More on Social Influence Marketing

I previously pointed out Shiv Singh’s thinking on Social Influence Marketing.  He’s written a another post on the topic, as a follow up to his recent SXSW presentation.   In our 2008 Digital Outlook, the head of Avenue A | Razorfish’s Emerging Media group, Terri Walter, provides her roadmap for success in SIM.  As the relationship between brands and customers continues to evolve, it’s a great guide for marketers:

In less than two years, social networking has had a transformational effect on the way we communicate. For teens, social networks are the hub of existence. For many professionals, they have become a primary source of networking. For the average Web user, social networks offer ways to stay better connected to a passion point, hobby, or issue and for connecting or reconnecting with family and friends.

For brands, social networking has also opened up new formats for engaging with consumers. Display advertising is certainly a viable ad model in social networking environments, but the real opportunity for marketers is to leverage the unprecedented community-building aspects of the medium to build their brands. Whether through unique content on brand profile pages, widgets with pass-along value, blogs, mashable video, advocacy programs, virtual avatars, or brand Web sites with social networking elements, marketers are experimenting widely in the space while getting better attuned to consumers’ opinion of their efforts.

While the opportunity is significant, it is not easy to join the communities that your customers have formed. There are six “Cs” of social influence marketing—the main principles that make it work.

1. Content
In 2007, many brands experimented with social networking environments—for better or for worse and in various forms. Brands like Victoria’s Secret loungewear line PINK and Nike seem to thrive in the space, giving consumers access to unique content they can’t get anywhere else. Access to valuable tools and content is a key factor in a consumer’s decision to interact with a brand.

Content can take many forms: brand badges, coupons, wallpapers, behind-the-scenes movie clips, mashable video, updated stock quotes, recipes, sweepstakes, mobile downloads, charity donations, or plain information. Content can also take many formats—on brand pages, in widgets, through avatars, or via mobile phones. Regardless of their goals, brands need to think about customizing bite-sized, portable content or experiences for their most prominent target segments—content that their “friends” would be proud to display, share, or support.

2. Customization
One of the foundations of social media is customization. In social networks like MySpace or Facebook, users are defining themselves through their profile pages and the elements that they choose to display, and each profile is personalized. Users crave the ability to customize content, post it, share it, and make it their own. On user generated content (UGC) sites like YouTube or Flickr, users are either building custom video or seeking content they can collaborate with or personalize that represents their particular likes, interests, or humor. Jeep’s custom video channel on YouTube is a good example of a how a brand and a community can come together by way of a common passion—love of driving—to share personalized content. While not all UGC is positive, the genuine quality of UGC can add significant dimension to a brand among a community of influencers.

In social media, marketers need to understand where their brands intersect with the passion points of their consumers. But ultimately, they need to empower consumers to express themselves via their connection to the brand. In most cases, brands can craft the framework of a campaign, but the customization of content and the dialogue around the campaign will be up to the consumer.

3. Community
The foundation of every community is a relationship rooted in trust and mutual interest, and online communities operate the same way. A first step for brands that want to participate is to understand the community they are convening with and what holds them together. The second step is to realize that they do not speak naturally in this space, but people do, so there is a need for marketers to think carefully about how to personify and express their brands in an appropriate way before jumping in. For Dove, the cause the brand has supported as part of the Campaign for Real Beauty—the self esteem of girls—has been enough to stir conversation and community among the target audience it sought, and to carry its viral video efforts through to success. Taking a genuine approach to social influence marketing that is truly rooted in a cause, a topic, a utility, or a behavior that is both relevant to the community and the brand will ensure a healthy campaign.

Building community for brands in social networks is hard. The adage “build it and they will come” is not applicable here. In order to build community within social media campaigns, brands need to achieve several things:

• Give users a reason to interact with your brand frequently by providing unique content, value or engagement.
• Let your content travel by distributing it across widgets and other mechanisms beyond your Web site.
• Consider adding social networking experiences on your site that relate back to your brand pages on social networking sites.

Many campaigns in social media can be aided by display media, PR, or other promotional support, but it is important to avoid a heavy-handed attempt to promote yourself—either you are providing a unique value to the community or you aren’t. If you are, consumers embrace it; if you aren’t, no amount of advertising will help. Our client work has shown that social marketing programs with media and promotional support have had much stronger results in terms of user participation and exponential pass-along value than those that were word-of-mouth only—but only when that support was consistent with the needs of the community.

If you use media support to launch a contest on a social network, it is also important to have your media do more than link to your home page. Your media buys on MySpace, for example, should link to your brand and/or campaign profile pages and to any other branded social networks you have developed on your Web site in order to build community around your campaign. Widgets and widget distribution networks like Gigya and ClearSpring have also proven effective at distributing content widely and rapidly among communities with common interests.

4. Conversation
Brands are so intertwined with our culture that inevitably many consumers represent aspects of their personalities through the brands they associate with, advocate, or even criticize. The social media space is unique in that dialogue is happening openly among consumers about the things they admire and despise the most. This creates both an opportunity and a challenge for marketers. Brands can tap into positive buzz and build a network of advocates to support customer relationship building and new sales. But brands must also accept the negative conversation and hear the signals that may help them mitigate a problem before it escalates.

Social networking environments are public—but from the point of view of consumers, it is still considered private space that warrants permission or value to enter and collaborative behavior to stay. Brands need to respect this space and explore how they can create benefit with consumers that warrants their welcome and continued conversation. Importantly, these conversations need to be transparent—nameless, faceless brand representatives are unlikely to connect with the community in a meaningful way.

5. Commerce
Many marketers are concerned about measuring success in the social media space. Standards and metrics are not yet well defined, and success varies based on the advertiser and type of campaign, as well as the kind of social media environment a marketer is participating in. UGC sites, blogs, and social networks are all slightly different environments for brand participation, and the metrics you lay out in the beginning of a campaign need to factor in the environment and its nuances. The coming year should bring additional progress in establishing metrics for engagement, buzz monitoring, and reputation management across the social Web.

As methodologies for measurement emerge, there is one factor around social influence marketing that is able to give marketers more immediate satisfaction: commerce. Whether you offer coupons on your brand profile page like Victoria’s Secret PINK, enable commerce in widgets, or build an entirely new product category like Nike+ that pays off in product sales, brands can gain a return on their investment in social media that goes beyond customer relationship building or branding. However, marketers should tread lightly when trying to establish social influence marketing as a direct driver of commerce. The community has not come together to help companies sell products.

6. Commitment
As mentioned earlier, consumers expect brands in social networking environments to bring some kind of benefit to the community they foster. Any brand can enter the social media space on a campaign level or experimental basis, but those who can actually make a commitment to building a presence, a community of friends, and a steady amount of new content to keep their communities engaged will benefit most.

As marketers focus on the six “Cs,” they will find that social influence marketing enables them to establish ongoing customer communication, solicit feedback on products and services, provide more value to customers, enhance a brand’s reputation, and enable brand advocacy. Ultimately, it will help them drive sales.