Branding, creativity and the importance of a good story. The Servant of Chaos blog covers social media marketing, digital and brand strategy and the art of storytelling for brand engagement.
Facebook’s recent decision to shut down The Cool Hunter’s Facebook page should have sent shivers down the spine of every marketer. For years the vast scale of Facebook has attracted brands like a moth to the social media flame. Promising TVC-like reach with the added benefits of interactivity, community building and interest-graph targeting, it seemed that Facebook was the answer to the prayers of digital marketers the world over.
But a Facebook only strategy is doomed to fail:
Facebook is well-known for changing their terms and conditions without consultation. If you are not on top of those changes you can find yourself in breach and at risk of being shut down
Many brands run competitions on their Facebook pages without understanding the restrictive rules for doing so – see particularly Item E (iv) about the use of the Facebook “Like” button as a competition entry mechanism. Again, transgression could see your page shut down
Facebook is a walled garden designed to keep interaction and activity firmly on the inside. If you are going to the trouble of engaging your connected consumers, building your community and deepening the brand relationship, you run the risk of being “Cool Hunted” and losing that entire investment if you are shut down
Facebook, while large in scale, is only one social network. Digital marketers should be aiming for quality of engagement and deep next gen customer experience over “reach”
Three steps to reclaim your digital strategy
Facebook can still be a useful (and powerful) platform – but it should be part of your strategy to drive marketing and business outcomes. For example, it should not BE your strategy. There are three steps you can take to reclaim your digital strategy:
Use a continuous digital strategy. In a digital world, strategy is not “set and forget”. Following a proven approach to set, refine and extend your digital strategy provides deep resilience in the planning and execution of your strategy
Strategy drives decisions. You must have a clearly articulated and documented strategy. It should provide a guiding principle. “Share the Message, Own the Destination” will not only drive the content and conversational approach, but will also inform your technology choices
Use technology to scale. While social media offers one-to-one communications, this cannot scale in a business context. There are a range of technologies that can assist you to scale the execution of your strategy. This topic is the focus of my future research, be sure to subscribe for updates.
Some of the articles from last week took my breath away. They are artfully written and deliver a slap to the face and a jolt to the brain. Some are by local writers – but as usual I source the best writing from all parts of the world.
I trust that these five posts will help kick start your working week in the best possible way.
My earliest experience of the internet was before the “world wide web” existed. Or certainly before I knew of things such as “web browsers”. Back then I would dial-in and manually connect to a BBS to check or write email, play games and find answers to questions. It was primitive in many ways, but it was inherently social. This kind of interaction is what Alexis C Madrigal calls Dark Social and he thinks we have the whole history of the web wrong.
A brilliant post by John Hagel on the paradox of preparing for change. It comes down to focusing on three things. Read the post to learn what they are. You’ll be glad you did.
Umair Haque can turn the world on its edge – delivering insight with poetry. Last week he served up a challenge. His article wanting meaningful work is not a first world problem. And as I viewed my family tree stretching back to the workhouses of 1850s London, it made me hope there was an occasional break in the cloud cover.
If you are interested in the concept of online influence, do yourself a favour and check out Danny Brown’s social influence and the shift of the Carnegie Principle. Then you’ll understand why I’m less than ecstatic about my Klout score.
Francis McCarthy has a great summary of the recent Social Media Club, Sydney event that goes beyond the ordinary level of description. It’s a post so descriptive you can almost smell the perfume in the audience.
If marketing technology vendors had doubted Australian marketers’ hunger for innovation, then the recent turnout to the Marketo Rockstar Tour laid those doubts to rest.
Stretching out of the main bar at Sydney’s Establishment Hotel and down George Street, a queue of 300 or so patiently made their way to the upstairs ballroom to learn about Marketo’s software as a service based marketing automation platform. Punctuated with case studies, driving rock music, audience questions and a keynote from founder Phil Fernandez, it was a glitzy launch with plenty of substance. Follow along with the tweetstream below.
Fifty four percent of the world’s population lives in Asia. That’s 3.7 billion people. And according to We Are Social, Singapore’s recent report, Asia is home to over 1 billion internet users – 80% of whom use social media (see full report below).
The numbers are impressive. And yet, they tell only part of the story.
The most compelling aspect is the trajectory of digital consumption across Asia:
New internet users every month: 11,350,000
Videos watched (in June 2012): 45,000,000,000
New Facebook users each month: 10,000,000
Mobile internet users now outnumber PC-based internet users in China: 388 million vs 380 million
Consumer Adoption is Disrupting Patterns of Media Consumption and Impacting the Buyer’s Journey
The shift to digital in Asia is characterised by the widespread use of mobile and smartphones. Almost half of the people in Asia are willing to make transactions on their mobile phones (43%). And 60% of internet users in Asia use social media to inform purchase decisions. This combination is impacting not just the top end of the marketing funnel but various points across the buyer’s journey.
Digital Adoption Will Drive Marketer’s Thirst for Mobile Solutions
Given that more than half of Asia’s population is under 30, marketers seeking to engage these high spending, younger audiences will need to develop new digital approaches.
However, with 82% mobile penetration across Asia – and a growing population of mobile internet users - digital approaches should increasingly follow a Mobile First with a Social Heart strategy.
Marketers Will Turn to Marketing Automation to Scale Execution
While digital and social media marketing promises one-to-one conversations with customers, the rapid growth in the population of “Connected Consumers” challenges marketers’ capacity to scale. As a result, marketers will begin turning to marketing automation vendors to provide personality rich brand communications at scale.
The Shift to Digital Requires a Re-casting of the Marketing Funnel
While the information in the We Are Social report focuses on Asia, we are seeing similar shifts in markets the world over. Marketers can no longer rely on past practices as a relevant method for predicting future outcomes. Forward thinking marketers will need to begin rethink their understanding of their consumers from the outside-in. This will require a re-casting of the marketing funnel.
Look for my upcoming report CMOs: Re-casting the Marketing Funnel for Consumer Engagement, available for free later this month to all Constellation Research clients. Want to know more? Email me.
It was a welcome return and a good, vocal crowd at the Shelbourne Hotel, for the topic of Blog Monetisation at Sydney’s Social Media Club event. A panel comprising bloggers, agency folks, digital publishers, journalists, PR and digital strategists kept the conversation going and got the crowd tweeting.
There is a lot of talk about brands becoming publishers – as if it was a simple transformation achieved by the stroke of a budget making biro. But what does it really take?
In Australia, Medicins Sans Frontieres or “doctors without borders” aim to put this to the test.
Médecins Sans Frontières is the world’s leading independent organisation for medical humanitarian aid, providing relief after natural disasters, helping victims of conflict and running emergency feeding programs. Working in war zones much of their work happens far from the eyes of the world.
And while MSF are known as a “below the radar” organisation – this poses real challenges for sharing stories, building awareness and engaging with potential sponsors, donors and the interested public.
For the month of October, MSF TV aims to address this challenge head on, creating a digital newsroom to bring stories directly to the public. There are:
Seven channels of video content aimed to stimulate conversation
Conversations amplified through the #msftv hashtag on Twitter
YouTube channel with an archive of episodes and issues from the MSF TV site
The rise of digital opens new opportunities for brands to go peer-to-peer
Marketers generally think in terms of business-to-business or business-to-consumer communications. But the rise of digital has changed the landscape. It’s not one-to-many but one-FOR-many communications. The old B2B and B2C distinctions are crumbling under the weight of social media – with communicators now working in a peer-to-peer conversation.
Very few organisations have followed this path thus far. It’s complicated, challenging and exciting. MSF and their partner agency, Republic of Everyone, are trailblazing. They truly are going where others don’t. But we can only expect more to follow.
In the UK, Google is set to launch a new financial services division with a new credit business the first product to market. As Adam Clark Estes reports, the initial offering will provide businesses with a small line of credit linked specifically to Google’s AdWords program.
A number of items within the announcement are worthy of attention:
It’s a new product within a new division of Google
The plan is to expand to countries beyond the UK in the “next few weeks”
Credit cards will be issued with very competitive rates
Why This Is Important
Financial services is a fresh field ready for disruption: Disruption in the financial services sector has been a long time coming. The sweeping tide of digital has washed through most sectors but has been held back from regulated sectors like financial services, healthcare and pharmaceuticals. Innovators are seeking a way into these lucrative markets
Google understands speed to market: Many industries rollout new offerings over extended time frames. It can take years for innovations in one national market to reach another. Google’s intention clearly intends to move very quickly to cement a foothold
The loan book is the thin edge of the wedge: As I suggested at a recent personal lending conference, disruptive competition is likely to come from outside the financial services industry. Cash Converters in the UK last year saw 154% growth in their personal loan book; in Australia they experienced a not insubstantial 28% growth. This is not about bit players – it’s about trends – and there is a wave of change coming. Google plan to be surfing this wave
The Bottom Line: Connected Consumers Shift to Where their Sense of Trust Takes Them
Despite advertising and branding blitzes over the previous 24 months, most financial services companies are viewed with suspicion by many of their customers. Long term lock-in has allowed FS companies to claw back GFC losses and to grow. This move by Google (and the accompanying announcement by Amazon) will capture the imagination of Connected Consumers – the tech savvy early adopters of a disaffected consumer world. Google has been building trust with Connected Consumers for years, turning every search result, every click and every app login into a brand experience. This may be the first step in what could truly be a transformative monetization strategy.
Your POV
Would you take a loan from Google for AdWords? What about cash? Where do you see this leading? Add your comments or send us an email.
Please let us know if you need help with your digital strategy efforts. Here’s how we can assist:
Assessing social business/digital marketing readiness
Considering new digital community strategy
Developing your social business/digital marketing strategy
Designing a data to decisions strategy
Create a new vision of the future of work
Deliver a new customer experience and engagement strategy
It feels a bit like back to the future this week – but with a touch of foresight!
Most of the must-reads that I have pulled out of the thousands of articles skimmed, checked and read last week come from those writers that I was most influenced by in my early blogging days. To this day they produce quality insight and actionable thinking. And if you don’t already subscribe to their feeds, do so – you’ll be glad you did.
Almost anything you read on Quartz, the recently launched “digitally native news outlet” is worth reading. With content defined by “obsessions” rather than “beats” you are bound to find more than you bargained for. This article on the diminishing returns of Facebook’s next billion users shows where the attention of the social media behemoth will need to shift
I have long been a fan of John Seely Brown and his thinking on the subject of social learning. This animated highlights package from one of his recent talks – cultivating the entrepreneurial learner in the 21st century - is jam-packed with goodness
Olivier Blanchard dismembers a recent Forrester report that was reported with the catchy headline “Forrester: Facebook and Twitter do almost nothing to drive sales”. The problem with bad science suggests Olivier, is that it can lead to poor strategic decisions. Read, learn and think
Case studies can be brilliant for your content marketing – yet so many of them are written so poorly. Drew McLellan explains there are seven keys to compelling case studies
On Friday, October 5, the Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, hosted a forum on the digital economy. Streamed via the web it brought together business leaders, academics, politicians and small business owners. Through out the day, speakers returned to the themes that are driving change in our lives – what we refer to as the five forces of the consumerisation of IT. PLUS the need for skills and training – ways to impact the culture of business, drive change in our workforces and prepare our teams for the future of work.
This storify captures and curates the topics from the day.
How many times have you heard those lines? It is often the first reaction to a new technology. It is the cold fish, slap-in-the-face of the overwhelmed. The desperate cry of the overworked.
Many times we let technology get in the way. It can confuse us or stop us from trying something new. Its first appearance looks like more work, more effort, more stress. More of everything that is bad.
But when we look back at improvements in productivity, technology is, without a doubt, the driving force. It has made our lives better – reducing boring, repetitive tasks, improving the speed of our decision making and delivering lightning fast, global communications to our desktops, fingertips and pockets. And yet, for many of us, new technology stops us in our tracks. After all, we are not all “early adopters” eager to try, use and show something new.
Often when we say “I don’t have time for that”, really we are saying, “I’m tired of this relentless change. I’m comfortable with the way I work. I’m good at it and I am busy doing what I am already doing.” In the end it appears to be change for technology’s sake.
But if the world of social media has taught us anything, it is that technology can also be transformative – it can change the way we do things. And it can change the way we think about things. It can change our attitudes.
But where do you start? This great 20 tip playbook from Salesforce Radian6 brings a decisively human element to the technology conversation (and I am not just saying this because I am mentioned in it). And while the focus is social media – this same approach can be equally applied to any communication challenge that you face. After all, it’s not about the technology – it’s about the people. Start by saying hello.
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