New Study: Consumers Expect Brands to Engage with Them in Social Media

October 22, 2009

New Study: Consumers Expect Brands to Engage with Them in Social Media
10.22.09 by Blake Cahill   

Well, is that really anything new? Haven’t consumers always expected attention and respect when they walked into a retail store or when they called a companies contact center? The rising chorus of social network users (4 out 5 US adults online interacted with a social site in ‘09 - Forrester) continue to up the expectation for brands and companies with respect to presence and interaction online. The 24 X 7 consumer and social technologies have enabled new-media users with an ongoing interaction cycle that necessitates attention from brands.

A new study that was just release from Cone reports that among new-media users, a staggering 78% of them interact with companies or brands via new media sites and tools — up from 59% the year before. And that these users are conversing with brands more often: 37% say they interact at least once a week — which is up from one in four when Cone did the study last year.

At this point it is simply not enough to just have a social media presence (although 95% of users expect it.) Increasingly, consumers are looking for companies and brands that have Web sites (58%) and email (45%) which I find extremely low percentages by the way. But, to also have involvement in social networks, such as Facebook and MySpace (30%) and online games (24%). Additionally, despite the annoyance of pop-ups and other intrusive ad methods 43% say they want to see companies advertise online up from 25% last year.

Perhaps the most intriguing part of Cone’s data, however, is that consumers strongly believe that social media is a two-way street, with 62% saying that they can influence business decisions by voicing their opinions through social channels. Additionally, about 25% have contributed their point of view on an issue or contacted a company directly (23%), and most want the conversation to be two-way — 74% expect companies to join conversations about their companies and brands.

Some of the data is inline with other studies I have seen and some of it seems a little be low. Will cross reference with earlier posts and provide updates with how this compares.

Tags: social media

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Desperately seeking metrics: what’s the business case for social media?

October 22, 2009

Desperately seeking metrics: what’s the business case for social media?
by Kelly Feller

About a week ago I became famous. Well, ok–famous inside the company where I work. But since that company (Intel) employs around 85,000 people, I’m going to do a happy dance for this proverbial five minutes of fame as they may be all I get. How did this come about? Recently the team of company journalists who publish our intranet found my internal company blog on social media and decided to link to it on the front page of the intranet website. This sparked an amazing dialogue, with nearly 9,000 views and 50 comments. And it was interesting to see the reactions of folks from a company like Intel–where it’s not unusual to run into colleagues who have worked at the company for 30+ years. (Intel is celebrating its 40th year this year).
My blog post, and the subsequent discussion, focused on whether employees should be encoraged to participate in social media externally. (Internally we already encourage the use of blogs, the Intelpedia wiki, and other collaboration tools). And I was surprised to see how widely people’s sentiment of social media varied. From extreme “be very afraid” to “keep up the good work,” many of these comments asked for the same thing: show me why.
Being the good marketer that I am, I scuried back to my cube to roll up my sleeves and track down how to measure the effectiveness of our social media (marketing) efforts so I could return and win over all the naysayers. Simple task, right? Not!
It turns out that measuring the “value” of corporate social media (marketing) efforts is an inexact science. Folks are definately talking about it–like Jeremiah Owyang and Rodney Rumford from Forrester. And their fresh approach helps us get closer to analyzing how social media efforts make a difference in a corporate marketing strategy. For example, they ask us as marketers to move beyond traditional marketing metrics that measure quantitative data like page views and clickthroughs–essentially traffic. Instead they suggest that we measure “engagement” and focus on these key areas:
Involvement - are customers present? (includes traditional analytics like traffic)
Interaction - are our customers are taking action? (downloading white papers, etc.)
Intimacy - what is customer sentiment or affinity? (how they feel about us)
Influence - are customers are talking about us?
But now that we know what to measure, it’s how to measure that is the next chapter in this ongoing saga. And we at Intel are definately working on that right now as we analyze several pilots that measure the tone of conversations both on and off domain. We’re also looking to capture the frequency with which our products are mentioned in certain dialogues or discussions.
In essence, however, social media makes tracking the ROI of marketing programs more complicated. No longer do easily digested and spit-out metrics–like traffic–successfully capture the effect a company’s social media (marketing) efforts are having on how their customers feel about them. And this makes marketers and company executives who are constantly analyzing the return on investment crazy. I suppose I better be careful. I wouldn’t want to be famous for that.

Tags: social media

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Bill Palmer speaks at CGT Executive Conference on Social Media

October 22, 2009

 

www.consumergoods.com

Consumer Goods Business & Technology Leadership Conference - formerly known as the CGT Fall Conference
Turning Challenges into Opportunities through Effective Collaboration
October 18 - 21, 2009  |  Ritz Carlton  |  Orlando, FL
The annual 11th Annual Consumer Goods Business & Technology Leadership Conference has been renamed to better reflect the content, direction, and goal of the event. It remains the industry's premier conference committed to providing a centralized leadership forum for CG executives to network with peers, share ideas and experiences, and learn about important industry trends. This year's theme of collaboration will build on previous year's discussions and enable attendees to take home actionable ideas to help improve their business success.

Topics covered will include:

- Collaboration with Retailer Customers
- Leveraging Emerging Technologies
- Understanding Consumer Trends
- Tech Trends Panel
- Shared Strategy Panel
- The Last 100 Feet: Winning at the Shelf
- Sustainability
- Analytics / Business Intelligence
- Demand Planning
- DSD
- Downstream Data
- Using Mobile Technology to Empower your Sales Force
- Innovation and IT

Tags: social media , speaking engagement , web 2.0

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