Corporate Eye

...compare, compete, excel

Archives for May 2013

State of the Social Media Marketing Industry 2013

keyboard reportSocial Media Examiner has released its annual Social Media Marketing Industry Report and the 2013 report highlights some interesting insights. Most importantly, the majority of marketers are convinced that social media marketing is essential but they aren’t confident that their social media marketing efforts are effective.

Taking a closer look at the key findings, an overwhelming 86% of marketers who responded to the study survey believe that social media marketing is important for their business, but 88% of marketers want to learn more about the most effective social tactics and the best ways to engage their audiences with social media. In other words, tracking social media marketing results is a problem for nearly nine out of ten marketers.

Key Areas of Focus in 2013 are YouTube, Blogging, and Podcasting

Three areas that marketers want to learn more about and plan to increase their use of and budgets for in 2013 are YouTube, blogging, and podcasting.

More than two out of three marketers (69%) plan to increase their use of YouTube and their investments in YouTube marketing in 2013.

Blogging is also high on marketers radar screens in 2013. 58% of marketers are currently blogging and 66% plan to increase their blogging activities in 2013. Interestingly, while blogging might be one of the more mature social media marketing and content marketing activities, 62% of marketers want to learn more about it.

Podcasting will also see a resurgence of activity in 2013. While only 5% of marketers are already involved in podcasting, 24% plan to increase their podcasting activities in 2013 and 32% want to learn more about it.

Facebook and LinkedIn are Ranked on Top but Effectiveness is Questionable

Overall, 89% of marketers believe that the top benefit of social media marketing is increased exposure, which isn’t surprising given the fact that most respondents indicated they cannot effectively track marketing activity results through social media channels.

For example, Facebook and LinkedIn were identified by marketers as the most important social networks for marketers, with Facebook ranked as most important by 49% of marketers and LinkedIn coming in second at 16%. However, nearly two out of three of marketers (63%) report that they do not think their Facebook marketing efforts are effective.

You can follow the link at the beginning of this article to get more details, access the full 70-page report, and watch video highlights from the report.

How does your brand stack up with social media marketing in 2013?

Image:  ilker

Social Media and Customer Relationship Management

Today’s post comes from Mitch Perkal, who offers some thoughts on managing your relationships with your customers.

online-crm

Leveraging Social Media for Customer Relationship Management

As individuals continue to use social media more and more as their primary means of communication, it is essential for businesses to stay ahead of the curve. In today’s world, it is important that all companies have a robust and wide reaching social presence. If customers are using these media for their daily interactions, it is important that your business is not only readily accessible on all social platforms, but has a fully developed strategy for engaging with satisfied customers as well as for placating ones who are not as happy.

Interacting with Satisfied Customers

Between Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, and countless others, there are many different platforms with which to communicate with your clientele. Different demographics tend to gravitate towards different options. Once you have identified your preferred outlet, you need to understand the particulars of the given site. Users interact very differently on Twitter than they do on LinkedIn. There are three main types of interactions to keep your customers engaged:

  1. General

    The most basic way to communicate on social media is via posts or announcements. This could be something as simple as passing along information about upcoming sales, contests, or branding material. While this does not always have a personal touch, it is effective in reaching a broad audience with minimal effort.

  2. Personal

    This is the most basic type of interaction that most people think of when they envision CRM online. It usually involves a personalized message or response to an individual user who was discussing your brand or products.

  3. Extraordinary

    This would include those rare anecdotal stories of a company going above and beyond. In one of the most famous examples of this interaction, Morton’s Steakhouse in Hackensack, New Jersey hand delivered a steak to a past customer upon his arrival at Newark airport. While your company does not need to do something this extreme, a one-time, excessive gesture can be invaluable for branding if executed correctly.

Managing Unhappy Customers

While it is always a good idea to have a series of procedures in place to handle standard interactions, it is also important that you make each conversation personal. Sometimes, unhappy customers will take to social media with hopes of either venting, besmirching the reputation of the company, or receiving some sort of compensation. You need to have someone leading the communication who can be trusted to make judgment calls on the fly. He or she needs to be able to quickly determine the severity of a given situation, identify what the customer is looking for, and assess the potential risk/reward of responding or not responding.

When developing your own customer relationship strategy on social media, it is important to understand the nuances of each specific interaction and use them to your advantage. While cookie-cutter responses are sometimes the easy way out, a little personalization of a message can go a long way.

Thanks, Mitch!

Mitch Perkal writes on behalf of Aspect, a global provider of workforce management software and contact center solutions. Aspect helps you build, enhance and sustain stronger relationships with your customers by uniting your enterprise with next-generation customer contact solutions. For more information, visit www.aspect.com.

Communicate: the Desert Island Session

desert-island
Since 1942, when Roy Plumley came up with the Desert Island Discs format, people have been refining their pick-list for their top 8 pieces of music, just in case they are invited to be a castaway on the BBC’s desert island.

Once down to 8 tracks, they have to choose just 1 as their ultimate desert island disc.

No doubt each variant of someone’s list represents just a snapshot, and if asked a little later, their list would sound very different. After all, your focus and interests change all the time…

This is rather how I feel about conference programmes. There are always a few sessions that are standout interesting at the time; and your standout sessions probably wouldn’t be the same as mine. Creating a set-list that’s going to appeal to as many people as possible, must be a very difficult task.

It’s time for the 3rd Communicate Reputation in Oil Gas and Mining conference, aimed at those with responsibility for brand management, corporate comms, internal comms and strategy. It’s on the 13th June, in central London, and will be looking at crisis management, digital media, employee engagement, internal comms, social media and more.

I’ve been to several Communicate conferences now, and the pick-list of sessions is always good. There are several sessions I’m particularly looking forward to, but if I had to pick my Desert Island session, it would be Behind the Scenes, looking at video.

I’ve been researching the use of video on the corporate website recently, and have watched many, many more than is probably sensible. The speaker, Stephen Golding from Tullow Oil, is going to look at video in internal comms, and it should be fascinating. Some of the external-facing videos I’ve spotted on corporate websites communicate their messages very strongly…

Here’s the IBM Diversity video, for example, which I think does a great job of ‘show don’t tell’ in communicating their corporate culture—and demonstrating just how long this has been a company value. It’s not new, but is worth watching to see how they do it. It’s on the corporate website diversity page too.


>

My second pick would be the “Daimler For Me Is…” video. This is used on the corporate website too, and is a great example of combining/linking videos. You can click the video at various points when a particular individual is talking to see another video with more detail about a them and their viewpoint. View it on the corporate website for best effect.


>

Do come to the conference if you can; the Communicate conferences are always worth attending. If you haven’t booked your ticket yet, it’s not too late: check out the conference programme and book — and let me know if the session you’d pick to be saved from the waves would be the same as mine. See you there?

100 Most Social Brands in the U.K. for 2013 Revealed

social brands 100 2013 report coverThe 2013 list of the 100 Most Social Brands in the U.K. from Headstream and Socialbakers is dominated by retail brands. In fact, one out of four brands ranked in the top 100 are retail brands, and one in three brands ranked in the top ten are retail brands.

Despite the overall dominance of retail brands on the Social Brands 100 list, four out of ten of the brands ranked in the top 10 are travel brands. Just one entertainment brand landed in the top ten, but it took first place. In 2013, Headstream’s engagement research identified Battlefield from Electronic Arts as the U.K.’s most social brand.

A total of 715 brands were nominated for inclusion in the 100 Most Social Brands list for 2013, and each brand was evaluated over a six-week period on several criteria, including: engagement rates, fan growth, response rates, and response times.

The top 10 brands on the 2013 list are:

  1. Battlefield (entertainment)
  2. American Airlines (travel)
  3. Lufthansa (travel)
  4. Thomson Holidays (travel)
  5. Thomas Cook UK (travel)
  6. Innocent (FMCG)
  7. Argos (retail)
  8. SEAT Mexico (automotive)
  9. Tesco (retail)
  10. Dr. Martens (retail)

This report comes just a few weeks after research by Socialbakers was released that identified a significant growth in brand social responsiveness. While the number of people who turn to social media to get answers to customer service questions and problems has skyrocketed over the past year, Socialbakers found that brands are still not adequately responding to those customer comments. They’re improving, but they’re still far from perfect.

Headstream reports that brands are devoting 10% of their marketing budgets on average to social media, but is that money being invested in the best ways? Is it enough? Given the huge shift from telephone and email customer service to social media customer service, companies need to determine where the budget dollars to handle these inquiries will come from, and which department will take responsibility for it. Of course, the best solution would include an integrated effort.

The full Social Brands 100 list for 2013 is included in the infographic below. You can follow the links to view the full ranking list and read the full 2013 Social Brands 100 report, which includes brand rankings by industry and some great insights.

The infographic below, from the Brand Republic’s The Wall blog, gives you an overview of the top 100 social brands.

social brands 100 2013 infographic

Image: Headstream

 

3 out of 4 Mobile Consumers Prefer Free Content with Ads Over Paid Content

mobile apps free premiumA new study from Tapjoy and Yankee Group reveals that 73% of tablet users and 67% of smartphone users would engage with advertising to access content for free while just 46% of tablet users and 31% of smartphone users would consider purchasing in-app premium content priced between $0.99 and $2.99.

In fact, 80% of mobile device owners reported that they already engage with advertising on a daily basis in exchange for premium content or some form of virtual currency, and nearly 50% do so on a monthly basis or more frequently.

It turns out that mobile consumers are already comfortable engaging with online advertising in order to get free content, and they’re willing to accept more advertising if it means they’ll get more free content or virtual currency. When asked what kind of content mobile consumers would want to receive in exchange for viewing and engaging with advertising, the study found the following breakdown:

  1. Tablet apps = 77%
  2. Paperback book = 75%
  3. MP3 download = 73%
  4. Table app upgrade/premium content = 73%
  5. Coffee = 71%
  6. Smartphone app = 70%
  7. Smartphone app upgrade premium content = 67%
  8. Newspaper = 66%

What does this mean for brand marketers? According to Tapjoy’s “Redefining Virtual Currency” report, giving your mobile consumers opportunities to earn virtual currency by willingly engaging with advertising is a key monetization strategy. Consumers have already demonstrated their comfort-level with accepting mobile advertising in exchange for premium content and virtual currency, and they prefer accessing that premium content and other rewards by accepting mobile advertising than paying for it.

Bottom-line, mobile consumers understand that the ads they see are what gives them free content. They expect to see ads, and as long as those ads aren’t obtrusive to the mobile experience, consumers are satisfied. Don’t jump on the premium content or freemium app bandwagon. Instead, consider how advertising and virtual currency could be integrated into your brand’s mobile app to generate revenue and satisfy more customers. In-app mobile advertising can be a positive thing for consumers and brands, so don’t count it out of your app development process.

What do you think? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts on free vs. paid mobile content and in-app advertising.

Image: Intel Free Press

Using Simple Math to Inform Your Disclosure Policy

making it clearOne of the main channels of communications between corporations and investors are sell side analysts.  They are useful in any number of ways, including as industry experts, creators of detailed financial models of the companies they cover, entry points to very sophisticated sales forces and as the ones who have a recommendation on your company’s stock. However, how they spend their time is often misunderstood.

Based on personal experience, the perception among corporate executives is that analysts spend their time in front of their computers doing research and constructing earnings models, interspersed with an occasional phone call and the odd trip to visit company management. Yet this is well off the mark, and its implications can have a serious effect on a company’s approach to investor relations.

I’m not aware of any academic research considering the relations between sell side analysts and corporate investor relations departments, so I am going to confine myself to a few simple calculations in order to make my points.

The first thing to consider is the number 50%. That is the percentage of time sell side analysts tell me they spend on marketing to the buy side, the investment shops that actually buy, sell and hold securities. So if your average workaholic sell side analyst is putting in 60 hours a week at their job, that means at most 50% of their time, or 30 hours, can be devoted to research on companies they follow. Consider next that the average sell side analyst covers between 10 – 15 companies. If we give the sell side the benefit of the doubt and say they cover 10 companies, that means on an average week they have 3 hours to devote to any single company. And that does not allow for any work the analyst may do on industry wide analysis and deals the investment banking department may want input on. What this means for investor relations is that sell side analysts are very time stressed.

Many companies take the position that the job of an analyst is to analyze and the company should not have to spoon feed them information about the company and the industry. In an ideal world this would be true, but the reality is that the easier you make it for the analyst to get good information, the more likely their analysis is to be accurate. This is because they often don’t have time to go out and get good information on their own.  If on average an analyst has three hours a week to produce quarterly notes, chase down buy side requests for information and talk to company management, it doesn’t leave a lot of time for incisive research and writing.

From an investor relations policy standpoint, this means that companies should think about establishing baseline disclosures, beyond what is mandated by regulation, that can help analysts understand the company and the trends it faces. By getting the basics out of the way, this will allow time strapped analysts to focus on what’s important and they have a better chance of getting it right. It’s one of those rare instances where by helping someone else out, you can also help yourself.