Stemato - Stephen Tompkins Writes About Anything but Mostly Digital Marketing
With all the news about the trial and tribulations of the Olympics torch this week, I thought to run a chart and see the blogosphere’s reaction to the issues. It is interesting to see that the torch is driving much more buzz than the issues. I cannot help but wonder if the events have actually overshadowed the reasons leaving no one to gain.
Protest is patriotic but just make sure your ideas, do not get lost in your methods.
A recent report, from OfCom of the UK, about social-networking shows their prolific growth and deep saturation in the UK. I first read about it in a MSN UK story located here and I found its classification system to oversimplify these users. Surely, we can come up with a more profound classification than: Alpha Socialisers, Attention Seekers, Followers, Faithful and Functionals. It seems to only scratch the surface of what is a much more complex eco-system driven by many different types of users and scenarios.
Lets first take a look at scenarios that could evolve as a result of shifting user profiles and maturation of the space. As my company reported last month, Facebook’s numbers have slowed in recent months but its not endemic of the death of social-networking in the UK. The fact is the numbers were growing at a rate that could not have been endured much longer.
But, have they reached critical mass?
This is an interesting question, but with 23% penetration in a country that has only 30 million people total online, it would seem social-networking is still red-hot in the UK. Certainly with that kind of reach, users would fall into more than a handful of types and morph from one classification to another. In fact, I believe that user intentions on social networks are so varied and amorphous that any attempt to classify must be primarily organic.
Lets take deeper look at my organic classification system.
Instead of a linear zoological approach to classes, it should appear more as a hexagon with overlapping interest and a sliding scale. Something like this:
Using this hexagonal approach, you could then further define user personality traits based on aggregate sentiment analysis. What does this mean? If you could take a predefined number of UK social network users evenly dispersed across the three majors and parse out there profiles into text. Using that text you could then score the sentiment into different buckets (eg. dating, networking, spammer) based on keyword recognition.
Further refining your chart to something like this:
Building out these finite profiles, you get a clearer picture of social networking users and how they interact and relate to one another. The more data ascertained the better the profile. Time of day, age and other demographics can also enhance the map to show more in-depth details of how people engage.
In a very general sense OfCom gets it right, they just leave out a big part of the picture. User interactions and how they effect user profiles. My father said it best when he said “you cannot be, all things to all people.”
This interesting chart from Blogpulse, shows key people being buzzed about in the blogosphere. It culls the data from over 70 million blogs and outputs the chart daily with most citations at the top. You can also dive further into the actual citations or the amount of spots they climb or descend daily.
An interesting takeaway for me, is that Obama is in 20th place. Does that put some merit into Hillary (who ranks 1st) supposedly saying Obama cannot win? Anything seem alarming to you? Perhaps Dolly Parton’s high ranking? Or, Britney Spears still hanging around?
Yesterday eMarketer reported that online advertising spend is approaching 10% of all media spending and will be there by 2009. Considering the accountability, that digital commands and traffic quality it should come as no surprise that money is shifting to online at a quicker pace than other media. But what are some of the social media trends that this move will precipitate? Here are three that I think will be important part of my work here at Nielsen Online.
1 - Social Media become increasingly salient as connection hotspots - As trust continues to erode in traditional media, consumers will look increasingly to social media as a trusted opinion for all sorts of decisions, from which restaurant to eat at or what jeans to buy. Malcolm Gladwell describes, in his book The Tipping Point, “weak links” as influential to humans for making connections that make ideas tip. These individuals will become even more important as online migration triggers even more diverse and larger groups of connections who will exert overwhelming force over trends and ideas. (As I write this, I have over 100 twitter friends most I do not know but they shape many of my opinions on any number of things)
2- Brands continue to fortify their digital positions - With dollars shifting to the internet so quickly, brands will rush to keep up with the digital consumer migration. Brands will increasingly face the tough questions about social media and what they should do in this new platform based web. Corporate blogs are not for everyone but opening up the lines of communication can benefit brands. The question is, what is the best way to leverage social media, to empower your consumers and gain valuable insights.
3- Web trust factor becomes site currency - Inevitably, web sites will come that try to game the system and erode consumer trust in social media. From this, will arise a digital trust factor that will eventually become a web currency. It could come in an organized fashion or maybe it will just be semantic based - meaning you don’t travel far from home on the web. You have a few sites you visit and trust based on history, promotion and recommendations and only visit them frequently. This trend will hasten the move to platforms that portalize you to the web at large - Facebook applications are a good example of this in action.
As we see all media continue its move to digital, these three trends are one to watch. Any I missed?
A whitepaper my company put out last year states that CPG (Consumer Product Goods) product launches can increase buzz by leveraging media spend. That buzz is significantly multiplied by a variety of factors surrounding a product launch. And major public announcements can be amongst the biggest drivers. The above chart shows how Led Zeppelin’s announcement of a charity performance gig sparked major ancillary insights. These secondary branches off of original announcements provide valuable insights, via CGM (Consumer-Generated Media), into your current brand.
What can you mine about your brand from the chatter around the internet?
Is it possible to understand the collective feelings of the world? Maybe not the entire world but a interesting gauge of the internet’s mood is Blogpulse. I usually pull data on Monday to show some trends that are on my mind and see how they compare to the rest of the blogosphere.
Last week the standoff in South America involving Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela was unfolding quickly and the blogosphere reacted just as quickly. Initially over Colombia’s encroachment into Ecuador to assassinate a rebel leader the situation escalated to involve Venezuela. Almost as quickly as it escalated, an accord was met and the situation was placated.
But what does this chart say about the mood of the connected?
Concern online briefly peaked on March 3 but has since been on a steady decline. However it has yet to reach its pre-standoff lows. This may signal that people have stood up and taken notice and the blogosphere is quick to react to sentiment as events unfold. Furthermore at its peak the story trumped Iraq coverage for a brief period and showed the truly global reach of the blogosphere.
The chart above displays differences in buzz between two global stories. The China-Tibet protest and the Sudan-Chad peace accord stories from this past week. The China-Tibet protest has experienced an dramatic surge over the last week as the Beijing Olympics approach and chatter reaches new heights.
The two charts above show that using a few online tools you can quickly get a high level look at global issues as they unfold. The collective voice does in fact mirror the global news voice.
Google Analytics version of Michigan…
And Google Maps Version…
Has anyone noticed the inconsistencies between Google Maps and Google Analytics version of the State of Michigan? I see that Google Maps which parses satellite data is a correct representation of the State whilst Analytics is a poorly outlined version. It looks like they came from different sources. Is Google not leveraging its internal resources to keep the brand consistent across departments? I am not sure what is at play here but it looks like Analytics has some room to improve.
Anyone else agree?
Project Runway had its big season finale last week. The three finalist were Christian Siriano, Jillian Lewis and Rami Kashou. It was great season full of excitement with extraordinary talent this year. Week in and week out, these folks put great clothes down the runway, so congratulations to them for all their hard work.
Now onto the buzz, I pulled two Blogpulse charts today to see if any themes surfaced in the data. The first chart queries the three finalists names. Nothing super exciting here, but we do see that the colorful Christian was the most talked about all season long and he had a huge spike for his winning designs. To quote Christian, he was “fierce” on the runway and also in the blogs.
The next chart shows some recent HBO shows compared with Project Runway. Its interesting to me for a couple reasons. First the season finale’s of each show seem to drive quite a bit of buzz represented in the major spikes on the chart.
The second reason is Project Runway and HBO’s runway hit Flight of the Conchords both shows that have amassed cult type followings in a very short period. One interesting fact, Flight of the Conchords buzz seems to be comparable to both The Wire and Project Runway even though it has not aired a new episode since early September of last year. (FYI - Flight of the Conchord’s season finale aired before this chart’s data)
What leads to the success of Flight of the Conchords and Project Runway in the engagement arena? In a time when strategist are stressing the benefits of social media and diversifying your marketing program, we see that both of these shows have integrated strategies encompassing social media and emerging trends. On the HBO site, you will find a vlog (video blog) and all sorts of social media features. Project Runway similarly has all the bells and whistles of a social media site with mobile fan clubs, widgets and many more interactive features.
Does all this social media drive active engagement in a television show? For now, it definitely seems to be working.
A quick Blogpulse chart showing buzz on my hometown sports teams yields some interesting results. The Miami Dolphins seems to be the talk of the town even as we see the NFL season coming to a close. It reminds me of my Dad who always laments that “baseball will never get a decent base following because all Miami can talk about is the Dolphins.”
The two spikes you see for the Dolphins are of course in correlation to the New England Patriots quest for a perfect season. (Note: 1972 Dolphins are the only perfect season in the NFL) The Miami Heat spike comes from the trade of Shaquille O’Neal to the Phoenix Suns for Shawn Marion.
Woefully, the Marlins hardly register in buzz talk. With the stadium deal close to being signed and all the offseason trades there is hardly a peep from the blogosphere. I guess it goes to show “father knows best.”
Interesting data from an Emarketer email on Friday, states that 9 out of 10 online buyers read reviews before making an online purchase decision. The data was compiled by Power Reviews and the e-tailing group who surveyed over one thousand buyers. The survey members also said that they read between 4-7 reviews while deciding what to purchase.
What does this mean to web managers, marketers and businesses alike?
That consumer are becoming more powerful every year. They are increasingly looking to the internet for answers and other digital citizens reviews are the currency they value. Opinions are everywhere on the internet; blogs, boards and search results are being seen by average consumers who trust this content. And as this content level rises, reputation will become the driving differentiator to whether consumers buy product a or product b.
By starting a dialogue between you and your customers the lines of transparency are opened up. You will reap the benefits of an empowered consumer. That value is two-sided and you will learn as much from the comments as the people making a purchase decision who stumble upon them. Additionally, the CRM benefits are tremendous as you continuously refine your service or product these comments.
If you are building, redesigning or planning a new e-commerce site user reviews and community will become important aspects to any plan and these numbers only reinforce the growing importance.
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