Sensei Blogs

Starbucks' Hijacked Twitter Campaign Could and Should Have Been Prevented

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Measuring and analyzing sentiment around a brand is becoming an important part of a business’ marketing and PR strategy. As a discipline, it seeks to understand the tone of the conversation occurring online around a business’ product, brand and/or that of its competitors. Using social media monitoring software like Lexalytics, Viralheat or Trendspotter (to name a few), marketers look for the context of social posts, the popularity of specific product-related topics, or the audience’s overall attitude as it relates to the product and brand.

Such programs are often on-going, general search-and-report type programs conducted as part of a market research or brand reputation management service. In other cases, it’s the marketing or customer service departments that are tasked with this job. In an ideal world – and in an ideal corporate structure – every department shares information in real-time and makes data available across business silos seamlessly. Yeah, right.

Back in reality, we know this situation is not common; in fact, it’s most likely the opposite of what’s really occurring. The immediacy of social media content sharing and the consumer’s ability to drive that unedited content across multiple platforms demands a rethink of this organizational failure. At a minimum, businesses must add sentiment analysis to the pre-launch stage of every social media campaign they execute. Why?

Starbucks Customers Hijack Twitter Campaign

A recent Starbucks Twitter campaign asked followers to tweet their holiday cheer on Twitter using the hashtag “#SpreadTheCheer.” A great idea except for the fact that with the 700 locations in the UK, Starbucks is embroiled in a public relations battle based on the news that it paid only 8.6 million pounds in corporate taxes over the last 14 years. With other news reporting that Starbucks in the UK planned to cut paid lunch breaks and maternity leave benefits, the public sentiment around the brand was decidedly poor. The result was a public hijacking of the holiday-cheer #hashtag campaign in protest of its corporate policies.

Not only were these Tweets seen across Twitter , they were amplified on a giant screen over a Starbucks-sponsored ice rink at London’s Natural History museum.

If the marketing team responsible for the execution of the campaign had conducted a standard sentiment analysis check before it launched, they’d have realized the potential risk before it was too late. Of course, that would mean sentiment analysis checks were part of standard pre-launch methodologies for social media campaigns or that the PR team communicates regularly with the marketing team.

<Insert soundtrack of corporate hysterical laughing here>

As much as marketers wish to deny this fact, the business brand is now firmly dictated by the sentiments and opinions shared by the general public and consumers. Social media can provide a stellar platform to amplify positive brand sentiment but it can just as easily – and more likely – disrupt corporate-directed messaging with negative social commentary. Sentiment analysis can no longer be a nice-to-have program or even a PR-specific effort; sentiment analysis must be inserted as a mandatory tactic preceding any social media effort.

Not convinced? Ask the executives as Starbucks in the UK what they think. Still not convinced? Ask the executives at McDonald’s who had their own positive-story Twitter campaign (#McDStories) hijacked by negative consumer commentary. This is not a trend; it’s a reality.

Is it realistic for a marketing team to conduct sentiment analysis before every campaign? Will budgets be made available for such a strategy? Or will businesses continue to take the risk? Join the debate in the comments below.

Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

Stop your bitching; you're not paying for it!

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 00:00:00 GMT

By now you’ve probably heard that Instagram, which was purchased by Facebook three months ago, announced a rather dramatic change to its Terms of Service. As of January 16th, 2013, by using the popular photo sharing app you give Instagram perpetual rights to use and sell your photographs without payment or notification to you. That’s right, unless you cancel your subscription to this free service before that date, you will agree to have them market and sell your vacation photos, the dozens (no, hundreds) of pictures of your meals shared with friends and of course, all those cute pictures of your kids at play in local parks, parties and at home.

Who knows, your kid might be the next Gerber baby! That picture you took of your girlfriend on a Fort Lauderdale beach during spring break might be on the cover of the next Maxim magazine. How great is that, right?! “How much will I get paid?” you ask? Ah, see there’s the catch: you get paid nothing. You give them the right to “market and sell” your photographs AND give up the right to be compensated for such use. Still excited about your possible 15 minutes of pictorial fame?

Guess What? There’s No Santa Claus

Naturally, whenever some free social networking service tries to pay its electricity bill (so it can continue to offer you a free service) by selling advertisements, sharing your information or accessing the content you produce and willingly share across social platforms, everyone gets all riled up and turns to…you guessed it…the free internet to share their outrage. When a fee is placed on the use of – or access to – content, networking or images, most balk at the notion and move on. Place an advertisement in front of your content or before your video plays and everyone complains about how they’ve been inconvenienced.

Well guess what netizens, there is no Santa Claus. Facebook is a business, not a jolly man in red suit giving away candy canes and toys made by mystical elves. Who do you think pays for the servers, programmers, network engineers and bandwidth that allow you to share your silly memes, political rants and pictures of last night’s “most amazing sushi ever!”?

Culture of Entitlement

I want all of it, everything, all the time but I’m not prepared to pay for it and I
demand the best service – with a smile – on my terms.

Social media has created a culture of entitled, whiney crybabies who expect that everything will be given to them without compromise, fees or responsibility. We post pictures of ourselves drunk at bars and complain when they’re used against us at a job interview. We complain about our bosses and work environment on Twitter and seek legal advice when we’re fired for doing so. We blindly accept Terms of Service agreements without reading the fine print and then act all surprised and shocked that someone is collecting and sharing our information.

Culture of Opt-Out

As I’m writing this post, Danny Brown posted a great article called Instagram, Social Media and the Opt-Out Economy. He takes a unique look at the issue by calling out the fact Instagram is changing the rules of the game midstream, forcing you to opt out. Other services like Klout.com, who freely and without the requirement of an opt-in, track and analyse your online activity so they can build their business by selling product managers that information, require you to opt-in in order to opt-out. Nuts, right?

Certainly, the Internet has created an almost lawless Wild West-type world where everyone is trying to stake their claim to the gold in dem der hills.

Do I like the change Instagram is making to their Terms of Service? No.
Will I be opting out? Hell yes.
Do I agree with the new “opt-out mentality” that Internet firms are forcing down our throats? Not a chance.

However, I recognize that Instagram is free and so I say “stop your bitching or just stop using them.” It’s really that simple. Instagram is telling you it has to pay its bills and instead of charging you for access, it’s collecting revenue by selling your pictures. Don’t like the cost? Don’t buy it. Just don’t act so shocked that there’s a fee for services in life.

YOU'VE ALREADY AGREED TO LICENSE YOUR PHOTOS

Unregister yourself from Instagram and start using another network that you’ll not read the ToS for either. Those of you complaining clearly don't read them since you most likely have a Facebook account and so you've already given up the same rights Instagram is now asking for. From Facebook's terms of service: "For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (IP content), you specifically give us ... a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post."

< /endrant >

Agree? Has social media created a culture of entitlement? Join the debate in the comments below.

Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

Customer Experience Cannot be Automated

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 00:00:00 GMT

I’m a bit disturbed by the fact that most customer experience (CX) discussions I’ve had lately with marketers have been about marketing automation and technology. Software firms pitching clients at trade shows, on webinars or at conferences all seem to be leading with the promise that their technology will generate a greater customer experience through automated engagements tracked back to the individual user profile.

I hope the clients of these software firms understand the phrase: Caveat Emptor / Buyer Beware. Customer experience is not downloadable, it does not come out of a box and it’s not about automation. In fact, great customer experience is not a technology-driven principle at all.

So what is Customer Experience?

It's a business discipline; customer experience is something you do, not something you install.
It's corporate culture; customer experience is something you inherently think and believe, not something you schedule.

Customers are more informed, sophisticated and social, which only serves to increase the pressure on businesses to better engage and satisfy. Customers have gained a lot of control over the success of the brands they love and hate and so they’re able to demand an improved customer experience. More automation is the opposite of what is being demanded.

A Deloitte and Forbes survey of 192 U.S. executives proves that this phenomena has become a major risk for the corporation. "Social media wasn't even on the radar a few years ago, and we're now seeing it ranked among the top sources of risk, on the same level as financial risk," Henry Ristuccia, a partner in Deloitte & Touche LLP. The power of the consumer voice, as amplified via social streams is forcing businesses to improve the customer experience or risk alienating current and prospective customers who are actively seeking each other out in these channels.

More High Touch, Less High Tech

Is your customer experiencing your brand solely through technologically-based communications such as social media, email, or automated answering machines? Are campaign decisions being directed by marketing software automation? There is definitely a role for software in the Customer Experience Management (CXM) process, but it must be a supporting player, not the director. CXM software must be chosen to augment real customer experience strategies, not have it dictated by the software’s pre-configured workflow.

When architecting the experience, the only universal “best practice” in customer experience design is to consider the customer’s satisfaction with the product or engagement as THE top priority and benchmark. And since every business and customer base is different – not to mention different customer segments within that base – there is no one technology that can effectively create the customer experience for your brand. In fact, there are an infinite number of outside influences on your customers including social channels, technologies, competition and other market forces, which add greater importance to human intuition and human touch.

It’s time your business stop looking to social media managers to bolster the engagement you have with customers and look to customer experience professionals that will infuse the discipline and culture across all customer touch points with your brand.

Has customer experience become overly automated? Are we building relationships on thin and technology-based connections today? Join the debate below!

Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

Marketers, What Your CEO REALLY Thinks Of You

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 00:00:00 GMT

You’ve earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in earned media. You’ve built your Facebook fans to 10,000 in 6 months. You’ve increased the lead funnel by 15% over last year. You’re the golden child of the organization; you’ve played squash with the CEO and received the keys to the executive washroom.

All is right with the world.

Until the company’s fortunes or the economy in general takes a downturn and the marketing budget is the first to get cut and the first department to see layoffs. Your executive washroom keys are taken back; you’re shocked that you once again have to “go” with the rest of the nobodies in the organization. You bide your time and do more of the same with less. Then (Oh Happy Day!) the economy rebounds and the marketing budget is the first to reap the rewards of the loosened purse strings.

Anyone in the marketing industry for more than 10 years, be they a corporate marketing or agency professional, has experienced this phenomenon at least once. When the business or the economy suffers, just as marketing is needed the most, CEOs stop investing in it. When the company’s fiscal outlook swings “to the black” and everyone is optimistic, budgets return to normal.

To my fellow marketers, what does this universal truth say about what CEOs really think of marketing or the value they place on what you do? I’ll tell you: it says they see you a marketer, not revenue generator. Your department is a cost, not a profit center.

Do you still think that branding, brand awareness and lead generation are the goals of marketing?

“What is the value of a mother’s hug?”

AAARRRGG! A week does not go by that I don’t bang my head on my desk in frustration with the articles, presentations and social commentary I see marketers spewing about the value and importance of branding and engagement, especially in the discipline of social media.

Of course brand awareness – the first stage in the customer lifecycle – is important; without it, marketers and sales teams cannot nurture the client towards strong purchase consideration. Of course social media is important; without it, we cannot identify the opportunities and obstacles in the way of consumers’ decision-making processes. Of course content marketing is important; without it, we’re not seeding social proof into the newly-social search engines. All of these go-to strategies and tactics marketers are so found of promoting these days are important, but without a calculation that demonstrates how they’re turning the marketing department from a cost-center to a profit-center, marketers will forever be the fair-weather friend of the CEO and the board of directors.

So, are you a marketer or a profit generator?

Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

Image Credit: George Marks

Announcing New Book: Influence Marketing, by Sam Fiorella & Danny Brown

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 00:00:00 GMT

The hype around social influence has been circling around me like a cyclone for a few years now, online, in-print and in-person. I’ve been open and honest with my views on the challenges with the current methodology being used by marketers and software providers alike until someone asked me to “put your money where your mouth is.”

And so I am.

This spring Que Publishing, a publishing imprint of Pearson, will release Influence Marketing: How to Create, Manage and Measure Brand Influencers in Social Media Marketing coauthored by Danny Brown and me!

Danny and I will move the conversation beyond social influence scoring and give you a start-to-finish blueprint for making influence marketing work in your organization.

Featuring case studies, empirical evidence, digital workshops and much, much more, Influence Marketing is based on successful campaigns that Danny and I have jointly and independently executed in this space. We look forward to sharing more with you in early January!

In the meantime, you can take advantage of the Cyber Monday week-long offers on Amazon.

Reserve Your Copy Today!

Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

Where Culture Derails Social Influence Marketing

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 00:00:00 GMT

During her 2005 tour of Japan, world-wide music superstar Madonna publicly praised Japan’s “Washlet,” an “intelligent” toilet that provides - among other features - posterior-cleaning water jets, hot air dry function, ambient background music and odour-masking technology. "I've missed the heated toilet seats," the pop-diva promoted upon leaving the country. She was not alone in her praise, many famous and well-connected people have gone on record promoting the virtues of the ultra-modern toilet.

It’s the earned media and public advocacy that brand marketers would die for, the type of public promotion many try to emulate when accessing social celebrities and socially-active people with high Klout scores. Find people who are perceived to have a popular voice and get them to talk about your product and their audience will beat a path to your door, open wallets in hand.

Yet, while the ingenuous toilets are found in 70% of Japanese homes, hotels and businesses, they’re one of world’s best kept secrets. Hiromichi Tabata, head of the international division at Washlet-maker TOTO does not hide the company’s desire to become a major player in international markets. They’ve been attempting to crack foreign markets, including the lucrative US market for more than 10 years with little success despite the volunteer endorsements by many internationally known celebrities and business executives. "It's because of the cultural taboo over talking about toilets," reports Tabata. "Americans avoid talking about those kinds of things so we can't expect success from word-of-mouth, even if they recognise our products are excellent.”

Influence Marketing vs. Purchase Decisions

The lesson learned from this case study is that influence marketing (marketing campaigns oriented around individuals perceived to have influence over a larger community), are ineffectual on the consumers’ purchase decisions when they are not interwoven into a more complex influence campaign that takes into account other decision-making factors such as culture, purchase lifecycle, context of the relationships between “influencers” and their audience, etc.

Too many businesses have been quick to jump on the bandwagon of early adopters such as Klout and Peerindex, allocating large marketing budgets to thin influence programs without proper consideration of the customer’s decision-making process. It’s the dichotomy of social media; it has inspired the creation and popularization of these platforms but also created an environment that generates disruptive forces in the communication paths between advocates and customers.

I’m not suggesting that social scoring platforms be ignored or thrown out; rather, I’m suggesting that the focus and blind faith being attributed them be rechanneled towards the customer’s decision-making process.

A new influence marketing blueprint is required.

Do you agree? Disagree? What might that new blueprint look like?

Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

Customers Have Run Amok; Get Your Pitchforks

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Sun, 18 Nov 2012 00:00:00 GMT

It’s about the conversation, not the pitch. Engage your audience, don’t preach to them. Social Media is about the customer, not you. Provide value to your audience; don’t sell your product. Create an outstanding customer experience and customers will become your advocates. The power of social media: the customer’s voice.

Much has been said, tweeted and blogged on the subject of the power of the customer’s voice in social media. Savvy social media marketers argue that a business may craft their brand, but it’s only validated when customers, who tweet, post, share, like and pin their experiences with that brand agree to it. The “wisdom of crowds” paradigm dictates that this collective chatter across social platforms creates consensus around the identity and value of a brand, not the spin marketers are paid to generate. It’s said that social media has given rise to an uncontrollable disruptive force in the traditional brand:customer dialogue, one that brands can no longer control or predict.

Do Customers Have Too Much Power?

The now infamous “United Breaks Guitars” story is an oft-cited example of how one man can dramatically affect the brand – and stock price – of a large corporation. Or the equally infamous “Dell lies. Dell sucks.” blog post that forced the computer giant to completely reinvent its customer experience and communication strategy. Yes, the customer has great power and with great power comes great responsibility. Or does it? Why are customers exempt from this universal rule?

My partner Jeff Wilson wrote a thought-provoking post entitled Social Media is Creating Bad Customers a few weeks back in which he argued that “deep down, people are bullies or at the very least indifferent to bullying.” His point was that social media provides consumers the tools to be bullies and the platform to thrive. Nothing hurts me more than to agree with something Jeff says, so I won’t. Instead, I’ll take that argument one step further: if social media is the drug that creates bad customers, marketers are the enablers that keep them stoned.

If we’re to agree that customers are now creating, shaping and advocating our brands through their social media engagement, should they not also be held accountable for those actions? If we as a marketing agency screw up a client’s branding because of employee error or simply poor performance, we’d be fired. If an employee creates a PR disaster that impacts the business such as the case where Taco Bell franchise employees invited camera crews to come film rats running around the restaurant or the “There’s A Comcast Technician on My Couch” video that captured a service technician sleeping on the customer’s couch instead of doing the job he came to do, they’d be fired. So why are customers let off the hook? Because they’re always right?

I’ve often argued that only true way to control customers and how they treat our brand online is to give them the best customer experience possible, but as my partner outlined so well in his post, that’s not always enough. People can be bullies and social media encourages the bad behavior of smartphone-carrying-YouTube-celebrity-wannabes. Should brands just take it?

I’m Mad And I’m Not Gonna Take It Any Longer

Businesses train customers to be loyalty with discounts, additional services and recognition rewards. Can’t we take the opposite approach for those who are purposely harming the brand? While a solid punch to the gut comes to mind or at a minimum a strong slap across the face, I understand this isn’t feasible – or maybe even legal – but certainly business brands must take back control somehow? What’s the future of our marketing if we allow – nay encourage – customers to run amok with our brands? Will we not be fated to be in PR disaster recovery mode permanently? Constantly on the defensive? Always looking over our shoulders?

I’m getting my pitch fork…who’s with me?!

Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

3 Ways to Manage Risk in Social Environments

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(2 Jeff Wilson) — Wed, 14 Nov 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Last week I argued that social media is creating bad customers. The post was designed to open people’s minds to the reality that social media channels create high degrees of risk for brands based on a number of factors. It detailed how social media enables poor customer behavior as easily as it enables good customer behavior.

For those that delved a bit deeper, you realized I was using bad customers as an example of risk within social channels. Bad customers will always exist and always try to game the system. Good companies will manage them effectively while poor companies will struggle. Such is life.

Social Risk and Uncertainty

Not many people are familiar with the concept of uncertainty in business, particularly its relationship to risk. If you’ve ever studied military history, you would recognize that uncertainty creates and/or amplifies risk. I will give you a simple example.

You can plan the hell out of an outdoor event, managing all the obvious risks such as theme, food quality and quantity, timing, supplier readiness and delivery, entertainment and A/V, invitations and registration along with the hundred other details that are managed by a good team and good plan. But you can never be certain of the weather, not even a week before. It will always retain a level of uncertainty adding that element of risk to the event. Do you get the big tent? Is parking going to turn to mud? How will rain impact attendance?

In this simple example, the weather uncertainty creates risk; risk that jeopardizes the event’s success and how you may choose to plan it. If it rains heavily attendance could be low. If it’s beautiful and sunny, attendance will be high.

So how is risk identified?

There are two forms of risk within social channels every marketer needs to be aware of and plan for.

Calculated Risk: Calculated risk is risk we can see, touch and smell. It can be identified, analyzed and planned for. We can see it coming but standard engagement policies are good enough to manage it. This is the stuff that our project planning typically takes into account and a good organization usually deal with this type of risk easily.
Risk Due to Uncertainty: Due to the public’s growing presence in the social space, risk created and/or amplified by uncertainty has become more prevalent. Uncertainty in social media is constantly present and can come from anywhere, at anytime and from any source. It is highly unpredictable and therefore capable of creating risk. Being difficult to spot or predict, it requires vigilance and a solid early warning system (excellent escalation process and good technology framework) to manage it.

Methods for Managing Risk in Social Channels

These three key tactics will aid you in identifying and reducing social media uncertainty and thus improving your ability to mitigate business risk.

A. Curate Knowledge from Other Parts of the Enterprise

I cannot stress enough how much insight and value can be gained from sharing knowledge across the enterprise. Sales, customer service, tech support, finance, HR, operations, product development, etc. all have knowledge of the customer and the market that will help you reduce uncertainty and manage risk. But you can’t rely on others to do it for you however; you must be willing to take a leadership role and curate this knowledge otherwise it simply will not get done.

B. Identify Trends and Patterns

The danger today is directly related to Big Data – or the likelihood we’re getting tangled up in it. We are so focused on what has transpired, we miss what’s coming. We need to stop looking at data for data sake. This is an intuition play, it’s about looking for emerging trends and patterns that produce uncertainty and amplify risk. Social data in particular can deliver some big insights if we look for greater patterns rather than focusing solely on sentiment around our brand.

C. Build a Defensible Position in the Social World

I advise all of my clients to take this three-pronged approach to social. Combined, they create an adaptable structure to identify and manage risk before it becomes a big issue.

Internal readiness: develop and build a work force comfortable with social and how to manage it effectively for your company. This requires an internal support network and enabled, outwardly connected employees.
Customer Communities: separate customers from the Great Unwashed Masses (GUM), engage, recognize and enable them. Customers will become one of your greatest early warning systems for impending risk as well as valuable allies in managing it.
Public Presence: Keep your social presence simple and focused on easily actionable measures that channel customers quickly to other parts of the enterprise – sales, service, support, HR, PR, etc. The public presence is about expedited service, not just saying thanks.

The Best Approach is the Strategic Approach

In the end, everything boils down to how well you have developed your strategy and how adaptable your organization is at managing risk. What is certain is that without a strategy in place you have eliminated your ability to reduce uncertainty and manage risk. The inevitable result will be a social program mired in issues that delivers little value to anyone.

Is your strategy designed to identify uncertainty? Do you have a risk management component to your social strategy?

Jeff Wilson - Sensei

Get Off Your Ass; Identify Your Own Influencers

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(1 Sam Fiorella) — Sun, 11 Nov 2012 00:00:00 GMT

It’s becoming clear that social influence scoring is not going away anytime soon – or ever – and so the debate over the validity of such scores and the businesses that provide them rage on. I know I’ve contributed my fair share of thoughts, dialogue, and rants on this subject and I have to say I’m rather tired of the same old debate. I’ve yet to read an article that satisfactorily explains how any software-generated score in isolation accurately dictates the real influence of an individual to measurably impact the decision-making of an audience based solely on their activity across a few social networks. Yet the providers of these scores remain in the spotlight; in fact they’re multiplying across business silos and industry verticals.

So what have we learned or accomplished?

Nothing. People are still gaming online engagement to increase their scores, marketers and HR professionals are still basing decisions on these scores and brands are still distributing product samples to those with high scores. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks?

So maybe it’s time we change the focus?

Can we change the public discourse from what a social influence score is or isn’t and, understanding that this virus is incurable, focus on how to successfully use it to our advantage? What would that look like?

We know, for example, that “social celebrities” who work the digital channels to get a lot of attention for their heavy social chatter and activity are popular – maybe even famous – due to their many thin connections that rank them highly by social influence scoring platforms. So if you define “influence” as the ability to amplify a message across social channels, then I guess you can call them influential and we can close the book on this discussion. However, from experience these amplifiers don’t impact short-term decision-making, which is true influence. Is there something the score can tell us anything that is important?

Can social celebrities have real influence? Of course they can. I consider bloggers who elicit many reactions as witnessed through thoughtful commentary, phone conversations and subscriptions among their audience, real influencers. There’s a dramatic difference between these two. Someone with 50,000 Twitter followers, lots of retweets and blog mentions but with little to no engagement on that blog is less influential than someone with only 5,000 Twitter followers, fewer retweets and blog mentions but consistent and meaningful debate among a targeted community within his or her blog. Most social scoring platforms – as they work today – would elevate the former with a higher score and deem them more “influential.”

Mapping Influence Marketing

What’s missing from the ongoing debate around the value of social influence scoring is the potential value in mapping the many degrees of social connections and relationships. Some are thin and vanity-driven; others are deep and meaningful, as is also the case in the traditional media and offline realms. Understanding the degree of relationship between individuals and groups is key to understanding the nature of the influence they might exert.

For example, I often tune into the Fox News broadcast when travelling though the US or watch it online when out of the US. I tune in enough to be one of the people that they claim to be a “regular viewer” and a data point in the rating statistics they use to sell advertising space. However, while I consider myself a “conservative,” the reason I tune into Fox News is the same reason I sometimes tune into America’s Next Top Model or slow down to gawk at a car wreck. I’m fascinated by the spectacle, the ugliness of humanity. I don’t tune in to educate myself or seek information in my decision-making but to gawk, a sick guilty pleasure. Fox News data crunchers and advertisers consider me someone they influence but do they? Maybe, but certainly not in the manner they intend.

Analyzing the Data

Until factors such as degree of relationship, context of engagement and sentiment of commentary are successfully interpreted and analyzed by software, the onus is on YOU to do the work. Does this make social scoring platforms worthless? No. Can they measure the nuances required? No. As I discovered in an interview with Andrew Grill from Kred.com, progress is being made. In the meantime, get off your ass and do the work.

Look for companies like Jugnoo or Kred that provide the raw data around audience engagement and use it as one metric among others you collect, vet and analyze to understand who has true influence over you target audience. I’m talking about the power to influence a purchase by a prospect, not the power to amplify a generic message to a loosely identified group of people.

Mama always told me “if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.” She is one smart lady.

Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

Social Media is Creating Bad Customers

sam_fiorella@hotmail.com(2 Jeff Wilson) — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Do you remember the disaster called #McDStories? The now famous story of how McDonalds was hijacked on Twitter by people tweeting negative stories on their hashtag. Poor planning combined with outright naivety about the their own brand perception quickly attracted a growing, “angry” mob of real customers and trolls who completely derailed the whole McDStories campaign.

Now, I’m not a big believer in social media on the best of days and this type of story adds more weight to my argument – Social Media is Creating Bad Customers. Why? It’s simple… because people deep down are bullies or at the very least indifferent to bullying. Add to this how easily the social media public is influenced by a mob mentality and you get recipes for McDStory after McDStory.

Social Media provides the average person with 4 factors empowering bad behavior, particularly against companies.

No Guilt. There is no remorse about bullying a brand. It’s much easier to do because no one gets “hurt”.
The Mob. Lots of other people are doing it. Whether they are the instigator with a real story or a troll making them up, its easy to find others who will join you.
Relative Anonymity. Anonymity strips many people of fear. “No one will know if I say this” is the common feeling and easily overwhelms any feelings of restraint a person might normally have.
No Accountability. Probably the most significant factor is the sheer lack of accountability in anything said in social media. Without accountability as a “natural check” on actions, you get an environment devoid of any punishment.

Proceed with Caution

My first two questions to companies that ask me about social media are:

What are the risks?
What is the compelling reason for you to use social media? (And please don’t say because my competitors are…)

For me, it always boils back to risk. The more risk you have the less likely you are to succeed. Most organizations are ill prepared for customers they already have let alone a new group of social media empowered customers. Social media creates risk even in a docile customer base because it can change the natural state of behavior in a single person or group of people. A social media environment provides fertile ground for unrest and poor behavior.

More McDStories are waiting to happen. Are you one of them?
How will you manage the bad customer social media is creating?

Jeff Wilson- Sensei