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Social Media 101Leveraging Social Media To Drive Word Of Mouth

March 24, 2010

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Why We’re Here Today

We’re here today to learn how social media has fundamentally shifted how consumers interact with brands …

… and to identify specific opportunities for driving sustainable word of mouth

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Today’s Agenda

• Explore the state of the industry• Highlight the power of the recommendation• Discuss the difference between buzz and sustainable

WOM• Gain insight into emerging social media trends• Explore a sustainable engine for growing your brand’s

social media presence

At the end of our session, you will walk away with:• Strategic insights and best practices for making Word of

Mouth (WOM) work for your brand

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Social Media 101Understanding The Shift

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The World Will Never Be The Same

Social media has fundamentally shifted how we communicate, gather information, make decisions, express ourselves and interact—both with others and with brands.

Consumers of all ages have embraced the changes much quicker than companies, and expect brands to engage with

them in these new channels in smart, meaningful ways.

The operative word: engage.

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The Numbers Show the Shift

How consumers and brands interact with each other has fundamentally shifted…

Even within the last year:• 100k+ iPhone apps and counting

• Twitter explosion : 50MM tweets per day

• Facebook just surpassed Google in weekly US internet traffic - at a 7.07% share

• LinkedIn eclipsed 50M in Oct ’09

• Is MySpace dead? Not with an average of 59 million unique visitors/month; recently announced focus on music

• You Tube: 8.9 billion videos were viewed by 120.3 million U.S. citizens in July alone

• Blogs: Minimum 346 million sites (last count March ’08)Sources: Facebook, ComScore, Compete

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Social media is changing how consumers interact with brands…

• It’s in websites, web applications, desktop applications, customer service…it’s literally becoming part of every consumer touch point

• Google Side Wiki has put every corporate website in the hands of the consumer

• Mobile has helped social go mainstream, and mobile commerce is knocking - the evolution of geo-applications

• Social will soon impact in-store shopper experience – in fact, impacts every aspect of the sales experience, and every level of the purchase funnel

• Real time is not fast enough – social media has made news travel faster than ever, making it critical to monitor and prepare for various scenarios

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…and changing expectations of how brands respond to and engage consumers

• Social Media has moved beyond the realm of sales and marketing to impact every department within an organization

• Customers don’t care what department you are in, they just want to be heard and addressed

• If left unattended, customer support problems become PR problems, become sales problems, become brand problems…become business problems

• There is a real need to develop a holistic, integrated strategy across the organization

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So, what does it all mean?

Social media has fundamentally shifted how we

communicate, gather information, make decisions,

express ourselves and interact—both with others and with

brands

Real time is not fast enough—consumers move faster than companies, so brands must

anticipate customer needs and actively listen

Social enables consumers to bypass the brand to find

information – which may or may not be accurate or

positive

“Traditional” interactive must evolve to incorporate social

tools, customer opinions and comments, etc.

Brands have access to more limited personal information,

but the ability to provide greater personalized content

Social goes beyond marketing and customer service to include HR, IT, customer

service, product development and every other corner of the

organization

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How Everything Fits TogetherThe Consumer As Central Figure

As more and more vehicles and channels for communication emerge, it’s easy to lose sight of the common thread at the center of the social web:

Social Media is about People

Identifying the right places to engage with consumers is as important as identifying the right message.

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Guiding Fundamental Principle:

Social media is not an objective, but rather a tool.

It’s not social media for the sake of social media.

Rather, it begins with the question of how to most effectively and sustainably engage customers through

social media channels.

Relevant. Engaging. Meaningful.

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Social Media 101What We Can Learn From Listening

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Do you know…

…who is talking about you, where they’re talking about you, and what they’re saying?…if you are recommended or trashed?…if and how your competitors are talked about and recommended?

…who the leading experts are in your space—those who ultimately help shape and drive the recommendations that influence your consumers?

…how you’d like consumers to recommend you? And are you helping them to do it?

…People don’t talk in marketing messages or “ad copy”

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Driving Recommendations Across the Influencer Ecosystem

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Social Media 101Bringing DWOM To Life Through A Conversation

Engine

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Listen

Engage

BuildOptimize

Measure

Five Keys To Driving Sustainable Online Word Of Mouth

– Listen– Engage– Build– Optimize– Measure

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Step #1: Listen

Listen Track & identify key trends, stories, posts and influencers

Through either subscription-based tools or through publicly available free tools, develop a monitoring routine to identify opportunities, influencers, and key trends

Subscription-Based Tools Free Tools

Radian6 Blogs - Icerocket.com & Technorati.com

Buzz Logic Forums - Boardreader.com

Buzzmetrics Twitter - Search.Twitter.com

TNS Symfony General - Google Alerts

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Step #2: Engage

EngageDrive discussion, posts, reviews, give feedback, and conduct contests with the right influencers

identified in your monitoring

1. Participate: Provide value to the existing conversation in the form of comments, video replies, or simply by email

2. Demonstrate credibility and earn the trust of your target community by drawing from your own personal and professional expertise

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Step #3: Build

Develop

Build content that makes it easier for consumers to share and

recommend your brand

Build assets that make your brand’s unique benefits shareable and portable - leveraging the full capabilities of online multimedia sharing sites to maximize visibility and reach

Build content that speaks not specifically to your brand - but addresses issues relevant to your target community ‘brought to you

by the brand’

Build video demonstrations and distribute to YouTube and beyond through services

such as TubeMogul

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Build A Social Media Hub - a destination that makes it easy for brand fans and influencers to learn more about your benefits in an inherently social medium that makes sharing simple

Examples Of Hubs

• Facebook Page (or Group)• Ning.com network• LinkedIn group• Twitter List (or simple account)• Tumblr• Blogger/Wordpress Blog• Self-hosted Blog

Facebook As A Social Media Hub

Step #3: BuildDevelop Community Through Platforms Like Facebook

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Step #3: BuildFacebook Strategy In A Box

Setup Tabs Fan Acquisition Engagement

• Develop overall engagement strategy

• Build editorial calendar

• Collect content– Photo– Video– How-To’s

• Wall• Photo• Videos• Promotions• Resources

• Display on website• Include link in

traditional promotional materials

• Paid options to drive immediate awareness

• Moderate conversation daily

• Support seasonal partnerships and advertising

• Spark engagement through questions, quizzes, tips and responsiveness

Facebook As A Social Media Hub

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Leverage social bookmarking sites like Del.icio.us, Digg, and StumbleUpon to increase the discoverability of positive recommendations - and mitigate the appearance of negative recommendations in search results.

Step #4: Optimize Social Search Matters

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Step #5: MeasureSimplifying Social Media KPI

Build-in metrics that demonstrate the impact of engagement at each point in the process

How is the brand being shared online and how active are the communities within which conversations take place?

How much is the brand being talked about and where is conversation occurring?

Is the brand being understood and talked about in a consistent, meaningful way?

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How is the brand being shared online and how active are the

communities within which conversations take place?

How much is the brand being talked about and where is conversation

occurring?

Is the brand being understood and talked about in a consistent,

meaningful way?

• Conversation volume increase over time

– Blogs

– Forums

– Micromedia

– Multimedia

• Share of Voice among competitors

• Mindshare within the category

• Unique Visitation to sites where recommendations are generated

– Pull from sites like Compete.com or Quantcast.com

• Sharing frequency as illustrated in social bookmarking network activity

• Comments per post

• Views per video

• Retweets & @ Replies on Twitter

• Sentiment analysis

• Automated or Hand-sampled

• Mindshare relative to key topics you want to own from a competitive standpoint

Step #5: MeasureSocial Media KPI Expanded

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Social Media 101Case Study: Scalability

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Case Study: Hyatt Don’t simply “play” in social media; integrate it into your existing marketing

efforts and use it to grow your business

Introducing @HyattConcierge

The Situation•Hyatt sought to drive brand preference and differentiate itself from competitors by owning Authentic Hospitality as expressed through: recognition, loyalty and service.

• Developed and implemented a Twitter-based, Hyatt banded real-time tool to enable the brand to reactively and proactively respond to traveler questions, needs, requests and concerns, creating a centralized Twitter presence for all Hyatt properties.

The Solution

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Target Key Online

Conversations

Enter and engage consumers in hotel-

related, locale-related,

service-related and competitor-related

conversations.

Program Elements

Available & Accessible 24/7/365

Staff at each of Hyatt’s three call centers (U.S., Germany, Australia) will coordinate to serve as Concierge “On Call”

Target Key Audiences

Help modernize, amplify and extend Hyatt’s existing customer

service capabilities among Gold Passport

members, loyal guests and prospective guests.

The Outcome

• Travel experts and guests alike began calling @HyattConcierge smart, relevant and forward thinking; others began looking toward Hyatt for its innovation and forward-thinking

• This revolutionary use of a social media channel generated more than 1.5 million via tweets and more than 1 million via blog posts in only four days

• From Mashable to MarketingProfs, the launch of HyattConcierge has received terrific praise for the innovation, intelligence, and ultimately proved that Service is a top priority for Hyatt

• The account received instant acclaim internationally, in blogs posts written in German, Spanish, and Russian

Case Study: Hyatt Don’t simply “play” in social media; integrate it into your existing marketing

efforts and use it to grow your business

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“I think it's a spectacular idea. A hotel concierge listening and actively helping its

guests (and even potential guests). It's more convenient to just send a tweet (via a mobile device, app, or the web) than to pick up the phone and dial an 800 number. And you can

also view the @HyattConcierge public timeline to see if your questions have already been

answered, or if you need ideas. “

“Recommendations are coming through citing not the technology, but the Service Hyatt provides

through the new channel”

Case Study: Hyatt Don’t simply “play” in social media; integrate it into your existing marketing

efforts and use it to grow your business

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In Closing:Ten Keys To Remember About Social Media

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Best Practices in Social MediaTen Keys to “Doing it Right”

1. Listen. 2. Participate in a respectful, meaningful way.3. “Fish where the fish are.” 4. Create experiences that are relevant, engaging and make the audience

want to come back, and tell their friends.5. Be honest and transparent. 6. Do not try to control the conversation, but facilitate it or add to it in a

helpful way.7. Understand, respect and abide by the rules, norms and guidelines of each

online venue.8. Make long-term advocacy the goal. Avoid “pushing” stuff at consumers.9. Evolve best practices through personal online participation. 10. Balance innovation with respect for the brand and its objectives.

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Questions?

Ryan RasmussenSr. Associate, Zócalo Group

rrasmussen@zocalogroup.comTwitter: @RRasmussen