Why Conversationalists Matter
Recently, Forrester updated our Social Technographics ladder to include an interesting behavioral segment called Conversationalists. These are the chatty folks, officially defined as people who update their statuses on platforms like Facebook and Twitter at least weekly.
If your Social Technographics profile shows that your target audience over-indexes with Conversationalist behaviors, then you probably already know a few Conversationalists; these are the people glued to Twitter and Facebook. While these folks are always conversing, the challenge for marketers is to get them telling their friends, family, and co-workers about your brand through various social media channels.
Why are Conversationalists important to consider? It’s not just because of the conversations they create and the sentiment they can affect; they are also more likely than the average US online adult to give product advice to friends and family.
In my most recent report, Engage Conversationalists Using the POST Framework, written in conjunction with Researcher and Interactive Marketing Community manager, Sarah Glass, we provide examples for reaching Conversationalists to achieve business and marketing objectives.
Are you a conversationalist? If so, what are some ways you’ve seen marketers reach out that were effective in getting you to be part of a brand dialog in social media?
Help Us Benchmark "Social Maturity"
We recently embarked on a Forrester-wide research project to benchmark the use of social technologies across enterprise organizations. Why is this important? Well as you may know, we cover social technologies from a wide range of perspectives – from roles in marketing to IT to technology professionals. We find each of these roles differ in their general “social maturity” and that most companies are experiencing pockets of success, but few, if any, are successfully implementing it across the board. In fact, full maturity in this space could take years, but there are clear differences in how some ahead of the curve companies are using social technologies for business results. In fact at this point it has been clearly established by many people (including us many times over) that social technologies as transformative tools that are changing the way companies do business. So we’re not talking as much about the opportunity social presents, but rather we are trying to determine the current reality of practitioners. It’s also clear that many companies have made tremendous strides in planning and organizing for the use of social technologies. However, the one question we consistently get is: “where is my organization compared to others in the use of social media?” We want to benchmark these companies to see if we can answer questions like:
- How do you define “social maturity” and why is it important to get there?
- Which companies are ahead of the curve in implementing social technologies for both external use (i.e. for customers/consumers) and/or internal use (i.e. for employees/partners)?
- What have been the biggest drivers of success?
- What are the biggest challenges?
- What steps do most organizations need to take and why?
Here’s how you can help:
Foursquare’s Starbucks Mistake: Five Ways Foursquare Advertising Is Getting Less Interesting
Foursquare, the geolocation social tool, has been a media darling as of late. Not only is it growing, but people innately understand the monetization model, which is not something you can say about every social site and tool. As people “check in,” or report where they are to their networks, Foursquare serves them offers from nearby businesses. It’s a win-win-win situation: Businesses can market to people who are able to immediately take action; Foursquare earns revenue; and users get valuable offers they can use.
But Starbucks’ current program on Foursquare may kill the goose that lays the golden eggs (or at least demonstrate how that goose may die a slow, lingering death of neglect). I believe (and I’m curious if you agree) that Starbucks’ ubiquity combined with the offer’s difficult redemption is decreasing attention for Foursquare’s other offers. If other large chains follow suit with similar promotions, those “Special Nearby” tabs within Foursquare’s mobile apps won’t get as much notice, and that means problems for advertisers on the Foursquare platform.
If you’re a Foursquare user, you’ve undoubtedly seen Foursquare offers, but for those who are not yet acquainted with the joys of mayorships, here is how it works: When you check in at a location, Foursquare will alert you when an offer is available in close proximity. With a click, you can view that offer. The first couple of times I saw this, the offers were interesting and immediately relevant. For example, I checked in at SFMOMA and was alerted I could get free entry to an art museum across the street.
Foursquare’s Starbucks Mistake: Five Ways Foursquare Advertising is Getting Less Interesting
Foursquare, the geolocation social tool, has been a media darling as of late. Not only is it growing, but people innately understand the monetization model, which is not something you can say about every social site and tool. As people “check in,” or report where they are to their network, Foursquare serves them offers from nearby businesses. It’s a win-win-win situation: Businesses can market to people who are able to immediately take action; Foursquare earns revenue; and users get valuable offers they can use.
But Starbucks’ current program on Foursquare may kill the goose that lays the golden eggs (or at least demonstrate how that goose may die a slow, lingering death of neglect). I believe (and I’m curious if you agree) that Starbucks’ ubiquity combined with the offer’s difficult redemption is decreasing attention for Foursquare’s other offers. If other large chains follow suit with similar promotions, those “Special Nearby” tabs within Foursquare’s mobile apps won’t get as much notice, and that means problems for advertisers on the Foursquare platform.
If you’re a Foursquare user, you’ve undoubtedly seen Foursquare offers, but for those who are not yet acquainted with the joys of mayorships, here is how it works: When you check in at a location, Foursquare will alert you when an offer is available in close proximity. With a click, you can view that offer. The first couple of times I saw this, the offers were interesting and immediately relevant. For example, I checked in at SFMOMA and was alerted I could get free entry to an art museum across the street.
Does Google’s ‘Sitelinks’ feature improve or hurt conversion rates?
I don't know about you, but I like the 'extended' search results I sometimes see on Google. I mean the ones where Google, instead of just offering a single link for the top search result, provides you with several deep links into a site. It makes navigation faster, and that's a good thing.
Those extra links almost always show up in organic results, so you may not have known that marketers can actually buy this feature in their paid listings as well. Google calls them 'AdWords Ad Sitelinks.' But – I'm starting to wonder how well these actually work for marketers. I noticed today that in Google's case study about how Nationwide Insurance used Sitelinks [pdf], Google says clickthrough rate went up 73% but conversions only rose 60%. The case study isn't clear on whether that's conversions per click or overall conversions — but it certainly sounds like overall conversions. In which case, the clicks Nationwide got from Sitelinks actually converted at a lower rate than the clicks they got from traditional paid listings.
Now, this is just one example – and as I said, it's based on my reading of the case study. But if Sitelinks really did drive conversion rates down rather than up, surely that'd be a concern.
I'm curious — have you used Sitelinks? If so, what did you think of the program's performance — especially the conversion rates? Let us know in the comments below.
Crowd Factory Launches New Social Campaign Product
Crowd Factory announced today a new product for marketers: CrowdWorks Social Campaign– which they describe as a way for marketers “to acquire new customers through simple social sharing and custom social marketing campaigns while easily tracking ROI”.
The key word there is simple. What Social Campaign offers marketers is not complex end-to-end community/social/conversational/engagement marketing functionality and services. It’s a curated set of light social applications (like sharing and ratings)—which they refer to as social gestures—that marketers can use to impact the business goals they’ve already established for their campaigns.
The interface is as simple as the feature set too, which may be a welcome change of pace for marketers who are used to requesting design and coding work from already tapped development resources. Crowd Factory says it takes 10 minutes, and no technical skills, to customize and deploy a social gesture, and having seen the dashboard, I can believe it. Of course, that 10 minute time-to-launch comes only after the platform has been approved by whatever internal departments need to sign off on technology platforms, but once that step is completed the dashboard is in fact a platform that can be used over and over to customize and deploy new social gestures without additional help from tech resources.
Calling B2B Marketers For The 2010 Forrester Groundswell Awards
As per Josh Bernoff's earlier post, it's that time of year again and we are now accepting entries for the 2010 Forrester Groundswell Awards. After so many impressive entries in 2009 , I'm happy to say that the B2B category will return to the awards this year. While consumer marketers might get all the love from the trade press, I know that many B2B marketers are producing amazing social media marketing applications. This is a great opportunity for B2B marketers to show that they too create great social marketing programs that generate actual business results.
So how do you enter the Groundswell Awards? The hard part comes first: you'll have to have launched a great social marketing application in the past 12 months. Then read Josh's post and (this is very important) the Groundswell Awards rules. The deadline for 2010 entries is August 27, but submit early so the Groundswell community can vote on your entry. B2B award winners will be announced online on October 28. I can't wait to see the submissions!
Now Accepting Entries For The 2010 Forrester Groundswell Awards
[Originally published by Josh Bernoff on the Groundswell blog.]
We first started the Forrester Groundswell awards in 2007. What a great run! We've seen applications like the one that the amazing Pete Williams used to raise a million dollars for recovery from Australian brush fires and the one that remade the rules for NASCAR. And for the people who created these award-winning applications, the awards have given them the recognition that helps them justify the great work they do.
This year, we're expanding them to match up to the expanding role that social applications play in business. It also means you have more ways to win.
We've got:
Calling B2B Marketers For The 2010 Groundswell Awards
As per Josh Bernoff's earlier post, it's that time of year again and we are now accepting entries for the 2010 Forrester Groundswell Awards. After so many impressive entries in 2009 , I'm happy to say that the B2B category will return to the awards this year. While consumer marketers might get all the love from the trade press, I know that many B2B marketers are producing amazing social media marketing applications. This is a great opportunity for B2B marketers to show that they too create great social marketing programs that generate actual business results.
So how do you enter the Groundswell Awards? The hard part comes first: you'll have to have launched a great social marketing application in the past 12 months. Then read Josh's post and (this is very important) the Groundswell Awards rules. The deadline for 2010 entries is August 27, but submit early so the Groundswell community can vote on your entry. B2B award winners will be announced online on October 28. I can't wait to see the submissions!
Now accepting entries for the 2010 Forrester Groundswell Awards
[Originally published by Josh Bernoff on the Groundswell blog.]
We first started the Forrester Groundswell awards in 2007. What a great run! We've seen applications like the one that the amazing Pete Williams used to raise a million dollars for recovery from Australian brush fires and the one that remade the rules for NASCAR. And for the people who created these award-winning applications, the awards have given them the recognition that helps them justify the great work they do.
This year, we're expanding them to match up to the expanding role that social applications play in business. It also means you have more ways to win.
We've got:
