts to its Facebook page after it became overrun with messages from activists railing against the brand’s use of sandblasting, a tactic that gives denim a rugged appearance. A petition started by Change.org against the “killer jeans” sparked the fiasco, where links to the campaigns ran amuck on Versace’s burgeoning 500,000-fans-strong wall.

According to Change.org, sandblasting is extremely hazardous to workers because of its high-pressure firing process, which has caused death among workers in Turkey and Bangladesh. Silicosis, a fatal pulmonary disease, can be developed when large quantities of silica dust are inhaled. Labels including H&M, Gucci and Levi’s have thus discontinued sandblasted garments from their lines.

All sandblasting-related messages on Versace’s wall have been deleted, and fans can only comment on posts put up by the label. This instance shines light onto a pressing issue: How should brands (especially luxury brands) control communication on Facebook?

Some call Versace’s move a PR mistake, where the brand missed out on an opportunity to engage with their fans and explain themselves. After all, brands create Facebook pages to interact with customers and give them a voice. It’s also a place for brands to communicate with their fans directly – not a discussion forum. Though, others claim there were so many comments on Versace’s page, censoring their wall was the only viable option.

It’s a significant debate, considering luxury brands were relatively late comers to the social media fore. Their reliance on exclusivity, the need to maintain the appropriate aesthetics and general hesitation to experiment with new marketing strategies for fear of jeopardising their image made high-end entites hesitant to all-access, visually painless sites like Facebook. Now abreast with the perks of social media, most luxury labels are on board, albeit with varying digital prowess. For example, DKNY allows fans to post on its Wall, though the messages are partially concealed in the “Most Recent” Wall tab. Conversely, fan-authored Wall posts have famously been ever-disabled by Burberry. A recent survey of luxury brands’ Facebook practice is detailed by L2, who ranked BMW, Clinique and Audi as achieving the most successful Facebook marketing campaigns.

Regardless of how Versace treads forward, the incident stresses the need for brands to have a solid social media plan before diving in.

This is where the net promoter score (NPS) comes in. For those not familiar with it, it is an almost comically simple metric. In fact, it is often referred to as the “ultimate question” or the “only question that matters.” Starting sometime in the mid-90s, academic and commercial research started pointing to the fact that this question was a strong predictor of repurchasing behavior and customer profitability. A few clever marketers decided to slap the brand name “Net Promoter Score” on the concept, and the rest, as they say, is history.

The question (scored on a scale of 1-10): “How likely is it that you would recommend [Company X] to a friend or colleague?”

Now, NPS has been largely confined to the world of survey-based research, which is widely used within market research. But the idea translates well to media, social media and influencer analytics. In fact, since that is where opinions are now often shaped as part of the consumer decision journey, it is in fact a vital area to measure.

We apply the metric in our research (see example below), but unlike those who simply use sentiment and renaming it as NPS, we think that it is critical that the basis of NPS is well understood to be able to translate it to content analysis.

For one thing, sentiment is typically measured as “good,” “bad,” or “mixed,” i.e., it is typically a three-point scale. Second, it tends to be a blanket catchall of opinions towards a company. NPS is a very specific metric, measuring the likelihood of someone recommending a brand to someone else. The more specific you are on what you measure, the better you can read what the outcome means.

The metric is far more indicative of advocacy and loyalty than classic sentiment is. And NPS, as we know, is related to very tangible business benefits such as profitability and customer acquisition costs. Combined with attribute-level sentiment, it gives you the granular data you need to formulate a plan of action to affect change.

• Social Media Case Studies Presented at Budapest Affiliates Conference by Judith Lewis

“Anyone who knows me, knows I’ve been around longer than Google. They also know I love sharing knowledge and one of the ways I do this is by speaking at conferences. I recently spoke at the BAC – Budapest Affiliates Conference. Affiliates are an important marketing channel for non-branded keywords in search and they are often able to capture sales a company might otherwise miss.”

• The Gold Rush by Nick Rappolt

“We’ve just finished a digital campaign for Amadeus called the Gold Rush 2020. The aim of this campaign was to drive traffic and downloads to the research report they created with Epoch PR and Oxford Economics.”

• It’s Nice That. What Is It? by Marley Petropoulos

“I don’t know if anyone in the audience really knew what to expect from last Wednesday’s It’s Nice That future:content event and even now they are probably still scratching their heads – well, at least I am.”

• Is Search Broken? (Part 1) by David Hargreaves

?I have had a number of discussions recently with brands about how they can increase traffic from organic search and which function is best placed to drive organic search: Comms or marketing? I would certainly not profess to be an expert on search (we have our very own Judith Lewis for that) but I know enough to be dangerous.”

• My Love/Hate Relationship With Automated Media Measurement by Seth Duncan

“The key takeaway is that the artificial intelligence that these tools offer don’t necessarily work for every brand or communications campaign and, even when they do work well, they require more human intervention than you expect.”

• The Facebook Four: What a Fan Wants by Faith Chihil

“Recently, Beyond completed a study analyzing over 14,000 posts on the corporate Facebook Fan pages of the world’s 100 most valuable brands, as well as a consumer poll of near 4,000 people based in the UK and the US.”

• Web Design: What Ever Happened to the Design Process? by Troy Chafin

“Don’t forget that design is a process, this includes web design.  Yes, I know – your client wants their site live yesterday.  And yes, your client is tech savvy enough to know that something can be pushed live on the internet in a matter of minutes and then changed 34,358 times post launch.  But that does not mean the value of design should be ignored.  This value depreciates when the process is taken for granted.”

A user named Maktar on UrbanDictionary defined “unfriend” as the following:

“The act of removing a friend from your Facebook account. Compulsive people prune their friend list periodically, removing people that they no longer have contact with. More often though, unfriending is only done when a particular friend’s updates and self-promotions become so annoying that you can no longer stand hearing about them. Or you might unfriend someone when they piss you off, however, this is not very effective since the person who is unfriended is not notified that you unfriended them and you’d be better off to keep them as a friend and plot your revenge.”

As much glee as we might get from whittling down those so-called “non-friend friends,” unfortunately for marketers the same principles above can be applied to product/brand pages.

When a company’s Facebook page fails to interact with their fans in the right way– not posting in a timely manner, not posting relevant content, not making actual interactions at all– not only does it reflect on the company’s lack of social media savvy, but on the company’s services and products as well.

Recently, Beyond completed a study analyzing over 14,000 posts on the corporate Facebook Fan pages of the world’s 100 most valuable brands, as well as a consumer poll of near 4,000 people based in the UK and the US. The purpose of the study was to find out why people become Fans, what keeps them engaged on Fan pages, what the true sentiment of people’s contributions are, and how users can become brand advocates.

After analyzing all this information, we’ve developed a list of guidelines to help brands develop their own digital brand interaction strategies. We call this list…

The Facebook Four

1) Provide fans with offers and discounts

Our study found that 42% of people friend a brand to get a discount or offer. Putting together an incentive program for your loyal fans to run with the rest of your content can be crucial to success. Promoting your page as a channel for reward distribution as well as a place for conversation must be done with a clear strategy. Posting a coupon is far different than actually maintaining consumer loyalty. Making sure to follow up customer questions and comments about different offers is inherent to a continued relationship.

2) Your reputational risk is lower than you think, so don’t just focus on managing the negative

We found that only 5% of all comments were negative. While there is always the ability to monitor and delete this kinds of responses, sometimes the better response is a public one. If you find a complaint, address it, and if you can, direct an extended conversation in private, away from the main page. On the other hand, sometimes other fans might be the people coming to the rescue…

3)  Empower your fans!

Our study showed that fans are 9 times more likely to help another fan than a brand itself. This isn’t to say that brands are lazy, it’s that a fan page is more successful if it remains exactly that: a page for fans. Our data suggests that fans may feel uncomfortable on pages where brands appear to be closely monitoring conversations. While it is okay to start a conversation by posting a question to all fans, for example, it appears to be off-putting when companies respond too often to fan comments. As you begin to amass more followers, aim for a ratio of brand comments to fan comments of 1:10. You can do this by using polls to increase comment levels as well as asking fans for content ideas.

4)  Fans prefer images over video

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and in this case, it’s also worth much more time. Posts that contained a mixture of media types (e.g., an image and text) tended to receive the most likes. This may have to do with the time it takes to watch video versus seeing a quick photo with an accompanying quote, as well as embeddability across different channels. That said, don’t dismiss fancy applications altogether. Higher fan count was correlated with a greater number of tabs, including applications, on a company’s page. Leveraging the two can be the key to rich and active brand community.

David Hargreaves, our CEO had this to say about consumer engagement and social media:

“Brands are clearly struggling to embrace the new rules of conversational marketing which requires them to act as catalysts of the conversation and not control it. This research clearly shows that those brands that focus on empowering fans, creating interesting content to spark conversations and providing a light corporate touch not only have more fans but those fans are more engaged.”

In short, make sure your page is a publisher, purveyor, and proponent of your brand.

Watch the video:

Want to read the whole whitepaper? Find it in the sidebar or right-click, save-as here.

Bonus! As part of conducting the Brand Interaction Study and sharing its findings with brands, we are offering a limited number of two-hour workshops with brands where we’ll share insights with brands and provide some simple, easy to follow recommendations for increasing engagement across their social platforms.

A recent study published in Booz Allen’s Strategy+Business, point to some of the same reasons  that we have found in our research for this effect, and include much that is relevant to communications professionals. The study, authored by Young & Rubicam’s John Gerzema and Ed Lebar, and titled “The Trouble with Brands,” presents data that makes the case that brands have been losing power over time, with the exception of a handful of brands whose values are afforded a premium and financially outperform their peers. This is based on intangibles the study’s authors call “energized differentiation,” but really boil down to having an emotional connection with customers (i.e., emotional loyalty), in that the brands speak to their customers (relevance) and have a unique meaning to their customers (differentiation). Further, these brands “add up to a more exciting, dynamic, and creative experience” to use the authors’ words. These brands have built valuable equity with both customers and prospective customers, creating intangible value. Apple is probably the most obvious example of such a brand at the moment, but since we do a substantial amount of work in the technology industry,they are an inescapable example. Apple has emerged as one of the more revered brands of recent times, and in our research the brand continually elicits a share of voice and sentiment that is completely out of proportion to its share of the markets in which it competes, be it PCs, laptops, mobile phones or consumer electronic devices. If you also look at market capitalization and valuation ratios, the company is afforded a rich premium by investors (PEG ratio of 1.5 and P/S ratio of 4.15 at this moment). Customers are also willing to pay a premium (Apple has a market share of 91% for all PCs priced over $1,000 – which shows clear dominance of the premium segment). And the media loves to write about Apple. Much of that is explainable by rational factors: investors like the margins and growth rates, and customers like the innovative products and product design. But, there is an emotional connection that causes both investors and customers to be willing to pay a premium and sustains the momentum. This premium is due to the company’s ability to excite the public, the fact that the products delight the customers, and the fact that a leader like Steve Jobs can captivate journalists to the point of worship.

PC/Notebook Market: Share of Voice Vs. Market Share

While these intangibles may seem very wooly, they are in fact very measurable. As an example, in the 90s I worked on building a customer satisfaction and loyalty program for a large software company who had a dominant position in one market and wanted to extend it to another – and they needed to understand how well loyalty would extend to this market that was relatively new to them. One of the key findings from our research – based on interviewing senior-level executives at the 2000 largest companies in the world – was that our client had two types of loyal customers: those who bought because they either had no choice or logic dictated it (e.g., because of issues such as compatibility, cost, or corporate policy), or those who not only stayed loyal because of the facts, but also showed a high level of emotional involvement in the purchase. They were more likely to recommend the brand (something Net Promoter has since exploited in its simple brand advocacy model), but they also exhibited other perceptions that indicated that there was an emotional connection that shouldn’t necessarily be part of a rational purchasing decision process. In understanding these perceptions lay the key to  a successful marketing strategy.

Ultimately, in our current environment where trust is easily lost and brand value is eroding, it is more important than ever for a brand to understand the strenght of the emotional bond with their customers, and to use that knowledge to better manage their brand. And if you think about it, much of what goes into creating that bond boils down to good PR strategy: design and communicate a clear vision of the brand that is distinct, is authentic, resonates and engages its audience (aka the DARE methodology employed by Text 100). Further, the leadership of a brand is key to communicating this vision, and marketing must back this up by sticking to the same message and effectively engaging the brand’s audience. Great brands don’t create value by accident – they do it through deliberate planning, thorough research and flawless execution. So if you do not have a clear strategy on how you will excite your market, then ultimately, your brand value will suffer. And of course, if you do not measure, you won’t know.