The second annual “Burson-Marsteller Global Social Media Check-up” shows that 67% of of the Fortune Global 100 are on Twitter, and they are actively using such interactive tools as the “@reply” function. They respond directly to other users, and the “@mention” tool to gauge brand comments. This is a significant increase compared to last year.
Large companies even give more power to their audience. 74% of large companies on Facebook allow their users who “Like” them to post on their page walls. And they don’t leave them alone in their conversation: 57% are responding to those posts.
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In the last weeks, I have been in the process of letting some of the publishers in our company know that the world of communities and forums is changing. The reasons are quite obvious: The world is getting social. New standards will become mainstream and as people have many registrations processes, passwords and combinations of login to remember, websites and online content production businesses have to change their mindset.
Here is the proof to my words (and yes, it helps me a lot…). A recent study by Janrain and Blue Research among “social media active” people concludes that for online publishers, site registrations will be out soon and social sign-on is trendy, and becoming the new standard. The study found out that 66% of respondents said that social sign-in, which allows users to sign in on a platform using their profiles from Facebook, Google, Twitter or other social websites, is a potential solution. Just 25% of users are inclined to hand over their information when asked to register on a website.
Most (75%) of the over 650 respondents said, they don’t like online registrations and, when presented with a registration request, may leave the site, go somewhere else, or not come back again. More than three-quarters of the respondents even said they are putting incomplete or incorrect information in online registration forms.
Social sign-on/sign-in even pays into company’s brand image. 42% agreed that companies offering a social sign-in option “are more up-to-date, innovative and leave a positive impression compared to those which do not offer this capability” on their sites.
“The findings of the survey clearly show that consumers are frustrated with the traditional online registration process and will favor brands that make it easy for them to be recognized.” Paul Abel, Managing Partner, Blue Research
Spot On!
In my eyes, the reasons affirming the statement “pro social sign-in” is easy. You don’t need to remember all singin passwords, and forgeting one is not an issue if you have many social accounts. At least, you will remember one login. And platform owners are not losing out of users then. 45% stated they have left a website after forgetting their password or log-in information. They just don’t answer the security question or use the “Reset my password” functionality. Automation is wanted: 55% said they were more likely to return to a site that automatically recognizes their identity. Many publishers (60% according to a study by Gigya and Edge Research) have realized the opportunity to upscale on traffic and engagement by users and include sign-in options now.
Would you agree with these results? What is your way of using personal sign-in? Is social sign-in the future?
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Facebook starts a new advertising format that focuses on the “check-ins” and “likes” of Facebook users, and thus their friends. The new commercial product uses the traditional business or product recommendations that can be seen in other ad formats of the company.
Facebook calls the new advertising model Sponsored Stories (watch the descriptive video). It gives marketers the option to identify activities that members to target those peoples’ friends. The Facebook News Feed becomes the driver of the acitivity. Companies and brands can feature these activities via check-ins, custom applications and page posts (i.e. discount offers) in a column on the right members’ friends.
Sponsored Stories highlight the actions of friends while giving advertisers no control over messages. So, it is not a straight forward promotion but all advertising may be considered by viewers as company or product recommendations. However, it is not the companies that know where the advertsing goes but the users with their activities.
Compared to Twitter and their Promoted Tweets this is a new approach. Promoted Tweets focusses specific tweets tied to keywords which gives advertisers full control over their commercial messages. Facebook Sponsored Stories are following a bidding system. Slots are on a per-impression and per-click basis.
Spot On!
In my eyes, this is aclever approach to use the activities of Facebook users to generate revenue. The only question stays if the users want to have their face and name used for commercial formats of this kind. What if a user doens’t want to be “used” for commercial purposes of brands? It suggest that users need to have the option to turn this commercial feature off. And I can imagine that some will be saying “And where is my rev share?”
What comes up to your mind when you think about it? Join the conversation…
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Yesterday, I came across a good post by Adam Singer that inspired me (as well as his comment to my comment) to finally explore a bit on the phrase: “evolution by revolution”. I don’t know whether this phrase is new, or invented by me but I would love to claim it as my invention. And as Google did not have any results on the phrase for me, I herewith put my trademark behind the phrase – maybe to make a case… “evolution by revolution”.
The phrase is one of these thesis I use for educational courses to discuss and leverage a modern social web world approach with C-level management teams in Europe. I have used it in many seminar or webinars when I was talking about the change management challenges that the Social Web, Social Networks and Social Media bring to live these days.
In the past of human kind, revolutions were often a way for the lower class or segments/departments in an organization to state their case. For them, the challenge to be heard, to get access to the higher education, to have enough food or to benefit from any other kind of wellness or upper (business) lifestyle was often only accessable by a revolution. Revolutions cost money. Revolutions are tough. Revolutions sometimes make sacrifices. Revolutions change habits, perspectives and … business objectives. And revolutions always happened publicly – via newspapers, magazines or even flyers in the streets.
Today revolutions spread faster. In our social web world today, the traditional print media opportunities are added (or replaced?) by new media formats that every individual can use to state their case. And sometimes it “pisses people off” as Adam would have put it. But it makes the case of the unhappy, unsatisfied and underdogs. Suddenly, somebody writes something that is not mainstream, not the evolution strategy of the leadership but becomes the new revolutionary fruits of growth for the management if these people listen, communicate and collaborate, if they pay attention – whether it be the clients, the partners or even employees that start the revolution.
Their voice might be found on all kinds of platforms, in a tiny revolutionary statement in a blog post, a comment in a LinkedIn group (think about the impact for B2B business) or in a Facebook fanpage. Think about it! No! Think about it! Rest…
Some companies put all their PR & marketing budgets in the effciency of search marketing but then forget about the power of blog posts, and what it could do to them. They don’t think of it as negative cases. Think positive! Think ahead! Think about how to leverage the power of social options!
Spot On!
This modern world of communication is all about humans – the past, the present and the future. Evolution follows every revolution (…in my eyes). Consumer or end user buzz for positive and negative business impact always starts an evolution whilst being embraced as revolution first. It changes the mindset. And evolutions can be positive and negative. It needs to be seen as a turn around opportunity, as a business review option, and as a way to think ahead to prevent revolutions.
“Evolution by Revolution” is a (business) challenge – not a phrase! C-level management should forget that… That’s my case!
What’s yours on this topic…?
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Do bank customers want ads in their checking accounts? Whether or not we like it, banks think about ways for new monetization opportunities but also try to strengthen loyalty programs of other companies. The big alignment of the industry and the end of the plastic loyalty card? Banks just ad links to the last transaction and you get the voucher for some benefit at the next check-in.
Apple released some numbers that every iPhone user has approximately 60 apps on their device which sums up in 10 Billion app downloads from their store. It took Apple 31 month compared to 67 month to sell the same amount of iTunes songs.
In their latest commercial, MINI battles vs. five-ton monster truck. Can a monster truck jump really clear the whole MINI family becomes the question? And just watch the feelings and what happens to those who watch the challenge. Can love be described better?
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John Hernandez is General Manager of the Customer Collaboration Business Unit (CCBU) at Cisco, which provides contact center and interactive voice applications to enterprises and service providers. In this capacity he oversees product and market development, and is closely involved in the business with the Cisco sales force and partners.
The Strategy Web spoke with him about the launch and benefits of their new customer care product SocialMiner.
What were Cisco’s most successful social medias tactics in the last 2 years? How did Cisco came across the new solution SocialMiner? Why is social media monitoring so important from a strategic point of view for businesses?
Cisco is very active in social media. Our employees were some of the earliest adopters of Myspace, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other social sites. We have tens of thousands of active social media users in our company, as well as a robust and vibrant corporate presence on the social web.
Social media monitoring can become a key strategic advantage for businesses. From a contact center perspective, social media could be treated as “just another channel” in a multichannel approach. However, the public nature of social media, along with the sheer volume of social media postings, makes social media as much a business intelligence tool as a new way to engage with customers. Cisco believes that proactive social media customer care will have a transformative impact on how companies engage and serve their customers.
The concept of the SocialMiner product came from our observation of the changing communication habits and Internet usage of consumers. As consumers have adopted social media channels for their individual communications on an ever-increasing basis over the past couple years, it is only natural that they would consider interacting with a business via social media. This concept of social impacting customer relationships is a very active topic within the emerging “Social CRM” community.
Is SocialMiner just a Customer Service product? Bearing in mind that social conversations on the web affects the whole business…
Cisco SocialMiner is an engagement product, not a “listening product.” SocialMiner is designed to scale the quality and quantity of social media interactions performed by a business. SocialMiner can be used for a variety of business functions such as Support or Sales, but we believe the customers that derive the most value from social media will also use these engagements to drive business process change. For example, an organization could use SocialMiner as a source of business intelligence to provide real-time customer appreciation or criticism of a product or service (or of a competitors’ product/service). Social media can direct their business strategy. Cisco believes that companies that learn from social media will become closer to meeting their customers’ expectations and this will drive overall business success.
Which three benefits do business users have using SocialMiner compared to other tools in the market (Radian6, Alterian, etc.)
1. Cisco SocialMiner is complementary to brand monitoring dashboard solutions. It is designed to support scaling social media by leveraging the best practices from contact center type operational models: Queuing, Service Level Metrics (Average Speed of Answer), and productivity metrics for users. By contrast, many of the brand monitoring dashboards have pieces of workflow capability, but these capabilities are either relatively limited or recently introduced functions.
2. Cisco SocialMiner is a component of the Cisco contact center portfolio which currently includes an installed base of over 10,000 customers. SocialMiner is packaged, priced, and delivered along with Cisco Unified Contact Center Express and Cisco Unified Contact Center Enterprise solutions, and therefore it supports the same installation, deployment, serviceability, and user experience as these other Cisco collaboration solutions.
3. Cisco SocialMiner is a very easy to install and operate software appliance. It runs on premise or in a customer controlled data-center hosting facility and offers unlimited capture capability. Cisco SocialMiner is an API-first product with 100% of functionality available via REST API’s and all user interface delivered as OpenSocial gadgets with documented source that can be modified by Cisco channel or customers. This model supports the preferred consumption model of most enterprise organizations along with a broad customization capability.
Can it be used as a stand-alone product or only in combination with other Cisco products for customer service? Do you have any case studies of success?
Cisco SocialMiner can be used as a stand-alone solution. We have several case studies that illustrate SocialMiner’s success. Zone Labs is one of them. The small wellness company was looking to accelerate revenues & grow 1000% in next 3 years, implemented Cisco SocialMiner to increase customer engagement, customer satisfaction and sales. Zone Labs started developing social communities on their own website as well as Facebook, Twitter and other social media outlets. They used Cisco SocialMiner to route and queue contacts to experts within their organization.
Using SocialMiner, experts were able to proactively answer health and wellness questions via Twitter, providing encouragement to consumers on the Zone Diet, customer service and expert advice on questions such as vitamins and healthy recipes. Zone Labs saw improved agent productivity by automating capturing and responding to social media posts (currently estimated at ~10x). They gained greater customer satisfaction & brand mind-share from faster first inquiry resolution on the web, and were able to compete on comparable scale with larger companies. Their social media activity reduced their customer acquisition cost and created a larger funnel with more leads, that were converted more easily and more quickly than before.
Within 4 months of using SocialMiner, Zone Labs saw tremendous results:
– Web site transactions up 189%
– Revenue up 203%
– 202% increase in total visitors to www.zonediet.com
Thank you for your time, John. And by the way: I like your commercial for the product…
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Early adopters show big interest (see study) in location-based platforms like Gowalla, Foursquare or Groupon and obviously Facebook Places. Though only 4% of the US internet users use it, and probably the number is even lower in Europe. Nevertheless, Check-Ins could become the pull mechanism for offers on location-based direct marketing campaign in the future.
However, the check-in technology is still not completely evolved. People can still log-on from places around a building (though often not in the building…) -like we check-in on our airlines for flights today from all over the world- and still earn their “check-in credits”.
Some months ago, I wrote about loyalty cards and how the intelligent use of Social Media at point of sales, i.e. cash points at retailers or in shops, could make our purse loose some “plastic weight”, and make loyalty cards a thing of the past.
Now, combine this thought with the new location-based technology and think where we could be if these platforms could embed loyalty programs in their technology/apps. Automated check-in via apps. No second hand-over from loyalty plastic cards. Quicker engagement and upsale opportunities for companies and brands. Brave new world!?
This presentation by the DASH7 Alliance looks at the state of location-based check-ins in the past, today and the need for a global standard for check-ins (and check-outs) in the future.
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The latest research by McKinsey & Company states that companies embracing Web 2.0 opportunities have more chances to gain market leadership and step ahead of their competitors than companies that are less Web 2.0-savvy. The research was interviewing 3.249 companies as part of its annual Web 2.0 survey.
The study concluded that “networked enterprises” are more likely to be market leaders and winning market share. The study’s authors, Jacques Bughin and Michael Chui said that the Web 2.0 companies “also use management practices that lead to margins higher than those of companies using the Web in more limited ways.” They found that 27% of companies overall gained market share against their competitors and could succeed with higher profit margins.
The success curve of the “networked companies” is exponential. Those companies that are “highly networked enterprises”, defined as companies using Web 2.0 inside and outside their business in innovative ways, “were 50 percent more likely to fall in this high-performance group than other organizations were,” the authors state.
The authors prediction is that that in many industries, “new competitive battle lines may form between companies that use the Web in sophisticated ways and companies that feel uncomfortable with new Web-inspired management styles or simply can’t execute at a sufficiently high level.”
Companies that have embraced Web 2.0 philosophy continue to report that they are receiving measurable business benefits. 90% are reporting at least one benefit. The benefits were increasing speed of access to knowledge – 77% of respodents with internal Web 2.0 efforts and 57% using Web 2.0 to engage external partners. Obviously cost saving is a big topic: 60% of internal and 53% of external users mention that communication costs could be reduced. And travel costs decreased as well said 44% internal users and 38% external users.
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This social media case study by Leo Burnett Worldwide called “David on Demand” is really something to be shared with my readers. It is outlining the success of an unprecedented social media experiment. Users were able to control the actions of a man through Twitter and then view the experiment live via 24/7 video streaming through a webcam installed on his head. Great and funny idea – although I would not let my followers do that with me… 😉
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When I joined the LeWeb10 in Paris last week, I was fortunate to spend some time with Jeremiah Owyang, partner at Altimeter Group and Blogger at web-strategist.com. We to talk about the future of web-strategy, the evolution of brands in the social web era and exchanged thoughts on how businesses need to integrate social media in their web activities. And it was good to see that our views matched nicely.
Afterwards, I did a quick video snapshot on three topics…
Where is web-strategy heading to in 2011?
The main trend that Jeremiah foresees is the integration of social media into the corporate website. In 2010, I have seen many companies already challenging this topic, and it improves. Although I have to admit, in many cases I found often tiny mistakes like the way social media conquers websites while important information gets lost or hidden in the backend or also placement of share items/buttons in the wrong corner apart from other things. Yes, companies are integrating their social affinity and activity but should not forget the business model, the target-group (or should I say friends or followers?) and the main existing user behavior…
What are the main trends from a long-term perspective?
Social analytics and Social CRM will emerge (active, pervasive), he said, and he differentiates this from social media monitoring (passive, reactive). I defintely agree in that point. Companies need to understand and react immediately whenever a client approaches a brand or a company how to match the data of all website and lead generation traffic stats with the CRM system in order to pro-actively supply relevant offers to them – be it on mobile, online or offline. Otherwise any competitive advantage will get lost in the future.
What is the role of brand vangelists/brand advocates in the future?
Microsoft, Intel, Oracle, SAP, Wall-Mart amongst others have already deployed brand vangelist/brand advocates for their purposes. He makes clear that by using these people brands get ahead of the 1:1 dialogue which he thinks does not work on the social web. Brand advocates make the communication programs scale, he argues – I could not agree more as I see the main ROI factor from a user perspective in the time factor.
Thank you, Jeremiah! Looking forward to catching up in 2011…
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The second annual “Burson-Marsteller Global Social Media Check-up” shows that 67% of of the Fortune Global 100 are on Twitter, and they are actively using such interactive tools as the “@reply” function. They respond directly to other users, and the “@mention” tool to gauge brand comments. This is a significant increase compared to last year.
Facebook starts a new advertising format that focuses on the “check-ins” and “likes” of Facebook users, and thus their friends. The new commercial product uses the traditional business or product recommendations that can be seen in other ad formats of the company.
Do bank customers want ads in their checking accounts? Whether or not we like it, 
One-on-one interview with John Hernandez
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