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Archives for December 2010

Most Brand Buzz Online is Positive so Let Them Talk!

Research conducted by the Keller Fay Group reveals that there are far more positive conversations happening about brands online than negative conversations.  If you’re not giving up control already and letting consumers talk about your brand online, then these statistics should alleviate some of your concerns.

While some industries received a higher percentage of positive versus negative brand buzz online than others, even industries that have come under fire in recent years have experienced more positive buzz than negative according to the research results.

For example, the telecom industry was reported to be the subject of the fewest positive conversations at 51% versus 23% mixed conversations and 14% negative. The financial services industry was split similarly with 51% of buzz positive, 16% mixed and 15% negative.

At the other end of the spectrum, the food and dining industry experienced 73% positive buzz, 12% mixed and 6% negative while the personal care and beauty and the beverages industries experienced 72% positive, 12% mixed and 5% negative online conversations and buzz.

emarketer-positive-word-of-mouth-chart

Another key finding in the Keller Fay Group study tells us how people feel about the information they glean from word-of-mouth conversations online and what they do with that information.  As the chart to the left shows, both positive and negative online buzz influences consumers, but those responses are more likely to occur when positive buzz is heard as opposed to negative buzz.

There is no doubt that using the social web to create and drive online conversations, sharing and buzz about your brand can deliver positive results to your bottom-line.  The concern that negative conversations could usurp those positive conversations is a possibility, but as the statistics from these reports show, the potential for rewards outweighs the risks.

Have you given up control and let the conversation about your brand spread across the web in the form of word-of-mouth marketing yet?  Leave a comment and share your reason why you are or are not leveraging the power of the online buzz to build your brand and business.

Image source: eMarketer

What Makes for Effective Investor Relations Sites? Part 31: Annual General Meetings

Companies are of two minds about Annual General Meetings of Shareholders; some view them as a necessary evil to be dispensed with as quickly and with as little fanfare as possible; others see it as an opportunity to reach out to their owners and present the Board and management in the best possible light while giving the shareholders a good overview of the company and its goals. If your company is in the first camp, you can stop reading now, because unless you have a compelling Annual General Meeting, simply placing it on your investor web site won’t gain you much.

MSFT Annual Meeting

On the other hand, if your Annual Meeting has a high information quotient, it makes sense to place a video of it on your web site where investors that were unable to attend can view the information presented. Any number of companies now place videos of their entire meeting on their web sites. Microsoft, the computer software company, is one that does just that.

While you can put the entire meeting up on the web site, you don’t really need to.

BASF annual mtg

Annual Meetings break down into three basic segments: the business meeting (the boring stuff), management’s presentation (the interesting stuff) and shareholder questions and answers (the stuff that can be anything, from the banal to the insightful).

Obviously, what investors want to see is the interesting stuff, where management reviews the past year and discusses their outlook for the upcoming year. BASF, the German chemical company, handles the differing parts of the annual meeting in an interesting way. As can be seen in the screen shot, the business part of their meeting is presented in written documents, while their CEO’s speech and accompanying slides are available in video format. (In the case of BASF, I could find no record of any shareholder questions at the meeting.)

However you choose to divide up and present the annual meeting, you should consider placing a video of it in the investor section of your web site. Chances are it contains information investors will find valuable.

In this series:
Previous post: Glossary
Next post: Governance

Fresh Ideas for Your Corporate Blog

A guest post from Barbara Jolie on keeping your corporate blog fresh and interesting.

fresh-paintCorporate blogs can get a little stagnant, but not if you approach them from a fresh angle from time to time. In writing this, I realize that corporate communications professionals are often given a very limited scope from which to write. Some corporate bloggers are given specific instructions and must generate routine, cut-and-dry content on subject matter that is completely out of their control. If you don’t have the freedom to change the types of information you are locked into, disregard this post. But if you have a bit more latitude for creativity than the average corporate blogger, or you are tasked with livening up a blog that currently gets very little traffic, try coming at your routine blog postings from a fresh perspective.

Now, even corporate bloggers who are given a bit of latitude will need to run many of these ideas past their superiors, but I think they are definitely worth suggesting. One of the first things you can do is begin writing in a first-person, conversational tone. From the start, blogs that connect with a large audience have been personal. While it may not be appropriate for you to use “I” language, you can certainly begin using “we” language. For example, instead of saying, “John Doe Financial is now offering this or that new service,” you can change the language to first person and say “We are proud to offer our customers a new service that will allow them to do such and such.”

Another idea is to write on industry-related hot topics in a journalistic style. Let’s stick with the financial services firm I used as an example and say that recent bad news stories on the state of the economy are getting investors nervous. You could interview some of the seasoned financial advisors at your firm on the top investor concerns, gather quotes, and craft a series of posts on investing through tough economic times. Not only does this help get new professional company voices into the corporate blog other than your own, but taking a professional stance on hot topics in the media that relate to your industry is also a great way to connect with your current blog followers and gather more followers.

In the same vein, you can solicit blog posts from professionals in your company or merely collaborate with them on brief, industry-related how-to posts. For a financial services firm, topics about personal finance and saving money would be relevant. Interspersing these types of short, bite-sized posts in with longer, company-specific posts provides more variety to readers of a corporate blog.

If your corporate blog does not allow visitor comments, lobby your supervisors to enable them. While you will undoubtedly become a moderator for such comments, which can be a royal pain, there is no better way to engage readers than by giving them a voice as well. Failing this, at least lobby to post an e-mail address on the corporate blog home page where readers can communicate their thoughts directly to the corporate communications team and let you in on the topics they would like to see addressed in the blog.

Finally, when drafting a blog post, ask one final question before publishing it to keep your corporate blog from becoming so laden with marketing-speak that it is of little value to readers. After answering the who, what, where, when and why in the post, be sure to answer the question who cares? Find an angle in your blog post that points out how the information contained in the post is relevant to customers and/or investors.

This guest post is contributed by Barbara Jolie, who writes on the topics of online classes. She welcomes your comments at her email Id: barbara.jolie876@gmail.com.

FTC’s Wants ‘Do Not Track’ List for Online Advertising

behavioral-trackingOnline behavioral targeting might be in danger for marketers if a new U.S. Federal Trade Commission proposal comes to fruition.  As Internet users lose more of their privacy every day with every click being tracked for behavioral marketing purposes, the FTC is considering implementing a Do Not Track list similar to the immensely popular Do Not Call list that puts an end to telemarketing calls for people who add their phone numbers to the list.

The FTC is calling for an opt-out list not just for behavioral targeting and ad serving but also of data collection entirely.  While there is still much debate about how such a system would work, the concept is one that consumers strongly support.  For marketers, the response is quite different.  Behavioral modeling has been a huge investment for companies in recent years, usurping demographic modeling in many cases.  Getting access to online behaviors was a dream come true for marketers.

It’s safe to assume that the Do Not Track list won’t become a reality in the near future, and it’s final form has yet to be determined.  One thing is safe to assume though — online privacy and tracking Internet users is a matter of contention that won’t go away and some form of government intervention (not just in the United States) is inevitable if self-regulation continues to fail.

Considering how the Do Not Call list in the United States negatively impacted the telemarketing industry, it’s interesting to speculate how a Do Not Track list would affect online marketing and advertising.

On the other hand, those Internet users who don’t add themselves to a Do Not Track list might represent an audience that is more responsive to behaviorally targeted ads and marketing messages.  Might return on investment actually go up if ads are targeted to the smaller audience that wants to see them?  The argument could certainly be made that it could happen.

What do you think?  Do you support a Do Not Track list from a consumer’s perspective?  How about from a marketer’s perspective?  Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Image: stock.xchng