Being Peter Kim

Social Media Predictions 2009

Community and collaboration are wonderful things.

Fourteen great minds on social media have shared thoughts on what 2009 may have in store for us.  Here's some of what they're thinking:

• "Although it is now cheaper to launch an initiative leveraging Web 2.0 technology - it requires qualified and passionate people to make them successful." - David Armano
• "You may not always start the year as a leader, but you can certainly finish it that way." - Rohit Bhargava  
• "Intimacy touches emotion; emotion powers conversation." - Pete Blackshaw
• "Doors are going to close all over the social web. Why? Because the money didn't come the way people thought it would." - Chris Brogan 
• "The tipping point has not only *not* been reached, but could still tilt *away* from Social Media." - Todd Defren
• "There's a lot of fixing that needs to be done." - Jason Falls 
• "Dwindling budgets suddenly make low-cost social media look like the pretty girl at the ball." - Ann Handley 
• "We're going to develop a set of better metrics to help guide, direct and validate 'commitment'." - Joseph Jaffe 
• "The movement is rooted in a desire to have quality, not quantity, as people cocoon in the face of the economic crisis." - Charlene Li 
• "After a pre-qualifying wrestling match..." - Ben McConnell
• "These will be cumulative events and interactions that will build brand loyalty for the companies that pay attention to them." - Scott Monty  
• "The recession will force revenue results out of social technologies." - Jeremiah Owyang
• "Companies that focus on earning love will thrive during hard times, and kick ass when good times return." - Andy Sernovitz
• "Suddenly, being Facebook friends with your mom will seem less ridiculous than following 4,000 strangers on Twitter." - Greg Verdino  

Everyone's thoughts have been assembled in this PDF. You can also read the document in-line below.

Your feedback is appreciated and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

BTW - can you suggest a place to publish these ideas for them to be commented and voted on?  As you think through the contributions, I'd love for everyone to have a way of seeing what resonates most with the community and also contribute their own ideas.  Kind of like a personal Digg or My Starbucks Idea.  If you know of a technology, please comment below or message me on Twitter @peterkim. Thanks!

UPDATE:  These are now posted on Slinkset, where you can vote on your favorites and submit your own.

A Wiki of Social Media Marketing Examples

Over the weekend, I created a framework to port A List of Social Media Marketing Examples into a wiki.  I also invited the 166 people who've left comments on that post to become the initial collaborators in the new effort. (At least I tried to...Google Sites seems to have had a delivery problem. If you think you should have a login, try your existing email address - it may already be setup.)

Soon after inception, several people asked about turning the list into a wiki, which is a natural container for this type of information.  However, I delayed doing this immediately for many reasons.

One of the benefits of doing so manifests in the framework, which allows users to sort information by different categories.  In an early experiment, I had created an alphabetical directory by company name, with 26 pages.  Continuing with that approach would've meant replicating efforts to relist examples by channel, industry, or geography.

Let me say thanks again to everyone who's contributed to help create

A Wiki of Social Media Marketing Examples

I'm looking forward to collaborating on this new community resource with you.

Slicing and Dicing A List of Social Media Marketing Examples

Since starting a list of social media marketing examples, I've seen some great work to frame content for specific uses:

By technology/media type

• I posted a framework on Mashable called The 22 Step Social Media Marketing Plan
• Ray Schiel has listed almost all the examples by category

By country

• Australia: former colleague Steven Noble has bookmarked many examples
• Canada: David Jones has set up a wiki
• Germany:  Benedikt Köhler has blogged a list
• Malaysia:  A table at GreyReview
• United Kingdom:  John Welsh has blogged a list

By industry

• Haven't seen any yet...

If you are maintaining or know of a segmented list, please let me know and I'll link to you here.

Copy-and-paste your social media marketing plan

This is a truncated cross-post that was published over on Mashable.

As you may know, I've been curating a list of social media marketing examples on this blog over the past couple of months.  The community could probably come up with 3,000 examples instead of 300 - but the current set already gives us a pretty good sample to think about.  Namely: it's time to master the last big thing now.

For a framework of 22 tools to consider, with notable brand examples, please visit the original post at Mashable.

Thinking Through Twitter

What's the matter here?

I've written a handful of posts about Twitter over the past year, published a syndicated research report, and have been interviewed by traditional and social media on the service.

Despite service outages that grew quite awful at some points, Twitter's site traffic grew 422% from August 2007 - August 2008, according to Mashable/Nielsen Online.  People aren't requesting that Twitter turn into a public alert system anymore, not when it can't even supply content to a web widget.  But with many more people participating, conversations can become much more diverse and interesting.

That's why I changed the way I use Twitter recently.  This year, I've fluctuated from following about 100 people to 400 to 1,000, then down to 200, eventually 90...and last month, I added everyone back...over 1,500 people.

Here's why.

I think paying 100% attention to Twitter for any length of time results in waste.  You may be interested in social media chatter, but what about travel gripes?  Baseball commentary?  Political opinions?  Watching a "raw" twitter stream - even from people who mainly focus on your primary interest - will end up as irrelevant as a typical TV ad break.

But tools help drive relevance by filtering noise.  Here are the ones that I find most helpful:

1. Twitter Search.  I'm reading as many tweets today via RSS to Google Reader as I am at Twitter.com.  How?  By searching for relevant topics and subscribing to the feeds.
2. Tweetdeck.  Useful for segmenting people - and companies - into groups, e.g. Bostonians, Austinites, Personal Friends, etc.
3. Mobile alerts.  Direct messages act like text messages and you can get alerts pushed to you whenever important people update.
4. Twinkle.  Provides proximity search for mobile and crashes less than Twitterific.
5. Twitter Karma.  Only tool I know that lets you manage relationships in bulk.

Other tools like TwitterCounter and Twitter Grader provide statistics, but aren't incredibly helpful...unlike utilities, I see these going the way of Tweeterboard.

By following more people, I'm hearing more chatter, geting answers to the most random questions, and feedback on social media topics.

I'm on Twitter as @peterkim.

234 Social Media Marketing Examples

234 examples, visualized. Created using http://wordle.net/

A month ago, I published a list of social media marketing examples.  At the time, the list started with 131 brands that were involved in social media to some extent.  (Sometimes not by their own choice.)

A month later, the list has added over 100 new brands due to the contributions of 81 community members.

Some interesting things happened along the way.  Dion Hincliffe from Social Computing Magazine requested permission to republish the list, no problem.  Almost 200 other bloggers have found the list helpful and I hope you do as well.  Unfortunately, I also stumbled across a few cases of plagiarism - two that were coincidentally blamed on "assistants" blogging whose work had not been checked.  (Really?  Maybe I need to get a blogging assistant, too.  But I'll be sure to equip that person with a copy of the MLA.)

As my way of saying thanks, here's a search engine shout-out to give credit where credit is due to everyone who has contributed to the list (either directly or through prior art):

Jeremiah Owyang, Mashable, Forrester, Mack Collier, Social Brand Index, Gavin Heaton, Philippe Deltenre, zeroinfluencer, Bruce Eric Anderson, Nick Ayres, Jeff Glasson, Luke, Mike, Robin Seidner, Tom Shea, Ed Nicholson, Stefan Halley, Tom Hoehn, Debbie Weil,  Marta Kagan, Paull Young, Kevin, Paul Fabretti, Nick Huhn, dominic, Michael Pranikoff, Kyle Flaherty, Ed Terpenning, Chi-chi Ekweozor, Lisa, David Bressler, C.B. Whittemore, Torley, David Jones, Keith De La Rue, Sean Lew, Tom Cummings, Donna Tocci, Adam Singer, Yianni Garcia, Matt Cronin, Stephen Manning, Jim Dietzel, Clayton, Mike, Kira Wampler, Woody Meachum, Lee Aase, Toby Bloomberg, Adam Denison, Colleen Gatlin, Davezilla, Gina, Marcos Fargas, Marianne Richmond, Kevin Barenblat, Dan Entin, Bruce Ertmann, Sean Moffitt, Elana Bowman, Dan, Andrew, James O'Connor, Herve Kabla, Sachin Agarwal, Lou Cuming, Danny Urguia, Kathrin Lohmann, Rafa, John Galpin, Ken Kaplan, Kathy Mandelstein, BJ Cook, John Welsh, Nils Koenig, James Finnen, Miko, Yvonne DiVita, Juny Lee, Massimo Cavazzini, and Gunther Lie.

But seriously...234.  Do you think that's it?

Everything old is new again

My colleague Brian Haven wants you to know that all media is social.

"If you think about all of the social tools and behaviors happening today, in almost every case there is an equivalent comparison to activities in the past."

The same old behaviors - sharing, connecting, opining, broadcasting, and creating seem new because of

• Reach
• Accessibility
• Usability
• Transparency and
• Recency.

So everything old suddenly seems new again.  For more detail, read Brian's post.

A framework for measuring social media

Do you think it's tough to measure social media?  It might be simpler than you think.

I've blogged before about how game mechanics describe social media participation. Games have scores.  Scores track progress, which results in success or failure.

Although social media channels seem to be mostly qualitative in nature, user activities can be easily quantified.  Although users interact with channels in different ways, four common factors quantify social media success:  Attention, Participation, Authority, and Influence.

Here's a framework for measuring social media:

1. Attention.  The amount of traffic to your content for a given period of time.  Similar to the standard web metrics of site visits and page/video views.
2. Participation.  The extent to which users engage with your content in a channel.  Think blog comments, Facebook wall posts, YouTube ratings, or widget interactions.
3. Authority.  Ala Technorati, the inbound links to your content - like trackbacks and inbound links to a blog post or sites linking to a YouTube video.
4. Influence.  The size of the user base subscribed to your content.  For blogs, feed or email subscribers; followers on Twitter or Friendfeed; or fans of your Facebook page.

There's an "x-factor" that comes into play well:  sentiment.  The spirit driving user participation matters.  The net result of these adds up to a score for social media engagement.

So what's the monetary value of a visit, comment, link, or friend?  Well, the only honest answer is "it depends."  Only you know how much these interactions matter to your brand, regardless of industry, channel, or competitive results.

Now...was that so tough?

Critical observations of 204 social media marketing examples

Last week, I shared a list of about 120 companies using and/or being used by social media marketing.  Less than a week later, that list has almost doubled solely based on community contributions.  Thank you for sharing.

The list seems big enough to support some analysis.  What do you think about these three major criticisms?

1. Big companies are lagging indicators.

• Although C.B. notes: "It's amazing to realize how many organizations now have a presence [when they didn't not very long ago] and also across several different platforms."
• Alfonso responds: "Keep your eye on the big boys to get an idea of what the me-too crowd does. No doubt they do it bigger and louder, but they have to: they're playing catch-up."
• Robert agrees: "I think we all have the tendency to gravitate to the household names to illustrate social media examples, but these companies often are laggards."

2. Are these examples really social?

• Dan points out: "There's a difference between participating in social media and marketing via social media."
• Tony takes this further: "Some of these examples feel a little more like social network digital advertising rather than social media."

3. Stuff is missing.

• Tim asks: "Where are the 'internal' employee/partner examples?"
• Philipp asks: "Are there more examples from Europe or the German speaking regions?"
• Antje says: "Next list should be smaller companies without huge budgets."

Your thoughts, reactions, and observations are appreciated.

• Should we really be watching SMBs instead?
• Is this conversation or lecturing?
• Why are we seeing these gaps?

Graphic analysis of 204 social media marketing examples

Last week, I shared a list of about 120 companies using and/or being used by social media marketing.  Less than a week later, that list has almost doubled solely based on community contributions.  Thank you for sharing.

The list seems big enough to support some analysis.  What do you think about this graphic?

(You can create your own at wordle.net.)

Thoughts?

Social media marketing's scalability problem

I'd like your thoughts on what I see as one of the biggest problems I see for using social media in marketing:  scalability.

In theory, using social media for marketing should scale elegantly.  Most advisors and evangelists tell a story that plays out something like this:  once a marketer gets up enough courage to push over the first domino and launch a social media effort, that person tells a friend, who tells another three friends, who tell yet another three friends, and so on with almost infinite reach at almost zero incremental cost.  Examples like Subservient Chicken, Dove Evolution, and Elf Yourself are often cited here.

In practice, real life starts to get in the way.  You can't create "viral."  (In fact, "viral" is even the wrong metaphor.)  Philippe reminds us of Watts's "big seed" concept, which starts to look like mass media. One-ninth of the WORLD's population watched the 2006 FIFA World Cup final.  Social media vs. Television for marketing purposes just doesn't match up.

People don't scale, either.  Frank at Comcast does a great job, but he's only one person.  Dell has 17+ people on Twitter, like Amie Paxton.  Scott Monty is a new kind of leader, but he's only one person.  How much harm did Exxon Janet inflict?  (Answer: none.)

[Let me pause here and say that I have and will always believe that the purpose of marketing is to sell stuff, whether direct response or 30-year sales cycle.  Marketers who don't believe that their job is to ultimately sell something should become receptionists instead, if all you want to do is talk.]

I do believe social media can help sell.  Social content has started integrating into traditional tactics like banners and emails.  I have a better opinion of Comcast after Frank helped me with my cable modem and will resist Verizon FIOS for a while longer.  From my last post asking if social media matters, the commenting consensus seems to agree, with its impact in awareness, consideration, and preference.

But if social media marketing matters, then does it scale?

I don't think so.  I think the technologies scale.  But the programs - especially those with a labor-intensive component - don't.

[Social technologies are better applied inside the enterprise - to improve existing systems, grow culture, improve productivity, and scale to a finite point...]

Your thoughts appreciated.

Companies CAN'T "join the conversation"

My colleague Jeremiah recently posted about why some don't need to join the conversation.  He makes two key points:

1. Brands can and should use a combination of social computing tools can help brands engage individuals - e.g. voting, tagging, and sharing - which are not "conversational."
2. All people do not want to participate with you in the same way.

About a week ago, I blogged about how it's what's on the inside [of an organization] that counts.  That means people, i.e. individuals on your payroll must be ready to participate in social media.

Your brand can't blog.  Unless you're going for comedy, you shouldn't have a corporate mascot like Aunt Jemima, Jack In The Box, or the Brawny Man blogging.

If you or someone in your company is thinking of blog authorship behind the curtain of a corporate logo, stop and make sure that your organization is actually ready to get social with the outside world.  Because a company can't participate in a conversation, only individuals representing a company can.

This thinking comes naturally to individuals in firms who understand this internally.  Fortunately, it can be taught. (But some will never learn - all people do not want to participate in the same way.)

I want to believe [that Twitter is useful]

  Why Twitter is Over Capacity 
  Originally uploaded by Jeremiah Owyang.

Twitter - do you love it or hate it?  I think your response to that question depends on why and how you use the application.  This drives the type of content you'll find valuable, the number of people you follow, and how you use text notifications and tracking.

Giving the continuing technical difficulties that Twitter has been facing - apparently birds moving whales can be quite difficult - I've been getting less value from my network.  I use Twitter as a heads up tool, to get advice, to connect with virtual communities, and to bridge communications from online to in-person (esp around events).  I was following almost 1,000 people - so getting information was either serendipitous when tuning in or via @/DM.

But I'm not getting text notifications like I used to.  So, inspired by some conversations and posts with/from Mitch Joel, Greg Verdino, and Mack Collier, I've decided to shift the way I'm using Twitter to make the conversation more manageable.  Similar to pruning my LinkedIn network, I unfollowed about 80% of my network, leaving only people whose names and/or pictures I recognized immediately, as well as people who I could remember having a helpful conversation with at some past point.

(remember is the key term here - my memory isn't fantastic and I'm bound to have offended some. My apologies, I will add you back.)

To me, Twitter content works best when personal.  Whether it's something you're doing or something you're thinking.  So I'm trying a new approach to Twitter, because I want to believe it's useful.  Maybe it's just microblogging that's useful and Twitter will ultimately pull a Friendster.

I think I'll go log into Pownce, haven't been there for a while...

Marketing community on Alltop

Looking for some fresh marketing feeds? Then check out Marketing on Alltop, from Guy Kawasaki's Nononina.

Other great (but not as good looking) marketing blog collections are the [now defunct] M20, Mack Collier's Top 25, and the Ad Age Power 150.

Coincidentally, my better known colleagues Jeremiah Owyang, Charlene Li, and Josh Bernoff are also on Alltop - in the "Egos" section...!

Webcast with Visible Technologies and Microsoft

On Thursday May 22nd I'll be participating in a webcast with Blake Cahill from Visible Technologies and Marty Collins from Microsoft.  We'll be talking about "Unlocking Social Media’s ROI through Engagement & Participation."  Registration is free and we'll begin at 10 am Pacific/1 pm Eastern.

If you are on the fence about brand monitoring or just want to learn more about how it's being put to good use, this is your chance to ask questions.

Searching blog trends

There's finally an alternative to Nielsen's Blogpulse.  Not that there's anything wrong with Blogpulse - it's a handy, free tool for searching trends in the blogosphere.  And there have always been other ways to get at the information (without paying for it) - Google blog search or Technorati in particular.  But Blogpulse delivers a simple results graphic with rudimentary tools for controlling date range and drilling down into results.

Now from Belgian brand monitoring firm Attentio comes Trendpedia - a tool to search blog trends with a bit of zeitgeist thrown in as well.  (Now available out of beta.)

I ran a quick search on the first topic that came to mind after a long three-day weekend (it was Patriots Day, for those of you not in MA, ME, or WI - commemorating the ride of Paul Revere in 1775).  The topic just happened to be the drama around the New York Yankees young pitching staff. 

The results from Blogpulse vs. Trendpedia:

(I admit that the first search I ran was for Joba, "Ian Hughes," and "Phil Kennedy."  Oops.)

From what I can tell, it looks like Blogpulse is on autopilot - a "2005 year in review" feature lives on,  the copyright at bottom is 2006, and latest news is from April 2007.  Maybe a tell-tale sign of the revenue generation potential from a free blog trend search engine...?

Three key applications for brand monitoring

I just had another piece of Forrester research publish - this one on brand monitoring.  Lest you think I went on a Kerouac-ian benzedrine + caffeine writing tear...I didn't (but what's the frequency, Kenneth?).

As you may know, I've been following the brand monitoring market for a couple of years and since publishing the Q3 2006 Forrester Wave on the space, it's clear that the market has shifted.  That's why I plan on updating the Wave in Q3 2008.

In the meantime - it's clear that not all brand monitoring firms are created equally or should be used for the same purposes.  But marketers who don't work to understand the differences before sending out an RFP or running a pilot are in essence using Plinko as their selection process.

I believe that three primary applications of brand monitoring have started to surface, based on buyer goals, vendor capabilities and intent, and business needs.  Clients can read the full research, "New Uses For Brand Monitoring," which explains how and why the three applications matter.  The summary:

J.D. Power and Associates acquired brand monitoring firm Umbria, combining industry-focused consumer satisfaction and rankings with consumer-generated media (CGM) insights. The deal highlights the use of brand monitoring as a key input to formulating marketing, brand, and product strategy. Interactive marketers and social media strategists interested in using brand monitoring must choose a tool based on business objectives, recognizing that the market now addresses three distinct applications: 1) mining customer insight to formulate strategy; 2) quantifying social media to compare with other metrics; and 3) identifying influencers in order to participate in online conversations.

Much deeper analysis forthcoming later this year.  In the meantime, Forrester clients - feel free to set up an inquiry via your account manager to learn more.

P.S. I think our Forrester Marketing Blog Feedback Survey is still open...

Umbria acquired by J.D. Power

Congratulations in order this morning to Janet, Howard, and the rest of the team at Umbria.  The brand monitoring firm was acquired today by J.D. Power & Associates, the customer satisfaction research company.

The significance of this acquisition lies in the acquirer - McGraw-Hill/JDPower is different type of company than Nielsen and TNS - and will use brand monitoring differently.  One thing in common - another brand monitoring brand name disappears.  Umbria will be folded into their new parent company, while Buzzmetrics/Intelliseek have disappeared into Nielsen Online and Cymfony now operates as part of TNS media.

I have a short research piece publishing soon for Forrester clients.

The secret to Twitter...really?

Robert Scoble posted recently that he's discovered the secret to Twitter, which is "how many people are you listening to, not how many people are listening to you."  To quote Scoble,

I say bulls**t.

Why?  You just have to read a post from an hour earlier where Scoble tells a great story about microblogging and starting a great impromptu party at a California vineyard.  What made that situation work? People were following his messages, not the other way around.  In fact, the more followers one has, the more difficult it becomes to filter signal vs. noise.

(I meant to say "the more one follows" there, but the same applies, as people typically reciprocate followers.)

What's wrong with considering Twitter as semi-synchronous conversation?  It's not more complicated than people talking, others listening.  Businesses need to have objectives when using social media; people do too.  Your objectives may change over time and they may have varying weights - but everyone has a reason and different people use Twitter differently.

But I'm not going to say that the answer here is something along the lines of "it depends."  (Being an analyst forces the fence-sitting out of you.)  Social media doesn't work well with a uni-directional approach.  That's the domain of traditional advertising.  The secret to Twitter and every other social computing application lies within the conversation and relationships - which requires not only listening, but also speaking, energizing, supporting, and embracing.

Personally, the way I use Twitter has changed - I only have time to jump on once or twice a day usually during the commute, so @ and direct messages have increased value.  But if you follow me, I'll follow you back (unless you're a porn star or sales pitch - which are showing up more often) and look forward to the conversation.  As tired, played out, and 1.0 as the term may be.

Predicting Super Tuesday winners with brand monitoring

I've seen a lot of brand monitoring solutions that claim to do a lot of things.  Many vendors say they can predict future events based on chatter levels.  Most often, the backup happens in hindsight, which you and I both know is 20/20.

But this brand monitoring vendor Collective Intellect is doing something different - they are publicly releasing projections of US Presidential primary outcomes, based on analysis using their technology.  Why does this matter?  Because the outcome is publicly available so you'll know whether they were right or wrong.

So how did they do on Super Tuesday?

Democrats:

• California.  Prediction:  Obama.  Outcome:  Clinton.  Result:  Incorrect.
• Colorado.  Clinton (close).  Obama.  Incorrect.
• Georgia.  Obama.  Obama.  Correct.
• Massachusetts.  Obama (close).  Clinton.  Incorrect.  [Oddly enough, I haven't seen much Clinton support around Wellesley, the town that shares a name with Hillary's alma mater.]
• Missouri. Obama (close). Obama. Correct.  Very close race.
  

Republicans:

• California.  McCain (landslide).  McCain. Correct.
• Colorado.  Romney (landslide).  Romney. Correct.
• Georgia.  McCain (landslide).  Huckabee. Incorrect.
• Massachusetts.  McCain (landslide).  Romney.  Incorrect.  I guess we still like Mitt here.
• Missouri.  McCain.  McCain.  Correct.

Overall, the predictions went 5/10 (results based on CNN projections).  Could have been better, but marketer decisions typically aren't as black & white as this and more directional.  Credit for putting your neck out there, Collective Intellect.

Contrast this with brand monitoring predictions around the Super Bowl.  All hindsight.  Will anyone else prove their system publicly?  Next American Idol winner?  New hit TV shows?  The next President?  Or does this show that these systems aren't ready for prime time?