The Engagement Principles

A decade ago, I bought several packs of notecards from corporate satire specialists Despair.com (see bottom of post) and mailed them to my clients.

They loved them (proof a little self-deprecating humor won’t hurt you), and now the wily business satirists are taking aim at the overheated social media space with a stunning t-shirt graphic:

The subhead on the t-shirt product page? “Unlocking the Awesome Potential of Behavioral Disorders.”

Yes, I think they’re making fun of all of us (at least the social media world), and frankly, it’s about time.

Stay engaged, Tom Chandler.

p.s.:

With Twitter doubling in size and Facebook ramping up new users as it were free, the hype surrounding social networks has reached, well, Internet proportions.

Social media “gurus” have begun popping up like weeds in spring, and yes, a certain backlash to the linky lovefest was inevitable. Thus, we point you towards a report from online researchers Knowledge Networks, which suggests social media’s affect on the population is vastly overrated (via a Media Post article):

Among other things, the study finds that less than 5% of social media users regularly turn to these social networks for “guidance on purchase decisions” in any of nine product and/or service categories (see table below), and that only 16% of social media users say they are more likely to buy from companies that advertise on social sites.

Based on the findings, Knowledge Networks categorizes the value of social media advertising “somewhere in the long tail” of marketing options, way below TV ads and personal, word-of-mouth recommendations.

“Obviously, a lot of people are using social media, but they are not explicitly turning to it for marketing purposes, or for finding out what products to buy. It’s really about connecting with friends, or connecting with other people,” says Dave Tice, vice president and group account director at Knowledge Networks, and the top analyst behind the report. “What we’re seeing is that word-of-mouth is still the No. 1 most influential source, followed by TV. The influence of social media isn’t at the bottom of the list, but it is somewhere in the long tail of marketing – about the same as print ads, or online [display] ads.”

The online marketing boot camp I’m teaching to small/micro business owners tends to bear out the above contentions; only two of the 28 entrepreneurs in my class know anything at all about social media.

Next week’s classes look hard at social media channels, and the students – while eager to learn – are asking questions like “how much time will this take?”

I developed my online marketing curriculum with the realization that – unlike so many of those touting the power of social networks for corporations – my students have businesses to run, which often involves not staring at a computer screen for hours on end.

I love the engagement potential of social networks, but find the hype – and the raft of “experts” who have zero experience generating revenue for a company – troubling.

Then there’s the troubling ROI question dogging social media (explored on the Ad Contrarian blog). The ROI of email and search strategies is relatively well known (or at least relatively easy to measure). Social media remains two steps further removed from the media stream, and until that connection can be more firmly established, I’m advising my small business clients to experiment

Like water, hyper-connected social networks will eventually find their own level in the marketing watershed. Until then, I’m advising my students (and clients) to step carefully – and to carefully evaluate their time investments in social media against the returns they could find elsewhere.

Stay engaged, Tom Chandler.

social network, social media, knowledge networks, social media gurus

The automotive industry – caught in the grips of a recession and poor management – is turning to “cheaper” social media en masse.

I took at close look at Ford’s new “Fiesta Movement” social media campaign in a prior post (Ford gave Fiesta cars to 100 people who were supposed to report on them via Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, etc).

In that article, I suggested some companies were accelerating their switch to social media precisely because their situations were so dire; those with little to lose often take the biggest risks.

Here’s a little more evidence for the pile: (from the Truck blog) Automotive Online Advertising Up, Print Media Is Dead

Automotive online advertisement is on the rise and print media is officially a lost cause. Over the course of 2008, advertising dollars spent for television rose 2 percent, Internet spending up over 55 percent, and radio & magazine advertisements were down over 40 percent combined. Analysts predict that the internet will become the second largest advertising channel by 2010 with television leading the pack at three quarters of the total advertising dollars spent each year. Nielsen Online says “The key to successful Internet spend in 2009 will be identifying where your target audience goes online and interjecting yourself at the right moment in the vehicle purchase funnel”.

As the recession drags on, expect to see more companies switching budgets to social media. And yes, expect to see even more new media carpetbaggers “Social Media Consultants” emerging from the woodwork, sensing the potential for a quick buck.

Keep writing, Tom Chandler.

social media marketing, social media, online advertising, print advertising declining

Engagement marketing has long suffered from a “hard to measure” reputation. Traditional online/offline metrics don’t readily apply – there’s nothing as neatly packaged as a two-decimal point clickthrough rate from the last email program, or even a solid conversion/revenue figure.

In the age of choice, businesses know engagement is critical, and the thrashing about for measurable results has gone on for years. In one sense, it’s odd that businesses – which were generally content to throw big budgets at print-and-broadcast-based “brand” campaigns for years – are reluctant to fund engagement (and check out the Nike+ site for runners if you don’t think some businesses are moving forward).

A Tokyo Web developer posted an excellent presentation on Social Media ROI, where he contends the problem isn’t one of a lack of metrics, but a focus on the wrong metrics. While his ideas won’t necessarily make the spreadsheet mavens happy, his ideas readily apply in the engagement world (as is the quote he uses to begin his presentation):

From his presentation (posted on the Zygote.egg blog):

It sounds like I’m stating the obvious, but the key to measuring returns is… knowing what to measure. This is the area where businesses – without proper guidance, or internal knowledge – start seeing fuzzy returns. Often the reason organisations or marketing teams don’t see recognisable returns or returns that are hard to quantify for social media campaigns is because they are using the wrong metrics. Choosing the right success metrics (or KPIs if you’re an MBA-type) is the first challenge of implementing a social media campaign you can measure.

There are infinite things that can be measured when you’re talking about digital communication / transactions. It’s so tempting to go into bean-counter mode and just start measuring any metric that keeps going up (because up is good, right?) when what you need to do first and foremost is: figure out what success metrics translate easily into a business context for your organisation.

Some will see YongFook’s ideas as a way to promote social media without accountability. (Can’t find the right metrics? Then lower the bar to make less-meaningful metrics seem more meaningful.)

My take? Engagement marketing (and social media) are still largely in their infancy, and while I’m all for looking hard before diving into massively hyped media channels which (so far) lack any hint of ROI, I’m also aware of the value of an engaged customer.

While engagement often occurs via channels other than social media, both concepts face similar challenges, both in metrics and credibility.

Stay engaged, Tom Chandler.

engagement marketing, engagement, social media, social media metrics, engagement metrics

You know the fun’s over for any media channel when analysts start issuing reports about it, which is why Forrester’s new report – titled “Social media Playtime Is Over” – offers a distressingly adult perspective on social media (You can buy one for $750, refundable if you’re “not completely satisfied”).

Social media promises much, but lest we forget, the channels themselves are proving hard to monetize, and while some businesses are generating traffic and connecting with customers, the real ROI is harder to judge.

Some advocate a full-blown dive into social media, including Advertising Age columnist B.L. Ochman. She suggests corporations won’t make any headway in social media until they start investing in it – moving beyond experimentation into the realm of serious marketing:

Three-quarters of those surveyed who knew their budgets said they allowed for $100,000 or less for social media tools over a 12-month period, according to the report, written by Forrester analyst Jeremiah K. Owyang. And they are not integrating social media into their overall marketing strategy. Instead, they are “experimenting” with isolated tactics and hoping that they will take the place of long-term strategy.

Furthermore, Owyang notes, social media is more of an after-thought than a marketing line item. “45-percent of marketers say their social budgets are determined as needed and 23-percent say they scrape together funds from wherever they can find them.”

I’m not going to deny the utility nor the promise of social networks, but corporations are experimenting for a variety of reasons, one of which is this: all social media isn’t the same, and the verdict isn’t wholly in on which will perform best – especially if you’re not a Web 2.0 company selling a Web 2.0 product.

And some in the marketing department may not have forgotten Second Life – a prior “must-invest-in-heavily” social media virtual reality that ate online marketing budgets for lunch.

I’m hardly a social media Luddite: I’m advising a couple clients to dive into selected social media, though not at the expense of other media channels with proven ROI (like email, integrated blogs, etc). In that sense, it’s possible I could be accused of only “experimenting” with social media, but then, what’s wrong with that?

Did fully formed email programs spring from the earth in the first months after email became widely available?

Every media channel – regardless of buzz or the market cap of the technology provider – should undergo the same scrutiny:

• How does this further our business goals?
• How do we measure the results?
• Does our target audience (or existing customer base) use this channel?
• Do our customers want us to communicate this way?
• Do we have the internal capacity to fill this channel with content?
• What will we have to cut to make budget for this new channel?

These are not always easy questions to answer, especially for smaller businesses.

It’s clear that social media are here to stay, and that they provide powerful engagement opportunities for the right businesses. But should companies commit hundreds of thousands without some hope of a result?

The use of social media channels is being
accelerated by the recession, and those companies that “experimented” with the
media will have their answers in time for the recovery.

Stay engaged, Tom Chandler.

social media, forrester, social media playtime is over, engagement, engagement marketing

Prior to the launch of its new “Digital Nomads” site, Dell Computers had only dipped their toe in the engagement marketing waters with the Dell blog.

Apparently, they liked what they saw, because Digital Nomads is a veritable showcase of social network channels, including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, an online community, and even a crowd-sourced whitepaper defining “digital nomad.”

Launched alongside the release of several new Dell laptops, Digital Nomads is a deliberate attempt to update Dell’s sometimes-stodgy image among younger, digitally enabled users.

This from the initial post on the site’s blog:

We’re all becoming digital nomads. And nomads want to know how to use
their technology in the most productive way every day. So, we decided
to create a site dedicated to Digital Nomads — a community where you
can network with others, learn and share ideas, and hear from some of
the best who are doing exactly what you do.

While I don’t have budget figures for the site, an interesting aspect of social media-driven sites like DigitalNomads is that most of the channels used to engage with customers are free, and the expenses accrue in the “seed content” expense column (an expense not listed in most marketing organizaton’s budget)

I’ll make a point of monitoring Dell’s interesting new Digital Nomads site.

Stay engaged, Tom Chandler.