social studies 101:
deconstructing the social media revolution
february 2009
Twentieth century marketing—Advertising 1.0, if you will—has been traditionally based on making a trade. I’ll trade you 22 minutes of television programming for eight minutes of commercials. Or in exchange for 30 pages of advertising, you’ll receive 70 pages of editorial. While this form of advertising still works, things are changing. Social media (think Facebook, YouTube and Twitter), a sprawling Internet-based virtual water cooler and coffee house, is about a different kind of trade: the exchange of ideas, personal messages, opinions and information. The direct conversational nature of social media holds incredible appeal. Millions of people visit social media websites every day, and according to trends, more time will soon be spent on social media websites than email, search and other Internet uses combined. Because of its size and growth rate, social media offers an unprecedented opportunity for marketers to speak with their audiences rather than at them. It provides a fresh way to reach new markets and create customer relationships. Far from a flash in the digital pan, social media is quickly becoming one of the sharper tools in the marketing kitchen. Welcome to Advertising 2.0.
Reach out and poke someone. Like the cosmos post-Big Bang, the social media universe is rapidly expanding. Once the milieu of college students, pundits and uber-geeks, social media has gone mainstream. And in a big way. In fact, over 13 million Facebook users update their status every day, and millions of others “poke” a Facebook friend, engage in a game of Scrabble or join a snowball fight in a binary-based winter wonderland. The popular kids at the social media lunch table include LinkedIn for business networking, Facebook and MySpace for friends, YouTube for video, Flickr for photos, Digg and StumbleUpon for recommendations and Yelp for reviews. Many of these sites support fan-bases, friend circles or other viral marketing networks that have become distribution channels for marketing-oriented messages. Citrus believes that social media is a new marketing medium that can be used not only to disseminate brand and product messages, but also to help marketers engage consumers in dialog and build long-term relationships. We feel so strongly about the potential of social media that we have created Facebook pages and have used YouTube, Twitter, MySpace, Blogs and podcasts to get our clients’ and our very own marketing messages out into one of the fastest growing areas of the Internet.
While Citrus is convinced about the potential of social media, not every marketer shares our perspective. According to a November 2008 article in AdAge, Ted McConnell, general manager-interactive marketing and innovation at Procter & Gamble Co., does not think that advertisers can leverage the power of social media. He said in part: “I have a reaction to that (social media) as a consumer advocate and an advertiser. What in heaven’s name made you think you could monetize the real estate in which somebody is breaking up with their girlfriend? Consumers weren’t trying to generate media. They were trying to talk to somebody. So it just seems a bit arrogant. ...We hijack their own conversations, their own thoughts and feelings, and try to monetize it.” I disagree. In fact, I find Mr. McConnell’s comments rather old school and surprising since he is applying the tenets of first generation interruption media (TV, radio, etc.) to social media. No, the bread and butter technique of just putting ads in front of an audience does not work as well in social media. However, there is plenty of room for creative, conversation-building and even (oh please help me) outof-the-box, paradigm-shifting marketing that is baked into the social media model. It just takes more creative energy than buying GRPs.
Here is an example of a small, low-cost and timely social media program from Starbucks. To support a “get out the vote” message in Fall 2008 and reward customers for voting, Starbucks created a simple Election Day program on Facebook and YouTube that offered voters a free cup of coffee. Here’s the copy from the Starbucks Facebook page:
What if we all cared enough to vote?
Not just 54% of us, but 100% of us?
What if we cared as much on Nov. 5th as we care on Nov. 4th?
What if we cared all of the time the way we care some of the time?
What if we cared when it was inconvenient as much as we care when it’s convenient?
Would your community be a better place?
Would our country be a better place?
Would our world be a better place?
We think so, too.
Celebrate the election today by coming into any Starbucks and we’ll proudly give you a tall cup of brewed coffee. On us.
You and Starbucks. It’s bigger than coffee.
This program delivered a serious message, a warm hug to Starbucks customers, a community-building online event, positive PR and an important retail promotion at a time when fewer of us have been visiting our local Starbucks locations. In one fell swoop and in a very cost-effective manner. I don’t know how many people popped into their local Starbucks for a half-caf no-foam double latte. But I do know that Starbucks’ video has been viewed on YouTube by over 409,000 people and Starbucks had over 240,000 confirmed event guests on Facebook. Come on P&G, its time to break out of the detergent box.
Who uses Social Media? Hey, who doesnt? Rarely a day goes by that I don’t have a friend request from Facebook, a message via my LinkedIn account or links to YouTube videos sent by friends. And I’m not alone. In June 2008, there were 580 million unique visitors to social networking sites according to Comscore. Facebook alone had 132 million visitors. Users of social media include expected groups like high school and college students (99% of this year’s Amherst University freshman had Facebook pages), plus older adults who recognize the benefits of using these new websites to share and gain information. According to a new Entertainment Trends in America study by The NPD Group (9/08), social media or networking sites used by teenagers and young adults are also being adopted by baby boomers (aged 44-61). The study, which surveyed 11,600 consumers online, found that 41% of baby boomers have visited social networks such as MySpace or Facebook, 61% have been to sites with streaming or downloadable video, and 57% of Web users overall have stopped at social networking sites in the past three months. “Overall, these sites offer a great opportunity to marketers at many age levels, but the boomer visits are really a surprise,” said Russ Crupnick, NPD’s entertainment industry analyst. “These things may be targeted to a younger audience, but as we are seeing, there are more older people who enjoy these services.” The following chart from Forrester Research provides an indication of how various demographic groups participate in social networks. As you can see, younger demographics are more prone to be “creators” of social media content, while older demographics are “spectators” looking for information. What people are doing
Who participates (U.S. online users) Young Teens 12 to 17
Youth 18 to 21
Generation Y 22 to 26
Generation X 27 to 40
Young Boomers 41 to 50
Older Boomers 51 to 61
Seniors 62+
Creators publish Web pages, write blogs, upload videos to sites like YouTube.
34%
37%
30%
19%
12%
7%
5%
24%
37%
34%
25%
18%
15%
11%
11%
16%
18%
16%
15%
16%
11%
51%
70%
57%
29%
15%
8%
6%
49%
59%
54%
41%
31%
26%
19%
34%
17%
21%
42%
54%
61%
70%
Critics comment on blogs and post ratings and reviews.
Collectors use Really Simple Syndication (RSS) and tag Web pages to gather information.
Joiners use social networking sites.
Spectators read blogs, watch peergenerated videos, and listen to podcasts
Inactives are online but don’t yet participate in any form of social media. Data: Forrester Research
All of this represents a major shift in how people use media. Savvy marketers (that’s you) must begin to think and, importantly, test the power of social media to reach a wide range of age groups and demographics.
Categorically amazing. There’s no taxonomy for the living thing that is social media, but we have created a classification system dividing this growing medium into five categories: Communication, Social Networking, Collaboration, Multimedia and WOM /Viral.
Communication Fast-talkers, rejoice. Social media’s communication tools and technology facilitate the distribution of information, allowing users to converse with ease and speed. Blogging, which sounded so exotic when it debuted, has gone mainstream. According to the Blog tracking site Technorati, 120,000 new Blogs are created each day. There are now over 70 million Blogs, including high-traffic overachievers like tech gadget Blogs Engadget and Gizmodo, political Blogs The Huffington Post and Daily Kos, Seth Godin’s marketing Blog, and the corporate Direct2Dell or Official Google Blog. You’ve done Blogs? Now there are micro Blogs. Twitter, which allows users to exchange brief, frequent answers to the question “What are you doing now?”, is the largest micro Blog network. Citrus used Twitter to allow Oregonians to follow and comment on the giant roving tomato we created for the 2008 Oregon State Fair. Dell has used Twitter to support realtime interactions to international presentations. And tech guru Guy Kawasaki uses Twitter to stay in touch with his worldwide audience. One of his latest tweets? Get this: “P&G not sure social media is the way to go for advertising (with a link to the article).” Of course, Twitter isn’t merely the purview of the technorati, illuminati or any other kind of -ati. A recent headline in USA TODAY demonstrated the mainstreamness of Twitter: “Moms offended by Motrin ads get tweet revenge through Twitter.” Social media works both directions: it can transport your message to millions, and it can be used by consumers to spread complaints. But we’ll get to that in a bit.
Social Networking The big Kahunas of social networking include Facebook, MySpace and the business network tool, Linkedin. The audiences for MySpace and Facebook are ginormous (240 million users worldwide) with Facebook taking the lead from MySpace in 2008. The popularity of these social networking sites is fueled by personal interactivity. According to the PEW Internet & American Life Project (12/08), “online social network applications are mainly used for explaining and maintaining personal networks, and most adults, like teens, are using them to connect with people they already know.”
- 89% use their online profiles to keep up with friends
- 57% use their profile to make plans with friends
- 49% use them to make new friends
- Other uses: organize with other people for an event, issue or cause; flirt with someone; promote themselves or their work; make new business contacts
For those who don’t already know, Facebook is a free-access website in which users connect via networks (organized by city, workplace, school, etc.), interact with friends and communicate about themselves. Facebook pages can contain personal or corporate information, contact information, status updates, videos, photos, invitations, fan photos, and “the Wall” for quick virtual conversations and discussion boards. When updated, each Facebook page automatically communicates the changes to its fan base (e.g. friends, fans, etc.). So will Facebook get you face-time with your target? Is it effective? Is it worth the effort? Yes, yep and absolutely. In fact, we believe virtually every brand should consider a Facebook presence. Why not? The key to success, as with any media effort, is to creatively leverage the available Facebook tools to create a compelling destination. Nike Shoes has over 1 million fans. Coca Cola has over 2 million fans. Even the Mini Cooper S has 130,000 fans. All of these Facebook fans are actively involved with these corporate brands. Facebook isn’t just impressions—it’s relationships. This is an active medium with enormous potential. The easiest way to dip your toe into Facebook’s marketing waters is to create a corporate Facebook page. You can ramp up from there with an event or program like Starbucks’ get-out-the-vote-get-a-coffee effort. Facebook also offers plethora of advertising tools, including run-of-network ads that can be bought online with tools that remind one of
Google, sponsored social stories and the new “I Am” email service. You can also target advertising on Facebook. A local dentist in my town uses Facebook to deliver a targeted ad to my Facebook page. Talk about drilling down. LinkedIn, the business relationship network, is the digital equivalent of exchanging business cards. As of November 2008, LinkedIn claimed over 30 million experienced professionals in its global network. I recently used LinkedIn to locate business contacts in Thailand ahead of a trip. Citrus will soon use LinkedIn as a business development tool to target B-to-B business prospects for a five-state regional client. In addition to pure marketing, both job seekers and savvy companies are using LinkedIn to find and fill important positions. Social marketing can go beyond participation in existing networks. Marketers are now building their own stand-alone social network sites using web-based tools like Ning. These niche social networks are websites that include communication tools that allow members of communities to share information and collaborate. Ning, with over 80,000 Ning sites, allows anyone to create their own branded social network. 15,000 people are using ASPCA’s Online Community. What relationships do you want to build? Social network marketing is such fertile ground that it deserves a separate conversation and more detailed examination. I smell another white paper.
Collaboration Social media collaboration includes social bookmarking, user ratings and collaborative contribution. Social bookmarking allows people to share their bookmarks. Delicious, the largest network with over 150 million bookmarks, is a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing and discovering web bookmarks. Delicious aggregates the bookmarks of its users to help other users find what the crowd thinks are the best and most useful websites. In some ways, delicious mirrors Google in that it points people to answers. Looking for a new digital camera? Delicious points you to the website Digital Camera Review that has been bookmarked over 17,000 times. StumbleUpon is another collaborative tool. StumbleUpon is an Internet community that allows its users to discover and rate Web pages, photos, and videos. With over 77 million visits per month, Wikipedia is the most highly trafficked collaboration website. Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia with millions of articles contributed collaboratively using Wiki software. Search on virtually any term in Google and Wikipedia will be in the top results. “Insurance”? Wikipedia is number 2. “Casino”? Numbers 2 (the movie) and 5 (the gaming hall.) With this level of Google results activity, I recommend that you consider having a Wikipedia page for your business. It’s easy and it may form a strong element of your search engine optimization program.
Multimedia Maybe there’s nothing good on TV. But there’s plenty to watch—and share—on the small-screen of the Internet. Chances are, you’ve been on YouTube (or at least been linked to a YouTube video) at least once in the last 48 hours. YouTube is a video sharing website owned by Google where users can upload, view and share video clips. The numbers are mind-blowing. In January 2008 alone, nearly 79 million users had made over 3 billion video views. In case you were wondering, the most viewed video of all time is Avril Lavigne’s “Girlfriend” added in February 2007 by RCA Records. It has been viewed 113,346,997 times. That’s 113 MILLION views, folks! After you’ve channeled Scorcese and made a compelling video, put down the megaphone and put your oeuvre on YouTube where it will be seen by some 66 million visitors (give or take). Or try YouTube’s sponsored videos. They’re kind of like Google ads in that you select keywords to help people locate your video. Another advertising option is running banner ads. Placements can be targeted by age, gender, geography, content category and time of day. Search on fashion week and you might get Tide’s ad starring Tim Gunn (OK, P&G does get social marketing’s YouTube—sometimes.) Another multimedia option is to create your own brand channel. Even KPMG, a staid accounting firm, has one. Here is their YouTube ad for their channel. I suggest you go and visit:
The photo sharing site of choice is of course Yahoo!’s Flickr. I recently searched on photos for Toyotas and was served up auto-related text ads. When I searched on Prius, a Land Rover ad was displayed. The Viral/Word of mouth category is rather difficult to define since almost all social media is, by nature, viral. I get a heads-up on what’s happening from my Facebook buddies and I’m sending YouTube videos by my colleague Marion in Miami.
WOM / Viral Viral marketing is hot. After all, the promise is that consumers and customers are going to spread your word for you. Virtually every Citrus client wanted the singular grease of viral marketing in 2008. However, creating a truly viral campaign isn’t easy. We have seen many major agency-developed viral campaigns get zero traction in the social media cloud. Viral ideas usually require at least one, if not all, of the following to hit pay dirt: some news value, something never seen or heard before, something a bit risqué, a homemade vibe and an edge. But not that many marketers are willing to go to the required “viral edge” and jump off. Are you able to create your own Whopper Freakout?
The viral word – once it does hit a nerve—can be delivered by Blogs, traditional forums, videos and social networks. On LinkedIn alone, I have 138 business-related connections that are then linked to close to 2 million others through a six-degree of separation web of relationships. Move over, Kevin Bacon. According to LinkedIn, I gained 941 brand new people in my network in the last 10 days. It’s this type of network (a viral network) that B to B marketers want to leverage. Even review sites provide a bit of viral. Call it paralysis by group analysis, but I can no longer go into a traditional bookstore and buy a book I am unfamiliar with. I have become addicted to Amazon’s professional and reader reviews. I’m not the only one jonesing for reviews and Blog-driven guidance. According to eMarketer, a BuzzLogic-sponsored study found that half of American Blog-readers thought Blogs were useful for gaining information about future purchases. I cannot imagine being a product manufacturer without trying to manage my online reputation, which gets passed virally between friends just like the common cold.
Reputation Management The new social media model is all about conversations—from exchanging views to sharing information to providing opinions. Therfore, social media is a powerful reputation driver. Your rep and the criteria that people use to make purchase decisions about you and your category are now driven by real person to person, not just your out-bound messaging. Power to the people! In fact, reputation management and tracking online social reputations has become a science – and a business. You can track your reputation by using Google Alerts, Google Trends, the Blog search engine Technorati and new software start-ups like RapLeaf and trackur. Interested in a bigger Big Brother? Nielsen brings you BuzzMetrics. “My BuzzMetrics is a fully-customizable dashboard that allows brand managers to easily monitor and analyze online buzz about their brand or organization based on a wide range of sources. Accessible via an intuitive Web interface, My BuzzMetrics provides real-time data collection, powerful analytical and segmentation capabilities, at-a-glance-metrics and a range of report and delivery options. Quick search capabilities, an intuitive interface with customizable views, filters and a range of reporting options provide a completely customizable user experience.” - Nielsen Buzz Metrics Who knew that buzz-management could be such a buzz?
Get out there and Social-ize. Citrus clients in categories that include recruitment, sportswear, a state lottery, retail, higher education and manufacturing have asked us to incorporate social media into their marketing efforts. Here’s what we’re telling them are the key success factors.
Get personal. Start by getting your personal profile (that’s you) on a social network. You need to personally witness the considerable power of social media. Once hooked, you can now consider an early-stage, low-cost marketing test using social media.
Get a little face time. Build a Facebook presence for your company or brand. Leverage targeted advertising channels on MySpace and YouTube. If you have a business-to-business focus, purchase the rights to advertise and send direct emails on LinkedIn. Create a Wikipedia page. If you have fast-paced news, try Twitter (check out twitter.zappos.com). Track your reputation.
Team up with a pro. Like they say on TV, don’t try this at home. Building a professional social media presence takes the help of, well, professionals. Remember, your online reputation is as important as any other form of word of mouth. Over 70% of consumers have reported that they sometimes, often or always use social media to make purchase decisions and 59% of shoppers say they use social media to vent about bad experiences. Creating positive interactions will help ensure a glowing reputation. Social media is as important as any other marketing tool you use.
Target. Just as you plan another media campaign, find out what social media your customers and prospects use and plan accordingly.
Engage. Social marketing is about developing relationships and creating a corporate voice and dialogue. Act and think like a human being, not an advertiser. Social media is 24/7. You will need to make a staff or marketing partner commitment.
Get real. Think of this as a PS to the rule of engagement. Act like an interesting and informative friend instead of a marketer. Transparency and honesty rule in the social world. Social media users will smell a poorly designed social marketing program in nanoseconds.
Keep track. Social media are digital tools that provide quantitative results. You will know if you are successful by the number of people interested in your message. You can also begin to use the new reputation management tools to track what others are saying about you.
Adjust. With social programs you will be learning 24/7. So, be prepared to make adjustments to your strategies and tactics. A good mantra? Listen, learn, act.
Now that you know the ins and outs of social media, get out there and be social. It’s a wild (and wonderful) world. Like I said earlier, this isn’t something to do at home without adult supervision. We recommend (surprise!), that you employ the services of an experienced social marketing firm. Even better, a social marketing firm that can add the benefits of years of traditional marketing and branding expertise to create an efficient 360º integrated program. Give me a call at 541.419.2309, an email at peter.levitan@hellocitrus.com, or a shout to my Facebook or LinkedIn page (I need all the friends I can get) and I’ll help you get started.
Peter Levitan, President
hellocitrus.com