research

Marketing 101 Lessons Social Marketers Shouldn’t Forget

In watching the social media revolution unfold around us over the past several years, there’s a recurring theme that keeps popping up. I see it all the time in discussions on “best practices” and in forums and blogs where marketers lament the fact that you can’t measure ROI in social and that marketing has completely changed. The “gurus” out there say it’s a brand new world—the past is past—we have to throw out the old and create the new, yada, yada, yada.

You know what I say to that? Phooey!

The number ONE reason some marketers fail when they try to use social media is that they DON’T take into account important traditional marketing lessons from the past—and I’m talking Plain Jane, Vanilla Manilla lessons that should be the bread and butter for any marketer. Social media doesn’t supplant traditional marketing practices and tenants. In fact, it enhances it when handled correctly.

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The Interest Graph on Twitter is Alive: Studying Starbucks Top Followers

Social media is maturing as are the people embracing its most engaging tools and networks. Perhaps most notably, is the maturation of relationships and how we are expanding our horizons when it comes to connecting to one another. What started as the social graph, the network of people we knew and connected to in social networks, is now spawning new branches that resemble how we interact in real life.

This is the era of the interest graph – the expansion and contraction of social networks around common interests and events. Interest graphs represent a potential goldmine for brands seeking insight and inspiration to design more meaningful products and services as well as new marketing campaigns that better target potential stakeholders.

While many companies are learning to listen to the conversations related to their brands and competitors, many are simply documenting activity and mentions as a reporting function and in some cases, as part of conversational workflow. However, there’s more to Twitter intelligence than tracking conversations.

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Research: Fastest-growing companies accelerated social media usage

Research released yesterday from The Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth indicates fast-growing U.S. companies continue to out-shine the Fortune 500 on deployment of social media marketing initiatives.  The research effort, now in its fourth year, studies a compilation of the fastest-growing private U.S. companies compiled annually by Inc. Magazine.

Social networking continues to lead the way. The platform most familiar to the 2010 Inc. 500 is Facebook with 87% of respondents claiming to be “very familiar” with it.  Another noteworthy statistic around familiarity is Twitter’s amazing “share of mind” with 71% percent (up from 62% in 2009) reporting being familiar with the relatively new micro blogging and social networking site. Forty-four percent say Facebook is the single most effective social networking platform they use.

In terms of actual usage, Facebook also leads the way:

Blogging remains an important tool for the Inc. 500. Fifty percent of the 2010 Inc. 500 has a corporate blog, up from 45% in 2009 and 39% in 2008.  Beyond the actual adoption of this tool, there is clear evidence that companies are using blogs effectively.  There is a strong propensity to engage consumers through accepting and replying to comments and providing a vehicle for subscriptions. Thirty-four percent have developed social media policies to govern blogging by their employees. Approximately 20% of the Fortune 500 has such a policy and only 22% of the Fortune 500 have an active blog.

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Why so much research about Twitter is flat-out wrong

Every week it seems there is some fresh research establishing that Twitter is irrelevant to businesses and/or brands. Bloggers gnaw endlessly on reports dismissing the marketing possibilities of micro-blogging, calling for the death of Twitter.

I’d like to suggest these debates are largely meaningless because so many of these reports are hopelessly flawed. I’ll demonstrate this point by asking you a simple question:

If you took a survey asking you to name the brands you follow on Twitter, would you name me?

I’m guessing that you wouldn’t, because you relate to me as a person and possibly even a friend, and yet I am certainly also a personification of my company and its “brand” on Twitter. I would be overlooked in any research report looking for how people relate to “brands” on Twitter, wouldn’t I? And lots of other companies would be missed, too.

For example, Amy Howell is the personification of Howell Marketing of Memphis, but I am following Amy because I like Amy. Megan Parker is paid to be a voice of GE on Twitter. I love her irreverent spins on corporate news and sometimes don’t even connect that in fact, I am following one of the largest companies in the world. Everyone knows how fun and effective Chris Brogan is on Twitter yet make no mistake that he is the personification of his growing new media fiefdom. When you follow Chris, do you even think about him as a B2B company?

Here’s the deal. If research focuses on the benefits of Twitter for “business-to-business” or “business-to-consumer” it’s doomed because this channel is ultimately about P2P — person to person. In fact I would suggest that with few exceptions, ONLY “personal” brands thrive on this platform. I can’t imagine following a bottle of beer or a restaurant chain on Twitter yet I would eagerly follow real marketing professionals from those companies who can enlighten, teach, and entertain me.

And that’s why so many of these research reports are missing the point. They’re asking the WRONG QUESTION. In fact I think it would be very difficult to measure the complete business value of Twitter across the social web quantitatively — many of the successes are “stories” of connection or qualitative data points. But I’m sure companies will keep trying to reduce Twitter to a list of survey questions because it’s easy to do, it’s a hot topic, and it’s a way to get their name at the top of the wave for a moment. And so many of these reports are being rushed to a data-hungry blogosphere without regard for statistical validity!

So, how many of the individuals I follow on Twitter represent brands or companies? Just about every one of them! And THAT’S the point!

Does this make sense to you?

Mark Schaefer