Archive for October, 2007

In 2005 Jeff Jarvis unleashed a storm of blog criticism on Dell and created the Dell Hell debacle.  In a recent article in Business Week he writes that Dell has embraced the online conversation and leaped from ‘worst to first.’  

Has it made a difference, asks Jarvis and the answer is a resounding yes. 

By Dell’s measure, negative blog posts about it have dropped from 49% to 22%. And the Dell Hell posts on my blog, which used to come up high on a Google search for the company, are now relegated to second-page search-engine Siberia.

“That change in perception just doesn’t happen with a press release,” says Dell blogger Lionel Menchaca.

And the opportunities created by the conversation go far beyond dousing fires, says Jarvis. Dell’s customers now make product suggestions and warn of problems.  They help fellow customers fix them.  In fact, customers share their knowledge in so many ways that Dell’s team says the challenge is to manage that knowledge and spread it.

If you are not listening to the conversation and engaging with your customers online yet make it top your list for 2008.

 

 

   

Interesting figures from the recent comScore study – social media aficionados are more likely to frequent leisure retail websites.

More than 95 percent of heavy social networkers visited retail sites in August, compared to 80 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience. And they have a particularly high tendency to visit the more leisure-oriented retail categories: entertainment (music, books and movies) fashion (apparel, jewellery/luxury goods/accessories) and retail technology (consumer electronics, computer software and hardware) “People typically enjoy sharing their experiences with these products, whether it’s to talk about their new iPhone or the pair of designer jeans they just bought,” says comScore Chairman, Gian Fulgoni.“People typically enjoy sharing their experiences with these products, whether it’s to talk about their new iPhone or the pair of designer jeans they just bought,” says comScore Chairman, Gian Fulgoni.What type of sites are top of their list?  Apparel.  The top ten sites were all fashion and apparel sites oriented to young adults.

“People typically enjoy sharing their experiences with these products, whether it’s to talk about their new iPhone or the pair of designer jeans they just bought,” says comScore Chairman, Gian Fulgoni.What type of sites are top of their list?  Apparel.  The top ten sites were all fashion and apparel sites oriented to young adults.Lesson to be learned: If you have a product that appeals to the young adult, use the social networking and content sharing venues to attract visitors.  Look into providing social media tools and creating a social networking and content sharing environment on your own site.

So says a new study from Deloite and Touche.

“Enabled by new information technologies, consumers have real-time access to information, insight and analysis, giving them an unprecedented arsenal to help make purchase decisions. At the same time, these technologies provide a voice and a venue for anyone with something to say, allowing individuals to shape reputations of consumer companies and their products.”

Consumers are turning to online reviews in large numbers, and those reviews are having a considerable impact on purchase decisions -

• 62 percent of consumers read consumer-written product reviews on the Internet,
• 8 in 10 say their purchase decisions have been directly influenced by the reviews, either influencing them to buy a different product than the one they had originally been thinking about purchasing, or confirming the original purchase intention
• Reputation and word of mouth – both factors that are greatly influenced by online reviews – are the key factors that influence consumers’ decisions to purchase a new product or brand
• While the percentages were slightly higher for the younger generations, all age groups are reading and acting on online reviews at significant rates

I spent the weekend reviewing the entries in the community and virtual worlds category for the Society for New Communication Research Awards. (I am a Senior Fellow there.)  Some companies have taken this idea of online word of mouth to heart and are really getting it right.  The results will be announced at the SNCR symposium in Boston in December.

Have you got a social media strategy for 2008?

 

 

If you’re still in the dark about RSS – how it can improve search results, online visibility and get your news out online – I’m doing a one hour free webinar tomorrow at 10 am Pacific and 1pm Eastern.

Email Mary Anderson for an invite.  You can reach her at mary at press-feed dot com (apologies for writing it this way but we have to circumvent the email spammers)  You can also call her on 626 793 4911

Yes, if it’s done right says Forrester Research. However, it’s not done right too often finds a recent report from Jupiter Research.

Forrester recently announced the finalists and winners of their Groundswell social media marketing awards. Good to see Dell in the company transformation category.

Details of the winning campaigns are in this post.

On the other hand Jupiter Research’s report called Bringing the Message to the Masses says that viral marketing is not as effective as marketers might like think it is. In fact only 15 percent of viral marketing efforts of the past year actually succeeded in getting consumers to spread positive word of mouth.
 
Don Pepper, c0-author of the upcoming book Rules to Break and Laws to Follow, says he was not surprised by this finding. “One of the conclusions we have reached after taking a close look at the mechanics of social networks and customers connecting with other customers is that it is a lot harder to generate positive word-of-mouth among consumers than most marketers believe.”

Emily Riley, author of the Jupiter report, commented that marketers often miss the concept underlying viral marketing. “A lot of times they’re using this method with the goal of launching a new product, and therefore they’re trying to measure sales, not brand awareness.”

The report predicts that 47 percent of viral marketers will start blogs, and 41 percent will drive traffic to microsites within the next year in an attempt to take control back out of the hands of the consumers.

Her advice: viral marketers should use social tools such as widgets and video to bring their message to existing centers of communication, as well as segment groups by age and influence, aligning their tactics accordingly.

“This is still a very exciting time for viral marketing,” says Riley. “There will continue to be mishaps, but if done properly, the results can be substantial.”

Riley offers these best practices:

1. Give them content worth forwarding – make it useful, informative or fun
2. Make it really easy to share the content – use forward to a friend or bookmark icons
3. Target the right demographic – surprisingly 45 – 54 year olds pass on viral messages 3 times more than 18 – 24 year olds
4. Consider partnering with a company that specializes in viral marketing messages
5. Attach your viral message to a blog or microsite
6. Seed influential blogs with your message – but be open and transparent
7. Make sure you give blog readers a way to sign up for your newsletter – provide a direct link in your signature line

  

 

  

The Wall St Journal reported yesterday that the continuing slump for newspaper advertising drove Gannett Co.’s third-quarter earnings down 11%.  The move to the Internet for news and information is credtied as a major contributing factor in the newspaper income woes.

That is likely to spell more bad news for the newspaper industry, which has seen readers and advertising dollars siphoned away to the Internet, says WSJ.

Newspaper publishers have struggled as advertisers shift spending online, following readers who get their news from Internet sites, writes the Maryland Daily Record.

One example is the announcement from Intel this week that they would increase their online co-op ad spend to 35% of their $300 million annual budget. And as it is for co-op ads this means brands like Toshiba, Sony, Lenovo and HP will be affected too.

Is your news content visible online?  Is coverage in online news sites a part of your PR strategy?

The Advanced PR Technology workshops in NYC and San Francisco will give you the tools you need to take advantage of this trend.

Businesses need to become more proactive about managing their reputation online as the risks of operating on the web are on the increase, according to research from Gartner. They predict that by the end of 2010 threats to damage a corporate reputation by ensuring that routine online search requests will return negative or even libellous results will have become routine.