branislavperic’s posterous

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Grégory Pouy is asking his audience here (in French) : Is Twitter a social network?
http://gregorypouy.blogs.com/marketing/2009/10/twitter-estil-un-r%C3%A9seau-social-.html

I would like to clearly state my point of view about Twitter, based on this question.
Twitter is a social network. Any tool that enables the construction of a social graph is a social network.
But, it should not be called a social network.
There are too many differences Facebook et Twitter to become comparable.

Let's start with a short definition: Twitter is a social graph and semantic based platform.

Here's why:
- Twitter's social connections are asymmetrical. As it is possible to establish a one-way social connection, it is much easier to build a social graph that is out of your friend/family/colleagues social spheres. Therefore, the "macro social graph" has a completely different shape if you compare it to Facebook. Connections are far more decentralized that Facebook.
Look at this blog post from David Armano, his illustration shows blue/orange nodes, but also less visible grey connections. Twitter is strong at grey connections. Far more than Facebook. It makes the "spreadability" factor much stronger than Facebook. It's common sense.
http://darmano.typepad.com/logic_emotion/2009/10/alliances.html

- Twitter is semantic, it is weaving the semantic web. It draws connections based on #hashtags. That's why it should be considered as a "semantic network" as much as a social network.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web

- Twitter is an open blogging platform. It is a "function" mostly, not a "website" (the website is actually quiet poor). Being a platform, it enables things. While Facebook is a website that aggregates basically anything around the social connection.

Facebook is location based, a website.
Twitter is service based, a platform.

Who will win the battle of the social graphs?
The big one, website based, but poor one, the swiss knife of our social life? Facebook?
The small one, platform based, but rich one, while being semantic at the same time? Twitter?

The answer is:
There's no reason to compare!
I firmly believe that both are here for a long time. The purpose and definitions are so different.
Comparing is a waste of time.
That's why I hate the fact that we shall call those two "social networks".
It can't be a unique word to describe two completely different notions.

As we say in French, "il ne faut pas comparer des choux et des carottes".
And as Albert Camus aptly observed: "Misnaming things compounds the troubles of the world."

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Achieving buzz or getting something viral is not an objective for a company in the digital space.
Those words have been jeopardized a long time ago, and misleading thousands of people in the marketing & communication world.

People think it's cool for several reasons (especially in Europe) :
- it means a lot of exposure at a low cost.
- it is a convenient territory to explore for frustrated creatives of the advertising world. "Let's make something fun, that the client would never accept on TV".

From there, it might sound great as it makes both the client and the creative people happy.
The human reality is there. No doubt about it.

However, success is random. Everybody knows it.
You cannot be sure of the overall outcome you might get in term of amount of views (exposure again).
Since we all want Success, while at the same time we are terribly afraid of Failing, one of the following options often predominates.

Either: "Let's make something that worked before (cats, beautiful people, naked, celebrity endorsement)"
Or: "Let's push the limit! (Whopper Virgins from CP+B is a good example), Who care about the ethics! Everybody knows there's no ethics on the Internet."
Also, the most talented creatives might think: "We are entertainers, we found a stupid fun idea that was never done before"

It is the alchemy of viral success.
But...
It's not the alchemy of something useful for the client.

Here's why:
Those are excellent ways of fighting the fragmented reality of digital consumptions. Getting people attention.
But those are also the best possible ways of getting the attention, while totally failing to tell your story.
Therefore, getting the attention and telling your story is still very well done by traditional media buying.

Digital is mostly about engagement.
Engagement is the objective that is related to the social essence of digital usage nowadays.
And there are thousands of ways of becoming engaging.
Viral & Buzz is not about engagement, people are not engaged with your brand, they're engaged with the stupid idea behind the viral film that is supposed to generate buzz.

Only one exception: you're a small company, you're proud of your product/service, you can't afford media buying, you can't afford advertising. Your awareness is close to zero. Doing yet another viral film with your logo/website at the end is a good way to boost your awareness at a very low cost.

If you agree, use hashtag #stopviral in your tweets, so that I can track you.
If you do not agree, drop a comment. I would be glad to read it.
(also feel free to comment in French)

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Stunning U.S. figures brought by Comscore and Adage.
http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=139367

1/ The number of people online who click display ads has dropped 50% in less than two years
2/ 8% of internet users account for 85% of all clicks
3/ Display ads, regardless of clicks, generate significant lift in brand-site visitation, trademark search (searching for, say, Toyota or Prius) and both online and offline sales among those exposed to the ads

It was known that display and paid search activities must be considered as a chain of influence to ultimately drive clicks.
Now it seems that the banner click is totally obsolete and that we'll be using the words "context" and "touchpoint" even more.

While, beyond exposure, it is also time to seriously reconsider how engagement becomes the key success measurement of a digital activity.

"It's the age of engagement, stupid."

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So many people have joined the debate about Social Media Monitoring or Measurement.
Interesting pieces can be found on the pages below :
Anna Obrien here : http://www.randomactsofdata.com/?p=73
Ben Kunz here: http://www.thoughtgadgets.com/2009/09/dare-we-say-it-social-media-measurement.html
Nathan Gilliatt here : http://net-savvy.com/executive/measurement/agency-approaches-to-measuring-social-media.html

Since Ben Kunz from Mediassociates is taunting me on Twitter to get a réaction, here it is.

I will start by saying that monitoring and measurement are two different things. Outlining the perimeter of each is key.

But, let’s start by putting a couple of things into perspective.
First, Social Media is a reality, not a discipline.

Here is my definition of the Social Media phenomena :
Social Media is not equal to word-of-mouth, and is quiet different from “Media” :
– Word of mouth has existed forever. People sharing information, opinion, interest…
– Media is a latin word. It describes by which means the message is spread. The modern understanding of media is “bought media”, which means buying interruption spaces for companies to advertise on it.
– Social Media is a mass behaviour of people spending a growing share of their free time using digital tools to share and influence each other.

Since people are using Social Media as a generic expression to describe the big blurry social mess, the measurement or monitoring is often getting no where.

Monitoring Social Media (the phenomena)

When something becomes big, namely « Social Media », you have to gauge various things first :
- how big is it, compared to what existed before, how fast is it changing ?
- how important is your presence as a brand on conversations ?
- how different is your presence as a brand and why ?
- identify opportunities and threats.

Monitoring Social Media is about getting an answer all year long about those few items.
But not only.

When a social phenomena gets big, you also need to understand who matters the most.
Enthusiasts, fansumers, influencers, people aligned with your company activity, positionning, message, product/service offer…
A good monitoring tool/capability is also capable of scoring those « MVI » : most valuable individuals. From that perspective, it a very similar to scoring individuals in your CRM database.
From there, you can start building proactive trust, strong relationships with those individuals.
Most importantly, assign strategic objectives.

Monitoring is a facilitator that enables companies to understand and get the pulse of the huge fragmented Social Media octopus.
It is a strategic objective decision driver, quiet far from the ROI outcome that most people are expecting from it.

Measuring how effective you are at Social Influence Marketing (the practice)

As soon as you get involved as a company in the conversation, proactively, the second question comes in : how effective are we at what we’re doing ?

I believe Anna Obrien’s chart is providing an excellent measurement framework of what’s at hand theoratically.
Of course, there is no company on this planet rich enough to measure everything.
That is why KPIs (key performance indicator) exist.

The monitoring phase brought you insights, objectives to follow.
Do the measurement by simply taking the best possible measurement option to get a feedback on the effectiveness of what your doing compared to the initial objectives.

Success measurement, all the way, YES
ROI all the way, NO!

Why? Simply because ROI is the obsession of the siloed marketing era, which has to be dismantled.
ROI is the outcome of your marketing and communication effort, that is a chain of influence. You cannot apply ROI to every single initiative within this chain (while preferably when possible).
That is why marketers are well paid, for the ability to manage the big picture.
That is why minor marketing executives are thinking ROI, they want to prove at the human level that they are capable of managing the overall ROI, and thus become CMOs themselves.

Reality Check

Enough theory, I work for various important clients who simply do not have the time to carefully look at the whole process explained above.
What they want is an « overall performance score ».
Something that could be as dumb as GRP as an advertising pressure measurement for bought media.

The bought media industry is strong as it is right now mostly because any stakeholder can understand the effectiveness of the bought media effort through that very simple indicator.

I have not found anyone capable of grounding the ultimate theory on what that indicator might be, and how should we calculate it.
At Razorfish, however, we already have the SIM (Social Influence Marketing) Score, which is solving a reasonnably solid part of the equation at least, and most importantly, in a way that any client can instantly understand it
That is good enough for now.

The Marketing Funnel, as an answer to Ben Kunz’s taunt on Twitter :D

Sorry Ben, the funnel is a rational marketing piece that is still very much relevant when you approach marketing as a whole, try to increase the fluidity of it.
However, doing Social Influence Marketing at an operational level means assigning operational objectives, based on the strategic ones.
You cannot evaluate any work by simply considering that people should move from left to right in the funnel.
At the micro level, it’s actually much more complex than that.
I will get back to it in another posterous post.

(Sorry for the possible mistakes in English, French is my mother tongue).

Feel free to comment or disagree. That is why I am posting this.

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Last year, I attended a Forrester conference and there was this Hilton hotels speaker: Rob McDonald.
He is the CRM Manager worldwide.
It was not social by essence, it was mostly about thinking “what’s next in CRM?” and it turned to be “how do you get out of the CRM silo” or from my personnal perspective “how should you evolve you CRM strategy to make is social compliant”.
It was also about efficiency and how a new kind of CRM program can actually drive a much stronger brand favorability and difference as opposed to competitors.
I loved the demonstration, this guy is a genius.

A short take-away:
CRM is usually a separate P&L, far away from the rest of the marketing/communication effort.
As a result, a loyalty program often encourages the consumer to gather loyalty points/miles, but the whole system is made aspiration wise. Actual points are always difficult to redeem (or meant to be difficult to redeem).
In most hotels, only 20% of the points are redeemed which is wrong.
Hilton demonstrated that people who actually spend 100% of their points are 5 times more loyal (coming more often, spending more... blablabla)
The edgy idea they had also, quiet breakthrough, is to propose ANY room in ANY Hilton hotels available in exchange of points. Basically, as long as you have the points, you can spend those points in millions of ways and offer yourself the best possible consumer experience that the hotel chain has to offer.
They consider that CRM is about “investing” on their best clients, for their ability to “love” the brand and spread the word.

From there, this deck becomes social, as there are millions of ways of “helping” the Hilton lovers to spread the positive feeling about Hilton hotels, and thus drive brand favorability.

I would like to warn my readers interested by Social CRM, think about how the CRM program should evolve before thinking social. It is about the big picture, not the social tools that you might leverage (Facebook... whatever).

I would be glad to have your comments here, or on Twitter.

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