FreshNetworks Blog

Today’s Social Media Marketing 2010 conference (search for #smmuk10 on Twitter) was a great mix of theory and case studies, presentations and debates, clients and the odd social media agency. We presented on why ongoing engagement is worth more than buzz and showcased our work in the retail industry with T.M.Lewin and Jimmy Choo.

In the final session of the day, I took part in a panel discussion on trends in social media and the areas where social media marketing will develop in the next 12 to 18 months. The panel debated and sourced ideas and then used the audience to vote for the ideas that the collective wisdom of clients and agencies in the room thought were the important trends to watch. The top three trends are below (and I’m rather pleased that my suggestion about geolocation tools made it to the top spot!)

Trend 1: Geolocation tools and the convergence of online and offline experiences

We’ve written before that we think 2010 is the year of location-based social media tools and geolocation is certainly becoming a much talked about issue at conferences and with clients. At this conference we presented our own case study of CatchAChoo, the trainer-hunt we developed and ran for Jimmy Choo using Foursquare and Twitter. There is also a lot of benefit that businesses can gain from working with Foursquare and other tools as they develop (even small businesses as this case study shows).

Geolocation is an interesting development. There is a much-recounted (but rarely-cited) statistic that says that 80% of all data 0nline has a geolocational element to it. But in most cases this data isn’t used. The steady rise of smart-phones (with their in-built GPS systems) will make this data more useful to users and easier for people to add to. It’s a trend to watch and for brands to capitalise on where relevant for their social media strategy. Geolocation tools are growing, and brands can benefit hugely from them.

Trend 2: Increased focus on ROI

There was a prediction that clients will increasingly focus on (and have to prove) the value or ROI of the work they do in social media. And so they should. Brands should not be using social media unless they have a clear view of what they want to achieve – the business aims that social media can contribute to. And when they start to use social media tools they should be ruthless in their measurement of success. This is critical because it shows that brands are thinking about social media in the right way and for the right reasons. Success and ROI is rarely a measure of how many people ‘Like’ you on Facebook or how many followers you have on Twitter. Real ROI comes from showing the impact your work has had against real business aims – increased sales, reduced cost of new customer acquisition, new ideas into the business. Real needs, real measures and a real focus on ROI.T

Trend 3: Consumer resistance to brands on social media

An emerging trend, associated to the privacy debate, was thought to be increasing resistance from consumers about brands engaging with them in social media. The real trend here is a need for brands to use social media and engage people in the right way. Trying to engage people in Facebook is often not the right answer. Infact Facebook is a place where people are often talking and sharing with friends and connections and don’t want to be interrupted by a brand. Better to choose the right place to engage in the right way. If not then consumers may start to filter out brands and brand messages and exert more control over their own experiences online.

What are your thoughts on these trends? Is Geolocation the next (or current) big thing?

According to a recent report by emarketer, business-to-business (B2B) spending on social media is set to increase dramatically over the next few years.

Outsell, a company who provides business intelligence for publishers and information providers, estimates that B2B marketing on social networks will grow by 43.3% in 2010.

Perhaps even more interesting is Forrester Research’s prediction that B2B firms will spend $4.8 billion on social media marketing by 2014 – an increase of $2.3 billion in comparison to 2009 spend.

Emarketer’s Evelyn Jung, author of  a new report called “B2B Social Media Marketing Heats Up“, believes that B2B marketers will realise they can use social media to generate quality leads and to position themselves as thought leaders in their industries.

Currently B2B marketers tend to spend their money on customer communities, podcasts and blogs. Paid advertising on social networks—banners, text ads and search advertising, as well as the more targeted advertising on Facebook and MySpace— accounts for just a small proportion of B2B marketers’ social spending.

The expectation is that when companies budget for social media marketing in 2010 and beyond, a substantial portion of their money will go on social initiatives like creating and maintaining a branded profile page or online community, managing promotions or public relations outreach and using social media monitoring to check the impact of social media on a brand or business as a whole.

Social Media Hub and Spoke

We’ve always had strong views about the best ways for companies to get value from social media.

We’ve battled against the consensus view: only fish where the fish are swimming. We’ve campaigned for recognition that people operate in different modes in different social spaces (online communities vs social networks) and as a result have always pushed the concept of an integrated social media Hub-and-Spoke model.

That’s why I was delighted to read Jeremiah Owyang’s latest post and see his excellent slide show about integrating social tools within your website.

Enjoy:

So the first FreshNetworks breakfast briefing has just finished and we had some great insights into how not for profit organisations (NFP’s) can use social media for strengthening their membership offering.

Breast Cancer Care Case Study

First up to speak was Bertie Bosredon, Assistant Director of Services (Information & Multimedia) at Breast Cancer Care. Bertie has been busy changing Breast Cancer Care’s social media strategy to utilise other social media platforms and contribute to overall integrated structure. More importantly changing the way they use social media to start listening and conversing with people online.

There were some key messages that resonated from his presentation, these were:

1. Have an integrated approach

Breast Cancer Care realise that a lot of conversations that were happening online were not necessarily happening in their space but through working with key influencers on other platforms supplying them with packaged information you can increase your presence online and collaborate with a lot more people.

2. Involve your members in planning

Bertie has been getting members involved in the planning of the current and future use of social media asking them what they would look for when engaging with Breast Cancer Care and how they could work this into a strategy that would best fit their organisational aims. Although a simple concept many companies forget that members and users usually know more about your brand then you do and can deliver some great insights.

3. Aligning all channels of communication

Breast Cancer Care have made sure that the social media strategy that they have been using is aligned with their offline print material so that it doesn’t matter where members go for the information. This means that they can use the channel that they prefer and the message will be consistent.

A popular point from Bertie: it doesn’t matter about the traffic to your site; care about how many people interact with your content even on other sites.

Social media marketing for not for profits

The next speaker was our very own Charlie Osmond from FreshNetworks. Charlie was speaking about how social media can be used for marketing and with specific reference to NFP organisations. Engaging people online is not about going for that quick win viral campaign but to successfully engage people online you need sustainable engagement.

Some key points to take away from Charlie’s presentations are:

1. The importance of the community manager

Engaging people online especially for sustainability requires a good community manager. They need to be able to reach out to people and facilitate discussions on a multitude of different platforms.

2. Know your tools but don’t let them drive your strategy

In order to be able to know what channels are available to you, you have to have a grasp of what’s in the vast social media environment. To create a successful strategy you should be looking at the aims of the business and the needs of the people that you want to engage.

3. To drive word of mouth for a certain cause take the ‘believe, belong and bear witness approach’

A great way to get people involved in a cause is to find people that believe in it, help them become involved in it and then help them bear witness to what they believe in this will help spread the message of the organisation through yours, and their own networks.

Steve Bridger on social media in charities

Finally but by no means least was Steve Bridger. Steve is a social media consultant and has some great (and extensive) history in community management for various charities. One of the more prevalent points of Steve’s presentation was the importance of putting people at the heart of your social media strategy

Some great points from Steve:

1. Help your advocates to amplify their voice

A lot of member organisations were using their current strategy to try and control conversations and go against ‘the flow’ of what people were online to do. They had a clear goal that they wanted to achieve and member organisations should be “enabling and empowering” these people to help deliver your message.

2. It’s about relationships not transactions

Member organisations and more specifically charities are currently set-up for transactions and are very ‘me’ focussed, there is greater value for charities if they position themselves for conversations and engagement.

3. You have to be in it to win it

A lot of companies are hoping for a win in social media what ever that may be but they don’t have a social media policy or ban social media access completely. A restrictive approach rather than a guided one causes bottlenecks at many organisations and restricts valuable internal knowledge.

It was great to see the focus on relationships and emphasis on the value rather then how much money can be made. There were lots of interesting perspectives and too many to write all in this blog post. A big thank you to all the people that attended there were some great discussions and insight from lots of different organisations and another big thank you to the speakers involved.

FMCG brands are often some of the most innovative in their use of digital and social media but this great presentation from Helge Tennø shows the importance of staying ahead of the market. And of continuing to innovate what you are doing, to avoid becoming what he calls a Big Lazy Brand.

His presentation outlines five ways to market FMCG brands in social media:

1. Use your marketing activities to impact how consumers feel about your brand, not just what they know about it
2. Build direct connections with consumers, rather than letter retailers have this connection. Engage them and have a dialogue
3. Use your marketing  activities to be part of their life, from home to the office to the store where they finally make a purchase
4. Remember that in social media it is about them and not just about you. This isn’t the place for a one-way conversation or for just telling them things. Ask questions and get ideas
5. Don’t confuse social media with media, the two things are different and need different strategies and approaches

Tennø’s presentation reflects well on the need for brands to move from just thinking about campaigns in social media, to thinking about ways in which they can use it to engage consumers in a sustained manner. For FMCG firms, who often have little direct contact with their consumers, this is of critical importance. Viral videos and buzz can be great, but too often it can leave users remembering the video or the game, but not remembering the brand. Engagement, on an ongoing basis, sees greater return for the brand and is a more effective use of social media marketing.

The presentation is Required Reading this week at FreshNetworks for its great thinking and the number of case studies and examples that it uses. It also highlights what we think of as an over-riding consideration for social media marketing: Digital is not a silo, it needs to integrate with other online and offline activities.