Walter Adamson

Brands in social media deliver higher search rates - comScore

Here is some good news for brands - people using social media demonstrate higher search rates for a brand if they have previously been exposed to branded marketing or "name dropping" on social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter or YouTube.

This a result of a study conducted by comScore: "The Influenced: Social Media, Search and the Interplay of Consideration and Consumption", in collaboration with social media agency M80 over a three month period.

"Social media-exposed consumers are far more likely to search for brand and product-related terms, and click on a brand's paid search ad," said Graham Mudd, vice president of comScore.

"This finding provides strong evidence that investing in social media marketing can both increase initial brand consideration and drive higher conversion rates once the consumer has decided to purchase." 

ComScore's survey found that the highest click-through rates (CTR) were seen when brands actively communicated with users through specifically tailored social marketing programs - such as when a company made and actively engaged with consumers through a  dedicated Facebook page.

More good news, you can find the Scribd presentation here and a whole further analysis by Cindy Kerber Spellman.

Listening for systems, not for information or need

I'm keen on Sharon Drew Morgen's approach to listening to a buyer's systems issues - the issues they face in socialising and incorporating a potential change in their organisation - as opposed to only listening for opportunities to sell your solution.

There is another form of listening necessary to actually help buyers address their off-line conversations so they can actually have help garnering buy-in to make a purchase.

Note that this is NOT SALES, but a different activity that needs to be added to the front end of the sales process as if it were a different language.

It’s a very different listening: You’re listening to serve as a guide and to facilitate the route without traveling it yourself. You are actually leading them through change. They can’t buy anything until they line up these internal issues anyway – it might as well be with you on their Team. Just remember that this guidance is not about their need! So before listening for the DETAILS of need, sellers must listen for the SYSTEM that buyers live in to help them manage the behind-the-scenes elements that must agree to add a new solution.

This also applies to how to engage with companies to develop and implement social media strategies, as these require heavy socialisation and often considerable change management.

New IT tools less than half of new customer care

IDC APAC reported that "customer care is emerging as a key IT investment area for CIOs in the current downturn", according to the findings of a new poll. 

While most organisations are reducing or freezing their investments in IT, 23 percent of the Australian-based respondees indicate they will still invest in IT solutions that can help them increase earnings or save costs. Chief among these areas is customer care, which nearly half of the respondents saw as a way to generate revenue, with many ready to progress beyond traditional customer relationship management, IDC says.

The world has changed so rapidly in the last 12 months in terms of customers informing themselves and in creating their own customer experiences that it will take a lot more than "new advanced customer care tools, such as customer analytics, customer database management and new web-based tools".

It's going to take a whole new business planning approach to social media and customer engagement, and that's hard work. It's where you need serious business-purposed planning and execution processes, such as those of the Social Media Academy.

See full article and my comment.

Related is the study released today by the Australia Centre for Retail Studies, which found that found that about 50% of people in Australia research their purchase before heading to the store.  Comments to this article centred on the need for an effective online buying website, but I think that it goes much deeper given the new role of the social web.

The social media is part of the brand behaviour, and this needs to be taken in to account in planning the whole customer interaction and how they inform themselves. Again, this is not a simple matter and certainly not something like just running a Facebook campaign or "launching" a Twitter profile. It requires serious cross-function planning and a proper social media assessment.

See full article and my comment.

It's more and more shaping up that 2010 will be the year when social media and the customer experience hits critical mass.

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Social media brown cows win real work

Here's a nice little post about how the brown cows of social media make hay - as opposed to the super stars and purple cows (thanks to @lukegrange).

Searching for a wire service, Mary Ellen Miller gave up on her first choice of a major provider and drifted into the helpful advice of a twitter follower, and made a buying decision.

It nicely illustrates one of the core opening discussions when we from the Social Media Academy meet corporate managers who say that their companies aren't ready for the social media.  I ask if it is important to them to be in the same places and spaces as their customers when those customers are making buying decisions.

They usually say yes, unless they are being super stubborn and can sense what is coming!

So if I said "your customers are in the social media now, in places and spaces in the social media, making buying decisions" would that mean that you should also be there?

Yes they say, but they then most often follow with the killer qualifier - but our customers aren't in the social media - Twitter and all that stuff.

So now we get to negotiation - if I can show you that your customers are there, then will you take social media and social media education seriously?

So starts the journey towards their education, and towards a proper social media assessment.

And the little stories, like Mary Ellen's buying decision, help amplify the importance.

	| | | | | | Save to Mobile Scan my QR Code	I blog about the IT Industry & the Cloud Shift, customer engagement & social media , and business value & innovation, and in particular where they overlap.
Melbourne Lead for Kinship Digital - delivering to business social strategy, tactics, monitoring, governance and tools. IT exec since way back, former Internal Auditor, blogging since early 2004, Tweeting since 2007, certified social business strategist since 2009, still learning. CoFounder and Partner of the Social Business Consulting Group. Qualified in Mathematical Statistics, Computing Science. Old eyes, new views. Give me a tweet. More bio here. Contact: walter@walteradamson.com  m: +61 403 345 632 Keywords: Social enterprise, social governance, social monitoring, community platforms, predictive analysis, IT strategy, customer value proposition,SaaS, cloud strategy, go-to-market, digital engagement.