Augie Ray is a Senior Analyst from Forrester Research, an independent research company that provides pragmatic and forward-thinking advice to global leaders in business and technology.
In this information-packed session, you will learn how to develop successful programs that draw in, engage, and leverage the power of social influencers to create brand advocates. Topics will include:
• Creating brand advocates
• Measuring peer influence
• Leveraging brand advocates across the digital landscape
• Driving results from a strong social strategy
You will also learn how the Ripple6 Social Hub can help you scale your social efforts and get the most out of your social strategy:
• Create a critical mass of users and conversations
• Distribute your messages, manage and engage with your audience wherever they are across the web, social networks, your brand site, mobile and more
• Easily extend into Facebook and Twitter from a single point of entry
• Turn your brand web site into a thriving conversational marketing vehicle
6. The Peer Influence Pyramid provides a model to understand trust, scale, and influence. Source: Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/yourdon/3118142319/)
7. Social Broadcasters: few with great reach Michael Arrington Social Broadcasters John Neff Source: February 26, 2010, “Tapping The Entire Online Peer Influence Pyramid” Forrester report
8. In social media, trust and scale are inverse “How much do you trust* the following information sources?” Social networking site profilefrom someone you don’t know 5% Social Broadcasters Blog writing by someoneyou don’t know 7% Social networking site profilefrom someone you know 39% Potential Influencers Blog written by someoneyou know 42% US online adults Source: North American Technographics® Interactive Marketing Online Survey, Q2 2009 (US)* Trust is defined as a 4 or 5 on a scale from 1 [do not trust at all] to 5 [trust a lot].
19. Mass Influencers: 80% of Influence ? ? Mass Influencers ? US online adults Source: North American Technographics Empowerment Online Survey, Q4 2009 (US)
20. Know your Mass Influencers You cannot reach out to all or most Mass Influencers. Don’t forget their offline influence. Give them more content and the means to share it. Understand their characteristics and size. Social Broadcasters Mass Influencers Potential Influencers
33. Marketers’ Challenge:Be everywhere, scaling engagement FragmentationHow can I have a social presence everywhere I need to be? Insights How do I leverage consumers in Social Media for Insights? Trust How do I get my message across if they only trust each other? Scale How do I have conversations with millions of consumers? Online Communities My Website
34. Social Hub Community that scales conversations Connected and centrally managed An asset that brands own Gathers and engages brand advocates View video: http://www.ripple6.com/social-hub
36. The Social Hub Enables Brands To: Activate Advocates for Social / Word Mouth Campaigns Amplify Advocates through syndication to any site, social network or mobile device Can also be used for Private Communities for Insights, Advocacy, Community Co-creation
37. Features that Enable Advocacy Discussion Groups Private Group functionality Polls Viral capabilities Ripple technology, Twitter Publishing, AddThis, Facebook Connect & Fan Page App Social Ads
59. Summary Challenges: Trust Insights Fragmentation Scale Solution: The Social Hub Helps you scale, motivate and manage to create a comprehensive social marketing strategy
Trust: How does trust vary and what does this mean for your marketing strategy?Scale: In a world where 5k Twitter followers seems impressive, how do you achieve true scale?Influence: How do you achieve true influence and not merely generate impressions in social media?
Few social broadcasters – great scaleWho are they? You know them by name—that’s the definition.
… they don’t necessarily have great trust. This means Social Broadcasters are more effective at awareness than preference. When Michael Arrington tells readers about a new product, they click to do their own research; when he says he likes a product, they still click and do their own research.So where does trust reside? At the bottom. Let’s explore what we call Potential Influencers.
Because they hate press releases and PR (or think they do) the key to success… Build long-term value-based relationships.Make special offers, but be aware that doing so becomes a form of sponsorship. Many Social Broadcasters will respond to customized and unique offers, but…But Beware of risks. Not journalists… won’t take what you tell them, keep what they like and ignore the rest. If they don’t like what you have to say, they won’t hesitate to tell their readers. Moreover, when making special offers, you’re crossing the line into endorsements and need to follow FTC rules. Sean Corcoran has written that they key to avoiding both legal and brand issues when sponsoring conversations is to do so w/ transparency.Involve legal resourcesStart small and test—the time to find out consumers or bloggers have an adverse reaction to your sponsored conversation program is before it goes wide and—heaven forbid—not afterward.
At the bottom… scale difficult to achieve but not impossible. Seen brands achieve viral success time after time—the key is to start w/a great idea that gets people talking.Monitor for Social PR problems and react quickly. All it takes is the right situation—or the wrong situation. No brand needs to face a situation like United Breaks Guitars if it listens and responds quickly enough.Potential influencers aren’t as motivated nor as technically savvy as the influencers higher in the pyramid. Make sharing drop-dead easy.While a short-term campaign may help you achieve short-term success, what do you do with your potential influencers now that you’ve found them? Plan for long-term engagement—it’s a costly mistake to jump from one campaign to the next trying to redevelop your influence fresh.And most importantly. Develop programs as if paid media weren’t available.
Mass Influencers are the minority of people in social media who are responsible for 80% of the impressions and posts about products and services.Who are these people? Well, that’s the definition of Mass Influencers: There are tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and possible millions of Mass Influencers in your markets so you can’t know them allWe’ll explore the implications of this in a few minutes.
Peer Impressions: We can count in venues where number of fans, friends, & followers are known, such as…Two big ahas here…
Compared to Nielsen Online 2 trillion
Any product category.Any age or demographic group.Any behavioral group.
We just heard Augie say that in order to Unmask your Mass Influencers to understand & unleash powerful Word of Mouth, you must Build different strategies for each type of influencer, Budget for the 500 billion impressions of peer influence, and Analyze and reach out to your Mass Influencers. I’m going to talk about how you can do that using the Social Hub. There will be plenty of time for questions.
With many brands embracing social media to reach consumers, the opportunities for engagement have exploded, but marketers are faced with new challenges: How to be everywhere and how to scale that engagement. Marketers now need to ask themselves:(Scale) How do I have conversations with millions of consumers?(Fragmentation) How can I have a social presence everywhere I need to be?(Trust) How do I get my message across when consumers really only trust each other?(Insights) How do I leverage consumers in Social Media for Insights?
Broad reach, yet modularCommunity PlatformContent and Workflow ManagementCommunity that scales conversationsBroad reach, yet modular An asset that brands own
The Social Hub helps you scale, motivate your advocates and manage your social efforts creating a more comprehensive and manageable strategy making the most of your social spend.