Sustaining a Brand Conversation: To Strategize, or not to Strategize, about Social Media? A Note to Brand Marketers

Why should you care about the Social Media industry beyond what you are doing in it? Why should you care about how it evolves?

You care about sustaining a Customer Centric Conversation with your customer. That's why.

You are already a step ahead of the competition if you are asking these questions.

Some might question why we need to think about market structures, channels, consumer behavior, and returns on investment in the Social Media industry. Fair enough. There is enough activity in the hyper-competitive Social Media market right now for folks to dive in and get a lot of the work done quickly in funky, interesting ways, while helping the market evolve as a byproduct. We could even discount research that discounts first mover advantage.

Recently, Facebook surged past MySpace in Monthly Unique Visitors. If that news made you wonder how you are impacted, or how your company's busy work in Social Media is impacted, you are asking the right questions.

If You want to sustain a conversation with your customer, without being distracted by the ebb and flow of the social media buzz around you, you know you want to tie in your social media tactics with strategic market insights.

Instead of steps that assist your journey toward an effective social media presence, your search leads you to information on how to get things done. Lets change that. Right here. Right now.

Here are four thought enablers that help you cut through the clutter to formulate a social media strategy.

The Interplay between Marketing and Social Media:

1. Marketing is currently following Social Media: What we define as conversational marketing right now, is just marketing catching up with social media. Social media can be abstracted as a process of developing new channels of communication. How you leverage these channels is driven by your brand. Marketing in these channels will mature when brands begin to consistently leverage the innovation in channels for improved resonance.

2. Marketing Future 2.0 goes beyond Web 2.0: Marketing has a few steps to take before it truly takes off, and leaves social media behind to become a platform. I will hold on my vision for marketing here.

3. The Social Media Industry is a Market: Social media will become a platform and will have a few dominant players like platform markets do. However, the innovation game is not over yet. While some players have taken an early lead and have shown the legs to innovate, social media tools have not reached a communication channel innovation plateau yet.

4. Value: Value, value, value! How do we justify social media spend to a corporate? How do we tie it into the brands, say, in terms of a Brand Equity Pyramid? This is the outcome of some ruminating on my previous blog here: http://randomjunkyramblings.blogspot.com/2009/06/brands-economics-blink-twitter-facebook.html

Needless to say, the note assumes that you already are pursuing social media opportunities for your brand. If you do not have your feet wet yet, you are welcome to read some of my previous posts below for some ideas- I would heartily welcome a conversation on those points of view.

http://randomjunkyramblings.blogspot.com/2009/06/economics-brands-blink-twitter-facebook.html

This loops us back to the next post that started this train of thought, proving that Execution -> Metrics -> Strategy are not linear, but form a circular reference, and spiral into greater maturity as the industry matures. Therein lies the risk and the reward.

While I am at it, here's a blatant plug: please feel free to contact me for more! You know how to find me.

Psst... Watch out for my Twitter game- BigBirdBots!

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Consumer Insights from News: Market Sizing

Three events this year have generated a lot of interest from consumers:
1. President Obama's Inauguration
2. Iran Elections
3. Michael Jackson's demise

There are interesting insights to be gleaned from analyzing patterns in data across channels that deliver news -or music, in the case of recent tweets over the Michael Jackson tribute song- to the consumer.

Kick off for Rigorous Analysis?
Keeping thoughts of rigorous analysis aside- how about plotting each of these event on 3 axes? These three events can be compared to other, more "regular" events like the NBA finals. The key point to note is that some of the delivery channels are pretty nascent and they may not have a large universe of comparison points.

The Objective?
The deep dive may help size the market for various solutions, like developing quick reaction advertising patterns that respond to breaking news, to more effective tools for the media and advertising industry. Of course, from experience, I would like to emphasize the sizing can only supplement your own acumen about the market opportunity.

What do you think?

Note: Updated with the 3 axes plot approach to kick of analysis.

Consumer Behavior and Robert Pittman on Investing in Media

Consumer Behavior
Robert Pittman had some interesting insights on consumer behavior. He provided an “action oriented” view of Maslow’s hierarchy by citing convenience and branding as key components of a consumer’s decisionmaking.

He defined convenience as physical, tangible productivity tools and branding as a means to prevent switching. Applying that to internet tools/ properties/ networks, the key trade off is effectively the relative “delta” of convenience vs. switching costs.

Advertising channels and consumer behavior
Robert pointed out that the internet is not killing TV, its really killing newspapers. Some thoughts put forth around this idea:
1> Pricing: He compared the cost per thousand impressions between TV/ radio and newspapers. He then questioned the rationale for the market difference.
2> Change in spend across channels: He presented data that highlighted the marketing spend across newspapers, yellow pages and the internet, with newspapers currently garnering more than twice the ad spend on either the internet or the yellow pages. Change in marketing tactics to adjust to the internet as a medium has not been drastic. Given the theme, this presents a tangible opportunity in the internet media segment.
3> Nature of advertising channels: The cable TV industry is larger than the broadcast TV industry; however, the cable TV industry is quite fragmented. This creates a difference in how advertisers approach these two channels.

Some takeaways
1> Critically analyze the value of internet properties
Is the internet properties’ lack of stick just a function of low switching costs?
Do internet properties really make us more productive or more effective as they interweave into our daily life?

2> Expect unrelenting, inexorable change
Citing the fact that TV show ratings lead their revenue impact, Robert sees a similar trend in the internet media. The internet is truly impacting consumers and consumer facing companies. Adapting to this change in consumer behavior will define which companies fail and which survive.

The talk led to questions, as usual:
1> The web and TV: How do we categorize the impact of online TV series viewers on series like The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Dollhouse? The former got the axe despite as many as 7 million viewers following the series online.
2> Channel relationships and Ad spend: Are the industry structures in place for the media planning industry to move quickly, seamlessly and effortlessly across the various advertising channels? Is it just a function of channel relationships, or it is also a function of the industry still being in the process of wrapping their arms around opportunities in the “new media” segment?

What do you think?


The Usual Disclaimer: This is purely a knowledge sharing resource and I have been careful to protect panelist/ speaker interests. Ethically, context is everything, and I will gladly retract anything that affects the parties mentioned. Call this my mini OpenCourseWare, if you will, where Open signifies life experiences.