Making the Case for Social Media: A Roadmap

Earlier this summer I gave a presentation in Minneapolis at a ClickZ OMS event on building a social media roadmap with tips on blog marketing and using Twitter. It’s all very introductory if you work in the social media space, but if not, serves as a useful baseline for making a case for corporate social media participation.

Many companies are without confidence in how to use communication tools like blogs or Twitter and this presentation can serve as a good starting point for those tactics as well as for creating a social media strategy. There was good feedback at the event and I’ll do my best to turn it into a slidecast in the future.

I should mention for those that have a good feel for the basics of social media or SEO, TopRank has partnered with the Direct Marketing Association to offer a 2 day intensive workshop on social media strategy, tactics and SEO called “Social Media Smarts“. We focus on building a social media roadmap for participants as well as understanding various social media marketing tools and how SEO fits into the social media marketing mix. The next workshop is in New York, December 1 & 2 so be sure to check out the Social Media Smarts site and get signed up.

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Friday Recap – Relive the Magic Edition

Jinkies! Friday already?! Feels like just yesterday I was living the SEO good life at SES San Jose.

Bruce and me at the IM Charity Party. Photo by Dana Lookadoo.

There are some resources helping me relive the magic. At WebmasterRadio.fm you can download all three keynotes from the SES. And Yo Yo SEO founder, Dana Lookadoo, has posted awesome albums of pictures taken at the show and after parties. I think I’ll nab one of those pics. Zoink! —->

If you didn’t get a chance to go to San Jose because you were in, oh I dunno, Australia, there’s another great educational opportunity coming your way. Throughout October a one-day SEO training program will tour Australia led by Bruce Clay Australasia. Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney are the stops, so BC’s SEO training will be available to all interested throughout the continent.

Twitter has announced that a retweeting system is in the works for the microblogging site. And a new site, bingtweets.com, is Microsoft’s experiment with a hybrid social media search engine. Topics trending on Twitter, Twitter/Bing search, and keyword-related tweets are some of the features on the site.

Bing’s technology is also behind some cool new apps. Bing Maps is powering Ancestry.com’s location feature for the family tree generator.

And Real Live Search is a search engine that uses a Bing API to provide search results as the user types. Basically, every letter added to the search box will result in different results being listed on the page. For SEOs this can come in handy when comparing results for slightly different queries — the difference between singular and plural, for example. [Now if only Bing's results were better. --Susan]

In the Googleverse, AdSense will soon be rolling out enhanced contextual targeting. Be sure to click through to the gallery of worst contextual ads ever. Eesh. YouTube, meanwhile, has landed another big media content partner, Time Warner.

While we’re on the subject of online video, I haven’t been able to get this song out of my head all week:

Yes, I’ll date her avatar. Geeks are hot.

Uh, where was I? How about smart phones? Responding to controversy following Apple’s removal of Google Voice applications from the iTunes store, some iPhone owners have turned to fire arms and flames to express their disapproval at Apple’s decision to pull the apps. Ever wonder what five bullet holes in an iPhone looks like?

If you don’t plan to strap explosives to your iPhone anytime soon, you may enjoy this list of iPhone apps for SEOs and site owners. Then again, maybe you’re more of a BlackBerry person. If you’re not sure, here’s a quiz that might help you decide if RIM or Apple is best for you.

Whatever your smart phone preference, I bet I can guess your carnivore preference. Does bacon top you list of favorite meats? Endless Simmer’s 101 ways to use bacon is one tantalizing adventure into the world of bacon. There are recipes for bacon toffee, bacon marshmallows and bacon fudge, because in America we like to take liberties with our pork fat. Mm mmm!

MarketingSherpa charts email performance since 2001

There’s a new report on trends in email marketing performance since 2001. Efficiency seems to have dropped from a peak in 2002 to a low point in 2008 and is on the rebound this year. Emails that don’t follow best practices are hurting the worst.

Maybe these marketers aren’t playing to their strong suits. If you subscribe to astrology (or just enjoy reading horoscopes once in a while) Search Engine People has a fun take on SEO astrology, complete with that eerie feeling of being too spot on.

Earlier this week I wrote about the concept of the SEO development life cycle, and usability expert Craig Tomlin pointed out to me via Twitter that usability wasn’t mentioned. Luckily, Craig’s all over it and has posted an overview of usability testing.

In social media advice, Ian Lurie shared his tips on how to ask a blogger for a review. His four points are exactly what I’m looking for when I get requests. Take note! Also, a recent survey by CareerBuilder.com shows that almost half of employers are using social media sites to screen job candidates.

Things I learned from Boing Boing this week:

• As Susan put it, the annual “don’t you feel old?” list is back! [The answer is yes, I really do. --Susan]
• Every single fish tested in American rivers and streams has been found to be contaminated with mercury.
• Fiji Water isn’t just hard on the pocketbook. It might actually support a brutal military regime.
• Gallery of sculpted sandwiches. ‘Nuf said.

Social technology growth marches on in 2009, led by social network sites

by Josh Bernoff

We just published our third annual Social Technographics Profile in a document called "The Broad Reach of Social Technologies" . The author is Sean Corcoran, with help from out data expert Cynthia Pflaum. The data across North America, Europe, and Asia will be available later today.

Starting with the book "Groundswell" and continuing now for three years running, we've analyzed consumers' participation in social technologies around the world with a tool called the "Social Technographics Profile." The profile puts online people into overlapping groups based on their participation (at least once a month) in the behaviors shown in the ladder. We've kept the ladder categories consistent to allow us to make comparisons year-to-year, across ages and genders, and across geographies. This provides something that's often sorely lacking in analysis of online social phenomena: perspective.

The headline: in 2009, more than four out of five online Americans are active in either creating, participating in, or reading some form of social content at least once a month. In a bit more detail:

• In the US, social technology Creators and Collectors grew slowly, and Critics didn't grow at all. Creator activity appeals only to those who like to create or upload content, and regardless of the ease of blogging and YouTube uploading, this doesn't apply to everybody. If you believe in the future that everybody will be creating or organizing content, we disagree — it's a matter of temperament, not technology. As for Critics, those who react to content, this group hasn't grown at all. Looking deeper into the data, this is a result of a small but actual decrease in the number of people contributing to discussion forums. Why? Probably because much of this activity has been sucked into social network sites like Facebook.

• At the same time, Joiner activity exploded and Spectators became nearly universal. The explosion in Joiners from 35% to 51% of online Americans reflects the appeal of Facebook, as both press coverage and invitations from friends suck more of us into social networks. Meanwhile, Spectators — those consuming social content — reached all the way to 73% of online Americans, which should end any remaining skepticism about whether this social thing is real. Soon, with the level of social content being put out there, it will be virtually impossible for an online consumer not to be a Spectator. Marketers, if you're not doing social technology applications now, you're officially behind. We expect a wave of Web site reorgs and redesigns to include social activity.

Looking at the data by age, we now see that participation among those under 35 is nearly universal (less than 10% Inactives) and even among those 55 and over, about two-thirds are participating. The trend is clear, soon, if you're online, you'll almost certainly be consuming social technologies.

For the first time, we are now releasing international data at the same time as this US data. A few highlights: Europeans continue to adopt these technologies more slowly than in the US, with about 40% Inactives in the countries where we do surveys. The Netherlands and Sweden have the most participation, Italy has the most Creators, and social networks are most popular in the UK. For more details see the summary of Rebecca Jennings' report on social technologies in Europe. Asian social participation is typically as high as or higher than in the US. For example South Korea, where I'm going next week, has only 9% Inactives and 48% Joiners, as a result of the popular CyWorld social network site.

The international data by country, age, and gender will be available later today. You can even put the data on your own site — we've made it embeddable. In my travels, I've found that marketers have a variety of attitudes about social technologies, ranging from "it's obvious that they're growing" to "it's a flash in the pan". The point of data like this is to provide a real, solid, objective basis for planning and discussion that goes beyond personal experience. No matter who you market to, and in what country, you need to know what your customers are doing. These surveys can help you take that first step.

It’s cool to be uncool on Facebook

  Health insurance isn't cool, government agencies aren't hip and medical equipment isn't very social. However, many companies that pedal these products and services work with me on a regular basis to understand how they can make social media work for their marketing needs. Often they find excellent reasons to use sites like Twitter and Facebook, and typically the ideas are quite practical. For example, one company came up with the idea to tweet lab schedule changes back to doctor's offices so they can in turn reschedule patient appointments. Or this Facebook application from Quest Diagnostics, that they created to encourage their customers to live a healthy lifestyle. These social services are free and can create much more effective pathways for communication, so it's worth looking at social media no matter how un-sexy you think your company is.

Unfortunately, many companies suffer from a strict internal policy around using social media. Often an overly cautious CIO or legal department will restrict employees from even using Facebook for personal reasons, let alone market on it. All companies will eventually use social media heavily. However, the current reality is that many organizations have big hurdles to overcome. Even companies with full access to social media and a few toes dipped in the water such as a CEO blog or Facebook fan page have a lot to think about when moving deeper into social marketing.

If you think you're at an un-sexy company and feel like you need help integrating social into your marketing plans, or need the right pitch to open up your company's social computing policy, come to our Social Computing Workshop in Cambridge on September 22.

Farewell and Best Wishes to Jeremiah Owyang

[Posted by Christine Overby]

Nearly two years ago, I heard that an influential blogger was interested in an analyst job at Forrester. I had just taken over management of our interactive marketing team and to my complete pleasure was able to hire that blogger — Jeremiah Owyang.

And so it's on a bittersweet note that I share that Jeremiah has decided to leave Forrester at the end of this month. All of you who connect with Jeremiah through his reports, blog posts, and tweets know that he is an enthusiastic teacher, a client advocate, and a creative force. We will miss his exuberance and his contribution to the Forrester "Idea Factory". We will miss him. What's next for Jeremiah? He's going back into the field to apply the trends. I expect that he'll still sleep in shifts so that he can stay connected.

What's next for Forrester? More insights on social technologies — driven by the topics that you tell us matter to your roles. We have 24 analysts who touch social computing in some way. Upcoming research from Nate Elliott and Emily Riley will look at the ROI of social media, both on its own and in concert with other interactive channels. Lisa Bradner is finishing up a piece on how social tools change the fundamentals of brand management. Sean Corcoran's next doc will analyze the growth of sponsored  conversations. On the B2B side, Laura Ramos and Oliver Young will examine how executives use social tools to make business decisions. And our resident best-selling author Josh Bernoff is currently taking entries for the third annual Forrester Groundswell Awards.

We're also starting a search for a senior social media analyst who will focus on online communities, social networks, and org structures that support social technology efforts. We're looking for an individual who is active in the social media community and has good ideas on how social tools complement other analyst activities and research methodologies. If you are interested, then please contact me at coverby@forrester.com.

Please join me in wishing Jeremiah the very best!

Mobile Web Audience Is Larger Than You Think

[Posted by Neil Strother]
Marketers take note: mobile audiences continue to build. Two major Web destinations offered some new evidence this week:

• Weather.com attracts 12.5 million monthly unique visitors to its mobile site
• People.com's site generates 18 million mobile page views a month

Moreover, Weather.com's 'repeat rate' among mobile visitors is nearly 100 percent, says Cameron Clayton, VP of mobile for The Weather Channel Interactive.

Other popular mobile destinations - Yahoo! (34 million monthly uniques) and ESPN (6.7 million), for instance – boast significant audiences as well. Expect these mobile audiences to grow as more people access sites from devices like the iPhone, BlackBerrys, and Android handsets, which deliver a more satisfying mobile Web experience than standard mobile phones. If you're looking to target the growing mobile Web audience, Forrester can help you frame a sensible strategy. See "Best Practices: Mobile Marketing" as a place to start (if you're a Forrester client, it's available in full).

Have you placed ads on mobile Web sites? What was your experience? Post a comment below.

B2B Marketers: Where Are Your Groundswell Award Submissions?

[Posted by Laura Ramos]

At the end of May, we opened up nominations for the 2009 Forrester Groundswell awards.  Well, the contest closes SEPTEMBER 2 — that’s less than a month away — and so far we have just 4 (ONLY 4!?!) submissions in
the B2B categories. C’mon folks, I know there are plenty of B2B
marketers out there doing interesting things in social media. You now
have less time to submit, so shake out of the summer doldrums and show
us how you use social media to listen to, talk with, energize, and
spread success among your customers and prospects.

Just to refresh your memories, this year the Forrester award
committee divided the categories for the prototypical groundswell
objectives (listening, talking, energizing, supporting, embracing) into
business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B).

Specifically for B2B, we added a new category, “spreading,” to
recognize social applications in which you promote ideas, products, or
best practices to employees of a company, then get them to similarly
promote their successes with others at that company or in their
respective/broader industries — thus speeding adoption of your
technologies or services through social channels and activities your
customers engage in internally or through business partners.  Right
now, we have 3 submissions in the Supporting category and 1 in
Embracing.

That leaves a lot of room for more entries and more winners.

Share with other B2B marketers what you do to listen to customers
and prospects tell you what they like and don’t like about your
products or services.  How are you using social activity to talk with
them via video, podcasts, integrated online media, and other social
channels?  What are you doing to energize customers — and encourage
them to join and participate in your events like IBM did with LinkedIn,
Facebook, Twitter, and a myriad of other social venues at their May 2009 IMPACT conference?

Big companies or small, if you sell highly-considered products with
long sales cycle through direct or partner channels, it time to share
your social media successes and nominate your campaign, online site,
community, or marketing programs for a 2009 Groundswell award.

The submission form is here. And mark your calendars: the entry deadline is September 2, 2009.

(You can also check out the current award submissions on the Groundswell site; might give you some ideas about what other firms are doing.)

What to do with your newer bigger ad budget

 by Emily Riley

Major players are showing signs that marketers are starting to spend more online. Yahoo recently made public remarks that they’re optimistic that advertising revenue will start to increase soon. If we do see a near term increase in spending (Forrester is forecasting general growth in the industry over the next 5 years) then it is probably a combination of things including a turn in the economy and the approaching 4^th quarter, typically the biggest quarter for ad spending.

 

If you are in the fortunate position to have a planned increase in your marketing budget, you are probably trying to figure out where to spend the money. Now is the perfect time to start using attribution to help you make that decision. I’m currently deep in the middle of a Wave to look at the different attribution vendors out there, which will be out in early Q4. In the mean time, I highly recommend starting to look at what problems attribution can solve for you. Attribution is a form of measurement that will allow you to understand which media placements move the needle from the early funnel branding all the way down to a conversion or sale. If you want a richer definition, check out a past attribution report I wrote that describes it in more detail.

 

Hopefully, interactive marketing spending does indeed start to increase in the near term. During the downturn, we’ve heard more talk about the importance of measurement and ROI in the past year than ever before, and I have a fear that the pendulum is about to swing away from these things. Forrester predicts that brand marketing will be a big part of interactive marketing spending increases in the coming years, and of course social marketing will be part of that. But there is no reason why “measurement” and “ROI” need to be sacrificed for these things to happen. By including attribution as part of your plans, you can have the best of both worlds.

Facebook Acquires Social Veterans in FriendFeed Deal

[Posted by Jeremiah K. Owyang]

Facebook makes a play and acquires Friendfeed, a sharing and aggregation tool that helps people find out what their friends are doing. Read Friendfeed's announcement, and Facebook's blog post. 

The Agency Landscape Is Coming To A Crossroads

by Sean Corcoran 

Today we published the Forrester Wave™: US Interactive Agencies – Strategy And Execution, Q3 2009. The objective of this wave was to identify the top interactive agencies in terms of their ability to develop interactive strategy as well as their capabilities in executing that strategy across services. Evaluating the top interactive agencies in the US is a rigorous task. After screening over thirty of the top agencies on AdAge’s “Top 50 Digital Ad Agencies” report, we ended up selecting twelve firms. The goal was to identify the biggest and most visible agencies in the market. The agencies we ended up selecting included Digitas, Razorfish, AKQA, R/GA, Draftfcb, OgilvyInteractive, Sapient Interactive, Rapp, Wunderman (specifically ZAAZ), Organic, VML and Rosetta. While we recognize there are probably dozens more interactive agencies that have a claim to the label of large (and capable) full-service interactive agency, these twelve agencies best met the criteria. When it was all said and done we identified R/GA, VML, OgilvyInteractive, Sapient Interactive, Wunderman, Razorfish and Organic as Leaders in the space. Rapp, Draftfcb, Rosetta and AKQA weren’t far behind as Strong Performers. Digitas declined to fully participate, but we did interview them and consider them at least a Strong Performer.

 

At Forrester we’ve been expanding our coverage of agencies, specifically related to interactive marketing, and after publishing this wave and our most recent wave on web design one thing is clear – interactive agencies have reached a point of maturity (hence so many leaders). They are at a point that their clients are more than happy with their performance across most of the major criteria in the evaluation. In fact, of the 33 different marketers we surveyed the average score for overall performance was 4.3 out of 5. While there were some very clear and some subtle differences between all of the agencies, most of them scored well in criteria such as strategy development, audience insight, execution & development, emerging & social media and analytics. However, though most of these agencies have built sophisticated analytics teams, they still have work to do in this area as the average score for that criterion by client references was approximately 5% lower than the scores for other criteria.

 

Maybe even more significantly, we are seeing the agency landscape in general coming to a cross roads. When you consider the fact that traditional budgets are getting slashed, that interactive budgets are expected to grow significantly in the next five years and that technology is becoming more and more integral to marketing overall, you can see how the role of agencies will continue to evolve. Interactive agencies therefore have an enormous opportunity to play bigger roles for their clients and are already beginning to do so. However all agencies are adapting and are now competing more than ever. We already see this playing out as interactive agencies, PR agencies, traditional agencies, media agencies and specialists are all vying to take the lead in social marketing for their clients.

 

So what does all this mean to interactive marketers? Well for one you can take solace in fact that the leading agencies in the space are considered more than competent by a large group of your peers. However, take note that an already complex industry will continue to get more complicated. We’ve been working several marketers on their agency portfolios lately and taking these few basic steps upfront helps immensely:

 

• Get your ship in order first – “interactive marketing” means a lot of things, if you have your objectives and even an overall digital strategy in place then it will be much easier to give clear direction to your agencies
• Know the agency’s heritage – while many agencies have successfully expanded their expertise in new areas, we find that most agencies are strongest in their heritage (in their “DNA” as one senior agency exec recently said to me). For instance, R/GA is still great at design and innovation, Sapient is still great at technology and Wunderman is still great at direct marketing. It helps to match their heritage to your needs when evaluating agencies
• Set clear roles – If you have your objectives and strategy set and you know your agencies’ capabilities, you should then be able to set clear roles for each agency partner to help eliminate the agency infighting

 

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